[HN Gopher] Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the...
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Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
Author : caiobegotti
Score : 141 points
Date : 2023-11-30 17:11 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (timeuse.barcelona)
(TXT) w3m dump (timeuse.barcelona)
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| "After agreement of a common date within the EU, we recommend
| doing the transition in 1 to 2 steps, depending on the member
| state:
|
| Step 1: All EU countries abolish the clock change to DST in
| spring and remain on the clock time they use in winter. For those
| countries whose recommended time zone is their current standard
| time, no further steps need to be taken.
|
| Step 2: Those countries whose recommended time zone is not yet
| their current standard time, additionally turn back their clocks
| one last time by one hour in autumn, in order to adopt their
| recommended time zone as their new standard time."
|
| I really wish we could do this in the US.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I've never seen anyone propose moving in the _opposite_
| direction of summer time before. That seems needlessly awkward
| to me.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| The United States adopted summer time in the 70s but
| abandoned it because of complaints about the late darkness in
| winter mornings.
| wharvle wrote:
| The sun setting at or before 5PM is so very much worse than
| morning darkness. Especially for kids. They need sunlight
| and their only real opportunity to get much time outside
| during the school year is the late afternoon and evening,
| especially as recess time has been cut post-NCLB (and
| public schools are absurdly timid about sending kids
| outside in the winter anyway). My kids are old enough that
| they won't reap a lot of the benefits of the change even if
| it happens tomorrow, but I remain hopeful we can make this
| happen for their kids' sake.
|
| And at least morning darkness means you don't start your
| day with a commute that involves having your eyes melted by
| a just-over-the-horizon sun.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Yeah, the argument made more sense in the 70s, but these
| days school districts have cut back on bus services so
| much that your child most likely wakes up in darkness
| anyways to catch a much windier bus route to school.
| pavon wrote:
| I don't think it is proposing that. From what I can tell
| their proposal is a (somewhat awkward) way of saying some
| countries will stick to their current summer (standard) time
| next time they switch to it. Other countries will stick with
| their current winter (DST) time when they next switch to it.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Look at the resulting time zones. They wrote it correctly.
| Every country is skipping the +1 to summer time, but
| several of them are still doing a final -1 _after that_.
| Several countries that use time zones X and X+1 would
| switch to X-1.
| netsharc wrote:
| You got the 2 terms mixed up...
|
| But yeah, assuming they want to do the magic in September:
| It would mean for countries where UTC+01:00 (standard time,
| winter time) makes more sense, they'd move to UTC+01:00
| when the next switchover date in September shows up,
| whereas for countries where UTC+02:00 (daylight
| savings/summer time) makes more sense, they'd stay on that
| TZ past the September switchover date. They'd have to
| assign new names though, one can't have 1 timezone with 2
| different names...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| No, none of the countries say on summer time in the plan.
|
| Every country that is currently UTC+01:00/UTC+02:00 ends
| up in either UTC+01:00 or UTC+00:00.
| qsort wrote:
| The idea would be to move Spain, France and Benelux to UTC.
| Currently all of Western Europe is on UTC+1/UTC+2, which is
| much wider than it "should" be.
|
| I have no opinion on the idea, just relaying what they are
| proposing.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Ireland is on GMT/-1, and we're already pretty far west in
| the 15 degrees centered on 0.
| vikingerik wrote:
| The point is to correct those locales that have gone way too
| far in the direction of summer time. Spain in particular is
| almost 3 hours off of solar time.
|
| There's a societal pull in the direction of earlier time,
| even aside from anything about sunlight. Nobody wants to be
| "late" compared to their economic neighbors so they gravitate
| towards earlier time zones. This is correcting for that.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Spain in particular is almost 3 hours off of solar time.
|
| I suppose if you squint right at the western edge in summer
| time you could get there.
|
| But the prime meridian runs straight through the country. I
| think a sensible reckoning would say that it's 1 hour off
| as a baseline and 1 extra hour during summer.
| reidrac wrote:
| Despite the prime meridian crossing the country, Spain is
| the same timezone as Berlin. One hour more than London.
|
| If you are interested, look for the historical reasons
| for that.
|
| Edit: OK, a good source.
|
| > On March 16th 1940, the clocks jumped from 23:00h to
| 00:00h to display the same time as Nazi Germany and other
| Nazi-occupied countries such as France and the
| Netherlands. This was an entirely politically motivated
| move to show support to the fascist government of Germany
| and showed no consideration for the natural cycle of the
| sun in Spain. According to the original 24-hour division
| of the world, Spain's latitudinal position meant that GMT
| was the most natural time-zone for it to follow.
|
| From:
| https://theculturetrip.com/europe/spain/articles/heres-
| why-s...
|
| Spanish civil war was won by the fascists and Franco's
| dictatorship followed.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I'd rather it be how it is in the spring rather than winter.
| When you get home there's at least a bit more time in the day
| to enjoy the sun.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| For large parts of the US it's probably dark by 4:30 so no,
| not really. I'm not in the US by the way.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Here's a map of the earliest sunset time:
| https://weather.com/science/weather-
| explainers/news/2018-12-... . There are parts of the US
| which have sunsets before 4:30, including some major
| population centers, but I don't know if I'd call them
| "large parts".
| alright2565 wrote:
| that map shows most major cities in North America have
| the sun set before 5PM (traditional work end time). New
| York, DC, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Chicago.
|
| New York, Boston, and Chicago all set before 4:30, a
| minimum of 10% of the population just there.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Right. Most people have sunset before 5 (there's not that
| much blue on the map), but not before 4:30.
| mjevans wrote:
| If you live, vaguely, in the north (of the 45th parallel) you
| get that change either way thanks to the tilt of the earth.
|
| I'd rather have the sunset start at 8PM and go over the
| horizon at 9PM (without DST) in the summer, than the current
| ends at 10PM in the summer.
| https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/seattle
|
| Now somewhere like Miami, FL
| https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/miami with DST has a
| longest day of about 6AM to 8:40PM (civil twilight start /
| end), which without DST goes to 5AM and 7:40PM.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Just stopping the change at all would be a good start.
|
| After that I suspect most people will figure out how to
| adjust their business / working hours to get the sun when
| they want.
