As an Australian who lives in Berlin, I find this hilarious, remembering the (cretinous) debates about daylight saving back in Australia, particularly Queensland where I was born.
For 30 years, Queensland has been in a different time zone to NSW and Victoria during summer, because it has never adopted daylight savings. For this, such wonderful arguments were advanced such as "It will fade the curtains" (Wait, wat) and it will upset the cows to be milked at a different time.
And across the other side of Australia, Western Australia (always a, er, special place) has had FOUR referendums in the last 50 years on whether to adopt daylight savings. All were rejected.
So watching Europe deal with this pragmatically and quickly is quite pleasing to watch.
I've seen several studies that conclude that cows don't care what time they are milked, as long as it is done consistently. In many farms, the milking operation is actually entirely automatic -- the cows walk up to the milking stations by themselves.
Growing up in Indiana, we never had daylight savings time. Standard time year-round. It was finally adopted after tireless arguing about how it was difficult for business to be an hour different from the rest of the country for half the year. Those against adopting it did use the "milking the cows" argument also.
I don't think at the time people could foresee the impact of online business, when it really doesn't matter where you are or what time it is.
My experience in my family and with my friends is that “it will fade the curtains” is said flippantly (my mother particularly likes it). Does anyone have any documentation of people that have said it seriously, or is it unsubstantiated and potentially urban myth?
Yeah, living in Victoria (Australia) I’d love to push to scrap DST but I also know how incredibly useless Australian politicians are and that it’s just go nowhere and only end up wasting money.
> For 30 years, Queensland has been in a different time zone to NSW
Ridiculous! That sounds like Portugal and Spain. If one lives in Porto and travels just north of the border to Vigo (Galicia), it's an hour ahead. Apparently it was done by Franco who wanted to be on the same time as Hitler [1]
About time! If people want to get up earlier or later, then they should do like the Iranians and go to work one hour earlier in the summer. Don't change the clocks.
I agree, but I think companies could make it more palatable if they instead describe it as coming in to work one hour later in the winter.
That way, rather than sounding like they expect something extra in the summer, it sounds like they are making a helpful accommodation in the winter.
(Also, it's probably not even necessary for those with desk jobs. Arguably it's worse because you are less able to experience at least a little daylight after work.)
Tragically, our legal system and business culture are so hidebound that the easiest way to make it acceptable for people to come into work earlier, shops to opening earlier and so on is to change what time shows on the clocks.
The reality is the time the sun rises changes throughout the year. To fix reality, we adjust the definition of time.
If an activity depends on the sunrise, and not the position of the hands on the clock, then maybe they should, I dunno, schedule around the sun instead of the clock. I know, seems like crazy talk. Farmers should have farming clocks, not break everybody else's clock to align with the sun.
> Farmers should have farming clocks, not break everybody else's clock to align with the sun.
Growing up on a farm, nobody hates DST MORE than farmers. DST was not setup for farmers, it was an energy saving device from WW1. Please stop spreading that DST is for Farmers, its plain wrong.
Farmers have nothing to do with daylight savings (country-raised person here!). They hate it. They live and work by the sun, not by the clock.
The entire concept is only kept alive today thanks to the golf industry, imho. The upper crust- politicians, bankers, the wealthy generally- like golfing. Poor people don't golf and often are unable to pay whatever fees are needed to even enter golf clubs or buy the needed equipment.
What does that have to do with golf? If the sun sets later, relative to the time you get off work, you can get more rounds of golf in. Now, you might ask "why not just leave work earlier?". Because then you look like a slacker who leaves work early to go golfing! But if all of society is told to get to and leave work early by an hour (relative to the sun's actual rise and set) then you're leaving at the same time as everyone else.
When I was a kid in China, we have winter and summer school schedules separately. It's not only a time shift. To deal with the shorter day time in winter, the winter schedule is tighter overall like shorter noon breaks. Companies usually don't do that.
For me, DST is more like a too simple solution for a much complex problem and too inflexible.
Farmer here. Daylight savings time isn't for farmers. We aim to wake before daylight and that time changes daily. I always thought it was to give 9-5ers more daylight.
Farmers have always hated having to switch because doing everything an hour earlier messes with the animals. They can't simply roll everything one hour forward in the summer, because their produce has to be loaded on trucks and then transported to markets quickly, so the entire food distribution chain would have to switch to one hour later in summer.
Yeah. Growing up [1] with 2 month polar day/polar night - and rapid week-to-week changes in-between - I never felt dst made much sense...
We have accurate clocks - have had for a long time. If you need to shift football practice or construction work or something... Just start at nine in the darkest period, eight in between and seven when there's light at seven. Or vice-versa for the evenings.
