from the hope-springs-eternal,-or-forward-maybe dept.
With the looming Daylight Saving Time cruelty of losing an hour descending upon us a mere week from now, it is worth noting that Texas has again introduced bills to abolish it in the Lone Star State.
For the 2019 Texas Legislature, House Bill 49 and Senate Bill 190 have been filed, with both being referred to the House and Senate State Affairs Committees.
The bills would exempt Texas from daylight saving time, including the portion of the state in Mountain Standard Time.
Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states that have opted out of Daylight Saving Time currently. New Mexico is also currently considering legislation to stop switching, with the House attempting to end DST and the Senate attempting to switch to it permanently.
Where do Soylentils fall?
[Ed. addition] Properly, DST is not "Daylight Savings Time"; it is "Daylight Saving Time". It has been so often misused, however, that it has become common usage. Also, Wikipedia's entry on Daylight Saving Time notes a tidbit I found interesting:
The time at which clocks are to be shifted differs across jurisdictions. The European Union has a coordinated shift, shifting all zones at the same instant, at 01:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which means that it changes at 02:00 Central European Time (CET) or 03:00 Eastern European Time (EET), the result is that the time differences across European time zone remain constant.[41][42] North America shifts at 02:00 but at the local time and is consequently uncoordinated so that, for example, Mountain Time is, for one hour, zero hours ahead of Pacific Time instead of one hour ahead in the autumn and two hours instead of one ahead of Pacific Time in the spring.
The dates on which clocks are to be shifted also vary with location and year; consequently, the time differences between regions also vary throughout the year. For example, Central European Time is usually six hours ahead North American Eastern Time, except for a few weeks in March and October/November, while the United Kingdom and mainland Chile could be five hours apart during the northern summer, three hours during the southern summer, and four hours a few weeks per year. Since 1996, European Summer Time has been observed from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October; previously the rules were not uniform across the European Union.[42] Starting in 2007, most of the United States and Canada observe DST from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, almost two-thirds of the year.[43] Moreover, the beginning and ending dates are roughly reversed between the northern and southern hemispheres because spring and autumn are displaced six months. For example, mainland Chile observes DST from the second Saturday in October to the second Saturday in March, with transitions at 24:00 local time.[44] In some countries time is governed by regional jurisdictions within the country so that some jurisdictions shift and others do not; this is currently the case in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and the United States.[45][46]
Related Stories
The Oregon Senate has passed a bill establishing permanent Daylight Saving Time in the state, and the Governor has signaled she supports the effort. If it passes the House (and possibly the US Congress, it is a bit ambiguous to me), it could end the semi-annual resetting of clocks which causes so much annoyance and increase of injury and deaths.
Personally speaking, I'd rather it settled on permanent Standard time than Daylight time, but as long as it is steady I think it's better than the current regime.
See also:
Texas efforts: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/05/1413228
Europe's efforts: http://fortune.com/2019/03/26/european-union-parliament-daylight-saving-time/
Mandatory XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/1268/
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:03PM (16 children)
I am not familiar enough with the American south to know how the day changes season to season in Texas, if there was no daylight savings how dark would it be at 8am? Who is backing this proposal? How much additional fuel will be burned each year to keep the lights on?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 5, Informative) by hemocyanin on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:28PM (5 children)
Fuel savings are a myth: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/daylight-saving-time-isnt-worth-the-energy-2017-11-02 [marketwatch.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:39PM (3 children)
What I really think about now, though, is does it shift peak time to when renewable are more available or less? Right now we're at a shitty like 3% solar mix in the US, but I think every person whose views don't suck ass want that to increase to over half, soon.
How does that play with DST? Would we charging electric cars later in the day, draining already dwindling active power sources? Would people go to bed later, using more nighttime energy?
I think we can all agree that daylight savings sucks ass, balls, and dick, but if we're gonna actually make a move to more solar now that it's cheaper than coal, what's the value to society?
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:32AM (1 child)
Why not gen4 nuclear?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday March 06 2019, @05:13AM
Potentially helpful, but problems with cost limit how much nuclear is reasonable. I think it's a necessary part of the mix, for the same reasons I'm asking this question about DST(peak usage times not matching peak production), but there's no reason to believe gen4 nuclear reactors will be cheaper to build and maintain, while keeping the strict safety standards that still make people nervous.