| xoa wrote:
| Well we can't, and that's having tried! The replies do a great
| job of illustrating why really: there's no consensus. Some want
| permanent standard time. Some want permanent DST. Some are fine
| the way it is. In a big country spanning a lot of latitude as
| well as longitude and tens of millions on wildly different work
| and sleep schedules, messy compromise making no one entirely
| happy is what success looks like.
|
| Basically time stuff is arguably one of the big Chesterton's
| Fences that comes up on HN a lot. We didn't end up where we are
| for no reason or because people in the past were stupid.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| We legislate lots of things without consensus with 51-49
| majorities.
|
| People in the past had a _very_ different time environment. I
| used to have 1 watch. Now I have a dozen different clocks in
| my apartment.
|
| We also did not interact with other time zones nearly as
| much.
| xoa wrote:
| > _We legislate lots of things without consensus with 51-49
| majorities._
|
| We really do not in the US when it's a matter of genuine
| controversy. Once in a long while something gets forced
| through if the status quo is just unsustainable or it's a
| core plank issue or something, but the system isn't
| designed to allow anyone hitting 51 to easily pass anything
| contentious. And that's with your implicit take that there
| is a 51-49, but that's the thing, it's not a dichotomy in
| the first place. It's more like 25/25/40/5/3/1/1. Plus this
| isn't some inherently critical issue, for most people it's
| at most a minor irritation twice per year. For some it's a
| minor enjoyable, "free sleep". And thus status quo rules
| :).
|
| > _People in the past had a very different time
| environment. I used to have 1 watch. Now I have a dozen
| different clocks in my apartment._
|
| Indeed! Our clocks used to not have global sub-millisecond
| automatic time synchronization.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| >Plus this isn't some inherently critical issue, for most
| people it's at most a minor irritation twice per year.
| For some it's a minor enjoyable, "free sleep".
|
| I want to push back on this a bit. It's not just the
| moment of change itself, it's how wall time compares to
| the sun.
|
| And the problem with that is business hours being stuck
| to wall time. Essentially the government controls how
| business hours relate to the sun, instead of expecting
| each entity to change their business hours with the
| seasons (or not) as desired. This goes back to the time
| when business hours posted on a door were much more
| important.
|
| If you are stuck in a "9-5" job or otherwise are
| committed to what the clock says, the time change
| significantly controls your interaction with the sun.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't really care any longer having a pretty flexible
| schedule and no commute. But living in relatively northern
| New England, the timezone tweaks for summer and winter really
| were pretty welcome. I suspect that most of those ranting
| about timezone changes wouldn't actually want sunrise at 4am
| or sunset at 3pm.
| xoa wrote:
| I also live in northern New England and feel the same at
| this point. It may not be ideal, but nothing else would be
| either. And honestly technology has made the pain points
| pretty much vanish for me anyway: now every single time
| keeping device automatically switches over, and my smart
| lights that I made a program for a simulated sunrise and
| time-of-day based color temperature changes also switch
| which means my circadian rhythm adapts right away. I can
| absolutely empathize with those who feel differently but I
| think where we've ended up is pretty decent given the
| ginormously different circumstances and wishes. Until
| something can win a better consensus.
| kelnos wrote:
| I feel the opposite way. I too have a flexible schedule and
| no commute, and I'd prefer not having to change time zones
| twice a year. It's annoying and doesn't serve any useful
| benefit to me. I don't care when the sunrise or sunset is
| in wall-clock time, I can get up later/earlier and go to
| bed later/earlier if I want. Yes, there are things that
| need to be done during normal business hours, but I have a
| full 8 of those to work with.
|
| The main issue I see is that of kids' primary school
| schedules: they already have to get up so ridiculously
| early; having to be in school when the sun isn't even up
| yet is brutal. But that seems to be the case in some places
| regardless of whether or not we do a DST change.
|
| And of course there are plenty of people who don't have my
| (our) flexible schedule and lack of commute. It does suck
| to have to drive to work in the morning when it's dark, or
| come home in the evening without any daylight left to
| enjoy. But, again, this is going to be the case for many
| people even with a DST change.
| ghaff wrote:
| In my case, I don't have kids, I don't have a consistent
| schedule, and I travel enough than a one hour timezone
| shift isn't something I even notice--the early airport
| pickup is far more likely to affect my rhythms. My
| preference is probably year-round DST in the Boston area.
| (We're basically in the wrong timezone.) But I understand
| being in sync with the rest of the east coast.
|
| I'd also pretty much be fine with year-round standard
| time at this point but the time shift just isn't really
| on my radar.
| jibbit wrote:
| > The main issue I see..
|
| you've 180deg misunderstood DST, the sole purpose of
| which is to give you an extra hour in bed in the winter
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Expecting school and business hours to have a fixed clock
| time, and then trying to shift that to the sun, is
| exactly the problem.
|
| Imagine if instead the school changed the start time a
| few minutes each week in order to maintain a fixed offset
| with sunrise.
|
| Bonus points because you don't force an abrupt change to
| circadian rhythm that takes two weeks to adjust.
|
| Of course the problem is that many parents are stuck in
| jobs that expect fixed start times too...
| danaris wrote:
| I live in Upstate New York, and care _much_ more about the
| frustration, added stress, and _provable loss of life_ that
| results from the twice-yearly changing of the clocks than I
| do about what the clock says when the sun is setting. If I
| want more sunlight during the time I 'm awake, _I can get
| up earlier in the morning_.
| ghaff wrote:
| Not everyone controls their schedule.
| tivert wrote:
| > Basically time stuff is arguably one of the big
| Chesterton's Fences that comes up on HN a lot. We didn't end
| up where we are for no reason or because people in the past
| were stupid.
|
| We should all pretend to be robots and use UTC for
| everything. Problem solved!
| golemotron wrote:
| > I really wish we could do this in the US.
|
| The US is about 4000 miles wider. That makes it hard.
| simbolit wrote:
| (1) abolishing daylight savings time is great and should have
| been done years ago.
|
| (2) the proposed time zones are really impractical, not
| necessarily in principle, but in their specific implementation.
| Germany-Netherlands in different time zones is strange, Dublin
| and Belfast in different time zones is stupid, Athens and Crete
| in different time zones is absurd.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I agree.
|
| National borders is quite possibly one of the worst ways to do
| time zones. At least in the US time zone borders were
| specifically chosen to run through areas of low population, so
| you would minimize the number of people doing, say, living in
| France but working in Geneva one hour ahead.
|
| Also it's kind of odd that Ireland and Portugal are in their
| own little time zone, when it probably makes more sense to just
| sync up with all their other neighbors.
