Curious how this affects date/time algorithms and software libraries, particularly those that do not have a way to sync with an external authoritative source of time. I guess they all need to be updated to account for this change?
They need to be updated anyway, and always have been: somewhere in the world, someone changes time rules basically every year, or even every few months. All current OSes already have support for stating "locale X will not use daylight savings / will always use daylight saving, starting from day yyyymmdd at hhmm" through simple updates.
Yes there’s databases like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database that track this and that are included in libraries that do the arithmetics. It’s why those libraries are often relatively bulky.
The Senate passed in a few years ago[0]... then the House did nothing. Now the House passes is and we have to hope the Senate does something again. If only Congress could get on the same page and do these things at the same time.
Passing the senate back then was because of shenanigans; not popularity.
They played tricks with the “unanimous consent” procedure where senators didn’t know it was happening until after it was too late to object. Multiple senators said afterwards that they were opposed to it.
From what I'm reading, it was a big factor that children were walking to school in the dark. One stat I read was that since that time the percentage of kids walking/cycling to school went from almost 50% to now 10%. Maybe that could make the difference this time around.
> But detractors say it could have economic consequences, particularly for farmers who would have to wrestle with later sunrises.
I genuinely don't understand the "farmer's like DST" argument. Farmer's schedules are dictated by the sun not the time and the sun changes continuously year round. If the argument is about commercial coordination that follows the same logic of being difficult regardless given constantly shifting sunlight, at least without DST there's year-round consistency by the other businesses.
It also varies depending on where in a time zone you are. The eastern and western sides of a timezone could see sunrise and sunset at significantly different times.
DST was never about farmers, it was to conserve energy for the war effort. Farmers also aren't punching a clock at an office. They can start and end work when they want, based on the weather and daylight that suits the work.
That is really only true if you are milking animals. Crops don't care when you plant them or fertilize them or spray them. The closest thing you can get with crops is certain grains you want to sell at certain percentage levels which the sun helps bring down. But even that is 50% just so the mill doesn't rip farmers off.
The “went you want” part was more about in relation to the clock. The sun will rise and fall just the same regardless of how we set our clocks. The farmers are completely unaffected. Their days don’t shift just because the time shifts.
Yep. I mean I knew Amish growing up in PA who didn’t observe daylight savings time and just kept it the same year round. And they’re living off the land more than most.
I grew up in rural Oregon, if there was rain forecasted and the farmer was in the middle of a alfalfa or wheat harvest, they would be up in the middle of the night with a combine or bailer to get the harvest done before it gets soaked and potentially destroyed.
> It is a common myth in the United States that DST was first implemented for the benefit of farmers.[40][41][42] In reality, farmers have been one of the strongest lobbying groups against DST since it was first implemented.[40][41][42] The factors that influence farming schedules, such as morning dew and dairy cattle's readiness to be milked, are ultimately dictated by the sun, so the clock change introduces unnecessary challenges.[40][42][43]
It's not the step change in time that's the gratest danger of DST, it's the entire time people are waking up early, increasing cancer rates and all-cause mortality: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6436388/
I'm glad we're agreed that changing the clocks twice a year is a bad idea, but I don't understand why we should abandon Daylight Savings Time by adopting it permanently. What's so wrong with Standard Time?
Oh, well: whether we put the clocks back or leave them permanently off-by-one, either is better than changing them around over and over.
I think saying on one time is better than switching back and forth, but we should really stick to Standard time.
I know people like it to be light out later in the evenings, but they tried this before in the 1970s and it didn't last long[0]. It turns out not only do people not like it to be dark late into the morning, but it also makes it unsafe for kids going to school.
Looking at sunrise and sunset times[1], people will spend a significant portion of the year with dark mornings.
Historically, year-round DST was done to conserve energy during war time and other energy crunches. Standard time seems like the more balanced choice for year-round use... that's probably why it was the standard to begin with. As difficult as these things are to pass, and as disruptive as they are (especially now with software update requirements), getting it right instead of making the same mistakes of the past seems important.
