EU Parliament Votes To End Daylight Savings (dw.com)

The European Parliament on Tuesday voted with a large majority to end daylight savings time in the EU by 2021. From a report: Under the proposals, each member state would decide whether to continue with twice-a-year clock changes or stick permanently to summer or winter time. All 28 member states would need to inform the European Commission of their choice ahead of the proposed switch, by April 2020. They would then coordinate with the bloc's executive so that their decisions do not disrupt the functioning of the single market.

Comments

Yay but nay

[bjoeg]

So we might finally end this, but only repeat history and head back into the chaos.
One Thing was that DST was created to save energy, but was not adopted by all countries in the beginning. It was only back in 1996 whole of EU got DST standardized so all member would change clocks on the same dates.

But now we are heading back into the chaos, where each member can decide which ever time they will implement. So we are back to pre-1996.

Re:Yay but nay

[Shaitan]

Yes, get rid of daylight savings by all means but whatever the choice is make it uniform!

Re:Yay but nay

[angel'o'sphere]

The EU is to big to have on timezone, if you mean that with "uniform".

Re:Yay but nay

[religionofpeas]

The EU is to big to have on timezone

Right, but they can be told to stay on winter time, which makes the most sense for a large part of the central european timezone.

Re:Yay but nay

[dunkelfalke]

They tried though, with the Central European Time zone, which is, indeed, too large - France and Spain should be in the Western European Time zone.

Re:Yay but nay

[Sique]

It does make sense. The idea was to optimize the daily schedule so most work will be done during daylight. But as it gets hot in summer, it was necessary to rest a little in the afternoon, and continue to work afterwards, extending the schedule for one or two hours. In winter, you don't need to avoid the heat in the afternoon, but as it gets dark early, extending the work schedule too late doesn't make sense.

Re:Yay but nay

[dfn5]

The EU is to big to have on timezone, if you mean that with "uniform".

Earth Standard Time. One time zone.

Re:Yay but nay

[Chris Mattern]

Earth Standard Time. One time zone.

Can't make that work. Unless you can persuade some people to be fine with the fact that it will be twelve noon and pitch black outside for them.

Re:Yay but nay

[Jason Levine]

We basically have that with Coortinated Universal Time (UTC). The problem is that, were I to follow this time, I'd be getting up at 1am local time (6am UTC), working from 3am to 11am local time (8am to 4pm UTC), and going to sleep at 6pm local time (11pm UTC). As sunrise tends to be at around 6:30am local time, my day would be a third over before the sun even rose.

You're not going to convince many people to follow this schedule.

Re:Yay but nay

[rossdee]

It may have made sense in the past, when lighting was the main use of electricity.
Nowdays with efficient LAD and fluorescent lights and many more uses for electric power, it doesn't save anything.

And you can add in the fact that a lesser proportion of the people these days work 9-5

Re:Yay but nay

[Wycliffe]

Time zones make sense as you don't want my clock to be 5 minutes different than your time but the time itself should be set based on some concept of sunrise, sunset, or high noon. What you are really asking is "what time of day is it in X?" or even "will so-in-so be awake / at work?" If we just set people's timezone where 7am is always the approximate time of sunrise then this would answer this question fine and businesses can set schedules appropriately. Many businesses already have summer and winter hours so daylight savings time does nothing but complicates the communication.

The different lengths of days doesn't really matter that much either as people still tend to be awake for the same number of hours regardless of season and if we are talking international, Australia has short days during the same time that Europe has long days. Better to just pick the timezone where your true sunrise is the closest to 7am and be done with it.

Re:Yay but nay

[religionofpeas]

Using UTC doesn't fix anything, because everybody will still have totally different schedules and office hours. And without official timezones, every business can decide for itself, which will cause a lot more confusion and chaos.

Re:Yay but nay

[Chris Mattern]

I bet those Swedes and Finns living high up in the north would find that highly unusual.

Not much you can do about it when daylight is only a couple of hours long.

Only a handful of people live where such conditions apply. There's a reason for that. Good luck imposing those conditions on people who never agreed to live under them.

Re:Yay but nay

[gizmo71]

The problem is not the times you do stuff - it's that for half the worl, the date would suddenly change in the middle of the day. "It's my birthday! But only from 1pm today to 1pm the next day" fails a basic sanity check - the notion of 'today' becomes bunk.

Re:Yay but nay

[msauve]

"The problem is that, were I to follow this time, I'd be getting up at 1am local time (6am UTC), working from 3am to 11am local time (8am to 4pm UTC), and going to sleep at 6pm local time (11pm UTC). "

You're obviously not clear on the concept. If you currently work 8-16 local time, which is offset -5 from UTC, a change to UTC simply means you would work 13-20 UTC.

How can you possibly argue that you'd work 8-16 UTC when you don't now?

Re:Yay but nay

[houghi]

That would be a bad idea economically. Gaving different timezones between France and Belgium or Germany would not be a good thing.

For me the timezones should be:
Ireland, UK, Spain and Portugal

The rest of Westen Europe.

The rest of eastern Europe.

Just because the imaginary hour lines are deviding France and Belgium/Netherlands does not mean we can not move that imaginary line.

Stop thinking that we somehow need to regulate our clocks to that yellow thing. We are long way past that. Look at what makes the most sense economically and politically.

Now if Spain decides to take the same time as France, so should Portugal. And I do not care if this is wintertime, summertime or a whole new time.

Re:Yay but nay

[houghi]

And you can add in the fact that a lesser proportion of the people these days work 9-5

In Spain, almost nobody does, as their office hours are more like 10-14 and 17-20, or something like that.

And not only do you have the east-west issue where time changes. There is also the north-south issue where in the south the differences are not as great from winter to summer as it is in the north.

In Stockholm, summer days are way much longer light than Madrid or Rome. opposite in the winter.

Re:Yay but nay

[Shaitan]

Why not? It's just a number. Everyone just switch to a 24hr UTC clock... it isn't like you don't have the existing offsets as a guide to get started. It would be an annoying transition but it is still consistent from day to day so you'd adjust pretty quickly.

There are advantages and downsides but the advantages of all having the same clock are pretty substantial especially given how globally connected everyone is. Arranging a meeting with someone in the UK or France? You just set a time and everyone will automatically know if its a reasonable hour. No more missed meetings improper timing because of timezone conversion, no more ambiguity about which time zone was meant when someone says "we'll meet back up at 5 tomorrow"

Re:Yay but nay

[lgw]

How ironic, since this area of the world is where we find the Coordinated Universal Time zone, also known as Zulu time.

"Zulu time"? Thas raysis! Surely for this politically correct world we need to abbreviate Coordinated UNiversal Time with an acronym, instead!

Re:Yay but nay

[Shaitan]

Uniform, as in a single election for all 28 members, either use daylight savings or don't and whether to use winter or summer time. Otherwise you'll have some which stick with daylight savings and some who don't and possibly inconsistency with regard to winter or summer time.

That said, switching everyone (globally) over to a 24hr UTC clock and getting over mental hangups about sucking up the minor adjustment of what "morning" means for you would be much better overall. You know what is much better than being able to determine what time is morning for someone when setting a meeting? Instantly knowing what time someone is talking about when they propose one, with no ambiguity, ever and intuitively know how early or late that will be for you. People can give instant feedback and nobody ever makes an error or is confused about what time an event is supposed to occur.

Re: Yay but nay

[c6gunner]

If we are going to move to just one time coordinate, I would seriously hope we would get rid of that am/pm bullshit too. A 24 hour clock is way more logical than two 12 hour clocks.

