Just what is daylight savings time anyways?

As you folks may know my body does not adheer to the normal laws of "time" and all that.

Witzbold

Ireland has it despite being so small. Gets dark over here at like 4-5pm in winter and like 11 at night in summer :S

Finstern

Here in Ireland we barely take up a timezone on the map but we gots the daylight savings time, happens in march and october

Finstern

The UK has it too, although recently there have been calls to scrap it as it makes our afternoons depressingly short in the winter.

greatinsight

Europe, but I think it will be next weekend or the following one...

Prinnygeddon!

yeah the Aussies have it too, it is not so fun...

dalethedino

Oh and DST, US jr. has it too of course (Canada)

RPGr

I know our office in Brazil has some clock adjusting.

Tyrohne

Ireland does

cormac

Daylights savings time is useless. Way to go farmers, ruin the flow of time for the rest of us.

Ulquiorra

*reads title

Yup, that damn daylight savings time is definately putting your brain into some sort of coma!

RPGr

You think DST is bad, they just changed it so it's all wonky and not where it's supposed to be. I hate DST, it actually causes more energy use given some recent studies. I say trash the idea and just use standard time all the time.

RBecho

[en.wikipedia.org]

kenkankendo

@nastysquared: They aren't really phasing it out quite yet. We still need to change the clocks twice a year. Just the amount of time spent in each has changed.

I personally hate it, ruins my internal clock for getting up and sleeping for a few weeks.

@WhiskeyJak: I am Canadian myself thank you very much

RPGr

I thought it was to help business correlate their business-y things together? As a result, improve finances.

phalanges

Hawaii never had it, and that's the right call.

I like knowing that it's darker during the winter, lighter during the summer. That's natural. Now it's March and the sun still isn't up until 7:41am? What kind of crap is that?

And for the argument that it saves energy, that's a load of crap. I'm getting up to go to work and it's pitch black, which means all my lights go on. On top of that I'm now driving to work in the dark, which means headlights and slower driving.

I was seriously considering starting up a protest website to abolish the damn thing.

Islandkiwi

Just to clarify, it's Saving, not Savings. A common mistake. And while it certainly sucks in the spring, getting that extra hour of sleep in the fall is always nice.

toefer

wait?! you live in Japan?! We never knew! :O

lol :P

matthewa5

DST is retarded, but hey, at least this time I was playing Brawl through the time change and not sleeping, so it actually didn't affect me as bad as it usually does. Me and my other friends playing just mistakenly assumed we'd been playing for longer than we actually did when we stopped at 7am or whatever ;)

DaiMacculate

I'm pretty sure they're slowly phasing out DST in the US. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

nastysquared

just have DST all year round..
that would be better

Darkedge

@Setzer IIDX: You can't correct someone's spelling and then make a typo in the same post. Article 423-a of the Grammar Police code.

I know... fer reelz. This time switching is still screwing with me. Or maybe I was trying to be ironical? ... nah, giving myself WAY too much credit.

ExistentialEgg

We have it in the UK, but not for another week or three.

akwinters

I'm all for Daylight Savings. Back in Australia, it was awesome to have a few hours of light to utilise the evening. In Tasmania at least, we used to play cricket well into the hour of eight in the evening.

pylon_trooper

@Tyrohne: correct, Brazil DST usually starts in October/November and ends February/March.
I like it, sun shines until about 8:30pm.

omegasc

@ExistentialEgg: You can't correct someone's spelling and then make a typo in the same post. Article 423-a of the Grammar Police code.

I keed, I keed. <3

And it was an older belief that certainly may have applied back in the day. New studies have found that it actually WASTES energy now. The validity of that statement though is unknown.

Setzer IIDX

Move to Arizona. Be awesome and not have DST... :P

("The Real Mountain Time")....

Volturi

I felt so sick when I had to wake up an hour earlier for the brawl release.

ManjiKengo

Apparently is saves billions in energy costs, or so the specialists say, and by the way don't insult us with that U.S. Jr crap, we are our own country thank you very much.

WhiskeyJak

I've been on a constant diet of coffee since the time change.....DAMM YOU DST....DAMM YOU

cduran

@Ulquiorra:
Not farmers! Especially dairy farmers. Cows are used to being milked at the same time every day, THEY certainly don't care if it's DST or not. It actually screws up a farmer's schedule.

Shea

DST is so dumb - especially when some states and some portions of some states don't practice it. "They" need to get rid of it, just like Nintendo needs to get rid of region locking (MS too)!

SumDum_Guy

I want my hour of sleep back

evslin

It's Daylight SAVING Time, not Savings. It is believed if most waking ours are during sunlight hours it will save with energy consumption.

ExistentialEgg

@RPGr:
Ungh. :(

Brian Ashcraft

We get it in the UK. The people down south in England want to get rid of it but they don't know what it's like to live in Scotland. The extra hour of light makes such a difference!

