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US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
- jsdevtom 5y agoAll these arguments about school times etc. My code would be eternally ridiculed if I mocked the Date object to artificially change the time, instead changing the time school started for certain months.
- snvzz 5y agoMy favorite take: Americans decide to relocate Noon to a 13h target, thus redefining the clock's meaning. - The sun stays up longer, I love it. - celebrates a random testimony.
- bouke 5y agoChanging school times cannot happen in isolation. That will also cause work times to shift to match their drop-off and pick-up times. So as work times for parents shift, so would opening hours for restaurants and shops and finally the society as a whole adjust their daily routines by an hour.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- t43562 5y agoI don't really understand why everyone seems to think that it's necessary to go to work at the same "time" each day. Why not let "time" stay the same all year but go to work at a different time in winter?
- njsubedi 5y agoBecause a lot of systems depend on the "time". As a simple example, the software that the workers use to "sign in" and "sign out" for the day depends on it, and needs bi-yearly updates. A lot of automated systems like ATM machines, telephone plans, etc. depend on the "time", and they require less maintenance if the time doesn't need to change twice a year.
- patrickaljord 5y agoYes, that would make more sense.
- raldi 5y agoIf you think it's hard keeping track of DST changes, imagine what it's going to be like when business hours, daycare hours, train schedules, recurring meeting times, TV shows, and everything else you're used to having at particular times suddenly start shifting randomly and uncoordinatedly. Or do you mean everyone will shift their hours in unison at the start and end of winter? If so, how is that any different from Daylight Saving?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- phendrenad2 5y agoNext step: get rid of timezones. But society isn't ready for that one.
- songzme 5y agoDoes this mean that it is final and that come winter I don't have to reset my clocks anymore? A bit sad because I have always correlated 12pm as the sun being at its highest point (except daylight savings time, but I mentally adjust for that). Now the sun will always be at the highest point at 1pm.
- frankfrankfrank 5y agoIt always bothers me that the Congress.gov bill tracker seems to never be up to date. How hard can it be? https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623
- ehsankia 5y agoHere's hoping Canada follows. I know many provinces were waiting for their southern states to make the switch to stay in sync (BC -> California, Quebec -> New York, etc). So hopefully Canada switches at same time as us!
- toyg 5y agoI hope this means we'll do it in Europe too. It was supposed to happen last year but then everyone was busy with COVID and didn't have the time for it (pun intended). And now we're all busy with Ukraine... This obsolete switch has to end.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago>Sunshine Protection Act Jesus, does everything need to be hyperbolic virtue signaling. Won't someone please think of the children!
- Epiphany21 5y ago>does everything need to be hyperbolic virtue signaling Yes. And our tax dollars fund it.
- mc32 5y agoAgreed. Maybe sunshine exploitation maximization act would be more accurate.
- mirntyfirty 5y agoThat is pretty funny. Don’t want to be caught voting against the Sun
- trhway 5y agoUntil your constituents are vampires. Or you sold short sunglasses stock.
- enraged_camel 5y agoI would love someone to propose a bill that requires the elimination of hyperbolic virtue signaling from all future bills, perhaps as an additional step in whatever pipeline is used to produce bills. Just need a hyperbolic virtue signaling name for it!
- DocTomoe 5y agoThe old art of the backronym was once florishing in the IT sector ... but like so many fun things, it eventually got axed by corporate. Tag Regulations Understandable To Humans - TRUTH Act
- readthenotes1 5y agoAmerican Integrity Act
- shadowofneptune 5y agoThis is excellent. With the rise of air conditioning, daylight savings has considerably less electricity savings than it used to. It will also make timekeeping more consistent. I have lived in Arizona for the past few years and it is pleasant to know that you will always be at UTC-7:00.
- mtoner23 5y agoTrue, but this keeps daylight savings permanent not standard time.
- shadowofneptune 5y agoIt will change how the morning feels in winter, but I'm OK with settling on savings time. The bill allows states like Arizona or Hawaii to stay on savings time if they'd prefer it.
- dijit 5y agoI don't care what we choose, personally, as long as we choose. This madness has to end. I'm not going to bicker about which one is kept.
- ciphol 5y agoIf your state doesn't like that, they can switch time zones.
- FL410 5y agoIt actually sets "standard time" to what is currently daylight saving time, and deletes DST.
- elwell 5y agoRIP code parsing human-readable datetime strings to determine timezone
- throw0101a 5y ago> It actually sets "standard time" to what is currently daylight saving time, and deletes DST. As the current maintainer of the timezone database observed: A *lot* of computer software assumes that timezone abbreviations like "PST" have their longstanding meanings. This software was obviously misguided, but it's out there and changing it will be quite a hassle. I don't envy people who will have the responsibility for cleaning up the resulting mess where "PST" has one meaning for older timestamps and a different meaning for newer ones and existing standards like Internet RFC 5322 continue to say things like "PST is semantically equivalent to -0800". * https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2022-March/031239.html https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2022-March/031239.html
- runjake 5y agoWhat does this mean in terms of short-term, real-world effect in the US?
- secabeen 5y agoNothing. The House has yet to act, and we don't know if Biden would sign it.
- barbazoo 5y agoWould this impose any action on individual states or would this only give them the green light to implement it?
- darkstar999 5y agoDoubtful. Arizona already opts out of changing their clocks. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623/text?r=53 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...
- lotsofpulp 5y agoCurrently, states can only choose permanent standard time, not permanent daylight savings time. The west coast states’ legislatures already voted to go permanent daylight savings, so presumably this bill would allow them to.
- BearOso 5y agoI don't see anything specific about Arizona in the bill. I wonder if they'd just be permanently one hour different.
- forgot_old_user 5y agohmm why wouldnt Biden sign?
- readthenotes1 5y agoThe House undoubtedly will opt to keep standard time permanent. The committee negotiating a unified bill will settle for a compromise of keeping standard time for 8 months of the year and daylight savings time for 4 months of the year on odd years and reversing the proportion during even years. There will be intense discussion about whether to do anything special for leap years. After several months of back and forth, someone will point out that there are also leap seconds and leap microseconds, leading to further debate. The bill will lapse.
- elmerfud 5y agoThe hooray the Senate is saving our daylight I'm glad somebody is. Take care so much what would we ever do if they didn't save this daylight for us. Maybe they can take some and put it in a lock box for when we need it most.
- mbg721 5y agoAre you saying that there's a threat to our children from lack of adequate daylight? And I am just finding out about it now??
- gscott 5y agoHaving kids, I would have them in a lot of activities and it was a big difference if there was daylight in the evening versus being dark.
- fluoridation 5y agoLet's just move the clocks forward by 12 hours, so there can be sunlight all through the night!
- mbg721 5y agoIt's just crazy enough to work!
- BearOso 5y agoThis adds an hour more darkness in the morning. Schools start earlier than most jobs, so the kids are bearing the brunt of this. If I was a kid, I'd certainly be grumpier about waking up and less alert.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lokar 5y agoHuge win for solar power.
- aadvark69 5y agoIncoming mass patching of any and all Date/Time libraries
- gwbas1c 5y agoOh, we've changed them so many times at this point. In the 2000s we changed the dates that we move the clocks back and forth. This is probably just a configuration update.
- foepys 5y agoWhich production-ready datetime library doesn't use zoneinfo? There should be no need to patch otherwise there would be quite a lot of patching happening each year. The current version is 2021e, meaning it's the 5th iteration for 2021. Notably Fiji decided to not use DST in 2021/2022 but apparently plans to resume using it afterwards.
- spiffytech 5y agoAny software using an IANA zone (e.g., America/New_York) shouldn't have any trouble. But any software that uses zone labels like EST might do the wrong thing, since EDT is being renamed to EST but will still have EDT's offset.
- itslennysfault 5y ago
- standardUser 5y agoI love this. I'd even go as far as to support permanent double daylight saving time. Let's get those daylight hours in the evening where they can do some good!
- croes 5y agoSo more dark hours in the morning when it's more dangerous.
- wvaske 5y agoDepending on how far north you live, it's academic at best; it's dark to and from work. We're already going to work in the dark in the morning in winter, why will it matter if its dark later?
- croes 5y agoIt's a difference if you just woke up or if you are already awake the whole day.
- standardUser 5y agoDusk is the most dangerous time to drive, and driving is the most dangerous thing most of us ever do. Standard time guarantees most rush hours, meaning most of our driving, will occur during part of dusk. Permanent daylight saving reduces the amount of rush hours that occur during dusk.
- ghaff 5y agoI've been remote since pre-pandemic. I had to drive home to the west from an appointment a few weeks ago. I forgot just how bad one of the local highways could be when the sun is low on the horizon at certain times of the year. And one of the worst spots is at a major merge. Just blinding.
- croes 5y agoSo now your morning rush hour is longer in the dark, doesn't get safer that way.
- CyanLite4 5y agoWon’t take effect until 2023, but good to see it happen.
- waynecochran 5y agoCan you explain to me why this is good. It seems like a pain, but I assume there must be a good reason for it. Does it truly save energy? Is this documented somewhere?
- emodendroket 5y agoChanging the clocks is a lot of hassle for dubious benefit.
- dijit 5y agoit's good that it's going away because switching DST to ST or vice-versa is correlated with a huge economic deficit and an influx of health issues. The severe disruption in schedules is correlated with triggering depressive episodes (great when we're going into winter!) and increase in obesity. What's more: the fact that we all do it syncronously and it negatively affects our mood means that there's a "DST meanness" wave that washes over cities during autumn and spring.
- tsimionescu 5y ago> It's good that it's going away because switching DST to ST or vice-versa is correlated with a huge economic deficit and an influx of health issues. It's not "and vice versa" - the change to DST has a slight negative effect, the change to ST has a similar slight positive effect on these indicators.
- dijit 5y agoI really do not care enough to argue for and against either one. Neither should you, because this discussion will be used as a justification to retain the status quo and I do not accept that either solution is worse than the status quo.
- arjvik 5y agoSo are we permanently going to be on "{Eastern,Central,Mountain,Pacific} Daylight Time"? Or are we redefining the time zones "{Eastern,Central,Mountain,Pacific} Standard Time"?
- cjm42 5y agoThe bill would eliminate Daylight Time and redefine Eastern Standard Time etc. to be the same offset they currently are during daylight time. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...
- puffoflogic 5y agoGiven that the US Congress doesn't really have the social authority to do the latter...
- ggrrhh_ta 5y agoA comment above states exactly the opposite.
- gnulinux 5y agoI think you're wrong. They really are re-defining e.g. EST to be the current DST but without yearly DST change.
- lfuller 5y agoHow would this work? Parts of Canada, parts of Mexico, Panama, Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Peru, parts of Brazil, and a bunch of islands are all on Eastern Time. Even if the US changed their own definition of EST it wouldn't change other countries' observations of EST.
- puffoflogic 5y agoShhh... The Narrative has now been decided, and going against it on HN is racist or something.
- Ericson2314 5y agoHot take: permenant daylight time not permanent standard time because nightowls are more common than they used to be.
- mrfusion 5y agoI prefer having more daylight in the evening. I never really understood the opposite argument.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- freedomben 5y agoReally? Seems pretty straight forward. For early risers it's nice to wake up to the sun... I think it comes down to, "what do I prefer"
- SllX 5y agoWhich probably is the best argument for the status quo of changing clocks; but personally I’ll take permanent daylight savings over permanent standard time every day of the week.
- freedomben 5y agoYes likewise. Now that we aren't a farm culture, DST makes little sense to me. We should make time permanent, and I'd prefer permanent DST personally.
- SllX 5y agoWell, that isn’t actually fair. You and I may not live on a farm, but there is still plenty of “farming culture” even in America and I don’t think it is fair to dismiss their concerns out of hand. I just know that if we’re going to pick a bad optimization, which one I prefer as a city dweller that enjoys the local beaches. And the way I personally always dealt with it is by having clocks that set themselves and barely noticing when they changed, or in some years, not even noticing at all unless someone else brought it up.
- mrfusion 5y agoDoes the house need to pass it? Will the president veto it? When can I literally set my clock to this?
- paxys 5y ago> Does the house need to pass it? Yes > Will the president veto it? No > When can I literally set my clock to this? 2023 at the earliest, but probably much later, if ever. The legislative process is not known to move quickly.
- rurp 5y agoCan you expand on why you don't think this will go into effect soon? This is the first I've heard of this bill but given the unanimous passage in the Senste it seems odd that it would fail in the House. Also, IIRC, bills must originate in the House, which makes me think something like this has already passed there at some point.
- paxys 5y agoI believe this is an equivalent house bill – https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/69/all-actions https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/69/a..., and it doesn't look like there has been any progress on it in over a year. > Also, IIRC, bills must originate in the House Only those related to revenue
- shadowfacts 5y agoUntil today, the Senate bill also hadn't seen any progress in over a year: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623 Now that the Senate's passed it, I think there'll be enough momentum for the House to take it up relatively soon.
- blendergeek 5y agoThis bill "originated" in the Senate. Bills only have to originate in the House if they raise taxes [0]. All other bills can originate in either the House or the Senate. While there is a virtually identical piece of legislation in the House that pre-dates this one, it has not passed the House yet. [0] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#article-1-section-7-clause-1 https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#ar...
- mbg721 5y agoMove it all twelve hours back forever, then we'll have eternal daylight!
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoSuch a terrible idea compared to permanent standard time. There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoHonestly don’t even care at this point, would take either way to end this nonsense.
- mbg721 5y agoLet's not be hasty; we could use math to accelerate time itself. Right? Right??
- micromacrofoot 5y agoI would also accept making clocks illegal
- mbg721 5y agoThen only outlaws could tell time! Brilliant!
- bmj 5y agoThis was my response, too. I have a slight preference for standard time, but anything to avoid the twice-a-year switch is appreciated.
