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Lithuania Calls On EU To Stop Adjusting Clocks For Daylight Savings (theguardian.com)

AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian: Lithuania has said that it would push the European Union to abolish its law on daylight saving time, claiming that most people find it annoying to have to adjust their clocks twice a year. An opinion poll published this year showed that 79% of people in the nation of 2.8 million were against the annual ritual of adjusting clocks forward by one hour in the spring and then back an hour in the autumn. Proponents of daylight saving time, adopted at the beginning of the 20th century, say the longer evening daylight hours in the summer help save energy and bolster productivity. The European Commission said it was "currently examining the summertime question based on all available evidence."

22 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OR we could have everyone keep time on their phones and have the phones automatically change the time by a few seconds every day!

    This is probably my greatest idea ever.

  2. Re:Reaction from most slashdot readers by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slashdot readers are pretty educated, if only because we know that's where Lithium batteries come from.

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  3. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 2

    Daylight Saving Time is a great idea. Ditching it in the winter is the problem. Just keep it year round and eliminate the stupid changing.

    Why do you think it matters if we call a certain time of day "8 A.M." or "9 A.M."?

    I mean, I'm all for not changing times, and I don't really care what arbitrary point you set to be your "noon", but I can't see that it makes any difference. It's not like your body cares about how we define what hour it is.

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  4. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you work until 5pm, and it gets dark at 5:10pm, you've swepnt all your daylight inside. If it gets dark at 6:10pm, at least you have a bit of daylight.

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  5. Oh gezz - not AGAIN by buss_error · · Score: 2

    Remember the Java DST bug?
    How about the SWIFT hiccup when the time change got applied backwards.
    Or how much it costs to update ever single time zone file on every computer in the world.

    I am not advocating for or against DST - I'm advocating for pick you're poison and stick with it. Changing it and mucking around with it is expensive, consumes time I should be spending solving other problems, and is annoying.

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    1. Re:Oh gezz - not AGAIN by No+Longer+an+AC · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't remember that bug but I do remember management making us test everything extensively when DST was changed in the US to a different schedule. And they were right to make us test it too, but everything worked - except for the 3rd party software that was used for timeclocks which fortunately wasn't my problem.

      Somehow telling hourly workers in the fall that they would get repaid for that extra hour when we "sprung forward" in the spring wasn't acceptable. Imagine that.

      But when I think about all the time and effort that goes into implementing and testing DST schemes as well as time zones I can't help but imagine it is a huge drain on the world's economy (not to mention the health effects).

      Even when I lived in Arizona I wasn't immune to this nonsense. The mantra was that if people on the East Coast were at their desks by 8 AM (eastern time) I either had to be at the office by 6 AM or 5 AM depending on whether DST was in effect or not.

      You mean I have to get up an hour earlier because THEY changed THEIR clocks? Goddammit.

      TBH, I'm not even sure if DST is during the summer or the winter. Others have suggested it before and I know it sounds radical but I'd be in favor of everyone adopting UTC or Coordinated Universal Time as well as adopting 24 hour clocks. For me, sunrise would be at 14:27 today. I can live with that. Everyone in the whole world could at least agree on the time!

      The sun rising at 14:27 is no more strange a concept than the fact that Australia and other countries in the Southern Hemisphere are going to celebrate Christmas in the middle of summer.

      --

      A couple of years ago I was frustrated because I was doing a phone interview for a position in Central Time being handled by a recruiter in Eastern Time while I live in Mountain Time.

      It's like they had no concept of time zones.

      "Your interview is at 1 PM."

      "Okay, is that my time, your time or the interviewer's time?"

      He seemed annoyed that I asked. Shouldn't it have been obvious? I'm curious what time zone others would guess was right if faced with that.

  6. Re:EU law by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    It's harmonised to make trade easier. All countries charge on the same day, although they still have their own timezones.

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  7. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, what you're saying is that your employer doesn't realize that "4PM with daylight savings time" and "5PM with daylight savings time" are the exact same time?

    I don't think "because people are complete and utter morons" is a good reason to keep doing DST.

    --

    How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
  8. Clearly what we need is a compromise by lazlo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's my proposed compromise: Keep the "fall back", but get rid of the "spring forward". Sure, it might take some getting used to, but I'm sure we'd manage it sometime over the next 24 years or so.

