Many US States Consider Abandoning Daylight Savings Time (newsweek.com)

You left off by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-04 19:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

... and these states consider this TWICE a year, EVERY year!

Re:You left off by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-04 22:47 · Score: 1

Officially, what is actually being proposed is that Massachusetts would switch from the Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic Time Zone, which would have the effect of being on DST all the time.
Year-round DST has already tried many times, in different areas, over the last 30+ years. Unfortunately, this accomplishes nothing and solves no problem. Due to the irregular nature of the earth's orbit, year-round DST simply means that the sun comes up later in the winter, which leads to one of the biggest complaints -- children having to go to school in the dark during the winter, which leads to various safety concerns.
Of course, you could just have school start later, but now you're right back to the same thing that everyone complains about regarding DST -- changing the time you do things.
Re:You left off by Calydor · 2017-11-04 22:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

You sound like one of those "It doesn't happen to me" guys, which is great. You don't get a fucked up sleep schedule for several weeks? Wonderful. You don't get hungry an hour earlier/later than the clock says you ought to? Good for you. Obviously then no one does.
You didn't get in a car accident today? No one else did. Your house didn't burn down? No houses at all burned down. You didn't die? Worldwide immortality achieved!

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Re:You left off by cjameshuff · 2017-11-04 23:31 · Score: 1

There's a reason they posted as Anonymous Coward...
Re: You left off by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-05 00:13 · Score: 1, Informative

Try living North. It gets DARK at 3:30pm here without the time change. That hour of light during the working man's day means a great deal southey.
Re:You left off by omnichad · 2017-11-05 00:27 · Score: 2

This is much better, but yeah - there are still problems. Daylight at the end of the day is much more valuable to me all year round. I would never want to drop DST all year, but if we need daylight in the morning in winter for a good reason, I guess DST just had to stay.
Re:You left off by Chrisq · 2017-11-05 01:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

In the UK reports show that keeping GMT+1 all year round would reduce accidents, reduce burglaries, save on fuel, and be good for health. The counter argument is that some Scottish farmers on the western isles wouldn't see the sun come up while they milked their cows. (They are too stupid to think of getting up at an earlier time on the clock) Every year the farmers win.
Re:You left off by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-05 01:45 · Score: 4, Informative

Why would the cows care about what number a pointer on a clockface is pointing to? If they want to be milked an hour after dawn, the farmer milks them an hour after dawn.
Re:You left off by Chrisq · 2017-11-05 01:46 · Score: 1

Absolutely! That was the point
Re: You left off by Hognoxious · 2017-11-05 02:38 · Score: 1

[Yorkshire accent] Luxury!

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Re:You left off by MightyMartian · 2017-11-05 02:54 · Score: 1

It has significant physiological effects. We aren't computers that you can just reset the clock. It takes several days to get used to the time change, during which there are a higher risk of accidents. It may have been a good idea when the electric light bulb was still a rarity, but it ceased being a good idea decades ago.

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Re:You left off by Wycliffe · 2017-11-05 03:02 · Score: 2

It's not a big deal, and changing your schedule by an hour, twice a year, does not cause strokes or miscarriages or anything else bad.
I've lived through a lot of DST changes and have never given it a second thought. You change your clock and go on with your life.
It might not be a big deal but people are saying it's pointless and does more harm than good. Why continue to do something year after year if there is no benefit?

People change their schedules and daily routine more than that, regardless of the existence of DST. Last week I was watching a movie and went to bed an hour later than usual. The week before that I had to get up an hour earlier than ususal to drive to a different office for a meeting. These things happen a lot more frequently than the DST change, and people are fine with them.
This is not an argument for DST. This is an argument against DST. Many businesses where I live already have "summer hours" and "winter hours". People already wake up at different times of the day depending on the time of the year. Why screw with the clock all the time? The only argument I've heard that makes a little sense is they don't want kids getting on the bus in the dark but many kids already do this with or without DST and again, it would be simple for schools to decide to shift the school schedule by an hour or more if it was a big concern. My town already has grade schools that run from 730-230 and high schools that run from 9-4 so they can double up on buses. They are more concerned with saving money on buses than they are about young kids getting on the bus in the dark or being home alone after school without their older siblings.
Re:You left off by hey! · 2017-11-05 03:22 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'm old.
Hey, so am I! And you know what, being old means you tend to be miserable a lot of the time. It's a package deal: on one hand life afflicts you with suffering. On the other hand, you get to live.
Being able to take it doesn't make you special; everyone who survives long enough learns to live with whatever it is aging has in store for them, whether it is arthritis, digestive problems, or for a majority of us, disturbed sleep patterns. That doesn't make disrupted sleep normal for younger people, or mean it should be compulsory for everyone.
Now the smart thing to do as you get older is to optimize the time you have left. And that means paying attention to the best evidence we have. You say that your cells don't know what time of day it is? Wrong. Even single-celled eukaryotic organisms have circadian rhythms. So as you get older if you want to minimize your misery you have to get serious about sleep discipline. No late night screen sessions without blue-filtered glasses, regular bedtimes, don't eat or drink to much late at night. Basically all the stupid shit you did when you were a kid because you could get by on six hours of not very good sleep.
As long as we're talking anecdotes, when I got serious about sleep hygiene I saw improvements in my arthritis and Type 2 diabetes sugar control. That makes sense because diabetes and arthritis are both inflammatory diseases, and the evidence is strong linking sleep disruption and a wide variety of inflammatory conditions linked with aging, including cardiovascular diseases and dementia.

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Re: You left off by PoopJuggler · 2017-11-05 03:40 · Score: 1

Every person is different and fucking around with the clock affects people in different ways. Is it really any skin off your back to not use DST?
Re:You left off by DarkVader · 2017-11-05 03:47 · Score: 1

I'm one of those "it doesn't happen to me" guys, which is great for me.
But it's still annoying and silly. There's no reason for it.
The fix is simple, year-round DST. If the schoolkids standing at the bus stop in the dark is a problem, then you're starting school too early anyway. Stop doing that. If the farmer is milking cows according to the clock, the farmer is doing it wrong. The only sane thing to do is make next spring's changeover the last one ever, abandon "standard" time permanently.
If anything, the changeover always went the wrong way anyway. Fall forward and spring back would make much more sense to me, I'd rather not have it dark when I finish working. So yeah, if we're going to do a changeover, it should be DST in the summer and DDST in the winter.
But yeah, let's just dump it. DST year round.
Re:You left off by Calydor · 2017-11-05 04:14 · Score: 1

I live in Europe, trollerick. In fact I bet I visit other countries a lot more frequently than you at roughly twice a month. But hey, it's north-to-south, so I don't cross time zone borders.

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Re: You left off by Opportunist · 2017-11-05 04:15 · Score: 2

Yes, but why do you feel entitled to make the rest of us get up early?

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Re:You left off by Opportunist · 2017-11-05 04:19 · Score: 1

I travel a lot. And as such I can tell you it means little to me whether I go from Europe to the US or whether daylight saving strikes, equally I'm struggling to get back to a sensible rhythm.
Fortunately I was able to simply go and ignore DST altogether. I come to work an hour late during the Summer and also leave an hour late. Hello flexible work times, go suck on my nuts DST.

