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End Daylight Savings

petitions.whitehouse.gov

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Re: End Daylight Savings

#121

Post by handzhiev »

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…

Why the heck do people want same time sunset every day? What's so great about it, I really don't get it. It's like dreaming to have 22 C and sunny all the time. Sounds cool until you really try it.

The nature is not equal every day. I see no point in trying to make it so.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#122

Post by Benferhat »

anonymouz wrote: post #51
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 is a good reason for leap seconds though: They make sure that UTC (based on atomic clocks) stays in sync with the solar day. If we didn't have those, the two would slowly drift apart and we would have to introduce a bigger jump at some later point.

> There is a good reason for leap seconds though

Isn't that the only reason for them?

Re: End Daylight Savings

#123

Post by mike_herrera »

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're just wanting to know what phase of the day it is, at a particular location, a sun projection is a good enough approximation.

e.g. http://www.die.net/earth/

Re: End Daylight Savings

#124

Post by mooism2 »

Osiris wrote: post #111
mooism2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I am suggesting that Wednesday would continue to run from midnight to midnight, but in a world where "midnight" means "midnight UTC" rather than "midnight in an appropriate local time zone", the block of time occupied by Wednesday would be less useful. I am concluding that having the entire world use UTC as its local time is not practical.

See also California, when the day of the week would change while you were at work in the afternoon.

(Did you mean for your comment to be in reply to sxp or zanny, not me?)

Re: End Daylight Savings

#125

Post by ghshephard »

zanny wrote: post #78
anonymouz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But when scheduling the meeting for time x you'll have to look at the time offsets of all the participants to figure out if x falls into their work day or into the middle of the night. If you schedule a meeting at 13:00 UTC, is the Chinese guy still in his office? Is the one from the US already in his office? Instead of knowing their timezones and their offset you'll now have to know their office hours in UTC, which…

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…

Most of us who have to deal in multiple time zones have a Web Page/Dashboard/App of clocks with all the time zones that we deal with. 45' away from me I actually have a physical wall of clocks with cities noted above them.

I know that my partners/customers/colleagues in all countries are available for calls from roughly 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM without ever having to ask them.

That's basically what TimeZones do for you - they provide a common basis to keep everyone in sync around with world, without me having to check, on an office-by-office basis what UTC hours they are in. It's just agreed that 9:00 - 5:00 is a reasonable time to schedule a meeting, and TimeZones tell me when 9:00 - 5:00 is for any particular office.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#126

Post by michaelochurch »

handzhiev wrote: post #118
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.

Most tropical countries don't have DST, because there'd be no point in it when there are no seasons, but some use a different time zone, which can have the effect of "year-round DST".

Re: End Daylight Savings

#127

Post by dllthomas »

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…

So, the one case gets way easier; the other gets no harder. Seems like an improvement to me.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#128

Post by ghshephard »

finnw wrote: post #74
anonymouz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But when scheduling the meeting for time x you'll have to look at the time offsets of all the participants to figure out if x falls into their work day or into the middle of the night. If you schedule a meeting at 13:00 UTC, is the Chinese guy still in his office? Is the one from the US already in his office? Instead of knowing their timezones and their offset you'll now have to know their office hours in UTC, which…

Office hours are not consistent in local time either - there are cultural variations. If you want to know what (UTC) times the Chinese guy will be in his office, you need to ask him, not try to predict using offsets from UTC.

In the approximately 10 countries that I work with - they are all available from 9:00 AMsh to 5:00 PMsh. This may be unique to my sector (Energy/Utilities) - but it's pretty much consistent Across Brazil /UK/ Portugal /Germany /Japan/ Singapore /Australia /Malaysia /US /Luxembourg)

I don't work (yet) with anyone in China, so I can't comment on that country.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#129

Post by perlgeek »

anonymouz wrote: post #51
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 is a good reason for leap seconds though: They make sure that UTC (based on atomic clocks) stays in sync with the solar day. If we didn't have those, the two would slowly drift apart and we would have to introduce a bigger jump at some later point.

By why is it important that UTC stays in sync with the solar day? The drift is very small, and I see no practical application for a sync in such small amounts.

Most people's local time isn't synced with the solar time anyway (that only happens in the middle of a time zone, and only if there's no crazy stuff like DST going on).

The only people who care about that are probably the astronomy guys, and they already need to adjust their time with other stuff for most observations.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#130

Post by tsotha »

jzwinck wrote: post #71
tsotha wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DST is also a killer. Traffic accidents go up for a few days every year when you lose an hour as groggy people are out driving to work.

I think it may be counter-productive to mention this, because it is difficult to prove. It is trivial to show that there are dead-weight costs incurred when computer systems need to deal with DST across political boundaries. Those costs alone should be sufficient to convince anyone to abandon DST (or just as well, adopt it full-time, as Russia recently did). The fact that "normal" people do not know these costs exist…

>I think it may be counter-productive to mention this, because it is difficult to prove.

Why would you think this is difficult to prove?

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