Re:Yay but nay

[bob4u2c]

but the time itself should be set based on some concept of sunrise, sunset, or high noon.

But that is exactly the problem. Unless you live exactly on the equator the sun doesn't rise/set at the same time each day. For example where I live we are now heading into spring/summer, so the sun comes up about 1 minute earlier than the day before. After a month, sun rise is a whole 30 minutes ahead. By the time this pattern shifts and I start loosing a minute (when heading into fall and winter) the sun is coming up at least an hour and a half earlier than it did before. So unless you reset your clock every morning, your hosed. Let's not even get started how you would make this work for business. You would need logic to add/subtract a minute each day to find out how many hours have passed since some event. And then based upon your location, it isn't even a minute, it could be more, it could be less. The math hurts my head just thinking about it.

You want a real solution, wake up and realize the sun does not revolve around you! A 24 hour day is based on how long it takes the earth to turn one full revolution. This has nothing to do with the sun, so stop basing the whole thing on the sun. Instead, pick some point, GMT is fine with me. Call that 0:00 when the sun first rises on January 1st at that point. All times in the world would then use that as the same starting point, all areas in the world would have the exact same time, no time zones.

Now that means your whole concept of I get up at 7:00 when the sun rises and go to bed at 10:00 when the sun goes down is shot. Depending upon where you are on the earth the sun may come up at 3:00, it may come up at 14:00, who cares its just a number. Your employer sets the work day, and if you work from 4:00 to 13:00 in one place thats fine; in another it may be that you work from 15:00 to 0:00, those are just numbers and you don't need an act from congress (or the EU) to change it. If your employer wants to shift the time you start in the summer or winter, again they can do so.

No daylight savings, no timezones! Next we need to tackle this whole year thing or we will never make it off this rock and our limited understanding of time!

Re:Yay but nay

[Shaitan]

You do know the clock is just a coordinated number and it doesn't actually impact the number of hours of light? If you go to work at 8am now and the clock changes to something else, you'll still go to work, sleep, eat meals, etc at the same points in your local sun cycle. If we adapted EST from 24hr UTC you'd just apply your current offset to find the new times and work from there. Nothing would change but the number on the display. You could use your existing alarm clock without change to wake up for work each day (as long as you didn't adjust it for daylight savings) because even though it shows the wrong number, it will continue to happen at the right time.

The difference is that when you communicate that start time to someone on the other side of the globe, they automatically know what time you mean and what that means relative to their own schedule.

Re:Yay but nay

[Shaitan]

"We basically have that with Coortinated Universal Time (UTC). The problem is that, were I to follow this time, I'd be getting up at 1am local time (6am UTC), working from 3am to 11am local time (8am to 4pm UTC), and going to sleep at 6pm local time (11pm UTC). As sunrise tends to be at around 6:30am local time, my day would be a third over before the sun even rose.

You're not going to convince many people to follow this schedule."

Why would you do that? Since you get up at 6am now in your example with a -5 offset you'd get up at 11:00 UTC, you'd work from 13:00 UTC to 21:00 UTC, etc. You'd still get up and go to work and do everything else at the same time of day, and that time would still be different than people in other timezones. You'd actually drop the nonsensical am/pm and go to a 24hr clock and people in different timezones would have the same number on their clocks as you. So when I set a meeting at 6:00 UTC you'd instantly know that is outside your working and even waking hours and respond accordingly and there would be no ambiguity about what time I meant.

Re:Yay but nay

[religionofpeas]

Stop thinking that we somehow need to regulate our clocks to that yellow thing

Right, we should all work 9-5 on UTC time, and if that means you work and play in the dark, and go to sleep in the light, so be it. Stop thinking that you need the sun to enjoy a nice day on the beach, or a hike in the mountains, when you can simply bring some flashlights with you.

Re:Yay but nay

[religionofpeas]

No more missed meetings improper timing because of timezone conversion

But instead you'll have missed meeting because you scheduled it at a time the other party wasn't in the office.

Re: Yay but nay

[Shaitan]

Yes, and the same would be true if we globally all agreed to just use a 24hr UTC standard. I don't know why people have a hard time seeing that they will more or less be doing things at the same time of day as now and the only thing being discussed is what number a clock should display when they do it.

With everything more and more globally connected, especially business, it would be a huge benefit to automatically all know what time an event set for 08:00 is, regardless of where we happen to be located.

Re:Yay but nay

[gmack]

Keep in mind that Spain is entirely in the wrong timezone It is south of the UK so it should be on the same timezone as the UK but instead it's on Central European time so 10-18 is actually 9-17. Also it's mainly only government offices that take 3h lunch breaks. At least in the Madrid area, the people who actually work for a living mainly get a 1h lunch break.

Re:Yay but nay

[Lothsahn]

Why must it be this way? What if we all just used one of the timezones (say, GMT), and I knew that the sun rose at approximately 2am instead of 7am? "Standard" working hours could be 4am-12pm in my region, instead of 9-5.

Then we'd all know what time it was everywhere. No need to convert. If we actually needed information like "what time is dinner, what time do you start work, etc", we could just ask those questions.

#NoDST #NoTimezones

Re:Yay but nay

[sjames]

We already have a standard for specifying a time in absolute terms. Just use it when scheduling an event across time zones and all is well. No need for anyone to change their clocks or anything. If you're unsure if someone might be in a different time zone or observe summer time differently, use parentheses. For example, conference call is at 1:45 P.M. ( 17:45 UTC).

And nobody had to change a clock or anything.

Re: Yay but nay

[Miamicanes]

Technically, GMT is NOT the same as UTC. There are actually three different standards... GMT, UTC, and TAI.

They differ because the precise length of an orbital & rotational year is neither 100% consistent nor predictable.

GMT is defined by solar noon at the Greenwich Observatory in London. If observation reveals that we've wobbled by a few milliseconds, GMT changes to reflect that. It sounds nice in theory, but 99.999% of use cases honestly don't give a fuck whether solar noon at Greenwich happens a few hundred milliseconds (or entire seconds) early or late.

TAI is kind of like Unix time, except it has much greater precision. It defines a second as a precise number of cesium-137 decay periods, a year as a precise number of seconds, and counts both as an offset from its starting point. TAI currently deviates from GMT by ~32 seconds.

UTC was envisioned as a compromise between GMT and TAI. It adds and removes seconds to ensure that UTC's noon falls within a half second of Greenwich solar noon. It's also a royal pain in the ass to deal with, because unlike TAI, UTC is a historical moving target. 9:47:42 July 18, 1997 UTC is NOT precisely 8 years before 9:47:42 July 18, 2005 UTC (even accounting for leap year gymnastics), because a couple of seconds were added as well

UTC makes a mess of things like timestamped logs, the same way DST does... but worse, because most people using UTC for timestamps are doing it PRECISELY to avoid the DST timestamp problem, and have no idea that "leap seconds" even EXIST until the first time they get burned by it.

UTC-vs-TAI was exacerbated by the sudden popularity of using internet time protocol (NTP) to automatically set clocks on computers. In the past, people set the time, and let it go until they manually updated it at their own convenience. Leap seconds were rare to begin with during that era, and a second or two gain or loss when the computer got rebooted was lost in the greater disruption of the reboot itself.

