
European Parliament requests recommendation to end biannual clock change - skrause
https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/latest-european-parliament-approves-proposal-to-end-bi-annual-clock-change-826985.html
======
fsloth
Thank goodness. Daylights savings time is one of the most god-damned fiddly
attempts to optimize something that it fails to achieve, and at the same time
irritates most who have to deal with it.

It was invented out on a whim, and adapted because it sounded good. No results
have shown that it saves anything or helps anyone.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time)

"Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson,
whose shift work job gave him leisure time to collect insects and led him to
value after-hours daylight"

"Many publications credit DST proposal to the prominent English builder and
outdoorsman William Willett,[29] who independently conceived DST in 1905
during a pre-breakfast ride, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners
slept through a large part of a summer day.[15] An avid golfer, he also
disliked cutting short his round at dusk."

I don't mind people collecting bugs and golfing, but please keep your hands
off the society's synchronization mechanism without a better reason.

~~~
imarg
I dislike changing the time twice a year too, but would prefer to stay on
summer timer throughout the year instead of winter time.

In autumn when the day becomes smaller, there remains almost no light(day)
time after a typical 9-5. Shifting to winter time at this very moment of
smaller days makes this 0. (For reference I live in Greece).

I understand though, that people with different schedules have different
preferences.

~~~
Viliam1234
It is an insane world where it is easier to redefine how the time is measured
than to agree that the job starts one hour earlier.

------
Gys
A bit of a click bait title ?

'Parliament accepted our proposal to ask the European Commission to come
forward with a recommendation that we would end the bi-annual clock change'

So if I understand it correctly, this is a 'proposal' 'to ask' for 'a
recommendation' ?

~~~
tmoravec
Welcome to the European Union. /s

~~~
sjwright
Dunno if you're trying to be sarcastic, but at least in this instance it
appears they're productively tackling a controversial, thorny, side-effect-
laden subject at a sensible pace.

(Edit: OP has added "/s" marker.)

------
macintux
Always interesting how this topic starts (at least?) 3 different discussions.

* Whether your local time should change twice a year

* If the answer is "no", whether your local time should be equivalent to the current DST or standard time (aka "summer" vs "winter" time)

* Whether we should be using time zones at all

Please know which question you're ranting about before you actually rant,
thanks. Lots of orthogonality here.

~~~
tantalor
> Whether we should be using time zones at all

"So You Want To Abolish Time Zones"

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

~~~
mixmastamyk
Strange he doesn’t use UTC as his base but rather Australia, I think.

~~~
pjvandehaar
That's addressed in the post.

> Oh, where did you think it was going to be? Somewhere convenient for you?

> One of the stronger reasons for adopting a new time zone is to more easily
> do business with a neighbouring territory which already uses that time zone.
> China, a gigantic country spanning some sixty degrees of longitude (and
> therefore, nominally, four whole "hours") has been unified on a single time
> zone since 1949. And it was already the largest single time zone in the
> world by population.

> So, this phenomenon has now spread globally. Everybody wants to do business
> with China and her allies - everybody is China's ally. Everybody is on China
> Standard Time, UTC+08:00.

~~~
mixmastamyk
He says it is UK time, but then proceeds to talk about Australian times in the
UK.

The problem is also not as hard as he implies. Instead of looking up the time
there in google, you look up a day/night diagram instead.

------
msiebuhr
Yes!

No more jet-lagged minors twice a year, no more train tickets stamped ~200
years in the future (yes, that has happened to me) and no more confusing
server logs with odd duplicates.

Also, contact your local EU parliament member and politely explain why this is
good...

~~~
ajmurmann
Nit: Why isn't the server running in UTC?

~~~
petecooper
I'm seeing more people recommending this. Is the main reason to avoid the
daylight savings time changes twice a year, or am I missing something else
obvious?

Disclosure: I don't use UTC, I set the server to local time. I'm very open to
learning why I'm wrong and how I can improve.