| simbolit wrote:
| Ireland and Portugal already are together in this time zone,
| but the UK is with them, which makes good friday sense.
|
| Map of Timezones: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm
| ons/8/88/World_Ti...
| ianburrell wrote:
| It would make sense to have Portgual and Ireland in the
| Western Europe time zone. They are right over the border
| from UTC but it makes sense to include them with neighbors.
| Especialy when they are currently in UTC. It is Spain and
| France that need to move.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| For what it's worth, Spain and France were on GMT (as it
| was back then) before World War II.
|
| (Technically French law referred to the time as "Paris
| mean time, retarded by 9 minutes and 21 seconds" - they
| had thought the Prime Meridian ought to run through Paris
| rather than London and were sore about losing that.)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Oh interesting.
|
| Admittedly that map is a bit difficult to read as a
| colorblind person.
| BigFnTelly wrote:
| Poor Yukon, skipping 2 time zones
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I share your opinion re: Ireland and Portugal. This is like,
| for example, in the US setting Maine to be in its own time
| zone.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I wonder if with a plan like this, the borders would get
| adjusted a little bit so that the French suburbs of Geneva
| would follow Swiss time. You see things like this in the US,
| where for example the Indiana suburbs of Chicago follow
| Chicago time.
| globular-toast wrote:
| But Spain being on CET is absurd too. They basically run on GMT
| anyway, it just shows a later time on the clock (that's partly
| why Spanish people eat dinner really late).
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| This actually kinda sucks. I like not changing clocks. But I'm
| not happy about moving the timezones around.
|
| I'm in The Netherlands and after this Germany will be in a
| different time zone than me. That's not cool.
| ghusto wrote:
| I'm in the Netherlands too, and I can't understand this
| sentiment. You're the second commenter to say this. Explain?
| bouke wrote:
| This proposes that The Netherlands switch to WEST/UTC. There is
| already no clear consensus on whether to stay on permanent
| summertime (+2) vs wintertime (+1), and I would expect the switch
| to UTC to be even more challenging to adopt. Interestingly we
| switched from Amsterdam time (+0:20) to Berlin time (+1) during
| WW2, so going to +0 would mean a much earlier noon. Additionally
| policymakers have been saying to favour keeping the time with our
| major export market (Germany) in sync, so that wouldn't fly with
| this proposal. Personally I don't care that much for what offset
| is chosen, as long as we abolish DST.
| Aachen wrote:
| I do like the idea of being in UTC and not having to worry
| about this timezone nonsense between my computer and any server
| application.
|
| Unfortunately I've moved from the Netherlands to Germany and my
| family, a few longitudinal kilometers away, would have to do
| timezone gymnastics when we talk about any sort of plans, so
| needless to say, from my personal point of view I fully agree
| with you that NL and DE being in different timezones, instead
| of the sea being the timezone separator as it is today, is
| bonkers
| tgv wrote:
| > I do like the idea of being in UTC and not having to worry
| about this timezone nonsense between my computer and any
| server application.
|
| It's an automatic watch. You do not have to worry about it.
| Communicate UTC timestamps with timezones between computers,
| but don't make people use those "because it's easier to
| program."
| theodric wrote:
| After placing all of Europe on permanent winter time, going by
| the image provided, this proposal seeks to split Ireland's time
| zone from the UK's and place it a further hour earlier, thereby
| ensuring that the sun will begin setting at 2:30PM, and it will
| be pitch black out at 3:30PM in the winter, all in the name of
| achieving "permanent time zones as close as possible to solar
| time (natural time) in Europe."
|
| Well done.
| loudin wrote:
| Exactly. This proposal is absolutely soul-crushing for most
| people. Having extended daylight hours when people are actually
| awake in the evening is critical for positive mental health.
| antupis wrote:
| Studies show that you want those daylight hours to morning less
| depressions and sleeping problems.
| computerfriend wrote:
| This is extremely at odds with what I actually want: longer
| evenings.
| theodric wrote:
| Are you following that we're talking absorbing a 2:30PM dusk
| to achieve this? That's worse than northern Finland. It's
| absurd and foolish. Those studies are failing to take
| northern latitudes' extreme swings into account when trying
| to legislate timezones...from Barcelona.
| cge wrote:
| >"permanent time zones as close as possible to solar time
| (natural time) in Europe."
|
| It doesn't even do that for most people in Ireland, according
| to its own map! As it appears to be based on land mass without
| regard to population density, the majority of the population
| would most naturally be in the Western European Time Zone, but
| they'd be pushed into the Azores Time Zone. A government in
| Dublin is not going to agree to a time zone change that
| wouldn't make sense for Dublin, and that's even ignoring the
| extreme political problems and potential violence and unrest
| involved with Ireland and Northern Ireland being in different
| time zones.
|
| For that matter, Greece is understandably not going to agree to
| any change in time zones that results in a map where its
| islands that Turkey disputes are changed to be the same colour
| as Turkey, rather than Greece. Neither is Cyprus. It would be a
| bit like asking either the government of Taiwan to start using
| simplified characters, or the PRC to start using traditional
| characters, and simply saying that it would make language
| support on computers simpler.
|
| I would support a reasonable proposal to end DST and have more
| natural time zones. But it has to at least consider factors
| other than just land masses and solar time, or it will never be
| a viable proposal. Their "full document" and "justification"
| doesn't include any discussion of the political ramifications
| or of population densities. They don't appear to give any
| justification of their specific country-level recommendations
| at all.
| stavros wrote:
| This sucks, not only will Greece not stay on summer time, we'll
| actually go to _one hour back from winter time_? So not only will
| we not get one more hour of daylight in the evening (ie stay on
| summer time), we 'll actually get _one hour less_ than we have
| now?
|
| That's terrible.
| vasco wrote:
| Same with Portugal, moving to Acores time seems bad, specially
| for working with the rest of Europe.
| maratc wrote:
| Portugal is already an hour behind the rest of Europe.
| p-a_58213 wrote:
| Also, the Greek islands will have a different timezone from the
| Greek mainland? This must be a joke.
| stavros wrote:
| That must be an error, there's no way.
| alex_duf wrote:
| It's a proposal not a law
| lloda wrote:
| I'd put Portugal and Ireland in the western zone.