Fast forward to sometime around 2006, when UTC-via-NTP had become commonplace, and a leap second occurred, Linux computers all automatically observed it, and all hell broke loose when software that assumed that "UTC" behaved like TAI found itself with 2 seconds' worth of logged activity bearing the same timestamp (and often, undefined weirdness if computations involving milliseconds were involved on computers that did 64-bit timekeeping).

As I understand the "Linux" problem, programmers want TAI-like behavior, but POSIX compliance explicitly requires UTC... switching Linux to TAI would require changes to POSIX to allow timestamps to unambiguously indicate whether they're UTC or TAI, and the current 32-second difference is too big to just sweep under a rug and ignore. So instead, we have a complicated system where computers use NTP to sync up to TAI, then the OS converts TAI to UTC and adds/removes leap seconds before exposing it as the leap-second-mangled offset from midnight January 1, 1970 for consumption by programs that don't actually CARE about the precise moment of solar noon @ Greenwich.

The proposed solution is almost worse... ending leap seconds in UTC (to avoid rewriting POSIX & everything it dictates, causing YEARS of insidious bugs in the process), and inventing a FOURTH standard to do what UTC currently does & keep astronomers happy.

Compounding matters even more is disagreement about how to handle the leap seconds we already have. If UTC retroactively wipes them out, we're back to the problem of ambiguity with "UTC" timestamps between the 1980s and present... no way to indicate whether it's a "legacy" UTC timestamp or a "revised" one. If it doesn't, we'll still have to deal with those legacy timestamps in perpetuity.

The net result is that we're likely stuck with UTC and dealing with leap seconds in Linux for at least another decade or two. My guess is that POSIX will be left alone, UTC will eventually stop adding leap seconds (but leave the existing ones as-is), and they'll come up with a new standard for Astronomers to take the place of UTC.

Re:Yay but nay

[Lothsahn]

Or we could just share one timezone and have different work times than 9-5 UTC?

Why MUST work start at 9 and end at 5?

Re:Yay but nay

[Solandri]

If we just set people's timezone where 7am is always the approximate time of sunrise then this would answer this question fine and businesses can set schedules appropriately.

That is the fundamental problem. People want 7 am to match with sunrise year-round. But it's impossible to do that astronomically. There's no way to maintain sunrise at 7 am, and simultaneously have 24 hour days. The time of sunrise varies with your latitude, and with the time of year (and to a smaller extent, with your longitude within your time zone). So trying to maintain sunrise at close to the same time requires your day length to deviate from 24 hours. That's what the clock change for DST does - we make one day 23 hours, and another day 6 months later 25 hours.

The only astronomical constant is noon (and midnight but that's harder to tell). You can set noon to be when the sun is exactly in the middle of its travel through the sky, and that noon will remain constant year-round with 24 hour days. During the year, the day gets longer or shorter symmetrically around noon. During the Spring and Fall equinoxes, the day is noon +/- 6 hours everywhere. During summer they day is noon +/- more than 6 hours. It reaches its maximum length on the Summer solstice. During winter it's noon +/- fewer than 6 hours. It reaches its minimum length during the Winter solstice. The exact +/- hours depends on your latitude.

Because the length of the day varies with your latitude and time of year, it is futile to try to synchronize global times with sunrise. A winter time-shift which works for one latitude only works for that one latitude - it does not work for any other latitude. The only solution that makes sense is to keep noon at 12:00, and to have each locale vary their business/school hours depending on time of year. If you live near the equator where sunrise is always around 6 am, then you can just have the start of business/school be 7 am year-round. If you live at a high latitude where the sunrise is 3 am in summer, 9 am in winter, then you can adjust your business start hours accordingly through the year to keep it synchronized with your local sunrise. Forcing everyone else at different latitudes to change their clocks to match your local sunrise is stupid.

Re:Yay but nay

[Gavagai80]

If you don't ask when they're in the office, your meeting is going to fail anyway. You don't know when they start and stop work, and you don't know when they take their lunch hour, whether they're across the street or across the globe.

Re:Yay but nay

[Gavagai80]

And without official timezones, every business can decide for itself, which will cause a lot more confusion and chaos.

If you were right, it would cause the end of all rush hour traffic congestion, which would be wonderful.

But back in the real world, most businesses are going to set their hours to be daylight hours since that's when their customers and employees will want to be awake. And back in the real world every business already decides for themselves what their hours are. Many people start work at 7, 8, 9am with no real dominant standard starting time. People talk as "9 to 5" were a standard, but the mean work start time is actually 8:18 (in USA+Europe, source). Which is why it's really more like rush 3 hours instead of rush hour. Clock time really has zilch current influence on when employers set their working hours right now, it would not change if we went to UTC.

Re:Yay but nay

[dunkelfalke]

A difference of one hour is not a big deal. And circadian rhythms are a thing until brain uploading is invented so we are definitely not past that.

Re: Yay but nay

[Mspangler]

Because you want to know if the Sales department of Company B is open. So everyone in the same area has to be keeping reasonably close to the same hours. I'll wait an hour for you to open, but not four.

Re:Yay but nay

[Calydor]

The problem with that is that we don't go to bed and wake up at equal times before and after noon.

Re:Yay but nay

[Calydor]

Yeah, let's abolish time zones so we have no way of knowing whether the guys in the offices in California, New York, London, and Tokyo are at work or not! That will fix ALL the chaos in our global community!

Re:Yay but nay

[Chris Mattern]

We are just so habitual.

Yes, we are. And this habit is so ingrained, and so baked into all our systems, that it's not going to be changed. The majority of people's work days are going to start at 9 AM, even when that means that 9 AM can't be the same moment in time across the globe.

Re:Yay but nay

[bob4u2c]

California, New York, London, and Tokyo are at work or not!

Each office has posted hours, those hours would be the same as the ones on your watch, no matter where you were in the world. No more having to think, well it's 5:00pm here in California right now, so that's -7GMT (standard time zone rules apply, -8GMT a month ago), Tokyo is +9GMT, so that means Tokyo is 16 hours ahead. 5:00pm is really 17:00; and 17:00 + 16 hours = 33:00; 33:00 is tomorrow; so subtract 24:00 to get 9:00. So it's 9:00am tomorrow in Tokyo, so yes they probably just opened there because I know they open around 8:00am Tokyo time.

Using one timezone the calculation would be like this: business hours in Tokyo are posted from 11:00pm to 8:00am UTC. I'm in California and my watch says its 12:00pm, yep they are open. The "in California" part is a trick question, because it would also be 12:00pm in NY, London, everywhere, no conversion needed. You just need to look up the business hours and call during that time. Take a flight somewhere, get off the plane, your watch is right. Amazing!

Will it take some adjustment, yes.

Re:Yay but nay

[Ol Olsoc]

So we might finally end this, but only repeat history and head back into the chaos.

Au contraire! I have it on good authority from Slashdotters near and far that the only ill effect of the switch is that so few people will die, overpopulation is inevitable.

Personally, I hope that each country adopts a different time, and we can sit back and watch that chaos. Popcorn will be my treat

Re:Yay but nay

[Ol Olsoc]

Time zones make sense as you don't want my clock to be 5 minutes different than your time but the time itself should be set based on some concept of sunrise, sunset, or high noon. What you are really asking is "what time of day is it in X?" or even "will so-in-so be awake / at work?" If we just set people's timezone where 7am is always the approximate time of sunrise then this would answer this question fine and businesses can set schedules appropriately. Many businesses already have summer and winter hours so daylight savings time does nothing but complicates the communication.

So if I want to know what time it is in Australia, all I have to do is call someone there and ask if the sun is up.

