Live data from Hacker News

The Waste of Daylight

nms.ac.uk

211–220 of 251 posts

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lights exist, though. I'm in Norway: Winter days are short where I*m at. As in, sun up around 10 and down before 3pm. (The sun sets for a few hours in the summer, but I can read outside at night in June). They do construction in the winter here. And honestly, construction companies in Indiana used to close during the darkest months - I knew many that would get unemployment for that time period.

> Lights exist, though. And pretty powerful ones, too. I remember the time when we had a very light winter and construction work didn't stop for that season. A building some 100 meters from my grandparents was being finished, a lot of roof work was happening. They had a light on that roof - when they turned it on in the middle of the night, my grandfather's room was lit as if it was just an overcast afternoon. I can…

Not sure about other countries, but in Australia powerful construction lights are referred to as ‘day makers’ (and for good reason!).

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#212
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…

I live at 59.6° N, 10.4° E. At midwinter changing between Standard time and summer time just changes whether one goes to work or comes home in nautical twilight or astronomical twilight.

Industrial workers typically work 07:30-15:30, sunrise is 09:20, sunset 15:15. Starting an hour earlier wouldn't make much difference but at least going home tired after a long day would happen before sunset.

Wouldn't help office workers at all, they typical work 8 to 16 or 8:30 to 16:30.

We tried permanent summertime in the UK. It was great success in the south but the Scots scuppered it complaining that children had to go to school in the dark. Well all my children were brought up in Norway even further north and they all went to school in the dark and came to no harm whatsoever. They start school earlier here anyway.

Edit: Scot -> Scots

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#213

Moving around what we call the hours of the day is a really stupid way to change habits. Why not do this for other unit's of measurement? People travel at 70mph on highways, have accidents and die. Lets make 1 mile only 1200m instead of 1600m, now when the speed limit is 70mph, people will really be travelling at 84kph instead of 112kph, so less will die. It's utterly absurd. Just post a 50mph limit. If you want peop…

How do you legislate that things happen an hour earlier when you don’t legislate when they happen in the first place?

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, they didn't mandate a return to standard time along with it It's arbitary anyway -- Spain and North Macedonia are on the same time zone, but in A Coruña in winter the sun rises at 9am, while in Bitola it comes up at 7am, despite being on about the same latitude. What makes "standard time" standard? Sun at the highest between 1130 and 1230? Timezones have a rough connection to solar mean, but on stand…

Spain is well lined up on the 0 meridian, but is on continental time. It should surprise no one that odd times result. China is on a single time zone, IIRC. Imagine if SF shifted clocks forward 3 hours just because that's what Washington does.

And this means that evenings in Spain are gloriously long.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#215
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of the “sleep experts” you’re referring to are the group known as SRBR. Their position paper comes up every time Daylight Savings is discussed on Hacker News. About a year ago, I was curious and read the position paper and followed up on a bunch of the references in the paper, reading the sources too. I found pretty conclusive evidence of exactly what @strbean said: the “evidence” here is using scientific data a…

What sort of agenda are you accusing the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, which appears to be a well-regarded professional organization that publishes a high-impact academic journal, of having?

It's not my opinion or an accusation that they have an agenda to show DST is bad, they have published this fact. You can read their "talking points" here:

https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/

The problem is not the existence of an agenda, the problem is that the agenda is too strong and is being allowed to cloud the science. It looks to me like the authors of the position paper have decided (and stated) that DST time changes are bad, ahead of the evidence that justifies this position. It appears that the certainty of their claims in the position paper is much higher than the evidence they cite can actually support.

My claim here is easily verifiable, please just go read some of the sources they cite in the position paper, and verify for yourself whether the citation is warranted and whether it really backs up the claims that are being made in the context of the citation.

I have provided some specific citations that I have trouble with in the HN links above. It's not necessary to inspect those specifically, but I offer them as easy things you could check in just a few minutes of followup work.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#216
At this point, my time zone is pretty much entirely determined by my phone and computer. Why don’t we just line it up to be more natural? Over the month of March, spring two minutes forward each night at midnight. By the end of the month we’d be an hour different and nobody would even notice.

Maybe not exactly that, but it seems like a great opportunity for technology to enable standards to adapt to people’s needs rather than the other way around.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#217

I support full time DST but ... Isn’t it weird to think That the Vast majority Of people are so powerless over their own schedules that they need nationwide legislation to do what they want and enjoy their evenings? I don’t have a point. It’s just kind of a funny thing to think about.

> Isn’t it weird to think That the Vast majority Of people are so powerless over their own schedules that they need nationwide legislation to do what they want and enjoy their evenings?

Workplace democracy is not one of the values our country holds, unfortunately.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#218

I support full time DST but ... Isn’t it weird to think That the Vast majority Of people are so powerless over their own schedules that they need nationwide legislation to do what they want and enjoy their evenings? I don’t have a point. It’s just kind of a funny thing to think about.

It's a hack because it's easier to change the fundamental concept of time than it is to change all of our published schedules. Imagine if businesses, trains, fairies, parks, etc all had summer and winter hours. A simple glitch in the Matrix twice a year is preferable.

Many parks open and close at sunrise and sunset, effectively ensuring that they have different summer and winter hours.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain is well lined up on the 0 meridian, but is on continental time. It should surprise no one that odd times result. China is on a single time zone, IIRC. Imagine if SF shifted clocks forward 3 hours just because that's what Washington does.

And this means that evenings in Spain are gloriously long.

Well, only to an extend, as of course a lot of things just happen later in Spain to compensate the offset of the time zone compared to the sun.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#220

I support full time DST but ... Isn’t it weird to think That the Vast majority Of people are so powerless over their own schedules that they need nationwide legislation to do what they want and enjoy their evenings? I don’t have a point. It’s just kind of a funny thing to think about.

It's a hack because it's easier to change the fundamental concept of time than it is to change all of our published schedules. Imagine if businesses, trains, fairies, parks, etc all had summer and winter hours. A simple glitch in the Matrix twice a year is preferable.

> It's a hack because it's easier to change the fundamental concept of time than it is to change all of our published schedules.

Imagine if businesses, trains, fairies, parks, etc all had summer and winter hours.

Isn't this already a thing in places that don't use DST? The concept of a winter/summer schedule isn't too hard for most people to grok.

Post reply on HN