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

221–230 of 282 posts

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#221

Post by sdenton4 »

mjlee wrote: post #68
SahAssar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The West Bank has (had?) timezones that are based on ethnicity, not geographic location: https://www.972mag.com/the-worlds-only-ethnic-time-zone/

Every time I consider this I'm reminded of an incident where 3 Israeli Arabs blew themselves up instead of their target, probably due to daylight savings time. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/clocks-change-kille...

I have a collection of 'mistakes you make exactly once,' mistakes that are so obvious in retrospect and terrible in consequence that you would never, ever do it again.

This is a whole other class, though.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#222

Post by andyv »

About twenty years ago now, the Arizona legislature put a referendum on the ballot that would have adopted switching between standard time and daylight savings time. It lost by about 80% to 20%, the most lopsided result I've ever seen.

Most desert dwellers don't want another hour of daylight in the summer, but one of the small perks of living here that there is no switch.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#223

Post by ghaff »

tzs wrote: post #182
buzzy_hacker wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And you pay for that hour in the morning when kids are going to school, adults are commuting to work, construction workers are working, etc. Indeed this is basically the whole reason we switch back and forth between standard time and DST.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#224

Post by benhurmarcel »

globular-toast wrote: post #104
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.

Set your alarm one hour earlier then. No need to inflict your choice on everyone.

You don't choose your kid's school schedule, and many people don't choose their work schedule either.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#225

Post by benhurmarcel »

contravariant wrote: post #160
input_sh wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here's hoping we can finally end the madness of having (temporary) UTC+2:00 in places west of Greenwich.

That would take France accepting being on a different timezone than Germany, and shifting their habits to have one hour more of darkness in the evening. I don't see it happening.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#226

Post by ghaff »

thdrdt wrote: post #75
andromeduck wrote: post #4

Can we get rid of timse zone and leap seconds too?

You already can get rid of time zones by only using UTC. But is is not very practical. The time zone communicates the part of the day in any place around the world.

I suspect most people on the "abolish time zones" kick don't actually deal with people in other timezones very much. By knowing what timezone someone is in, I know instantly--without even consulting their calendar to find out what their usual working hours are--whether 2pm my time is a reasonable time to propose a meeting.

Similarly, every time I travel to a city in a different timezone, I'm going to have to find out what usual business hours are, when dinner typically is (which admittedly varies a bit from country to country anyway), and so forth.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#227

Post by Aaargh20318 »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #187
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The Netherlands. This year we again had a summer a lot of >35ºC days. You couldn't be outside without applying copious amounts of sunscreen and it was just uncomfortably hot in the sun. Nights were great though.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#228

Post by hyiltiz »

sdenton4 wrote: post #221
mjlee wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I consider this I'm reminded of an incident where 3 Israeli Arabs blew themselves up instead of their target, probably due to daylight savings time. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/clocks-change-kille...

I have a collection of 'mistakes you make exactly once,' mistakes that are so obvious in retrospect and terrible in consequence that you would never, ever do it again. This is a whole other class, though.

Care to share? I am sure that would be very useful for me (and probably many others).

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#229

Post by jesterpm »

varispeed wrote: post #205
dahart wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe this was influenced by industrialisation and 9-5 culture. Yeah, exactly right. Before industrialization, you’d simply wake up with the sun. If you ever go camping or on long outdoor trips, you might notice your schedule becomes suddenly much more aligned with sunrise. Mine does, anyway. > I’d rather go to sleep earlier so that the 4am feels like 5am That’s totally reasonable, but hard to achieve alone. We agr…

I understand that I didn't think "sleep earlier" through. I wouldn't be able to do that easily. I can't go around getting to sleep at other time than 3am, it seems like my body is fixed to that hour.

Now is that 3am standard time or DST?

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#230

Post by loloquwowndueo »

user5994461 wrote: post #117
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument never held, particularly because the brunt of the social cost is borne by regular people but we never see a decrease in our energy bills compared to prior to DST.

>>> prior to DST. that means prior to 1916. I don't know about you but I don't have bills going that far. ^^

Look at countries where DST was implemented more recently so you can compare :P (I was in such a country when it adopted DST in the 90s and can tell you power bills were not reduced after the change).
Post reply on HN