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End Daylight Savings

petitions.whitehouse.gov

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Re: End Daylight Savings

#11

Post by zanny »

repsilat wrote: post #3

One real problem with daylight savings is that it goes the wrong way. The idea was that in the winter there would be fewer hours with the sun up, and it made sense to put those hours in a more useful part of the day. When daylight savings was introduced, that "more useful part of the day" was earlier in the day. That doesn't hold today, though - as TFA says, most people work indoors under artificial lighting, and shi…

There isn't anything saying a business can't have employees work 8pm - 4am during the winter. Besides the fact a lot of people can't adapt their sleep schedule.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#12

Post by sliverstorm »

thematt wrote: post #4

Slightly off topic -- but these petitions have been cropping up more and more lately, but have they actually done anything? Are there any we can point to that actually caused some change in government behavior? All I see in every response is just politician-speak from random government officials. Typically they acknowledge the submission and then wave it off with no specific action to fix it.

They've achieved absolutely nothing that I've heard of.

But, slacktivisim has such a low barrier to entry, I expect this is going to go on for a good long while. If not forever.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#13

Post by zanny »

While we are at it, can we get rid of time zones and switch the world to UTC? I get that it is a jarring idea to not be getting up at 8am anywhere in the world, but for international travel, computing, shipping, etc not having to constantly adjust dates and times across arbitrary lines of longitude would be such a boon.

I don't get why people inherently need 6am to be the early morning, 12pm being "high noon", and 6pm being "early evening". I'm sure different regions would adjust quickly to just having different hours correlate to different states of the sun wherever they live. Time should be measured the same around the globe, not with arbitrary divisions.

You know, we could also get rid of the AM/PM arbitrariness too and switch to a 24 hour clock. Wouldn't it be nice if time made sense.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#14

Post by codex »

repsilat wrote: post #3

One real problem with daylight savings is that it goes the wrong way. The idea was that in the winter there would be fewer hours with the sun up, and it made sense to put those hours in a more useful part of the day. When daylight savings was introduced, that "more useful part of the day" was earlier in the day. That doesn't hold today, though - as TFA says, most people work indoors under artificial lighting, and shi…

DST doesn't shift daylight hours earlier in the day; rather, it ensures that the sun rises at approximately the same time every morning, regardless of season.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#15

Post by InclinedPlane »

thematt wrote: post #4

Slightly off topic -- but these petitions have been cropping up more and more lately, but have they actually done anything? Are there any we can point to that actually caused some change in government behavior? All I see in every response is just politician-speak from random government officials. Typically they acknowledge the submission and then wave it off with no specific action to fix it.

These petitions are utterly useless.

In fact, they are worse than useless, because they channel energy that would otherwise be useful into such a feckless means.

If you care about something, write your reps in congress, your senators, and the president. Clicking a button on on a whitehouse.gov petition is as useless as liking a political post on facebook.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#16

Post by InclinedPlane »

zanny wrote: post #13

While we are at it, can we get rid of time zones and switch the world to UTC? I get that it is a jarring idea to not be getting up at 8am anywhere in the world, but for international travel, computing, shipping, etc not having to constantly adjust dates and times across arbitrary lines of longitude would be such a boon. I don't get why people inherently need 6am to be the early morning, 12pm being "high noon", and 6p…

This is a hugely bad idea. You'd still need a system to keep track of local relative time of day. For example, let's say you need to schedule a phone call with someone in another part of the world, how do you determine what time you should call? There are many, many other similar problems. How do you encode all of that information? It turns out, you'll need something almost as complex as the time zones we have today. There's no escaping the irreducible complexity of the problem, there are just ways of shifting it around.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#17

Post by rms »

repsilat wrote: post #3

One real problem with daylight savings is that it goes the wrong way. The idea was that in the winter there would be fewer hours with the sun up, and it made sense to put those hours in a more useful part of the day. When daylight savings was introduced, that "more useful part of the day" was earlier in the day. That doesn't hold today, though - as TFA says, most people work indoors under artificial lighting, and shi…

Yeah, I would have a strong preference for permanent reverse daylight savings.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#18

Post by maqr »

thematt wrote: post #4

Slightly off topic -- but these petitions have been cropping up more and more lately, but have they actually done anything? Are there any we can point to that actually caused some change in government behavior? All I see in every response is just politician-speak from random government officials. Typically they acknowledge the submission and then wave it off with no specific action to fix it.

The last one was very well written, and it got rave reviews in the HN comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5046178

I would imagine that the public would find the Death Star response to be distasteful and patronizing, but it is apparently well received. The petitions themselves might be useless, but they are a great public relations channel for the white house.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#19

Post by codex »

zanny wrote: post #13

While we are at it, can we get rid of time zones and switch the world to UTC? I get that it is a jarring idea to not be getting up at 8am anywhere in the world, but for international travel, computing, shipping, etc not having to constantly adjust dates and times across arbitrary lines of longitude would be such a boon. I don't get why people inherently need 6am to be the early morning, 12pm being "high noon", and 6p…

UTC everywhere simply moves the complexity somewhere else. You still need time zones to know when the locals get up and go to sleep. My flight gets into Fiji at 22:07? Is that morning or night? Will they be serving breakfast during my layover in Istanbul? When should I schedule my conference call with Tokyo?

Re: End Daylight Savings

#20

Post by sxp »

zanny wrote: post #13

While we are at it, can we get rid of time zones and switch the world to UTC? I get that it is a jarring idea to not be getting up at 8am anywhere in the world, but for international travel, computing, shipping, etc not having to constantly adjust dates and times across arbitrary lines of longitude would be such a boon. I don't get why people inherently need 6am to be the early morning, 12pm being "high noon", and 6p…

Working off UTC makes a lot of sense for modern companies that span the world. And it would also simplify UIs for calendaring applications. (Try creating an event in iOS that starts and ends in different time zones such as a flight). I've switched to using a Casio 3319 (http://www.casio-usa.com/products/Watches/Classic/AQ160_Seri...) with the digital time set locally and the analog time set to UTC because it makes it somewhat easier to coordinate events across disparate timezones.
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