I am not convinced that less than a year is sufficient time to test and debug all systems that rely on their clocks and calendars for transactions. Particularly tax, payroll, banking, and travel booking systems that frequently have to talk to systems that are 30 or 40 years old.
2 Likes
Holy shit - yes - please. Fucking yes. Do it this way! Keep it DST!
5 Likes
… until you learn that it was done at the behest of candy company lobbyists who wanted to turn back the clocks after Halloween.
4 Likes
Except that anything that is doing that kind of time sync is internally using UTC and converting to/from local time for user interaction. This makes DST changes an inconvenience, not a disaster.
Using local time for internal representation is a disaster in and of itself. Starting with synchronizing servers between California (uses DST) and Arizona (no DST) and finishing with differentiating the first and second 1:00 AM when you fall back.
Now if you’re talking about leap seconds, then I agree. That’s a royal pain in the ass and more over, it happens so infrequently that code changes aren’t tested unless you simulate it.
6 Likes
And say thanks that you don’t have to roll your own time zone code, because that way lies madness:
9 Likes
I’m going to make the wildly impractical plea for elastic time! If we just declare that sunrise is 6 am, and sunset is 10 pm and adjust our clocks to align thusly, voila, a humane schedule. I admit, the thought of having a wildly shorter work day in the dark of winter is my goal. But I’ll happily work longer in the fall and spring to make up for it (summers off, sorry all you year round workers.) I think this is what my body wants!
6 Likes
Except for when we actually had permanent DST and they realized for lots of folks, sun wasn’t rising until 9:00. Yes, this happened. 1974-75. People complained, it got changed back again.
Standard time is absolutely the way to go.
10 Likes
That’s not really a great “be careful what you wish for”.
Most of the problems it lists are things that already happen with the current system and have minimal impacts other than inconvenience. People hope to make it less obnoxious with the change. Or not pertinent.
The goal this time is not to save gas. So it can’t fail to do a thing we aren’t trying to use it for.
And the whole leaving for school before dark thing which seems to be the major bit here. Is a ship that sailed long ago. When I was a kid we needed to be at school by 7am, 7:30 am. And commonly left before sun up part of the year.
1 Like
Sure, great idea 
It’s worth noting that child psychologists and doctors have been trying for years to get schools to adopt later starting times (across the board) especially for high schools. It rarely gets much traction because parents have jobs and other schedules. Those in turn are set by operation hours of businesses and so on. Seasonally changing school hours without changing a bunch of other things is going to be pretty much a non-starter most places.
And honestly having a large number of businesses, schools, government offices, transit departments, and so on locally implement their own seasonal schedule shifts with no central coordination would be not only completely impractical by far far more disruptive than any problem with shifting clocks twice a year. It’s not even close.
12 Likes
God imagine the hell on earth for staff and teachers though.
2 Likes
Interesting thought, but some states don’t “fit” into a single time zone.
(Before Alaska was shoehorned into a single time zone.)
(Texas, with two time zone split down the middle, before time zone divider shifted to El Paso.)
6 Likes
As someone living in Europe, I find it to be most annoying. For a few weeks in the spring and fall, we go out of sync with the US, which is tedious.
10 Likes
However, there are also health risks involved with driving to work at 8am in the dark. What the senate actually just voted on makes DST permanent, so those problems will be getting worse. I’m not at all convinced this will be any kind of public health win and it could be a loss.
8 Likes
The government isn’t forcing everyone to drive to work at 8 AM in the dark. If you live in the northern latitude where that is a problem then you should be pushing local businesses to adjust their seasonal hours accordingly. There is no reason to inconvenience people in other parts of the country.
Again, three-quarters of the planet’s population has figured out how to get by just fine without changing their clocks twice a year.
9 Likes
From a CNN article…
Rubio noted that the bill delays implementation to November 2023, because, he said, the transportation industry has already built out schedules on the existing time and asked for additional months to make the adjustment.
3 Likes
That might actually work out great for me, if I understand it correctly. Does that mean the time we are all in now would be frozen, and that’s our time? Because if that’s true, I’d be the same time as California from here on out, which would be kinda awesome.
1 Like
Given that it’s currently cocktail hour here, I can get wholeheartedly behind that! 
@Papasan - back me up?
8 Likes
You buying?
6 Likes
You know it, buddy!
10 Likes