I hate to say it, but you're the problem. One time is better than switching, but we switch because no matter which time standard we choose, some group of people takes issue. The only way we can get one time standard is if we all let go of our highest preference and allow the second-best thing to succeed. Otherwise we'll be doomed to third-best (devolving into worst--see Indiana and Arizona and all the other carveouts within carveouts) for eternity.
> I hate to say it, but you're the problem. One time is better than switching
I’m not the problem, we agree. That’s the first thing I said in my post (thought I realize now I had a typo… “saying” = “staying”).
My concern is that if we choose a new standard that was already shown to be problematic when implemented previously, that we’ll end up reverting back in 2 years. Then it will be another 50 years before we try again.
If we go to daylight time and stick with it, I’m still happy. I just worry that people are so focused on that evening sun that they are forgetting where that time comes from and some of the issues that come with it.
Start school and work later, "problem" solved. Also another great argument for WFH, don't waste an hour in commute, spend it in bed getting the rest you need!
I mostly just want the time change to end, but I definitely prefer DST since the afternoon sun is something everyone can enjoy in the winter. I don't get how dark mornings (when a non-trivial percentage of the population is just asleep anyhow) are worse than a dark afternoon, especially when you'll probably wake up in the dark regardless. Plus sunrise even earlier in the summer is useless.
Kids already go to school in the dark in the winter (at least where I'm from). I can see how in the 70's it was more of an issue to increase the number of dark days because many more kids walked to school than they do now (another poster noted it's 10% of children compared to 50%, not sure if that's correct). And DST would be better for afternoon commutes. Plus DST has been pushed to being used during more and more of the year: the spring switch was in late April in the 70s and early 80s, then early April in the late 80s, now early March (since 2007 I think). 75% of the year is DST, let's just make it 100%.
But hey, the morning people out there are never going to be pleased with year-round DST, just like how people like me will never like standard time. But either is better than what we have right now.
Well studies show that early school start times are bad for kids anyway so schools should fix their schedules. Kids also naturally like to stay up later these days so more daylight would better match that rather than keeping awake with artificial light.
I also dispute that site's claim that everyone starts before 8am. Here on the west coast I'd say most jobs start at 9am unless they are retail. A lot of schools have also switched to later start times.
Not to mention: DST is already in effect for 65% of the year.
Permanent DST has been introduced in congress every year since 2018. A few years ago it passed the Senate but the house didn't take it up. This time the house has passed it but who knows if the Senate will take it up. I'd prefer to be on permanent DST but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
that's a reductio ad absurdum, the opposite of which would be adjusting our clocks by some seconds every day to sync so the sun always rises at 6 AM. which would be kinda neat, but very inconvenient.
> dark late into the morning, but it also makes it unsafe for kids going to school.
This is such bullshit.
What is unsafe for kids is human drivers driving their death machines into kids. The solution is not messing with clocks. The solution is convincing human drivers that they should not drive their death machines into kids.
You are presumably based in some location where "standard time" has year-round daylight around the time school starts. Guess what, many people live in locations closer to the poles where this is not the case. What do you do in a location where winter daylight hours are only between (say) 10:00 and 15:00? Have school start later and later, and have school days be shorter and shorter? Do such locations have the sides of their roads littered with child corpses, or do such locations enforce better driving?
Also, even in locations with longer days but all-day school, it's often dark when kids get out of school, especially after any extracurricular activities. At that point it's dark, and the kids are tired after a long school day, and the drivers are also tired after a long day at work. If anything, that would make them even more dangerous. The fact is, for many locations it's simply impossible to enforce that kids only go to and from school in broad daylight. Any problems arising in the dark (not from the dark!) must be solved in other ways than magically wishing for the sun to shine when it simply doesn't.
Could you please omit swipes like "this is such bullshit" and flamebait like "driving their death machines into kids"? These things are against the site guidelines because they poison the kind of discussion we're trying for here.
You're welcome to make your substantive points thoughtfully, of course.