Edit #2: thanks, responders – makes perfect sense when you put it that way.
Today I learned.

~~~
sudhirj
Local time is very idiosyncratic - the hands of the clock on your wall move
forwards, backwards, repeat the same hours, skip hours and dance at the will
of your people and politicians.

Needless to say, this may cause issues in computers. The only clocks that stay
consistent and dependable are the ones in UTC land.

So the people mirror the clocks of their local government, but computers
mirror the UTC clocks.

~~~
baq
Leap seconds would have a word with you. The only time that's fixed is GPS
time, or so I heard.

~~~
tripzilch
Legend has it there's a secret order of monks that have been going "one
mississippi, ..." since 1970. They say it's the only way they can be really
sure.

But nobody knows how, when or why they came to be 23 minutes off ...

------
rhino369
I'm against time changes, but Daylight savings time is better. We should just
stay on that year long.

~~~
dorfsmay
No! Let's keep time that make sense, I like the concept that the sun is at its
highest at noon. Shit like drawing the shadow of a stick is stuff that kept me
interested in school, as opposed to arbitrary/political things such as
spelling (in french and english anyway).

If natural light matters, shift society to do everything earlier!

It shouldn't be very difficult, especially in Europe, where governments have
such an influence, mandate that schools start earlier, shift transportation
peak time (number and frequency of trains and buses) earlier, give some tax
incentive for a year or two to companies who let their employees leave work
earlier, etc...

I lived in countries where the currency was changed, people got used to it, it
didn't turn out to be the end of the world. Some countries shifted on which
side or the road cars drove, people adapted.

~~~
arkh
> mandate that schools start earlier

You know it's bad for teenager health?

[http://www.nj.com/education/2014/05/early_class_times_are_ba...](http://www.nj.com/education/2014/05/early_class_times_are_bad_for_teenaged_students_british_researcher_finds.html)

> Because their biological clocks push them into later sleep/later wake
> patterns, adolescents on average lose almost 3 hours a sleep on school days,
> the researchers found. In addition, they found that middle school students
> who start later in the morning had “clear test gains” over their peers.

~~~
andrewla
The GP does not propose that teenagers wake up any earlier in the sense of
solar time, just that we don't change the clocks. Right now they wake up an
hour earlier than they did the previous day, the only difference is that their
clock shows the same hour as it did the previous day.

Instead, they should just wake up an hour earlier and have the clock show that
they woke up an hour earlier. There's no actual difference in the amount of
sleep or daylight that the teenagers get, just a vastly simplified system for
figuring out what they wall clock should say.

------
siberianbear
I'm an American living in Russia. Russia got rid of daylight savings time in
2014. [1]. I love, it's great.

One of the most confusing part of daylight savings time is that the dates that
it occurs on vary between countries. Trying to figure out how to get hold of
people back in the states at an agreed-upon time was a huge PITA.

[1] [https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/russia-abandons-
perman...](https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/russia-abandons-permanent-
summer-time.html)

------
epanchin
Continental Europe permenantly on UTC+2 would move EU further from NY... a
nice little boost for the City of London.

~~~
gpvos
I really hope they won't do that, but just switch to permanent winter time
(UTC+1), which is the closest to solar time.

In fact, while we're at it, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and _certainly_
Spain should switch to UTC+0. The eastern border of those countries aligns
pretty well with 7.5 degrees east.

Then I can finally be fully awake when work starts at 9 o'clock.

~~~
bouke
Netherlands should be at +00:20 UTC to be at solar time, thus having the sun
peak at noon. This offset was in use until WWII and was called Amsterdam Time.
But having such an offset would be very unpractical to work with.

~~~
gpvos
Yeah, I just meant that winter time is closer to solar time than summer time
(and then argued that we should get even closer to solar time). I have no
problem with using full hour offsets, since they make calculations about times
in other zones so much easier. The Netherlands was one of the last countries
to switch to a "modern" time zone, in fact it was again a foreign occupier
(the first being the French) that forced us to modernize (except that they put
us in the Central European time zone instead of the Western European). Until
1937 we even used an offset of +00:19'32.13", using the meridian of the
Westertoren in Amsterdam.

------
starchild_3001
Notion of wall clock time is probably unnatural and harmful. Humans for
millenia did not follow wall clock time to wake up, go to bed, go to work etc.
they rather followed the sun. Following the sun is natural because we all need
light. For better mood, for being able to do work outside or for vit d. We
should rather sync up our schedules with the sun rise/sun set (while
minimizing the total wall-clock delta and confusion people experience).

------
5_minutes
I hope at least they go for summertime all year long then. Instead of
wintertime, that would be crazy.

------
kabes
But...I really like my extra hour of sun in the evenings in summer.

