[throw0101a]

The closer one is to the poles, the more the number of hours of daylight shifts over the seasons.

So at/near the equator, in a place like Panama, you will get roughly 12 hours of daylight in both the December and June Solstices.

* https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/panama/panama

Whereas in the Edinburgh you go from having 7 hours of daylight in December to over 17 hours in June:

* https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/edinburgh

So people want those 7 hours to be when it's most convenient for them.

[asoneth]

The goal makes sense but our current DST implementation of a sixty-minute jump twice a year seems unnecessarily large and disruptive. (And not just dealing with kids -- traffic accidents and heart attacks spike after.) Whereas if there was a way to coordinate a daily shift it would be less than a minute.

It reminds me of when I'm camping. I usually fall into a dawn-based time system: Wake up around ~dawn, eat breakfast ~d+2h, lunch ~d+6h, dinner ~d+12h, bed down ~d+16h. You maximize daylight this way but the main problem is that you end up drifting relative to everyone else and if you want to rely on a standard watch to keep your schedule it requires some mental math.

I'd love to figure out how to use a combination of dawn-based time system for my daily routines plus UTC for remote collaboration.

[gumby]

It's a technology path dependence issue.

When towns had public mechanical clocks they were typically frequently adjusted (even daily) so that noon was when the sun was directly overhead.

Once railroads were developed their schedules were a mess since each time had to be in the time of the specific station. So the railroads got time zones introduced.

Then when the move for DST came around it had to be something easy to calculate, thus a one hour shift. Sort of like the Dow Jones: something that could be easily calculated by hand.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

The infuriating thing is that our solution to this is to change the clock instead of just changing our schedules. It's completely ridiculous.

[ceilingcorner]

...no, actually it’s extremely logical. Changing clocks society wide is far easier than getting every single person and company to adjust its schedule.

[fishywang]

>than getting every single person and company to adjust its schedule

but by using DST we are just pretending that we didn't ask people/companies to adjust their schedules. in reality they did, just the "clock" stayed the same.

[dhimes]

Exactly. Changing our clocks is changing our schedules, the easy way.

[kukx]

Yes, it is similar to how creating inflation by the government is just a way to tax poor and the middle class, without actually rising taxes.

[rowls66]

Wrong. Inflation is a way to tax lenders, and reward debtors who get to repay their debts with less valuable currency. As the poor and middle class are more likely to be net debtors, they tend to benefit from inflation.

[Lvl999Noob]

Perhaps it was easier in the times before the internet. Now a consistent timeline should be far more convenient than not having to change your habits by a little bit.

Edit: If changing schedule is normalized, then it would be just as convenient as changing the clock. In countries without DST, if someone started using DST instead of changing their own schedule, it would be just as difficult.

[ceilingcorner]

I don’t think anyone other than programmers thinks DST is much of an inconvenience. The clock changes twice a year, big deal. That’s infinitely less complicated than asking your boss if you can start earlier, which means the store at the subway station will need to be open an hour earlier (since its business comes from commuters), which means restaurants will need to be open earlier to address the lunch crowd, which means your doctor will need to schedule appointments earlier, on and on.

[ghaff]

In all fairness, people like parents with young children, pets, etc. find time changes disruptive. That said, there are good reasons to shift schedules in mid latitudes and daylight saving time is a good way to do that if you don't want 4am sunrises in the summer or heading out in the pitch black in the winter.

The reality is that if you don't do daylight savings, you're not going to have a collective switch in schedules and you're going to have to deal with what, for most, is sub-optimal sunlight.

Personally, I don't care much now because I mostly set my own schedule. But I'd have hated eliminating daylight savings when I was on a more fixed schedule.

[u678u]

If they find time changes disruptive, changing schedules instead of time is going to be equally disruptive.

[GoblinSlayer]

What's the problem with 4am sunrises?

[toyg]

> I don’t think anyone other than programmers thinks DST is much of an inconvenience.

I don't think anyone other than programmers thinks DST is not a huge pain in the ass.

Twice a year your bodyclock gets screwed up and you risk getting to work at the wrong time; once a year you even get a shorter night of sleep.

In Europe (hardly "programmer's country"), it took very simple polling to discover that DST was hugely unpopular. The population at large simply does not benefit, it was introduced for the good of industry and we're largely leaving behind that world. Good riddance.

