

Why do we still have Daylight Saving Time? - finanology
http://finanology.co/post/100863123629/seriously-why-do-we-still-have-daylight-saving-time

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shirro
I don't understand the hate for daylight saving. Splitting those extra
daylight hours either side of work and school is a waste when you can combine
some of that time for more recreation at the end of the day. When my kids get
home from school I get to ride bikes with them in daylight for an extra hour.
I have time to enjoy cooking and eating a bbq of an evening before it gets too
dark outside. There is time for gardening after work. Summer sports practice.
A round of golf. That extra hour of sunlight is fantastic for family quality
of life.

Programmers are inconvenienced? Who the fsck cares? The dates for time changes
are gazetted way in advance. Some data tables need adjusting and only a
handful of people on the planet need to do it. The rest of us just need to
apply updates which we need to do for security anyway. It isn't all that hard.
Phones, computers, media centres adjust fine for me.

What would be really inconvenient would be to change everyones work and school
hours to achieve the same benefit as that little, mostly automated, timezone
change twice a year. The inconvenience of changing the time on a small number
of non-networked dumb devices is a small price to pay for that extra quality
of life.

In a global networked economy the only real timezone is UTC. The rest are an
arbitrary fiction that we can manipulate for our enjoyment.

~~~
icebraining
_That extra hour of sunlight is fantastic for family quality of life._

I agree, that's exactly why it's depressing that today it'll be dark one hour
sooner than yesterday. Disliking the DST doesn't mean preferring winter time.

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B-Con
Because it's an agreed upon widely used standard.

Making standards and getting near-universal buy-in is hard. Tweaking them is
too. Since it isn't impacting most people beyond a mere rare inconvenience,
it's hard to convince someone to start cranking on the gigantic cogs of
worldwide standards to improve the situation.

~~~
finanology
It's widely used, but only by the western world. Look at the map at the bottom
of the article. Essentially everybody else abandoned the idea.

It's an inconvenience at best. It causes massive programming problems, e.g.
Louisiana's switch to DST was a nightmare for Microsoft. It also results in
large productivity losses. Economically, it does not work anymore in the way
that it maybe used to. It causes more harm than good.

~~~
shirro
DST makes no sense nearer the equator where there is less variation in
daylight hours throughout the year. There goes much of Asia, Africa and
Central America. It is popular with people in wealthy democracies which enjoy
around an 8 hour working day and have a culture that values outside
recreational time and people have a say in such things. That pretty much
explains most of the map. Many of the places that don't have DST are between
the tropics, poor or have no functional democracy. The rest are more concerned
with getting a few more holes of golf in after work than the welfare of
Microsoft's staff.

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riffic
Hear, hear! It's well passed time we put to rest this outdated notion that
jumping forward or back the hour hand will have an effect on the length of
day.

Daylight saving time is cargo culting at its worst -- and those who say we
should stay on a perpetual Summer time are probably the worst of them all.

~~~
wycx
Cargo culting for wanting to stay on DST year round?

Here at 35deg south, I would prefer it not to be dark at 4:30 pm in winter,
hence preference for year round DST. Darkness in the morning is less of a
concern for me.

The sleeping pattern disruption is also unpleasant.