And Why don't you check with the higher latitudes and tell them that 7 A.M. is their average sunrise? Or is your world one where you only do business with peopel 100 miles away or less? Has Slashdot gone over to the flat earthers?

Re:Yay but nay

[Ol Olsoc]

but the time itself should be set based on some concept of sunrise, sunset, or high noon.

But that is exactly the problem. Unless you live exactly on the equator the sun doesn't rise/set at the same time each day.

I think most slashdotters don't really care, because what is Sunset and Sunrise when you are living in Mom's basement?

Re:Yay but nay

[Ol Olsoc]

Each office has posted hours, those hours would be the same as the ones on your watch, no matter where you were in the world. No more having to think, well it's 5:00pm here in California right now, so that's -7GMT (standard time zone rules apply, -8GMT a month ago), Tokyo is +9GMT, so that means Tokyo is 16 hours ahead. 5:00pm is really 17:00; and 17:00 + 16 hours = 33:00; 33:00 is tomorrow; so subtract 24:00 to get 9:00. So it's 9:00am tomorrow in Tokyo, so yes they probably just opened there because I know they open around 8:00am Tokyo time.

So you do a double conversion, where one moment you have to think about what time the sun rises, then next you have to GMt time and compare the two.

Dayum - how is your plan for the higher latitudes going to work out? Some days you can't call bewcause the sun never comes up, and others it si daylight 24/7, so you can call any time. And constantly changing, you'll hhave to look up the sunrise sunset tables for any place.

But then I guess the earth is flat, and all of these differences are just some liberal world domination scheme.

Will it take some adjustment, yes.

So does hanging, but after a while you get used to it.

Re:Yay but nay

[Cro Magnon]

My birthday would begin about when I get home from work. I could celebrate at home, sleep, go to work and enjoy a birthday lunch at work.

Re:Yay but nay

[turbidostato]

"Yeah, let's abolish time zones so we have no way of knowing whether the guys in the offices in California, New York, London, and Tokyo are at work or not! That will fix ALL the chaos in our global community!"

I live in Spain, and I've worked at the same time with people in India and Americas. The way to know if my colleagues were working or not has always been the same: ask. It is not only that I should memorize (or look at) about five different timezones but also that the job schedules were not the same: some guys at Argentina went 8AM to 17PM, USA, West Coast, 9-5; Chennai... well, I never knew their exact schedule: some days seemed to work 24 hour, some others, you couldn't find them but at our daily meeting 15:00 Madrid time... and add too that from time to time our shared calendars acted funny with regards to time conversions...

So, yes, having just one timezone would have made things easier: I still would have to ask when they were working, but at least I wouldn't have to deal with translating their local-time answer to my local time request: if they'd say they were working 18-2, I would just have to look at my watch to understand what they meant.

Re:Yay but nay

[turbidostato]

"Can't make that work. Unless you can persuade some people to be fine with the fact that it will be twelve noon and pitch black outside for them."

Just tell them is not twelve noon anymore but 19 noon, seven hours more noon than ever. Problem ended.

Re: Yay but nay

[tsqr]

I don't know why people have a hard time...

I have a feeling you don't know very many people. People are creatures of habit. People loathe change. People think that the way they do things is the best way. People think that the way they think things should work is the best way things could possibly work, and they can't figure out why other people have a hard time agreeing with them. People think that people who don't think like they do, have something wrong with them. People who have serious things wrong with them think they're perfectly fine, and that other people should be like them in every way.

Re:Yay but nay

[Shaitan]

Generally there is some sort of communication to work out the time of a meeting. I can't just assume the hours of a guy in India who might work the night shift anyway. Now if I'm on the phone with a couple guys in brazil and a couple more in India, when someone proposes a time everyone has to go and start trying to convert it to figure out if that will work for them. Or they trust he is being considerate and don't figure out until later they got screwed. They also might screw up the conversion and make a mistake agreeing to it.

If everyone uses the same clock, they are on the same page about what time is being proposed immediately and can respond immediately.

Re:Yay but nay

[mutantSushi]

Where is the 'return to chaos'?
I believe only change is EU previously mandated yearly time change, and now mandates constant year-round time.
No independent choice of whether and when to semi-annualy switch time. So not "pre-1996" in any way.

The framing of discourse focuses on countries choosing 'permanent summer time' or 'permanent winter time''.
Whose results are functionally indistinguishable from the results of a choice of time zone.
Which EU countries (as others) have always reserved for own independent designation, with only summer/winter shift mandated by EU.

In fact the prompted 'choice of summer/winter time' can easily be used to 'adjust' time zone boundaries,
i.e. return to 'natural' (longitude) West European Time for Spain, France, Benelux as opposed to "Nazi Time" CET.
Or not, if effective time zone designation is not given attention to in favor of arbitrary cultural sunlight-clock preferences
(which by now have long been built around a very distorted-from-longitudinal norm clock time, particularly in case of Spain)
it is equally possible to have random patchwork of effective national time zones without longitudinal coherency.
But that isn't a change from status quo as EU countries have always been free to designate time zone irrespective of neighbors.

But 'paying attention to details' probably isn't quite as exciting in Hollywood thriller sort of way as 'head back into the chaos'. Alas.

Re:Yay but nay

[mutantSushi]

I realized the original article wording is inaccurate and misleads posters to believe the proposal allows for individual countries to continue seasonal time changes.
In fact, the proposal absolutely ends seasonal time changes, and the only choice for each country is 'permanent summer' or 'permanent winter'
(which amount to choices of time zone, which was always within remit of countries to individually choose in the first place)

Here I include excerpts of the actual text adopted by EP... (full link here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...)

P8_TA-PROV(2019)0225 Discontinuing seasonal changes of time***I European Parliament legislative resolution of 26 March 2019 on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council discontinuing seasonal changes of time and repealing Directive 2000/84/EC (COM(2018)0639 –C8-0408/2018 –2018/0332(COD))

since the introduction of summer-time there have been several initiatives that aimed to discontinue the practice. Some Member States have held national consultations and a majority of businesses and stakeholders have supported the discontinuation of the practice. The consultation initiated by the European Commission has come to the same conclusion.

  it is necessary to put an end to the harmonisation of the period covered by summer-time arrangements as laid down in Directive 2000/84/EC and to introduce common rules preventing Member States from applying different seasonal time arrangements by changing their standard time more than once during the year.

The decision on which standard time to apply in each Member State needs to be preceded by consultations and studies which would take into account citizens’ preferences, geographical variations, regional differences, standard working arrangements and other factors relevant for the particular Member State.

Re:Yay but nay

[angel'o'sphere]

It is convenient to know that the sun rises around 6:00 and sets around 18:00 and is at its zenith is around 12:00.

For people who actually have to deal with other people in other timezones it is rather easy ... unfortunately there is no "contacts" App that shows the local time of your contacts. That would be helpful.

Re:Yay but nay

[angel'o'sphere]

If everyone uses the same clock, they are on the same page about what time is being proposed immediately and can respond immediately.
People who have that "problem" are actually using a reference time, and that is GMT. For that you do not need a worldwide unified time.

Re: Yay but nay

[angel'o'sphere]

Nearly every country on the world uses a 24h clock ... go figure :P

Re:Yay but nay

[angel'o'sphere]

Instantly knowing what time someone is talking about when they propose one, with no ambiguity, ever and intuitively know how early or late that will be for you.
Do you actually know people who have that problem?

I don't.

