Hacker News Reader

Comment by mpweiher | Hacker News Reader

Nah...summertime is actually the better one. You get more light in the evening, rather than at 4 in the morning.

Winter time is definitely crap for western europe, but I don't know how good or bad it is for eastern: CET is used from poland to france to spain so it covers a fair bit of territory, and the difference between solar and standard time is already negative: http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTimeV...

FWIW remaining on summer time is the recommendation.

It's the other way round. Implementing daylight savings time ("summer time") moves the effective timezone 1 hour to the East. It's worse for Western European countries. Even CET normal time is already very lopsided. France and Spain should really be part of GMT.

I'd guess that if permanent summer time were instituted, France and Spain would drop back an hour (to permanent GMT+1 instead of permanent GMT+2).

Reverse way for France

Summer time is equivalent of UTC+2 Winter time is equivalent of UTC+1

That's right. But I can't imagine France would want to be on +2 year-round. (Paris mean time is only nine minutes ahead of GMT.)

Spain could even drop to GMT. Most of it is west of London, and that would align it with Portugal.

Does Spain want to be aligned with Portugal, though?

In fact, all of Spain is west of 7.5° east, which squarely puts it in GMT territory (there's a little sliver west of 7.5° west).

Up here in the Baltic states it gets dark at 4pm in winter. Sticking to summer time would make it slightly more bearable. It's dark to wake up and head to wherever one has to be one way or another.

"Outdoors" season pretty much starts at ends with DST switching.

Summer time year around is going to suck in the winter for Northern Europe. I continue to be surprised that no one is willing to learn from Russia. They tried permanent summer time, and had to switch to winter time one last time.

It's not that people in Scandinavia isn't used to having pitch black mornings in the winter, it's about the sun not rising until 10 - 10:30.

Why? More daylight after work. I'll happily take walk in daylight over breakfast in daylight.

This. It'll kill morning productivity, and children will have to go to school in pitch dark.

Permanent winter time is the way to go.

Sitting in an office from the morning I couldn't give a toss when the sun rises. But I would like the sun to be up when I leave, so I could actually enjoy the sunlight.

But this does seem to be a pretty polarizing issue.

In the end does it matter though?

I mean, if it had a proven benefit for kids, schools could start at different hours depending on the seasons.

Companies can decide to start at 10 or 8 instead of 9, etc.

More light in the evening doesn’t seem to make sense to me as we are the ones deciding when is “evening”

Apparently it's easier for our collective society to agree that what was 9:00 yesterday is now 10:00, rather than allowing companies to start at 10:00 instead of 9:00.

I fully agree with you, but in many people do not agree with your argument. Interestingly in my experience whether people agree with this is different depending on whether that person has a STEM/non-STEM study or job, STEM people tend to agree.

> In the end does it matter though?

Yes.

> More light in the evening doesn’t seem to make sense to me as we are the ones deciding when is “evening”

Western society has pretty much embedded the idea that the day is centered around 16:00 (4PM) and "night" around 03:00~04:00.

Lights out being when the vast majority of people are asleep with no light when they're actually up is stupid.

> Western society has pretty much embedded the idea that the day is centered around 16:00 (4PM) and "night" around 03:00~04:00.

Where I'm from, 4PM is late in the day, just a few hours from bedtime, and 4AM is nearly time to wake up.

You're ok.

There are at least 4 or 5 hours in difference between dinner time in western societies. From 6 PM in some Anglosaxon countries to 8/10 PM in Italy (North / South) to 10/11 in Spain.

Dinner is at 10pm in Spain, and 11pm in the summer? Interesting.

You might find this article interesting http://spanishsabores.com/2015/06/17/spain-dining-guide-when...

But remember that they are in the wrong time zone, so they always get one extra hour of light in the evening and one less in morning. This could account for the one hour of difference with comparable latitudes in Italy.

Humans have a sleep cycle driven by circadian rhythms, and most jobs in a country work similar clock hours in order to coordinate with other companies more easily.

So in fact, it's much easier to change what the clocks say than it is to change either of these.

Serious question: In other parts of the country or world, do "companies" all open at the same time? They certainly do not, anywhere I've ever lived. If that is the case, that must be an interesting lifestyle. How does anyone get anything done if there's never a non-overlapping interval of "the bank is open but my employer is closed" type of problem?

I've also lived almost all my life in a "recreational paradise" state far from the coasts where its totally normal for there to be at least one, often many, "in-season" work hours vs "out-season" work hour thru the year. Much like agonizing over average temperatures is heard but isn't an issue, its not a problem for the millions who live around here.

Yes they do. Plus nothing is open on Sundays. You get to work a bit later, or duck out for a bit to go to the bank, or go while you're doing outside work anyway.

In my experience smaller companies tend to adjust to the rhythm of their biggest clients.

