this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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I'm ok with timezones, but the guy who invented daylight savings time I'd slap to all the way to the sun
From a development perspective it certainly sounds easier to have one global timezone with DST than a bunch of smaller ones without it. Would that make sense in reality? Probably not but I definitely think timezones take more work to compensate for properly.
Not really. Timezones, at their core (so without DST or any other special rules), are just a constant offset that you can very easily translate back and forth between, that's trivial as long as you remember to do it. Having lots of them doesn't really make anything harder, as long as you can look them up somewhere. DST, leap seconds, etc., make shit complicated, because they bend, break, or overlap a single timeline to the point where suddenly you have points in time that happen twice, or that never happen, or where time runs faster or slower for a bit. That is incredibly hard to deal with consistently, much more so that just switching a simple offset you're operating within.
What matters is consistency and our time system has tons of crazy inconsistent shit in our. Everyone knows about leap years, but do you know about leap seconds? Imagine trying to write a function to convert unix time to a current date and suddenly all your times are a second off.
Just look at this insane bullshit nonsense. The added complexity of time zones and daylight saving time is nothing compared to simply supporting our time system.
We need to synchronize all computer times with that one clock that can stay accurate to within 1 second every 40 billion years.
We do? With NTP
Lets just have 2 timezones, Chinese time and EST w/ permanent DST. The most populated timezones for Eurasia and the americas, and they're both 12 hours apart, so nobody has to do timezone math, just swich AM and PM.
There was actually a really interesting idea I heard to have no time zones. And I actually think it could be a good idea. It'll never happen because people would need to re-learn time but if it was always the same time everywhere it would make scheduling and business so much easier. No one would need to convert between different zones or be late because of an incorrect conversion. The downside is that times which are conventionally morning or evening etc, would no longer would be so people would have to get used to time just being a construct for scheduling and not a representation of the natural day/night cycle...but it actually doesn't sound like a half bad idea.
Problem you run into is the areas where we need to tie things to solar days across an area.
You end up with places having to regulate that school starts at 22:00, and gets out 05:00 the next day.
Businesses close for the night at 06:00 and open bright and early later that day at 22:00.
You have places where one calendar day has two different business days in it, so the annoyances faced by people who work overnight shifts spreads to everyone, and worse gets spread to financial calendars, billing systems and the works.
It's not better.
🤔 that's a fair point...
Time is an air bubble trapped under a screen protector. It's annoying, and you can push it around to try to keep it out of the way, but you can never really fix it.
There's just too many inherently contradictory requirements for us to end up with a "good" system, and we just need to settle for good enough.
My dream is that we stop changing things. Whatever we have in time zone database today is what we stick with going forwards. No more dst shifts, no more tweaks to the zones, no more weird offsets and shifts, because we don't get to stop dealing with the old layout when we change, we just add a new one that we think is better.
For the most part, dealing with this stuff is a solved, shitty problem. It's when we change the rules that problems come up. Worse when we change them retroactively. (Territory disputes between nations have been resolved with the conclusion that land was actually in a different time zone in the past because it was actually in another country. Not a problem usually, unless there's a major stock exchange in an island that was transferred between nations and retroactively changing what time it was affects what laws were valid at the time certain transactions took place.
Switching sucks but DST is better than Standard Time.
Which part of the year is DST and which part is Standard Time?
I know, but it seems like half the people that say they prefer DST have it backwards.
It's easy, the good part is DST (which is what we're currently in - Spring through Fall in the northern hemisphere).
It's only good from spring to fall. Come winter and it's a permanent depression.
Standard Time during that period is what's depressing.
With standard time you get some light in the morning. With DST you get no light at all. Also there's nothing worse than waking up in the darkness.
Sure there is... Coming home from work in the darkness is way worse than waking up in it.
As I explained in my other comment, there's no situation where you're getting any daylight in the evening with DST, that's just not possible.
Also daylight in the morning sets your day on a high note. The morning you're spending in the darkness is what turns your life into a winter long depression. Coming home in darkness is inevitable and has a lower impact on your mental health. And with DST effectively removing BOTH morning and evening daylight, you'll be completely fucked.
I disagree.
Also, sunrise and sunset times vary depending on one's location.
Daylight in the morning only serves to remind me (and people like me) that it's being wasted and won't be available when I have free time.
You're not getting any daylight with DST in the winter no matter where you are.
Strong disagree, under DST I get to experience some sunlight in then evenings. Under Standard time I get to watch the sun come up through the window and set through the window.
just move somewhere better. don’t mess up my timezone just because your weather always sucks!
I don't know what you mean by evening, but it's already dark at 16:00 during winter. You only get some light in the morning. DST means no more light in the morning and no more light in the evening. Complete depression. DST should not exist.
i still dont even understand what DST even is, as far as i care because i don't is that DST just means we change the time, because god forbid the time be a little funky.
DST is shifting the sunlight later in the day during the summer.
Love me some early evening daylight though. Nice warm but not hot cruise/drive with the windows and the top down on the car.
I love DST! I just think ever switching out of it is where the mistake lies
DST during winter = permanent depression.
You are aware that the actual amount of daylight doesn’t change when we move the clocks right?
It really comes down to when you’d rather have more daylight, morning or evening.
Evening
Agreed. That’s why DST is best.
Except that it doesn't. Take a look at daylight data for 20 Dec here https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/london
That's ST obv. Now let's convert it to DST, that will be 9:03 - 16:53. Let's say you work a standard 9-5 job. Well, 9:03 is after you start working and 16:53 is before you finish. Thus you get ZERO daylight during the day in DST. You get almost an hour in the morning with ST.
