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

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

#101

Post by silvester23 » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:59 AM UTC

flurdy wrote: post #95

jopsen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you just make a system that the clients must enter data through? Instead of accepting spreadsheets... But, yes, I can imagine this is a nightmare..

Supply and demand. I would guess the clients can just go "no" and you either loose the electricity they provide or allow spreadsheets.

Working in the same sector, I can confirm this. We try to offer pretty much any half-way reasonable interface to our clients for that exact reason, be it spreadsheets or csv via mail or SFTP, REST APIs or a web interface.

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

#102

Post by mcv » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:59 AM UTC

beobab wrote: post #99

mcv wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that argument, the whole world might as well use UTC everywhere. The whole idea of timezones is that local time still has some resemblance to natural time. If we're going to let go of that, I'd rather we just abandon timezones altogether and use UTC everywhere.

I actually like this idea. Mostly because it means that my Elite Dangerous time will be the same as my "local time".

You've got a solid grasp on your priorities.

But it would definitely make it easier to coordinate online events, including gaming. As the world gets more globalised thanks to the internet, maybe it's not such a crazy idea after all.

Or at least, maybe people should be more aware of how their local time relates to UTC, so they can think it both local time and UTC.

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

#103

Post by sonnyblarney » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:59 AM UTC

esolyt wrote: post #66

tumetab1 wrote: post #52

Title improvement suggestion: EU Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings IMHO, EU institutions should always be referred as such instead as related to a continent, i.e., "EU Parliament" is more correct than "European Parliament"

Except there is no such thing as the EU Parliament. It is called the European Parliament: https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/institutions-bodie...

It's called 'European Parliament' but it's not the Parliament of Europe because EU is not Europe.

Like the MLB 'World Series' ... not quite.

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

#104

Post by gutnor » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 10:00 AM UTC

Tharkun wrote: post #62

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Getting rid of DST sounds like a good thing. Not messing time is patently good. But a bunch of countries on the western side of the EU ought to be on GMT instead of GMT+1. And appparently a majority of people want to make that worse, by making a permanent switch to GMT+2. This will make for fun winters, with the sun rising long after rush hour. This is stupid.

> This will make for fun winters, with the sun rising long after rush hour. This is stupid.

For a lot of people in the EU the day starts with preparing the family for work/school. However the day ends with various activities social or others. Shops and other things tends to close later rather than open earlier (eg: have you ever tried finding some judo class for the kids between 5AM and 6AM ?) More light in the evening extends the possibilities.

As other mentioned, I spent all my youth going to school before the sun rises and coming back after it has set. That's the way it is in the North.

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

#105

Post by ggm » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 10:02 AM UTC

A change which may be rational closer to the equator, but which makes less sense in Edinburgh or further north surely?

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

#106

Post by silvester23 » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 10:03 AM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #100

benj111 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naively I would like to think this was all done using a designed system, but this makes sense. Any documented cases of the lights going out due to an email ending up in the spam folder?

To my knowledge, you won't loose power because your energy provider forgot to buy energy from the market, they still have to pay for it though (probably with late fees).

It depends on the market design of course, but generally, if too many energy providers did not match their consumption with generation (or bought power), that could lead to power outages.

Concerning the 'late fees': if your consumption exceeds your production, you pay what is called balancing energy. Essentially, you have to buy the energy for a price that is set by the transmission system operator depending on the total imbalance in the grid. In some cases, this might actually be beneficial to the energy provider as the balancing energy is sometimes cheaper than the prices you get on the sport market close to gate closure.

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

#107

Post by diminish » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 10:04 AM UTC

The `daylight saving` purpose is intriguing.

I'm very curious why people long time ago, decided to change clocks, instead of work/school start and finish times. Like we start in April at 8:00 am, and in November, at 9:00.

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

#108

Post by flurdy » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 10:06 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…

Seems like they needed a latitude based timezones on top of longtitude timezones... A grid based timezone system.

Sounds like it would pay for a lot of developers careers... And a nightmare.

I grew up at 59 degrees north latitude. Daylight savings was pointless. Wintertime I'd go school in the dark (8am) and go home in the twilight (2pm). Lunch time was bright though...

My parents grew up at 70 degrees north, where daylight saving is totally useless as there is no daylight in the middle of winter.

I now live at 51 degrees latitude and my kids go to school in daylight as school start an hour later here. For a few weeks in the winter daylight saving does make a tiny difference for their morning but not afternoon.

But as an adult daylight saving always went the wrong way as it means evenings get darker sooner. I don't care if I commute in the dark in the morning, but I do prefer to do things after school/work in some daylight/twilight.

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

#109

Post by bonzini » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 10:07 AM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #39

pmontra wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But darkness at 8.30AM is also depressing. For some countries, certainly not all of them, daylight savings time is a blessing and well worth the hassle.

Those countries would probably benefit from using standard time and moving everything thirty minutes earlier (effectively a 30 minute off time zone), but it's hard to implement such a sweeping change.

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

#110

Post by timthorn » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 10:12 AM UTC

ptah wrote: post #98

timthorn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

BST is all year, just it is the same as GMT for (roughly) half the year

British Standard Time existed all year (~50 years ago) but British Summer Time is defined as "the period beginning at one o'clock, Greenwich mean time, in the morning of the last Sunday in March and ending at one o'clock, Greenwich mean time, in the morning of the last Sunday in October."

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/262/article/2/made