Live data from Hacker News

Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

nytimes.com

161–170 of 282 posts

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#161
post #82

commenters seem to be missing the sentence about "Florida doesn’t have the authority to adopt daylight saving time year-round." this is just state politicians being state politicians. Nothing to see here. Lets just say Florida politicians probably have more important things to do and aren't doing them, and leave it at that.

Witness the Indiana Pi Bill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill), (attempting to )establish mathematical truth by legislation, which implies various incorrect values of pi, such as "3.2".

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#162

> The problem? Florida doesn’t have the authority to adopt daylight saving time year-round. > The federal government controls the nation’s time zones, as well as the start and end dates of daylight saving time. States can choose to exempt themselves from daylight saving time — Arizona and Hawaii do — but nothing in federal law allows them to exempt themselves from standard time.

we're all familiar with the article in the constitution that gives the federal government the power to decide for states how to set their clocks, i assume. i guess you can always count on the times to advocate for centralized power

The Constitution grants the federal government the power to pass laws, and "setting your own time" isn't explicitly enumerated as a right that is reserved to the states.

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#163
post #81
post #17

I wouldn't mind everyone moving to UTC. Sure, only people in Greenwich would be able to eat lunch at 12 noon. But at least it would simplify my life as a programmer.

So you want to abolish time zones: https://qntm.org/abolish

Great read, clocks are probably all going digital so no need to manually adjust hours twice a year

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#164

> In parts of Maine, for example, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the sun sets before 4 p.m. — more than an hour earlier than it does in Detroit, at the other end of the Eastern time zone. Why is the solution "permanent daylight savings"? Why is it not "let's split up the timezones better"?

This problem is inherent to having timezones that are an hour long. You're stuck with it unless you are willing to add a bunch more timezones, e.g. have 7 going across the country in 30 minute increments. I think that might be worse than aberrant sunrise/sunset times at the edges of the existing hourlong timezones.

There are regions that have timezones offset by 30 minutes, e.g., Australian Central Standard Time, UTC+09:30. In this case it's not for fitting in extra timezones though, since the neighbouring zones are UTC+8:00 and UTC+10:00.

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#165
post #81
post #17

I wouldn't mind everyone moving to UTC. Sure, only people in Greenwich would be able to eat lunch at 12 noon. But at least it would simplify my life as a programmer.

So you want to abolish time zones: https://qntm.org/abolish

Nice essay. Some good points about the past still having time zones so programming might not get any simpler. I think appropriately adjusted "Do Not Disturb" settings on his uncle's phone could have save him a lot of the trouble.

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#166
post #17

I wouldn't mind everyone moving to UTC. Sure, only people in Greenwich would be able to eat lunch at 12 noon. But at least it would simplify my life as a programmer.

I actually have my laptop at work and desktop at home set to UTC. I eat lunch at 17:00. I go to sleep at 04:00. Not too difficult, just do it.

I live in NZ, I work in California, I get up at 5am in (my) winter, 6am for a few weeks in spring/autumn, 7am in summer - I have breakfast (lunch at) 7/8/9am, I quit at 1/2/3

In case you haven't figured it out DST transitions go the other way in the southern hemisphere - UTC would make so much sense (and for me being at roughly UTC+12 wouldn't be such a big deal)

having said that I'm a big fan of just being on permanent DST, more daylight evening time for people

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#167
post #66

> In parts of Maine, for example, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the sun sets before 4 p.m. — more than an hour earlier than it does in Detroit, at the other end of the Eastern time zone. Why is the solution "permanent daylight savings"? Why is it not "let's split up the timezones better"?

Or, why is the solution not "who cares, we have electric lights."?

I live in a place where winters are long, days are short and skies are either gray or dark.

Having the opportunity to see the sun even for a couple of minutes when coming out from work is a great feeling that has a big impact on people's mood and mental health especially at the tail end of winter. Electric lights don't have that effect.

I also spend more of my non-working time outside and I'd love to be able to go out for a run without a headlamp earlier in the year.

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#168

> In parts of Maine, for example, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the sun sets before 4 p.m. — more than an hour earlier than it does in Detroit, at the other end of the Eastern time zone. Why is the solution "permanent daylight savings"? Why is it not "let's split up the timezones better"?

The problem is that in parts of the Northeast, permanent EST would have significant deficiencies in the summer while permanent EST-1 would have significant deficiencies in the winter. Permanent EST: As it is, the sun rises in Boston before 5:30 AM from May 9-July 25, 2.5 months. With permanent EST, the sun would rise before 4:30 AM for those 2.5 months. People would much rather have that sunlight later in the day whe…

Just shift the school schedule.

Determine the optimal time for Wednesday, round to the nearest 10 minutes, and apply that to the entire week.

Considering the student with the longest commute, they should leave their house an hour after there is enough sunlight to make things clearly visible to a typical child in a typical bedroom.

The school can't possibly match up with every different work schedule. Matching up with none of them is fair. It's not the school's problem anyway.

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#169
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time zones can have any granularity desired. Most are 1 hour, several are 30 minutes (including in India and Australia), and a few are 45 minutes (in New Zealand, for example). There’s no rule though about granularity though.

New Zealand's timezones are full hours, not 45 minutes. You might be thinking of Nepal? (Picky - your broader point is of course right.)

I think the poster is refering to Chatham Islands timezone[1].

[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/new-zealand/chatham-is...

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#170
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is where having one central clock would make sense. But it would have to be something based on like a standard physical quantity instead of morning/noon. I’m thinking like rotational speed of the planet.

The problem with only having one central clock is that you no longer have relative time. Right now, I can say something like "I woke up at 11am", and you understand what that means, regardless of which timezone I'm in or you're in. It means I woke up late. But now imagine I said "I woke up at 16:00 Z." That's meaningless without the context of what timezone I'm in. That could be early, it could be late, it could be w…

For shift workers, 11 am can be usual or downright way too early. Everything is relative. A central time would force people to clarify just like they really need to anyway.
Post reply on HN