European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings • Hacker News Board

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#31

Post by harperlee » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 6:49 AM UTC

zanny wrote: post #20

paganel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s mindboggling depressing to lose an hour of daylight each day for almost half a year because you’re stuck in an office at work.

Collectively bargain with your coworkers to work 8-4 instead of 9-5 then. Nothing at all prevents workplaces from independently adopting their own biannual shift scheduling savings time if they want to. That argument against sane time that doesn't constantly change is "we don't have any power in our workplaces to see the change we want in our working conditions" and all I hear is "wouldn't it be nice if we had a unio…

That only works with some types of work. Anything customer-facing is difficult to change. E.g. you may decide to open/close your restaurant or bakery at different times. It will probably be a very bad idea.

The point of “changing the clock” is that the clock synchronizes all alarm clocks, all contracts, all billboards, al timetables and schedules - so the change updates everything transactionally.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#32

Post by pmontra » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 6:52 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #7

paganel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s mindboggling depressing to lose an hour of daylight each day for almost half a year because you’re stuck in an office at work.

How much daylight you lose depend highly on what latitude you are living. In California, daylight savings actually makes sense, it's a noticeable boost of daylight for your office commute in the winter. In northern Europe, it makes absolutely no sense, because the darkness consumes everything anyway. It takes about a week or two for sunrise to be at the same time it was before the clock adjustment each fall. It's pre…

I agree. I see why countries in northern Europe have little use for daylight savings: they have darkness in the morning in winter and sun well before everybody's awake in summer whenever they use daylight savings or not. In southern Europe it's different (I live there), especially because those countries tend to center their day not around noon but to later hours: lunch starting between 13:00/15:00 and dinner between 21:00/23:00. Spain basically lives with a double summer time. Italy has a gradient between North (earlier, 1 PM) and South (later). I don't live particularly in the south but if I have to choose I'll pick summer time for all the year, and maybe double of it. Sun at 6 AM is wasted, darkness at 7 PM is depressing.

We could end up with two horizontal time zones. UTC+1 in the north and UTC+2 in the south.

By the way, the few people from my country that voted in that poll were keen about keeping daylight savings.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#33

Post by henrikschroder » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 6:55 AM UTC

mhenr18 wrote: post #25

henrikschroder wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much daylight you lose depend highly on what latitude you are living. In California, daylight savings actually makes sense, it's a noticeable boost of daylight for your office commute in the winter. In northern Europe, it makes absolutely no sense, because the darkness consumes everything anyway. It takes about a week or two for sunrise to be at the same time it was before the clock adjustment each fall. It's pre…

Daylight saving time doesn't apply to the winter though. Winter time is standard time, and DST is in effect during the summer months to better make use of the extra light available during summer by winding clocks an hour forward. The idea being that you get an extra hour of sun in the afternoon.

Yes, sorry, moving back to standard time provides a boost in winter.

Both clock adjustments provide different benefits, which is why we do both, to get both benefits. Abolishing DST means you pick one of the two.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#34

Post by ben_w » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 6:55 AM UTC

Spearchucker wrote: post #23

lsh wrote: post #2

> mandated EU-wide summer time has only existed since 2002 and this repeal only repeals the mandatory adherence to daylight savings. Their next problem is consistency and coordination of the removal of DST among member states. And the Germans seem to be dominating the vote as well, so the really hard work in negotiating with others to remove their DST is the real barrier.

" And the Germans seem to be dominating the vote... " On what basis are Germany dominating the vote? They cannot. No EU member state can dominate a vote. Germany could at best lobby other member states, as other member states can (and do) lobby Germany.

The number of seats in the EP is proportional to the population, and Germany is slightly more populous than any other nation. I wouldn’t call it “dominating”, but as a nation it is more influential.

Separately, the seats are divided into parties, and not all MEPs represent the interests of their national governments — UKIP prior to the referendum, for example.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#35

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 6:55 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #7

paganel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s mindboggling depressing to lose an hour of daylight each day for almost half a year because you’re stuck in an office at work.

How much daylight you lose depend highly on what latitude you are living. In California, daylight savings actually makes sense, it's a noticeable boost of daylight for your office commute in the winter. In northern Europe, it makes absolutely no sense, because the darkness consumes everything anyway. It takes about a week or two for sunrise to be at the same time it was before the clock adjustment each fall. It's pre…

> In California, daylight savings actually makes sense, it's a noticeable boost of daylight for your office commute in the winter.

Winter is in standard time, so DST has no effect on it. (Also, the standard time evening commute in CA is in darkness, and wouldn't be if it was in DST, so even if you are comparing the status quo against permanent DST rather than permanent standard time, that's still wrong.)

DST—“Summer Time”—maximizes post-9-5-working-hours daylight time (to promote shopping and other commercial and recreational activity) in summer, not commute-convenient daylight time in winter.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#36

Post by kzrdude » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 6:59 AM UTC

I really hope this doesn't happen. I don't want to have darker mornings than they already are. Daylight in the morning is important to wake you up and to adjust your circadian rhythm.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#37

Post by LoSboccacc » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 7:03 AM UTC

jaabe wrote: post #9

henrikschroder wrote: post #4

In before "Let's all switch to UTC to solve this problem once and for all!" Anyway, it's so weird to me that daylight savings is such a new concept, it didn't exist where I was born when I was born, but it feels like a thing that ought to have existed for a hundred years at least. And yet, despite it being so new, people are actually defending it? Mindboggling.

We changed our educational grading scale a few years back to make it comparable to the international scale. One of the huge problems was that we had a top-grade for people who went “beyond” expectations for the course. Because “beyond” is up for interpretation, some examiners were more likely to give it than others, but in general it was just extremely hard to earn a top mark and no one really knew what was needed to…

??

Most international scales include laude

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#38

Post by timthorn » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 7:08 AM UTC

BurritoAlPastor wrote: post #15

The graphic would seem to indicate that the UK and Portugal observe a time zone of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC±0). This is nonsense, of course; UTC is not a time zone. I believe the UK observes GMT (UTC±0) and Portugal uses Western European Time (UTC±0). It's also worth looking up the story of why Coordinated Universal Time is abbreviated UTC and not CUT, if you haven't heard it. Time zones are great.

> I believe the UK observes GMT (UTC±0)

That's correct, with BST in the Summer. It can get confusing when working with people from different countries who aren't aware of BST and who schedule meetings explicitly in GMT, thinking that it automatically includes daylight saving.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#39

Post by LoSboccacc » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 7:09 AM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #32

henrikschroder wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much daylight you lose depend highly on what latitude you are living. In California, daylight savings actually makes sense, it's a noticeable boost of daylight for your office commute in the winter. In northern Europe, it makes absolutely no sense, because the darkness consumes everything anyway. It takes about a week or two for sunrise to be at the same time it was before the clock adjustment each fall. It's pre…

I agree. I see why countries in northern Europe have little use for daylight savings: they have darkness in the morning in winter and sun well before everybody's awake in summer whenever they use daylight savings or not. In southern Europe it's different (I live there), especially because those countries tend to center their day not around noon but to later hours: lunch starting between 13:00/15:00 and dinner between…

Same for me, if they drop the dst I hope they keep the summer time in Italy, because extended light at evenings is awesome and more useful than extended light when I'm sitting in the office early in the morning

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#40

Post by sambucini » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 7:10 AM UTC

I work in energy trading in Europe and for us this is a blessing. Of course we store our time series TZ aware, but many less professional small utilities or other market participants (incl. Grid operators) who e.g. Order power on hourly resolution with tz-unaware excel spreadsheets via email are a nightmare as each participants treatment of double or missing hours is different and requires manual processing.