
Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone - tonyztan
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/10/26/massachusetts-is-considering-leaving-the-eastern-time-zone/23256633/
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poulsbohemian
Personally, it would be brilliant if we'd just go to permanent daylight
savings time nationwide. The transition is hard on the kids and living in the
northern part of the country, the extra daylight is appreciated.

~~~
austincheney
Better would be to go to a single Zulu timezone nationwide. You just go into
work an hour later in the central area compared to the east coast.

~~~
idbehold
[https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish)

~~~
tempestn
Your conclusion is a thing of beauty:

> If it's any consolation, all of this is extremely unlikely to happen, since
> it relies on an international agreement between every single nation in the
> world. Or on China attacking and conquering the entire world and installing
> China Standard Time as part of a totalitarian regime, which is slightly less
> unlikely but still very unlikely.

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sinodin
Thanks u

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tzs
One of the main purported benefits of DST is that it in effect moves some of
the extra sunlight from the longer days of summer from the morning to the
evening, where most of us are in a better position to use it.

That's because without DST as the day lengthens the extra daylight is split
evenly between morning and evening.

But WHY does it split evenly? It's because we historically use noon as our
reference. We think of noon on day N+1 as being exactly one day after noon on
day N. Noon is a sensible reference, fairly easy to determine with ancient
technology.

Suppose that instead we had historically used sunrise as our reference. By
definition, then, sunrise would be 8 AM every day. As the days lengthened in
the summer, all of the extra daylight would then have shown up in the evening
automatically.

It's interesting to ponder whether or not such a reference could have worked.
I think that in the days before clocks, when the sundial was the most
sophisticated timepiece, this could have worked quite well. It would also fit
in well with work schedules, meaning people who needed to wait for light to
work would be going to work at about the same time every day. It would also
fit in with animal sleep schedules.

With clocks, though, a noon reference is easier. A sunrise reference requires
a much more sophisticated clock, or it requires frequent manual adjustment.

Nowadays, though, clocks easily have the sophistication to handle that. We
probably could actually reasonably handle using sunrise as our reference, and
have our clocks adjust daily to keep that so.

It would mean that a given clock time on day N+1 is no longer exactly 24 hours
later than that same clock time on day N, but I don't think that would matter
for ordinary life. I'd be willing to put up with that if it means I get the
benefits of DST (more evening light in summer) without the two big
discontinuities a year.

Edit: to be clear, I am assuming that if we did a sunrise-based system instead
of a noon-based system we would still do time zones. 8 AM would be
simultaneous everywhere in the zone.

[1] In this comment "day" refers to sunrise to sunset.

~~~
Mz
There is one flaw with your theory here: Historically, noon was defined
locally by the sun being directly overhead. All time was local time.

Then we invented trains and railroads and you couldn't schedule anything with
such a system. Thus was born standardized time zones where it is the same time
across large swaths of land. Noon is no longer strictly correlated to the sun
being directly overhead.

I think there are all kinds of things we could do, including promoting the gig
economy. If I work when, where and as much as I choose, it makes little
difference what time it is (as long as I meet deadlines).

The world population is both high enough and mobile enough that you can now
find 24 hour establishments in a lot of places, even relatively small towns.
The small town I am in has enough 24 hour places that I have quite a lot of
latitude on when I shop, when I get lunch, etc. I don't care all that much
when the sun rises or sets. I care much more about things like if it is
raining, and that is because I live without a car, so I walk everywhere.

~~~
m0llusk
My experience with the gig economy is that my schedule ends up being whatever
is convenient for my clients.

~~~
Mz
That hasn't been my experience. I do what I can to try to promote the idea of
gig work done well such that it is a net positive for the worker in metrics
like quality of life and control over their schedule.

Granted, some things are inherently more flexible than others. An Uber driver
can choose what hours to work, but is at the beck and call of people who need
rides. If you want to make good money, you realistically need to work during
busy times. But a lot of knowledge work can realistically be done whenever
works best for the employee, so long as they get it done in time for the due
date. You do need to arrange for such expectations though.

