
Time to move on? The case against daylight saving time - tobyjsullivan
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131101-when-does-daylight-savings-time-end-november-3-science/
======
Shenglong
I wonder - have any of you who run large projects which are sensitive to time
changes ever have to deal with DST? I ran a MMORPG, which had specific events
at certain times of the day, on certain days of the week. Now imagine:

North America observes DST two weeks before Europe. DST _ends_ for Australia
two weeks before North America (time goes the other way). China does not
observe DST. I won't even bother to get into the other countries.

Even disregarding the other issues that DST created (and trust me, there were
lots), just syncing up players for events was a giant hassle. Yes, people
_should_ theoretically research and know how their time works, but expecting
users to sync your events to their time without missing one or two is naive
ignorance. Even with mitigations, my staff and I basically spent every DST
start/end dealing with a plethora of IRs to the degree of, "why did you change
the time?"

I would not miss DST at all.

(We did standardized time quite early on, and did announce in server-time)

~~~
sixothree
This is one this I'm thankful for in the .Net framework. Give it any datetime
in UTC, then give it a time zone and it spits out a local time. There is zero
work to do.

~~~
brown9-2
You realize that the tzdb files this functionality depends on has several
updates each year that are probably never being installed on 90% of computers?

~~~
sixothree
Yes, of course.

------
Expez
I wish we would go one step further and just stick to UTC as well. That way
when we try to set up a video conference at 0900 we don't have to translate
between time zones. We can just ask if 0900 works, and everyone would know
what time that is.

There's no reason 1200 should be midday. If we changed this today the next
generation would never stop to think about how "weird it is that it's dark at
1200" where they live.

~~~
mhurron
Most people like being awake when it is light out and asleep when it is dark.
Having the world on UTC doesn't let you figure that out.

Your in London, UK and schedule a meeting for your team at 9:00 in New York,
LA, Tokyo and Bangalore.

Who is awake? Who is asleep? Who's workday ended?

You live in Paris, your mother lives in Hawaii. You want to call here when you
get off work. Did you wake her up? Is she at work?

Timezones give you a general idea about what it going on at that part of the
world. You lose that information without them.

~~~
carbon3
You are misunderstanding how it would work. People would still be awake when
it's light out and asleep when it's dark.

Instead of everywhere starting their workday at 9am UTC like you're imagining,
London would start their workday at 9am UTC, New York would start their
workday at 4am UTC, Los Angeles would start their workday at 1am UTC.

~~~
mhurron
Actually, that's exactly how I know it would work. I'm pointing out the
information your going to loose without having timezones because people are
still going to get up and go to sleep basically following a solar day. Are
people in Paris awake at 9:00 or asleep? Are people in LA working or not?
Without a table, say a table that says what time of day it is in particular
zones, 9:00 tells you nothing.

------
dade_
Articles that debate DST always seem to have some strange anecdotal comment
that doesn't make any sense. This article has a couple, but I would love to
see the source for: "Many farmers still don't like DST, including some dairy
farmers, who find that cows' natural milking schedules don't adapt easily to a
sudden shift."

Farmers aren't stupid and cows can't tell time. Do you really think they
adjust the actual time they milk cows in order to observe DST? A schedule on a
farm has far more to do with actual daylight hours regardless of the official
"time".

However, they did get the sentiment correct. Farmers have always opposed to
changing the time twice a year and largely think the whole idea is ridiculous.
Case in point, Saskatchewan does not change their time, but permanently
maintain the equivalent of DST year round. Tellingly, there is no debate about
adopting time changes either.

~~~
DanBC
UK farmers were neutral or cautious, but have been moving towards wanting a
change.

Scottish farmers sceptical: [http://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk/news/daylight-
robbery.156...](http://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk/news/daylight-
robbery.15681279)

Scottish farmers change position: [http://www.daylightsavingstime2014.com/the-
nfu-shifts-positi...](http://www.daylightsavingstime2014.com/the-nfu-shifts-
position-on-time-change/)

Politics; the bill fails for lack of time despite support:
[http://www.theleader.info/article/41171/spain/national/the-s...](http://www.theleader.info/article/41171/spain/national/the-
sun-rises-again-on-the-daylight-saving-debate/)

EDIT: I agree about the weird anecdotalism of a lot of reporting! I find it
quite frustrating. Little snippets of fact get repeated and pulled out of
context until they're almost meaningless.

------
daigoba66
Pro-tip for programmers: never, ever try to build your own library to handle
DST. You will get something wrong. Lots of frameworks and system libraries
handle this for you, and do it pretty well.