- mrfusion 5y agoWhen it’s scarce you want to waste it on the early morning?
- nemo44x 5y agoIt's not wasted then, it's quite useful. Having kids walk to school or to the bus in the dark is ridiculous. In northern areas the Sun won't come up until 8:30AM. Not to mention the extra energy use.
- xattt 5y agoLooking forward to the boost of crop production with the extra hour of daylight!
- mincer_ray 5y agothis is the first time ive felt something in weeks
- Freak_NL 5y agoLet's hope the EU manages to follow; it seems to be in the cards, but politically tricky. This is something that has gained a lot of traction the last decade though; lots of popular support too (parents of young children will rejoice).
- MrZongle2 5y agoI can understand the concern of other posters about going to DST as opposed to standard time... but at this point, I just want the switching to end. It is such an unnecessary disruption and fixing it seems so trivial.
- nemo44x 5y agoIt's total necessary and a great design. Without this then it would be dark until 8:30 in the morning during winter and the other way the Sun would rise at 4:30AM. These are both bad outcomes so we adjust the clocks so optimize these.
- barrucadu 5y ago> These are both bad outcomes Why?
- nemo44x 5y agoBecause having the Sun rise at 8:30 is really late. We waste energy and secondly people are spending 2 hours of their morning in the dark. Having the Sun rise at 4:30 is bad because it's just too early to get up and makes for poor sleep. Having the Sun set later in the day is better in this case.
- maerF0x0 5y agowhats 9:30 vs 8:30? Just a label. Work when the sun is up, call that 9AM. Wake up at X AM so you can get to work on time. It's all just a label, so long as humans can agree.
- nemo44x 5y agoFor a lot of people it's the difference between having a job and being fired. Try telling your boss that you're coming in at 9:30 because it's just a number.
- joezydeco 5y agoWe did this before. 46 years ago. And it went badly. https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-saving-time-went-too-far/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-sav... Why do we have such short memories?
- nemo44x 5y agoBecause our politics are in many ways a clown show. It probably polls well when you ask regular people who haven't considered why we do this. That they feel sad because the Sun goes down at 5:00AM when it's cold but don't consider that without this then the Sun won't come up until 8:30AM.
- joezydeco 5y ago"In a Roper poll conducted in February and March, just 30 percent remained in favor of year-round daylight saving time, while a majority favored switching times again. Louis Harris polling in March showed just 19 percent of people said it had been a good idea, while about twice as many — 43 percent — said it was a bad one." https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/15/no-more-changing-clocks-history-says-be-careful-what-you-wish-daylight-saving-time/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/15/no-more-c...
- hannasanarion 5y agoA poll conducted during the first winter of the first year where the status quo was different, and where institutions hadn't yet made changes to their procedures and schedules to prepare for it is not a true poll of the issue.
- nightski 5y agoOr that everyone except yourself isn't an idiot and they did in fact consider it and don't view that worth the trouble.
- nemo44x 5y ago
- chapium 5y agoI know this is hardly a radical take, but I don't care what time it is. I can adjust my schedule appropriately. What I hate is changing the time. It makes us all sicker, causes accidents, and workers in certain professions have to work weird hours to keep up with the changes. It's such a drag on the economy and only seems to serve a small fragment of society.
- stadium 5y agoNot radical at all, I'll happily take either too.
- tastyfreeze 5y agoWhich fragment of society are you thinking time changing benefits? The common one I hear is farmers. Which is complete BS. Farmers work by the sun because the plants and animals they care for don't use clocks. https://agamerica.com/blog/myth-vs-fact-daylight-saving-time-farming/ https://agamerica.com/blog/myth-vs-fact-daylight-saving-time...
- falcolas 5y agoFarmers used to care, when they made broad use of their spawn to assist with harvests and chores. If the spawn gets out of school an hour earlier, that's an hour more labor they can do before the sun sets.
- caleb-allen 5y agoWow, this is the first time I've actually understood the practical use of DST. Not that it's needed anymore, but that makes a lot of sense.
- bena 5y agoIt's also kind of bullshit. Children can do some farm work, but the majority of farm work is going to be done by adults and teenagers. Farmers have been mostly against DST since the beginning. It was golfers, bug catchers, and 7-11 that wanted it. And permanent DST has failed when it was tried here in the 70s, in the UK a few years before that, and in Russia as recent as the 2010s. Why do we want to do it again?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dddddaviddddd 5y agoCurrently working its way through the legislative process, first introduced in 2018: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Protection_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Protection_Act
- daenz 5y agoWhat will the impact be for software engineering?
- emodendroket 5y agoWell, do you work on a time library? If not you probably just need to update your dependencies.
- londons_explore 5y agoSince the USA designs most of the software in the world, support for changing time zones will gradually disappear. There will no longer be a constant force making people correctly convert UTC to localtime. People will go storing dates as strings. People will just have "+8 hours" hardcoded for their application. That will lead to people in the rest of the world having constant bugs and trouble every time daylight savings time happens. That may be part of the push for other countries to drop it too, when lawmakers see that every spring and autumn their computer deletes an hours worth of emails or their fancy web 4.0 microwave cooks their breakfast for 1 hour and 30 seconds.
- technothrasher 5y agoDoes this mean that I will no longer be able to smugly remind people that there is only one 's' in "daylight saving time"? It was really the only reason I could see for keeping the biannual time change around.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- johnboiles 5y agoThis is HN, plenty of ways to be smug around here
- Razengan 5y agoYou forgot a full stop 8^)
- fingerlocks 5y agoAlso "Orders of Magnitude" especially when it's not https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Orders%20of%20Magnitude&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- dheera 5y ago"making daylight savings time permanent" Isn't that just changing the time zone and abolishing daylight savings? "Senate votes" What does this mean? Does it take effect forever starting from today? Does Senate have authority to actually enact the change or is that some other dude that actually flips the lever?
- boffinism 5y ago"just"
- tastyfreeze 5y agoSenate is only half of the legislature. Nothing becomes law until it has passed both houses of Congress and is signed by the president. Schoolhouse Rock - Bill https://youtu.be/OgVKvqTItto https://youtu.be/OgVKvqTItto
- seltzered_ 5y agohttps://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623 . The tweet doesn't provide much context if it just passed the senate, republican senate cloakroom, house, or is fully passed up through the President.
- RKearney 5y agoI've never come across a device that supports permanent summer time. You can typically opt out of daylight saving time and stay in standard time, but you can't stay in summer time. These devices will either need to pick the standard timezone of the timezone to the east and disable daylight saving time, or we will have to change the offset of every timezone in the US, or devices will need to add an explicit summer timezone. I don't see how any of this is easier than staying on standard time and disabling daylight saving time, which every device that tells time that I've come across seems to support.
- JamesBarney 5y agoIt's not easier, it's better because more people prefer having an extra hour of light in the evening to an extra hour of light in the morning.
- jp57 5y agoI mentioned something similar in a comment last year, but I think there's going to be a lot of moaning about late sunrises in US in December. Roughly 8:15-8:20 am around the solstice in New York, DC, Chicago, and even Austin. Not til nearly 9am in Seattle. The sun won't rise before 8am in NYC for basically all of December and January. I'd even be willing to guess that the amount of moaning might be equal to what we get now around the clock change.
- scotuswroteus 5y agoEnough from these self centered early risers. They go to bed at 7 PM. They live in homes full of "live, laugh, love" decorations. They tuck in their shirts. Enough.
- o4b 5y agoBeautifully put, scotuswroteus. "The tyranny of the minority is infinitely more odious and intolerable and more to be feared than that of the majority" - William McKinley
- scotuswroteus 5y agoThis McKinley guy is all about that "live laugh love" lifestyle https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ6eplzzizuqqDx95Hp00aNO4fp0hD_1cf73w&usqp=CAU https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ6eplz...
- jp57 5y agoI know, right? But I think it will be those night owls who must wake up early who will suffer most. Left to my own devices I would wake at 9 and go to bed around 2, but because of work and family scheduled I get up early Mon-Fri. Another hour before seeing the sun in the winter doesn't thrill me. Somehow I think it will bother me more than the early sunsets, but we'll see.
- Miner49er 5y agoI'm not a morning person, because the sun isn't up. This will make it even worse. This is bad for night owls.
- site-packages1 5y agoI am an idiot. Would this mean that the time stays as it is right now (after the change from this past weekend)? Because I would love that so much.
- paxys 5y agoYes
- annadane 5y agoIt's actually really hard to remember which is which, isn't it? lol. I get confused all the time
- phailhaus 5y agoYes! Later sunsets in the winter!
- bonzini 5y agoSince it's anyway going to get dark way before dinner (5:30pm in NY), does it really matter?
- asdff 5y agoYes, because now it gets dark at 6:30pm instead of 5:30pm and you get an hour of sunlight after work or extracurriculars to absorb vitamin D.
- _ph_ 5y agoThe most likely outcome is, that work schedules shift as people struggle to get up in the winter. Consequentely the amount of light after work doesn't change. Actually its worse than with the time changes, where there was an effect on the amount of light after work in the summer.
- asdff 5y ago
- adam_arthur 5y agoHow many decades until a universal timezone?
- basisword 5y agoCan someone explain why they actually care about this? I always see such strong opinions on it but really, why does it matter to you? Most clocks are digital and change automatically these days and otherwise changing your clocks twice a year is such a minor inconvenience. And whether or not the light should be preferred in the morning or vending is probably a pretty even split. Maybe it’s better to get rid of it (I don’t know) but to care about it strongly seems odd. What am I missing?
- cheeze 5y agoMy kids hate it, there is data to show that children suffer a bit from it (although quickly correct) I hate it because I have to remember whether it's PDT or PST right now. Huge deal? No. Would I prefer it just be one or the other? Absolutely.
- Rebelgecko 5y agoa) if you're a software developer who works on anything related to time, changing up timezones is always scary b) if you're someone who has a strong preference for when they do outdoor activities, day vs night can make a big difference c) if you wake up in the dark, work all day, then drive home in the dark it's kind of a downer (latitude dependant)
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoPersonally I enjoy being having the sun up after work. My fitness and general happiness immediately improves when daylight saving starts and drops when it ends. For me the year has eight good months and four shitty months. After this change it’ll be more like ten good months and two mediocre months. Those additional hours of time when I can enjoy the world really do mean a lot to me. I understand that there are other people with lifestyles that benefit more from sun in the morning, and they aren’t wrong, they are just different.
- geerlingguy 5y agoFor 1-2 weeks post-time-change, I used to adjust okay, it was just annoying. But kids and pets have no clue what's going on, and their bodies are basically jolted into a different sleep schedule since society doesn't have any ramp-up/ramp-down into the new hour difference. We have basically been fighting to get our kids up (fighting against their own bodies' sleep schedules and instincts) this week. And when the time changes again in the fall, we end up getting woken up "an hour early" since the kids don't care to sleep an extra hour that day.
- mesozoic 5y agoPersonally I'm tired of coding around time zones can we just make the whole world GMT time and learn to deal with not having "noons" and "midnights"
- maerF0x0 5y agoExactly. Lets just wake up when the sun dictates, go to bed when it doesnt. So what if it's 12:37 PM where you are in the world. It's just a label and our circadian rhythm dictates most of this, ignorant of what time society says is "slothful" or "eager" to rise.
- msoucy 5y agoA couple of fun posts you might enjoy: So You Want To Abolish Time Zones: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish So You Want Continuous Time Zones: https://qntm.org/continuous https://qntm.org/continuous What I've gathered from these and similar articles is that time just kinda sucks in general, and no matter what we do we're going to suffer.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jrootabega 5y agoI would prefer we have permanent Standard Time so I can wait a year and then my car's clock will be correct forever.
- somenewaccount1 5y agodoes this make the clock flip-flopping permanent, or that we will stop doing it? personally, i just want to punch the moving clock in the face. it nearly killed me last year when I was just starting to get an exercise routine at the end of winter, and then it sent me back into the dark by an hour, completely fucking up my schedule. i absolutely blame many of my problems on these flip flopping clocks, and I do not think i am alone.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThe flip flopping is currently “permanent”, this bill would stop the flip flopping.
- bilalq 5y agoWe thought Y2K38 would be the next big industry challenge, but I expect a lot of things are going to go wrong with a change with just a year or two of notice. I love that this is happening, but I'm pretty certain a lot of random things are going to break when the cutover happens.
- NovemberWhiskey 5y agoNah. We are getting good at this; we "just" did it in 2007.
- Ekaros 5y agoThe way they do it is just so self-destructive. Changing the definition of timezone, not just changing to existing one... That is so lovely corner case to remember forever... Idiots...
- _greim_ 5y agoWhen they shifted the transition time by a month a few years back I remember it causing grief. I had to get rid of an alarm clock that was hard-wired for the old cutover. There were a few other minor inconveniences. Random things definitely broke.
- collegeburner 5y agoFuck this. Keeping the DST change is still better than keeping DST permanently. We should stay on standard time all year, I'm sick of having 0 daylight in the morning when I get up.
- scotuswroteus 5y agoYou get up too early. Relax
- collegeburner 5y agoYou get up too late. Relax. If I get up later I can't go to the gym and get a good workout, then sit and drink my coffee and eat breakfast before work.
- richardwhiuk 5y agoYou could go to work later.
- collegeburner 5y agoThat's not how the work world works. This site is biased because programming isn't the same, but most corporate jobs still need people working at the same time to get stuff done.
- scotuswroteus 5y agolol yes let us unbias ourselves. Give me a second. HEY, EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH THIS GUY, PLEASE DO NOT ARGUE WITH HIM. IT SHOWS BIAS. there we go. Ok, please repeat your argument so we can all agree.
- cheeze 5y agoI'd rather it be dark when I wake up and light when I am done working, but to each their own.
- jimbokun 5y agoDoes this still need to pass the House?