| irdc wrote:
| I've said this before and I'll say it again: switching to
| UTC+0:30 will put a large number of countries in a common time
| zone without them deviating from their solar time too much.
| qwytw wrote:
| And make converting time between different time zones/countries
| even more confusing.
| jhugo wrote:
| India manages to deal with a fractional offset from UTC, as
| well as several other countries. It's really not that big a
| deal.
| netsharc wrote:
| That makes me wonder of the little adaptions they need,
| that we Minute-Zero-ians ;) don't notice... do many Indian
| desktops have world clocks, for example?
| rational_indian wrote:
| Regular people dont't have world clocks. Only people who
| need to care about this do.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I just had a look through
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UTC_offsets,
| because I thought it was just India and some obscure
| little islands - but some fairly substantial countries
| (Iran, Afghanistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka) also have
| non-whole-hour time zones.
| Tagbert wrote:
| and that 30 minute offset makes quick mental timezone math
| doubly hard and error prone. What is the benefit of merging
| timezones?
| irdc wrote:
| The EU is big enough and the CPU in your watch is fast enough
| that it won't matter.
| qwytw wrote:
| > CPU in your watch
|
| I'm much more concerned about the one in my head.
| seydor wrote:
| But more work for programmers
| anticensor wrote:
| tzdata is a thing
| jonathankoren wrote:
| This is a very special troll post, and I am all for this troll.
| irdc wrote:
| It's not a troll post, I'm very serious: UTC+0:30 corresponds
| to the solar time at the geographical midpoint of the
| continental EU. The advantages are legion.
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| Has someone calculated the optimal unique timezone for the EU
| given population distribution and the goal to minimize the sum
| product of number of people and solar time difference?
| madcaptenor wrote:
| You can get a quick and dirty answer by assuming all of each
| country's population is at its center of population.
|
| Centers of population of each country: https://cs.baylor.edu/
| ~hamerly/software/europe_population_we...
|
| Country populations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_sta
| te_of_the_European_U...
|
| If I've done the math correctly (and this was very quick and
| dirty) you get something like +0:40 / 10 degrees E, roughly
| the longitude of Hamburg or Milan. Ultimately there's gridded
| population data that could be used to get a better answer but
| I suspect it's in this neighborhood.
| skerit wrote:
| I'm good for a 30 minute shift either way if we can forever
| stop talking about this.
|
| I really like the extra hour of sunshine in the Summer time, I
| would miss it.
|
| And to think this proposal would even take away an extra hour
| on top of that... Yikes.
| roflmaostc wrote:
| I find it kind of absurd that people claim that clock alignment
| has negative impact on their health. Studies show that but:
|
| You do it only twice per year. But how often do you stay late up
| because of an event or whatever. And how often do you travel to
| another time zone, sometimes even >6 hours.
|
| I think the latter effects outweigh the health impact of clock
| alignment significantly.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| You find it absurd because you're one of those people for whom
| the change isn't hard. It's hard for a good percentage of the
| population (like me). Please just stop messing with my clock!
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Also just ask any parents of young children for a vocal
| opinion. Feel free to mess with the clock every other century
| or so, but not twice a year.
| graeme wrote:
| Especially because people only focus on the one time that the
| clock takes sleep. Certainly, studies show that heart attacks
| rise that day.
|
| But also during the year, you gain an hour of sleep. Studies
| show that heart attacks fall that day. People always discount
| this one.
| ghusto wrote:
| > You do it only twice per year
|
| Your body has six months to get used to an hour difference, so
| it sets in nicely, for maximum impact 6 months later.
|
| > But how often do you stay late up because of an event or
| whatever
|
| Personally, not often at all, but I get the point. The time
| you're supposed to wake up doesn't change though, and that's
| what makes the difference.
|
| > And how often do you travel to another time zone, sometimes
| even >6 hours
|
| I can count how many times I've done that in my life on one
| hand, and I'm sure I'm not alone in Europe.
|
| > I think the latter effects outweigh the health impact of
| clock alignment significantly.
|
| Have to disagree. Like I said it's to do with having a set hour
| you're _supposed_ to wake up. Meal times are another big
| factor.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| - Clock alignment has a negative impact on health for some
| people
|
| - Waking up before sunrise has a negative impact on health for
| some people
|
| - Going to sleep before (or just after) sunset has a negative
| impact on health for some people
|
| We do not all have the same sleep cycles. Early birds and night
| owls are a real thing, and any solution will be an improvement
| for some, and a degradation for others. Health-wise, I think
| the best solution would be to abolish office hours. Don't look
| at the clock, look at the sun, and let people work at different
| times. Of course, economically, it would be a mess.
|
| So yeah, no good solution, only compromises. The most we can
| ask for is fairness. I don't know what is the most fair, but I
| think the current situation (with DST) is close, as it is what
| people have settled with.
| Halan wrote:
| Crete not having the same timezone as the rest of Greece?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you move Spain to UTC+0, then it would finally line up with
| Portugal. Why move Portugal over even further? It's accurate
| enough.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Abolishing daylight savings and keeping standard time.
|
| If you're going to abolish it, this is the way. None of this
| permanent summertime nonsense.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Yes people think they like summer time because they only use it
| in the summer. Most people will realize it sucks during winter
| more than "winter" (read: actual) time sucks in summer.
| wewxjfq wrote:
| I want summer time all year. In winter it really doesn't matter
| if the sun rises at 8am or 9am and if it sets at 4pm or 5pm,
| it's depressing no matter what. But with winter time in summer,
| you rob working people of a chance to catch some sunlight in a
| meaningful intensity after work. It will just make people more
| depressed.
| serpix wrote:
| yeah, it's depressing to start working at dark and stop
| working at dark. What a waste of life.
| highmastdon wrote:
| We (Europe) shouldn't fragment time zones that much. We (NL)
| should stay on permanent summer time.
|
| Reasons
|
| - criminality is lower when there's longer light
|
| - earlier darkness leads to more accidents. It's better to have
| longer darkness after the masses are RESTED (in the morning),
| opposed to when they're TIRED (in the evening)
|
| - longer day-time for office workers, is more productive
|
| - shorter time of year that has long after noon darkness. As
| humans are using artificial light to stay up longer, it's better
| to align the time of day with that
| bojangleslover wrote:
| Criminals can't distinguish between 8PM and 9PM light because
| they don't operate on an hourly schedule
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Potential victims sure do.