If one of the behemoth decides to start working at 11am -> 9pm, a lot of contractors and related services will move to the same time tables.

> How does anyone get anything done if there's never a non-overlapping interval of "the bank is open but my employer is closed" type of problem?

This is a fairly big problem in modern life, as far as I can see.

Traditionally, I assume what happened was that you worked at your employer, and your wife went to the bank.

But you don't want more light in the evening, you want it to be dark earlier. Especially with summers getting hotter due to global warming.

The past summer was a good example, you can't spend any time outside before the sun goes down because it's just too hot in direct sunlight. If anything we should move the clock back an hour in summer, not an hour forward. It doesn't start being nice to be outside until after dusk.

This isn’t true for most any location in the EU, except maybe southern Italy.

It's not even true of places like Florida, where the vast majority of us prefer daylight savings time.

>State Sen. Greg Steube, who sponsored the bill, said that the idea of year-round daylight time has enormous support among Floridians.

"I've heard from mayors across the state that it's going to save them money because they don't have to light their softball fields at night," Steube said, according to the Miami Herald. "I can't tell you how many people have come up to me who have said even my high school-age kid, it's hard to get him up in the morning when we fall back the clocks."

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/08/591925587...

> It's not even true of places like Florida, where the vast majority of us prefer daylight savings time.

Except the sun goes down a LOT earlier in Florida which is much closer to the equator than northern Europe. In summer the sun doesn't go down until after 10PM here. If you want to have a BBQ and not burn alive while doing it, you have to start at 22:30 at the earliest. That's just not a realistic time if you have to work the next day.

edit: Also, in Florida the days get shorter during the summer, over here they get longer.

Not only northern Europe. Rome is as far north as NYC.

For what it matters Rome is north of NYC. NYC is slightly to the south of Naples. As hot in summer, much colder in winter.

The climate is different but it highlights the district in daylight variance.

> edit: Also, in Florida the days get shorter during the summer, over here they get longer.

I'm not sure what do you mean, but it doesn't seem right.

Either the days in Florida get longer during the summer relative to the winter, as they do in Europe, or the days in Florida get shorter as the summer advances, as they do in Europe (the longest day everywhere in the Northern hemisphere is around June 21).

>In summer the sun doesn't go down until after 10PM here.

Ah, I was just thinking about the heat, but that's a good point.

>edit: Also, in Florida the days get shorter during the summer, over here they get longer.

No they don't. Like other places in the northern hemisphere, the summer solstice is the longest day of the year in Florida - and the winter solstice is the shortest.

I believe all of Florida is north of the tropics, so no you don't get the interesting effect of the sun swinging north of you in mid June. You might have a sense of earlier dusk during the part of the year that has frequent cloud cover and afternoon thunderstorms.

When you are in the real tropics, that adds a surprising twist to the experience of seasons, including disorientation when your shadow points towards the opposite pole for part of the year!

The hard to get up in the morning is the worst argument for DST ever. It's hard to get up because we are disputing the rhythm by changing the clock around. It's like saying "The Japanese time zone is terrible. Everytime I traveled there I get jet lag."

It's not like saying that at all.

Live in a non-DST timezone, and nothings bad.

Live in a timezone observing DST and you get the time shift twice a year, without fail.

I'd say it's more like saying - "Travelling is terrible because I hate jet lag".

I agree that it's not a very good argument. I'd say a better one that it's a weaker version of is: DST kills people:

https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-dead...

It most certainly was true in the summer here in NL, EU. The best times were somewhere between 3 and 11 in the morning. The other times, it was simply too hot. But that depends on factors such as the wind as whether you have sea climate or land climate (the third climate is the Mediterranean climate, though I'm unsure Scandinavia has a separate climate).

However whether the better solution is to just wake up earlier or officially shift the time, I do not know. That question is entirely up to what's easier for society to organise.

I'm in the Netherlands. It was true here this summer and has been for the last few years.

It's probably true for most places in Europe except southern Italy. Remember that the farther north you go the more daylight you get.

> you want it to be dark earlier

At the cost of having the sun out at 3:30 AM? I'm not sure I like that idea.

You go to bed earlier.

Either way, Spain solves it by having siesta (at the peak). We don't have that in France or Belgium or The Netherlands.

Because when it is very warm, the best thing to do is not waste any energy and the best way to do that is rest/sleep instead of work.

But if you would have to go to bed earlier, how is that better than staying up later?

You get more vitamin D, light is good against depression, and its easier to sync yourself with the daylight.

Why not ? Light-blocking curtains are a thing.

You can keep the sun out of your house a lot easier than keeping it out of all of the outside world.

Not really. I'm too far north for DST to make a difference. Summer nights are light enough I can easily read outside without other illumination. December days are 4 hours or something. The only real reason to be on DST here is make international stuff easier.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com