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European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes

bbc.com

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Re: European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes

#81

Post by qalmakka »

wongarsu wrote: post #58
qalmakka wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think countries on a blatantly wrong timezone such as Spain should take this opportunity to fix it. For instance, Spain could stay in UTC+1 all year round and go back in the same timezone as Portugal (which is going to certainly pick its summer time as its whole-year round timezone), thus eliminating the artificial shift everything has there (people eat lunch at 14 and dinner at 22, but these times match roughly wi…

I would argue Portugal is the one in the "wrong" timezone here. If you want the sun to be at its high point at noon, Spain is obviously in the wrong time zone. But you see plenty of countries around the world choosing a slightly different timezone to facilitate trade and communication with some other country (or within itself, in the case of larger countries). With most other barriers to trade gone within the eurozon…

Spain was in GMT/UTC+0 until march 1940, when Franco's desire to align the country with Axis powers led him to change the clocks to CET. France was in GMT (as it is obvious given that its right below the UK) until the same year, when it was moved into German time following the Nazi invasion.

Re: European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes

#82

Post by ridgewell »

I recognize that this is probably an unpopular opinion but I live for the days when the sun sets at 9pm.

DST really factors in quite well for night owls like myself. I'm aware there is a strong degree of detraction in terms of complicating time keeping and body clock adjustments.

It makes the daylight stretch into what we conventionally consider the night. In the winter, I'm always somewhat a little sad that the sun sets before I even leave the office (~4-4:30pm), but I'm always in a much better mood in the summer when I leave the office at 5pm and still have hours of daylight left in the day.

Re: European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes

#83

Post by dsfyu404ed »

ridgewell wrote: post #82

I recognize that this is probably an unpopular opinion but I live for the days when the sun sets at 9pm. DST really factors in quite well for night owls like myself. I'm aware there is a strong degree of detraction in terms of complicating time keeping and body clock adjustments. It makes the daylight stretch into what we conventionally consider the night. In the winter, I'm always somewhat a little sad that the sun…

The late evening sunset in the summer is a godsend for anyone who has a day job and has projects they need to work on outdoors. It's like having every weekday followed by a Saturday afternoon for productivity purposes.

Re: European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes

#84

Post by logfromblammo »

mijamo wrote: post #59
seanalltogether wrote: post #38

People often say they would rather have permanent summer time, but from observation it seems everyone sets their rhythm around solar noon regardless, so why not make noon = noon. During the summer months Spain's solar noon is between 2 and 2:30pm. Guess what time Spaniards sit down to eat lunch? In the summer the UKs solar noon is around 1pm, guess what time all the office workers pour out on the streets to eat lunch…

THis is actually false. School start at the same time in Spain and UK, people wake up early in Spain. One of the main reason of eating late is that it gets too hot in the beginning of the afternoon so people take a break then. Work hours can be 8-14 and then 18-21 for instance. Making solar noon 12:00 would not help anything at all. In addition, it would require rewriting all the laws regarding night work, all the wo…

Why even bother with a 24-hour clock, then? If we went to a 25-hour day, everyone could get another hour of sleep.

We synchronize clocks to the sun because there is actual merit in matching the civil day to the solar day. The sun-earth relative positioning is the same for everyone on the planet. It sets a time standard without everyone having to agree on it. If someone chooses to go off the common standard, they may be trying to push some time-dependent externality off onto those who remain on it. That's something we should actively punish, rather than everyone joining in to do exactly the same thing.

Making mean solar noon at the nearest meridian divisible by 15 degrees equal to 12:00 clock time would have the benefit of making the clocks uniformly honest. If the laws are the problem, it is the laws that should be changed, not the goddamned clock settings.

Re: European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes

#85

Post by selimthegrim »

rocqua wrote: post #68
setr wrote: post #3

>The proposal would give each member state a choice from 2021: either to keep the current summer time system or scrap the twice-yearly clock changes So if you travelled vertically within a timezone, you could end up going back and forth by an hour repeatedly, depending on the state’s decision made here? Truly, a design made by committee.

I once found a latitude with 4 different time zones. I think it goes through Pakistan. Time zones are always going to be weird.

I believe India and Pakistan shared a time zone until partition (there were Bombay and Calcutta Times), and Pakistan adopted some standards asymptotically closer to Bombay Time (see the Wikipedia article for Karachi time)

Re: European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes

#86

Post by notatoad »

tilolebo wrote: post #79

I have been wondering for a while: will this decision trigger any significant work to make software compatible? Or is it "just" a timezone library to update and voila?

it's just a tz library to update, assuming you're using a tz library. Any poorly localized software is going to have issues.

The challenge is actually getting that update pushed out to everything that needs it. Every embedded and IoT device needs to get a new tz database, and any applications that might use a different tz database to the system one need to be updated. It's not significant programming work necessarily, but it's still probably going to cause a significant number of bugs in reality.

Re: European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes

#87

Post by oarsinsync »

logfromblammo wrote: post #77
allannienhuis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want the sun to be at it's high point at noon? Perhaps that has value in an agricultural society, but in today's world I'd much rather have more daylight in my leisure hours (evening) than my working hours.

Because that's the literal definition of local noon. That has value in any society that values precise measurements of physical observations. A purposefully inaccurate time zone is the equivalent of changing the length of the meter to make your daily commute less distance in the winter and more distance in the summer, or to make the meterstick longer all year just so you don't have to drive as many meters every day.…

Solar noon and local noon are different things, unfortunately.

Changing an offset isn't quite the same thing as changing the measure of a unit. Seconds, minutes and hours are not being adjusted as part of this. It would be more like starting to count from 1 metre instead of 0 metres to adjust the length of your commute.

> Business hours are almost entirely arbitrary anyway. Change them instead.

As it happens, a sibling comment has already pointed out that people have effectively done this. The time of day you eat lunch is arbitrary. So the lunch hour in Spain is 14:00 instead of 13:00, effectively resolving the 'wrong hour' issue.

Re: European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes

#88

Post by oarsinsync »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #18
renholder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Under the new legislation, governments opting to make summer time permanent would adjust their clocks for the last time on the last Sunday in March 2021. For those choosing permanent standard time - also called winter time - the final clock change would be on the last Sunday of October 2021. It's down to the member states to decide but I think most would prefer summer; save for maybe the Nordics, where the vast dif…

Even in the Nordics, eternal summer time would be preferrable for most people I think. It gives you more sunlight in the afternoon (if I'm not mistaken), when you actually have some free time to utilize that fact. Who cares if it's light or dark in the morning, nobody is outside enjoying the weather at that time anyway, we're just trying to get everyone to school/work.

I leave every morning at 5.30am. I literally see many others (but clearly a minority of peoples) doing the same.

It's much nicer doing that in daylight than in darkness, although it was also nice watching the sun rise during my morning swim a couple of months ago.

Re: European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes

#90

Post by Faaak »

madcaptenor wrote: post #50
BerislavLopac wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already have that in EU -- Spain is observing CET (and its summer equivalent CEST) even though it is pretty much completely in the same time zone as Great Britain.

And Portugal is on GMT, so you have a bit of Spain (GMT+1) that's due north of Portugal (GMT) and borders it by land. (and most of Portugal is west of 7.5 degrees west so "should" be GMT-1... but really in any sane time zone scheme Portugal and Spain would have the same time.)

PS: GMT is defined by UTC, and not the other way around.
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