I'm, like most of this site, love high-tech feeling things, but I've yet to see a pragmatic, implementation-realistic version of a 50% nuclear world.
Solar is here, and affordable, and mostly limited by: A. storage, and B. an unnamed political party that literally does everything in their power to choke it(at the national level).
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:21AM
Which part of the State? Texas is probably big enough that sunrise varies by an hour between the west and the east.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:02PM
Agreed ..
Daylight Saving Time - How Is This Still A Thing?: Last Week Tonight [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:40PM (1 child)
Texas is only part of the American South, just as a disclaimer.
I have heard (in the mid 1980s) that at least one farmer has written their congress critter to abolish daylight savings time because the extra hour of sunlight would burn up their crops.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bogsnoticus on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:29PM
In Australia, the Premier of the state of Queensland, Sir Joh Bjelke Peterson, went on record stating that adopting daylight savings would "confuse the cows", with his wife adding "the extra hour of daylight would fade the curtains".
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:34PM (6 children)
Funny thing about time zones and Texas and Alaska, they the only U.S. states that have 2 time zones. Most of Texas is in Central Time, but El Paso in far western Texas is in Mountain Time.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:43PM (5 children)
Not true, Florida has two timezones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:55PM (4 children)
Kentucky has two time zones as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @09:23PM (3 children)
As does Tennessee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:50PM (2 children)
And Nebraska, Kansas, Oregon, and both Dakotas. And until recently Indiana, despite its narrowness, had effectively three. It still straddles eastern and Central, though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:52PM (1 child)
And Idaho and, apparently, Michigan.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday March 06 2019, @05:08PM
And even in Arizona, the Navajo nation observes DST, while the rest of the state does not.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by ls671 on Wednesday March 06 2019, @05:21AM
You don't need to be familiar with Texas, this feature is universal and depends on how close you are from the equator (or how far from the poles). Since Texas is closer to equator than almost any other state, the difference should be negligible.
As a reminder, if you live straight on the equator, each and every day of the year is 12 hours light, 12 hours dark.
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snow on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:15PM (12 children)
I love DST. Up here in The Great White North, it's fucking dark all winter long. Super depressing. DST gives me evening sun. It makes spring BBQs possible (cold, but you can at least see what you are doing).
I don't care if it's dark in the morning. I'm in the bathroom or kitchen, and the lights will be on regardless. Driving in the dark to work is worth it if it means a little sun after work.
I would be okay with permanent DST though.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:31PM (5 children)
> Driving in the dark to work is worth it if it means a little sun after work.
Given the number of pedestrians who don't wear anything reflective, I strongly disagree with this. I was quite happy to be out of the months of black shadows sprinting across traffic lanes every morning, and next week I'm going to be right back in it.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:36PM (4 children)
Not wearing reflective clothing and then running across the road is one of the few areas where natural selection is working.
Maybe the problem is you wearing dark clothing and "sprinting across traffic lanes every morning".
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:25PM (1 child)
> Maybe the problem is you wearing dark clothing and "sprinting across traffic lanes every morning".
If I'm sprinting while driving the car, I'm doing something wrong.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bogsnoticus on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:31PM
Oh look at Mr Fancypants there with someone else to do the sprinting for them. Come on Wilma, grab Pebbles, we're getting out of here.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Wednesday March 06 2019, @03:52PM
Millions upon millions of children walk to school or walk to the bus stop for the bus that takes them to school in the morning. They are too young to know what to wear, they just wear what their parents put on them. Longer, darker mornings are not great for them...
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday March 06 2019, @05:46PM
> Not wearing reflective clothing and then running across the road
Good ol' USA, where pedestrians must be vagrants or worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:05PM
Once you retire you can just use a sundial.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:30PM
I'm with you, and for all the same reasons. The evening sun makes all the difference.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @09:45PM
For your purpose, it really doesn't matter what the number on the clock says. You could be in UTC and it really wouldn't matter. Get up, or got to bed, at whatever time is required to get your evening light.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:04AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday March 06 2019, @05:13PM (1 child)
It sounds like you extracted the intended meaning, but you haven't supported your case for name-calling. Do you disagree with the literary style of the phrase 'permanent DST'? I mean, the math you presented is valid; where's the idiocy?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday March 07 2019, @01:09AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:16PM (2 children)
All the more reasons to get rid of DST nonsense.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:53PM (1 child)
Can I earn extra daylight interest on the daylight that I save?
