U.S. senators reintroduce bill to make daylight saving time permanent

https://fox8.com/news/u-s-senators-reintroduce-bill-to-make-daylight-saving-time-permanent/

by lxm • 5 years ago

512 402 5 years ago

paxys3• 5 years ago

Opponents of the bill say DST makes it hard on school children and parents who have to wait at the bus stop in dark hours of the morning.

Here's an idea - let students (and parents) sleep for an additional hour rather than make them wake up before the crack of dawn for no reason.

exabrial2• 5 years ago

Yep.

Or just close the schools permanently, sell the assets, commit to at-home learning or micro-schools.

tony1014• 5 years ago

How about we do it the other way: Eliminate daylight saving time and make standard time permanent?

ISL• 5 years ago

That way noon has the sun at zenith, which makes sense.

bryanlarsen• 5 years ago

That's my preference too, but making DST permanent is better than continuing to change twice a year.

When confronted with three choices and none of the three have majority support, society usually chooses the "status quo" option. Even when a proper ranked choice vote would end up with one of the other two options.

So I guess I need to keep quiet to ensure that we end up with our second choice rather than our third choice.

DavidAdams2• 5 years ago

That's only good for early birds, because you end up with it being light for hours before most people are awake (during the summer). If you keep DST in place permanently, sundown happens later, and you eliminate the need for an extra hour of lighting every evening, which presumably saves electricity.

hitpointdrew2• 5 years ago

Oh hell no. The late day light is WAY better than early day light. I am not going to mow my lawn at 5 a.m. and piss off all my neighbors (plus the grass tends to have dew and be wet early). Mowing my lawn at 7 pm (if it is still light out), is not a problem.

UncleOxidant2• 5 years ago

It's bad enough as it is in the northern latitudes where you wake up at about 5:15AM in June because the sun is already pretty bright. Keeping it on standard time would mean waking up at 4:15AM. Also, it's nice having more daylight after work.

watwut9• 5 years ago

No. Standard time is the worst one.

ghaff5• 5 years ago

A lot depends on where you live. In Boston which is fairly northernly by US standards and very far east in a time zone, for example, staying on Eastern Standard Time year round would mean it's sunrise at about 4AM on the summer solstice and it gets dark at 8:30pm rather than 9:30pm like today.

Now, these days, I have a lot of schedule flexibility and at least for activities I'm doing on my own I could just get up earlier in the summer. I'll be a bit out of sync with business schedules but I could largely do it.

axaxs• 5 years ago

States can already make standard time permanent if they want to. Obviously, not many do.

This change just allows states to make DST permanent.

jimbob453• 5 years ago

I don’t think it ultimately matters. Shifting the schedule forward or backwards doesn’t change the fact that the students will only have so many hours in the day. The only way to give more time to students is to cut school shorter. That’s to say nothing for the students who would feel compelled to immediately fill that time with another extra-curricular.

IMHO what would help is colleges putting a stop to the resume-padding they implicitly encourage students to do to gain an edge on their peers for acceptance.

sokoloff5• 5 years ago

When elite colleges get 15-20 applicants for every student they admit, how would you propose they implement this? Roll a d20, score a critical hit, get into Harvard?

heavyset_go4• 5 years ago

Here's an idea - let students (and parents) sleep for an additional hour rather than make them wake up before the crack of dawn for no reason.

Turns out that that doing just this has quantifiable benefits[1].

[1] "Teens get more sleep, show improved grades and attendance with later school start time, researchers find": https://www.washington.edu/news/2018/12/12/high-school-start...

xeonoex• 5 years ago

I think it's mostly the teachers and the administrators who advocate for the earlier times. Well, that and parents who drop off their kids before work. A later start would be great for students.

hammock• 5 years ago

Here's an argument for DST I haven't seen yet - circadian rhythms. Forget about "maximizing daylight."

Your circadian rhythm is actually mediated/regulated/communicated to every cell in your body by a diurnal oscillation of YOUR BODY TEMPERATURE, which is coolest around 3am and warmest around 3pm.

These times just so happen to correspond with the times of coolest and hottest surface air temperatures on earth - and it's not a coincidence that our bodies evolved that way.