There are two kinds of people:
a) people who have to talk regularly with people on the other side of the planet, and those have no problem with "time" - probably less than 1% of the planets population
b) the other kind of people, does not talk regularly with people on the other side of the planet, hence they don't have that problem either

On the other hand, I'm a sailor ... hobbyist obviously ... and I can simply *guess* time on basically every spot in the plant by knowing the rough longitude.

Re:Yay but nay

[mutantSushi]

Cool story.

But what is actually happening is no countries are being "told by the unelected EU bureaucrats what to do".
The topic of the story is in fact a VOTE OF ELECTED EU Parliament.
The result of the vote is seasonal time change is ended across EU, as massively supported by polls across the EU:
I believe only Cyprus and Greece barely failed to have majority support for it with basically every other country polling at ~85% support for it.
Poll Result (Graph): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/reso...
But each country gets to choose what time zone to keep and thus whether or not to apply the last seasonal time change in 2021
i.e. 'permanent summer time' or 'permanent standard time' (although these are indistinguishable from time zones per se).

But don't let me get in your way of invoking A COMMENT ON SLASHDOT as "the reason for Brexit". I didn't know /. was so important really.

Re:Yay but nay

[angel'o'sphere]

For every outside restaurant it is a _huge_ difference.

Re:Yay but nay

[mutantSushi]

Do you have book or paper to reference the negative economic and political effects of Spain/France/Benelux being in different time zone from Germany preceding Nazi era? Or the current negative effects of Spain and Portugal being on different time zones? Or the different time zones of American states, or Russian regions etc? As long as there is no variance in off-set (e.g. due to different application/dates of season time change) then it is a simple +1 adjustment. Countries within CET already tend to have different official business hours despite sharing same time zone. Even within a country different businesses will have different operating hours to suit their purpose. How does reverting to pre-Nazi-era West European Time actually constitute economic and political damage given that?

Re:Yay but nay

[angel'o'sphere]

At least in the Madrid area, the people who actually work for a living mainly get a 1h lunch break.
In offices where it is "relevant" ... where it is not "relevant" people don't take a 3h lunch break but a 3h siesta, that means: a real break and dozing/sleeping.

Not everyone works in an office anyway ... try to bring your car to a mechanics around 13:00 ... good luck. The only business that is definitely open between 11:00 - 15:00 are restaurants and similar and big shopping malls like El Corte Ingles.

Re:Yay but nay

[angel'o'sphere]

You forgot to make the year a 100 day thing, and a day a 100 hours thing (or do you prefer 10?) and an hour a 100 minutes thing.

But then again you need to change the size of the circle from 360 degrees too ... uh, i don't know how do we get it back into synch with a 100 day year ... have to do the math later.

Anyway: navigation on this planet is based on a 360 degrees system (in case you don't know why ... think a bit). We use the sun + a clock for reference (and if needed stars) to pinpoint our position (in space and time).

All the suggestions to have a single time zone are just nonsense. Brought up by idiots who are to stupid to realize that Bangkok is +6h of during winter time, and +5h off during summer time. Wow, and that is so simple. The fundamental problem: which time does my GF get out of bed, does not change at all if we had the same timezone. She will get out of bed +6h or +5h ... always! Regardless if we have the same timezone or not.

Re:Yay but nay

[mjwx]

Keep in mind that Spain is entirely in the wrong timezone It is south of the UK so it should be on the same timezone as the UK but instead it's on Central European time so 10-18 is actually 9-17. Also it's mainly only government offices that take 3h lunch breaks. At least in the Madrid area, the people who actually work for a living mainly get a 1h lunch break.

Keep in mind that many posters here on Slashdot are Americans and a 1 hour lunch break is wanton profligacy to American employers.

The reason behind the tradition of a Siesta is that it was during the warmest part of the day, with modern climate controlled offices this is less of an issue. Often afterwards they'd keep working into the evening, thus a lot of Spanish influenced cultures like South America still have their evening meals later (as in 9 or 10 PM later) even though they've adopted Anglo-American 9 to 5 working hours (well, 9 to 5 ish).

Re:Yay but nay

[strikethree]

"It's my birthday! But only from 1pm today to 1pm the next day" fails a basic sanity check - the notion of 'today' becomes bunk.

But, how does changing the clocks by an hour twice a year solve that issue? Or, are you conflating two separate issues for nefarious purposes (purposeful ignorance)?

Re: Yay but nay

[houghi]

Yeah, like banks who are open when everybody is at work. Or stores, so everybody has to go on saturday when everybody goes.

Re: Yay but nay

[Lothsahn]

You missed my point. Everyone in the same area could work at the same time, it just wouldn't have to be 9 to 5. It could be 7 to 3, or whatever is appropriate to that region. They would work the same hours as today, but we could just eliminate the timezone and all use one standard one, such as GMT.

Re:Yay but nay

[tehcyder]

as it gets hot in summer, it was necessary to rest a little in the afternoon, and continue to work afterwards, extending the schedule for one or two hours

This does not apply to Central or Northern Europe, only to places like the south of Spain.

Re:Yay but nay

[tehcyder]

Right, but they can be told to

And this, ladies and gentlement, is the reason for Brexit. Some people are getting sick and tired of being told by the unelected EU bureaucrats what to do. Especially after voting against it, like the Dutch and the British.

Found the straight bananas fuckwit.

Re:Yay but nay

[Quirkz]

The only astronomical constant is noon (and midnight but that's harder to tell). You can set noon to be when the sun is exactly in the middle of its travel through the sky, and that noon will remain constant year-round with 24 hour days.

Not with time zones, it isn't. If the zones were totally regular, there'd still be at least an hour of variance. But time zones are irregular, so it's as much as an hour and a half in some places.

Time is a problem any way you slice it.

Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[J. T. MacLeod]

There is a standard, and it's called solar noon. Aim for that, and then adjust your schedule accordingly rather than pretend that the clock must decide your schedule.

States having inconsistent times across longitude (or even incrementing inconsistently across latitude) will be a bigger mess.

Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[gaiageek]

Solar noon in Berlin is 12:11 today. In Madrid, it's 1:20. Currently, Germany and Spain (minus the Canary Islands) share the same time zone, along with most of Western Europe. I'm guessing people would rather keep it that way - and most likely on DST (summer) time. Or they could follow your advice, switch to different time zones just to be aligned with solar noon, and Berliners can start enjoying the morning light at 3 am during mid-summer (sunrise would be at 3:43am without DST).

Re:Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[religionofpeas]

Timezones are pointless, let's all just use UTC.

Anybody who wants to use UTC can already do that. I would highly recommend it for internal events or appointments. It's a shitty idea to force UTC for domestic times, though.

Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[religionofpeas]

I'm guessing people would rather keep it that way - and most likely on DST (summer) time

Permanent DST sucks for Spain in the winter.

Berliners can start enjoying the morning light at 3 am during mid-summer (sunrise would be at 3:43am without DST).

3 am or 4 am sunrise hardly makes a difference if you want to sleep until 7 or 8 am. Get some good curtains if the light bothers you.

Re:Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[religionofpeas]

*international* events.

Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[Chris Mattern]

3 am or 4 am sunrise hardly makes a difference if you want to sleep until 7 or 8 am. Get some good curtains if the light bothers you.

The problem isn't so much that the sunlight interfers with your sleep, as you waste daylight hours asleep and then are active after sunset in the dark. It's better if you get up earlier and have more daylight at the end of the day, hence, daylight savings time. I've particularly noticed this advantage as I've gotten older and my night vision has deteriorated; I very much appreciate having daylight to see by in the evenings.

