Live data from Hacker News

The Waste of Daylight

nms.ac.uk

101–110 of 251 posts

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#101
post #99
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans don't seem to naturally rise with the sun. Ever been camping for more than a day or two? Rising by the sun happens pretty naturally and quickly. Endless artificial light is a very recent invention. What do you think life was like before electricity?

Well, depends a bit on where. I live at 69 degrees northern latitude, with a 2 month polar night/day in winter/summer - all this talk of DST and schedules following the sun seems a bit silly from up here (and we do have forced DST in Norway - although I hope we'll drop it). An interesting counter point: in summer it's quite easy to drift into a pattern of following the weather -sometimes day will be overcast/rainy, n…

Absolutely. DST makes no sense at your latitude, where rising with the sun isn’t always possible.

A long camping trip during the polar day would be sooo weird! I’ve only been to Reykjavik in the late summer, and it was hard for me to get enough sleep.

Has anyone started a Northern mystery novel with “It was a clear and sunny night...”?? ;)

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#102
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article was funny. Business owners complaining they have to open up in the predawn? How does SBUX do it? The one down the street opens at 5 am. Construction men working in the dark for an hour? What do they want bankers hours? And schools having to open 30 minutes later, Imagine we give the kids 30 more minutes of sleep in the am. These days they are like factory workers waking up at 6 am to ride the bus and get…

> Construction men working in the dark for an hour? What do they want, bankers hours? Presumably, they want their schedule moved around so they can see what they're doing. There's no reason that the clock itself needs to change for that, though. Just unions forcing employers into a "9-5 in summer, 10-6 in winter" schedule would work fine.

Whether you call it 9 am year round, and in winter you only start working at 10, or you change the name of the hour in winter to 9, doesn't really make a difference. People will have to adjust to the fact that in winter light start one hour later.

And with people flighing across time zones all the time, and it's not stopping them from taking holidays in a different time zone, i feel people are making an issue out of nothing.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#103
post #88

I would vote for any Presidential Candidate and House Representative regardless of party on the promise of leaving the clocks on DST all year around. That's all they would have to do to get my vote....nothing else.

I’d love to hear more about why this issue is more important to you than any other reason to vote. Is the time shift causing you serious problems, or do you have a business that is hurt by it, or anything like that?

Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. Source: wife is a teacher.

Effect on adults is less pronounced, but it still puts a strain on us to shift our schedule by an hour.

... yet for what? Original reasons why this practice was started barely apply today. Light bulbs are efficient and we waste much more electricity in other ways. Let alone that many offices are lit up all day anyway.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#104

I try to keep my sleep schedule so I wake up shortly after daybreak for exactly this reason. I love natural light and loath sleeping through it. I've considered writing an app that sets an alarm to sunset and a reminder 9 hours prior to sunset so I can always wake with the sun and have plenty of sleep. Should be pretty simple I just haven't gotten around to it. (Though personally, I'd prefer it were a personal choice…

I was gifted some Philips Hue lights a few years ago. I set one up on my nightstand to turn on at sunrise (actually earlier in the winter, sunrise is the latest I want it set to). It's a much more pleasant way to wake up (with it fading in over 10 minutes or so) than an actual alarm clock. Of course, it can't travel with you but it's not a bad option for the home.

Philips also sells an actual wake-up light alarm clock(s) (such as HF3519/01 ). They have smaller models too which probably would be OK to pack for travel.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#105
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article was funny. Business owners complaining they have to open up in the predawn? How does SBUX do it? The one down the street opens at 5 am. Construction men working in the dark for an hour? What do they want bankers hours? And schools having to open 30 minutes later, Imagine we give the kids 30 more minutes of sleep in the am. These days they are like factory workers waking up at 6 am to ride the bus and get…

> Construction men working in the dark for an hour? What do they want, bankers hours? Presumably, they want their schedule moved around so they can see what they're doing. There's no reason that the clock itself needs to change for that, though. Just unions forcing employers into a "9-5 in summer, 10-6 in winter" schedule would work fine.