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We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Re:You left off by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-05 04:19 · Score: 1

You don't get hungry an hour earlier/later than the clock says you ought to? Good for you. Obviously then no one does.
I eat when I'm hungry. What do you do?
Re:You left off by interkin3tic · 2017-11-05 04:53 · Score: 2

If it were just the usual "culture wars" over here, that would at least be something. I have no doubt that any attempt to get it changed would run into conspiracy theories from Alex Jones and people insisting it was liberals trying to destroy farms. That would be annoying, but it's far more annoying to me that no one seriously tries anyway.
Re: You left off by Miamicanes · 2017-11-05 05:01 · Score: 1

Here's the thing: people tend to have more discretion about their "leave work" time than their "go to work" time. In the summer, office workers look outside at 5, see the traffic jam, say 'fuck it', and work another hour or two (thereby spreading their traffic over a longer interval of time). When DST ends, those same people run for the door at 5, causing INSTANT gridlock that persists until 7:30 or 8pm (which reinforces the 5pm race to the door... waiting only makes the drive even worse, vs summer when working an hour later can shave 30 minutes from the drive time).
In contrast, morning traffic starts around 6am, peaks around 8, and falls off rapidly after 9, REGARDLESS of whether or not there's light outside.
Re:You left off by grumpy_old_grandpa · 2017-11-05 07:58 · Score: 1

In this day and age, declaring yourself a victim is The way to promote your cause. An ideology is defined by what it is opposing, not what it tries to achieve. And there is no shortage of ideas, people and politicians to be against. The only problem with that tactic, is that the momentum of your cause rests on the strength of your enemy. If you win, you also lose. The best course of action is thus to merely complain. As long as there is no stand-off, there is no risk of victory nor defeat. Only noise.
Re:You left off by Darinbob · 2017-11-05 08:47 · Score: 1

They'd complain it was government interference probably, or that government was overreaching its authority, despite that government interference created this in the first place.
Re: You left off by Darinbob · 2017-11-05 08:56 · Score: 1

Yes, but that's the "standard time" in the winter, or "normal" time. In summer is when the time advances forward into "daylight savings time". That's why some countries call it "summer time".
The reason it gets dark so early in some places is because the time zones themselves are very coarse approximations of solar time, with lines drawn due to politics very often.
You could just get up at dawn instead, don't worry about what the clock says.
Re:You left off by Darinbob · 2017-11-05 09:01 · Score: 1

Right, just look at winter. If you've got an eight hour workday, and daylight is only 6 hours in some places, then it's going to be dark at some point when you're at work. DST (which is summer) does not add extra hours of daylight, it just means that stores may open one hour later but stay open one hour later.
It's rather silly since the store could just adjust their closing hours without the state getting involved. School is a different matter, but school hours can change also. But then some will complain that it needs to correspond to working hours... For that, companies should allow flexible schedules.
Re:You left off by Darinbob · 2017-11-05 09:06 · Score: 1

DST is for the summer, in winter we're in "standard" time (in northern hemisphere that is, in southern hemisphere winter and summer are swapped).
Re:You left off by omnichad · 2017-11-05 10:22 · Score: 1

Read upthread for context and you'd know what I'm talking about. The proposal drops DST changes by staying in that offset year-round.
Re:You left off by Wycliffe · 2017-11-05 11:32 · Score: 1

School is a different matter, but school hours can change also. But then some will complain that it needs to correspond to working hours... For that, companies should allow flexible schedules.
School hours already don't align with working hours. Standard working hours are 8-5 (9 hours) where most schools run something like 730-230 or 830-330. If you get lucky or have a flexible schedule then you might be able to drop the kids off on your way to work but kids generally aren't at school for a full 8 hours much less the 9 hours of a typical work day.
Re:You left off by superdave80 · 2017-11-05 16:51 · Score: 1

which leads to one of the biggest complaints -- children having to go to school in the dark during the winter, which leads to various safety concerns. Of course, you could just have school start later, but now you're right back to the same thing that everyone complains about regarding DST -- changing the time you do things
Well, why does EVERYBODY have to change something (changing clocks) so that some people that might have a complaint about something don't have to change (later school start)? That still makes no sense...
Re:You left off by fatwilbur · 2017-11-05 19:36 · Score: 1

The primary complaint from farmers was that the society they interact with - contractors, labourers, seed stores, other stores, etc., etc., would shift the schedules they operated by twice a year. Which is a larger than normal inconvenience for their group as one of the few who do actually operate their schedule according to the sun regardless of what some clock says.
Re:You left off by ArmoredDragon · 2017-11-07 15:34 · Score: 1

Nah, I live comfortably here. Housing is cheap and I don't have to get waken up an hour early.
Re:You left off by RockDoctor · 2017-11-12 06:33 · Score: 1

Daylight at the end of the day is much more valuable to me all year round.
In "Freedom Loving America" (), I assume that it is the rankest of communism to suggest that other people might have different lifestyles to you, and that they might actually deserve a little consideration.
Of course, you can always conduct your business on a 10:00 to 19:00 clock if you want. Good luck coordinating with the rest of the universe. You can even leave your kid home-alone for 4 hours a day before school opens and pick them up from school 4 hours before the end of your working day if you want to live your individualistic life to a clock that you find convenient and the rest of the world can work to what clocks you aren't following yourself. Feel free to pay for 8 hours a dy of home tutor if you want - it's your money.
There's a whole bunch of reasons that people synchronise their clocks to some degree. But mostly it adds up to being, on average, more efficient. "On average" is a a concept that Senator McArthy and his Commission on Un-American Activities tried to have made into an unthought in the anti-Communism purges of the 1950s, as parodied in Orwell's '1984'.

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I love daylight saving by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-04 20:01 · Score: 1

An extra hour of light in the evening.

I don't care at all whether is saves electricity or not.

It's"daylight saving" by Spy+Handler · 2017-11-04 20:05 · Score: 5, Informative

singular, not plural.

Also you don't need to capitalize each word. This is English, not German.

Think of it like this: during a melee you pick up a +5 magic sword and say, "It's ass kicking time!". Not "It's Ass Kickings Time!"

Re:It's"daylight saving" by Pseudonym · 2017-11-04 20:07 · Score: 1

Obligatory.

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sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Re:It's"daylight saving" by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2017-11-04 20:30 · Score: 4, Interesting

This is English, not German.
Noch nicht, aber wir arbeiten daran.
If you ask a linguistic, they will you that English is a butt ugly bastard mix of French and German anyway.
But English is amazingly effective in that everyone seems capable of using it. I sat in a company cafeteria in scenic Austin, Texas, and listened to how a colleague from China talked to a colleague from India . . . in an English that would have turned my 8th grade English teacher into a rampage. But hey, they could effectively communicate with each other. The wonders of English!
Capitalizing words in English seems to be a bit of a fad these days . . . we can't blame it on the "hipsters" any more since they are now history.
What are the current counter culture folks called . . . ?

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Re:It's"daylight saving" by phantomfive · 2017-11-04 20:40 · Score: 1

Also you don't need to capitalize each word. This is English, not German.
In English, you capitalize most words in a title. See for example.

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Re:It's"daylight saving" by mrbester · 2017-11-04 21:04 · Score: 1

And you definitely capitalise words that are part of an acronym.