Wuffles

@greatinsight: And it's BLOODY USELESS.

It was invented to SAVE OIL IN OIL LAMPS.
WE DON'T USE OIL LAMPS.

Grar. I'm cranky at the Spring Ahead. >_<;

Setzer IIDX

It's actually used throughout Europe, Russia and South America. I thought Bash was an American? Did he change citizenship? If so that's gotta be quite a process.

iron789

Whoever doesn't like daylight savings is borderline crazy. We should make the summer hours the permanent hours and do away with the standard time zones. Why would we want daylight hours wasted in the morning when the vast majority of the population isn't awake to enjoy it?

Heavyfuel

The land of the Rising Sun doesn't need DST. The rest of the world however does... I love it when the day suddendly lasts almost up to 8 o'clock.

@greatinsight: You got it backwards. DST is in effect during summer not winter. If they kept DST during winter it would be pitch black in the morning when people get to work.

dionion

i just flew home for spring break, so I am super jet-lagged.

But yeah, Japan is ridiculous. During the middle of summer the sun rises at like 3:30 in the morning.

FarmboyinJapan

@WhiskeyJak: I have read they have done studies and daylight savings time doesn't actually save energy so we apparently do it out of habit.

ion1626

@kenkankendo: Dang it, beat me to it! So ya, go to the wikipedia and read everything your could ever want to know about DST, and so much more...

ComputerMonkey

@greatinsight: By 'calls to scrap it' in the UK, you're referring to calls to move the country permanently to GMT+1.

Which is sort of a good idea but... that would mean Greenwich isn't in the GMT (+0) time zone. If Greenwich isn't, where the fuck is? :)

Seriously it's sort of a good idea but rather than screwing about with the clocks why don't they just say that on a particular day, all opening hours for all businesses move forward? So businesses open at 8am instead of 9am, that type of thing. Then we can keep GMT all the time.

Incidentally, I think Europe has standardised the date at which countries move (if they do use the system). Which is good. Unfortunately, that doesn't include the US...

quen

Chile also has DST.

Kris_

there is a place in oz called coolangatta, that lies on the border bettween new south wales and queensland. NSW has daylight saving but queensland doesn't. add to this that oz in the southern hemisphere, and it's possible to celibrate 2 new years in one hour.

evolutionman

@baked ham: They also don't recognize MLK day, and have a 25 year period on their drivers license. Its a kooky state ;)

DaiMacculate

Mexico has DST. I really don't see the savings anywhere but I guess it has to have some sort of benefit.

UnholyGamer

@Islandkiwi: Yeah but when you are home at night you don't need those lights on until later.

Evil_Snow_Man

I don't know if this is due to DST but I haven't been able to sleep for 2 days straight. I cant get to sleep until 5am so I either have insomnia or it's DST...

Sollus

LOL! I know right!

ToolTip

Arizona doesn't have daylight savings time.

baked ham

The benefits of any potential time savings only matter if people don't spend their day hours in a hot office using up lots of air conditioning...

oh, wait...

That, significant numbers of people stay up until midnight or 1 am or even later regardless, and use up lots of energy keeping their rooms lit after the sun has set.

There just isn't enough of a benefit to justify a twice a year hassle that causes lost time, business problems (when US switches times, but Europe doesn't, all international businesses have to adjust), and any possible energy benefits are neglible if they exist at all?

DST or Standard time, just pick one and be done with it I say!

Bellamy

It's called "Winterzeit" and "Sommerzeit" in german speaking countries (I guess I don't need to translate that for you). I'm never quite sure, but DST should be our "Winterzeit".

little_dragon

@Islandkiwi: You're spot on about it not saving energy. Screw statistics, if it doesn't work for you, then it must not work for goddamn anybody.

ninjafetus

Actually they're not phasing it out in the US, they recently added on about 3 weeks and are considering longer. I always liked the extra sunshine in the evening because pre-7 am sunshine is just a waste in my book (no, I am not a morning person).

Haven't seen the studies mentioned, but it would make sense that DST does actually save energy. Who's up early enough in the morning to have to compensate for the lack of sun? Lots of people, but not everyone. Who's up between 5 and 8 pm not turning on lights until an hour later? Just about everyone.

erlik

My guess is that Japan does not have DST because it does not have any direct land border with any other country, AND has only one time zone (unlike, say, Australia).
I don't know about New Zealand though.

Mokona

The funny thing is, studies continue to show that DST actually INCREASES energy consumption in the US.

As RPGr noted above, the increased usage of energy consumption related to air conditioners during the summer is not offset by the decreased usage of lights.

Of course DST was extended a few weeks in the US this year, but when has the government ever used studies and analysis to formulate policy?