I just went through house construction. Pretty much all contractors insisted on coming in super early. Like 7:00 early. Apparently these days fancy lightning is cheaper than sitting in traffic. On top of that, I was able to come over to make arrangements before my work hours.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#106
post #28

I would vote for any Presidential Candidate and House Representative regardless of party on the promise of leaving the clocks on DST all year around. That's all they would have to do to get my vote....nothing else.

This actually happened in the ‘70s and it sucked so hard it got repealed in less than a year[1]. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-tried-year-round-daylight...

Many businesses already have winter and summer hours.. I remain unconvinced that changing the definition of time for all of society is worth it because some people benefit.

For every edge case, the better solution seems to be that they adjust their schedule seasonally.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#107
post #85

I would vote for any Presidential Candidate and House Representative regardless of party on the promise of leaving the clocks on DST all year around. That's all they would have to do to get my vote....nothing else.

An issue with year around DST is that at latitudes were there isn't enough daylight to have both the morning commute and the evening commute in daylight it is generally better to have the morning commute be the one that gets the light based upon both weather and volume. First, weather. In the cold months, when you have to worry about icy roads and fog, the worst time for those is in the morning. The coldest time of d…

[deleted]

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#108

I try to keep my sleep schedule so I wake up shortly after daybreak for exactly this reason. I love natural light and loath sleeping through it. I've considered writing an app that sets an alarm to sunset and a reminder 9 hours prior to sunset so I can always wake with the sun and have plenty of sleep. Should be pretty simple I just haven't gotten around to it. (Though personally, I'd prefer it were a personal choice…

Same here, and I've also thought about writing the same app. I've always wondered why our system of time is built around the point of "midnight", when what we really care about is "sunrise". DST is an ugly hack that we use on top of our midnight-based time system to roughly approximate a constant sunrise time. Imagine if 00:00 was defined as the time that the sun rises. You could set your alarm to 00:00 and start wor…

May work well in your latitude, but go far enough north and it’d just get ridiculous over the year.

Sunrise is also gradual and long enough around the solstices to become quite arbitrary

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#109
post #103
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to hear more about why this issue is more important to you than any other reason to vote. Is the time shift causing you serious problems, or do you have a business that is hurt by it, or anything like that?

Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. Source: wife is a teacher. Effect on adults is less pronounced, but it still puts a strain on us to shift our schedule by an hour. ... yet for what? Original reasons why this practice was started barely apply today. Light bulbs are efficient and we waste much more electricity in other ways. Let alone that many offices are lit up all day an…

> Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost.

FWIW, my kids (~8yo, ~5yo) didn't even notice the time shift in the Netherlands let alone be affected by it. For adults, (me and my wife), it was a mild surprise. We first suspected that clock had gone bonkers only for me to realise the DST change. We were moving to a DST country from a non-DST one so the net effect for us was amusing, at best. Otherwise I don't remember any disruption to our schedule at all.

Maybe it's a big enough of disruption in the North America?

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#110
post #102
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Construction men working in the dark for an hour? What do they want, bankers hours? Presumably, they want their schedule moved around so they can see what they're doing. There's no reason that the clock itself needs to change for that, though. Just unions forcing employers into a "9-5 in summer, 10-6 in winter" schedule would work fine.

Whether you call it 9 am year round, and in winter you only start working at 10, or you change the name of the hour in winter to 9, doesn't really make a difference. People will have to adjust to the fact that in winter light start one hour later. And with people flighing across time zones all the time, and it's not stopping them from taking holidays in a different time zone, i feel people are making an issue out of…

It does make a difference: only some professions are harmed from the lack of light, and only those professions would need to change their schedules to follow the sun.

When you change the clock, it affects everybody. But people can change their own (business's) schedule without affecting anyone else.

Post reply on HN