Now let's move further away from equator https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/latvia/riga
Well, DST is a perma fucking depression now as you're robbed from the very few minutes you had before.
How about further North https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/finland/helsinki
No wonder Finland has such high suicide rates during winter...
P.S. It is also worth noting that daylight grows the closer you get to the equator and it grows in the morning, not in the evening. You can see from the examples above that their evening difference is smaller than the morning one. There's just no point having DST.
I’m missing your point. Do you think that moving the clocks is having an effect on the tilt of the earth? Or are you just trying to explain to me how daylength and latitude are related?
I know quite well how dark it gets in the north. I live in the north. Luckily, the sun still rises and sets at very predictable intervals. If I want to enjoy sunlight, I simply need to be awake at some point that coincides with when the sun is up.
You are also aware that not everyone works the exact same hours, right? And windows exist?
Use a different example to make the opposite point: I’d like the sun to be out for at least an hour after I get home from my “9-5”, so if the sun sets at 1700 I’m standard time, I am depressed. But in DST, I get to spend an hour in my garden.
See? The debate is stupid. Do you want more daylight in the morning or afternoon. That’s the only question. The amount of daylight is not affected by clocks.
Wut? If it's DST during winter, you don't have any light to enjoy after work. You can only enjoy light in the morning with ST. All the explanation is above, with facts.
IIRC daylight savings was created way back when electricity really didn't exist so it allowed the farmers more daylight to harvest their crops.
Now with that said there is more technology in today's farming equipment so DST shouldn't really exist anymore.
So, this is wrong on so many levels. First of all, DST had nothing to do with farmers, it was to save energy usage in the summer as people were doing more things when the evenings were warmer.
DST does not increase the amount of daylight on any specific day of the year, it just shifts it later in the day so that people in 8-5 jobs can do more things after work. Farmers don't work 8-5, they work as needed so if the crops need harvesting they will get harvested based on the weather.
Nowadays farmers have lots of lights and can harvest after the sun goes down, but that has nothing to do with why DST shouldn't exist. DST shouldn't exist because it doesn't save energy due to any populated place having their lights on all night and the actual changing of time leading to negative outcomes like deaths from accidents with no benefits.
Sure, the sun will come up earlier and set later in the summer if we get rid of DST, but the only reason for the time change in the first place was the standard working hours being longer after noon than before.
And you'd think *if anything farmers would want more sunlight in the morning when it's cooler.
Edited because people want to take this the wrong way. As in this another reason that DST and farmers makes no sense.
Farmers don't care about clocks unless they are scheduling a time to meet and using the clock for clarity.
The sun comes up when it comes up and that is what matters. Farmers don't care about the clock for what they consider morning, because morning is before the sun is highest in the aky. They are already getting up a few minutes earlier or later depending on whether the days are getting longer or shorter.
DST has nothing to do with farmers.
I think you misread my comment. It's along the lines of if anything they would prefer the morning.
This is like saying dogs would want better stock options when stock options don't matter to dogs.
This is besides what I was saying, which was again "if anything" and adding another reason why farmers and DST makes no sense. But dude people live in the world. Farmers are not 1000% in their own bubble. They need to go out to stores and get supplies and interact with the world and the supply chain. You are now taking lack of an office schedule or something to a ludicrous degree with your analogy. I wasn't even disagreeing with your old points, I was saying "if anything" and adding another reason, but you want to go off on seemingly everyone. Perhaps you're confusing me with the other guy, but whatever. Cheers.
Why add something irrelevant about something irrelevant?
Has anyone asked Ja Rule about DST? How do you think DST impacts Ja Rule's travel plans while on tour?
and set earlier in the summer*
I hate it. I fucking hate it. With every fiber of my being. I spend every winter counting the days until the sun stops setting before I stop working. Our entire lives are scheduled so we are inside under neon light from 9-6, why are we trying to maximize how much of that is during daytime?
On the day that we go back to permanent ST I will turn to hard drugs to make up for the dopamine deficiency. No joke very few things in my life fill me with more dread than having to suffer early evenings for the rest of my life.
Maybe, and hear me out, the problem is that 9 to 6 is the problem, since 2/3 of that time is after noon. Instead of changing reality to appease business, business, work hours could be changed to 8 to 4 with four before and four after which is both more light in the evening than DST and a shorter workday because people are more productive than they ever have been.
But I guess you would rather let business practices determine when noon is for everyone instead of the sun.
Business hours is no more or less of a social construct than DST or the 24 hour clock.
The only difference is that we have a shot at making everyone agree on a timezone shift or permanent DST, but absolutely NO SHOT at getting every business to switch to an 8-4 schedule. None. It'd be a nice sentiment. But it's not happening, and I don't care what the number says on the clock when I leave work as long as it's sunny outside.
Why is it so important that the sun reaches its zenith at noon anyway? Do you often get confused while looking at your antique sundial?
First of all, noon refers to when the sun is at the highest point in the sky so being an hour off is confusing.
Being able to look at the general position of the sun and being able to estimate time is pretty handy.
Being able to estimate the length of day because the time between sunrise and sunset being approximately the same is handy.
Not changing the time of day twice a year would be fucking fantastic.
Some places already stick with standard time all year round.
The US tried year round DST in the 70s and it was widely rejected within a year because DST during the winter is fucking awful.
Plus, most jobs don't mind people coming in and leaving early, which is a far more common shift adjustment than coming in and staying late.
Year round standard time is the real solution.