Re:Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[Chris Mattern]

Timezones are pointless, let's all just use UTC.

Fine. In San Diego at this time of year, it would make sunrise at 1:40 PM and sunset at 4 AM. Good luck talking them into that schedule.

Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[religionofpeas]

The problem isn't so much that the sunlight interfers with your sleep, as you waste daylight hours asleep and then are active after sunset in the dark. It's better if you get up earlier and have more daylight at the end of the day, hence, daylight savings time

I see. In that case, I fully agree. That's why I would prefer to keep what we have now. Reasonable sunrise in the winter, and later sunset in the summer, when the early light is not useful.

Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[dafdaf]

Permanent DST sucks for Spain in the winter.

Agreed. Permanent DST makes no sense.

I always thought Spain would be in WET ? Maybe it's just is in the wrong time zone ? Why not take the opportunity and fix that too by switching from CET to WET and enjoy noon at midday ?

Btw: I just recently had the pleasure to try to fit the tzdata file into an embedded system with 1MB flash. I nearly went crazy sifting through the data. We couldn't do it anyway and had to settle for a compromise.

Every person that has to do with software has to encourage any attempt to get rid of DST switching. Look into the source files at https://www.iana.org/time-zone... and bee blown away. :-)

Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[religionofpeas]

I always thought Spain would be in WET ? Maybe it's just is in the wrong time zone ? Why not take the opportunity and fix that too by switching from CET to WET and enjoy noon at midday ?

That's where it's supposed to be, but I guess they adopted CET for economic reasons, i.e. more overlapping business hours with trade partners.

Re:Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[mrbester]

So, rather than getting rid of changing your clocks twice a year, you advocate changing your clocks every single day?

Hint: look up "analemma". No, not "anal Emma". Unless that's your thing.

Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[Malc]

I would rather see daylight at least once per day in winter: make it double DST please! There's a point as you go further north from London where even this doesn't work though.

Re:Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[lgw]

Why? In a couple of months it will seem normal that that's what the clock reads when you wake up. It's just a number.

Re:Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[sjames]

And they'll argue that what we do now ALREADY seems normal and nobody even has to list a finger!

Re:Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[lgw]

Which is fine, let's just stops changing it every few months when we're just getting used to the new number again!

Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[mobby_6kl]

I always thought Spain would be in WET ? Maybe it's just is in the wrong time zone ? Why not take the opportunity and fix that too by switching from CET to WET and enjoy noon at midday ?

They should be, but some guy named Franco changed it to be the same timezone as Germany in 1941 for some reason.

Re:Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[thegarbz]

and it's called solar noon. Aim for that

Why? What makes your arbitrary choice any better than anyone else's arbitrary choice? Also how many timezones can we split the world by? The sun isn't at its peak at noon here, it is somewhere within our timezone, but not here. So what are the error bars on your arbitrary decision?

and then adjust your schedule accordingly rather than pretend that the clock

You don't live in our reality do you. Or do you understand why the concept of a clock was developed in the first place?

Re:Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[irrational_design]

That's basically what China does. Look at how many timezones are in Russia above China, then look at the one timezone for all of China. Just think about what noon looks like for someone in far west China versus far east China.

Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[lexman098]

I very much appreciate having daylight to see by in the evenings.

The keyword there is "I". Get up earlier if you want, why does the clock have to change?

Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well.

[mutantSushi]

More like political reasons, that originating during Nazi era with CET imposed on France and Benelux, and Franco wanted to join the party.
In fact CET countries don't currently share business hours, these varying from West to East by an hour or more, negating that rationale.
It basically comes down to inertia, which "forced" choice of "permanent summer vs standard time" removes (or at least makes it active choice).

End DST? I think not.

[CrimsonAvenger]

No, allowing each member State to decide whether to have permanent Standard Time, permanent Summer Time, or continue to switch as always is NOT "ending DST".

If you want to end DST, then you need to find a set of choices that does NOT include "change clocks twice a year"....

Why not split the difference?

[pollarda]

It is interesting that you donâ(TM)t see a proposal to split the difference by adjusting our clocks by only 1/2 hour and leaving them there.

Re:Why not split the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to point out that had DST never been invented in the first place, we would have all gone about our lives, never given it a second thought, and lived happily ever after. But because we spent a few decades clinging to this ridiculous practice, now we have a debate.

Re:Why not split the difference?

[twosat]

That's what happened in New Zealand many years ago. "Summer time" was introduced year-round and daylight saving was discontinued for many years. Now, when we are on daylight saving time we are actually 1.5 hours ahead of our solar time. https://www.govt.nz/browse/rec...

Everybody hates it

[spaceyhackerlady]

What problem does it solve? If any? Ditch it and save the time, money and hassle. I've been to places that have better things to worry about. Not just tropical places where the length of the day doesn't vary anyway, but also Arizona (UTC-7 all year) and Saskatchewan (UTC-6 all year).

Everybody hates it. Why is it taking so long?

...laura

Re:Everybody hates it

[Sir_Eptishous]

If we move to permanent DST, my sunrise will be around 10 am in the winter. I'll hate that more than spending a few minutes changing the clocks.

Too fucking bad.
I'll take dark mornings over having my body clock changed twice a year.

Re:Everybody hates it

[thospel]

Not everybody hates it. I for one couldn't care less about the change of time, I don't even notice it. My alarm goes of an hour later or earlier and I just go about my day. It's just because the people for who it is a problem scream so loudly that you think the hate is universal.

But not changing is fine by by me if and only if we then go to permanent DST. I don't want to lose the extra light in the evening and don't care about having to go to work in the dark.

But under no circumstances do I want permanent winter time.

Re:Everybody hates it

[jmauro]

Just contact your reps and let them know you prefer permanent standard time then. It doesn't really matter which just stop changing the time ever 6 to 8 months.

Re:Everybody hates it

[omfglearntoplay]

Really, 1 hour is nothing to adjust to... it takes all of a couple of days if anything. If you think adjusting an hour twice a year is bad, I guess you never travel to another timezone. Nothing is more hellish than being 5+ or 10+ hours off your internal clock, yet people do it frequently and the body will adjust soon enough.

Re:Everybody hates it

[thospel]

Bugs happen all the time. Until you compare this to normal bug rates for other issues and can show a major increase I really don't care. For getting that extra hour in the evening every day I will gladly take the extra risks.

Re:Everybody hates it

[Solandri]

If we move to permanent DST, my sunrise will be around 10 am in the winter.

If you live in a place where you only get 4 hours of sunlight in the winter (noon +/- 2 hours) and you don't want to wake up in the dark, then the correct solution is to adjust your local business hours in winter to start with the local sunrise. Forcing everyone - even those living in places which get 6, 8, 10, or 12 hours of sunlight in the winter - to change their business start time to match your local sunrise isn't just wrong. It's egotistically stupid.

Re:Everybody hates it

[openright]

Forget no DST or permanent DST.

The easy reference should be midnight and noon.

Midnight should roughly be halfway between sunset and sunrise.
Noon should roughly be halfway between sunrise and sunset.

For PDT (DST in CA, US), right now, midday and midnight are at 12, which is why permanent DST make sense on the west coast.

Re:Everybody hates it

[HuskyDog]

Can I just say that it is not true that "Everyone hates it". I don't hate it and never have done.

What I can't understand is why the objections to daylight saving are getting bigger whilst the hassle is getting smaller. When I was young my father had to go round the house manually adjusting all the mechanical clocks twice a year. For the last few years I haven't had to adjust any clocks in the house at all. They are all controlled by radio or internet and just change automatically. The only clocks I have to change are my ancient digital watch and the one on the dash in the car.