Will it be taxable?
Drat! Shouldn't have mentioned that.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:38PM
No, but you get a solar piggy bank and a free starter box for your accompanying Daylight Checking Time account.
(Score: 2) by tizan on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:22PM (10 children)
Large fraction of people like the extra hour of light after work in summer...you can do stuff outside after work.
NM is the same latitute as large part of Texas...so if we stick to Summer Time (MDT) throughout the year...then it is dark in winter till close to 8 am...so you may want to move school time if you don't want kids to wait in the dark for school bus
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:33PM
The problem is that until the middle of summer its still light out at like 10:30, which completely sucks if you are an amateur astronomer with a day job.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:35PM (3 children)
Its only purpose is to annoy and occasionally kill [fee.org] people. Anyway, DST is mostly in effect during the summer, when nobody goes to school.
Standard time was set when society was much more agrarian than it is now and electric lights didn't exist. It might be better for today's world to go to full-time DST, or maybe light early in the morning is more useful than people give it credit for. The important thing is to quit screwing with the clocks all the time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @09:17PM (2 children)
> full-time DST
Or… just move worktimes permanently, I mean, really, stop touching that clock.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 06 2019, @01:37AM (1 child)
Yes, that!
People don't seem to realize that it might be alright to go to work at 6:00 AM, and work until 2:30 PM. Or, maybe even start work at 4:00 AM. Some people, like bankers, understand that it's alright to start work at 9:00 AM. Working construction, we often moved our work times. As a rule, we wanted to start work at sunrise. Drive to work in the dark, open tool boxes, and get set up as the sun is peeking over the horizon, and actually start hammering nails, or digging in the ground as things brighten up. Like farmers, work through those nice cool hours in the morning, and when the sun finally turns into an unbearable heat lamp, call it quits and go home.
I've never liked changing the clocks around. It's just stupid shit, IMO.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Wednesday March 06 2019, @03:55PM
If it is even feasible for your job to offer flex hours, and if they do offer flex hours, and if those flex hours are compatible with when your kid starts school...
The "just work X to Y" solution does not work for perhaps the majority of people.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:39PM (3 children)
I had to walk in the dark to go get the city bus. The time zone in Western Europe is at sun+1 in winter, and sun+2 in summer.
Yep, it was darkish, and it was cold in winter. But the evening sun is totally worth it.
Sun+1 is the minimum. With jobs going 9-6+ (9-7, 9-8 too often) in most cases, being right on sun time absolutely sucks.
> you may want to move school time
This. Not happy about your school times ? Talk to your local officials.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:54PM (2 children)
Not happy about your work hours? Talk to your boss.
Standard time is as close as seems feasible to actual solar time. It's not the earth or sun's fault that your workday is skewed later in the day. Midday is midday, midnight is midnight. Go Texas, and I hope it gives momentum to other states, leading optimistically to the US as a whole!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:24PM (1 child)
> Not happy about your work hours? Talk to your boss.
And three quarters of the industry, since most of us just have to work when other people do.
And all the school districts which put start of classes after 8, as a major hindrance to parents getting to work early (actually, gotta do that one to punch the idiots in the face for letting the kids out before 3PM).
And all the morons on the highways who dare go to work at similar times to mine (Oh, wait...)
If you leave on your own desert island, you can set your offset to whatever you want, for sure.
> Standard time is as close as seems feasible to actual solar time.
Except that we are an advanced civilization, so we can deal with an offset to solar time. Having symmetric free time before and after work does not result in symmetric uses, because in most places it strangely just happens to be colder right after sunrise than just before sunset.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Wednesday March 06 2019, @02:47AM
I work 3rd shift at a business that is 24/7/365.
