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 It's well passed time we put to rest this outdated notion that jumping forward or back the hour hand will have an effect on the length of day.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Since it isn't impacting most people beyond a mere rare inconvenience
Most people.
The reason no one is pushing to change it is that it's hard to lead a big effort with lackluster support. Very few people feel any impact at all.
It's obviously a bigger pain than benefit (it's arguably almost zero benefit). But what politician wants to lose out on a cooler project to spend time fighting for something almost no one really cares about?
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.
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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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 27.4 ms ] threadDaylight 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.
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.
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.
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.
Most people.
The reason no one is pushing to change it is that it's hard to lead a big effort with lackluster support. Very few people feel any impact at all.
It's obviously a bigger pain than benefit (it's arguably almost zero benefit). But what politician wants to lose out on a cooler project to spend time fighting for something almost no one really cares about?
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.
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.