Poll of the Day > Daylight savings in danger

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3571007-permanent-daylight-saving-time-hits-brick-wall-in-house/

These idiots think theyre going to agree on the more important issues. At least give us permanent daylight savings.

well, what they say is kind of right

easy: we should stop changing the clocks all the time and just use one time
hard: what should that one time be?
also hard: actually implementing it

Sahuagin posted...

hard: what should that one time be?
also hard: actually implementing it

lol no.

Damn it, today was crappy enough, now I find out permanent DST is hitting a roadblock?

:(

One of the few good things Congress actually was managing to pass, so of course...

eradicate time zones

its 3pm everywhere and fuck you if you dont like it

Sahuagin posted...

hard: what should that one time be?

Pretty much. Different regions have their own reasons to want to either keep or ditch DST permanently, and even then arriving at a consensus within those regions is hard. Even as a simple matter of personal preference, I find darker mornings to be far worse than darker evenings because it makes it harder for me to get out of bed, but others find that darker mornings aren't a problem and hate darker evenings because they get tired too early. Plenty of people feel that the status quo sucks one way or another, but most just grin and bear it. Once you open up the option of changing the status quo, though, getting everyone to agree on that change is a challenge.

Sahuagin posted...

also hard: actually implementing it

Nah, that part's easy enough. "It's 10:00 am now" and you're done. All of the difficulty is in the process leading up to that and deciding how to determine that it's 10:00 am.

Almost no one benefits from changing the clocks

it was invented and implemented only because it gave an extra hour for people to shop retail because back in the 50s people didnt really shop after dark

Fucking idiots, this is so easy, no more spring forward shit and losing an hour of sleep is the only way to do this

Stop stealing people's sleep for no reason, congress

adjl posted...

Nah, that part's easy enough. "It's 10:00 am now" and you're done.

I meant implementing it in the world, not just as a legislator. The point being, I would not want to be the person who is making a decision like this where potentially everyone in the world will be affected by my possibly stupid decision.

also thinking of it as a programmer where now the already horrendously complicated calculation of dates and times will now be yet another small amount more complicated.

do they even do DST globally

C'mon this was supposed to be an easy win that could bring everyone together.

VampireCoyote posted...

eradicate time zones

its 3pm everywhere and f*** you if you dont like it

Honestly totally okay with this too. With the world being so connected it'd be nice to see a time and just know exactly when it was.

VampireCoyote posted...

do they even do DST globally

good question me, I looked it up and its mostly just the americas, europe, and the middle east

Sahuagin posted...

I meant implementing it in the world, not just as a legislator. The point being, I would not want to be the person who is making a decision like this where potentially everyone in the world will be affected by my possibly stupid decision.

also thinking of it as a programmer where now the already horrendously complicated calculation of dates and times will now be yet another small amount more complicated.

It'd be a transition, but it'd ultimately be simpler than the current approach of having to figure out which time zone a given person is in based on what the date is instead of just going by where they are. This would effectively be a matter of shuffling time zones around permanently instead of having to account for them being shuffled around twice a year.

VampireCoyote posted...

do they even do DST globally

No, but countries that don't do it often have to interact with countries that do, so it still needs to be taken into account. That's further complicated by many regions that do it using a different schedule from the one Canada and the US use, rather than being able to use a single pair of dates globally.

Didn't we just change when DST happens some years ago? So I assume we've already been in most systems and monkeyed with that stuff anyway. Plus there plenty of countries where major business happens that don't change their clock. Plus if the countries already vary when it happens then this could only make it simpler I would think.

AndyReklaw posted...

Didn't we just change when DST happens some years ago?

Under Bush, if memory serves, so it's been a while.

adjl posted...

It'd be a transition, but it'd ultimately be simpler than the current approach of having to figure out which time zone a given person is in based on what the date is instead of just going by where they are. This would effectively be a matter of shuffling time zones around permanently instead of having to account for them being shuffled around twice a year.

that's only true for present time. past time calculations (so, datetime calculations in general) will still need to know the date in order to determine time-zone. that said, I guess it is true that it is done with time-zones. it's actually the determination of time-zone that becomes slightly more complex.

They're been saying they're going to eliminate DST for decades now. I'll believe it when it actually happens.

Sahuagin posted...

that's only true for present time. past time calculations (so, datetime calculations in general) will still need to know the date in order to determine time-zone.

True, though absolute time for past data sets isn't necessarily essential (that it, is doesn't really matter if the meeting last week happened at 9 or 10, only that it happened five hours before the meeting at 2 or 3). There's no reason every piece of non-DST time data couldn't get retroactively DST'd if that would simplify matters. That might get awkward if you're determining relative time differences across the time change, but even then converting the non-DST time into DST would make for a simpler calculation (i.e. you don't need to figure out how to say that 10 pm and 6 am are nine hours apart because it'd just be expressed as 10 and 7 instead).

Sahuagin posted...

that said, I guess it is true that it is done with time-zones. it's actually the determination of time-zone that becomes slightly more complex.

And once it's determined, that's all there is to it (moving forward, at least). Because we already do it with time zones, it's just a matter of reconfiguring the time zone data we already have to reflect new times.

changing the clocks doesn't change what time the sun goes up or down

They literally need to just not change the clocks this fall. Lets just leave it as it is because this is great.