- cwt137 5y agoWe need a lot of new embedded devices. Lots of them have hardcoded when the time changes and have no way of taking it off.
- amaranth 5y agoIf that's true they've already been wrong in recent history. The US changed when they do DST in 2007 and I believe other countries have moved it around recently as well. If you're dealing with timezones (which DST is) you either need the ability to do frequent updates or you need to stop dealing with timezones.
- equivocates 5y agoIs daylight savings time such a hassle? All my clocks update themselves. I hardly ever notice the difference.
- windows2020 5y agoWondering if you have a nice microwave, stove, coffee machine and thermostat or none at all.
- coding123 5y agoThis is not law yet, does anyone know what hurdles remain?
- divbzero 5y agoThis means permanently EDT/CDT/MDT/PDT? Or would EST/CST/MST/PST all be shifted by +01:00? I am also curious if Canada or other countries would follow suit.
- zht 5y agoOntario has already passed a bill saying that it will make DST permanent if 1) Quebec and 2) New York State make it permanent
- tempestn 5y agoAt least in BC we already have legislation to do this as soon as the western states do. In Alberta it just got voted down by a very slim margin, so if the US made the switch I expect that would be enough to swing it there as well. I expect other provinces would follow suit as well, assuming the federal government didn't just make the decision for everyone (which they probably would if the whole US went to permanent DST).
- slimginz 5y agoQuestion from a dumb American: Does Canada have a lot of laws that only go into effect if the US or nearby US states do the same? I've never heard of that before.
- tempestn 5y agoI can't recall any others (edit: aside from obvious things like laws relating to trade agreements or defense cooperation), but this one makes some sense to keep the time zones consistent. Also since I made that last comment I learned that Ontario has a similar plan w.r.t. NY. So it definitely appears Canada will switch when the US does.
- nullc 5y agoIn California the law of the land is already that we'll switch to permanent DST when the federal government allows it.
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- thehappypm 5y agoPeople literally die more because of these changes. Statistically measurable increase in mortality on these days. Save lives, stop changing the clocks.
- dgritsko 5y agoInteresting, I've never heard that, although it seems like it would make intuitive sense (people more tired than usual from lack of sleep?). I searched around a bit and found a couple of articles that others might find interesting: [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-deadly-2018-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-dead... [2]: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-03-12/the-dangers-of-daylight-saving-time https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-03-12/...
- ibejoeb 5y agoWhat are the modalities of these deaths? Are they a result of the time change, or are they coincident to the time change?
- thehappypm 5y agoPresumably, being late to work or more tired leads to more car crashes. Super anecdotal but I saw two horrible wrecks yesterday, when I normally see 0.
- xeromal 5y agoI'm too dumb to know what modalities means but simply, a lot of people end up with 1 hour less sleep because they're not tired at the normal time and over a population of 300+ million, more mistakes are made driving and people with poor health experience elevated stress due to lack of sleep. A non-zero amount of people pass away the day of from these issues.
- dqv 5y agoA bunch of missed healthcare appointments (not everyone uses their phone to tell the time!) happen after the change and diminishes over the following weeks.
- solidsnack9000 5y agoThe rule should be that each state can decide which one it wants but can only pick one. Arizona's case for standard time ("spring forward" just puts more of the day in the hottest time) is pretty reasonable.
- lamontcg 5y agoGet in!
- ultra_nick 5y agoThat's terrible news. It'll be extremely hard to wake up and do anything before day jobs now. We should move the standard work day to 10-6 to compensate.
- pathartl 5y agoHow about we just make it 10-5?
- ultra_nick 5y agoEven better!
- mdturnerphys 5y agoMore info here: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-approves-bill-that-would-make-daylight-savings-time-permanent-2023-2022-03-15/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-approves-bill-tha... Important note: "Senator Marco Rubio said after input from airlines and broadcasters that supporters agreed that the change would not take place until November 2023."
- rhexs 5y ago
- anchpop 5y agoPresumably your state chose to elect some of the senators who voted unanimously to pass the bill because the electorate trusted their judgement. Sometimes making the best judgement that means consulting with interest groups like airlines, who offer an important service millions of Americans depend on. I'm not sure what you're unhappy about here
- nr2x 5y agoBecause public polling regularly shows legislators do what donors want, not voters.
- camel_Snake 5y agoto be fair a public poll is not exactly representative of the subset of the population that consistently votes.
- mmcgaha 5y agoAnd yet we vote them back into office. What is the solution to this problem?
- paxys 5y agoThe solution has been obvious for a long time – politicians must campaign with a fixed budget and no outside special interest financing.
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoSo how long do I have to wait until this goes to the House? And why will it fail when it gets there, or be stuck in committee forever before reaching the floor, or have some nonsensical pork attached to it? I have no faith in my government to do something as nice as give me a little sunshine in the evening...
- Thristle 5y agoOh dear, poor datetime/timezone library maintainers
- salawat 5y agoSo who is going to update all the non networked electronic clocks that automatically adjust for standard/DST changes? This is the problem with Congress... No connection feedbackwise to the ungodly hell made by the legislation they pass. It's always someone else's problem.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- maerF0x0 5y agoWait, it's not April 1. Suddenly I love this adminsitration [1] > Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 Yes. Save the sun, save the lights, save everything. [1]: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias
- tomcatfish 5y agoIt's not "Sunshine Protection" to make people feel good, those words are just likely to be recognized as synonyms for "Daylight Savings". (I actually didn't catch this on my own either)
- danso 5y agoMods: Maybe the tweet link could be replaced with this Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-approves-bill-that-would-make-daylight-savings-time-permanent-2023-2022-03-15/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-approves-bill-tha... > WASHINGTON, March 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate voted unanimously on Tuesday to make Daylight Savings Time permanent, a move supporters say would make winter afternoons brighter and end the twice changing of clocks. > The measure still needs approval from the U.S. House of Representatives and the backing of President Joe Biden. On Sunday, most of the United States resumed Daylight Savings Time, moving ahead one hour. The United States will resume standard time in November 2022. > Senator Marco Rubio said after input from airlines and broadcasters that supporters agreed that the change would not take place until November 2023. (I searched around after seeing the @senatecloakroom tweet, but apparently the news was new enough that no articles had yet been written)
- humansuit 5y agoAs long as they eliminate the constant inane switching back and forth. Sleep disruption is harmful in many ways and all this practice seems to actually do, old wives' tales about farmers and circumstantial localized benefits aside, is induce it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5449130/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5449130/
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- kayodelycaon 5y agoI'm bipolar and extremely sensitive to "minor" things like changing timezones during travel. The switch between EST and EDT fucks up my sleep for at least a week, usually longer. This is not going to be a good month. I can't wait for this to be signed into law.
- soperj 5y agoYou should start trying to adjust it gradually. If you start by just a couple minutes every day in the start of February, you don't even notice it. Also can't wait for it to change.
- kayodelycaon 5y agoAdjust gradually how? Between ADHD, anxiety, depression, mania, and medication side-effects, my bedtime can vary by as much as 2 hours. By the end of the day any willpower I started the day with is usually gone, so going to bed at the same time each day just can't happen with any regularity. I have settle for a 90 minute window. What I can't handle is my window shifting by 60 minutes, especially when the sunlight changes. Suddenly, it's bright 60 minutes after the sun should have set and everything gets out of balance.
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- foxyv 5y agoI will love it when my sleep schedule isn't disrupted twice a year for no good reason. I can stand waking up in the dark or getting off work in the dark. I just hate having to adjust my circadian in order to reduce candle usage...
- tested23 5y agoSleep is one of the most important bodily functions, disrupting it because of silly reasons such as not waking up in light is ridiculous
- hirundo 5y agoBecause it is such an important function, and because light disrupts sleep, it is important to sleep mostly in the dark. If it gets light naturally in time to wake you up when you need to, great. If it gets light earlier, not great.
- tptacek 5y agoObligatory: https://archive.ph/Aro0a https://archive.ph/Aro0a Barro is very fond of pointing out that we tried this once in the 1970s and almost immediately rolled it back. Permanent DST means that it's dark between 8-9AM in large swathes of the US. Among other problems, having kids go to school in the dark or twilight hours is unsafe, so schools responded by adjusting their schedules, which is an even bigger problem than DST, because the rest of the economy has a de facto requirement to coordinate with school schedules.
- Mindless2112 5y agoFor some definition of "we". I wasn't alive in the 1970s; half of people living today weren't.
- bluGill 5y agoThat doesn't pass the smell test. In my areas different schools start at different times and always have.
- tptacek 5y agoRight, but they don't start at different times during the school year.
- nostrademons 5y agoThat makes this the perfect time to do this. There's tons of research out there that early school start times have a negative impact on students' learning, alertness, and well-being. We should be pushing schools back to a 8:30-9:00 AM start time. My high school started at 8:30, which was much better than my sister's 7:00 AM start time, and this was explicitly called out as a plus when my high school was accredited. The reason we don't do this is exactly the reason you mention: for the convenience of adults and the rest of the economy. Children don't get a voice, but corporations do. And that's also what makes this the perfect time to do it, when the future of work is in total disarray, nobody knows how they're going to be handling RTO, and large swaths of America is quitting for remote jobs (or just quitting) anyway.
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- nimbius 5y agoS.623 spent nearly a year languishing it seems...better late than never i guess https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s623 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s623 curious if govtrack is following this development? id be stunned if it makes it out of the house alive, as efforts to repeal DST frequently face stiff opposition from fast food and entertainment lobbies that insist its value.
- slavik81 5y agoThis is nice to see. A provincial referendum to make DST permanent failed in Alberta last year (49.9% in favour to 50.1% against). I have no strong opinions on whether we should make it permanent daylight saving time or standard time. To me, the important thing is just picking one and sticking with it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hinkley 5y agoI think I can say this on behalf of most developers who have ever had to fix DST errors in their code: Thank fucking god. I am shocked that none of our unit tests failed on Monday. One of the first code reviews I did here I pointed out that his tests were going to break in a few months when DST kicked in because his tests asserted that there was a 24 hour gap between two calculations. He responded this code was temporary and it would be gone by then. There was another PR on a certain Monday a few months later. Told ya so.
- eldenbishop 5y agoLOL - this is good timing. A bunch of my unit tests just started failing due to the recent DST transition. Luckily our CI build servers are all GMT so it only failed on local runs. But even better if this problem went away altogether.
- qwertox 5y agoI personally am against timesaving switches, but just because the US stops this practice doesn't mean that the issue is gone. There is nothing to thank for since nothing will change, except for the lack of enforced switches the developers will have to deal with, which may lead to more bugs.
- travisjungroth 5y agoFixed one of these yesterday!
- hinkley 5y agoMy favorite is when they fix 23 hours in the spring and then have to fix 25 hours in the fall, although the reverse is easier to do.
- waqf 5y agoIf this law will solve your problems then I … guess your code doesn't have to work outside the US?
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- LeoPanthera 5y agoThis is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. There's a reason why "Standard Time" is called that. Now the words "Midday" and "Midnight" are meaningless. The measurement of time is a science, and science should not be decided by politicians. This seems trivial, but if this, then what next? Edit: I'm getting a lot of replies saying that "midday" isn't precisely the middle of the day, and therefore I am wrong, but even since the invention of timezones, midday is supposed to be "the middle of the day, to the nearest hour". Now it is intentionally skewed, and keeping this forever seems like a huge mistake. If you are willing to accept that the numbers on the clock don't actually mean anything, we should all just use UTC all the time, with all the pain that that will bring. This is just the first step along the way.
- horsawlarway 5y agoHate to break it to ya - but midday and midnight are already meaningless ever since we adopted standard timezones. So basically - since 1883.
- sophacles 5y agoMidday and Midnight are not meaningless and have never been based on the numbers of the clock. Those are terms for "about halfway between sunrise and sunset" and "about half way between sunset and sunrise" respectively. The measurement of elapsed time is a science. The time of day however is a number that represents how far along you are in one rotation of the planet, relative to an arbitrary 0 position +/- an offset. The arbitrary 0 position has always been political.
- nfw2 5y agoI would say time of day is not completely arbitrary, but it also does not require exact alignment with physical phenomena to have meaning. For example, if one were to say it is 12pm, people would understand roughly where we are in the diurnal cycle. People will understand it is not night time. People will know roughly where the sun is in the sky. Rough information is still information. Information doesn't need exact boundaries and discrete rules to carry meaning.
- 5y ago
- nullc 5y agoThank god. Every change causes hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in damages. Case in point-- my pool cleaning pump that was supposed to run for <1 hour managed to stay running all night long because its shutoff time was during the missing hour. Fortunately, I was aware of the potential issue and checked it and stopped it before there was any damage. This is in spite of prior years effort to fix this specific issue. This same kind of dysfunction is repeated all across the country from homes to industry. Thousands of tiny cuts, significant increases in automotive accidents, and a measurable increase in all-cause mortality even excluding the auto accidents. After this is activated the next damage producing time meddling to fix is leap seconds: Without leapseconds it'll take 4000 years for solar time to drift an hour -- and if people still exist care about solar time agreement with some arbitrary clock numbers at that point they can simply adjust all the timezone definitions by an hour at that point and be good again for thousands of additional years. Like the DST changes leapseconds cause an enormous amount of disruption and failure and as more of our electronic systems depend on precise synchronization the amount of disruption is only increasing. While the displacement of leapseconds is shorter, they are more rare than DST changes so systems are less likely to be tested against against them. In particular, we haven't had a negative leapsecond before but they're possible and one will almost certainly happen in the not-distant future if we continue to apply them. Unlike DST whos times are perfectly predictable except for politics, leapseconds also have to be signaled shortly before they apply. This creates a massive amount of additional complexity and avenues for error and security vulnerabilities. With the development of solid state atomic clocks we could reasonably expect to see affordable timing devices that never need to be set in our lifetimes, -- but they couldn't keep accurate time in a world that used leapseconds.