[BrandoElFollito]

To be fair, the polling went largly unnoticed (at least in France). I discovered it by chance in the middle of summer, shortly before it got closed.

Then the results were published and a few people were pissed off for not having been informed.

OTOH, it would have had been a discussion for 20 years otherwise.

I am happy we just have one tole shift left (to move to summer time, yay for me because I am on the western edge of a timezone)

[bluefirebrand]

> I don’t think anyone other than programmers thinks DST is much of an inconvenience. The clock changes twice a year, big deal

Everyone, and I mean everyone, I talk to about DST hates DST and wants it gone. It's definitely not just programmers who dislike it.

[Johnny555]

I think it's hugely inconvenient, I have to shift my waking and sleeping time by an hour twice a year and it takes at least a week to settle into the new schedule, and I have at least a half dozen clocks to shift time on, including one that needs a ladder.

Without DST why would I need to ask my boss to start an hour earlier? I've lived in places without DST and it was just fine, I didn't notice or miss any "extra" hour of daylight.

[remram]

Your argument sounds very similar to the "let's abolish timezones" argument so let me post this again: https://qntm.org/abolish

Changing your schedule works for you and your boss, but does not let people in other parts of the world know when they can reach you. Officially shifting something is necessary, and then you might as well have timezones.

[SamBam]

I find it insane that there are otherwise-smart people in the world that want to abolish time zones. For example, this NY Times article. [1]

In includes the most bizarre history:

> A century and a half ago, time zones didn’t exist. They were a consequence of the invention of railroads.

... and goes on to describe that it's suddenly so confusing and laughable that when it was 7:00 in New York, it would now be 8:00 in Chicago and 5:00 in San Francisco.

But what on Earth did the writer think the time was in San Francisco before there were time zones?

Before there were time zones, everyone synchronized to local noon. The result was much more fine-grained "time zones." What time zones did was to actually flatten those difference, leading to fewer time zones, because now suddenly the time in Maine was the same as the time in Michigan, despite being at completely different longitudes.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/sunday/time-to-du...

[inglor_cz]

> The result was much more fine-grained "time zones."

That is true, but it did not bother anyone, because fast long-distance communication either did not exist or was very limited (e.g. smoke signals) and syncing of clocks wasn't necessary in everyday activities; for a medieval person, the idea that clocks in Vienna and Prague MUST be synchronized would be as strange as for us the idea that everyone in the same city should have their breakfast at the same time. It just did not serve any obvious purpose.

There are only two exceptions I can think of.

a) people doing astrological horoscopes for someone who was born in a different place (a big thing among some nobility and royalty) would probably be bothered a bit by the time difference,

b) armies trying to converge on the same target at the same moment.

[WorldMaker]

Some extended timezone databases even have tried to collect historic city timezones from before the railroads, most often to the nearest 15 minute offset, but sometimes even minute specific offsets. It's interesting to explore those.

On that Michigan versus Maine thing, as someone in a city that historically was -0045 from its current timezone, I feel it interesting to point out that DST is closer to local noon than "Standard Time" in the city, versus that cities that define the other edge of the time zone and have local noon closer to Standard Time noon. (Our hour-wide time zones make the question of DST versus Standard Time much more complex than just picking one or the other, when talking about abolishing DST or standardizing only on DST.)

[amalcon]

For some evidence of this, consider that sundials have existed since about 1500 BCE. The existence of such a device easily disproves the notion that the "current time" was ever the same globally. Even mechanical clocks would obviously need to be set such that they would agree with a sundial, or the reading of the mechanical clock would be useless in a world where others are using sundials.

[scbrg]

It's a while since I read that article, so I may forget some details, but I do recall that I found it pretty stupid. It somehow assumes that it would be harder to find out what the regular working hours are in a country are than it is to find out what time it is in that country, possibly in addition to what the regular working hours are.

If Google today tells me, "It's now 5PM in Singapore", with no time zones it could just as easily tell me "Regular working hours in Singapore are 12-20".

OK, so that's two numbers to remember rather than one, but come on. Thing is, what a certain time means varies wildly country to country, and from person to person anyway. My Swedish friends eat dinner at 17:30. My friends in southern Europe eat dinner at ~22:00.

Unless I know who I'm calling, and their regular hours I have no idea if it's OK to give them a call at, say, 07:00 or 22:00. So I need extra information about them anyway - and that information wouldn't be harder to package in a world lacking time zones. In fact, it would be easier, since it'd contain only one element (times available) rather than two (times available plus timezone).

