Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time • Hacker News Board

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#191

Post by dahart » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

reidacdc wrote: post #131

throw0101a wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

FWIW stay curious - I was curious and followed the citations in those articles and found that there’s isn’t as much literature as is being claimed, and not a lot to directly support the conclusions. Some of the research that is cited is research into serious long term sleep deprivation, and is being assumed to apply to DST without any direct links demonstrated. For example, one of the papers cited (Koopman et al) talks about how sustained “Social jet lag” of 2 or more hours per week for years leads to higher rates of diabetes. That doesn’t directly support the idea of health risks caused by DST, nor is the difference in magnitude even discussed, but it was cited as supporting the claim that DST has serious health risks. There are at least several more examples of that in those links. Anyway, I don’t care if DST is abolished, but I’m personally more scared of agendas being cloaked in scientific sounding literature than I am of DST.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#192

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #102

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…

15 degrees is the the size a timezone "should" be, since 360°/24h = 15 degrees per hour. The Western European time zone ia about 33 degrees wide, from Spain to Poland. Spain is about 2 hours off their natural time..

[deleted]

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#193

Post by _ph_ » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #63

What will it take for this to ACTUALLY happen? Every time change, I hear folks talk about how we should move to permanent DST, but nothing changes. I am tired of getting my hopes up.

The problem is, there is a huge split amongst people, what the alternative should be. Just getting rid of DST would be rather easy. But, as you can see here in the discussion, there are other opinions. Some want to switch to permanent "summer time", even if that may a redesign of time zones, some want to introduce entirely different time concepts.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#194

Post by runarberg » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #100

throw0101a wrote: post #84

It should be noted that the folks who study this: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology Seem to have come to a consensus that if we're going to get rid of DST, then health-wise it is best to have Standard Time year-round: > 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 fi…

Is this based on the fact that the vast majority of people start work at arbitrary wall clock times, usually on the hour some time between 06:00 and 09:00, depending on profession? I'm all for keeping standard time just it makes slightly more sense for 12:00 to be the time when the Sun is highest in the sky, but surely any choice is completely arbitrary and the only thing that matters is the phase difference between…

I think this perspective misses the evening effects. There might be cultural reasons for people to stay up later (e.g. something on television, or an ongoing online group chat). There might also be the case that some people have a hard time going to sleep earlier then x hours after sunset.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#195

Post by Kwpolska » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

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…

This makes no sense. Your morning meeting will be at 17:00 UTC (for example), but it will still be “morning” in the SV office, and “afternoon”/“multiple hours past sunset”/“go away I’m asleep” for your offshore team (wherever they may be located). Changing the digits our clocks represent will only simplify those clocks, but it won’t, it can’t, it shouldn’t change business hours to 9-17 UTC everywhere. Because why would half of the world sleep when it’s light outside? Just because Europeans set UTC as a time zone and 23 as the time to go to sleep?

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#196

Post by mac01021 » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #184

mac01021 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you want "midnight" to refer to "approximately one hour from the middle of the night".

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#197

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #63

What will it take for this to ACTUALLY happen? Every time change, I hear folks talk about how we should move to permanent DST, but nothing changes. I am tired of getting my hopes up.

WA/CA/OR already voted to get rid of time changes, but are being held up by the federal government not giving approval. Supposedly all it takes is the blessing of some people on the executive branch.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#198

Post by ghaff » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

notsuoh wrote: post #70

I'm curious of what one would speculate would be the effect of Apple and Google and Microsoft just not observing daylight savings time. All computers and phones with operating systems just don't change times in accordance with DST.

Tech giants collude to break their software to force society to conform to their vision of how time should operate worldwide. Yeah. That will end well.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#199

Post by _ph_ » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

input_sh wrote: post #108

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #63

What will it take for this to ACTUALLY happen? Every time change, I hear folks talk about how we should move to permanent DST, but nothing changes. I am tired of getting my hopes up.

EU voted to end it in 2019 (pretty decisively, 410 in favour and 192 against), and 2021 was supposed to be the final year. Unfortunately, it was postponed once again because of the pandemic. The implementation plan is for every country to choose which timezone to stay in (summer or winter), and I guess now is not the time for nations to figure out between themselves which timezone to stay in.

The big problem is, there is no agreement about how time zones should be set up in the future. Just dropping DST would be easy and the logical thing to do. That would just need some lead time ahead to skip the spring shift.

Having each country independently decide about the time zone sounds nice, but is of course a ridiculously stupid idea in the real world. At least some minimal constraints need to be enforces as in:

- no timezone differential when you go in north-south direcion - timezone offset increases monotonic when you move east - avoid to have more than 1-hour timezone steps - and of course try to keep countries in the same timezone, which work closest together.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#200

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #177

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.

The problem with that in more northern latitudes is permanent DST pushes the morning commute deep into darkness. From a safety perspective, if you have to have one of the morning or evening commute in darkness, it is safer to have that one be the evening commute. There are a couple reasons for this. 1. Mornings tend to be colder than evenings. In fact, the early mornings before sunrise are often the coldest time of t…

Then maybe people don’t need to work at the same time in the winter, or work fewer hours. Maybe let’s take advantage of the efficiencies that technology has provided.