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Goronmon
Maine is tentatively on-board:

[http://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/27/maine-may-switch-to-
at...](http://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/27/maine-may-switch-to-atlantic-
time-zone-if-new-hampshire-and-massachusetts-do/)

New Hampshire looks to be against it so far:

[http://www.concordmonitor.com/time-zone-change-
atlantic-9808...](http://www.concordmonitor.com/time-zone-change-
atlantic-9808198)

~~~
KGIII
Yeah, it really screws with us up here. Once you get up above the meridian,
days get pretty short in the winter. Moving those hours around helps exactly
none. No farmer has their life improved. It's not saving energy. It's just a
dumb setting on the clock.

~~~
megaman22
It's super depressing in December and January when you get up to go to work in
the dark, and by the time you get out at 5, it is pitch dark again.

I do wish we'd fallen back earlier, like we used to. I'd much rather have that
extra hour of daylight in the morning when I could maybe use it, rather than
on my commute home.

~~~
KGIII
Yeah, you know where I live, as I recall? You should come visit. ;-)

Anyhow, we'd have to throw the clock off a full two hours to get any benefit.
It's just getting light at 0700 and already getting dark at 1600 - during the
shortest days. Daybreak was at about 0700 today, maybe later. It is raining. I
couldn't tell and I didn't look online,

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chrisabrams
I really hope NY get on board as well. Being in Manhattan during the winter,
the sun is gone many days by 4pm, sometimes earlier depending which part of
the city you are in (which skyscraper is blocking the last bit of sunlight).
As a native Texan it's tough to adjust to :O

[edit] my grammar

~~~
grzm
Thinking a little bit more about this, I'm wondering how much this would
really help. Yes, there would be more daylight in the evening, but given the
latitude, how much longer in the morning would it be dark? I found this handy
tool to get a feel for it:

[https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/new-
york](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/new-york)

And here's Boston:

[https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/boston](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/boston)

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eli_gottlieb
>[https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/boston](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/boston)

Well _that_ explains why I feel like winter nights are somehow worse and
darker than summer ones. In summer, it's mostly _not night_ at all: the
twilight periods eat half the clock-nighttime. In winter, twilight gets cut in
half and combines with the losses of daylight to extend nighttime.

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starlig-ht
I would rather see the planet stop using time-zones altogether. Let's all go
UTC, adjust our clocks and schedules once and be done with it.

It doesn't matter what number my clock says at noon/sunrise/sunset. If it is
about working-hours coinciding with daylight, businesses can adjust their
working hours as needed (and post them on their site without you having to
convert to local time to know when you can call)

 _edit: the link below just changed my mind. dammit, I hate being wrong_.

~~~
idbehold
[https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish)

~~~
starlig-ht
damn. some good points in here. I stand corrected.

~~~
b-ryan
All of the arguments seem to assume you have today's current tools and
knowledge at your disposal, just with timezones abolished. This is clearly not
what would happen. The real answer to "What time is it there?" without
timezones would be the same exact thing, you google "what time of day is 4:25
in australia?" and google would tell you something like, "it's equivalent to
8:00 where you are"

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cfmcdonald
Haven't you just then re-created time zones?

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yen223
Yes, but with none of the inconsistencies.

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erickhill
A bit off topic, but I was equally intrigued by the fact that the article was
on aol.com. Made me do a brief double-take.

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rconti
The major problem here is that far too much effort was put into accommodating
everyone by including them in the eastern time zone. Last time I looked, I
think something like 48% of the US population lives in it, and it's just
unnecessarily large. Obviously there are benefits, but it creates a ton of
perverse consequences too.

Realistically, the eastern time zone should probably stop between OH/PA, west
of West Virgina, east of TN, etc.

But of course we'd then need 5 time zones to cover the continential US to keep
other time zones from becoming far too large.

~~~
graywh
4 time zones is enough to cover the 48 states unless you want half-hour zones
or radically different sunrise times on one coast or the other. Just need to
reduce the sizes of Eastern and Central to better match the longitude lines.

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Animats
Unless all the states east of New York switch, this is a non-starter.

~~~
wickberg
It's even more subtle than that - about half of Connecticut is heavily
involved with business in NYC, and would probably be quite unwilling to jump
an hour over.

To a lesser extent, south-western Vermont is economically linked to the Albany
metro area, and would also likely vote against a shift.

Were you to poll on support for moving New England over to Atlantic time, I'd
bet you'd wind up with a map closely matching that of local support for the
Boston Red Sox vs New York Yankees:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/23/upshot/24-ups...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/23/upshot/24-upshot-
baseball.html)

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inanutshellus
Everyone whines about DST, but I love the DST "timezone" in summer. I leave
work in the sun. It feels like I still have time to play and have fun after
work.

It's great.