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Re:It's"daylight saving" by rudy_wayne · 2017-11-04 22:51 · Score: 1

This is English, not German.
Noch nicht, aber wir arbeiten daran.
Gesundheit.
Re:It's"daylight saving" by Kjella · 2017-11-04 23:49 · Score: 5, Interesting

If you ask a linguistic, they will you that English is a butt ugly bastard mix of French and German anyway. But English is amazingly effective in that everyone seems capable of using it.
Everyone is capable of using it just like they could butcher any language, but English is a PITA to learn properly because they've generally not only adopted the vocabulary but also other bits and pieces. For example say the following words: beak peak weak leak steak... whoops, the last one is completely different for no discernible reason because it's a loaner from old Norse. You were knighted but not fighted, you were fought. And you're ugly-uglier-ugliest but beautiful-more beautiful-most beautiful not beautiful(l?)er. It's no wonder that basic users end up with "me love you long time" English, a lot of it is simply rote memorization that this is the way things are. Same with vocabulary, a driver does driving and a plumber does plumbing but a person cooking food is a chef rather than a cook(er?). It's not that any pattern is more or less valid, but English got all of them mashed together.

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Re:It's"daylight saving" by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-05 00:08 · Score: 1

singular, not plural.
Not to mention that Slashdot just last week ran a story about this, before proceeding to run a summary chock full of the same error they spent time pointing out.
And yet I keep coming back to Slashdot.
Re: It's"daylight saving" by locketine · 2017-11-05 00:44 · Score: 1

Umm... No, no you do not. I'll do that if I'm trying to explain the acronym, but otherwise that's specifically not something people do.

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Re:It's"daylight saving" by AmiMoJo · 2017-11-05 01:01 · Score: 1

Hmm, if I just picked up a +5 magic sword I'd probably say "It's ass stabbing time", but I take your point.

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Re:It's"daylight saving" by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-05 01:46 · Score: 1

It's even right there in the summary under "related links", and they still get it wrong.
Re: It's"daylight saving" by Zero__Kelvin · 2017-11-05 01:52 · Score: 2

It is not true that a person who does cooking is not a cook. Have You really never heard the phrase "too many cooks spoil the broth"? A Chef is a master cook.

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Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Re: It's"daylight saving" by Zero__Kelvin · 2017-11-05 01:55 · Score: 1

You are doing it wrong then. You always capitalize words that make up an acronym. As was already pointed out you also capitalize words in titles, save conjunctions and prepositions. So Daylight Savings Time is correct in the title for two different reasons.

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Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Re: It's"daylight saving" by Hognoxious · 2017-11-05 02:02 · Score: 1

They aren't a cooker, though, which is the point he was trying to make. In British English at least that's an appliance.

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:It's"daylight saving" by AmiMoJo · 2017-11-05 02:10 · Score: 1

You know I actually despise Islam, right?
It's it really just that one comment that made you think this or is there more? I want to understand what happened.

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Re:It's"daylight saving" by Hognoxious · 2017-11-05 02:10 · Score: 1

The verbs are very simple; only two conjugated tenses, everything else is done with auxiliaries, as is the subjunctive. No silly gender nonsense either. That's a lot simpler than French or Italian.
The downside is that the spelling is an absolute bastard, and some learners screw up phrasal verbs - but they can all bugger off.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re: It's"daylight saving" by Zero__Kelvin · 2017-11-05 02:20 · Score: 2

A driver drives, a plumber plumbs, and a cook cooks. A cooker also cooks, but a cooker is in fact a device. There are many inconsistencies in the English language, but this isn't one of them.

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Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Re: It's"daylight saving" by Hognoxious · 2017-11-05 02:51 · Score: 1

They squeeze their arses, same as before.
Oh hang on, that's the Italians.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:It's"daylight saving" by mentholsmooth · 2017-11-05 03:32 · Score: 1

Unless you're Minsc...He would totally say something like that. But we are talking about the same guy who hid a hamster up his butt for months....
Re: It's"daylight saving" by Zero__Kelvin · 2017-11-05 04:28 · Score: 1

std::string wrong = "Tell that to Bjarne";

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Re: It's"daylight saving" by Zero__Kelvin · 2017-11-05 04:34 · Score: 1

Dale Earnhardt Jr. *may* be a tool, but he is certainly not a device.

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Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Re: It's"daylight saving" by Zero__Kelvin · 2017-11-05 04:54 · Score: 1

It's not an event, it is a state.

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Re:It's"daylight saving" by skastrik · 2017-11-05 06:23 · Score: 1

...In English, you capitalize most words in a title. See for example.
I would actually really appreciate if Slashdot would switch to plain sentence case for all article titles. It is usually much easier to read, in particular for technical stuff where it is often difficult today to tell if some word is a company name or some tech thingy.
Re: It's"daylight saving" by Zero__Kelvin · 2017-11-05 18:11 · Score: 1

Drives screws. DOH!

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Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Re:It's"daylight saving" by Cro+Magnon · 2017-11-06 02:51 · Score: 1

I was watching a nature show the other day, and I had a question. Why aren't multiple mongooses called "mongeese"? For that matter, why isn't more than one moose "meese"?
And a similar question, why is the state next to me pronounced Kansas, while the state to the south is pronounced "Arkansaw"?

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Re:It's"daylight saving" by Hognoxious · 2017-11-06 04:36 · Score: 1

For the first one, probably because "goose" is Germanic (vowel changes are quite common - e.g. man/men) and "mongoose" is ... not.
For the second ... I'm stumped there. Was the -aw one settled by froggies?

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

The reason it doesn't happen by phantomfive · 2017-11-04 20:08 · Score: 3, Funny

The reason it doesn't happen is because people will be upset when they find out they have to be on 'winter' time all year round.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

This is incorrect by maroberts · 2017-11-04 20:26 · Score: 5, Informative

What they're suggesting is actually remaining on "Summer" time all year round.

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Re:This is incorrect by MrL0G1C · 2017-11-04 22:10 · Score: 2

UK here, winter time is stupid, it gets light before I even wake up and then it gets dark before I'm even on my way home from work. We just changed from BritishSummerTime which made a lot more sense.
So Winter Time is stupid and rubbish, I'd much prefer to have some day time left in the evening than have it completely wasted whilst I'm sleeping.

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Re:This is incorrect by rudy_wayne · 2017-11-04 23:08 · Score: 1

Ever since the invention of the light bulb, it doesn't matter when the sun comes up.
But, if you adjust your clock so that you are performing more activities while it is light outside, then you eliminate the need for some of those light bulbs, which is the whole point of DST.
Re:This is incorrect by Hognoxious · 2017-11-05 02:22 · Score: 1

Candles (especially good ones that don't smell and produce loads of smoke) were an expensive luxury through most of history.

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:This is incorrect by mark-t · 2017-11-05 03:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

That doesn't work well in higher latitudes, because then you end up with schoolchildren walking to school in the morning while it is still almost pitch black outside through most of December and January. The hour right before sunrise is often both the darkest and coldest period of the night.
Unless you propose that children start and finish school an hour later than they currently do, which could would be an even bigger clusterfuck than DST as tens of millions of adults, via a ripple effect, end up having to adjust their schedules to compensate, forcing them to work later as well, and negating the extra hour of daylight that they might otherwise have had in the evening.
"Standard" time year around makes the most sense. Noon, logically, is when the sun *should* be at its highest in the sky, but on DST, the sun is at that position at 1PM through the summer months.