- mobilene 5y agoI live in Indiana, where we didn't change time at all until ...was it about 10 years ago? I forget. We were EST year round It was wonderful not to have to deal with DST. But then we started observing DST and ...glory be, we had sunlight in summer until after 9 pm! That was quite a revelation, and very welcome. So I'm all for permanent DST. Or putting Indiana in the Central time zone and observing permanent Standard Time. But that ignores the people on the other side of the Eastern time zone who have a very different experience with when the sun is out.
- acoard 5y agoYou also wind up not getting sunlight until close to 9am during winter in some places. Personally I don't mind, but I've heard that some sunlight-sensitive people can really suffer in those conditions. Personally, I'd say keep the winter-time hours all-year round, even if you give up an hour of sunlight during summer just to tack it on to winter mornings.
- throwaway48375 5y agoChanging the clocks doesn't change how much daylight there is. Just go outside earlier.
- sllabres 5y agoThe country of Elbonia passes the bill for the "moon bashing act" and permanently forward the clock by _12_ hours (and not just a laughable one hour), after Elbonien scientists discovered that the cost savings for street lighting alone is equivalent to half of their gross domestic product. ... and i will adjust my clock dynamically, so i'm never too late again.
- paxys 5y agoPriority 1a – Daylight saving all year. Priority 1b – Standard time all year. .... bottomless pit ... Last possible priority – Switch clocks back and forth twice a year. It would suck so bad if because of the fighting between the two preferable options we are stuck with the worst one.
- radley 5y agoObligatory link to previous attempt (1973) to make DST permanent: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/01/31/archives/schools-ask-end-to-daylight-time-pressure-follows-success-in-easing.html https://www.nytimes.com/1974/01/31/archives/schools-ask-end-... TLDR: schools asked to reinstate DST because more school children were killed in accidents walking to school in the dark that year.
- wolverine876 5y agoDoesn't DST make it darker in the morning and lighter at night?
- discardedrefuse 5y agoI see a lot of people arguing for and against DST. But, I can't imagine this is being done for anyone's comfort. DST is associated with higher consumer spending. https://www.jpmorganchase.com/institute/research/cities-local-communities/jpmc-institute-daylight-savings-report https://www.jpmorganchase.com/institute/research/cities-loca...
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- mjw1007 5y agoIt would be nice if the title mentioned which country's senate it's talking about (particularly as the title is made up for HN rather than taken from the source page).
- hbarka 5y agoWhen do we see this take permanent effect in California? It feels like this has been decided many months ago but why is the implementation in limbo?
- runlevel1 5y agoFederal law currently allows states to opt out of DST and use permanent Standard Time. It doesn't permit states to use permanent DST. This is a byproduct of the Uniform Time Act.[^1] CA's Prop 7 was contingent on federal authorization. CO, WA, OR, and many other states are all waiting on that too.[^2] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Time_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Time_Act [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_the_United_States#Table_of_state-level_legislative_actions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_... EDIT: Fixed 2nd link.
- hbarka 5y agoWhether it’s PST or PDT, let’s pick one please and get it done. When do you see it taking effect?
- runlevel1 5y agoThe House still needs to pass it and President needs to sign it, but based on another comment it sounds like they're targeting November 2023. That would mean the last clock change would be March 2023.
- Smithalicious 5y agoWatching Americans freak out about post-8AM sunrises is surreal to me. The sun doesn't rise until 8:45 during the darkest times of the year here in the Netherlands and its really not much of an issue. Whether standard time or summer time is the better choice here is something I hold no opinion on, but the sheer hysteria some people here express is very overblown.
- CyanBird 5y agoIt will be funny to see what happens with Alaska, they might have just forgotten about the state Same thing happened in Chile a while back, the entire country was left on "summer time" which then meant that the southern tip of Chile had very, very little sun during the winter during the mornings, the "proper day time" was notoriously "shifted"
- ghaff 5y agoI remember a guide on a trip a number of years back telling that she rather liked the northern latitude (Alaska). In winter you're screwed anyway and in summer you have more light than you know what to do with. I'm sure an hour shift doesn't make things much different. Most of the people arguing are arguing around states where there is sort of enough light most of the year but some people like it earlier and some later.
- tshaddox 5y agoIt's odd that most places seem very used to longitudinal time zones, but no one seems to be suggesting latitudinal time zones.
- henrikschroder 5y agoWhen you're as far north as Alaska, daylight savings stops making sense, because the difference in daylight hours over the year is huge. At Anchorage's latitude, two weeks after changing back to standard time, sunrise is back at the same time it was before the change, and mornings will get a lot darker until you reach midwinter. In California, the effect of the change is noticeable, because the difference in daylight hours is small over the year, so people who have only ever lived in California or similar are the ones complaining about "having to go to school in the dark" as if that was some weird anomaly or tragedy.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoGreat idea, hope we will follow suit in Europe. I hope we will go for the "Summer" time too because it will give more light at night. It's ridiculous to have it dark so early.
- giantg2 5y agoBackground information for all the people talking about what is early and what isn't. (Not that this settles the definition but does show when people need to be starting the work day, and thus the number affected) https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/overflow-data-finds-the-average-time-most-americans-get-to-work https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/overflow-data-finds-th...
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- coryfklein 5y agoPersonally, this makes me so happy. I have wanted this for so long now. Professionally I'm already groaning inside; it looks like 2023 will be the year of "DST-related bugs being exposed in our product".
- macintux 5y ago2024 apparently.
- armandososa 5y agoThis is so going to screw with my remote working situation. I'll have to do everything one hour early for half the year.
- MaxMoney 5y ago
- grammers 5y agoGood, it was about time. All research suggest that the switching back and forth is harmful so why keep it?
- mlindner 5y agoFinally! I'm glad this is finally happening. Time switching is a plague on society.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwaway27727 5y agoThis extra daylight in the evening is killing my babies sleep schedule - but I'm sure to enjoy it once they're older and they don't need such early naps.
- seangrogg 5y agoI'm all for either implementation of this (standard or savings); I have no particular skin in the game when it comes down to where daylight hours are positioned. Having lived about a decade in Arizona it literally never negatively impacted my life once. Since moving I've come to participate in what seems to be the standard dread of moving hours back and forth. I either lose sleep and need to adjust my Circadian rhythm or I gain a one-off hour to... I dunno, lay in bed longer because I've already gotten my sleep? The worst is being a gaming raid leader (and I'd imagine anyone dealing with globalized scheduling), though, because every time we do this I have to reach out to my gamers in other states/countries who don't play collective clock madness and ask them to adjust to those of us that still do for what appear to be largely outmoded "reasons".
- mdavidn 5y agoScheduling recurring meetings that span the United States and Australia is always a calendaring shock. Both countries observe daylight savings time but, being in different hemispheres, they move in opposite directions. And on different dates.
- seangrogg 5y agoSeriously though! One of my Aussie buddies recently switched over to a recently-opened Oceanic server and while I was lamenting the loss we joked about not needing to step on each other's toes with scheduling.
- blhack 5y agoAs an Arizonan: welcome! (Arizona does not celebrate daylight saving time)
- codazoda 5y agoHow out of date is Congress.gov, which still shows this bill as having last action in March of 2021 and the status is "referred to committee" which is where all the legislation I care about seems to go to die. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623 Why is Twitter a better place to get this news than a .gov website that seems like it was built for it?
- OrwellianChild 5y agoThe world moves at the speed of Twitter - this is confirmation with video from the senator who originated the bill: https://twitter.com/PattyMurray/status/1503804622087020545 https://twitter.com/PattyMurray/status/1503804622087020545
- metadat 5y agoWow, good observation. This is supremely messed up. Twitter is not a government affiliated entity, it seems inappropriate for public officials to endorse (bless?) a singular non-state-owner platform this way. How can we trust Twitter not to manipulate information for their own gain and agenda? Oh, wait..
- nfw2 5y agoMy personal pet peeve is when people write the Standard Time acronym when scheduling cross-timezone meetings, despite the fact that it is Daylight Saving Time. (Eg. "I'll call you tomorrow at 4pm PST.") In the past, I've gotten paranoid that they may live somewhere that doesn't observe Daylight Savings, but I also don't want to seem like a pedant by bringing up their mistake. I'm curious if this change will make this sort of thing more or less common.
- redwall_hp 5y agoMy personal pet peeve is giving times in their local time zone when they know full well everyone is going to be in different time zones. Convert it to UTC so everyone can just worry about their offset.
- lelandfe 5y agoI doubt most of my colleagues even know what their offset is – keeping track of that with DST is just not fun. Personally I just Google e.g. "2pm PT in CT," as Google has an info box that handles time conversions and is smart enough to know when you want DST.
- pflanze 5y agoFor people not wanting to use Google, I've written a script "dateparse"[1] that allows to do the same: $ TZ=America/Chicago dateparse '2pm PT' 2pm PT: assuming PDT 1647464400 Wed Mar 16 16:00:00 CDT 2022 (You don't need to set TZ if your local time is already CT, of course.) [1] https://github.com/pflanze/chj-bin/blob/master/dateparse https://github.com/pflanze/chj-bin/blob/master/dateparse
- coryfklein 5y agoIf you attach a time zone, then at least some won't need to do a conversion in their heads. If you just use UTC, then EVERYONE has to do some conversion in their heads. (Unless some participants happen to live at the prime meridian, in which case using UTC as "the timezone" is equally as good.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stevenyoung 5y agoThis is the right thing done the wrong way. Make Standard Time permanent. Let's Make Noon Noon Again!!!
- oppositelock 5y agoBah! Those of us who are morning people would prefer to ban daylight savings time and stay on standard time. Pretty soon, we'll have the war of the big-endians and little-endians like in Gulliver's Travels.
- gpvos 5y agoAs an evening person, I want standard time. I can stay up in the evening anyway, I don't need sunlight for that. But in order to get up in the morning and be on time at work, sunlight is very helpful.
- upofadown 5y agoEveryone will not be happy no matter what happens here. A compromise might be to switch to regular time all the time and then encourage businesses to allow employees to optionally come in an hour earlier. A really mild form of flex time...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Brian_K_White 5y agoThis is a great idea! Instead of just working from 8 to 4 to leave an hour of daylight after work, let's instead tilt all the clocks so that noon is at 11am. Why stop with the clocks? Today I announce my genius proposal Wallet Saving Prices. Everyone wants more money left over after they buy something, so the obvious way to achieve that is just slide all the numbering systems left by one. Henceforth all prices shall be written on a scale that starts at -1 instead of 0. If a thing cost $4 yesterday, it now costs the same 4 dollars, but the price is written as $3. This will give everyone more money!
- ragnese 5y agoWho cares what time the clock says? I don't care if they do permanent DST or permanent not-DST; just stop with the twice a year changing! So, I'm super happy about this.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoThe consistency is fine, the alignment is stupid. If the numbers don't matter, then why do the numbers 9 and 5 matter so much that we center the new clock on those rather than noon/midnight? It's probably not going to be a harmful stupid, it's only a small stupid, but it's still stupid. There will be no explaining this to kids a generation from now. "Well you see way back, they had this even goofier system where everyone changed all their clocks twice a year...that was ultimately just silly so finally they eventually decided to clean that mess up and treat the clocks rationally. Except they still didn't. They had that DST system for some hundreds of years so we can look forward to the current slightly less dumb system for another 100 or so. It's dumb but it doesn't matter that much, it just annoys programmers and data graphers because the numbers are all off-center by 1 for no justifiable reason, and a little bit more annoying for anyone who knows they actually did go through the bother of making a sweeping disruptive change across the land explicitly to finally clean up this minor stpidity, and did this with it."
- tlbsofware 5y agoSo you are saying it’s better to alternate Wallet Saving Prices twice a year?
- mdaniel 5y agoApparently the dupe detector is case sensitive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30689221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30689221 currently has 388 comments to this thread's 92
- dang 5y agoWe'll merge them. Thanks!
- patwolf 5y agoBack in '08 when the US dates of DST changed, I was working on a Java-based enterprise software product with a relatively large install base. It suddenly became known to a lot of customers that timezone tables are part of the JRE, and simply updating the OS wasn't enough to get proper time calculations in Java. It was a very stressful time getting customers with many different versions of Java across dozens of platforms properly updated. A lot of customers were running ancient versions of Java that were well past EOL, but we still helped them out. Needless to say, I'm very happy this might finally happen. I do not, however, envy whoever is now supporting that software. I'm sure there are folks that haven't touched their systems since the last DST change.
- paxys 5y agoConsidering how frequently time zones around the world change, any OS or software that doesn't auto update them from a standard list at this point deserves to break.
- lastofthemojito 5y agoSure, but I'd imagine on lots of threads discussing exploits, there are a lot of experts commenting, "Considering how frequently systems are exploited, any system that doesn't require Internet functionality shouldn't be on the Internet".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- paxys 5y agoA system with correctly configured firewalls and other access controls which receives regular updates and zero day patches is still more secure than an offline one.
- upbeat_general 5y agoNot sure how you reached that conclusion. A fully-airgapped system is definitely more secure as long as physical attacks aren’t a threat vector.
- thehappypm 5y agoOne thing I like to point out is that DST is longer than Standard Time. DST is March to November (~8 months), Standard Time is about 4 months.
- Veuxdo 5y agoRIP companies that stored future events as timestamps.
- u2077 5y agoNow let’s all move to the metric system.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ddlatham 5y agoWe did this before, about 50 years ago. Going in, close to 80% of people supported permanent Daylight Saving Time. After experiencing a single winter, that dropped to close to 40%, and it was repealed. Looks like we may be doomed to repeat the experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_the_United_States#Previous_observation_of_year-round_daylight_saving_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_...
- ultimoo 5y agoNo, 50 years ago people had different lifestyles, jobs, and hobbies. Technology as we know it today did not exist. It's a very different world today and the chances of a different outcome are large enough to warrant repeating this.