~~~
nicky0
Just do everything an hour earlier.

------
encoderer
Building Cronitor has given me more experience with local dst customs than I
ever wanted to have.

One great thing about dst in Europe is that rather than happening at 2am local
time in each tz the way USA does it, it happens across Europe at the same
timestamp.

------
excalibur
Doesn't bi-annual mean every two years?

~~~
danesparza
Biannual means "twice a year" [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/biannual](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/biannual)

Biennial means "every two years" [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/biennial](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/biennial)

~~~
macintux
Notice, however, the 2nd definition. Biannual means whatever the user happens
to be thinking at that point in time.

------
sehugg
I once had to write a daylight savings calculator from scratch for a Windows
CE system -- its kernel couldn't be updated, and I had to implement the 2007
changes to the DST rules. Good times.

------
phillc73
> Many believe the clock change negatively impacts on people's mental and
> physical health.

This is absolutely not true for me. An "extra" hour of daylight during summer
evenings has a large positive impact on my mental and physical health.

I don't find the actual physical change of the clocks to be a problem either.
Change them twice a year by one hour, which most digital clocks do
automatically now anyway.

~~~
tom_mellior
> An "extra" hour of daylight during summer evenings has a large positive
> impact on my mental and physical health.

It would be nice to have the same on winter evenings (or afternoons) too,
i.e., "summer" time all year long. No clock changes needed for that.

Of course depending on where you are, "winter" time can help you get out of
bed in the morning, and you might find that more important. There is no
pleasing everybody, especially in a time zone as big as CET. Its eastern and
western extremities are separated by about two hours of solar time...

~~~
carlmr
>It would be nice to have the same on winter evenings (or afternoons) too,
i.e., "summer" time all year long. No clock changes needed for that.

Exactly. I always hated winter time. Why can't we abolish that? Oh you have a
short day where you only get half an hour of daylight after work? Let's make
it an hour shorter.

~~~
nicky0
The day is the same length you just do everything an hour earlier. You can do
that without changing the time.....

~~~
carlmr
Do you get all your collegues to get up one hour earlier with you? Do you call
the TV station to broadcast one hour earlier? Do you get your gym to open one
hour earlier?

Society agrees on time because it's necessary to make the system work. You
can't individually live in a different time zone.

~~~
nicky0
Of course you are right. But that "impossible" thing is precisely what
actually happens when everyone moves the clocks. It's a clever social hack.

------
ocdtrekkie
How likely is the EU removing DST to pressure the US into considering the
same? Any chance at all?

~~~
mseebach
"Pressure"? Probably not. If anyone was able to pressure anyone else, they
would have managed to align the switchover dates (they're off by a week,
making for two quite amusing weeks a year where everybody is late or early for
transatlantic meetings). But doing it and proving it works well (provided that
it does) would be valuable arguments in favour of its abolition elsewhere.

~~~
danaris
Used to be a week. Now it's a lot more, thanks to some bright sparks during
the second Bush administration thinking they could score some quick points by
extending summer time to "reduce energy usage"...

------
minikites
I like DST for all of the reasons outlined here: [http://www.leancrew.com/all-
this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-
like-dst/)

The alternatives are worse. Either you drop DST and the sun rises at 4 in the
morning in the summer or you stay on DST permanently and the sun rises after 8
in the winter.

------
seba_dos1
But 0h Game Jam! :(

[http://0hgame.eu/](http://0hgame.eu/) (see the FAQ)

------
jxub
It would be paramount to look at labour productivity changes after the
implementation of this proposal.

------
cletus
A lot of hate here for DST. Personally, I like it. In the sense that in
northern climates, the really long days are actually pretty nice. Even in
London in the height of summer, the Sun didn't set til about ~10pm. That's
nice.

I'm not opposed to the clock change but my solution for that is to have DST
year-round not non-DST year-round.

All this being said, I'd be surprised if this goes ahead.