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Re:This is incorrect by jez9999 · 2017-11-05 08:46 · Score: 1

UK here, winter time is stupid, it gets light before I even wake up and then it gets dark before I'm even on my way home from work. We just changed from BritishSummerTime which made a lot more sense.
So Winter Time is stupid and rubbish, I'd much prefer to have some day time left in the evening than have it completely wasted whilst I'm sleeping.
And I disagree completely. Waking up in the dark is damn depressing, whereas I fully expect the evenings to be dark (in winter they are dark no matter what because the day is so short).

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Re:This is incorrect by MrL0G1C · 2017-11-05 09:25 · Score: 1

Day light whilst sleeping is completely wasted, that's the point here, the days feel even shorter when the sun goes down an hour earlier, day light in the late afternoon isn't wasted for 99% of people, very few people go to bed in the afternoon.

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Re:This is incorrect by Darinbob · 2017-11-05 09:42 · Score: 1

Go to work later and come home from work earlier. The only way for you to get longer days in winter is to move closer to the equator.
Re:This is incorrect by MrL0G1C · 2017-11-05 10:03 · Score: 1

That'd be nice, but I don't get that much say about my hours (weeks yes, hours no) and my job is very location specific.

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Re:This is incorrect by jez9999 · 2017-11-05 10:06 · Score: 1

No it's not wasted, it makes my brain think it's time to get up and my eyes are happy that it is light instead of getting up in the middle of the night.

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== Jez ==
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Re:This is incorrect by MrL0G1C · 2017-11-05 10:11 · Score: 1

And what if it's not time to get up because they've just moved the clocks back and the sun rises too early?

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Re:This is incorrect by imrahilj · 2017-11-07 03:05 · Score: 1

I absolutely welcome a 8:15 am sunrise on Christmas morning. I'd far rather have more light in the evening. When you are only working with ~9 hours of daylight, you don't get to have daylight on both ends of the work day, and I'd rather be in the dark in the morning, when I'm more alert, than at night, when I'm sleepy. Massachusetts is in the far eastern side of EST. It doesn't make sense for Ohio and Massachusetts to be in the same time zone, they are simply too far apart.
Re:This is incorrect by imrahilj · 2017-11-07 03:06 · Score: 1

AST is what standard time for MA should be. We are too far east for EST to make as much sense for us as it does for other parts of the country further west.

Not quite by sjames · 2017-11-04 20:37 · Score: 4, Informative

Several northern states are considering going from Eastern to Atlantic time, effectively springing ahead and never falling back.

Re:Daylights savings causes miscarriages? strokes? by phantomfive · 2017-11-04 20:39 · Score: 3, Informative

Ever since cell phones came out, I don't even notice DST anymore. It just kind of happens and my clocks adjust automatically.

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Make the entire year DST by execthis · 2017-11-04 21:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

Most people don't like when DST ends, not when it is in effect. We don't like the loss of daylight in the evenings in Winter. It gets dark too quickly. People come come from work and it's already dark and they have no daylight time left to enjoy on their own.

So if DST is abandoned, then clocks should be permanently adjusted forward one hour. Of course that would never happen because standard time zones are offset from UTC.

So maybe the best solution would be to extend DST to cover the entire year.

Re:Make the entire year DST by execthis · 2017-11-04 21:03 · Score: 1

Ok just replying to this because the timestamp above was incorrectly set to 02:01.
Re:Make the entire year DST by execthis · 2017-11-04 21:04 · Score: 1

...and it's 01:03 right now...
Re:Make the entire year DST by msauve · 2017-11-04 21:29 · Score: 2, Informative

But of course, only an idiot would think that DST actually saves any daylight.

Which is better than a the author of the summary, who's straight out lying. Where they (EditorDavid?) claim "A special Massachusetts commission recommends the state stop observing Daylight Savings TIme", the actual article says

Massachusetts should only consider moving to what in essence is year-round Daylight Saving Time
...which is exactly the opposite of what the summary says.

It's also sheer idiocy. But that's not surprising, since they studied a bunch of idiots - "retailers liked the idea of more daylight late in the day for shoppers." Sorry, no, there is no "more daylight." A government law can't change astrophysics. If people want more light after working hours, push for a change from a 9-5 to a 8-4 working day. Clocks are based around solar noon. We're screwing it up half the year now, don't screw it up for the full year.

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Re:Make the entire year DST by Powercntrl · 2017-11-04 21:52 · Score: 4, Interesting

Most people don't like when DST ends, not when it is in effect.
You have to be a morning person to actually like DST. Fuck that. Anyone who enjoys being awake at the crack of dawn should just get up early of their own accord.
If you ask me, the biggest waste isn't daylight. It's all the road space, electrical generating capacity, and cell network bandwidth that goes unused every night, because there's a silly stigma against working the graveyard shift. Unless you work outside, it makes absolutely no difference whether the sun is shining over your place of employment. Convince half the population to be nocturnal and you've doubled the capacity of your roads, without paving a single new lane.

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Re:Make the entire year DST by hazardPPP · 2017-11-04 22:57 · Score: 1, Insightful

Clocks are based around solar noon. We're screwing it up half the year now, don't screw it up for the full year.
The actual day is 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds, so we are already off by having a 24 hour day. Not to mention the year does not have 365 days exactly, which is why we have leap years, but the Gregorian calendar isn't perfect etc.
Furthermore, time zones (even we look at "pure, straight" time zones, not adjustments made for political or practical reasons) are a rough approximation. If every clock were tracking solar noon, the time 100 a miles away would be slightly different. Time zones were created to have predictable shifts in the clock. Ergo, most of the Earth is off of true solar noon, DST or not.
Finally, due to the arbitrary nature of some time zones due to political or economic considerations, moving permanently to DST would actually take a lot of places closer to actual solar noon.
Ultimately, telling time is just a convention. All that matters is that this convention is consistent planet-round so we can effectively schedule things. In the end, what is the practical difference of working 8-4 and setting the clock one hour forward and working 9-5?
Re:Make the entire year DST by janeil · 2017-11-04 23:48 · Score: 1

I'm not sure what time zones could move closer to solar noon on DST, I thought the eastern edge of the time zones is usually closest to solar noon. For example, in western Ohio we're on the western edge of EST, and our solar noon doesn't come until about 12:50 on normal time. Hell, in the summer we don't hit solar noon until around 2 in the afternoon, it's almost arbitrary. That's my only argument against DST, it just makes the clock time so far off "natural" solar time. Noon should be noon.
Re: Make the entire year DST by locketine · 2017-11-05 00:40 · Score: 1

This is brilliant. And not only does it lower infrastructure costs, commuter times, etc, but we'd also have all of our leisure time during daylight.
Down with our agrarian based work schedules!

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Re:Make the entire year DST by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-05 01:13 · Score: 2, Informative

The actual day is 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds, so we are already off by having a 24 hour day.
Uhh, no. You're talking about a sidereal day, which is the rotation of the earth relative to the rest of the universe, and the reason that is different is because we are in orbit around the sun and that orbit shifts our relationship with the universe around us. Imagine spinning in a circle while you're on a merry-go-round that is itself spinning (much slower than you), and you are talking about your relationship to the school that the merry-go-round is near, not your relationship to the center of the merry-go-round. That is much different than a solar day, which is the commonplace use of the term "day". Otherwise, you'd effectively shift two hours in your daylight rotation every month. You're not even being pedantic here, just absurd.
Re:Make the entire year DST by Hognoxious · 2017-11-05 01:57 · Score: 1

Sorry, no, there is no "more daylight." A government law can't change astrophysics.