| pmontra wrote:
| I live in Italy and I also want a permanent summer time: for
| the way we live it's far more valuable to have light in the
| evening than in the morning. Actually, I'd get double summer
| time March to October or at least April to September.
|
| I know that we could just change our culture and habits and
| move everything we use to do one hour back, but that has an
| inertia that will make it impossible.
| edgyquant wrote:
| > criminality is lower when there's longer light
|
| Correlation is not causation
| ImJamal wrote:
| What do you believe the causation is then?
|
| If light isn't what impacts it, then it seems like the summer
| should have more crime than winter. Kids are out of school
| and there is no snow and cold.
| raverbashing wrote:
| "permanent summer time" yes, and have you checked how does that
| look like in winter, right?
|
| It would mean a sunrise at 9h30 (given today's sunset/sunrise
| times)
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Better than sunset at 4:30pm.
| serpix wrote:
| you're lucky, it is 3:30pm in Finland. Dusk at 3pm. Up
| north it is even worse, although they've got the Borealis
| and usually snow.
| hypnootis wrote:
| Just checked my weather app and yup, sun rises at ~10am
| and sets ~2pm here in northern Finland
|
| A bit difficult to fulfill that sunlight exposure every
| morning.
| mrspuratic wrote:
| Winter and latitude, not longitude should of course guide the
| selection. Dublin today, Nov 30th, marks the start of the 6
| week period where daylight is less than 8 hours, IMHO only
| wintertime (UTC) makes sense here. Oddly IST, Irish Standard
| Time and legal time, is UTC+0100. Sticking with IST all year
| round means 10:00 sunrise in late December for the north-
| western most parts of the country (Belmullet, for example).
| irdc wrote:
| > We (NL) should stay on permanent summer time.
|
| I think the easiest way to permanently switch to UTC+1:00 will
| be to first try UTC+2:00 for a year; few people are going to
| accept only seeing the first rays of the sun at around 9:50 in
| winter.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I live in the Midwest and everyone I know would MUCH rather
| have light until 9pm than darkness at 4pm. Get up for work,
| it's dark. Finish work and get home. It's been dark for an
| hour. It's incredibly depressing. Everyone is at work at
| 9:50am, who cares whether it's light outside or not?
| jetzzz wrote:
| > We (NL) should stay on permanent summer time.
|
| > Reasons
|
| > ...
|
| Why not just have time as close to solar as possible and move
| working hours as needed? I have always found arguments for
| permanent summer time very confusing. Just move working hours
| as needed, why do you need to deviate the entire clock from the
| solar time for that?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Because it's easier to adjust the clock than to get employers
| to adjust schedules _and_ to adjust public transit etc.
| accordingly.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's basically a coordination problem. Workplaces, schools,
| stores...
| this_user wrote:
| Because we no longer live in a pre-industrial society where
| people start work with the sunrise and go to bed at sunset,
| because the only available artificial light is candles. For
| the vast majority of people, noon is not the middle of the
| day.
| recursive wrote:
| So what does "noon" even mean? Why is it significant?
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Because many people for some reason don't strongly value the
| derivative of the solar inclination being zero and a local
| maximum within at most slightly over 30 minutes[1] of an
| analogue watch having the hands both vertical, on the few
| days a year that the equation of time is zero.
|
| [1] Because the equation of time might not be exactly zero at
| noon, the Earth isn't a perfect ovoid and you could be up to
| 7.5 degrees of longitude from the centre of an hour-wide
| timezone, even if you drew them perfectly straight down the
| globe with no regards to national borders.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > It's better to have longer darkness after the masses are
| RESTED (in the morning), opposed to when they're TIRED (in the
| evening)
|
| Speak for yourself! I am definitely sleepier in the morning,
| and definitely feel less safe driving in the morning.
|
| I prefer summer time, because I almost never wake up before
| dawn, but for most people, I think DST is actually the best.
| You generally want people to wake up at around sunrise. It
| means we could adjust office hours to sunrise, say, work starts
| 1h30 after sunrise and ends 10h after sunrise. Nice, but it
| would be a mess. Instead we are using clocks, but the problem
| becomes that during winter, you will wake up and even sometimes
| start to work at night, something that most people dislike, and
| during the summer, morning daylight is lost to sleep. So, how
| to fix the problem? DST of course. It is an approximation, but
| it means that as a whole, our lives more closely match the sun
| cycles.
|
| So that's my opinion, keep the DST. It is added complexity
| compared to no DST, but we have been doing that for decades, we
| know how to deal with it. And while many people want to abolish
| DST, about half want winter time, the other half want summer
| time, there is no consensus, so we might as well keep DST.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > criminality is lower when there's longer light
|
| I just don't understand how anyone can think changing the clock
| creates more light. If that were true wouldn't everyone change
| their clocks, and by more than an hour?
|
| All your arguments are just about people starting and finishing
| work earlier. It's so annoying that it has to be "change the
| clocks" instead of just "why don't we just start at 8 and
| finish at 4?"
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Summer time makes plenty of sense as-is, especially at fairly
| extreme latitudes like the Netherlands. Pithily stated, it is
| about keeping the wall-clock time (meaning the clock _everyone_
| looks at, the Schelling point in a society-wide coordination
| game) approximately aligned with sunrise /dawn. That way you
| always have sunlight in the morning, but the sun never rises
| _too_ early making you lose sunlight in the evening.
|
| > ...opposed to when they're TIRED (in the evening)
|
| Morning darkness is _way_ more dangerous. You _don 't_ want to
| have dark mornings when people are in a rush, commuting to
| work.
| zirgs wrote:
| Morning darkness is unavoidable during winter unless you
| start working at 10 or so.
| Someone wrote:
| Unless you do what the Greeks did.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour#History:
|
| _"Instead of dividing the time between one midnight and
| the next into 24 equal hours, they divided the time from
| sunrise to sunset into 12 "seasonal hours" (their actual
| duration depending on season), and the time from sunset to
| the next sunrise again in 12 "seasonal hours"."_
|
| I think that can work reasonably well close to the equator,
| but in Athens, the 'hour' already would vary from about 47
| minutes to about 73 minutes. Feels too large for me for
| such a system to work, but that may be because I'm too
| accustomed to the current system.
|
| And of course, going further North, the difference becomes
| very large.
|
| Because of that, I think it wouldn't work in large parts of
| the world in a society that has artificial light.