~~~
crististm
This argument "don't build it yourself - you're doing it wrong" is starting to
wear off.

Why should I trust the third party library was built by programmers that knew
better? What do they know that I don't?

If I ever need to build something that people say others are better at - with
no argument backing - I will just ignore them (I'll do due research as in
other projects though).

~~~
sparkie
It's not that the programmers who wrote those libraries knew better - it's
that they know better now!

Most programmers have a simplistic view of time, and start out writing some
library that assumes simple arithmetic can calculate any duration, then they
find their library is wrong in many cases, and problems are gradually fixed as
they research and learn more about time. A robust time library that gets
everything right is not going to be hacked together over a weekend.

Perhaps the parent comment was too strong as it sounded a bit like "Don't try
to write a time library you idiot." Writing a time library is fine, if that is
your aim. I think the suggestion is rather, don't bother writing a time
library that is intended to be tacked onto your main project, as you'll either
get it wrong, or waste time you could be working on your actual problem, when
others have already solved the time problem.

~~~
dionidium
_It 's not that the programmers who wrote those libraries knew better - it's
that they know better now!_

This is exactly right and it has nothing really to do with time specifically.
In any area with a lot of edge cases, you'll usually figure out how to get a
lot of those edge cases right after you've got a lot of them wrong, so you
should prefer to use something that's already gone through this process.
Similar advice here [0]:

 _" Back to that two page function. Yes, I know, it's just a simple function
to display a window, but it has grown little hairs and stuff on it and nobody
knows why. Well, I'll tell you why: those are bug fixes. One of them fixes
that bug that Nancy had when she tried to install the thing on a computer that
didn't have Internet Explorer. Another one fixes that bug that occurs in low
memory conditions. Another one fixes that bug that occurred when the file is
on a floppy disk and the user yanks out the disk in the middle. That
LoadLibrary call is ugly but it makes the code work on old versions of Windows
95.

Each of these bugs took weeks of real-world usage before they were found. The
programmer might have spent a couple of days reproducing the bug in the lab
and fixing it. If it's like a lot of bugs, the fix might be one line of code,
or it might even be a couple of characters, but a lot of work and time went
into those two characters."_

[0]
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html)

------
robotmay
Personally I'd like to see timezones disappear too. Why does 9am have to be
morning in every country? What would be so difficult about everyone in the
world sticking to one timezone? Hell we could go all in and start using star
dates.

~~~
fvirexi
I find this a really good argument for it: how are you supposed to know if you
call somebody in the middle of the night, if it's noon where you are, and the
hour is the same? By having different time-zones, you need to look it up, but
then you have an intuitive way of judging which stage of the day they are
perceiving.

~~~
Expez
You are complecting two problems: 1) When does the other person sleep. 2) What
does his watch show.

Making 2) easier does not change anything with regard to 1).

~~~
philwelch
For most people, their sleep is highly correlated with what their watches
show.

------
codex
Junking DST completely is an unimaginative, backward solution to an imperfect
system. DST just needs to be improved a bit more. The advent of computerized
timekeeping and GPS means that, for the first time since timekeeping began, we
can realize the natural benefits of waking the way humans were meant to--with
the sun. I call this scheme Human Time.

With Human Time, the sun rises at seven a.m. every day, in every location,
regardless of season.

* An hour is still an hour, but every night at three a.m., time skips about a minute or so each day, ensuring that the sunrise always occurs at seven a.m.

* Each state (or cluster of states) maintains their own 2D timezone.

* Your watch/smartphone uses GPS to ascertain the correct date and time zone. From this information it can compute the correct Human Time, and can show you the time in any other zone, or set an alarm for any other zone. Let's face it--the average human doesn't remember differences between today's time zones anyway, and hits Google whenever such calculations are needed. Moving to a more complicated time differencing algorithm will have no negligible effect on travelers.

* All "human" events (working hours, parties, etc.) use Human Time appropriate for their 2D timezone. All machine events use "machine time," which is standard non-daylight, non-slewed time, GMT, used for all things non-human.

* All watches/clocks/phones would also be able to convert to and from "machine time."

From the improved circadian rhythms that such a scheme would engender, I
expect a marked increase in mood and decrease in cancer rates, but obviously
this is conjecture, and not proven.

