Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 282 posts

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#131

Post by reidacdc »

throw0101a wrote: post #89
reidacdc wrote: post #15

The article is mostly suitably modest about mechanisms, focusing on the epidemiology of the observed effects, and it's more or less obvious to me that the transitions are disruptive to everyone, and especially so to sensitive individuals. But there's also a bit in the answer to the fourth question (about long-term vs short-term impacts) that mentions effects of "chronic circadian misalignment". I've seen this a few t…

Two papers on why Standard Time should be used everywhere: * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541... * https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.0094...

Good to see that there is some literature, thanks!

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#132

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

User23 wrote: post #80

This was already tried in the 70s and it sucked[1] so much so that we went back to the current method. It's strangely hard to find references though. [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-sav...

I'm surprised how much 1970s news is hard to find references to. The 1978 Tractorcade remained forgotten until just a few years ago.

There's still not much on the US domestic terror attacks (100s/yr), during the early 1970s. That one has a vibe, as if no one wants to discuss it.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#133

Post by Riesling »

User23 wrote: post #80

This was already tried in the 70s and it sucked[1] so much so that we went back to the current method. It's strangely hard to find references though. [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-sav...

This was different. They tried DST all year around. Russia also tried this in 2014 and also failed.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#134

Post by crazygringo »

throw0101a wrote: post #91
mrfusion wrote: post #50

I think permanent DST makes more sense. The best hours of the day are in the evening. Folks are off from work, kids are home, the heat of the day is gone. It’s a great time to get out to a park or a stroll.

> I think permanent DST makes more sense. The chronobiologists disagree: > As an international organization of scientists dedicated to studying circadian and other biological rhythms, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) engaged experts in the field to write a Position Paper on the consequences of choosing to live on DST or Standard Time (ST). The authors take the position that, based on comparisons…

The problem with the purely biological perspective is that it's too narrow. Psychology matters too.

The benefit of an extra hour of light in summer evenings is measured in happiness. You can read a book in the park, play frisbee with friends, eat outdoors with family, with all the happiness that summer light produces.

Nobody's measured it, but I have to believe that the increased happiness, reduced stress, and therefore increased health has got to far outweigh any small effects on circadian rhythms.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#135

Post by gruez »

Adutude wrote: post #109

We should all just be on GMT. In software development on Pacific time, I always feel bad for the guys offshore that have to stay up late at night to make our morning meetings. It sure would make things a lot more easy from a coding perspective. But to the point DST only adds complexity to the already complex task of converting time to GMT and back so that you can synchronize events in different time-zones, I fully su…

Obligatory: https://qntm.org/abolish

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#136

Post by ghaff »

Adutude wrote: post #109

We should all just be on GMT. In software development on Pacific time, I always feel bad for the guys offshore that have to stay up late at night to make our morning meetings. It sure would make things a lot more easy from a coding perspective. But to the point DST only adds complexity to the already complex task of converting time to GMT and back so that you can synchronize events in different time-zones, I fully su…

Guess what. You're still going to have morning meetings relative to your local solar cycle and the offshore guys are still going to joining the call at a time that they're probably thinking about bed based on their local solar time.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#137

Post by sojournerc »

dahart wrote: post #64
someguydave wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see this as an argument for year-round DST. Now defend falling back one hour in the winter, when by your own admission a one hour shift will be insufficient to align with sunrise.

If you stay on DST through the winter, most places in the US will have a morning commute in the dark. The reason we switch is to keep the sunrise just slightly more even. The annual swing in sunrise time is just under 3 hours. With a DST switch, the swing becomes less than 2 hours, at the cost of switching twice.

It's still the same swing in sunlight time, just masked by changing the clocks. Some people will prefer sun in the morning, others in the afternoon. The answer is to allow flexibility of schedule to accommodate preferences, not switching clocks. It doesn't do anything other than mess with routines. Daylight is not saved, or extended.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#138

Post by dahart »

kingaillas wrote: post #24
laurent92 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is natural that work is shifted towards the morning and people have time after work in the evening for personal matters. People do what is most important in the morning, because we can focus better. Therefore worktimes need to follow the sunrise, especially beyond 45° latitudes where the sunrise shifts by more than 3 hrs between winter and summer.

But why the changing of clock settings? Could have just shown up earlier to follow the sunrise?

Because for most jobs in most locales, everyone has to agree together when the workday starts. It’s not an individual choice, it’s a collective decision.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#139

Post by Ensorceled »

dahart wrote: post #58
varispeed wrote: post #5

I don't know how someone ever could think this is a good idea and also got so many governments to implement this. Whoever is behind it, he or she is a genius of evil. Let's ditch this nonsense now.

> I don’t know how someone ever could think this is a good idea Why is that? Whether or not it’s still a good idea, lots of people have thought so in the past. You don’t see the fact that governments have implemented it as evidence that there has been consensus and something legitimate there you might have missed? I honestly don’t care if daylight saving is abolished, but when I was younger, I used to think like you…

> What, exactly, is “evil” about that?

People literally die because of the change. Every year, extra people die so you can enjoy more sunshine in summer evenings. You dismissed these deaths because you "like what happens".

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#140

Post by Kwpolska »

jt2190 wrote: post #121
imglorp wrote: post #12

Social issues aside, the software perspective of keeping up with DST is very costly. Every time any government entity anywhere on Earth changes its mind about what zone they're in and when, the IANA needs to reissue the TZDB. Then every OS and platform vendor needs to patch up to a new TZDB. Just for laughs, Java seems to have its own TZDB so in general your OS and application layer might disagree about zones. This i…

> Java seems to have its own TZDB so in general your OS and application layer might disagree about zones. More precisely, the Java Virtual Machine ( not the programming language) will, like any operating system running inside a VM, need to be patched with the new time information. Updating the host machine’s time info is not enough.

Java is not an operating system. Other environments, such as .NET Core, don’t have any issues using the OS timezone database: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/cross-platform-time-zo...
Post reply on HN