_This_ is the great herculean push for workers rights from Gen X — abolishment of the cruel Standard Time! What a fucking joke that this is what we send people to washington for, while citizens are summarily executed in the streets and cost of living skyrockets.
Something I genuinely don't understand: everyone is saying that with DST, the sun rises later in the day. But as someone who doesn't work first shift and regularly goes to bed anytime between 04:00 and 06:00, I can tell you with certainty that in the summer time (when DST is active), the sun always comes up *way* sooner. I typically despise DST because I always struggle to fall asleep due to the damned sun coming up right as I go to bed.
Meanwhile, in the winter, the sun typically doesn't start to rise until closer to 08:00.
The sun would come up even earlier without dst. It’s just the earth’s tilt that’s causing the sun to come up earlier after spring, nothing we did to the clocks.
I think it’s bad for kids to have to walk to school before sunrise.
Fundamentally it is useful to have more sunlight later in the evenings in the summer. It’s also useful to have sunlight early enough in the morning for conventional “start of day” times.
Changing the clocks meets these. Yes, time is arbitrary and throughout the year we could collectively change the times we do things at to better match daylight hours but this is obviously much worse and harder to coordinate than changing the time for everyone all together’
There are plenty of northern climate countries that get by just fine without DST. Also, if it’s genuinely a problem in a specific location for some reason, that specific location can just say, “Let’s all start work at 9 rather than 8 for the winter months” rather than impose an absolutely absurd song and dance on the entire time zone.
The majority of the US population lives at latitudes that would be affected by the “sun rises after 8am in winter” problem.
As I said before, changing the clocks is a much more efficient approach than getting every school and workplace (etc) to change their hours.
It’s not true IMO that “plenty” of northern countries do without it. Russia doesn’t (since 2014) but their time zones are a mess anyway. Iceland doesn’t. Otherwise pretty much every European country does.
Hm. A quick search suggests that 70 countries out of 195 have daylight savings time, with a fair number of those considering abolishing it. Most of those are in Europe. 73 countries have abolished DST, and 106 have never had it in the first place.
Not 100% sure on those stats. They come from AI, and I only spot-checked it. But yeah. Most northern climate countries do currently have DST.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 43.0 ms ] threadhttps://www.daylightsmearings.com/
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...
They played tricks with the “unanimous consent” procedure where senators didn’t know it was happening until after it was too late to object. Multiple senators said afterwards that they were opposed to it.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-happened-the-...
I genuinely don't understand the "farmer's like DST" argument. Farmer's schedules are dictated by the sun not the time and the sun changes continuously year round. If the argument is about commercial coordination that follows the same logic of being difficult regardless given constantly shifting sunlight, at least without DST there's year-round consistency by the other businesses.
> It is a common myth in the United States that DST was first implemented for the benefit of farmers.[40][41][42] In reality, farmers have been one of the strongest lobbying groups against DST since it was first implemented.[40][41][42] The factors that influence farming schedules, such as morning dew and dairy cattle's readiness to be milked, are ultimately dictated by the sun, so the clock change introduces unnecessary challenges.[40][42][43]
Now they need to get it through the Senate. Maybe we'll see something useful passed during this admin :)
The shift is a relic of an older economy and damages folks' lives through worse mental health and driving outcomes [0].
[0]: https://www.coveragecat.com/blog/daylight-saving-time-car-in...
Oh, well: whether we put the clocks back or leave them permanently off-by-one, either is better than changing them around over and over.
I know people like it to be light out later in the evenings, but they tried this before in the 1970s and it didn't last long[0]. It turns out not only do people not like it to be dark late into the morning, but it also makes it unsafe for kids going to school.
Looking at sunrise and sunset times[1], people will spend a significant portion of the year with dark mornings.
Historically, year-round DST was done to conserve energy during war time and other energy crunches. Standard time seems like the more balanced choice for year-round use... that's probably why it was the standard to begin with. As difficult as these things are to pass, and as disruptive as they are (especially now with software update requirements), getting it right instead of making the same mistakes of the past seems important.