|
| There also 'may' be some complications to making that
| change, though (would hourly wages still work, for
| example?)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > "Instead of dividing the time between one midnight and
| the next into 24 equal hours, they divided the time from
| sunrise to sunset into 12 "seasonal hours" (their actual
| duration depending on season), and the time from sunset
| to the next sunrise again in 12 "seasonal hours"."
|
| It would be interesting to try this in the modern era.
| Though to do this really well you should probably vary
| the duration of the hour smoothly throughout the day
| (with no overly jarring shift at sunrise or sunset), so
| the difference would be felt quite extremely around noon
| and midnight whereas the hours around sunrise and sunset
| (6AM and 6PM with perhaps half an hour of dawn and
| twilight respectively in non-polar latitudes) would be
| close to normal.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Driving early in the morning (when compared to equal-darkness
| in the evening) has the extra risk factor of frost and ice,
| which both obscures vision and reduces grip. Those factors
| definitely contribute to accidents.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| That line putting the whole Benelux, France, and Spain on one
| side of the divide (Western European Time) and Germany,
| Switzerland, and Italy on the other (Central European Time) makes
| this proposal just about dead in the water.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Don't think it is workable. Changing clocks is annoying, but
| probably a good idea when you live in high latitudes.
| mjevans wrote:
| See my other post in this discussion. Higher latitudes are
| dominated by the tilt of the earth
| https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/seattle DST only harms them
| by making the latest summer sunset around 10PM.
| ghaff wrote:
| >DST only harms them by making the latest summer sunset
| around 10PM
|
| What's the harm in that? It still gets light in the morning
| at a reasonable hour.
| bluGill wrote:
| Changing clocks only makes sense (to the little it does) in
| middle latitudes when there is a decent amount of both light
| and dark in a day in the worse case, as you can shift things
| around to use the light better (maybe). When there are only a
| couple hours of light/dark in the day it doesn't mater what the
| clocks do, you can't really do anything different.
| trabant00 wrote:
| Apart from the specific location issues highlighted in the
| comments here, the entire site can be summed up to "everything is
| better, just trust us". Zero arguments for any claim. Terrible.
| tgv wrote:
| Indeed, there is none. There is a FAQ though, but it is not
| supportive of any advantage. It just contains a handful of "But
| won't it ..." with rather shallow dismissals, but nothing to
| show an advantage of the proposed change.
|
| And it contains "debatable" statements, such as "For most
| people, it is not a problem to sleep beyond sunrise." That's
| not my experience, and they don't offer evidence. It's followed
| by a worse one: "Having to get up an hour earlier due to DST
| the next morning, unable to finish your sleep, is what causes
| sleep deprivation." Yeah, that's one day, perhaps two. Very
| early sunrise is 2 months.
|
| But if you shout loud enough, you get influence.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _Zero arguments for any claim._
|
| You mean aside from the list of citations?
| seydor wrote:
| Half of greece having a different timezone that's kind of
| ridiculous
|
| Why don't we reduce working hours to 7 also
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| How about 6 working hours for half the year and 7 working hours
| for the other half?
| seydor wrote:
| which half
| anticensor wrote:
| Longer in summers?
| NeoTar wrote:
| Putting Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (AKA
| Ireland) on different timezones strikes me as political suicide
| for anyone proposing it.
|
| But otherwise I am warm to the proposal. Some tweaks would make
| it more practical/politically acceptable (keep Portugal and
| Ireland on the Western Time Zone, don't split up Greece from the
| islands).
| closewith wrote:
| Yes, that's completely absurd. Ireland is more likely to leave
| the EU than accept timezone partition.
| switch007 wrote:
| Nonsense. Ireland will never leave the EU. They more likely
| to accept a time zone difference than leave the EU. They
| wanted membership desperately in the early 60s but had to
| wait a decade partly because de Galle hated the Brits. They
| couldn't join quick enough.
| closewith wrote:
| Are you aware of the accession path Ireland took and why it
| was linked to UK accession?
|
| Ireland has the highest level of pro-EU sentiment in the
| bloc and it is still more likely that we will leave than
| accept a timezone partition with the North. It's not in
| question. Failure to understand this is a complete failure
| to understand the country.
| switch007 wrote:
| I am. What's your point ?
|
| I know Ireland likes the riches that come with EU
| membership. They don't want to return to being a poor
| country.
|
| It would be a time zone difference, not a partition.
| Let's not used such loaded language.
|
| Edit: is the USA "partitioned" or any less united because
| of multiple timezones?
| dudul wrote:
| The US would definitely be more efficient with fewer
| timezones. Really we should find a way to remove at least
| one between the 2 coasts. United, no, but the US is not
| the EU. America is united by default, Europe divided.
| adw wrote:
| Loaded language is _entirely_ appropriate when you're
| talking about a frozen war (which, let's be clear, is
| what we are talking about here).
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Not even one of the signatory experts is from UK/Ireland.
|
| They could be completely clueless of what dynamite they are
| playing with.
| dfawcus wrote:
| Yeah, but given they seem to be proposing that the UK change
| from its current natural position, to what would be permanent
| BST, it seems daft. (It would help if they'd included the UTC
| offsets with their diagram)
|
| I'd suggest that ain't going to happen, especially as the UK
| is no longer a member of the EU, and so this will be ignored.
|
| As I recall part of the issue with the previous time this was
| proposed was that the UK intended to continuing observing
| Summer Time in the summer, and hence it would cause issues
| for Ireland if it had to stop switching.
|
| I guess we can only wait and see...
| dudul wrote:
| Same with corsica an hour ahead of continental France. This is
| idiotic.
| pmontra wrote:
| From the Who We Are page of the site
|
| > The Time Use Initiative (TUI) is the main non-profit
| organisation promoting the right to time all over the world. Its
| main objective is to encourage public discussion on how we
| collectively organise our time, seen as a way to improve
| citizen's well-being through innovative time policies.
|
| So this is not a proposal from an EU department, but it's a
| proposal to the EU. For sure they "encourage public discussion"
| as the comments here on HN demonstrate.
| theodric wrote:
| It is, however, endorsed by some EU department and a bunch of
| other entities (see bottom)
| morsch wrote:
| The only organisation related to the EU is the European
| Economic and Social Committee, which is[1]: _a consultative
| body of the European Union (EU) established in 1958. It is an
| advisory assembly composed of "social partners", namely:
| employers (employers' organisations), employees (trade
| unions) and representatives of various other interests._
| ...ok? This does not strike me as a particularly important
| institution.