- drekipus 5y agoWell you know what they say..
- bonniemuffin 5y ago"Those who study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it"?
- thrill 5y ago"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."?
- thehappypm 5y agoI don’t get this at all. Why would people want the sun to go down in the afternoon? In my time zone it sets at 4:30 part of the year! That’s awful, and sunrise is at around 7:00am. We have way more sun in the morning.
- D13Fd 5y agoBecause it make zero sense for everyone to have to get up an hour earlier. And it makes no sense for kids to stand around in the dark at freezing cold bus stops every morning.
- charles_f 5y agoI wish they passed a bill to make the switch to standard time permanent. That extra hour of sleep once a year, that was gold.
- mbg721 5y agoThus proving that they are robotic idiots designed specifically to annoy people. What exactly did that accomplish????
- wolverine876 5y agoThe whole world going to the same time zone, usually proposed in these discussions, doesn't work - sun-time dissociates with clock-time, making words like "night" and "noon" confusing. However, I would like to see a North American Standard time (NAT): Set the clock at half-way between US Mountain and Central times and apply it to all of North America (with maybe a few extreme exceptions, such as western Alaska and Hawaii). The coasts would be off ~30 minutes more than DST, which I hope isn't too far, and nobody in North America would have to think about time zones again.
- collegeburner 5y agoI'd be pretty ok with this, but I'm also biased because I live in central. Calis probably won't like it much because they'll be getting up hours before the sun.
- wolverine876 5y agoCalis will have even longer summer nights though, with the sun setting into the ocean ...
- captainmuon 5y agoOr you could go the exact opposite, and do solar-local time everywhere. We introduced time zones historically to make train travel easier. Now, we use navigation systems almost every time we travel long distances. It always shows me time of departure, time of arrival, and since they are non-round times and I can't be bothered to calculate the duration, it shows me that, too. If every city was in its own timezone, nothing would change. Just that duration would be slightly different than arrival-departure. TV programming is basically dead, so you wouldn't have a problem with announcing when a show will run. The only problem would be when scheduling online meetings. Frankly I rely on calendars for that, too. And often different places already have weird rules like meetings start 15 minutes later, or you should be there 5 minutes early. The benefit of solar-local time is, I hope, that it will help people live more attuned to nature. You know at 12:00 the sun is at highest, that the daylight is symmetric around noon. People will be encouraged to make longer days in the summer and shorter days in the winter, maybe.
- D13Fd 5y agoI really don't like that they picked permanent DST. Does no one realize that this means that we all have to get up one hour earlier year round? That kids will have to travel to school in the dark for the majority of the year, including in most cases standing around in the freezing cold at unlit bus stops? It's still better than resetting the clocks. But I really they should have chosen standard time. Also, this means nothing unless passed by congress as well.
- aidenn0 5y agoI live in Southern California which means no freezing cold and no school buses. Not sure what the rest of the country is thinking.
- Apocryphon 5y agoIs it any better for them to leave school in the dark? Isn't it just the same thing?
- D13Fd 5y agoIt's not, because they aren't standing around waiting for a bus on the way home, they can just head inside.
- Apocryphon 5y agoThen perhaps school buses can change their protocol so that children don't have to be waiting outside for the pickup. Or maybe there can be some sort of notification system installed. Or some other solution to fix this specific use case without upending everything else with a massive clock shift. This is a technology forum.
- D13Fd 5y agoThe massive shift is moving to DST year round instead of standard time. Our work and school schedules are not adjusted for standard time in the winter, when it actually makes a difference.
- wolverine876 5y agoIt feels like we live in such a post-truth world, even the clock will now be an untruth. Couldn't we just use standard time, and let people wake and sleep when they choose, instead of creating an illusion for them?
- dannyw 5y agoHow is permanent DST an untruth? It’s more of a standard time.
- ginko 5y agoPermanent DST means it'll be off by an hour forever.
- kompatible 5y agoTime doesn't have an "off"-ness when it is solely the way people measure the time between sunrise and sunset. If the methods used to measure time is changed, it is changed, but not in the consequence of it being "wrong" forevermore.
- stormbrew 5y agoUnless you're extremely lucky (in the sense that you exist in a very particular line of place in each time zone), it is off by an arbitrary and varying amount for everyone everywhere all the time regardless of DST or not. Clock time is an abstract construction over imperfect measurements and compromises with practicality and it always has been. [edit to remove under-researched claim about some effects of shifting]
- ginko 5y agoThe average difference from solar time would still be larger with DST. You can find a pretty good visualization here: http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTime.png http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTime.... This shows the difference between solar time and standard time. By switching to DST you essentially shift the gradient to the east by an hour. Other than Greenland I can't see a timezone where that wouldn't mean that the longitude at which the difference is 0 is outside of the actual timezone.
- linsomniac 5y agoNext up: The metric system? One can dream...
- dlp211 5y agoThe US has officially been transitioning to the metric system since the 1970's and the metric system is widely used in official capacities throughout the US and the US government.
- jcadam 5y agoDon't tease me, is this real? I honestly don't care whether they go with ST or DST permanently, just pick one and stop screwing with my circadian rhythm twice a year.
- kmote00 5y agoOur grandchildren will never know what "High Noon" meant.
- jeffalbertson 5y agoBeing from CA, Daylight savings is the closest thing I have to seasons. I find the clock changing to be festive and fun :(
- Overtonwindow 5y agoWill this mean sending out an update to every single phone and gadget that changes automatically? On the iPhone you can just turn it off, so I would imagine not seeing it in future updates?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 5y agoIf we’re going to stop switching clocks, shouldn't it obviously be for permanent standard time, not DST?
- beefman 5y agoThe lack of agreement on this point tells us something about why we change clocks and why we should continue to do so (albeit more smoothly).
- dragonwriter 5y ago> The lack of agreement on this point tells us something about why we change clocks and why we should continue to do so (albeit more smoothly). Personally, I see the options from best to worst as: 1. permanent standard time 2. permanent daylight time 3. change clocks twice a year 4. change clocks more frequently but by a smaller increment. Lack of consensus as to which of the first two should be #1 isn't an argument for #4.
- beefman 5y agoLots of comments like this in this thread, but no one has given a principle that generates such a ranking. However, there is a principle that recommends seasonal clock changes, quite apart from the (false) folk stories about why the U.S. (never mind most of the world) has them.
- captainmuon 5y agoThis is ridiculous. Why don't they make the regular time permanent? And if people want to have more light in the evening, then they just leave work earlier. Surely that is easier than permanent daylight savings time. I know people will say it's too hard to change habits and (clock) work hours, but with permanent DST you will have to change that anyway, when people realize how dark winter mornings will be. I predict a lot of people will want to move school start to a later hour then.
- Monkoton1 5y agoNot everyone has the freedom to choose when to get off work as many have commitments from looking after children and to commute. Given a fixed schedule, I think more people have free time in the afternoon and would like to have that time be in the light and spend the time like commuting in the dark.
- fknorangesite 5y ago> And if people want to have more light in the evening, then they just leave work earlier. What percentage of people do you think get to choose what time they can leave work?
- HideousKojima 5y agoThe problem is that there are three options: 1) Permanent DST 2) Permanent Standard Time 3) Status Quo And the problem is that, at least based on what I've gathered anecdotally from speaking to people and from which side the media pushes, preferences are usually 1-2-3, followed by 2-1-3, followed by 2-3-1, with anyone who prefers the status quo in dead last. Personally I prefer standard time to DST as well, but we don't really have any power to make that decision.
- sschueller 5y agoWhat about a 30 min shift? There are already time zone that are shifted by 30min.
- 5y ago
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y agoYes. Permanent. Until the next time change.
- goldtownjac 5y agoIt seems like everyone I know has a strong reaction to this news. It’s clear that sunlight is both precious and scarce for the modern office worker. Why do most employers still require butts in seats for almost 100% of the sunlit day in winter? It makes me really sad to see people fight over a ubiquitous resource like sunlight. It’s neither natural nor healthy to spend all day every day inside, let alone against your will.
- pleb_nz 5y agoI propose Seconds should be made to have a different duration depending on the time of day and year the second is ticked. This would happen in a way to facilitate a sunrise and sunset to occur at the same time every day of the year. I name this plebian time.
- zuminator 5y agoAs a late riser I am thrilled by this development.
- AngryData 5y agoHow about we just abolish the whole debate by moving the clocks 6 hours and making it permanent. Then nobody can complaint about sunrise versus sunset times because they will have to choose new hours to start and close at anyways and they can make it whatever they want. It shouldn't be necessary, but I find this entire debate ridiculous to the extreme. The clocks don't determine your hours of activity and sleep, you and your business does and they can be changed at any time for any or no reason at all.
- alerighi 5y agoI will never understand why we change the clock instead of changing our habits. Well, maybe in a time when we didn't have computers it was simpler to just put the clock ahead or behind an hour, but nowadays it creates a ton of complexity for nothing. Isn't it simpler to just shift our times, for example in the summer start to work at 9:00 and in the winter at 8:00? Beside, if we have to choose a time, why not choose the solar time and shift all our times one hours, at least the sundial are right...
- phailhaus 5y ago> Isn't it simpler to just shift our times, for example in the summer start to work at 9:00 and in the winter at 8:00? You make this sound so simple, but the "our" you're referring to is "hundreds of thousands of employers". Yes, it is simpler to change the time than to convince every single employer to voluntarily shift their working hours in tandem with everyone else. Even one would be practically impossible: everyone would have to sit down and adjust every single meeting by an hour. "Meeting's at 10am!" "Wait, is it 10am before or after fake-DST?" "I don't remember, did you change it?"
- tjader 5y agoTo me that just makes what DST really does transparent. It makes everyone shift their schedules, whether they want to or not. About the meeting example, I don't think GP meant purple who like DST should change their clocks, they should just change their schedules. If you want more sunlight after work, arrive earlier and leave earlier. After all, that is effectively what DST forces everyone to do.
- phailhaus 5y ago> If you want more sunlight after work, arrive earlier and leave earlier. Too many people on HN assume that everyone has dream jobs with flexible work hours like them.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoIt is difficult to get every business, school, and workplace to coordinate on changing habits together. If they don't, it causes a lot of problems for a lot of people
- robbrown451 5y agoWhile we're at it, can we please get rid of leap seconds? (which we don't know are going to happen until ~six months beforehand?) Just wait until we are off by a full minute, and then we'd know at least a full decade ahead of time when the next leap minute will happen. I don't understand the need to have it so precisely align with astronomical measurements (to the nearest 0.9 seconds) when we already do so much roundoff due to time zones, daylight time, etc.
- bluenose69 5y agoThe comments on this item are the funniest I've seen in a long time. Who knew Usians were so witty?
- dwighttk 5y agoLet’s get back to local noon!
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoWoo hoo! This is going to be really great for Seattle, where the sun sets at 4PM in the winter. Washington state has already voted on this change locally, and are only waiting for congressional approval at the federal level.
- siruncledrew 5y agoI am so ready for permanent DST. More daylight to actually do stuff. Plus it's nice to not have to come out from work and it's all dark in the Fall/Winter.
- kristopolous 5y agoAnd people say bipartisanship is dead...
- stormbrew 5y agoI'd kill for a peek into the parallel universe where it was permanent standard time that was likely to get adopted and see how much effort went into researching the ill effects of that choice to convince people with enough FUD to keep daylight time switching going. Here's the thing: If you're a proponent of permanent standard time, you should be in favour of turning off the switching no matter what. Even if it means daylight time. Because you know what? Your local time zone is changeable. You can lobby to change it. If permanent DST really results in the entire country turning into sleep deprived zombies having spontaneous heart attacks as they arrive at work and crashing into children going to school, then there'll be pressure to change it -- but we will have at least already started the process of eliminating the worse thing: changing twice a year.
- Arubis 5y agoAgreed. The posted decision (permanently DST) is stupid, but less stupid than switching.
- moffkalast 5y agoI feel like the permanent DST option is a bit stupid in principle since as the other guy says it's about switching time zones and time zones should be primarily longitude based, not I-feel-like-being-in-whatever based because that's nonsense. As an example France and Spain have no business being in CET/GMT+1 at all. France is geographically entirely in GMT, while some of Spain is in GMT-1 even, I mean what the actual fuck. Time zones should be based on science, and work/school schedules should be flexible enough that people can decide on a company/institutional level when to start. If you want to start later, start later, don't fuck with the countrywide clock and make timekeeping a nightmare you goddamn idiots.
- chias 5y agoTimezones are based on who you do business with, and who you primarily need to coordinate with. Timezones aren't inherently anything, they're purely a measure that humans use to make our lives more convenient. If you want to argue hard science, you'll have an uphill job of explaining to me why there should be 24 timezones and not 1440 of them. With that in mind, picture how annoying it would be if you crossed a timezone line on your way to your (or your child's) school. Picture how annoying it would be if half the restaurants, shops, and businesses in your town were in one timezone, and the other half were in another. These issues are what timezones address, just on a governmental level. Timezones don't try to be "correct", they try to be useful.
- throwthere 5y agoJust when you thought your timezone display code was finally functioning. Now what do you call non-DST timezones? Just PST? Will we refer to our timezone as PST (DST) for the rest of our lives? Let's drop this madness and go to one worldwide timezone.
- mbg721 5y agoWe call them "Arizona" and "that one bit of Indiana". UTC does exist; it's not widely used in practical circles for a reason.
- shmerl 5y agoGood, now also complete the metrication as a next step instead of dragging it forever in some half baked limbo.
- morpheos137 5y agoHas anybody studied the number of premature deaths attributable to daylight savings time?
- jgwil2 5y agoSince apparently no one likes changing the time but no one can agree whether we should go with standard or daylight time, why don't we just split it right down the middle and have an extra 30 minutes added to our UTC offset like in India?