IMNSHO Always refer to _cities_ when talking about different civil time systems for a specific moment, e.g. "The call is at 14:30 Melbourne time" or "When you arrive it'll be 18:15 Montreal time".
The Olson TZ data works on cities (e.g. "Europe/London" or "America/Los_Angeles") but more importantly because a city has all these humans living in it there must actually be a real working answer, or it'd be chaos. Even if the person you're speaking to isn't _from_ or working/ living in the major named city, they will have a better idea what the time is in nearby major cities than how timezones work around the world. Nobody in, say, Nantes is confused as to what time it is in Paris but they may be unclear about PST vs PDT.
Ireland is unusual in that it doesn't have a "summer" time as during summer we use Irish Standard Time (UTC+1) and switch to Greenwich Mean Time (UTC+0) for winter.
It doesn't actually make a difference. We still switch at the same time that the rest of Europe does.
I see that most people here (and people I know) would like to keep the "summer time" all year, because they like to get out early from work. But why not start working at 7am instead of 8am, while keeping the "true" solar horary, instead of our clocks be almost 1,5h away from the reality? Time is relative, I guess.. :)
Thrilled they're considering this, but my first thought was "I wonder how many time and date libraries will fail to adjust correctly?"
I'm sure that for the well designed ones it's just a matter of configuration somewhere ... But there will definitely be some fun and weird time bugs in the near future
On top of that DST is one of the nastiest things when dealing with time / date in CS.
I’m scared as well that there will be another edge case when the DST is being demolished from EU as the time calculation in the past and the future will have another “if” clause.
Fantastic!
Though I'm getting a vision of the future ~50 years from now where the US is one of the two countries in the world still practicing daylight savings.
It's worth noting that Greece, Cyprus, Malta and in a lesser extent Italy were the only ones supporting the existing system. All the other countries are clearly in favor of abolishing the change. Strange that Spain and Portugal didn't vote like the remaining southern EU countries.
Daylight time or standard time -- I don't care. Just pick one and stop changing it twice a year. There's plenty of evidence that messing with the clock doesn't do any good.
I wonder if anyone has looked at the complexity¹ of maintaining timezones in software before raising as a solution for every member state decide for themselves whether to abolish or not. It will be an absolute nightmare. It's going to be hours of code audit and consulting gigs like it's 1999 (I mean Y2K).
As someone who deals with date/time on computers I can only say "about damn time". Time is a goddamn mess already, no need to complicate it even further.
I'm going to go against the grain and advocate in favor of daylight saving time, mostly because the alternatives are worse. Dr. Drang lays out the reasons nicely:
>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. And if you’re wondering why I’m not accounting for predawn light in this case, it’s because winter skies tend to be more overcast and don’t provide as much twilight as summer skies do.
As a parent with young kids will tell you it takes a couple weeks for our family to recover from the twice yearly switch. It is also depression for me when I lose that hour of daylight in the fall. My body doesn't get the benefit of a gradual change in daylight from season to season.
[+] [-] jlangenauer|7 years ago|reply
For 30 years, Queensland has been in a different time zone to NSW and Victoria during summer, because it has never adopted daylight savings. For this, such wonderful arguments were advanced such as "It will fade the curtains" (Wait, wat) and it will upset the cows to be milked at a different time.
And across the other side of Australia, Western Australia (always a, er, special place) has had FOUR referendums in the last 50 years on whether to adopt daylight savings. All were rejected.
So watching Europe deal with this pragmatically and quickly is quite pleasing to watch.
[+] [-] dsr_|7 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/nyregion/with-farm-roboti...
[+] [-] ams6110|7 years ago|reply
I don't think at the time people could foresee the impact of online business, when it really doesn't matter where you are or what time it is.
[+] [-] chrismorgan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrmondo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] callumjones|7 years ago|reply
Can you expand on this? Or is this an east vs west viewpoint?
[+] [-] personlurking|7 years ago|reply
Ridiculous! That sounds like Portugal and Spain. If one lives in Porto and travels just north of the border to Vigo (Galicia), it's an hour ahead. Apparently it was done by Franco who wanted to be on the same time as Hitler [1]
1 - https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=244995264
[+] [-] m3mpp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjourne|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianmonk|7 years ago|reply
That way, rather than sounding like they expect something extra in the summer, it sounds like they are making a helpful accommodation in the winter.
(Also, it's probably not even necessary for those with desk jobs. Arguably it's worse because you are less able to experience at least a little daylight after work.)
[+] [-] lmm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _han|7 years ago|reply
Also, I'm not sure if it was intentional, but I appreciate your pun. It is indeed about time.