Re:Everybody hates it

[mutantSushi]

Well there is official EU polling results which one can refer to as to the level of support/opposition to it. (80% support year-round time)
The difference is also the body of scientific studies demonstrating failure to achieve original energy savings goal,
and negative effects re: human health (medically and re: auto accidents etc) when adjusting schedules abruptly.
But hey, maybe it's fun to ask people's opinion about a number instead.

Re:Everybody hates it

[angel'o'sphere]

Not just tropical places where the length of the day doesn't vary anyway
The length of the day varies, just not as much as in the far north or far south.

Re:Good for the EU!

[UnknownSoldier]

God ISN'T a name -- it is a title / job description. i.e. WHICH god is the OP referring to???

I'm assume you are coming from the Judaic / Christian / Islam perspective. "I AM" is the name you are looking for -- which wasn't used.

Instead of whining about other people's Free Will how about stop judging others?

Re:Agree 100%

[UnknownSoldier]

> The people who advocate "permanent DST" meant to say they want to switch to the next time zone to the east.

You DO realize that there are places of the world where the time zone DOESN'T change, right? They effectively are on "permanent DST" such as Arizona, Hawaii, etc.

It is fucking stupid to constantly be changing the clocks. It is far less disruptive to be just consistent.

EU parliament votes to end daylight savings

[Red_Forman]

Unfortunately, because of a new law recently passed, nobody in the world can learn more about this.

Slashdot owes money

[LynnwoodRooster]

I think you linked to an article, don't you have to pay someone now?

Weird

[MBGMorden]

I thought daylight savings was only a US thing. Hopefully we can abolish it soon too.

Re:Weird

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with the sentiment, I think it's perhaps still too soon to talk about abolishing the US.

Re:Weird

[jpaine619]

I thought daylight savings was only a US thing.

Then maybe you should open a fucking book and quit making the rest of us look like moronic isolationists. Or, at least not announce to the entire internet that you're a moron. This retarded practice has been going on for around a hundred years.. It didn't start yesterday and there's no reason you should be ignorant of it. *Hint* There are places in Asia and South America that observe it too...

Re:Agree 100%

[religionofpeas]

You DO realize that there are places of the world where the time zone DOESN'T change, right? They effectively are on "permanent DST" such as Arizona, Hawaii, etc.

You do realize that places closer to the equator don't have so much yearly variation in sunrise/sunset times as places closer to the poles ? Whatever works in Arizona doesn't necessarily work just as well in Norway.

Daylight Saving(s)?

[Mes]

Isnt it Daylight Saving Time?

Re:Daylight Saving(s)?

[jpaine619]

Isnt it Daylight Saving Time?

Yes it is. 1/2 the people on Slashdot are idiots who think the sunlight goes into a bank account (savings account) and then is spent later in the year... All of them are mouth breathers.

Re:Daylight Saving(s)?

[mutantSushi]

Nope, the term is Summer Time.
Of course Slashdot mouth breather Americans are incapable of using relevant terminology when discussing events in other countries.

Re:Daylight Saving(s)?

[jpaine619]

Slashdot is an American company.... The mouth breathers are the assholes who come from other countries and expect us to not use American phrases or sayings.

Retail

[tomhath]

The only reason it still exists is to get people out spending money in the evening. The clocks aren't set back until mid-November - barely six weeks from winter solstice - to squeeze out a bit more Christmas shopping. And of course in the summer the golf courses and restaurants want people out as late as possible.

Social benefit

[sjbe]

One Thing was that DST was created to save energy, but was not adopted by all countries in the beginning.

Energy savings might have been a goal originally but that goal seems to be largely a failure or at least any benefits seem marginal. However DST does have the positive social benefit of maximizing daylight hours in the evening when it's of benefit to the majority of people. For various reasons the middle of our daylight hours no longer matches people's schedule. For most people the middle of their day is somewhere around 1-2pm. Most adults go to bed sometime between 9-11pm and they finish work some time around 4-5pm. The choice of mid-solar day being noon is an arbitrary choice as is the choice of mid-working day. Having daylight for the maximal amount of that period after work is hugely helpful so putting mid-day (noon) a little later is pretty helpful. I suspect if you took a poll and asked most people if they would prefer it dark in the morning or in the evening, most would prefer the later.

Permanent DST is the best choice

[sjbe]

There is a standard, and it's called solar noon. Aim for that, and then adjust your schedule accordingly rather than pretend that the clock must decide your schedule.

Evidently you've never had an actual job because companies are mostly quite inflexible about the hours they expect you to work. They aren't going to collectively coordinate to change their hours of operation for your personal convenience. Easier to change the clock than to convince everyone to voluntarily change their hours of operation.

Solar noon is an arbitrary decision about timekeeping. It has no inherent causal relationship to human activity schedules. We can just as easily define 11am or 1pm to be "noon" as 12am and it would be just as valid a choice.

Definitely want permanent DST

[sjbe]

Agreed. Permanent DST makes no sense.

Disagree. Permanent standard time makes no sense. I want maximal daylight in the evening when it is actually useful to the most people including myself. That means DST year round makes more sense.

Re:Definitely want permanent DST

[religionofpeas]

I want maximal daylight in the evening when it is actually useful to the most people including myself

So, you want daylight between noon and midnight ?

You have that backwards

[sjbe]

You DO realize that there are places of the world where the time zone DOESN'T change, right? They effectively are on "permanent DST" such as Arizona, Hawaii, etc.

You have that backwards. They are permanently NOT on DST. They are on standard time year round. DST gets you an extra hour of daylight in the evening. No state in the USA is legally permitted to be on DST all year under current law. Standard time is what we get in the winter. DST is the act of advancing clocks forward an hour in the summer.

Re:You have that backwards

[Aqualung812]

No state in the USA is legally permitted to be on DST all year under current law.

Before Indiana started changing their clocks, they were on permanent DST.
When DST became all the rage, most of Indiana moved from CST to EST in the 60's. Areas near Chicago, Louisville, and Cincinnati would change their clocks with the neighboring city.
When Indiana started changing their clocks, everyone ignored the fact that they were already a time zone "ahead", and now we have the stupidity of EDT in a state 100% in the Central Time Zone.

Permanent DST for the win!

[sjbe]

If we move to permanent DST, my sunrise will be around 10 am in the winter. I'll hate that more than spending a few minutes changing the clocks.

So what? It also means you'll have an hour of extra daylight at the end of the day and that is more useful to most people. I get up, drive to work and spend the next 8-10 hours indoors. Most people do something similar. I don't give a shit if it is pitch black out until I'm ready to leave work for the day. Give me the daylight when I can do something useful with it.

Re:Permanent DST for the win!

[religionofpeas]

It also means you'll have an hour of extra daylight at the end of the day and that is more useful to most people

I like it a bit more balanced. Extra daylight at the end of the day is nice, but not at the cost of a morning commute in total darkness. In the winter it's too cold to enjoy the outdoors in the evening anyway.

I don't give a shit if it is pitch black out until I'm ready to leave work for the day

What about the days you don't work ? You want to go walk in the park on a sunday morning in darkness ? What if you have a job as a landscaper or construction worker or another outside job, and you have to work in the dark ?

Re:Permanent DST for the win!

[mutantSushi]

What if you have a job as a landscaper or construction worker or another outside job, and you have to work in the dark ?