Lucky we had you here to point that out.

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:Make the entire year DST by Neuronwelder · 2017-11-05 02:22 · Score: 1

I thought about it too. You gain a little sunlight in the morning - (When people like me, don't want it glaring in my eyes as I'm driving.) And then you get shorted when you need it in the evening. (I don't go to sleep around 4:00pm.
Re:Make the entire year DST by Wycliffe · 2017-11-05 03:12 · Score: 1

With everyone using digital clocks, there is really no reason that we couldn't just set 12:00 as solar noon and do micro adjustments every day to the clock.
We would likely still want time zones so you could use the solar noon of the center of the timezone.
Re:Make the entire year DST by jklein · 2017-11-05 03:14 · Score: 1

Or maybe just change our mind-set to do everything one hour earlier. There is nothing that requires our workday to begin at 9:00 am, so just adjust business hours. Granted, eight to four is not as catchy a song title, but hey...
Re:Make the entire year DST by swillden · 2017-11-05 03:15 · Score: 5, Informative

The actual day is 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds
It's blindingly obvious that this cannot be true. Think about it. Our clocks measure 24-hour days. If the solar day (the time between when the sun is directly overhead) were actually almost four minutes shorter than 24 hours, noon would shift by two hours every month. Sunrise and sunset would shift by even more.
The figure you mention is correct if you're judging completion of a day by watching far-distant stars (sidereal day). If you're judging it by looking at the sun, which is what's useful for human schedules, the mean length of a day is 24 hours and 0.002 seconds (solar day).
The difference is that the apparent motion of distant stars is caused only by the Earth's rotation. The apparent motion of the sun is caused by the Earth's rotation and the Earth's orbital motion about the sun. Because the orbit is elliptical, the length of a solar day actually changes throughout the course of the year. But the mean length is ever so slightly more than 24 hours

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Re:Make the entire year DST by chuckugly · 2017-11-05 03:20 · Score: 1

Because the Earth and sun orbit about each other, the day for the purposes of this discussion is not the same as the sidereal day. The rest of your comment I basically agree with.
Re: Make the entire year DST by Miamicanes · 2017-11-05 05:11 · Score: 1

Or, we could compromise, split the difference, and redefine EST as UTC-4.5, CST as UTC-5.5, MST as UTC-6.5, and PST as UTC-7.5
If we had to, we could rename our timezones to something like ECT, CCT, MCT, and PCT ("x Compromise Time"), though I suspect Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean would follow us anyway (in fact, I think Canadian law actually defines DST by referencing US standards, just to make it automatic & avoid the mess that would happen if Canadian DST had different dates than the US).
Re: Make the entire year DST by Defakto · 2017-11-05 05:46 · Score: 1

Actually he is correct. Though, the rotation isn't constant. It's called a stellar day. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Re:Make the entire year DST by trawg · 2017-11-05 05:54 · Score: 1

Agree for the same reasons. Where I'm from (Qld, Australia) in summer the sun is up by 4.30am and it's often pushing 30 degrees celcius soon after. Unlike the other states on the eastern seaboard, we do not have daylight savings, so it's dark by 7pm.
I am not at all a morning person but in Qld I almost don't have a choice because it's hard to sleep much later. For me DST means a much nicer summer.
Where I live now (London, UK), we've just switched off DST. It's now suddenly pitch black by 5pm and it's creeping down earlier and earlier. It's amazing the impact this has on the day. Again as a non-morning person I'd happily sacrifice an hour of morning light for more in the evening, even though in winter the difference would be massively less noticable here.
Re: Make the entire year DST by swillden · 2017-11-05 09:08 · Score: 1

Actually he is correct. Though, the rotation isn't constant. It's called a stellar day. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

A stellar day is the same thing as a sidereal day, and neither are the basis of our normal day/night cycle, which is the solar day. The solar day is not constant, due to the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit. The sidereal or stellar day is constant, because the Earth's rotation does not vary. Oh, it's very gradually slowing, but not enough to make any difference in our everyday timekeeping.

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Re:Make the entire year DST by Darinbob · 2017-11-05 09:10 · Score: 1

This depends upon where you live. The time zone lines are not drawn in a logical manner, but often for political reasons they shift. So rather than always being within 30 minutes of the true solar time, some areas may be very far off. So while one city may complain that it's getting dark at 4pm, another city in the same time zone and latitude may not see it go dark until 6pm.
Re:Make the entire year DST by Darinbob · 2017-11-05 09:32 · Score: 1

And if we really want to increase the number of shopping hours, Massachusetts could just adopt Europe time, the sun comes up at the end of the work and stays light for many hours after that. That's silly though, it's simpler for the stores to just stay open later in the summer, offices could allow workers to leave before its dark in the winter, and so forth.
We're never going to fix the problem that in Winter the days will be shorter. You either force dawn to come earlier or you force dusk to come later, you can't adjust both. Either it's dark in the morning and I hate that, or it's dark when I come home and I hate that. No amount of adjusting time zones will fix that.
Re:Make the entire year DST by Darinbob · 2017-11-05 09:39 · Score: 1

And we can just shift, assuming that work allows us to. Not just our work, but other people's work if you want to avoid traffic. There are a lot of factors that try to shift people into a standard work day, and that's what is messing us up. A shift of merely an hour is not a big deal to adjust to, but if someone needs daylight to be productive then winter is always going to suck no matter how the time zones are arranged.
Re:Make the entire year DST by PPalmgren · 2017-11-06 02:12 · Score: 1

If you ask me, the biggest waste isn't daylight. It's all the road space, electrical generating capacity, and cell network bandwidth that goes unused every night, because there's a silly stigma against working the graveyard shift. Unless you work outside, it makes absolutely no difference whether the sun is shining over your place of employment. Convince half the population to be nocturnal and you've doubled the capacity of your roads, without paving a single new lane.
Good luck with that. Nocturnal schedules are significantly harder on the body. It has nothing to do with preference, it has everything to do with biology.
Re:Make the entire year DST by hazardPPP · 2017-11-06 12:03 · Score: 1

I'm not sure what time zones could move closer to solar noon on DST, I thought the eastern edge of the time zones is usually closest to solar noon.

The Central European Time zone (CET; GMT +1 that is, GMT +2 during DST) is arbitrarily extended both eastward and westward due to political reasons. Its western edges (Spain) should be GMT and its eastern edges (e.g. Serbia) GMT +2 (and they used to be until ~40 years ago). The eastern edges are therefore closer to noon during DST in the summer - and moving permanently to GMT +2 would make it so all year round.
Of course, for Spain for example, this would make things worse as it would make them permanently 2 hours out of wack, but I guess that could encourage them to move back to their "proper" time zone.
These types of situations are repeated all over the planet (think China, which despite spanning five actual time zones, is in a single time zone by decree), and DST seems to have a bit of a "smoothing" effect on these semi-arbitrary time zones, meaning that if it is to be abolished, there would be a lot of argument whether you should abolish DST or move to permanent DST. I would hope that such discussions would end with the most logical solution - the break-up of these arbitrary time zones into more sensible ones more closely aligned with the "true" time zones - but we can't really hope for that, as unfortunately politics trumps reason a lot of the time.
Re:Make the entire year DST by janeil · 2017-11-06 23:36 · Score: 1

Ah, interesting! I confess to thinking only of N. America and not considering the other fine continents!