Now, in the summer, the hottest time of the day is actually LATER than it is in the winter, since the sun spends more time in the sky and the earth has more time to heat up. So it makes sense to align our circadian rhythms with that by springing forward one hour before summer, and then falling back one hour before winter - when the hottest time of day starts to edge earlier.

flowerlad2• 5 years ago

"Teens get more sleep, show improved grades and attendance with later school start time, researchers find"

But that's relative to the clock, and where the clock is relative to daylight hours has no relevance.

macjohnmcc• 5 years ago

After a study with the same findings came out the school district my son was in changed it's start time. To an earlier start time. This is in Texas so not surprising.

vmception3• 5 years ago

In my area this was actually a logistical thing. Other schools in the area bussed children at different hours.

I don't think people are considering this reality in this debate.

I am not advocating for anything.

Retric3• 5 years ago

Adding more buss drivers is relatively cheap. Bussing is ~3% of the total cost of primary school.

WarOnPrivacy4• 5 years ago

Other schools in the area bussed children at different hours.

Do you mean other schools in your school district or schools in other districts?

baron8162• 5 years ago

Yeah, what’s stopping schools from having their own “DST/Standard Time” switch. Schools should set their hours according to what makes sense for students. We don’t need the whole country to set its clock around students.

sokoloff5• 5 years ago

If elementary schools changed schedules by an hour, some parents of elementary school kids would need to change their schedule by an hour as well. When the whole society does this all at once, the individual parents/coworkers/bosses don’t have to negotiate or coordinate anything; it “just happens”.

Arubis• 5 years ago

IIRC, parents--particularly parents with younger kids. The highschoolers need (in their view) to be home earlier than the middle- and elementary schoolers to be the responsible party so the parents can come home at the end of the workday.

The problem is deeply structural.

_greim_• 5 years ago

We don’t need the whole country to set its clock around students.

Don't we, though? Parents have jobs, jobs have schedules, and those schedules need to be coordinated with school drop-off and pickup times.

joezydeco• 5 years ago

It's a great idea, and would work fine for younger kids. High school kids with after-school jobs and sports might find a conflict, though.

I'm in the camp of "seriously, fuck high school sports" because entire districts bend their will and finances to support football programs (other sports? what other sports?) to the detriment of everyone else in the school.

But that POV is spitting into the wind. And god help you if you're in a smaller area where high school sports are the entire social center of the community.

MisterBastahrd• 5 years ago

Schools also have to take bus schedules into account. A district with elementary / middle / and high school will have 3 separate bus schedules if there's enough population.

My 8 year old nephews' school day doesn't begin until 9:40, but it ends after 5pm and allows very little sunlight for play time in the evenings. I know that when I was that age, I was far more concerned about being able to go out and play than whether the sun was up when I got up.

zhengyi13• 5 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if part of what drives school start times to be earlier is the prevalence of dual income households, where both parents need to get to work, and (particularly with younger children) children need to be cared for.

This brings to mind my own memories of childhood; I have a sense leftover from that that afternoon daycare is relatively common, but early morning daycare perhaps less so?

chrisseaton2• 5 years ago

makes it hard on school children and parents who have to wait at the bus stop in dark hours of the morning

I can't even understand what is 'hard' about it?

belltaco• 5 years ago

Possibility of crimes in dark hours in crime-prone regions? It's hard to imagine if you don't experience it where you live.

Ensorceled3• 5 years ago

It's a bizarre "con": Pros: better health, less accidents fewer deaths during the switch, etc. Cons: it's "hard" on some kids and parents to wait for the bus in the dark which they already do anyway, just now it's for a few more weeks.

Seems a no brainer.

cafard2• 5 years ago

Montgomery County, Maryland, is quite prosperous, but wishes its school buses to make more than two runs per day. So the high school students are out at the curb early in the morning, since nobody wants the elementary school students out in half-light. The high school students--who would prefer to sleep in--are groggy from lack of sleep, the elementary school students--who wake early--have an extra hour at home to do nothing in particular. I don't know what the story is with the middle school kids.

I commuted to college long ago one winter with DST. I did not enjoy it. I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed it even living on campus.

drtz• 5 years ago

Adding adequate street lighting near bus stops really isn't that hard.

DoofusOfDeath• 5 years ago

Opponents of the bill say DST makes it hard on school children and parents who have to wait at the bus stop in dark hours of the morning.

Probably easier to just give them all flashlights, than to have everyone shift their clocks to accommodate this use case.

croes7• 5 years ago

How about standard time instead of DST especially in winter

WarOnPrivacy4• 5 years ago

let students (and parents) sleep for an additional hour

To complete the sensible set, elementary schools open first, high schools last.

