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Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#181

Post by brandmeyer »

imglorp wrote: post #61
app4soft wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the software perspective of keeping up with DST is very costly. To be clear, the software perspective is to use Unix time instead.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time

Not really. Most machines use UTC internally (with varying epoch dates to represent it). And this is absolutely great until you need to interface with meatbags, ie local time. It's not just display of time either: think about anything Cron does in localtime, eg backups or open building door locks, or send an ACH payment file; then ponder all the corner cases of DST switches. Eg do you do something twice, or never? Wh…

> Most machines use UTC internally

No, they rally aren't. Most machines use Posix time internally, and the fact that it doesn't reflect real-world leap seconds is a problem.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#182

Post by tzs »

buzzy_hacker wrote: post #168
crazygringo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 there…

I agree. And don't forget about an extra hour of light in the winter! It gets dark around 4:30pm in New York during standard time, it's depressing.

What difference would it make if it got dark at 5:30 pm in the winter? That's still too close to the end of the standard 9-5 day to make much, if any, difference in what you can do before dark.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#183

Post by jholloway7 »

lou1306 wrote: post #145
heavenlyblue wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does JVM need to know about time zones?

I guess it allows you to implement a JVM that runs on bare metal, or a host without timezone support.

Yep, it makes it easier to port the JRE to platforms like Windows that have an entirely different TZ system. Python, for example, has the same problem. Historically, Python took the stance of providing a "naive" datetime module that provides a conversion API, but delegated the actual TZ conversion to external implementations (dateutil, pytz). Only recently (as of 3.9) have they added a stdlib implementation that uses system-level zoneinfo by default.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#184

Post by Terretta »

mac01021 wrote: post #162
cheschire wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have 12:00 be the time when the sun is highest unless you're willing to shift to infinite time zones.

You can have it be closer to 12 than to 1 with only 24 timezones though.

Well, I want it closer to 1 than to 12. It’d be weird for 1 PM to be less directly overhead of a sun than 11:30 AM.

// Pure opinion, formed living in southern U.S., northern Europe, and equatorial Africa. But ... I could get over it.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#185

Post by dahart »

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…

What do the chronobiologists say about living outside of a fixed clock schedule, and rising with the sun naturally?

I’ve ask you before, but haven’t heard an answer: why are you convinced by this research that the data is strong enough to support the conclusion? The evidence here seems scant at best to make such strong claims. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24314134) Are you part of SRBR?

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#186

Post by DangitBobby »

Ensorceled wrote: post #139
dahart wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

This is ridiculous.

> People literally die because vending machines fall on top of them. Every year people die so you can enjoy more chips at lunch. You dismissed these deaths because you like what happens.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#187

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #107
mannykannot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too hate the idea of losing an hour off summer evenings. Of course, the rational solution is for society to adjust its schedule, but that will never happen.

But you'll be gaining an hour of summer nights. With DST, the sun goes down way too late, around 10pm in summer. With the climate as it currently is, summers have become unbearably hot and this will probably get worse in the future. When I get home from work on a summer day, around 18:00-ish. being outside is unbearable. It doesn't get comfortable outside until the sun goes down. By moving the clock forward, you're r…

That's really interesting. The sun goes down at the same time for me during the summer, but I love it. Where do you live perchance?

(Actually everyone in this thread should probably be prefacing their comments with their location, as it's very important for this topic).

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#188

Post by zajio1am »

crazygringo wrote: post #134
throw0101a wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 there…

For you, it is one hour of light in summer evenings that brings happiness, for me, it is one hour of light in spring/autumn morning, so i do not have to wake up during night.

I would be much less opposed to DST if it were limited to 3 months around summer solstice instead of 7 months.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#189

Post by wasdfff »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #132
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.

Not all of it is digitized. A lot of it is still only found on microfilm in larger libraries.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#190

Post by ghaff »

brandmeyer wrote: post #178
tgv wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very costly? That would require some serious evidence. And even then, so what?

> And even then, so what? I have to agree. The function of software is to reflect the state of reality as it is. Human sociopolitical reality is complicated; that's just a problem to deal with.

Software developer: The world should adjust in order to make my life as easy as possible.

The world: LOL

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