It's hilarious that all of China is one time zone.

Compromise by rossdee · 2017-11-04 21:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

Advance the clocks half an hour next spring and then leave them there

Re:Compromise by Maxo-Texas · 2017-11-04 21:44 · Score: 1

That's probably going to be really hard for a lot of software.
I wouldn't make such a change without at least a 24 month warning to everyone.
I'm for getting rid of DST tho. I hate DST.

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Re:Compromise by Maxo-Texas · 2017-11-05 07:05 · Score: 1

Companies with custom software.

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She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Re:Compromise by Darinbob · 2017-11-05 09:53 · Score: 1

ANY change is hard for software. Dealing with time zones and DST is a bitch in software, and I see so many people screw it up when the implement such things (necessary when the normal libraries won't fit on embedded systems). Any change means fixing up all the databases on all the systems that use time.
(Annoying sometimes when you've got some systems that stick exclusively to local times, meaning you have to fix up time twice a year. I've seen it on medical equipment when someone naively assumes a hospital network will never straddle a time zone, and on electricity networks where the meters only know local time but the utility straddles 3 time zones. I see equipment where the time zone rules are hardcoded, even though we know the rules will inevitably change before the equipment hits end of life. It was only a decade ago that DST rules in the US changed...)

Time by tquasar · 2017-11-04 21:06 · Score: 1

I hate it, don't see any benefit or reason for the change. Schools can change their start time so the little children don't have to walk in the scary darkness. Analog clocks are easy to adjust but some digital ones are a pain to reset. The health studies should be shared widely but most sheeple will never read them. It's two AM in my zone.

Re:Time by sjames · 2017-11-04 21:25 · Score: 4, Funny

I was in the 2nd grade the year we did DST in January. Far from scary darkness, the kids loved it. It was an excuse to carry a flashlight to walk to the bus stop (pretty cool when you're 7 years old). I'm sure some parents FEARED for safety, but since we had flashlights, we couldn't have been that hard to see.
Re:Time by mark-t · 2017-11-05 03:14 · Score: 1

Schools can change their start time so the little children don't have to walk in the scary darkness.
So suddenly, loads of parents end up having to adjust *their* schedules to compensate, so that they don't end up needing to leave their kids alone at home for as much as an hour before school. Via a ripple effect, your proposal would actually end up affecting a majority of adults, causing most people to have to work later in the day and completely negating the extra hour of daylight that you supposedly got in the afternoon.
What is so awful about noon being the time when the sun is the highest in the sky year 'round?

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Sigh by DNS-and-BIND · 2017-11-04 21:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

The whole point of DST in the first place is otherwise in winter the sun sets at 4:30pm. In the summer, it rises at 4:30am. This is fine for farmers, but for an urban population it's no good. I've lived in a region with no DST and it's silly, in summer the sun sets at 7:30pm. Totally wastes useful daylight. If you want to go back to this system so be it, but it's like there is no awareness of why it was adopted in the first place.

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Re:Sigh by theNetImp · 2017-11-04 22:39 · Score: 2

I live in Japan, we don't do the whole change the clock thing, and you know what I absolutely love it. None of this changing the clock bullshit. A lot of people seem to think that it shouldn't bother people, but some of us do not work on the same schedule as the people during the day, and that change really messes up the schedules of those who have to work those hours. The end of changing the clocks is needed. The hour less daytime in the evening is not that hard to get use too, and honestly in the winter in MA when people are driving westward home from Boston (I use to do this commute every day for 10 years), having that change would be a good thing because right now people drive into the setting sun and it causes a lot of accidents.
Re:Sigh by DNS-and-BIND · 2017-11-05 00:27 · Score: 1

Again...sigh. Less daylight means more carbon from wasted lighting and heating energy. Oh, and by the way, it's hour *fewer*, English teacher.

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Re:Sigh by belg4mit · 2017-11-05 01:20 · Score: 3, Informative

They buried the lead in the summary. They're not just considering an end to DST, but a simultaneous shift from Eastern to Atlantic time zone.

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Re:Sigh by Archimonde · 2017-11-05 02:05 · Score: 1

This what you're saying actually is a matter of your time zone not being properly chosen.

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Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-05 02:06 · Score: 1

As resident of Maine, and now New Hampshire, and more than halfway up the state, I'd rather stay in EST and just not have the DST change. It honestly doesn't make sense for the change at this point.
Prior to today, the sun was coming up around 7am, setting just after 6pm. As we approach winter solstice, those will be later, and earlier respectively, until Vernal Equinox. Looking at that, it doesn't make sense to switch at all, since those are the primary time windows where most of society is awake. Even if you drop in latitude, towards the Mass state line, there isn't THAT much deviation. for the time reference to the sun.
Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have all been kicking this idea around for better part of a decade. Probably longer...
The problem is, Maine, can not go it alone if they make a shift it their time zone There's too much commerce between Maine and New Hampshire for Maine, that would, per the discussions, have negative ramifications if Maine were an hour ahead. As for Massachusetts? I don't see any argument that they should change. They're at a lower Latitude, and despite the East West variability for being in the same time zone, at best, the 'Cape' should evaluate if part of it should switch to Atlantic.
Another consideration would be the 'Eastern Part' of Maine, consider switching to Atlantic TZ. I can see this making the most sense, however it's a VERY tough sell to Mainer's, who, as I am not a native, are loathe to consider change on something like this. Especially if it involves farming, which would be quite a bit affected by that idea.
Re:Sigh by Neuronwelder · 2017-11-05 02:29 · Score: 1

Maybe I'm a little slow. But can't farmers and the related parts of the entire system just change what time they get up, and stay open?? I don't see anything gained in the fall.
Re:Sigh by caseih · 2017-11-05 02:49 · Score: 1

Sure, but even farmers have to interact with people in the rest of society who are not getting up early and are staying up late. Anyway, DST has nothing to do with farmers. It's all about summer-time recreation honestly.
Personally I'd rather stay on DST all year long (which is actually what these states are proposing if you read it... they want to change to Atlantic standard time, which is the same as EDT). I think people would rather have a bit of daylight at the end of the day on a short winter day, than have that light in the morning.
Re:Sigh by mark-t · 2017-11-05 03:16 · Score: 1

Actually, what he is saying is that it is actually a matter of living north of about the 45th parallel.

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Re:Sigh by belg4mit · 2017-11-05 06:47 · Score: 1

DOT, not NIST
https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/time-act
http://timezonereport.com/?page_id=313
Few people are farmers. The only change to the clock that makes sense if you're not going to stick with the geographical approximation of mean noon, is anti-DST, which is what this proposal equates to. I don't need sunlight at 6AM when I'm not awake, and prefer to not be heading home in the dark at 5PM. I'd welcome the shift, and it seems like many others agree.