- vohu43 5y agoWould love to see something like this in Europe as well.
- 9192631770_Hz 5y agoAs an avid astronomer and someone diagnosed with SAD, this hurts double. This is going to kill me in the winter.
- noveltyaccount 5y agoI don't care if we pick permanent DST or Standard time, or abolish time zones altogether and just use UTC. It's the change that I dislike!
- ZYinMD 5y agoSorry I'm too lazy to do mental gymnastics, could someone tell me, does this mean 8am will be darker or lighter than before?
- riffic 5y agoif we're doing permanent daylight saving time, I propose just doing year-long standard time because it's effectively the same thing.
- robotcookies 5y agoMaking DST permanent is essentially forcing everyone to wake up earlier in the day. All we're doing is calling 7 am, now 8 am to get people to psychologically accept this. This is a win for morning people who function better earlier... AND this is a loss for all the non-morning people who will now be forced to work, go to school, etc at a time when they don't operate optimally.
- whymauri 5y agoI work in another time zone and have to shift my hours pretty aggressively so I get >3 hours sunlight total, most of which happen when I'm working. No idea why it's preferable to have the sun go down sooner... lol.
- Crash0v3rid3 5y agoThe change would only happen once, so it might take you a few days to adjust but afterwards it shouldn't matter.
- dirtyid 5y agoWell I guess the dream is dead in Canada now.
- greyhair 5y agoI hate daylight savings time. I get up everyday at 6:00 AM, with a large segment of the population whose workday starts at 7:00 AM every day. They have no choice. And just as it was getting to be light a little at 6:00 AM, we just 'leaped ahead' back into darkness. I would prefer that we just run on standard time all the time. You want more light in your evening? Get up earlier. Go to work earlier, so you get home earlier. Daylight Savings Time sucks.
- phailhaus 5y ago> Go to work earlier, so you get home earlier Must be nice having a job where you can choose when to leave. Most people don't have that option.
- toothpicked 5y ago> You want more light in your evening? Get up earlier. It works both says... just agree on one time.
- 11thEarlOfMar 5y agoYou mean..... I'm never going to get this hour back??
- mgkimsal 5y agoI've suggested for years that we just split the difference, 'fall back' 30 minutes or what not, and call that done. Not sure why it doesn't get traction.
- ZYinMD 5y agoSomething you don't realize but matters to certain people: this will lock the time difference between east coast US & east coast China to 12 hours, which is very convenient, a quality of life change for a variety of things.
- rkagerer 5y agoIf this doesn't work out there's always Daylight Smearing Time. https://xkcd.com/2266/ https://xkcd.com/2266/ https://gregcochard.com/daylight-savings-time-smearing/ https://gregcochard.com/daylight-savings-time-smearing/
- dade_ 5y agoWonderful news! I grew up without time changes in permanent "summer time" and watching the glorious sunrise winter mornings. I already wake up in the dark in the morning in the winter, so a few more precious moments of daylight in the afternoon will be great.
- ColinEberhardt 5y agoFor those of you who are interested in the changing shape of the various timezones, moving to standardised offset, the rise and fall of daylight savings, I wrote a blog on the subject a little while back, "Exploring 120 years of timezones" https://blog.scottlogic.com/2021/09/14/120-years-timezone.html https://blog.scottlogic.com/2021/09/14/120-years-timezone.ht...
- 51Cards 5y agoAnd then some cities in Canada are going to have the sun rise at 10am in the winter. There is no win on this one, shift it one way, Group A gets screwed, shift it the other way and Group B gets screwed, flip it back and forth and everyone complains.
- dathinab 5y agoSometimes the ignorance of lawmakers is just baffling. I mean there is pretty much a scientific consensus as far as I know that switching to permanent DST is a quite unhealthy choice for the larger part of the population, which happen to already be negative affected by other effects also balanced against them. Just to be clear I don't know if it's worse then DST switching. But it's worse then permanent "normal" (i.e. winter) time. I mean there is a reason this was the normal time, before DST was introduced. I also want to note here that for some areas in some time zones the negative effects of permanent DST might be less then for other areas (potentially) in other time zone, idk. how this applies to the US.
- SubiculumCode 5y agoYour claim that DST is worse for health than standard time IN THE ABSENCE of seasonal switching seems doubtful. Got a source?
- dathinab 5y agoYes in absence, because the seasonal switches are rather unhealthy. Wrt. sources I don't have any english ones at hand without looking them up. But it shouldn't be to hard to find. I mean like I said it's pretty much consensus as far as I know between sleep scientist. Through like always it's a bit more nounced, like it's not worse for all people, but the larger group of people and it makes effects of social jetlack and similar worse (as it overlaps with them, maybe also because of people will change their action but that's hard to include in a prediction). EDIT: I'm currently wondering if less healthy working conditions in the US might affect what is worse/better. Also the consensus is wrt. Germany not necessary the US, I was a bit oversimplifying things.
- panick21_ 5y agoThis 10 year old classic video is still relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aWtseb2-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aWtseb2-4
- andrewstuart 5y agoI wonder why the USA is so supportive of this, but so against metric?
- 3836293648 5y agoSurely the idiots wouldn't use summer time permanently. Winter time is needed. Summers are bright day all day long, it's summer time that needs to be gotten rid of
- narrator 5y ago1084 comments? This is the ultimate bikeshedding issue.
- xnx 5y agoDaylight Saving Time Gripe Assistant Tool "A handy tool to help make your case when whining about a biannual time change" https://observablehq.com/@awoodruff/daylight-saving-time-gripe-assistant-tool https://observablehq.com/@awoodruff/daylight-saving-time-gri...
- sam0x17 5y agoThis is the most impactful, positive piece of legislation that affects my life that has been enacted since marriage equality in 2015. How sad is that?
- capital_guy 5y agoThat was a Supreme Court ruling, not a piece of legislation - so it might be even longer!
- zupreme 5y agoAll I can say is that it must take alot of confidence, for lack of a better term, to look at what time the sun goes down and to decide that you are going to change that.
- colinmhayes 5y agoReally they're looking at the time people wake up compared to when the sun rises and deciding they're going to change that.
- bombcar 5y agoIf dawn is more important than noon, we could redraw the timezones so they slant as they go north, keeping dawn at roughly the same time.
- consumer451 5y agoWow, now that's coloring outside the lines. I had never considered this idea before. Interesting.
- sylware 5y agoI guess this is removed useless complexity. EU should follow soon hopefully.
- russellbeattie 5y agoCalifornia passed a prop about this, but implementing it has been stalled for a couple years because why? You guessed it: Half the reps want to stick to PST and the other PDT.
- zentiggr 5y agoLet's end the debate, assuage the farmers who opposed time changes from the beginning, and honor every other timekeeping system in our earlier history: From now on, sunrise is 0700. The clock runs from 0700 sunrise to whatever time necessary overnight to arrive at sunrise again, at which point the time becomes 0700. For the part of the year where that duration is greater than 24 hours, the time past 06:59 simply counts up extra seconds until reset. Now we can have computers and every other carefully regulated timekeeping system on milliseconds since an epoch timestamp, and regular old clock time fits everyone's schedules regardless of time of year, and never needs 'adjusting' again, since its sun-synchronized. And people said Y2K and the Year 2038 issues were hard...
- ethbr0 5y agoHaving seen a colleague deal with northern hemisphere Guam -> Puerto Rico times, thinking about implementing the above gives me heart palpitations.
- throw0101a 5y agoUnequal hours were a thing: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour#Unequal_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour#Unequal_hours * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock
- bayindirh 5y agoI recommend you read time keeping on the computer systems. Without NTP and some atomic clocks on the network, computers can't keep accurate time themselves. And using a moving window / sun synchronization like that is just brave to put it mildly. [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/keeping-time-on-the-pc/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/keeping-time-on-the-pc/ Also, there was an excellent article about clock drift, but I failed to find it.
- talaketu 5y agosure, except obviously sunrise at 6AM and sunset at 6PM.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Ansil849 5y agoDoes anyone else find it incredibly fucked up that the government gets to dictate our concepts of time?
- anticensor 5y agoThey also use timekeeping for their own purposes, hence they get a say.
- betwixthewires 5y agoGoodness. Just end daylight savings time, problem solved. Oh you don't like waking up at 6, you'd rather wake up at 7? Well I've got news for you, you're waking up at the same time either way it's just that the clock shows an hour later. What time it is is when the sun comes up and goes down, not what number it is on the clock, the clock is supposed to be indicative of where the sun is in the sky, not the other way around.
- tomohawk 5y agoSurprised they didn't compromise and go to 4, half hour adjustments per year.
- thebiss 5y agoThe sunrise & sunset calculator at https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/ https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/ will plot how this affects your location.
- bob1029 5y agoWhat do we think about the impact on our software? I have no clue about how my OS deals with TZ info changes over time or how older systems would behave absent a centralized management system.
- cwkoss 5y agoGood software will just need to update their libraries after this change is implemented and everything will keep working fine. Bad software is going to have a mess, but was already a mess.
- kalium-xyz 5y agoMan I wish we could get rid of timezones. I know its psychologically impossible for humans to adapt to it but timezones really haven't made sense since clocks became a thing.
- gruez 5y agoretort: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish
- kalium-xyz 5y agoThis person has clearly never worked remote for an Australian company from western Europe. I've had quite a lot of quite bad misconceptions and missed meetings. Not only was it utter hell and confusion WITH TIMEZONES it ended up making for conversations / scenarios worse if not similar to what described here. Australia doesn't even share the same notion of when a week starts as we do.
- dijit 5y agoI guess it’s some form of nation-centricism that kills it. No country wants to change their dinner time to be 3am. Even if it’s just the number on the clock. I find it super odd that we keep a record in of all the offsets of time and assume that everyone starts/finishes work and eats at the same regular interval as everyone else would given that the numbers on their local clock says the same as our local clock when we do those things. So arbitrary.
- ithkuil 5y agoFor me the main madness was not DST but the fact that countries (in particular US and EU) start and end DST at different dates. Honestly, I don't get the complaint about one hour change two Sundays a year. But the several weeks a year of conflicting meeting bookings in companies that cross the pond is much more infuriating.
- sbahr001 5y agoAm I not mistaken, but isn't this change going to make datetime calculation hell now; especially with legacy systems or am I missing something.
- mrorbitman 5y agoit's already hell, who cares.
- burtonator 5y agoIt might if the function is broken but 'time' as you think about it is usually stored referenced at UTC timezone and then converted. Timezones then are stored in a database with the specific zone name and offset. You have to convert to get time in the right timezone.
- nunez 5y agoAbsolutely fantastic news. I love later, brighter afternoons. This will also make lives for people in the North a little more tolerable; sunset at 4pm was a killer when I was there.
- xivzgrev 5y agothis is the best news i've read on hacker news for some time. it's time to standardize our time.
- germandiago 5y agoNothing is permanent? What silly thing is this? It is like when Sweden did recently a nuclear waste area until the 30th century. What is the meaning of making it "permanent"?
- capital_guy 5y agoI am extremely surprised at all the people who are against this, saying that "Making DST permanent forces people to wake up earlier." I am not sure I know a single person whose morning wake-up time is dictated by the rise of the sun. Everyone I know wakes up whatever time that their work tells them to. I am happy to have more sun after I get out of work. It was a breath of fresh air this week getting out of work and seeing daylight.
- dheera 5y ago> I am not sure I know a single person whose morning wake-up time is dictated by the rise of the sun Well now you do I do everything in UTC, don't use daylight savings, and I do set my wake up time based on sunrise
- chrisan 5y agoClearly you must understand you are in the minority and most of the world have jobs requiring a set start time. And once you partner with another you must now hope you both can be afforded that luxury of a job. Despite working remotely since 2008 I'm married to someone who works at a hospital and must be there by 7am. Getting woken up and trying to fall back asleep is much worse than just going to bed with her and waking up with her to get uninterrupted sleep. Add on kids to that equation who must be at the bus stop at a certain time and the number of working households who can wake up with the sun is minuscule.
- dheera 5y ago> Clearly you must understand you are in the minority and most of the world have jobs requiring a set start time. This sounds like internet forum flamebait. "Clearly?" I have a relatively consistent job start time around 9am on most days which I think is quite possibly the median start time of all jobs and is well after sunrise. > I'm married to someone who works at a hospital and must be there by 7am I would hypothesize that the majority of people are not married to people who need to be at their jobs at 7am. For those that do, I imagine sunrise is not really much of a factor anyway, they will probably be getting up before sunrise regardless.
- sporkland 5y agoTrying to analyze the impact of this I used my favorite tool for thinking through DST issues: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@z-us-94114 https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@z-us-94114 Seems like with this law in effect, near the winter solstice in San Francisco what would have been 7:21am - 4:54pm will now instead be 8:21am - 5:54pm day light hours. Is this accurate? On the one hand, the 6pm night time feels pretty reasonable, but 8:20 for sun in the morning seems pretty early. Although I think I prefer this to having standard time year around. My favorite option on this topic is to change the clocks smaller amounts way more often to try and achieve good alignment between clocks and day light. I haven't worked it out with precision, but it seems like it should be better than than these hour jumps or not jumping at all.
- hindsightbias 5y agoI'm 100% for this as long as the FAANGs enforce work schedules tied to public education schedules. You will all know what it's like to have a morning newspaper route.
- anchochilis 5y agoStudies have shown that later sunsets lead to worse health and economic outcomes. People who live on the western edge of a timezone earn 3% less and have higher rates of lifestyle diseases than those on the eastern edge, because they go to bed later but wake at the same socially-prescribed time, and therefore get less sleep. [1] So why make DST instead of eliminating it entirely? It seems earlier sunset would be much more beneficial for society. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/19/how-living-wrong-side-time-zone-can-be-hazardous-your-health/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/19/how-livin...