[0] https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-...
[1] https://savestandardtime.com/maps/
I’m not the problem, we agree. That’s the first thing I said in my post (thought I realize now I had a typo… “saying” = “staying”).
My concern is that if we choose a new standard that was already shown to be problematic when implemented previously, that we’ll end up reverting back in 2 years. Then it will be another 50 years before we try again.
If we go to daylight time and stick with it, I’m still happy. I just worry that people are so focused on that evening sun that they are forgetting where that time comes from and some of the issues that come with it.
Kids already go to school in the dark in the winter (at least where I'm from). I can see how in the 70's it was more of an issue to increase the number of dark days because many more kids walked to school than they do now (another poster noted it's 10% of children compared to 50%, not sure if that's correct). And DST would be better for afternoon commutes. Plus DST has been pushed to being used during more and more of the year: the spring switch was in late April in the 70s and early 80s, then early April in the late 80s, now early March (since 2007 I think). 75% of the year is DST, let's just make it 100%.
But hey, the morning people out there are never going to be pleased with year-round DST, just like how people like me will never like standard time. But either is better than what we have right now.
I also dispute that site's claim that everyone starts before 8am. Here on the west coast I'd say most jobs start at 9am unless they are retail. A lot of schools have also switched to later start times.
Not to mention: DST is already in effect for 65% of the year.
Permanent DST has been introduced in congress every year since 2018. A few years ago it passed the Senate but the house didn't take it up. This time the house has passed it but who knows if the Senate will take it up. I'd prefer to be on permanent DST but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
If you work on things for banks, financial markets or the federal government, you may be starting as early as 5~6am on the west coast.
DST is one of those things our descendants will be baffled by the stupidity of.
This is such bullshit.
What is unsafe for kids is human drivers driving their death machines into kids. The solution is not messing with clocks. The solution is convincing human drivers that they should not drive their death machines into kids.
You are presumably based in some location where "standard time" has year-round daylight around the time school starts. Guess what, many people live in locations closer to the poles where this is not the case. What do you do in a location where winter daylight hours are only between (say) 10:00 and 15:00? Have school start later and later, and have school days be shorter and shorter? Do such locations have the sides of their roads littered with child corpses, or do such locations enforce better driving?
Also, even in locations with longer days but all-day school, it's often dark when kids get out of school, especially after any extracurricular activities. At that point it's dark, and the kids are tired after a long school day, and the drivers are also tired after a long day at work. If anything, that would make them even more dangerous. The fact is, for many locations it's simply impossible to enforce that kids only go to and from school in broad daylight. Any problems arising in the dark (not from the dark!) must be solved in other ways than magically wishing for the sun to shine when it simply doesn't.
You're welcome to make your substantive points thoughtfully, of course.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Meanwhile, in the winter, the sun typically doesn't start to rise until closer to 08:00.
Is that correct?
So getting rid of DST makes it 06:00 instead of 07:00
Hey, thanks y'all for explaining it to me. :)
https://www.joshbarro.com/p/this-week-in-the-mayonnaise-clin...
I think it’s bad for kids to have to walk to school before sunrise.
Fundamentally it is useful to have more sunlight later in the evenings in the summer. It’s also useful to have sunlight early enough in the morning for conventional “start of day” times.
Changing the clocks meets these. Yes, time is arbitrary and throughout the year we could collectively change the times we do things at to better match daylight hours but this is obviously much worse and harder to coordinate than changing the time for everyone all together’
As I said before, changing the clocks is a much more efficient approach than getting every school and workplace (etc) to change their hours.
It’s not true IMO that “plenty” of northern countries do without it. Russia doesn’t (since 2014) but their time zones are a mess anyway. Iceland doesn’t. Otherwise pretty much every European country does.
Not 100% sure on those stats. They come from AI, and I only spot-checked it. But yeah. Most northern climate countries do currently have DST.
We don't need any of that.
I remember this exact debate going on in the south pacific in 2007.