Hisame

@Mokona: yeah new zealand has it and only one time zime, as had been already said its great if you're at the top or bottom of the globe as it adjusts for the severe changes from winter to summer.

juliopalio

Daylight savings time gave me a cold. No really, it did. Now if they'll pay me part of that billion for the misery and torment I'm going through I'll forgive daylight savings time, but right now it's dead to me.

FadedEchos

Works well for us down in Tasmania, Australia. The extra sunlight is great.

Heavybell

I lost an hour of sleep, I hate that.

KM91

Daylight savings was invented a) as a way to better coordinate farming schedules with yearly daylight hour shifts, and more importantly b) to save energy that would be wasted by lights on at night. The average estimate is that daylight savings actually saves the US $1,000,000,000 a year in fuel costs.

TempvsMortis

New Zealand have it and for the first time this year we're extending it for another month. It works well in countries where the wobble of the earth effects the amount of daylight we get at different times of the year. Not very useful for equatorial countries I imagine.

floppylobster

@skullivan: Like I said, this was on some news channel, which meant it was something like a 30 second blurb.

Still does not lessen my hatred of having to go to bed 2 hours early only to find I've overslept anyway.

VioletArrows

@Mansteak: Ah so it changed in 2000. Last time I was there was 96, so that makes sense ;)

Also damn, 16 to 60 is even crazier than 25 years! I just estimated it must be 25 from when I worked retail and would see many 35 year olds with expirations in 2030-ish, thanks for the correction! ;)

DaiMacculate

Yea...I dont like it...I want my extra hour of sleep back. Anyway, you KNOW it's a bad thing when its acronym has the same letters as the acronym for Sexually Transmitted Disease...STD..DST...come on!

dgonchild

@skullivan: I agree that the extra hour at the end of the day is nice, but your example is flawed because people traditionally associate things like eating out and movie with night, so those establishments could actually seat/serve more customers, not less.

Wei

NZ has it, without it we'd have lovely 4am sunrises in the summer, yay!

TheJeanGenie

Lucky that you live in an Asian country. At least THEY figured out DST is pure crap.
If Japan converts to DST, they can stand to save less than 2% on their energy. "WOW?"

Angryrider

@VioletArrows: Yeah, it has to do with the fact that DST was made for the electricity consumption of "lights", which with the advent (heh, Civilization reference here) of the compact flourescent, has become lower than the electricity consumed by the extra hour of air conditioning.

RPGr

@DaiMacculate: Actually, AZ DOES recognize MLK Day, even if the circumstances were less than desirable: [en.wikipedia.org]

And the license doesn't last 25 years, it lasts until you're 60, even if you get it on your 16th birthday (or at least that's how it was when I lived there, years ago).

You are correct on one point, though - it is a kooky state.

Mansteak

DST is killing me... I need a week or so to get used to it...

Puchi

it sucks to lose an hour, but the benefit is that it stays brighter longer (sorta)... so can't cry too loudly.

joelface

@greatinsight:

Yes its' the same here in the north US. The darkness comes at about 3:00. Hmm

bird1988

I'll never understand people who hate DST. If we didn't push the clocks ahead the sun would be rising at like 4:30 in the morning come June.

I don't know about anyone else but for me, that hour of sunlight is much more useful at the end of the day (especially during the summer) than while most people are still sleeping.

@VioletArrows:

And did you read how much money was "wasted"? $3.19 per person. That's right, three measly dollars. I'd pay 50x that per year to have the extra hour over the summer.

I'm sure that study didn't take into account how much money would be lost in the economy if the sun set an hour earlier every night. The later the sun is up the later people are out spending money at the movies, going to restaurants, the mall, whatever. I have no doubt that the money businesses would lose if we abandoned DST would be exponentially greater than the $3.19 per person extra it costs us in utilities.

skullivan

I'm in canada and we have day light savings but I dont pay it much mind but because I dont notice it it can screw up my days I'm always an hour early for something or an hour late.

Tzero7

DST is actually adjusted for the summer. The winter is not adjusted and is the "normal" time.

[en.wikipedia.org]

I (like most of you) would rather have the time set to DST (Summer) and leave it there. I can't stand it getting dark at 5pm during the winter.

AnonymousFinger

I wish they would get rid of DST. Not sure whether to trust CNN (or whichever large media source it was) or not, but they have the studies in from last year, and lengthening DST in the US actually wasted more money than usual because everyone used MORE electricity during that extra hour of daylight.

VioletArrows

Well, somebody must have thought it was funny that Argentina should start using DST A WEEK BEFORE FREAKIN' CHRISTMA'S EVE so nobody would know exactly when to celebrate!

monkey_87

Wow, I pretty much dont even notice it....
I mean its on a Sunday ususally so I sleep pretty much the same amount (sympathies to those that work on a Sunday).
But its nice at the start of winter when you have an extra week where you dont have to go to work in the dark.

iakiak

Canada has it, heck some of us need it.

ohayou_kun