~~~
maxerickson
At even moderately high latitudes, this would be obnoxious during the summer.

At those same latitudes, it would also be obnoxious during the winter, taking
any and all evening sun away.

(I'm near the 45th parallel, towards the edge of a timezone. Sunrise tomorrow
is at about 7:30. Sunset is at about 5:30)

------
rapht
DST is obviously not the real issue.

The real issue is that people's habit have changed from what they were until a
century ago : the advance of transportation has meant commuting times have
extended, the advance of lighting has meant it was possible to spend more and
more time awake after dark, etc.

The average time during people are awake is roughly 16 hours a day, and these
16 hours used to be aligned with 1pm being the middle of the day, meaning
people would seldom go to bed after 9pm, and would usually get up around 5am.

This makes sense as daylight is well balanced between morning and afternoon.
And you don't need daylight saving time !

Therefore the appropriate course of action is to set working hours to be not
9am to 5pm but 7am to 3pm, once and for all.

~~~
Qom
That is not appropriate. I do NOT want to have to go to work at 7am, and
neither do many people I know.

~~~
rapht
What difference does it make ? It's just a mindset.

~~~
Zak
It's a mindset or preference to the same degree that homosexuality is:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype)

~~~
jsmeaton
Whoa, I didn't know that was a thing. Now I've got a handy little reference
available when the girlfriend complains that I "stay up too late" (past
10pm!).

------
vacri
I like how the article characterises it as a bad thing that people go out in
the evening, get social, and enjoy their lives. The article spends a lot of
time countering the "DST saves energy" argument (and mostly only fights to a
draw, not a win), and absolutely zero countering "DST gives you more time at
the long end of the day to enjoy your life".

------
petercooper
I never had a problem with it when I was young and carefree but now married
with kids.. man DST is annoying. The kids seem to take a good week to adjust
and I'm finding I'm still feeling tired an hour earlier than I should 6 days
on.

~~~
lostlogin
Was looking for the person who mentions kids. Thank you. The misery of putting
a kid to bed an hour early (WHY DAD WHY?) then listening to them rage for
about 2 hours due to getting overwrought, just to have to wake them up in the
AM rather than wake up naturally. Its miserable and having braved 4 time
changes since she became sentient, it gets worse every time.

~~~
petercooper
_The misery of putting a kid to bed an hour early (WHY DAD WHY?) then
listening to them rage for about 2 hours due to getting overwrought, just to
have to wake them up in the AM rather than wake up naturally._

It's funny how opposite some problems can be though! I have the total opposite
issue: my kids love going to bed and would happily go at 4pm if we let them,
the problem is they want to be up at 5:30am every day.. :-) I can't even think
of a single morning in 4 years where I've had to get my eldest up..

------
bluthru
Russia recently stopped observing DST by staying on the "ahead" time. I think
that's a great compromise.

------
JacobAldridge
Having lived with it and without it, I'm a loud and proud opposer of Daylight
Saving.

It seems that the changing of the clocks causes the most problems. I've oft
suggested that fans just change their timezone permanently forward - boy does
that create confusion among those wanting to argue.

~~~
mavhc
You can't give up now, almost all my clocks change automatically.

------
hrjet
When I first heard of DST I couldn't believe that there are entire countries
out there that follow this practice. It seems like it came straight out of a
Terry Pratchett novel.

------
bane
Time is one of those things that's pretty much _all_ edge cases.

------
harel
Is there any viable case FOR dst? The concept is archaic and insane

~~~
caster_cp
I'm an electrical engineer and the first project I worked in my professional
life was a Power Quality Meter, used by the power company at my city, in
Brazil.

