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Is Daylight Saving Shift Really Worth It?
Krishna Dagli writes "Two Ph.D. students at the University of California at Berkeley say that Daylight Saving Shift will not do any good or create any energy savings. We are already spending money for software upgrades in the name of saving energy and after reading following article I wonder has congress really studied the impact of DST shift? " I also read some back story on the concept; OTOH, I found TiVo's suggestions that I manually change everything on my Series 1 device to be somewhat...insulting.
NO!
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- Douglas Adams
Energy savings or not, I like the extra hour of daylight in the evening. It's extra time to play ball, take the dog for a walk or just let my kid play outside.
I'd go for double daylight savings if I could.
Maybe the PhD guys should get out of their classroom and enjoy the day.
Quick, someone add the tags please.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
... that two college students think they're smarter than a bunch of politicians?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I agree. I live near NYC and it does WONDERS for my morale. The days of going to work in the dark and leaving in the dark weigh heavy on the soul/psyche. DST is a big boost, IMO.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
According to the SANS Incident Handler's Diary, various issues have been reported in Cisco VOIP phones, Blackberrys, Veritas aka Symantec BackupExec, and Watchguard firewalls.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
I wonder has congress really studied the impact of DST shift?
It is already well-established that the US Congress doesn't bother to read the laws before they pass them.
If they don't even read the law, I doubt they would do any studies.
This change in DST was definitely worth it, if only for the benefit of forcing embedded systems designers to remember to not hard-code DST dates into their code. Historically, these dates have been changed about once per decade in the US alone. Assuming that they'll never change again is plain stupid. This shift will help train the current generation of developers to just not do that.
According to CNN.com, a gas price bump is expected now because people are expected to drive more with the expanded daylight hours.
So wait, Washington passed a law to change DST early...the early DST change is now being used to justify gas price increases? Coincidence? Happenstance?
Sorry all, maybe my TFH is a little tight this morning.
Ok, I am going to argue the other side of this.
From TFA:
But Ryan Kellogg and Hendrik Wolff, who are working on their doctorates in economics, say the reduced need for light in the evening will likely be negated by the increased need in the early morning.
That sounds logical, but it is not (IMHO). In the morning when I get up for work, I turn on maybe two lights (bedroom and bathroom). I am focused on getting ready for work, so there is not any entertainment (TV), stereo, really nothing except an electric razor. I brew my tea, and I am off to work (I don't think my headlights count as extra energy).
When I come home from work, well, all the lights in the kitchen, the halls, very soon the livingroom, the plasma TV, the surround sound, the computer. Lot's more things. Now, most of these don't change from summer to winter, except the lights. If it is light out, I do not turn them on (shocking). That is a savings of energy by not turning on the lights.
I really don't think this article took into account the different energy needs from the morning to night times. It is short sighted.
Spack
(ok, the gate is open for you to disagree, but really think about the way you do things different in the mornings and how most people do it different first)
Clearly this legislations was thought up by a "morning person." You douchebag "morning people" and your silly daylight requirement may suck my left nut.
It shifts all the time. It's even slowly moved westward as cities on an eastern time zone border have pushed to get lumped into the next time zone. Why? Because the vast majority of businesses aren't flexible in their staffing hours and people can't choose to simply go in when they wake up.
My wife says that she wishes DST was all the time, as she has no problems waking up in the dark but tends to work long hours and we regularly stay up until 11 or 12.
And yeah, as a reminder to programmers it's great, but it's also great for all people to realize that time is abstract and can pretty much be whenever. I don't think I've ever heard an elderly person lament the time when we were all standard time.
The days of going to work in the dark and leaving in the dark weigh heavy on the soul/psyche. DST is a big boost, IMO.
But that has nothing to do with DST, that has to do with 1) what time you come and go to work and how long you stay there, and 2) the days are simply shorter in the winter because the Earth's axis. In extreme Northern and Southern climates (think North and South polar regions), its daylight and dark 24 hours a day depending on the season, and changing the clock will not change that.
I heard on NPR the other day, that the _real_ reason for DST is not to save energy, but rather to appease the retail sector. They have data that people are more willing to go out and spend money after work if its not dark. So people go motoring around in their fuel efficient SUVs, blow money, and thus energy is saved!