~~~
torstenvl
DST does not change the length of the days.

If your shift begins at an inconvenient hour, or your timezone is misaligned
to your astronomical time, those problems do not require manually fiddling
with time by multiple countries to solve.

~~~
bluejekyll
Devil’s advocate: why don’t we all just use UTC? Get rid of time zones, those
are only a human conveniences as well...

~~~
tzs
Universal UTC does not change the need people have to know how approximate
solar time locally maps to approximate solar time at some different longitude.

E.g., you are in Munich and want to call your friend in Tokyo. You want to
call him at a time that is not too early in the morning for him, or not too
late in the evening for him.

Let's say you want to call him at lunch time, which you both take around solar
noon. Under the current system, where the time in each time zone approximates
local solar time, that means he takes lunch around the same clock time you do,
which is 12:00. The question you ask yourself is "When his clock says 12:00,
what does my clock say?".

You answer that by subtracting the time zone difference (which is 8 hours), so
you get that you should call him when you clock says 4:00.

Now let's do this with universal UTC. Your clocks no longer approximate local
solar time. Solar noon is around 11:00 clock time at your place. The question
you want to ask now is "What time is his solar noon?".

Since his solar time is approximately 8 hours ahead of your solar time, you
answer it exactly the same way. You subtract 8 hours from the time from the
UTC time you have lunch to get the UTC time he has lunch, so 3:00.

As long as people keep their activities lined up with approximate local solar
time and people need to sync things with people whose solar time is
significantly different than theirs, we need something like time zones.

------
dazc
Maybe Spain should get back to the correct time zone first?

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/13/spain-plans-
repla...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/13/spain-plans-replace-nazi-
time-zone-gmt/)

------
okket
Maybe it is time to switch one global time and ditch the old system
completely. E.g. UTC, but it carries the old semantics with 'high noon' at
12:00. Maybe another system, but UTC is very popular already, e.g. for
logging.

Imagine you don't have to deal with different time zones any more.

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

Mandatory read every time this comes up.

~~~
kuschku
Which completely misses culture-based time differences (depending on culture,
in Europe, two neighboring countries in the same time zone may have 3 hours
difference in usual working hours)

and mismatched timezones (half a china has a timezone 5 hours off from their
local time)

Look at this map:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/St...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/Standard_World_Time_Zones.png/1920px-
Standard_World_Time_Zones.png) the timezones already are all over the place.
What you think of as 4:25 can be 9:25 or 23:25 thanks to timezone mismatches.

~~~
pluma
That's an argument for _more_ timezones, not less.

------
pdq
Shouldn't this say semi-annual, not bi-annual?

~~~
dbatten
Biannual is fine.

I think you're confusing biannual and biennial. Biannual and semiannual both
mean twice a year. Biennial means every other year.

~~~
colsandurz
So what's semiennial mean?

~~~
bloak
Good question. I'm going to say "demisemiennial" instead of "quarterly" from
now on.

------
pmarreck
Greeeat, more code to write to work around it ;)

------
shmerl
Great. Now US should do that as well.

------
horsecaptin
I sure will miss my extra long summer days.

~~~
lancebeet
This seems like an "up to eleven" argument to me. Why not just wake up earlier
in the summer?

~~~
bpicolo
It's a working-hours alignment thing for most people. Flexible work hours are
pretty common in SV Tech, less so elsewhere.

------
spodek
In the United States we do even better. We propose laws for values of pi.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill)

~~~
icebraining
I don't see the similitude..?

