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US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

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Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#121

Won’t take effect until 2023, but good to see it happen.

Can you explain to me why this is good. It seems like a pain, but I assume there must be a good reason for it. Does it truly save energy? Is this documented somewhere?

extra hour of daylight after work in the north, during the winter the sun sets at 4pm in some places

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#122

Such a terrible idea compared to permanent standard time. There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.

Personally, I have wanted more daylight in the evening hundreds of times in my life, at least. It's the obvious result of average workdays ending at 5 or 6 (or later) and our "free time" being restricted to a sliver of daylight much of the year. But how often have I wanted more daylight in the morning? Basically never.

Umm no, I get up early and have free time before work and want light then. It's a great time to be outside because it's the coolest part of the day. Yet again society accomodates the people who can't be bothered to go to bed on time.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#125
post #19

So are we permanently going to be on "{Eastern,Central,Mountain,Pacific} Daylight Time"? Or are we redefining the time zones "{Eastern,Central,Mountain,Pacific} Standard Time"?

The bill would eliminate Daylight Time and redefine Eastern Standard Time etc. to be the same offset they currently are during daylight time.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#126

Such a terrible idea compared to permanent standard time. There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.

Standard Time would make more sense than DST since that would mean noon is at 12pm (give or take a few minutes depending on latitude) not 1pm.

And why does that matter?

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#127

Such a terrible idea compared to permanent standard time. There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.

People who live on the eastern extreme of a timezone likely feel quite different than those who live on the western extreme.

Boston, MA and Marquette, MI are in the same time zone. Boston's sunset today is 6:51 PM. Marquette's sunset today is 7:55 PM. It's no surprise that residents of each of those cities would have a different view as to "what should we do about DST?"

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#128
post #82

I can understand the concern of other posters about going to DST as opposed to standard time... but at this point, I just want the switching to end. It is such an unnecessary disruption and fixing it seems so trivial.

It's total necessary and a great design. Without this then it would be dark until 8:30 in the morning during winter and the other way the Sun would rise at 4:30AM. These are both bad outcomes so we adjust the clocks so optimize these.

> These are both bad outcomes

Why?

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#129
post #57

What will the impact be for software engineering?

Since the USA designs most of the software in the world, support for changing time zones will gradually disappear.

There will no longer be a constant force making people correctly convert UTC to localtime. People will go storing dates as strings. People will just have "+8 hours" hardcoded for their application.

That will lead to people in the rest of the world having constant bugs and trouble every time daylight savings time happens.

That may be part of the push for other countries to drop it too, when lawmakers see that every spring and autumn their computer deletes an hours worth of emails or their fancy web 4.0 microwave cooks their breakfast for 1 hour and 30 seconds.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#130

Such a terrible idea compared to permanent standard time. There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.

Standard Time would make more sense than DST since that would mean noon is at 12pm (give or take a few minutes depending on latitude) not 1pm.

Noon shouldn't be at 12pm. It should be at 1pm or later.
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