Personally, I don't understand why humans are so clock oriented vs sun oriented. It kills me that houses in the US are built in random directions (unless there is a nice view) instead of oriented around the Sun.
Sometimes I think humans are the silliest of all animals.
Is DST WORTH IT? Boy, Let me tell you a story about the place I come from.
I live in Indiana (a midwestern US state). Up until last year, we'd never done DST before at all (with a few exceptions in towns whose economies were linked to cities across the border in other, DST-observing states).
Before we had DST, it was HELL. All year, it got dark at like 2:00pm. There was no Little League Baseball, no football (american or otherwise) for the kids. Most of our youth joined gangs, who roamed the incessant darkness in large, heavily fortified bad-mpg SUVs, kicking puppies and beating up old ladies just for fun. There was no Christmas and no birthdays, and if we saw the Easter bunny we ATE HIM.
Though many people had the misconception that we were "America's Breadbasket", in fact the darkness prevented us from raising any sort of sustenance crops and most of us resorted to cannibalism to survive. Most Hoosiers (that's what we're called, it means "land of eternal darkness" in a Native American tongue) eventually starved to death, which was viewed as a welcome respite from the hellish, unstoppable night. Dogs and cats, living together, you get the picture.
Then, we elected a new Governor who brought us into the light (literally). With the introduction of DST, and the seemingly random (almost whimsical, really) distribution of our Counties between two time zones, our lives were changed forever. Now, it's light outside pretty much twenty-four-fucking-seven. Our kids are all on at least six sports teams and never shoot each other anymore. They call you "sir" or "ma'am" (these words were not used before, as it was difficult to discern gender in the darkness), shine your shoes for you, and present you with ice-cold lemonade from stands with amusingly misspelled signs. We discovered oil everywhere, we grow more crops than the world could ever possibly use (which has ended hunger globally) and we're all filthy, stinking RICH. All the women have big perky boobs, all the men are RIPPED, and everybody has an IQ of at least 160.
Yes Sir, I don't know what we'd do if it weren't for good ol' DST. I have to assume that with the new DST-extending rule from our good friends in the US Congress, we'll probably just evolve to a higher state of being and shed these silly, out-dated husks to become super-intelligent beings composed of pure energy.
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
I see your point, and I like it when you are a happy camper, but daylight savings does NOT change how many hours of daylight we have at our disposal.
I repeat DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME DOES NOT GIVE US MORE DAYLIGHT. It does not change the planets tilt, rotation speed, or smell.
Sorry, but it just bugs me when everyone claims it gives us more daylight. DST should be abolished altogether. Any companies that want to change their business hours for the seasons should do so on their own. Factories in the Midwest, like mine, start their employees 2-3 hours earlier in the summer so they can avoid the heat of the day. DST just means now we have to start our employees 3-4 hours earlier to avoid the heat.
DST is my new mortal enemy.
Obviously, the closer you are to the equator, the smaller the difference between daylight hours in summer and winter.
However, for those North/South of about 30 degrees, the difference is significant. Not to mention the (measured, reference unavailable) reduction in traffic accidents due to fewer people driving home from work in the dark.
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
Why don't we just set the clocks back 9 hours? Since Daylight Savings Time adds an hour of light, doing this will make it daytime all twenty-four hours. It's a win-win scenario!
Anyone who thinks the decision to keep the US on DST, or increase the time it is on DST, has anything at all to do with energy savings is woefully naive at best. The US increased DST because of commercial interests involved in outdoor entertainment and business. And those commercial interests bought congresscritters to do their bidding.
Any other government explanation is a lie. No exceptions.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Why don't they just pass a law stating that for purposes of the government, standard work hours are shifted +1/-1hr within a given time period, and encourage private industry to do the same? That way you get your ability to drive home in daylight, and I don't have anyone screwing with my clocks.
(For that matter, if it's that big of a difference, why doesn't private industry decide to change business hours independently? Personally, I don't see it as a big enough change to be worth bothering -- but then, I exercise in the mornings rather than afternoons, and have an employer who allows me to shift my hours at will).