|
| Some -- not all -- of the other cosigning entities are
| ridiculous. One of them (Normalzeit Leben) is literally the
| title of one person's blog where they talk about their
| struggles with DST.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_and_Socia
| l_C...
| slartibardfast0 wrote:
| also, was it some formal declaration by this body, or just
| someone with an email address from the organization?
|
| doubtless, the irish representatives wouldn't support any
| divergence between Dublin and Belfast, (especially
| considering this is wrong from a spatial perspective as
| population density is heavily skewed to the east of the
| island).
|
| edit: i was curious enough to email all of the irish
| delegates to this organisation. some fairly heavy hitters,
| as a citizen with a keen interest in Dublin & Belfast being
| in the same timezone will be interesting to hear back!
| janice1999 wrote:
| This is absurd and absolutely detached from reality. Not one
| person on the island of Ireland is going to accept either a
| timezone border between Ireland and Northern Ireland or between
| Northern Ireland and Britain. Unsurprisingly not one expert or
| group on their list is Irish or from the UK.
| gizajob wrote:
| Ha why "Azores time zone" including Ireland and Iceland when the
| Azores are miles away. "Atlantic time zone" seems to make more
| sense.
| jcranmer wrote:
| In the Americas, "Atlantic time zone" refers to the time zone 1
| hour before Eastern. Presumably Azores time is meant to avoid
| confusion with existing Atlantic time.
|
| Also, Azores Time Zone is the existing name of the time zone.
| yafbum wrote:
| Time zones are geopolitical artifacts just like borders, laws,
| currencies, etc. They can't really be "permanent"...
| delecti wrote:
| They can be "more permanent" than changing twice a year.
| alentred wrote:
| I live in Europe. As far as I remember, the proposal to abolish
| DST was already voted in the European parliament some time before
| the COVID pandemic, and the next steps were for the countries to
| chose their time zones and implement the change. Then the
| pandemic happened and this was put on hold.
|
| Probably, there is also some analysis paralysis: it is just hard
| to chose between keeping the winter or the summer time. Just look
| at this thread: morning birds cannot agree with night owls,
| someone leaving a bit to the west disagrees with those leaving in
| the east of the same country...
|
| I wish we'd just settle on any choice. At this point I care much
| less about "winter vs summer time", more about abolishing DST
| itself. Twice a year I have a small jet lag for nothing.
| rvba wrote:
| In the last vote 80% peoppe wanted to stay at summer time
| permanently to have more aunlight after work. Wtf is this?
| riffic wrote:
| here's an idea - UTC everywhere
| tgv wrote:
| That's so utterly absurd. So now I know that it's also 20:00Z
| on the other side of the ocean. Great. But, are they awake at
| 20:00Z there? Or asleep? Let me subtract the time difference...
| ghaff wrote:
| I think it's mostly a sentiment from people who don't travel
| --or don't really communicate with other timezones at all. I
| need to know that someone in Europe is about 5 or 6 hours
| ahead of me whether it's a timezone or an informal UTC
| offset. And if I'm traveling, while there are cultural
| differences between countries (e.g. later dinners in Spain),
| I know that the workday is something roughly 9-5 and dinner
| is roughly around 7pm.
| amai wrote:
| +1 for this proposal. It is just unhealthy to permanently live in
| a wrong time zone and this proposal would fix that at least in
| europe.
| jalk wrote:
| By that logic it would be unhealthy to permanently move from
| Portugal to Spain.
| dirtybirdnj wrote:
| DST is social terrorism at this point. "We" keep it that way
| because the herd is too scared to change. Never underestimate the
| awful raw power of herd thinking, it's the worlds greatest
| cancer.
| jalk wrote:
| Really? Perhaps you should checkout
| https://www.timeanddate.com/ to see when the sun rises/sets in
| the summer in various places. I.e. June 21st Stockholm - 03:30
| and 22:08 with DST. The vast majority of people simply prefer
| evening sun to "useless" night sun.
| amai wrote:
| Interesting tidbit from the full document:
|
| "During the Second World War, Western European states were forced
| to adopt Central European Time by Hitler and Franco. After the
| war, this was not revoked, leaving the Western European states at
| a disadvantage to the Central European states due to the
| detrimental effects of misaligned clocks."
|
| https://timeuse.barcelona/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/proposa...
| steveBK123 wrote:
| This almost feels like a false flag of proposing the most
| disruptive plan possible such that it couldn't possibly be
| approved, haha.
|
| Splitting & re-groupings are almost arbitrary and have no
| consideration for politics, business and culture.
|
| Ireland & N. Ireland in different TZ? France & Corsica in
| different TZ? Pushing Ireland & Portugal into their own TZ and
| calling it Azores time? Bringing UK into alignment with
| Spain/France/Belgium/Netherlands, but pushing
| Germany/Italy/Switzerland into alignment with Eastern Europe
| countries but out of alignment with Western Europe?
|
| A 2 step process by which some countries change TZ twice? Would
| love to write the code for that mess.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| I too would also love maintaining servers where the time
| changes according to some convoluted approach that no one
| really understands.
|
| Sec becomes really, really easy. No one can access it at all!
| BryantD wrote:
| The page does explicitly call out Ireland and Northern Ireland
| as an issue with the first draft of the map. This feels to me
| like the part of the process where you stand up a proposal to
| get refinement, since large deliberative bodies are rarely able
| to create such a proposal from scratch.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| On Ireland, our biggest business partner in Europe is still the
| UK.
|
| I don't think we'll be clambering to add friction to business
| with Northern Ireland and Britain so we can hang out with
| Portugal and Iceland.
| mklepaczewski wrote:
| Serious question, why not adopt one timezone globally? For some
| of us sunrise would happen at 10pm, for others on 4pm. So what?
| Wouldn't we just get used to it? Is there any rationale for
| anchoring start of the day between 4am-8am?
| katbyte wrote:
| No I imagine not as mid day and midnight have meaning and that
| changes them from roughly 12 and 12
| globular-toast wrote:
| Midday and midnight should be based only on the sun. Midday
| is when the sun is at the highest and midnight is half way
| between middays. Whether midday corresponds with 12ish on the
| clock or any other time doesn't really matter. The point of
| your parent comment is people would just get used to midday
| being around 18ish or work starting at 03:00 etc.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Then you just need to implement a global system of determining
| how people's activities are aligned locally. What you end up
| with is timezones by another name.
