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European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

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

#251

Post by magduf »

rsik wrote: post #197
athenot wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be great but convincing School Boards of that would be a non-trivial task.

DST causes trauma for people with bipolar disorder, heart attacks go up, etc. Also, on a selfish note, it's irritating to program around. DST is a legislative solution to the problem of getting everyone to change scheduling. So why not use legislation to get those school boards to change scheduling directly?

I can answer this one to some extent, at least for America: the school boards are all run at the local level, which is why our education system is so inconsistent and generally poor, and there's huge resistance to any mandates from the Federal level, and it's like herding cats to get the States to agree on anything. I suppose it should be possible to get State governments to separately legislate that school districts in that state change their hours (since, after all, some states may care more than others, and different states really do have different latitudes which affects their daylight hours), but again it'd have huge resistance since every local school board thinks they know best.

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

#252

Post by magduf »

stonecharioteer wrote: post #241
magduf wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to someone farther down in the comments here, India has no DST and simply starts school later in the winter. I guess that's just too hard for America?

I'm an Indian and that doesn't ring a bell. School used to start at 8.00 for me. Throughout the year. No dst. When I started working for a European company, it was insane that I had to wind back clocks.

Sorry if I was incorrect. Here's the comment I was referring to:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19318022

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

#253

Post by K2L8M11N2 »

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".

https://qntm.org/abolish

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

#254

Post by rmah »

rsik wrote: post #197
athenot wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be great but convincing School Boards of that would be a non-trivial task.

DST causes trauma for people with bipolar disorder, heart attacks go up, etc. Also, on a selfish note, it's irritating to program around. DST is a legislative solution to the problem of getting everyone to change scheduling. So why not use legislation to get those school boards to change scheduling directly?

The US federal government does not have the power to do that.

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

#255

Post by dang »

rsik wrote: post #209
rsik wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DST causes trauma for people with bipolar disorder, heart attacks go up, etc. Also, on a selfish note, it's irritating to program around. DST is a legislative solution to the problem of getting everyone to change scheduling. So why not use legislation to get those school boards to change scheduling directly?

downvotes instead of rational arguments? On HN? Either pigs are flying or it's Wednesday again.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

Also, going on about downvoting breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

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

#256

Post by bad_user »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #247
bad_user wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, there may be side effects of changing clocks twice per year, but how do they compare to the effects of having less light in the morning in winter or less light in the evening in summer? In think the effects you’re mentioning are insignificant compared with having your sleep schedule disrupted twice per year. People have literally died due to it. Getting rid of DST also simplifies business. Did you know that Eu…

> In think the effects you’re mentioning are insignificant compared with having your sleep schedule disrupted twice per year. People have literally died due to it. That's quite the claim to make. If changing the clocks has a negative effect, it last at most a few days. Getting the timezone wrong for the whole of winter / summer is an effect that lasts months.

You're underestimating the effect.

Do some reading on the body's circadian rhythm. Every cell in our body is tuned to it and disrupting it has serious consequences.

You may not feel it because you're probably young and healthy. Give it another decade or two.

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

#257

Post by bad_user »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #139
bad_user wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think abolishing the daylight savings change is bad? Personally I think it’s a super awesome move. And note that no matter what you have against it, disrupting the sleep of billions of people twice per year has caused depression and cardiovascular issues which shouldn’t be taken lightly. So what’s the issue in everyone switching to the summer time for the whole year?

It also helps reduce power usage and farmers also like the extra daylight for doing you know farmer things.

Farmers that want to do "farmer things" can wake up earlier and they need to be in tune with their animals, following a circadian rhythm, so the clock on the wall rarely tells them when to wake up. The sun doesn't all of a sudden rise earlier or later.

The timezone is important when collaborating with others. Does a farmer need to do business? Not sure how that fits in the farmer things they do, but when they do business they'll surely appreciate not having to search on Google for their freaking timezone when talking with a peer from another country.

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

#258

Post by pmontra »

factsaresacred wrote: post #250
pmontra wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the closer you get to the poles the less you benefit from DST. At the poles you get 6 months of daylight and 6 months of night no matter what. The same at the equator, 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night (this doesn't take into account the inclination of Earth's axis, but you got the idea.) The places that benefit most from DST are the ones in between, especially around 45 degrees latitude. Then there…

> only hens have dinner at 6 PM Which country is this saying from? I'm guessing Mediterranean.

In the north of Italy. People in the south probably don't think about dinner at 6 PM even in jokes.

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

#259

Post by henrikschroder »

mac01021 wrote: post #215
Reason077 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "If “daylight savings” time is so great, why not keep it all year round?" This is exactly what many countries are proposing. Rather than abolish summer time, just make it permanent.

Which is exactly the same as using standard time all year and then moving all your appointments 1 hour earlier for the rest of eternity. Except that "noon" ceases to mean the time when the sun is highest in the sky equidistant between sunrise and sunset and "midnight" ceases to be the middle of the night. In this respect, standard time makes more sense. In no respect does "daylight time" make more sense. Still, anyth…

Solar noon coincides with noon for a pretty small amount of places, take a look at this map:

http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTimeV...

Only the thin stripes of white have it, for every other place solar noon is off by minutes, if not hours.

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

#260

Post by henrikschroder »

function_seven wrote: post #213
mac01021 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By why is UTC a Molotov cocktail?

This site does a good job of explaining: https://qntm.org/abolish For me the biggest headache would be the date changing in th middle of the day.

"Excuse me, does your workweek start on Sunday/Monday or on Monday/Tuesday?"

Yay, everyone is now on the same time, too bad the concept of weekdays got completely broken in the process...

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