In a 24 hour society, daylight savings is an absolute farce outside of the May->August period when it's possible to have 16 hours of daylight. If there's, say, 14 hours of daylight, then you have 2 hours of darkness in most peoples' days wherever you shift the timezones, and that's only the optimum outcome because millions wake up before daylight and millions stay up after it.
If the government was really interested in "saving energy", it'd clamp down on emissions and fuel efficiency, and promote more effective techniques. Banning incandescent lighting and enforcing energy-saving bulb usage would strip several percent off of electricity demands year round and would cause a whole lot less annoyance than timezone changes. The EU and Australia have already figured this one out.
My girlfriend's after a house with a south-facing yard, so as to catch all the sun it can (she's a garden enthusiast). It's amazing how many estate agents don't actually know which direction a given house faces.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
Even if the DST dates are not hard-coded there is still the problem of upgrading all the units out in the field.
It shouldn't be a law.. It should be up to the individual, weather or not, to follow DST.. like religious or political view. Also, It should be upto the individual, when to fall back or spring forward. [I would fall back while in bed and spring forward while at work, perhaps on a Monday morning, just like this.]
They're not built in random directions, the roads are. The house simply faces the road.
Yup, I heard the story on NPR. It was an interview with Michael Downing, author of the book "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Savings Time". He said there's not much energy savings, but more shopping because of DST.
y Id=7779869
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
Time zone specific calculations are on the client end, as all NTP sources give time in UST. So even if your embedded device is time syncing, if the software says "DST starts in april in timezone X" it is going to be wrong (even if it is very close to being wrong by an hour). The GP ignores the fact that no amount of "flexibility" in the DST implementation is going to make it economically feasible to support a $50 device for longer than production run. The thing to fix is setting up a public system that stores time offsets for all localities and make it a standard part of all OSes, like NTP.
Fortunately, WWV includes a DST flag so that at least those so-called "atomic clocks" (actually radio clocks) automatically changed at the right time.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Whenever I hear someone talk about how awesome it is to have extra hours of daylight, I ask them why wouldn't it be better to just "recalibrate" the time zones so that "daylight savings time" is the new standard time, then just stop all this switching nonsense.
But time zones are another total pain in the ass, even if there's no switching back and forth. I recently found out the China has a single time zone, whereas the country would encompass about eight zones if they used our style of time zones. And have you seen the time zone map of the US? It makes no sense at all. Alabama is completely on central time, but if you go due north, Michigan is in . . . eastern time? WTF?
I personally advocate the abolition of time zones altogether. Let's all use Greenwich Mean Time, no time changes, and deal with it. Businesses and schools can just change their hours of operation, rather than messing with time itself. Sure, it would be weird to have sunrise at 6 pm and sunset at 6 am, but would it be any more complicated than the current system?
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
The thing to fix is, getting rid of the DST change completely, either way, and stop changing clock twice a year. THAT'S the waste here.
Nothing to say here... move along
I honestly do not get what the big stink is with the DST thing. This change was announced MORE THAN A FREAKIN' YEAR AGO! Any company that did not make preparations long ago DESERVES whatever problems they get. Really, this did not sneak up on us. My company prepared for it, made the appropriate changes to systems from DOS through XP. The DST change came and went. Guess what? No problems. Did it cost us any money? Um...no. When you give yourself plenty of time, you don't have to stop doing your existing job to fix the problem.
Bearded Dragon
Psychologically, I feel a hell of a lot better when it's lighter out later. I know there are millions of people who have some sort of seasonal depression thing that are equally as delighted. I don't know if it saves any energy, but driving home from work when it's nice and bright out and being able to go for a nice walk or something in sunlight makes me happy.
In the US, it was changed federally in 1918, 1920, 1942, 1945, 1966, 1974, 1975, 1985, 1986 and 2007. That averages out to about once per decade. Up until 1966, many individual states also fiddled with the times. Even today, states are allowed to opt in and out of DST altogether, and Indiana just recently changed its rules.