Whether you start at 7am, 8am, or 9am doesn't really make any difference to me at all.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Wednesday March 06 2019, @02:51AM
If it's such a large fraction, why don't they are all start work an hour earlier instead of trying to change what time it is for everyone else?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:23PM (7 children)
DST is a nazi plot.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:50PM (2 children)
This is a safe space. No daylight savings time allowed!
operator: 911 What's your emergency?
caller: a biologist is lecturing at my school and says that gender is NOT a social construct! He cannot be allowed to say that because this campus is supposed to be a safe space for all points of view.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:17PM (1 child)
operator: for a whiny bitch, you sure are a whiny bitch.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 05 2019, @09:48PM
Did you notice?
Supposed to be safe space for all POV
Yet the caller wants a certain POV suppressed.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:20PM
Cue creepy music, with the band tuned to A 440 of course. [thedailybeast.com]
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 05 2019, @09:59PM
In winter.
Or in the same place they stand
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:08AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 06 2019, @07:15AM
I wrote that before watching the video linked in some post above in which it is mentioned the Kaiser was the first to implement DST. Still, perhaps that explains Hitler -- you know, not getting enough sleep when he was in the trenches during the time shift caused permanent mental/social defects or something like that.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:33PM (8 children)
zulu time, all the time.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:42PM
That's an interesting idea actually.
- OR -
That's crazy talk! Like saying Americans should switch to the crazy metric system or to A4 / A5 paper sizes.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:17PM (3 children)
I've heard this argument, but it doesn't hold up. First, you have zero chance: people are accustomed to time the way it is, and this kind of massive re-think just isn't going to happen. Most people work roughly 8-5, or maybe 9-6, and that seems to be the way we like it. At least, all attempts at flex-time seem to fail pretty miserably.
Second, time-zones do actually have a purpose. What good does it do, to have the same time everywhere? With time zones, given a local time, I know at least roughly whether it's working hours or not; whether it's morning, afternoon or evening. Read in the news that that Sydney was hit by a tidal wave at 2am, and you automatically know that was in the middle of the night. With UTC, most people would have no clue, and the rest of us would be doing math in our heads to figure it out.
This is the same kind of brilliantly logical, and yet utter unpractical idea as demanding that noon = sun directly overhead. It makes someone's inner nerd happy, but would piss off everyone else.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:37PM
I actually think everybody would be fine with that.
"Let's meet at 'noon'."
"Ok, so that's about ... 11:15? Sounds good to me!"
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:40AM
West coast tech companies should just only release software with pacific time. Fuck everyone else. Alaska is PST+1 and DC is PST-3.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday March 06 2019, @02:16AM
I've worked in several places with flexitime. Employees generally love it. Good managers deal with the few downsides from their point of view, and appreciate the general improvement in morale and efficiency.
Poor managers don't like it because if handled badly it increases their workload. They generally get rid of it as soon as they can. I have even heard PHB-type managers say that it is bad because it makes employees happy, and if they are happy then they are not working hard enough.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:25PM
I rather like that answer. The problems it causes (not knowing what time they're talking about when someone says it's 8:00) are trivial. Of course, all the businesses and schools, etc., would need to change their hours to something locally appropriate where they are situated, but that's a one-time problem.
That said, be sure to switch to a 24 hour clock at the same time.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:55PM (1 child)
It used to be Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:08PM
A.K.A. Zulu, the phonetic alphabet representation for Z, meaning zero offset, i.e. UTC+00:00.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:42PM (7 children)
I don't care if we go DST or standard time, just pick one and stay with it.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:48PM (5 children)
I agree to pick one and stick with it.
But PLEASE pick the one that puts 12:00 Noon at the time of day when the sun is directly overhead.
All other things are simply conventions of choosing what hours a store will be open, or when people will go to bed, etc.
We open and close an hour later in the summer! (instead of making everyone set their clock forward)
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:10PM (2 children)
"But PLEASE pick the one that puts 12:00 Noon at the time of day when the sun is directly overhead. All other things are simply conventions..."
Well, no.
Let's talk about conventions. For whatever reason, people seem to be wedded to an 8-5 or 9-6 workday. This is also just a convention, but it's a very widespread one. Yet another human convention seems to be relaxing after work, rather than before. Both of those being true, having "noon" mean "sun directly overhead" is a really poor decision, because most people will have more daytime before they go to work, rather than afterwards when they could enjoy it.