|
| Timezones are a lot less of a problem now that we are using
| calendar apps to book events. Better integration of tools to
| negotiate availability would make that even easier.
|
| The problem that people largely govern their activities by the
| rotation of the earth and we are in different places on that
| globe doesn't go away.
| mklepaczewski wrote:
| But why I need to come up with system similar to timezones?
| You translate all hours once and that's it, no? It might be
| weird at first have business hours from 9pm to 3am, but those
| are just numbers. I don't find it any more weird than
| starting a day at 6am.
| dudul wrote:
| You would still need to remember to not call your buddy in LA
| at your "8am" when in NYC. Now you need to take into account
| what a 9-to-5 translates to for all parts of the world. Solves
| nothing.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I think a lot it comes down to pride. Nobody wants to be the
| country that works 23-7. We all want the "nice" numbers the UK
| picked for itself.
| mklepaczewski wrote:
| Well, I might be weird but I have zero problem with it. I
| also would happily learn a new language if the world would
| agree on universal one.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| https://qntm.org/abolish
| odiroot wrote:
| No way RoI and Northern Ireland will be okay having separate time
| zones.
|
| On the other hand, I'm glad to have Central European TZ.
| Halan wrote:
| Good luck convincing Greece to have two timezones. These are the
| people who made a Macedonia change their name to North Macedonia
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| We need a two-tier schedule for businesses and institutions.
| Summer time and winter time. So, when authorities switch from
| CEST to CET or viceversa and clocks are adjusted an hour,
| schedules are inverted to leave things as they were according to
| the Sun.
|
| So if after the switch you are supposed to start an hour earlier,
| you just start one hour later, thus starting at the same time
| according to the sun.
|
| This might sound crazy but the craziness of making people switch
| clocks is evil and cruel
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I also want permanent summer time. Winter is so depressive when
| it's dark at 15:30 already.
| mongol wrote:
| All attempts to optimize society by changing time zones and
| adjusting for daylight savings time time should be abandoned. Let
| society set the schedule after a static time. With this I mean
| ordinary time zones and the same time throughout the year. Which
| approximately should correspond with the sun at its highest at
| noon.
|
| If someone prefers brighter mornings and darker afternoons, and
| someone else the opposite, the solution is easy. Adapt your life
| to follow that. Don't expect the time to suit you, it is keeping
| track over the sun's trajectory over the sky, not your life.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| > the solution is easy. Adapt your life to follow that
|
| Those pesky employers are such traditionalists, though.
| chrisBob wrote:
| My employer might be flexible, but I am sure my daughter's
| school wouldn't let me just pick when her bus picks her up
| and drops her off.
| maicro wrote:
| Honestly I would prefer to go even further - UTC for the entire
| planet, no offsets. Unfortunately I know most people won't go
| for that...
| SllX wrote:
| Why not go just one step further and adopt Swatch Internet
| Time? I mean if we're just going to go the mass upheaval
| route, we might as well ride that train as far as it will go.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I'd rather go all the way, decimal time and dates. Liberte,
| Egalite, Fraternite
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I don't see how that solves the problem.
|
| When you travel (or call) somewhere new, instead of
| consulting a timezone map to set your watch or know if it's
| safe to call someone, you'll consult a guide to local "time
| equivalents" and set your expectations based on that. "Let's
| see, it's 08:00UTC now and my time guide says locals at that
| location usually each lunch around 17:00UTC, so if I call Bob
| there now, it's the middle of the night for him"
| almostnormal wrote:
| > Honestly I would prefer to go even further - UTC for the
| entire planet, no offsets.
|
| The use of "tomorrow" and "yesterday" will be confusing in
| parts of the world where at 24/00 o'clock it isn't night.
| Convincing people will be difficult.
|
| But for just the the EU it would work nicely.
| jurschreuder wrote:
| I never understood why you have to change the time zones, when
| you can just change the office hours
| enz wrote:
| Japan Standard Time is funny: very early in the morning you have
| bright light, and you are in the darkness at 4pm in winter. But
| it's the "Land of the Rising Sun" after all, so it makes sense.
| kinnth wrote:
| Surely just getting rid of summertime would have most of the
| benefits without moving countries current time zones?
| salmonfamine wrote:
| I have a modest proposal to end all time-zones forever: the
| fractalizing time grid.
|
| Currently, partly due to a historical legacy of railroads, time-
| zones are longitudinal. That is, they help standardize time (and
| daylight hours) across east-west distances.
|
| However, given that the number of daylight hours is even more
| starkly affected by north-south latitudinal differences, we
| should also implement time-zones in that direction. After all,
| what does "12:15am" really mean if its dark in London and sunny
| in Reykjavik?
|
| So, in order to standardize daylight hours, we could implement
| north-south time-zones as well, producing time-offsets for each
| lat/long cell on the globe. We could standardize the number of
| daylight hours in a given 24-hour period (using the equator as
| reference) and standardize each cell to have the same number of
| daylight hours.
|
| In order to do so, we would simply have to redefine what a
| "second" is (or really, all time measurements.) So, the further
| north you go during the summer, the shorter a "second" becomes
| (so as to preserve the same number of "seconds" per time-cell)
| whereas in the winter you would have the opposite effect.
| Therefore this also has the interesting consequence of changing
| the duration of all time measurements seasonally, with a greater
| delta the further away from the equator you are (a "second" would
| always have the same duration at the equator.) So the further
| away you are from the equator, the quicker the duration of time
| changes with respect to equatorial time as time passes
| seasonally. Still with me?
|
| Good, because we can do even better! Why even have time cells?
| Time-zones were implemented as lines on a map because that was
| the technology that was available at the time. But now that we
| have the internet, we can instead standardize an algorithm that
| could be implemented into all RTC chips and run on reference
| servers a la atomic clocks. So instead of "crossing over" into
| the next time cell, all of your time measurements would be sped-
| up or slowed-down proportionally to your GPS-measured latitude
| (standardized to some number of significant digits.)
|
| So all analog clocks would immediately be rendered useless --
| unless you are exactly on the equator -- and we would live in a
| world where you could speed up time by running north, but only in
| the summer.
|
| If you've made it this far without throwing your laptop/phone out
| of the nearest window in rage, thank you for your patience (and
| welcome to the time grid!)
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