- canjobear 5y agoOnly a correlation, and a small one at that.
- neilv 5y ago> The Senate approved the measure, called the Sunshine Protection Act, Not to be confused with "sunshine laws", and using that word for an unrelated legal measure could, uh, cloud things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_laws_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_laws_by...
- zcombynator 5y agoThis decision boosted my confidence in the US Gov dramatically that they're actually trying to get more efficient.
- globular-toast 5y agoI'm completely in favour of not regularly shifting the clock backwards and forwards, but making daylight savings time permanent instead of standard time is so dumb. I guarantee this is because people think they will "get more daylight" or something stupid like that. I guess this is the pragmatic solution to getting people to agree to stop the shifting but damn, we are so far from Star Trek right now.
- sjg007 5y agoAt least they finally passed something..
- jackjeff 5y agoI really hope the UK does not imitate this. I moved from France to the UK over ten years ago. According to geography, France and the UK should be on the same time zone, but in practice France is using Germany’s time zone. In France thanks to the perfect combo of DST and the wrong time zone, you’re permanently shifted by either +1 or +2. The net effect is almost never see the sun in the morning when you wake up if you have to abide to standard office/school hours. When I moved to the UK I realised I was much less tired and happier to just wake up with the sun (at least for part of the year).
- engineer_22 5y agoThis is the kind of change I can live with!
- richardfey 5y agoEU to follow soon? It's been in the talks at least since 2018.
- n_plus_1 5y agohttps://www.c-span.org/video/?518686-2/senate-session-part-2&vod https://www.c-span.org/video/?518686-2/senate-session-part-2... I love hearing who I assume to be the speaker of the Senate say "oh I love it" on a hot mic.
- n_plus_1 5y agohttps://www.c-span.org/video/?518686-2/senate-session-part-2&vod https://www.c-span.org/video/?518686-2/senate-session-part-2... I love hearing from who I assume to be the Speaker of the Senate (am from Westminster system country) say "oh I love it".
- cbhl 5y agoFriendly pointer to this piece from a few months ago about the folks behind the time zone database (also known as tz or zoneinfo): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28904252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28904252
- aunwick 5y agoWhere's my screwdriver... I have to remove some DST toggles.
- mdavis6890 5y agoBad idea. TimeZones and DST are for humans and physical realities, such as the tilt of the earth and circadian rhythms. And they serve to address these things in a universal, coordinated way rather than asking each of us to change our schedules individually. During DST, we all agree to start our days, open our business, and adjust our schedules one hour earlier, but without changing our individual clock times. With DST all year long, can we choose to send our children to school at 9:30 instead of 8:30 during the winter? Should the school have a different winter schedule than a summer one? Or should we just wake up our young children well before dawn and drag them off?
- notreallyserio 5y ago> Or should we just wake up our young children well before dawn and drag them off? We already do this, FWIW. It's terrible for them but I guess we do it out of convenience for the bus drivers and parents. Changing clocks twice a year hasn't and won't address the problem, unfortunately.
- asdff 5y agoThis is much better for children imo. During my childhood the sun rose as I got into school in the winter (~7:45am) so I was still waking up before dawn, and was setting or set by the time I got done with extracurriculars and my parents finished working (~5:30pm). In other words, for half the year I would simply not see the sun or have any sunlight hit my skin unless time was explicitly made for that during the limited daylight hours on weekends. It's no wonder so many people are vitamin D deficient when they spend half the year as a troglodyte.
- 1024core 5y agoWhat does this mean, in practical terms? Will DST become permanent?
- rdiddly 5y agoSorry, permanently from here on in, we will spring forward and fall back, in accordance with the "Daylight Saving Time" custom, or permanently year-round we'll be sprung forward and using the "Daylight Saving Time" clock setting?
- baron816 5y agoNo government is telling me what time it is!
- VoodooJuJu 5y agoWrong move (again). The correct move would have been to make standard time permanent. We tried permanent DST in the 70's and it was all well and good until people realized it meant complete darkness at 9am in winter. I guess an extra 45 minutes of walking their dog in the park after work wasn't worth trudging through the cold black before their morning coffee kicked in. Let's see if people will feel differently this time around (they won't).
- froderick 5y agoI’m amazed a group of politicians that can’t agree on basic stuff managed to agree on this. This thread is evidence of the issues at play, the strongly held opinions.
- lsh123 5y agoNow, let’s just all switch to UTC time and my life will be much easier.
- danrl 5y agoFinally! Couldn’t be happier. Still can’t believe this really happened.
- ilovesunlight 5y agoThe problem with daylight savings is that people generally go to bed later, because the sun influences what time we feel tired. For adults with a flexible schedule this may be OK, but for children it is a disaster, as their school start time does not change. India is basically doing this experiment in real time with their one-time zone policy. Children on the west do worse from an educational standpoint because the sun sets later, yet school starts at the same time. This was widely covered in the news a few years back. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47168359 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47168359
- sjmm1989 5y agoSome of the people are talking about how it affects the kids going to school. Honestly, having grown up part of my childhood in Saskatchewan... daylights savings time was never a thing I had to deal with really. We had our own time zone. But the few years I was in Alberta during my school years, those days after the hour removal were just dreadful. Having to get up at what was yesterdays 5:30am to take a school bus at what was yesterdays 7:00am in the morning to be able to get there for todays 9:00am... up to 30 minutes early... was pure and unadulterated BULLSHIT. Half the morning classes I was too tired to ever learn a damn thing properly, even with a good amount of sleep.
- stretchwithme 5y agoFinally. .001% of our national nightmare is over.
- Someone 5y agoI didn’t know this is for the senate to decide, and find that surprising, given that most of Arizona doesn’t do DST at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Arizona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Arizona: “Arizona does not observe daylight saving time (DST), with the exception of the Navajo Nation, which does observe DST. The Hopi Reservation, which is not part of the Navajo Nation but is geographically surrounded by it, also does not observe DST.[2] For this reason, driving the length of Arizona State Route 264 east from Tuba City while DST is in place involves six time zone changes in less than 100 miles (160 km).”
- cipheredStones 5y agoBy federal law (the Uniform Time Act), states can choose to stay on standard time permanently, but _cannot_ choose to observe DST permanently.
- objektif 5y agoWhat? Why??
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ilovesunlight 5y agoThe sun sets about 2 hours later during the summer than the winter (depending on lattitude). DST adds an extra hour. In other words, 2/3rds of the "longer day" effect is from earth's tilt, and only 1/3rd is from DST. Seems like some people misunderstand this.
- User23 5y agoHere we go again[1]. [1] https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-70s-people-hated-it/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-perman...
- twayt 5y agoWhat changed that has allowed this to happen now instead of decades ago?
- chrysoprace 5y agoSpeaking as a non-US person, I think this is great so long as it's across every state (can't tell from the Tweet). Here in Aus, whether to have daylight savings is determined by state/territory, which means that for half the year the entire East Coast (except for the biggest state by land area) is an hour ahead.
- BurningFrog 5y agoI didn't think we're heading for nuclear war, but the US Senate 100% agreeing to something is a clear sign The End Is Near!
- xanaxagoras 5y agoI want to say this is the only issue in America right now with strong support on both sides of the aisle.
- lburton 5y agohttp://andywoodruff.com/blog/where-to-hate-daylight-saving-time-and-where-to-love-it/ http://andywoodruff.com/blog/where-to-hate-daylight-saving-t... has a nice interactive viz for # of days a place has a sunrise/sunset before/after a certain time with or without DST.
- jlokier 5y agoI'm surprised at the number of commenters who think permanent DST is favourable to night owls and bad for morning people. I think it's night owls and delayed-cycle teenagers attending school who will suffer most under permanent DST. In the Winter, permanent DST means everyone has to get up an hour earlier for work or school's clock time, relative to the sun which regulates their body rhythm. Someone pointed out virtually nobody sets when they wake by the sun. Fair enough. But the sun does affect how well and how long they sleep, how restored they are, how they feel when they wake, and energy and concentration through the rest of the day. Night people already struggle with getting up early enough for clock-time social expectations. As it's a struggle already, getting up an hour earlier is going to be harder for them. (If the sun makes no difference, why is it already hard?) Research (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691158) suggests that overall, health will suffer, sleep will be shorter, and educational attainment in teenage years will reduce. Even brain development may be adversely affected. But there will be more shopping (economic activity), so that's ok.
- saurik 5y agoI mean, as a true night owl, my real problem isn't happening when I wake up: it is that when I go to bed in the morning it is extremely bad for me if dawn has already happened, so I would prefer the sun stay down for as long as possible to give me more leeway.
- balfirevic 5y agoDon't you have shades/curtains to make your room dark even when the sun is out?
- ilovesunlight 5y agoFinally, someone that gets it.
- svnpenn 5y agoI don't like it when the sun comes up early. Unless you have really dark curtains, then you don't get to choose when to wake up. You wake up when the sun comes up. So if you stayed up late, fuck you, here's some bright sun at 6am. Oh, and you're coming home for the day at 5 or 6p? Fuck you, here's some darkness. I can't understand how anyone would be against DST.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- apetresc 5y agoBefore I get excited about this, is this actually binding in any real way? Or is it one of those governmental things where this vote just allows another vote that allows another session to decide whether or not to have another vote, etc. forever? And also, if it does happen, how much more likely does it make it that Canada will follow suit? Surely having Canada out of sync with the USA for half the year is untenable, right?
- ilovesunlight 5y agoWhy now? Consumer spending goes up with DST, so is this a desperate attempt to save the economy?
- Lamad123 5y agoMorocco did this very thing a couple years back! I remember reading it on HN.
- _Nat_ 5y agoGlad that they're trying to simplify it, though it'ld seem obnoxious to maintain a 1-hour addition to the discrepancy between solar-time and clock-time. It'ld seem far more sensible to have a system that tries to align clock-noon with solar-noon (this is, noon on a [sun-dial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial )). After that, if folks want to change whatever times work/school/etc. are at, awesome, folks can change such times -- as a matter of scheduling, without obfuscating clock-times. I guess it doesn't matter too much. Computers should be able to re-interpret times, such that different folks in the same community could use different time-systems, while computers would automatically interpret between them for users' convenience. Then, folks could pick the time-system of their choice without regard for what their peers use -- much like no-one cares what font-size others use -- rendering the exact choice of standard a relatively low-level primitive-formatting-detail.
- bogota 5y agoThank you. I feel terrible for a week every time they change the clock. I have a hard enough time getting on a good schedule without dealing with this stupid crap twice a year. This will greatly improve my life.
- ezconnect 5y agoDST solve nothing, I still don't understand why it was invented.
- wrs 5y agoTo be precise, the bill [0] does not “make DST permanent”. It eliminates DST and redefines the standard time zone offsets. (Possibly an important distinction in software…) [0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...
- unixbane 5y agoyes, this is a very big problem for devs who practice tutorial oriented programming and store and transmit local times.
- anu7df 5y agoApparently as per the house majority leader's office they have no plans to vote on this now[1]. May be he was just making a factual statement on what they have on schedule. Cynic in me thinks it is just the usual dysfunction since the republicans were in favor of this in the Senate so the House doesn't want to do anything about it. Really how long does it take to vote on an almost non-event non divisive bill. [1] https://www.npr.org/2022/03/15/1086773840/daylight-saving-time-permanent-senate https://www.npr.org/2022/03/15/1086773840/daylight-saving-ti...
- IgorPartola 5y agoDid you read the comments on Twitter or right here in this thread? This issue is stupidly divisive for no goddamn reason. Twice a year this bill is introduced. Twice a year it fails to get far. This might be the farthest it has gotten. My personal feelings are they I am all for this. Give me daylight after work, I am not going to get it before work because I sleep in the mornings and am more productive in the afternoons. But morning people disagree.
- bigbluedots 5y agoI love the title of the bill: "Sunshine Protection Act". This is great news. I am in Australia, and if this becomes law in the States it is more likely to be seriously considered here. We have a situation with half the country on DST and the other half on standard time. It hits a lot of us very hard at the end of April when DST ends.
- greenknight 5y agoFollowing on from this, Queensland is usually considered part of the East Coast of Australia. Which is 30 minutes ahead of South Australia (normally). Then when the switch over summer, queensland doesnt switch whilst the rest of the east coast (nsw and vic) and south australia switches. Which results in queensland being 'behind' in time compared to SA, even though very far east on the globe (1300km east, 1600km away)
- cjohnson318 5y agoDST is inconvenient, but in the grand scheme of things like critical infrastructure spending, gerrymandering, voter suppression, congressional insider trading, congressional term limits, sensible gun control, regulating the insurance industry, among other things, voting on daylight savings time is an extreme example of bike-shedding.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoWe've been eagerly waiting for this vote for 8 years. Out of all the hard problems to solve, an up or down vote on letting states adopt full year DST should have been a no brainer.
- cjohnson318 5y agoTerm limits are a no brainer, and a less complex issue than the legislation of time itself.
- aj7 5y agoNow we get to remember the why of Daylight Saving Time.
- joyhumin 5y agoI wish there will be a same bill for NZ. DST really sucks :(
- kccqzy 5y agoSo far it's not showing up on the official website of Congress: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623/actions https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623... I'd also love to read the relevant Congressional Record to see how senators debated this bill.
- comicjk 5y agoReuters agrees (it's not just on Twitter). https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-approves-bill-that-would-make-daylight-savings-time-permanent-2023-2022-03-15/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-approves-bill-tha...
- pc2g4d 5y agoI just saw a poll yesterday showing greater support for permanent standard time. After all, it is "standard". The farther we get from "noon" being the sun directly overhead, the worse for health, in my view. But probably this is better than switching twice a year.
- pabs3 5y agoWill some states get new timezones that meet their DST needs in response to this?