~~~
ranit
People don't whine about DST, people hate the one hour change every year.

~~~
dboreham
Especially people who debug calendar software. Just sayin..

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_raoulcousins
Over here in Seattle sunset is at 4:19 in winter. Maybe we need to switch to
some other time zone.

~~~
mkempe
Two things to say: a) come spend winter in Sweden... in Lapland the sun does
not set at all in June and there is darkness around the clock in January;
Stockholm is not that far up North, so we get a few hours of daylight in mid-
December; and b) if lack of daylight in the winter is such an issue, maybe
move to Southern California, or somewhere even closer to the equator.

Three things, actually :-) c) consider spending your winter months in the
Southern Hemisphere. Some animals migrate vast distances twice a year.

~~~
rconti
I was actually surprised during a visit to Stockholm (granted, in May) that it
was not light that much later than my native Seattle in the summer. I guess
there's probably a reason major cities in Scandinavia are not all that far
north in their respective countries :) I've been above the arctic circle in
the summer, but thankfully never in the winter.

~~~
mkempe
The really long days are in late June. In early May you’d be halfway between
equinox and solstice...

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floitsch
Just wrote a post a week ago on the subject of date/time issues programmers
have to be aware of: [https://medium.com/@florian_32814/date-
time-526a4f86badb](https://medium.com/@florian_32814/date-time-526a4f86badb)

It's almost sad that Massachusetts switching wouldn't even make it into that
document... (too normal)

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minikites
This is an unpopular opinion but I'm a big fan of DST for most of the reasons
enumerated in this article: [http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-
like-dst/](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/)

>If we stayed on Standard Time throughout the year, sunrise here in the
Chicago area would be between 4:15 and 4:30 am from the middle of May through
the middle of July. And if you check the times for civil twilight, which is
when it’s bright enough to see without artificial light, you’ll find that that
starts half an hour earlier. This is insane and a complete waste of sunlight.

>If, by the way, you think the solution is to stay on DST throughout the year,
I can only tell you that we tried that back in the 70s and it didn’t turn out
well. Sunrise here in Chicago was after 8:00 am, which put school children out
on the street at bus stops before dawn in the dead of winter.

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manoj_venkat92
_Laughter_ from India. We don't have this DST stuff but I have to deal with
this at work as the clients are American. Damn, this is some serious mess.

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werty1
Seriously only clicked because aol.com. That's a thing I've not seen in close
to 20 years.

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iFred
I get the strange feeling that I might be the only happy person who loves
early sunsets.

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GnarfGnarf
Gee, should Nova Scotia move into another time zone?

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pmurT
I wish we'd get rid of timezones all together - is there really much point
aside from tradition?

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dredmorbius
Yes, there is, and it ties into a whole mess of interrelated standardisation,
information, and control capabilities. Beninger's book is a fascinating
exploratiion of this.

[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674169869](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674169869)

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skykooler
The sun sets around 4 in the winter even in Philadelphia. This would imply
that basically all of New England should move to Atlantic Time.

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asveikau
Philadelphia is not in New England. See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England)

Also the article says Massachusetts wouldn't do it without the rest of New
England also joining:

> A majority of other states in New England would have to jump on the time-
> zone train, too.

Edit: Must have been downvoted by west coasters who don't know what new
england is ...

~~~
kw71
If New England is North or East of Philadelphia, then shouldn't the situation
for New England be worse, iow, sunset earlier?

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asveikau
It's both north and east. And I think that was the point of the article, that
New England has it particularly bad for this.

Most people think that east coast cities are on a north-south axis, but as you
go up I-95 (the major highway connecting these cities) you are actually
traveling northeast. It was a head trip for me being from DC when I realized I
could drive straight north for 5 hours and end up in Rochester, NY, or drive
"north" on 95 for 5 hours and end up in New York City, but the distance
between those two points was also itself a 5-6 hour drive.