These professions already optimize work by sunlight hours irrespective of clock time, so... not any fundmental difference.

But I'm baffled why people respond to this with all these hysterical "what if" and hyperbole. This isn't speculation.
It's a real law that will be in effect in EU in a few years after preparations are done.
Plenty of countries around the world already don't have any season time change. It's not theoretical, it's real.
Just not in the (entire) USA and EU (for now).

All or nothing

[Livius]

I hate the time changes but it may be going a little too far to completely abolish it everywhere. At high lattitudes, it does make a certain amount of sense. Daylight at 9:00pm really is more useful than daylight at 4:00am.

The problem has been politicians doing it for show (2005 US Congress, and a bunch of weak-willed Canadian politicans who followed suit for no reason) for locations where the benefits were minor if not outright imaginary.

Re:All or nothing

[mark-t]

Which do you believe is more important? Catering to people who want daylight after a morning commute, or catering to an even large number of people who would otherwise not have any exposure to morning daylight at all during the winter months?

If you really believe that evening daylight is more useful, I suggest you do some reading on the impact of daylight on serotonin and melatonin cycles, and why the timing of such exposure is important.

DST needs to go away... but permanent standard time is really the most rational thing to do. Permanent DST just amounts to shifting time zones... and is isomorphic to just starting your work day an hour earlier... which you might as well do, rather than making 1pm the middle of the day instead of noon (which would technically make noon 12am, since it is before midday).

Re:All or nothing

[Livius]

Daylight saving time is about the summer, not the winter.

Re:All or nothing

[mark-t]

The idea being discussed here is to get rid of the time change twice a year.

That means one of two things: either standard time year 'round, or DST year 'round... in either case, DST will have nothing to do with summer.

Split the Difference - 30 minutes in the middle !!

[ripvlan]

I hate the time change. It does NOT save energy (I never understood that argument). I live near the 45th parallel and it is damn dark in the morning & afternoon during the winter. Around here the excuse is to have light in the morning to make school bus pickup safer - see the reason isn't even universal. Experience says, it don't make much difference. The bus comes around 6:50am and the sun doesn't rise until 7:30. And for those in Seattle or Montreal its even worse(8 am?! holy-moly). But its fast period in the middle of December and January, a big difference is noticed by Feb. Longer nights in the summer promotes business (outdoor events, concerts on the green etc).

And summer time - The sun is up by a bit after 5 and sets around 9, we still have light at 10pm. A plenty long day.

So - why not split the difference by 30 minutes. We get "30" minutes of extra light in the winter. And it doesn't make a difference in the summer. I'd hate to have summer sunset occur before 8pm with a whole-sale switch. Lots of outdoor stuff goes on in the summer evenings - outdoor music, riding bikes.

But we'd all be awake and not have to listen to constant complaining 2 weeks a year.

Saving, not savings

[vipvop]

as above

Daylight SAVING time

[jpaine619]

It's still Daylight Saving Time. How many times does this have to be repeated? It's not a fucking bank account.. I miss the days when journalists had editors and proofreaders.

Re:Daylight SAVING time

[sjames]

Nobody cares. Everyone, obviously including you, understood what was meant. Haven't you picked up on that yet?

Re:Daylight SAVING time

[Livius]

You mean... we're not earning interest on the daylight we're saving?

Re:Daylight SAVING time

[Woeful Countenance]

In the US, the act of Congress that first enacted nationwide daylight saving time (the Uniform Time Act) doesn't actually use the phrase "daylight saving", except a passing mention in section 6, "Effective date".

I have a theory I call the Principle of Conservation of S's. First, I noticed that S's often disappear: for example, in the musical "Guys and Dolls" (1950), there's a song about the "oldest established permanent floating crap [sic] game." The game is actually called "craps"; a "crap game" would be something different. Similarly, people referring to (e.g.) the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team will mention a "Laker game", a "Laker fan", or the "Laker girls".

My theory is that these lost S's become free-floating S's, like free electrons or free radicals. When one of the free S's encounters an oppositely-charged word, the S attaches to the word. This explains words like "forwardS", "backwardS", and "Daylight SavingS Time".

It's also possible that people just say "savings" because it's more familiar, and brains seem to love familiarity. It goes without saying that People Don't Think, so the actual translation from thought to spoken word or written word usually is done subconsciously.

Re:Good use of public money...

[jpaine619]

You're an idiot if you think absolutely every last piece of legislation needs to be critical. Yeah, sometimes you can fix the small things too.

Re:Your whattaboutism reveals how wrong you are

[religionofpeas]

Numerous studies show this causes an increase in accidents, heart attacks, and, yes, even deaths

That's only true if you focus on the couple of days right after the change. If you measure over the whole year, accidents get reduced, and heart attacks stay the same (people who get a heart attack because of a 1 hour time change would get the heart attack anyway, just at a later time)

Re:Your whattaboutism reveals how wrong you are

[Ichijo]

If you measure over the whole year, accidents get reduced

This is a good argument for year round DST.

Re:Your whattaboutism reveals how wrong you are

[Calydor]

This just in: People who die because of something would die later anyway, so it doesn't matter.

The EU and the West

[WillAffleckUW]

Time to wake up and smell the end of DST and it's false promises

This will eventually get solved

[Cro Magnon]

In a few centuries, we'll be using Stardates.

DST is a good thing and shouldn't be abolished.

[c-137]

Nope. Daylight savings is a good thing. First of all, it has nothing to do with farmers. That's some stupid old myth by people who oppose it. What it's all about is having people get more sunlight in their daily lives. (Hence; "Daylight Savings".) Increasing sunlight exposure increases productivity, it increases productuction of vitamin D, and, dare-I-say; happiness. Inarguably. If you're going to do that, you have to do it federally (well, globally). For example- if you have a company and you say "sure, I'll just have my employees come in an hour later and leave and hour later". Well, no, that doesn't work if other companies aren't doing that too. You end up with a bunch of voicemail because of those two hours of gaps with other companies. So it has to be done at a federal level- no- a global level. Um why are there no paragraphs here in the preview? Sorry but I'm a programmer, and yea it's a headache, but DST (sunlight) is a good thing. Deal with it.

Re:DST is a good thing and shouldn't be abolished.

[c-137]

Why are there no paragraphs in my post? (Or the preview) sigh. I guess I have to go read the probably overly-special slashdot regulations on carriage returns.

Not sure about Europe

[rsilvergun]

but in the States we've long since determined there's no energy savings to be had. The "extra" daylight doesn't really change anything. Folks just turn on the lights anyway.

What's been keeping DST here is retail. Studies show that folks shop more when it's light out. So retail campaigns to keep it. The fact that DST is going away is more a sign of the reduced influence of retail lobbies than anything else.

Re:Agree 100%

[mutantSushi]

In the EU poll of this topic, the only 2 countries without majorities supporting year-round time were Greece and Cyprus (and almost 1/2 did there).
Italy and Malta had ~55%-60% support for it, the rest averaging closely around ~85% support with Poland and Finland nearly tied at 95% support.
(Graph.jpg) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/reso...

Re:Good for the EU!

[angel'o'sphere]

This is /.
Stuff for nerds
Stuff that matters

Lords (I guess you wanted to say gods): don't matter at all

If you want to post religious tuff, I'm sure your lord will help you with your google foo to find some mentally disabled religious forums.

Re: When Did England Vote To Join the EU??

[tehcyder]

the "common market" destroyed English manufacturing and mining

No, that was down to Thatcherism.