[+] [-] icc97|7 years ago|reply
Actually it would be more of a benefit if it were staggered in the winter since lots are on holiday in the summer.
So I propose scrapping summer time and bringing in winter time. That'll confuse the cows.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] markus_schmaus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snarfy|7 years ago|reply
If an activity depends on the sunrise, and not the position of the hands on the clock, then maybe they should, I dunno, schedule around the sun instead of the clock. I know, seems like crazy talk. Farmers should have farming clocks, not break everybody else's clock to align with the sun.
[+] [-] mitchty|7 years ago|reply
Growing up on a farm, nobody hates DST MORE than farmers. DST was not setup for farmers, it was an energy saving device from WW1. Please stop spreading that DST is for Farmers, its plain wrong.
[+] [-] mabbo|7 years ago|reply
The entire concept is only kept alive today thanks to the golf industry, imho. The upper crust- politicians, bankers, the wealthy generally- like golfing. Poor people don't golf and often are unable to pay whatever fees are needed to even enter golf clubs or buy the needed equipment.
What does that have to do with golf? If the sun sets later, relative to the time you get off work, you can get more rounds of golf in. Now, you might ask "why not just leave work earlier?". Because then you look like a slacker who leaves work early to go golfing! But if all of society is told to get to and leave work early by an hour (relative to the sun's actual rise and set) then you're leaving at the same time as everyone else.
[+] [-] azurezyq|7 years ago|reply
For me, DST is more like a too simple solution for a much complex problem and too inflexible.
[+] [-] supermatt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Asooka|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomastjeffery|7 years ago|reply
All you need to do is change your schedule.
[+] [-] Guvante|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e12e|7 years ago|reply
We have accurate clocks - have had for a long time. If you need to shift football practice or construction work or something... Just start at nine in the darkest period, eight in between and seven when there's light at seven. Or vice-versa for the evenings.
[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/norway/tromso
[+] [-] CalRobert|7 years ago|reply
"we'll meet at four your time"
"great!"
"why weren't you there?? I googled 'current time utc!!'"
"because we're on BST, aka IST, aka UTC+1 in the summer"
But this rando website says UK/Ireland is UTC!!
Someday, somehow, we'll teach people that if you're using PST in the summer, there's a 99% chance you're wrong.
[+] [-] tialaramex|7 years ago|reply
The Olson TZ data works on cities (e.g. "Europe/London" or "America/Los_Angeles") but more importantly because a city has all these humans living in it there must actually be a real working answer, or it'd be chaos. Even if the person you're speaking to isn't _from_ or working/ living in the major named city, they will have a better idea what the time is in nearby major cities than how timezones work around the world. Nobody in, say, Nantes is confused as to what time it is in Paris but they may be unclear about PST vs PDT.
[+] [-] patrickmcnamara|7 years ago|reply
It doesn't actually make a difference. We still switch at the same time that the rest of Europe does.
[+] [-] gerikson|7 years ago|reply
In my experience, people in the UK refer to their time as "GMT" all the year round.
[+] [-] kenneth|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xamolxix|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Balero|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hopeless|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddebernardy|7 years ago|reply
Hopefully t's will get crossed and i's will get dotted before winter time kicks in this year.
[0]: https://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2018/08/31/la-commissi...
[+] [-] jventura|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisper|7 years ago|reply
Imho the summertime should be abolished for all member states..
[+] [-] baldfat|7 years ago|reply
I am 100% for getting rid of this dumb system.
[+] [-] cpfohl|7 years ago|reply
I'm sure that for the well designed ones it's just a matter of configuration somewhere ... But there will definitely be some fun and weird time bugs in the near future
[+] [-] drinchev|7 years ago|reply
I’m scared as well that there will be another edge case when the DST is being demolished from EU as the time calculation in the past and the future will have another “if” clause.
[+] [-] protoster|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NKosmatos|7 years ago|reply
Here is the official link to the preliminary results: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-5302_en.htm
Not a lot of people participated, less than 1%, so the results should be taken with a grain of salt.
[+] [-] rectang|7 years ago|reply
The switch is only a brief adjustment. But having an extra hour of daylight in the early evening for half a year makes a huge difference.
[+] [-] Wildgoose|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RegBarclay|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DyslexicAtheist|7 years ago|reply
__
¹ The Problem with Time & Timezones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY
[+] [-] jandrese|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minikites|7 years ago|reply
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. And if you’re wondering why I’m not accounting for predawn light in this case, it’s because winter skies tend to be more overcast and don’t provide as much twilight as summer skies do.
[+] [-] jemfinch|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlj|7 years ago|reply
I hope that it can be abolished in the US too.