Given these human conventions, it would be better for the sun to be directly overhead sometime in the early afternoon, so that people can enjoy more daylight after their workday ends. Yes, "people should adapt", but you know what? The whole concept of timekeeping is just a convention, so we had just as well use it as we see fit.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:09PM
I divorced that one long ago.
Relaxing during work hasn't kill anyone either. Certainly not me.
If we can has zillions of sexes, why can has zillions of time zones and DST too.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Wednesday March 06 2019, @02:54AM
I've been working for nearly thirty years now, and I've never started work that late. I never even started school that late when I was a kid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:19PM (1 child)
I thought as you do about the 12:00 thing. But I found out that actually seasonal variations in noon are very big (can be on the order of 2 hours for mid latitudes), so that the "sun on top at 12" only really works on those two days a year (maybe 4, I'm too tired to think about it now). However I still think we should pick the 12 that works at the equinox, and then stick with the 24 hour day for the rest of the year.
and then people can pick 8-17 or 9-18 or 14-23 for their work schedule, I really don't care.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 05 2019, @09:45PM
I mean the sun is "on top" in the east-west direction. Not necessarily north-south direction.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday March 06 2019, @01:09AM
This got modded +5 insightful within 20 minutes of me saying it. That tells me there are a lot of people who don't care DST vs standard, we're all really tired of changing the faruking time twice a year.
Old joke. Egypt king at the time was Farouk. Subsidized University degrees in plumbing. Hence Farouck Fawcett Major. Which was much funnier when I was a teenager in the 70s.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:44PM
As a Hoosier, I want my sane time back!
And of course I wish the good people of Texas and New Mexico luck in getting sane time of their own.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:13PM (3 children)
Ugh, if this goes through then I'm gonna have to test all the code changes for dealing with that crap. Just had to deal with some report that wasn't printing for Puerto Rico for half of the year because of this kind of idiocy. Took three freakin attempts for those code monkeys to get that shit right. Assuming this version actually works...
I'm all for dumping this nonsense, but can we at least do it uniformly instead of one little bit every couple of years?
Also totally on board with moving RI and other parts of New England (it was officially proposed in MA at least) into the next timezone over. I work 7am-3pm shifts and even then it's sometimes dark by the time I get home...but the sun is up at like 5am...who the hell needs THAT??
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:43PM
You should be using the Olson database, like almost everyone else who writes software that deals with local times. Then your program might have a chance of actually working. Basically all major operating systems include it. It is updated several times a year (9 times in 2018!) in order to give a faint hope of possibility for computers to deal with the fact that timezones are changing all the time.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:14AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 06 2019, @02:22PM
Perhaps, I would never deny that our devs might be doing it wrong...but part of the issue for us is about generating reports and how the time that the report executes interacts with the time of the data. For example, they might want to run the reports at 2am every night from the EST datacenter, but they want "per day" values from each store based on the store's local timezone. If it hasn't hit midnight yet for that store, you have to either alter the report for that entire timezone to no longer end at midnight, or you generate the report for the previous day instead. I don't know of any library that will take care of that kind of change. And both of those solutions do kinda suck, but they potentially suck less than running the same reporting job every hour for each individual timezone (we do that for some of the larger reports where we need to stagger the load anyway, but the ones that take five minutes to generate aren't really worth it.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:26PM (4 children)
Last thing we need is a patch-work of states on or off daylight savings time. 4 time zones is bad enough when trying to schedule a conference call, certainly don’t need 50
(Score: 2) by tizan on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:39PM (2 children)
Right now driving from Arizona to Utah can be interesting in Summer...
Arizona is on MST
Get into Navajo land it is on MDT
Then get into Hopi pueblo is on MST
then back into Navajo land on MDT
then back into non-Navajoland Arizona which is on MST
the into Utah which is on MDT
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:25PM
Which is exactly why the only good Indian is a dead Indian. If the US army had done its job properly you could have one time zone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 06 2019, @01:51AM
And, how does that affect your drive? Does your engine run better in one time zone than in another? Does your credit card stop working? The radio cuts out? Does the clock on your dashboard go crazy?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:19AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:17PM
Server and config fiddling often are needed when there are such changes. Some apps get the "public" time from the OS, others calculate it themselves based on OS's "raw" time-stamps. Sometimes there's no timely update such that the app or system computes it wrong.