In our specific case, DST was pretty good at shifting the two main power
demands we had at night: lighting and the effect of people going home (taking
a heated shower, using elevators...)

I had access to oscillographies at all power stations in my state (which is
not small, here is located the biggest hydroelectrical dam in the World, by
annual production). It happened that during DST the quality of the power being
provided increased.

I'm not arguing here that this is a solid proof that DST is good, but the
effect of concentrated demand and the subtle implications that this has on the
actual efficiency of the power grid seem to be all too often neglected.

Well, it's a good discussion, and my main point here is that things are not as
simple as they may appear at a first glance :)

~~~
harel
I get your point. I see it as a pain in the backside from a programming point
of view. Managing arbitrary dst changes which keep changing at the whims of
political powers is exhausting at best.

------
robotcookies
Yes, please. We need a movement to eliminate DST. There is no reason why we
should force everyone to accommodate the few who enjoy the illusion of longer
days in summer. It is easier to allow those to opt into it (you can wake up an
hour earlier if you want) rather than force everyone to get up an hour
earlier.

------
dochtman
There should be a link here to a piece/rant from last year (or at least it
made the rounds then, on here as well, I think), I think, where someone
passionately, and quite convincingly, defended daylight saving time.

I searched, but I can't find it at the moment. Does anyone else remember what
I'm referring to?

~~~
minikites
[http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-
dst/](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/) ?

~~~
dochtman
Yes, thank you!

------
rxever
In my opinion I would always leave the DST on. Because people tend to go on
average in my opinion to bed later than at 8 pm and on average wake up after
the dark is long gone. In other words we sleep when there is light. And I
think that the argument about spending more gas because people travel
somewhere to play and do activities is all but a bad thing. I have a concrete
example when people have a hard time exercising outside because it is dark
before you come home from a job. So I vote that DST stays always ON.

------
DrJokepu
I don’t understand why anyone would like it to get darker earlier?

------
drewjoh
Always my favorite video showing just how crazy DST makes everything:
[http://youtu.be/84aWtseb2-4](http://youtu.be/84aWtseb2-4)

------
conductr
I find most people that complain about DST actually are complaining about how
it gets dark so early. So, they actually want DST year round and dislike
standard time.

------
mgkimsal
for places that observe DST, move the clocks 30 minutes in between and call it
quits.

------
michaelochurch
I like DST, but I recognize that it's there largely for cultural reasons. (It
doesn't save much energy.) Summer nights should be light until 9:00pm; that
goes back to childhood and just seems "right". (I know that that's an
emotional argument with no reasonable backing.) On the other hand, I don't it
to be dark at 8:00 in the morning in the dead of winter, so I prefer the
reversion to standard time in the winter.

Want proof that it's cultural? It starts in March and ends in November.
Lightwise, March is the midpoint while November is almost the darkest part of
the year-- but not cold yet. DST follows the temperature, not the light.
People wouldn't like it if they left work in darkness during the high foliage
season of October. Hell, I wouldn't like that.

What's really going on, of course, is that DST forces everyone to do
everything an hour earlier during the lighter months. In companies that care
about presence down to exact minutes (thankfully, those are rare in tech) it
becomes socially acceptable to work 8-5 instead of 9-6, because everyone is
calling 8:00, 9:00. This prevents all that light in the morning from getting
wasted, because people are tricked into getting up earlier than they otherwise
would. They think getting up at 6:00 is for old people and gym rats, but
that's exactly what they do for 8 months out of the year.

People who work the standard workday want: (a) at least an hour and a half of
light _before_ they leave for work (typically, 8:30); (b) darkness by one hour
before the average bedtime (about 10:45), and (c) as much evening light as
possible during the nicest months (April, May; September, October) of the
year. DST is the hack that makes that possible.

One could argue, on the other hand, that it would be better for people to just
adapt to asynchrony in work and social life and thus make it irrelevant
whether we call the summer sunset "7:30" or "8:30"... but most people don't
have that luxury.

~~~
JeffL
Yes. I was going to say that people should just get up earlier and quit work
earlier to get the extra daylight, but practically speaking, I think doing
that without changing the clocks is much harder for most.

