Who the hell is responsible for much of the DST insanity?
I think most people on hacker news would agree DST is insanity.
I think most people on hacker news would agree DST is insanity.
People who live close to the equator or in the middle of time zones tend not to see much point in DST. The day length doesn't vary much at the equator, and if you are in the middle of a time zone then the offset doesn't vary too much.
If you are closer to a pole or at the edge of a time zone, the offset is not ideal around the solstices. So, DST is welcome for many.
I've heard the arguments from people close to the equator that the curtains will fade and the men will get their morning erections while they are on the bus, etc. Of course it is different there in the sub-tropics.
If you accept that time should not be completely local (i.e. the local church tower clock is set to noon, as it used to be) and not completely global (i.e. we all run on UTC and Tuesday begins at 00:00:01 which happens to be late afternoon in location X) and so that we arbitrarily assign time zones according to the rotation of our planet, surely we can also adjust the time zones depending on the path of our planet around the sun.
Well, if it works for the locals, that is. Insanity seems like a strong word.
> If you are closer to a pole or at the edge of a time zone, the offset is not ideal around the solstices. So, DST is welcome for many.
I'm not quite sure what your argument is.
I can tell you that here, above 60˚, it's light enough the entire summer anyway (as in, it's only dark for about 2 hours a day), and in the winter the added light is too early in the morning but it gets darker earlier in the afternoon. Today, for example, the sun was up at 7:52 and down at 16:14 (4:14pm).
I suspect it's most useful for people around 35-45˚.
I also live above 60˚ north - today I had 2 minutes less daylight than you :(
I think some of the negativity towards DST here is due to failure to consider the local needs of other people. I guess that's my argument. The day is important, and you know the importance of things more when they are gone.
If your noon is true noon, then shifting the clock forwards will balance the daylight hours towards the afternoon and away from the morning.
If your noon is badly skewed from a wide timezone, then you'll get the problems you describe (too much light in the morning). Your problem is longitudinal, not latitudinal.
If you scroll down to the "Politics" section, DST was implemented as a way to save coal during WWII.