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  9. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ah, so the old "it doesn't matter if the official time moves around, everyone will just have different office hours during daylight savings time, all move in unison (as companies have to work together) change signs/automated messages/websites and have Google recrawl the web" answer that ignores that the way we coordinate changes like that is... by having customary start/end times for businesses and shifting the clocks until we like where we end up.

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  10. Re:Daylight Saving Time in the USA by jensend · · Score: 2

    Gee, why not go on quadruple savings time then? You can have the sun out until 1AM!!

    Or you could simply admit that DST is just a silly attempt at self-deception to get ourselves to do things earlier. If we want to do things in the sun after work, we need to go to work early and get out of work early. Lying to ourselves about the time is one of the most ridiculous ways imaginable to try to do this.

    12 noon should be left as close as possible to true solar noon.

    In future years, the idea that the government mandated that people lie to themselves about the time will seem as bizarre as the strangest medieval legal customs seem to us today.

  11. Re:Reaction from most slashdot readers by quenda · · Score: 2

    If you think slashdot readers are especially stupid (a not unreasonable observation) you have not had much contact with the broader population.

  12. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 2

    I don't like shifting the clocks. I'm responding (in a hypersarcastic tone) to your dumb idea that 5pm DST = 4pm non-DST is relevant, when I'm talking about people working until 5, and the sun going down at 5:15, as though people will all univerally adjust their hours to make sense.

    By all means, let's choose one time that works. I don't see why we wouldn't. But it has to take into account that most people will work 9-5, whenever we decide that the clocks should read 9-5. So it fucking matters.

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  13. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    79% of europeans don't like adjusting their clocks twice a year. That's not the same as 79% of europeans want to stay on standard time year round. The article doesn't say if people prefer DST year round or Standard Time year round.

  14. Get rid of wintertime, then by johannesg · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I find summertime to be much more pleasant anyway. But joke's on them: after the last switch to wintertime I never changed my hours. So now I go to work at 7:30, instead of 8:30. Sure, it's still dark, but at least I get to go home in daylight... Unlike the official time zone, which would have me arrive in the office and go home in the dark.

  15. Re:Reaction from most slashdot readers by johannesg · · Score: 2

    Shows what you know then. They only have the hottest women of all of Europe.

  16. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by Imrik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about we get rid of the notion that people work 9-5 while we're at it. This would help reduce congestion on the roads and make it more likely that people will be able to take care of errands before or after work instead of having to use their lunch break.

  17. Policies should be based on evidence by peppepz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There are many things that "people" find annoying, and would probably be overwhelming against them in opinion polls: paying taxes certainly, but also dying in car accidents because of working in the dark. Decisions shouldn't be taken by the people's belly; they should be based on rational evidence.

  18. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Funny

    OR we could have everyone keep time on their phones and have the phones automatically change the time by a few seconds every day!

    This is probably my greatest idea ever.

    Please don't tell us any of your other ideas.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  19. Re: EU law by aix+tom · · Score: 2

    At least that should be made simple by software. The meeting time should be UTC in the database, and both the client making, and the client receiving the meeting data should handle the conversions.

    On the other hand, the synchronisation between Outlook and Sharepoint doesn's even handle DST correctly. When we tried that, our team birthdays wound up being from 23:00 to 23:00 in one half of a year.

  20. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by markdavis · · Score: 2

    >"Daylight Saving Time is a great idea. Ditching it in the winter is the problem. Just keep it year round and eliminate the stupid changing."

    +1000

    This. It should just never stop being summer time. Problem solved.

  21. Re:Eliminate Daylight Wasting Time by djinn6 · · Score: 2

    But stores have opening hours, public transport runs on a schedule, nurses work shifts, in all sorts of production facilities you need a whole staff to run the machinery. Or they're done just in time, like when a bakery makes fresh bread or you order a pizza.

    Literally none of those operate on a 9-5 schedule! My local bakery opens from 8 AM to 8 PM. The light rail runs from 5 AM to 1 AM the next day. The hospital opens 24/7 so it literally doesn't matter when their shifts change.

    Yes, the whole staff need to get there at the same time, but it really doesn't matter whether other businesses operate with the exact same schedule. In fact, most don't!