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End Daylight Savings

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Re: End Daylight Savings

#111

Post by Osiris »

mooism2 wrote: post #61
sxp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 makes calendar UIs more complex. I mean, I live near Greenwich, so telling me I've got to clean the house next Wednesday is fairly unambiguous, but if I lived in Sydney and we were using UTC there would all of a sudden we two days you could be referring to.

Are you suggesting that Wednesday wouldn't only start at 00:00 UTC but that each place would make up its own start time for the weekdays? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of getting rid of timezones?

Re: End Daylight Savings

#112

Post by aneth4 »

zanny wrote: post #75
aneth4 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more nontrivial amount of time would likely be wasted changing the time system of 7 billion people and every computer system. I think learning to include time zones in emails to people in different time zones might be an easier solution.

Not at all, because we will always have to endure the costs of having a crappy time zone based time system, especially when we start moving into space, those time systems become absurdly antiquated. The idea of changing time to match the sun is just completely obsolete. If every country just agreed to use UTC, besides some errant systems not easily recognized as depending on time zone based timekeeping, we could prob…

I appreciate your optimism. You do know not everyone in the world is interested in, let alone willing to make such changes? I'd guess less than 1% would be. The cost would be in the hundreds of billions.

Meanwhile, try getting just the US to switch to the metric system....

As far as space goes, interstellar time is probably rather different than Earth based time. I suspect there will be a new system based loosely off of GMT. But that won't matter to most humans for at least 20 years, more likely 100.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#113

Post by codex »

henrikschroder wrote: post #94
codex wrote: post #29

In an era of smart timekeeping, I would much prefer the opposite: minute DST adjustments every single day to ensure that sunrise is always at the same time of day, everywhere. This is how we evolved, after all: to awake with the sun. This would imply two dimensional time zones (one per state?) with a non-trivial conversion function between zones. Once everyone's watch is GPS and Internet enabled this should be straig…

Where I am, in the summer, the sun sets, sort of, a bit after midnight, and sunrise is about two hours later. And in the winter, the sun rises at nine in the morning, and sets before three in the afternoon. Your suggestion is hilariously myopic. Go live in Alaska for a year, and then come back and tell me if you've re-evaluated it.

EDIT: By my calculations, even in Anchorage the average slew rate would be only two minutes a day, which seems practical enough to me.

With two dimensional time zones, each region could choose the strategy that works for them. If the slew rate is too great at peak, it could be smoothed.

Note that I am not suggesting that the hours in a day change (much), or length of an hour, or an attempt to keep both sunrise and sunset constant; sunrise would always be at seven, and sunset times would change. This way you maximize sunlight time while still going to bed at the same time each night. They would seem valuable for Alaaka.

To be honest, though, tus sounds a lot like an argument that humans are not naturally adapted to live in the arctic. Perhaps there no time system makes sense.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#114

Post by diminish »

ArchD wrote: post #91
diminish wrote: post #9

daylight savings creates useless complexity, confuses the electronic devices, travel plans, flights and many other human and post-human activities. artificial lighting, flexible working hours, remote working are all helping better day for everyone. beyond that, following bold suggestion exist; 1) the 'second' time unit must be quicker to match average human heart rate. 2) time zones maybe abolished totally and 1 sing…

Using a time unit not related to the metric second would be a step back. If you use a new unit equal to half a metric second, that's too fast for normal human heart rate.

yes, not half but a bit slower. i read this from a book long time ago, but don't remember where. the guy was saying that the 'second' was a bit slower than the average heart beat rate and that made people generally unhappier because it is reflected in many things during a day.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#115

Post by jvm »

codex wrote: post #29

In an era of smart timekeeping, I would much prefer the opposite: minute DST adjustments every single day to ensure that sunrise is always at the same time of day, everywhere. This is how we evolved, after all: to awake with the sun. This would imply two dimensional time zones (one per state?) with a non-trivial conversion function between zones. Once everyone's watch is GPS and Internet enabled this should be straig…

> This is how we evolved, after all: to wake with the sun.

Is there any actual evidence of this? what about all the non- morning-people who seem to like to wake at noon?