Dude, I'm so glad you brought this story to light. I've been telling my friends this story for years, and they look at me like I'm crazy. Truth be told, they look at me like that no matter WHAT I'm talking about, but even more so when I get started on "The Indiana Thing." I drove, naively, into Indiana in 1983, searching for the woman in the L'eggs (panty hose) advertisement in my Mom's Redbook magazine. I was operating under the mistaken premise that Indiana was - rather than the breadbasket of America - the "Pantyhose and Nylons Capital of the World, due to an unfortunate misspelling of "hoosiers" in the budget encyclopedia set that my Mom purchased from someone at her office. Driving around vainly searching for the L'eggs headquarters, the headlights in my '73 Chrysler Newport burned out halfway through my second day there, and I couldn't find my way back to the border. With a horde of cannibals closing in around my car (which only went about 10 miles between fillups - of gas, oil, or coolant) I thought the end was near. Quick thinking saved my life that day, and my penchant for popcorn. I ducked into the back seat and quickly fashioned a mask out of a box of Orville Redenbacher popcorn, and the cannibals began to bow and chant all around the Newport. You didn't TELL your readers that Orville Redenbacher was a God to the denizens of once-dark Indiana, friend. Did you forget? Not likely. Were you, perhaps, brainwashed into secrecy? Possibly. Or, more sinister still, are you STILL a member of Redenbacher's scattered army of darkness? Just waiting for a new Governor to come in and repeal the DST proclamation?? State your motives, Sir!
Here's the real loss:
If you live in the northern US and are doing the responsible thing and turning your central heating down overnight, then getting up an hour earlier means you're turning the heat back up earlier. Why is this wasteful? Because on sunny days in March there's significant solar gain once the sun's up. In my house that can be enough that the heat doesn't even need to be turned on in the morning - unless we get up too early.
In the evening, both the house and the outside environment lose their heat relatively slowly. The darkest hour isn't literally just before the dawn, but the coldest hour is. It's much better to spend the coldest hour under the covers - from an energy use point of view - than to get up during it or right on its tail and turn the furnace up to compensate.
Of course, if the government just looks at electrical use, this may not show in areas that don't primarily use electric heat. The increase in oil and natural gas use though, from this idiocy, will be real and significant.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I have a toddler. Toddlers don't spring forward very well. Put them to bed an hour early and they'll spend two hours fighting it. Then get them up an hour early and see how happy they are to see you.
Please, please, either ditch it completely or use it all year long. I really like having an extra hour of daylight to spend outside with the boy, the dog, and the missus.
This is not my sandwich.
Now if only they used it. I've got an analog radio clock that doesn't even display the date, but for some reason they decided to read the date bits and do some calendar calculations (or hard code the next X years of DST dates) to calculate DST rather than reading the flag.
I don't understand why you wouldn't use the flag -- it seems easier to just read the flag than to calculate the start/stop dates. There's even a countdown so you can miss several days of syncing before the switch and still know when it should happen. Apparently not all clock designers share my hatred for calendar calculations.
FYI: Common radio clocks use the 60kHz WWVB signal not the 2.5-20 MHz WWV signals. They both contain the digital timecode information, but WWV and WWVH also include frequency information (440 Hz, 500 Hz, 600 Hz, 1000 Hz and 1500 Hz beeps) and vocal timestamps, and reports about the weather, GPS health, and solar/radio conditions. In general WWV/WWVH are intended for manual use (all the time information is available in a format useful to human ears) and use outside the WWVB range, but WWVB is more accurate where available (better straight-line propagation) and less complicated to decode electronically due to the extremely low bit rate (a standard serial port can decode directly from an AM amp).
There are many kinds of smart.
Some of them are cultural.
Some of them are inherent physically.
People who have the currently popular versions of smart are treated as smart by society.
In the french court, calculus counted for nothing- but you could basically kill a person with the right witty saying.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Or at the very least, the acronym DST should change. Since the so-called "standard" time lasts from the first Sunday of November to the second Sunday of March which is 19 weeks, and the "daylight saving time" lasts the remaining 34 weeks, the one which lasts longer (summer time) should be called "standard time", while the winter time, opposite of DST, should really be called "daylight wasting time".
Really, if we're so save daylight, why not save it all year long? Otherwise, we're just wasting it.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
To me all that daylight at 4am (ok, a bit of an exageration) in the summertime is wasted. But light at 9pm? Not wasted . . . that means outdoor activity like bike rides after work, especially earlier in the spring when it would be getting dark at 6:30 instead of 7:30. I think that it is this sense that keeps it alive, rather than the Big Brother type of control you imply.