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Were that I say, pancakes?
Re:Sigh by Darinbob · 2017-11-05 10:03 · Score: 2

The tme zone is chosen pretty well for New England and Eastern Standard Time. All of New England is within the "natural" border of EST, except for a tiny bump on Maine. Ie, they're not more than half an hour off of true solar time during EST. The western EST border strays too far west, but that's a problem for Michigan and the like.
Re:Sigh by geoscodin · 2017-11-06 02:01 · Score: 1

I lived in Hawaii with no DST and was never adversely affected. It gradually gets darker a little earlier every day and then gradually gets lighter a little earlier. What I get on the mainland now is an abrupt change twice a year. Saturday it was getting dark a 6:30 and Sunday -- BAM -- it got dark at 5:30. I'm driving home from work in the dark and it makes things like yard work impossible for a few months. And in 6 months it will suddenly be pitch black when I get up to drive to work. Plus I get up at teh same time every day with an alarm, so twice a year my body has to adjust for the clock change. I much prefer the gradual changes that are hardly perceptible over twice a year extremes that mess with my internal clock and external schedule.
Re:Sigh by Tyrannosaur · 2017-11-06 05:25 · Score: 1

Why don't you just wake up earlier and go to bed earlier? That is *literally* what happens during daylight saving time anyway
Re:Sigh by imrahilj · 2017-11-07 03:09 · Score: 1

What you are proposing is not staying in EST, but staying in EST + DST (we were in DST over the summer). That's exactly the same as switching to AST with no DST. I agree that without the change to winter time here in MA, things would be just fine. I am loathing the dark when I leave work, I much preferred going to work in the dark.

About the Only Good Thing... by rally2xs · 2017-11-04 21:23 · Score: 4, Interesting

...of not changing would be making drive-in movie theaters viable in the western part of each time zone. Otherwise, you get off work at maybe 5, drive an hour home or maybe more if you're in this screwed-up area of impossible traffic that is the DC area, and when NOT being exactly on the summer solstice, having just a few minutes to get the lawn mowed (hour and a quarter for the 1 acre here, or 45 minutes for the zero-turn mower I have now), and that's it. Not getting anything else done outside. Walk the dog? Do it in the dark. Have a cook-out? Dark. Rake the leaves? Dark.

Dark, dark, dark, dark, dark...

Pee on that. Keep DST, and make the day for something besides sitting in the office and writing code while wasting all the best part of the day for doing stuff outside, then getting home and going broke feeding batteries to the flashlight(s). We can tolerate non-DST in the winter 'cuz its too nippy to enjoy stuff outside anyway, but lets apply roundup to the weeds, spray for mosquitoes, work on our big radio antennas (K8DH here), and everything else outside in the daylight by keeping DST!!!

Re:About the Only Good Thing... by EvilSS · 2017-11-04 21:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

Some of the proposals are to stay forever on DST (essentially shift one time zone east) to maintain that daylight year round. Yes it means some dark mornings but it would also mean an end to driving home in the dark at 4:30pm in December for many northern states.

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Re:About the Only Good Thing... by Ol+Olsoc · 2017-11-05 02:28 · Score: 1

Dark, dark, dark, dark, dark...
Pee on that. Keep DST, and make the day for something besides sitting in the office and writing code while wasting all the best part of the day for doing stuff outside, then getting home and going broke feeding batteries to the flashlight(s). We can tolerate non-DST in the winter 'cuz its too nippy to enjoy stuff outside anyway, but lets apply roundup to the weeds, spray for mosquitoes, work on our big radio antennas (K8DH here), and everything else outside in the daylight by keeping DST!!!
Exactly. I suppose that people who go to work, come home and never step outside except for going to some other inside place don't care, but people who do actually do things can really make use of those extra hours of daylight. Plus the neighbors won't like it if you get up and mow the lawn at 0430.

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Re:About the Only Good Thing... by EvilSS · 2017-11-07 13:58 · Score: 1

Some of the proposals are to stay forever on DST (essentially shift one time zone east) to maintain that daylight year round. Yes it means some dark mornings but it would also mean an end to driving home in the dark at 4:30pm in December for many northern states.
Instead you drive to work in the dark. TANSTAAFL.
Well it's going to be one or the other. Personally I'd rather have the extra daylight in the evening when I can make use of it.

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Re:Why? by Maxo-Texas · 2017-11-04 21:51 · Score: 1

For me the fuss is that the time everyone I interact with cuts into my sleeping time when it falls back. I'm retired. I live off the clock. Even more so now with streaming video.

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Why even timezones at all? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-11-04 22:09 · Score: 1

Is it so everyone can complain about 0900-1700? For global businesses, lack of timezones would be a huge improvement. None of this, when is the meeting.

Re:Why even timezones at all? by rally2xs · 2017-11-04 22:44 · Score: 1

If not time zones, then you're back to "sun time" which is slightly different at each longitude. Try scheduling trains so they're not on the same track heading different directions when the freakin' time is changing with every mile west and east you run. You had to be a mathematical genius to be a railroad engineer back before time zones. Lots of 'em failed, and spectacular train wrecks ensued.
Try your 6th grade story problem, "Train A leaves Chicago at 5:30 AM traveling 60 mph, Train B leaves New York at 6:30 AM traveling 72 mph. They are traveling toward each other. Where and when do they meet?" Good luck, and prepare to jump...
Re:Why even timezones at all? by _merlin · 2017-11-04 22:48 · Score: 2

No it wouldn't. Time zones are very helpful, for example when you're trying to set up a reasonable time for a phone call/teleconference, or thinking about when someone will read an e-mail. You can think, "well, they're five hours behind us, so they won't be getting into the office for a couple of hours yet," or, "they're two hours ahead, so they should be just getting back from lunch." You can have a row of clocks showing the time in all your offices and from that have some idea of what part of the day it is.
Without timezones, you'd have to think about what phase of the day a time corresponds to in another part of the world. It's more work to think through. It's been tried before. You may or may not remember "Swatch Internet Time", heavily promoted starting in 1998. They divided the day into 1000 parts called ".beats" with 0 at midnight UTC+1 and used the same values everywhere. It went nowhere because it just isn't useful.
Re:Why even timezones at all? by Opportunist · 2017-11-05 04:44 · Score: 1

A sensible meeting software will automatically calculate a given time based on the timezone of your partner and yours, not display "4pm" even though you're in Rome and he's in Sydney.

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We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Re:Why even timezones at all? by itamihn · 2017-11-05 05:44 · Score: 1

In the global company where I work we just use EST to schedule meetings and so on.

LED technology make DST obsolete by Max_W · 2017-11-04 22:42 · Score: 1

Now the economical LED lamps make electricity savings by the DST ridiculously small if any for the whole hoopla.

It's time for daylight savings to go by DaMattster · 2017-11-04 23:56 · Score: 1

This whole daylight savings time thing is really a joke. It's time for it to go. The ending of daylight savings time is not so bad but the beginning of it is known to cause more health problems, including heart attack. I don't even know why we ever did it. Some claim that it was to give the farmers more light in the morning. Some claim it is so that school-aged children don't have to wait in the dark for the bus. Let's just get rid of this!

Re:It's time for daylight savings to go by GuB-42 · 2017-11-05 01:44 · Score: 1

The idea is that we should wake up with the sun. There are biological and economic reason for this.
The problem is that in modern society, we live by the clock, not by the sun. DST is a way to approximate this behavior.
Re:It's time for daylight savings to go by Opportunist · 2017-11-05 04:37 · Score: 1

Then I guess in October we should turn our clocks back not only by one but actually 2 hours. Sunrise around here is no sooner than 7am. 8am in December.