[thedufer]

Have you ever said "let's hang out Tuesday afternoon"? Abolishing time zones makes that a useless phrase for a large slice of the world - consider the area where the date changes in the middle of the afternoon. And which days are the weekdays? The ones where it's Monday-Friday in the morning (with Tuesday-Saturday afternoons) or where it's Monday-Friday in the afternoon (with Sunday-Thursday mornings)?

This doesn't really solve the problems with times, it just moves them from times to dates.

[blueblisters]

Fine, let's have separate working hours for every region. Now, how do you determine what longitudes share working hours?

[recursive]

I read it last time. I still think it's a weak argument, and that abolishing time zones has benefits that outweigh its costs.

[GoblinSlayer]

People in other parts of the world can reach me at any time by email, during the work hours of the email server.

[remram]

If that is how everyone at your company feel, you don't need a schedule at all (or even a clock).

[kjakm]

It's even easier post-internet. Your clocks automatically change for you now. In the past you had to remember when the change occurred and updated all your clocks manually - and if you forgot you ended up an hour late/early to any Sunday appointment after the change.

[exporectomy]

What's this inconvenience you're talking about? I often don't even realize when daylight savings changes because everything is automatic. My alarm wakes me up at the new correct time, the clocks on my phone and computer have adjusted themselves. Sometimes I wonder why the clock on the oven is wrong and then Google to find out that daylight savings just happened. Maybe some people have more dependence on non-internet-connected clocks or work through the night on Sunday?

[toomanybeersies]

Easier to get a few computers to automatically change their clock twice a year than every human being to change their schedule.

[asoneth]

This. Coordinating a mass schedule change is just an alternate implementation of a time shift.

The primary benefit of mass schedule change is that it might make (some) programmers' lives easier. The disadvantage is that it makes everyone else's lives harder as they adapt to schedule shifts.

(Clocks exist to serve people, people don't exist to serve clocks.)

[qwertox]

We shouldn't even adjust our schedules. We should just accept the fact that it is going to be dark at different times.

Then again, this would be an issue for road workers (those who repair highways or other roads) and maybe trash collection services. So it begins... Horrible.

[ljm]

Technically DST _is_ accepting that it's going to be dark at different times, and therefore the completely man-made thing that is a clock can be changed a bit to reflect that.

A perfectly human solution really: work around the shift in daylight hours across the year by fiddling with the clocks. The whole thing with schedules and timetables is a self inflicted problem in a post-industrial society, sure, but workarounds are never really meant to be more than a bandaid.

[ghaff]

The problem is that you need to "fiddle with the clocks" in a coordinated way. Schools can't shift around starting times asynchronously with the many businesses where parents work for example.

[davidw]

Yeah. Any sufficiently coordinated schedule change would involve as much headache as clock changes.

[CydeWeys]

More of a headache, even. Sadly, DST is the only good way to have everyone synchronize a schedule change like this.

[rurban]

No, the worst is that date outputs wrong data without error. Wrong input is silently ignored, and the output 3 letter code is also wrong. Bug report pending

[hnick]

Times get written down or otherwise recorded, it would be a lot of work to update or duplicate entries for opening hours on signs and websites, times in laws, and various other things to account for the time of year. Instead we can just update the clock and have all the references preserved.

[wiredfool]

The worst thing is that the farther north you go, the less it matters. In Ireland, DST only really makes a difference for a month or so around the change. In the summer, light. In the winter, dark.

[ghaff]

DST mostly matters between about 35-50 degrees latitude. Less than that and the days are similar enough in length throughout the year that it doesn't really make sense to change clocks. And, as you say, much further north (or south) you have more light than you know what to do with in the summer and you're probably largely in darkness outside of work hours in the winter whatever fiddling you do.

[Dylan16807]

> So people want those 7 hours to be when it's most convenient for them.

In theory. Going by the normal justification for daylight savings, the convenient hours to have sun are the afternoon. But if that was it, then you'd expect the clock to be pushed even further in the winter.

[prerok]

It's actually the other way around. DST is applied in summer, so people actually want those 17 hours when it's convenient :)

[dreamcompiler]

..and the latitude where that 17 hours finally grows to 24 is called the Arctic Circle.