(Score: 4, Informative) by SemperOSS on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:44PM (5 children)
Daylight Saving Time is based on the wrong assumption that it actually would save fuel and was first implemented by Germany and Austria during World War I. It had and has nothing to do with people's well-being. Unfortunately — as someone else has pointed out with an appropriate link — it does not save fuel ... and it does definitely not increase people's well-being. Several studies have shown increased mortality in the periods just after the time changes, e.g. Daylight Saving Time Transitions, Incidence and In-Hospital Mortality of Ischemic Stroke [neurology.org].
People working in the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK work to their appointed hours without getting compensation nor deductions, even if they work a shift crossing from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT — the same as UTC) to British Summer Time (BST) or vice versa. This means that somebody working a 12-hour shift can be working 11 hours for 12 hours pay (yay!) when the clock changes from GMT to BST and 13 hours, still for 12 hours pay (nay!), when the clock changes from BST back to GMT. This can be very stressful, especially if you work as a paramedic in an ambulance. The idea is that this will even out over the years as you may work the 11-hour shift one year but the 13-hour shift the next year. This is, apart from exhaustion of the long shift, probably not a big problem for people that stay for years in the service but can be unfair for people working in the 111 service or similar jobs where people turn-over is very high — in the order of average employment time being around three to six months, if I remember correctly.
Personally I think that the UK should just stay on BST all year round. It means that the winters are going to be a bit more dreary but I can live with that for the benefit of longer summer evenings. I always find the first week or so after changing to summer time very difficult. If constant BST is not an option, then make it constant GMT instead — just do not change the clock any more ... Please! Staying on BST would also mean that the UK would be aligned with the rest of Europe if they stay on Central European Time (CET).
Open Source Solutions and Digital Sovereignty is the new black
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:24AM (2 children)
Of course, France and Spain are clearly in the wrong time zone, and they should move to GMT.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:22PM (1 child)
First and foremost, I want the UK to scrap DST and the changing the clocks twice a year. So now the clocks are not changing it is just a matter of selecting what time zone to belong to. I would prefer to be in the same time zone as the rest of Europe as it would make my personal life easier (often working at home for companies working in the CET time zone, which is bummer for two reasons: they are not only ahead one hour but many places work 8-16 instead of 9-17, which is the norm of UK, meaning I have to be in phone/video meetings when the rest of the family is trying to get ready for work/school) and because I prefer the extended days of summer. Should the UK not want to go permanently on BST/CET/UTC+1, I will settle for permanently staying on GMT/UTC — which, incidentally, would be a more probable outcome, the British being, er, British. Anyhow, the main purpose is to scrap the clock changes.
Open Source Solutions and Digital Sovereignty is the new black
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday March 06 2019, @06:42PM
Put me down for Britain being on UTC. I mean, they invented it, they should have to live with it.
Also, it would make intuitive sense that Greenwich be on Greenwich Mean Time (as approximated by UTC, of course).
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mykl on Wednesday March 06 2019, @01:55AM (1 child)
Daylight Saving was not created to save fuel. It was created to 'normalise' the time that the sun comes up each day. This was largely irrelevant in the pre-industrial era - people got up with the sun and did their work. That meant they woke up earlier in Summer and later in Winter. Once set working hours were introduced (e.g. 9-5), people noticed that it was harder to consistently get up at the same time each day. Turns out, your body attunes fairly finely with sunrise (it either consistently likes to wake up just before, just after, well after etc).
By introducing Daylight Saving, sunrise is shifted back closer to a person's typical "winter" waking hours (i.e. you have moved working hours back to be closer to dawn during summer so that there is roughly the same amount of time between dawn and 'start of work' through the year) . This has the added effect of providing extra post-work sunlight hours, but that's not the intent.
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:31PM
Not historically, really. DST may not have been proposed by Hudson or Willett as a means to save fuel, but the first adoption of it was by Germany and Austria-Hungary during World War I, and the reason for it was to save coal, i.e. fuel.
Open Source Solutions and Digital Sovereignty is the new black
(Score: 2) by noneof_theabove on Wednesday March 06 2019, @01:59AM
Just an old fart that lived thru hours of darkness heading to school versus the snowflakes of today.
And unfortunately I live in Texas, and have missed the "high noon" hangings of the old days. /sarcasm