Re: End Daylight Savings

#116

Post by amurmann »

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…

It still wouldn't make sense. The whole time system comenly in use is just a big ball of garbage. 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes per hour and 60 seconds per minute??? Are you kidding me?! What inconsistent collection of rubbish ist that? 60 and 12? Why not 13 and 79? Why 12 month with an arbitrary number of days per month? Kids every day waste hours of their life learning this random system while they could be using that time to learn something else for no reason. We could at least fix the days/month situation by January to May having 31 days and all the other month having 30 days. Why doesn't the day just have 10000 units and 5000 is noon? Ideally it's noon in one particular place, unrelated to the location of the user.

Of course this is sadly never gonna happen, like we never gonna get UTC, because the majority of people never have to deal with computers and/or people in other countries. As a expad and programmer I of course get annoyed by this almost every day...

Re: End Daylight Savings

#117

Post by mistercow »

haberman wrote: post #7
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…

> 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. Daylight Savings time happens during the summer, not the winter. Winter time is unadjusted and tracks a true solar day. Summer time is adjusted, and indeed it's adjusted in the direction you favor (to provide more daylight hours at night).

>Winter time is unadjusted and tracks a true solar day.

That really depends on where you are in the time zone. If you're right at the edge, you may be closer to tracking a true solar day in the summer.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#118

Post by handzhiev »

michaelochurch wrote: post #90

I like DST, but let's not kid ourselves that it's about energy savings. It's not, because energy savings are minimal to nonexistent. It's about culture. People in northern latitudes like their 9:00pm daylight in the summer, but no one wants 8:00am darkness in the winter, so we switch back to "standard" time (which is now the anomaly, covering only 4.5 months) in the colder months. This also explains the lopsided cale…

I wish I could upvote this twice because it's the best explanation WHY we want DST. Late daylight summertime is very useful for all kind of outdoor activities. The late daylight is mostly applicable for those of us at northern latitude, and exactly we are these who can enjoy most outdoor activities only in the hot part of the year. So I guess DST makes much lesser sense to those living near the Equator.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#119

Post by mnutt »

lazerwalker wrote: post #110
zanny wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have to ask for times they are available. That never changes. With UTC as the global time standard, you don't have to try to figure out time offsets. You just say "I'm available from 8 to 12" and they say "I'm available 5 to 9" and you make the call at 8. The alternative is "I'm available 3 - 7 London time", the other guy is available 12 - 4 Pacific Time, and you have to get out a calculator to figure out w…

For prescheduled meetings, you're absolutely right. "I'm available 8-12, and you're available 5-9, so let's chat at 8" is a clear improvement. But what if it's not a scheduled meeting? If it's the middle of the day where I am, and I need to give you a quick call to verify something, I need to figure out if it's appropriate to call and if you're likely to be in the office. Currently, that means converting my time to y…

If we all operated in UTC time, you would probably very quickly get a feel for when other people are at work. I'm on the east coast, and when working with people on the west coast I often just imagine them as working 12pm-9pm.

Trying to remember the hours people work in Japan may be a problem, but I don't think it's any worse than trying to remember timezone conversions and I don't think it's a large enough problem to warrant varying the way people measure time. It may have made sense at the time, but today it is vastly overkill. That said, I doubt it will change anytime soon due to inertia.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#120

Post by ghshephard »

Firehed wrote: post #56
ghshephard wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great for Unix Log files, bad for pretty much everything else. I work in emerging markets, and in the last two weeks I've had conference calls in Brazil, Singapore, Australia, Luxembourg, Portugal, and the UK. Whenever I'm scheduling a call with any of these people, I need to know what time it is. For whatever reason - every company we deal with seems to work from 8:00sh (sometimes 9:00) to 5:00sh (sometime 6:00) - L…

UTC would eliminate the confusion - just say "We're in the office from 17:00-02:00" (currently 9-6 PST) A nontrivial amount of my time is wasted responding to emails with "3pm pacific or mountain?". Asking "does 23:00 work for you?" avoids the variable. This is twice as bad if you ever have to work with anyone in Arizona during the summer, as they already skip DST. Fortunately calendaring software does a decent job a…

I'd rather not have to ask every company/partner what time they are in the office - assuming that 9:00 - 5:00 eliminates that step. And it's certainly much easier for me to remember what city a partner is in, than to track what UTC time periods they are in the office.

DST is yet another reason why time zones make this better. Particularly with Melbourne/Brazil which seem to get out of Sync with Pacific Time - being able to eyeball Big Page O' international clocks to see what time it is in those regions this week helps me keep our meetings at a sane hour.

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