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We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Re:It's time for daylight savings to go by iggymanz · 2017-11-05 06:10 · Score: 1

you're free to set your alarm clock to the sun's rise
a school that worries about "children waiting in the dark" (which they will do anyway where I live), can change its opening time once a school year
letting politicians change the actual time of day is stupid

Re:Daylights savings causes miscarriages? strokes? by Paradise+Pete · 2017-11-05 00:23 · Score: 1

Humans aren't that fucking fragile. I don't believe any of this "harm" shit.

Jet lag is very real, and it gets worse and worse as one ages. It seems unlikely that there's zero effect at one hour, but then it suddenly kicks in at larger amount of time. If so, then there's some effect. Perhaps trivial in most younger people, but a greater effect with age.

Re:Sigh, easily solved! by DNS-and-BIND · 2017-11-05 00:29 · Score: 1

Bed at 10pm every day? Sure, whatever you say, grandpa.

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Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!

Re:Daylights savings causes miscarriages? strokes? by Hadlock · 2017-11-05 00:33 · Score: 1

As I've graduated out of my 20's I've noticed I'm a lot, a LOT more sensitive to time changes than I used to be.

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moox. for a new generation.

Re:Any language is "effective" by your standard by Paradise+Pete · 2017-11-05 00:34 · Score: 3, Informative

What makes English easy to use and understand is that it is so very redundant.

And it's not tonal. Mispronounced words are easier to understand, and tone can be use to convey meaning even when the vocabulary is lacking.

Re:get up later, by maroberts · 2017-11-05 00:36 · Score: 1

What is being complained about is that people would rather have daylight after work has finished. In winter, moving the clocks back removes an hour of daylight from the evening.

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Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon

Re:Switch to UTC, and Change the Culture by Chrisq · 2017-11-05 01:08 · Score: 1

I second that. Keep "summertime" all year. On the very shortest days nothing would help here(sunset 3:40pm would be 4:40 with summertime) but for a lot of the year you'd get a useful hour of light when you get home.

Re:Idiots drew the original time zone maps by belg4mit · 2017-11-05 01:26 · Score: 1

The US states alone span GMT-5 to GMT-10, with territories it's GMT-4 to GMT+10.

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Were that I say, pancakes?

Re:This is a one sided bull by Fly+Swatter · 2017-11-05 01:38 · Score: 1

It was introduced for the same basic reason anything else gets done: money. Nope I'm not jaded at all.

Re:DST by drew_kime · 2017-11-05 01:51 · Score: 1

[pedantic]

DST is Daylight Saving Time.

Not "savings".

[/pedantic]

It was wrong so many times in the summary I'm convinced they're trolling us.

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Nope, no sig

I've already abandoned it by HalAtWork · 2017-11-05 01:59 · Score: 1

I don't switch my clocks, I just switch my work hours. I'll keep my afternoon sunshine thanks.

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Twinstiq, game news

Re:I've already abandoned it by Ol+Olsoc · 2017-11-05 02:43 · Score: 1

I don't switch my clocks, I just switch my work hours. I'll keep my afternoon sunshine thanks.
There's actually something to that. I travel to the west coast fairly often. If its a short stay, like a week, I simply "stay" on East coast time. For longer stays, my body will force adaptation, but for short trips it avoids jetlag.

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.

Re:adjust time everyday by PPH · 2017-11-05 02:14 · Score: 1

Let's just switch to traditional Japanese time.

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Have gnu, will travel.

They'll probably get it wrong by mrun4982 · 2017-11-05 02:15 · Score: 1

and keep it on standard time all year round. What people want is permanent daylight saving time.

Re:They'll probably get it wrong by mark-t · 2017-11-05 03:22 · Score: 1

How is it wrong for noon to be the point where the sun is highest in the sky?
Bear in mind that the entire point of timekeeping approximates the sun's position in the sky. Otherwise you might as well suggest that everyone switch to UTC, and abolish timezones completely. As has been pointed out elsewhere by comments in this story, that would be an even bigger headache than DST is.

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File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Re:They'll probably get it wrong by Opportunist · 2017-11-05 04:30 · Score: 1

Really?
I didn't know I wasn't people.

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We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.

Re:Start of work day is not fixed by Hognoxious · 2017-11-05 02:36 · Score: 1

This. Imagine if supermarket opening times were posted as "Sunrise plus 27 minutes" or whatever. The one in the next town would say the same and mean something slightly different.

This is sort of how it was before the railways, in fact. It's just that nobody really noticed as it was a day's walk or a few hours by gee-gee and by the time you got there you'd forgotten why you went.

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Got that Backwards by kjhambrick · 2017-11-05 02:52 · Score: 1

I would certainly consider abandoning Standard Time but abandon Daylight Saving Time ?

Not so much.

DST - Australian Argument by bromoseltzer · 2017-11-05 02:55 · Score: 1

The classic OZ housewife's opposition to Summer Time: "It faids me curtins."

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Fiat Lux.

Re:DST - Australian Argument by walshy007 · 2017-11-05 14:07 · Score: 1

Bit of a straw man there, easy to attack.
Why not keep clocks representing the actual local time, and simply make work hours more flexible?
People want to start work earlier and finish earlier? Do it. Just don't pretend that the sun is in a different location than it is (what with midday really being 11am in a one hour shift daylight savings system).
I'd consider it similar to people wanting a larger tennis court, but instead of just adjusting the dimensions in meters they adjust how long a meter is.. ridiculous.

Re:get up later, by Hognoxious · 2017-11-05 02:57 · Score: 1

The problem is fitting in with everyone else. You know, school, jobs, transport, that kind of shit.

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Lack of sleep is harmful to your health by WaffleMonster · 2017-11-05 02:58 · Score: 1

Without daylight time the sun would kick my ass out of bed at ~3:00 AM during summer months. Most days it would start to get light before I ever bothered going to sleep.

Reason people may like it by pgn674 · 2017-11-05 03:21 · Score: 2

I have found one logical reason that people may like DST. It normalizes sunrise time through the year, at the expense of extremifying sunset time. Here's a chart showing this.

Get rid of wintertime, and keep our long evenings by KayakFun · 2017-11-05 03:35 · Score: 1

While in principle you could get up early in the morning and enjoy the sun then, it is much more convenient to enjoy the sun in the evening. So get rid of wintertime and stay on summertime.

yup, i say split the difference by FudRucker · 2017-11-05 03:56 · Score: 1

instead of setting the clocks back an hour in the fall, we just set them back 30 minutes and then next spring dont change them, and abandon the daylight savings time thing

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Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing

Re:Why? by nyet · 2017-11-05 04:21 · Score: 1

Then you should be fine with eliminating DST time changes, if you are a fan of not "having a fuss".

Stop fussing.

Why stop at half-assed solutions? by Opportunist · 2017-11-05 04:22 · Score: 1

We could turn back the clock 6 hours instead of one. That way we go to work when it's still dark and it remains dark for most of the time we're at work, and then when we get out it's about (real) noon and even in Winter we have at least 3-4 hours of daylight left. And in Summer even a whooping 10!

If the holy grail is to have daylight when you get out of work, why don't you put your time change where your mouth is?