- throwaway984393 5y agoAm I the only person who's only mildly bothered by daylight savings? Like, it's very slightly annoying every once in a while. But I adapt and move on. You'd think the Senate could vote for something else that's trivial, like giving every child that needs one a lunch. It's not like millions of kids in the US go hungry every summer when they lose a free school lunch. Oh no, wait, they do actually. https://www.businessinsider.com/free-school-lunch-kids-summer-hunger-2019-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/free-school-lunch-kids-summe... Richest nation in the world. 22 million children depend on state assistance to eat, because their family doesn't make enough to buy enough food. Something seems wrong with this picture.
- XorNot 5y agoAnd now a new generation of programmers are going to discover some more things they didn't know about time...
- razzimatazz 5y agoI like that this is such a wholesome topic we can safely debate on the internet. There are clearly good arguments for and against the change to permanent DST, so I will safely ignore anyone presenting statements of the "You must be an idiot if you think..." form. There's no disinformation campaigns to worry about, nobody getting 'cancelled' for their poor arguments on the topic, no fraudulent studies being passed around. At least, for the time being...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bandyaboot 5y agoI think we should abandon any semblance of practicality and go for the elegance of some sort of continuously variable time system where it’s always noon exactly when the sun is at in zenith everyday and at every spot on Earth. It would be a great excuse for never being on time to anything.
- ck2 5y agobtw the visualization of hours of daylight and the DST shift on this website is really great IMHO https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/new-york https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/new-york So basically if the house also votes for this the ends are moved up.
- rejor121 5y agoI live in Taiwan, and there’s no time switching at all. So happy about it.
- collinthecorgi 5y agoMe work with a US-based boss so he changes our call one-hour earlier when it comes. Kinda confusing to me when it comes to the switching happens. Everytime.
- mazlix 5y agoI guess I'll be "that guy" and say even though it's a disruption I feel a bit sad for the loss of the switch between standard and daylight time. Yeah it's annoying, but I never found it devastatingly so and it's almost like an extra 2 holidays, I would occasionally get an extra hour once a year (and also lose an hour). I feel a bit sad knowing my child won't get that feeling of dread having to go to school one hour earlier and that boost of going to school one hour later. It feels like the world is become more practical in so many ways, but with it we lose some flavor. I also love seasons and dislike places that are the climate year round for the same reason - it's a little extra something that breaks up the monotony. At least every time-shift you know that half a year has passed. I really imagine a lot of people will become very nostalgic to having to change clocks throughout the house and then eventually it'll die off and become a completely forgotten relic of the past.
- andredz 5y agoI'm surprised at how positive the response to this has been. Whenever I've tried to reason through why we change our clocks twice a year I've found that it makes sense to do so (at least in my case). Also, I've quite enjoyed experiencing the switches throughout my life. They've provided for a mildly entertaining small talk topic, an opportunity to fix my circadian cycles and some measure of excitement when getting to sleep for an extra hour. That said, I recognize (now that I've seen this HN thread) that a LOT of people disliked the status quo of having to switch. I just hope that my country won't follow the US in this, but I'm afraid we will.
- Winsaucerer 5y agoIf your country is Australia, then I hope it does follow :)
- andredz 5y agoIt isn't. Go for it :)
- IndySun 5y agoWhile it is (daylight saving) truly one of the most antiquated, and somewhat cuter, activities of humankind, why not just shift everybody (those countries that do this hour change thing) by 30 mins, split the difference, and leave it there?
- andy_ppp 5y agoWill this actually become law then, I’m keen for this to happen everywhere, the downsides of changing clocks is enormous - even just the increase in heart attacks from losing an hour of sleep is non trivial from what I read.
- chkas 5y agoThis moves noon away from the middle of the day, and midnight from the middle of the night.
- kseistrup 5y agoIn Denmark (EU) we are currently switching timezones twice a years, which is a huge PITA for people like me with a sensitive circadian cycle. The EU has opened for the individual countries in the EU to settle on permanent DST or permanent normal time. In order of preference I choose: 1. permanent normal time 2. permanent summer time 3. switching between normal time and summer time twice a year
- CannisterFlux 5y agoThe EU directive kind of fizzled out because of Covid. It was meant to be decided in 2021, this year we were not going to change the clocks. But the negotiations are stuck in bureaucratic limbo. I don't really mind moving the clocks twice a year, it keeps things interesting at least, but now that the US has voted to stop doing it I imagine the rest of the world will follow. Or maybe the EU will decide to keep switching, just to be seen to not copy the Americans.
- nvarsj 5y agoOh this is awesome! I hope the rest of the world follows suit. My kids are basically sleep deprived for a week solid every year the clocks change.
- tempodox 5y agoAm I the only one who finds the naming of this bill Orwellian?
- yoyopa 5y agothis is so dumb. other things to worry about
- friendzis 5y agoThis will probably get lost, but anyway. Socially we need a way to synchronize with each other and we designed our culture around calendars and clocks, synchronized to Earth revolutions - midnight. Our bodies are designed (evolved if you want) to synchronize with the sun and there the best (healthiest) waking time is at sunrise. When synchronized to midnight, sunrise time varies and that variation depends on latitude. It is simply preferable to have waking time synchronized with the sunrise. DST is one way to do that and actually quite good: it keeps clocks universally synchronized around the world allows scheduling not to consider sunrise time variations.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago> It is simply preferable to have waking time synchronized with the sunrise. This seems like a preference stated like an objective fact, unless I’ve misunderstood. I have been waking up between 11am and noon for years. The only issue I think it causes for me is it can make scheduling things with other people difficult. There was a brief period in my life when I woke up before 6am (about six months in 2016) but at no other time have I woken up at sunrise.
- friendzis 5y agowaking with the sunrise is preferable in the same way as not-smoking is preferable
- Cogito 5y agoWhat are you actually suggesting here? Say that sunrise is at a fixed time every day, for example 6am (to avoid changing the entire system too much). Well sunrise for me might be quite different to sunrise for my neighbour, especially if I live in the valley and she lives at the top of the hill. Every quarter of a degree around the globe (25km east or west, give or take) would have their clocks shifted by a minute. I guess meetings and phone calls would require a location and a time, and we would need to convert the time from wherever we are right now into the time where the meeting is taking place. The time between sunrises changes every day, would we add and subtract the extra time every day, or would we have a have an extra hour every now and then?
- taubek 5y agoIf the Sun is at the highest point in the sky at the noon, and the shadows point to the north wouldn't it be logical to abandon daylight savings? If the problem is that kids go to school too early or that workers go to work while it is dark, wouldn't it be possible to start school and work one hour later? What effect will this have on international trades (stock markets) and synchronization with transoceanic flights?
- devinnsomnath 5y agoHotel Dev Inn, a luxury hotel in Somnath with sea view is well known as a great destination for the tourists as well as devotees visiting Somnath and seeking for a comfortable accommodation with a sense of luxuriousness!!
- ryanmercer 5y agoWe didn't even observe it here in Indiana until something like 16 years ago and it is the dumbest thing that I've ever been a part of.
- qwery 5y agoappendages not worth saving without daylight savings only saving time
- rapht 5y agoSo did America actually just change timezones?...
- aqme28 5y agoFascinating to me that the one thing the Senate unanimously agrees on, HackerNews finds it incredibly controversial and discusses it for 2000+ comments.
- ryathal 5y agoThere has been a "daylight savings is the worst thing since Hitler" type post every time change for as long as I can remember, it's the ultimate bike shedding topic. It actually has a lot of parallels to most covid posts, there are a lot of competing benefits and many are angry their preference isn't given the most weight.
- sebzim4500 5y agoI agree that the debate about 'permanent daylight savings' vs 'permanent standard time' is bikeshedding, but the idea of changing the clocks twice a year is patently absurd.
- ryathal 5y agoSwitching makes sense because the length of day varies by 3-4 hours for a lot of the population over a year. Switching means about a week of unpleasantness twice a year, where not switching would be 30-60 days around the summer or winter solstice are miserable.
- aqme28 5y agoBut then why is the Senate not busy bikeshedding this?
- awiesenhofer 5y agoThe biggest surprise here for me was that this happened unanimously - does anyone know why or how? Maybe I should be glad that such clear-cut, science-based decisions are still possible, but it's become just so unusual lately...
- greyhair 5y agoWhy don't we leave the clocks aligned with the Sun, so noon occurs at solar noon, and just have everybody agree to shift their work day to 7:00 to 4:00. Because on a solar basis, that is exactly what you are doing. "8 to 5" will now be "7 to 4". And people that normally work "7 to 4" will now be working "6 to 3" That is all you are doing. You are basically just kidding yourselves. It is so extremely stupid, really. You want more sun in your evening? Get up and get to work earlier. It isn't rocket science. I'll be waiting two years out for everyone pushing the school day to start at 10:AM, and for a lot of businesses to start at 9:AM instead of 8. You could solve all these problems by just getting the Networks to stream their programming one hour earlier at night. And leave the clocks on standard time year round.
- BobbyJo 5y agowhich one is easier: Doing what we do every year, and just not changing it back, or getting everyone to agree to changing their schedules independently? You are right, they are the same thing, but one is unilateral, routine, and easy, and the other is never going to happen.
- ryathal 5y agoThis requires essentially every business, person, and entity in existence to change hours all at the same time at least twice a year. It is far easier to just change the clock and know that a store closes at 8 than having to remember it closes at 7 starting this week. I get this is an age old retort, but it's because the common proposals always ignore reality. -changing schedules is still a change. -changing a single time is easier than changing infinite schedules. -the change is going to suck either way because it's a change.
- greyhair 5y agoOh no, permanently change to the early times. No more switching. Everyone works 7AM to 4PM.
- dan-robertson 5y agoIt is advantageous to have relatively few timezones rather than everyone using hyperlocal time. If you accept that then consider that most timezones are biased towards the point where noon is at 1200 being in the east of the region, leaving the western side with their daylight hours particularly biased towards the early morning. In some sense an adjustment to +1 merely moves the bias so that most of the region has physical noon after 1200 instead of before it, and this tends to strike a better balance because early in the morning is not considered a particularly sociable hour.
- g_log 5y agoSunlight is one of the most powerful zeitgebers and it makes sense to try and optimize the amount of sunlight exposure. However, is there a difference between morning light and evening light in terms of how they entrain the circadian rhythm? If I work from 9am to 5pm in a dark office building, permanent standard time might allow me an hour of sunshine before work from 8am to 9am, and permanent DST might have me arriving in work while it's still dark but allow me an hour of sunshine from 5pm to 6pm. Which of those light exposure patterns would allow me to wake up easier at 7.30am?
- dav_Oz 5y agoFor anyone wondering how our bodies synchronize to a 24-hour-cycle of the earth, it is primarily through light detected by our eyes. (A great resource for in depth: Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology Andrew Huberman [0]) Apart from cone (RGB) and rod cells (brightness) which are responsible for vision in general (through the "-opsin" proteins: photopsin and rhodopsin, respectively) we also have a more ancient distinctive third class (subconsciously: not taking part in any vision at all) which was first discovered in the light-sensitive skin cells of the African clawed frog in 1998: intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), which express their own distinct opsin—melanopsin. Melanopsin cells in mammals are specialized for measuring ambient illumination, contributing to visual discrimination, and driving a wide variety of physiological responses including, but not restricted to: synchronization of circadian clocks to light : dark cycles, regulation of pupil size, modulation of sleep and suppression of pineal melatonin production.[1] So, even if you are blind those important signalling cells could be still intact. That's why one does not remove the eyes for 'cosmetic' reasons, anymore. This circadian feedback system functions ideally when all three parts of our photoreceptors are working in unison but can still function - albeit to a limited extent - if just one part is available. To not confuse "noons" we can categorize those in three ways: (i) solar noon: the time when the sun is at the highest point, at a specific day, at that exact location on earth (ii) local noon: static time-zones i.e. conventionally set. Normally within +/-2 hours of the solar noon. (iii) biological noon: adjustable through the light from outside but without any light input it varies from person to person (a "night-day"-cycle could be anywhere from 23.5h - 24.5h long). There are roughly three time windows in which the photoreceptors of the eyes synchronize our bodies to the outside world, the first and last being the most important ones: (1) After our physiological temperature minimum, normally about 2 hours before we wake up, naturally. Here the "biological noon" gets set, initially. The window closes some time about that point (I couldn't find a reliable number, anywhere, my guess is about 2 hours in, so about 4 hours after the "temperature minimum" the window closes and one is locked in the "dead" zone, for now). (2) When the sun sets down. Experiencing the change and reduction in light helps the body to anticipate and prepare for the last window. (3) In the last phase everything gets reversed, in order to not disrupt melatonin production ("hormone of darkness and sleep initiation") it is vital to not emulate the sun (bright, overhead). The best sources of light are low-hanging warm lights and just enough brightness to feel comfortable. Here, you have to take into account the adjustment period for your eyes. Unfortunately most people aren't used to see adequately and orient themselves in low brightness settings (peripheral vision). Star-gazing could serve as a starting point for some sensibilization. Those biological insights can be used to balance and fine-tune one's circadian rhythm. But the most reliable and effective way in getting the system into full gear, is how this elaborate system evolved in the first place: outdoors. Living outside for a couple of days, on some weekends of the months for example, to "reset" can work wonders: a substantial set of people who think of themselves being night owls are actually fooled into it by artificial lights ;) [2] [0]https://hubermanlab.com/find-your-temperature-minimum-to-defeat-jetlag-shift-work-and-sleeplessness/ https://hubermanlab.com/find-your-temperature-minimum-to-def... [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3619500/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3619500/ [2]https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(13)00764-1 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(13)...
- graphenus 5y agoOh wow, the USA is now repeating Russia's mistake. :) Russia abolished time shifting more than a decade ago and adopted DST. But then they realized that mornings in winter time were very depressive (too dark) and hence in 2014 switched back standard time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia