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British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

cbc.ca

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Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#551
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people hate standard time in winter because the sun sets at 4 or 5, and they want the sun to instead set at 8 or 9 like it does in summer. DST in winter doesn't actually give you the 8 or 9 sunset, it gives you a 5 or 6 sunset (which doesn't get you all that much) combined with moving your sunrise to 8 or 9, which causes its own set of issues most people don't think about. The last time we went to year-round…

No, I hate standard time, because in winter the sun sets at 4 or 5, when it could set at 5 or 6, i.e. daylight when leaving work. I do not care if the sun is up as I shuffle groggily into the building. I don't think I'm alone.

Right, but one problem is that people with kids do care a lot that they're going to school in the dark.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#552
post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what someone might come up with without a scientific definition. Think of 0 - 100 F being (very very roughly) the survivable range for humans without special precautions beyond normal winter/summer clothes. -18 - 38 C is way more arbitrary from that perspective.

textbook post-hoc rationalization

They said there's no intuition there, I gave them one. I didn't say this was how it was defined, just how it could make more sense in daily life than the Celsius range without relying on familiarity.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#553
post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean switch to UTC+1 all year while doing +1 on the timetables of all schools and anything else that might directly or indirectly depend on them: childcare for younger children, working hours of teachers and parents, sports activities, public transport, ...? Compared to switching to UTC+0 all year and leaving the timetables as they are, the disadvantages would seem to greatly outweigh the advantages. The other co…

Maybe you could use different timetables in summer and winter, so that only the relevant part of activities is affected, not everything indiscriminately. This would also make it possible to cater to local needs much better instead of simply fixing school hours from 9 to 15 and adjusting the clock that it falls into daylight.

Then local businesses would have to shift their hours to support parents with kids. And before you know it, you’ve effectively shifted everyone’s clock anyway.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#554
post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

textbook post-hoc rationalization

They said there's no intuition there, I gave them one. I didn't say this was how it was defined, just how it could make more sense in daily life than the Celsius range without relying on familiarity.

Conclusion before reasoning. post-hoc.

I can do it too.

- 0C - 30C are nice round numbers that are much better numbers for human comfort than 0F and 100F are. - above 0C in the winter means "it's going to be messy outside", and is the most important number. - 100C is an important number for cooking - a degree C is a reasonable interval. People using degrees F tend to round to multiples of 5, which is too large especially around room temperature, but a single degree F change is imperceptible.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#555
Good to see this is getting more common!

Changing the time every year cause a lot of accidents involving wildlife. Wild animals learn human activity patterns and avoid the roads during our active hours. When we shift the time we start they get caught off guard and a lot of accidents happen. It takes roughly 2 weeks of adjustment apparently.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#556
post #264
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remain unclear what authority the federal government has over such a matter It's actually an enumerated power under Article I, Section 8, Clause 5: > [The Congress shall have Power...] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; ... https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C5-1/...

I'm surprised that would be interpreted to include time zones. Units of time, arguably (measures), but time zones? Time zones are not a measure of anything. Time zones do not follow on from definitions of units of time, any more than road speed limits follow on from the definition of a mile. I would be less surprised if it were the commerce power used to uphold time zone coordination - for the promotion and regularit…

I don't think there've been many court cases exploring the meaning of "[to] fix the Standard of Weights and Measures", and probably none as it regards time. And in the modern era the Commerce Power would probably be sufficient on its own. SCOTUS has suggested that under exiting precedent Congress would have the power to grant copyrights and patents under the Commerce Clause, and so the Copyright and Patent clauses today act more like restrictions on Congressional power.

But I don't see a problem relating time zones to measurement. Part of the authority to standardize measurement is the ability to dictate the manner and means of determining a quantitative value. Under the Weights and Measures clause I think Congress can regulate things like scales, including their precision and accuracy, at least in so far as they claim to provide a measurement of a Federally standardized unit. You might intuitively think the only reasonable end to such power is using it to improve and mandate ever greater precision and accuracy. But sometimes too much precision and accuracy is a bad thing--it can create transactional friction. Case in point, when 12PM noon varied between every town it become increasingly problematic as the speed of long-distance transportation improved, i.e. the rail roads. So the solution was to mandate worse accuracy.

Relatedly, there's a whole separate question of what time means. Most HN readers understand time in the scientific sense, and think of time in the sense of the SI second. But civil time used for general daily life has a slightly more nuanced meaning. That said, UTC/TAI time is very much like time zones in the sense of fudging accuracy. Modern clocks and gravimeter, even the kind regular people can buy for a few hundred or thousand dollars, are precise enough to be able to distinguish local time dilation. So the time passing in your living room is actually different from UTC/TAI. But think of how complex and, for the most part, useless it would be to try to "solve" that discrepancy by trying to integrate that reality in the general definition of civil time.

Also, AFAIU the authority to standardize measurement, and time specifically, operates more as a prohibition on states imposing their own mandates. See, generally, the Legal Tender Cases for the push and pull between various powers allocated between the federal government and the states.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe just once we can not bias literally everything in life towards morning people and throw night owls a bone?

That is literally what permanent DST is— benefitting people who like to wake up before sunrise. Night owls want to wake up after it's been light already.

Yes, and GP is arguing that it should be optimized for morning people instead. Hence my comment.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#558
post #219
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset I'd bet people would happily trade away the inkling of light they get during their winter commute before locking themselves into their office for some extra daylight when they leave that office. Daylight is most enjoyable if you can actually make use of it.

That's what everyone says. But it turns out people hate spending their morning in darkness for more light at night. Which makes perfect sense: https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-... > the inkling of light they get during their winter commute It's not an inkling. Unless you roll out of bed and instantly onto your commute, you're getting natural sunlight through all your windows for hours every…

Here in Ireland in December civil twilight starts at like 08h, and if you are lucky, you'll see the sun only at 08h30. For many, that's mostly darkness all the way to the office.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually there are several hours of reasonable buffer in the morning. We're only talking about moving wakeup time by one hour here.

That massively depends on where you live. The northern most city of British Columbia is Atlin and during some parts of the year the sun doesn't rise until 9:54 AM. If you take into account places further north than British Columbia it gets even more extreme. Barrows Alaska has the sunrise after 1 PM some days. Do you think businesses, schools, etc are going to start at 1 PM on those days?

I think if you live where the sun doesn't rise until after noon (or never rises, etc) the DST change wasn't helping or hurting you either way here.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#560
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't. In my professional experience, having needed to work with relatively unsophisticated people across many time zones, the only thing that worked consistently was "[City] time". That way people could always check 'what time is it in X now' or 'when it's X in [City], what time is it here', and get correct responses. Descriptors like "Mountain time" are too vague, especially when there are various places that…

My theory on why people use "xST" is that the word "standard" time sounds like it is the fancy official time. When people say EST and mean EDT I'm tempted to just show up an hour late, if it's a meeting I don't want to go to.

I like that theory! I think you're right.
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