In brutal southern climates, end the school year on Halloween when kids can play outside w/o heat stroke - with kids inside air conditioning during worthless summer months.

sjg0072• 5 years ago

Some places have year round schooling.

guyzero• 5 years ago

American high schools have to be out around 3 PM to allow for enough time for sports teams to practice. Other schools end up synchronizing to this schedule. A non-trivial reason is that high school teachers with young children need to have them synced with their own work schedules and teachers have some level of control over how school days are scheduled.

Anyway, like everything in the US, blame the obsession with high school athletics.

pbronez• 5 years ago

I have no great love for high school sports, but at least it's a mechanism to get kids moving. Given the obesity epidemic, a solid physical education option seems useful. Definitely has grown into something way beyond that though.

JDulin• 5 years ago

It's not for "no reason" - Public education's primary purpose in the United States, other than indoctrination, is daycare for the workforce.

So school must start early enough parents can get children to school before heading to their jobs.

Broken_Hippo2• 5 years ago

Before school programs exist. Daycare exists. School does not need to start early enough for parents to get children off to school first. Folks working retail, in factories, and in health care deal with this all the time.

eMSF• 5 years ago

Just so I understand what you're saying: we should first move the clocks an hour ahead (permanently), then delay our schedules an hour, then ???, and then, I guess, profit?

How exactly does this differ from not moving the clocks an hour ahead permanently and not delaying our schedule for the day for an hour?

paxys3• 5 years ago

This problem (if it even is a problem) affects a small number of students in a handful of regions in the country. Individual schools/school districts are free to come up with their own personalized solutions. There is no reason to involve the other 95% of the population in this game.

poopypoopington• 5 years ago

You have more daylight in the evening and can actually have some time to enjoy said daylight rather than spending the entire day indoors and going home when it's dark out.

nabilhat• 5 years ago

North of about 45 degrees latitude, the winter time change centers daylight perfectly so that for part of the year students leave home in the dark, go home in the dark, and sit in class through all of the daylight. When the days finally start getting long enough to see a little sunlight at each end, it's time to move the clocks forward and they're back to going to school in the dark. It's brutal.

Way back when I was in school there were a couple that had 10 hour days, to better accomodate parent's schedules. Drop junior off when it fits your morning schedule best, same for pickup in the afternoon. Teachers worked on the early end, late end, took a long lunch, worked four 10 hour days, whatever suited the needs of their students and their own lives. The pickup and dropoff zones didn't get gridlocked with every single parent showing up at the same exact time. My point is, there are far better options available than fooling around with time itself.

flowerlad2• 5 years ago

Here's an idea - let students (and parents) sleep for an additional hour rather than make them wake up before the crack of dawn for no reason.

When exactly is the "crack of dawn"? Unless you live near the equator the "crack of dawn" changes every day. If "additional hour" is relative to the clock then you can always start things an hour late relative to the clock, regardless of where the clock is relative to daylight hours.

fooqux• 5 years ago

"Sunshine Protection Act"

Gag me with a token ring card. I hate these bill names, if for no other reason than it introduces severe bias in voting. Anybody voting against this now hates sunshine, freedom, etc.

That said, I'm eager for this to pass so I never have to deal with a time change again.

exabrial2• 5 years ago

Like ISA or SFP? Two totally different levels of effort.

PS I hate sunshine.

YarickR2• 5 years ago

Hold the vampire, bring garlic !

WarOnPrivacy4• 5 years ago

PS I hate sunshine

Likewise. The only good weather is whatever obscures the giant, glowy, migraine-inducing, cancer ball in the sky.

ironmagma2• 5 years ago

They should just name bills like they name cloud servers. Vote yes on mystical-quagmire-cheesepuff!

rglover• 5 years ago

You joke but this is a great idea.

caseyw• 5 years ago

I’d vote for anything named mystical-quagmire-cheesepuff.

ARandomerDude• 5 years ago

I can't help but notice the "Sunshine Protection Act" was sponsored by a senator (Marco Rubio) from Florida, the official nickname of which is "the Sunshine State."

I suspect the bill's name was purposely chosen to subtly suggest it protects Florida during the next election cycle.

ravi-delia4• 5 years ago

Either Marco Rubio is playing some kind of 10d chess in the hopes of subconsciously suggesting to all 8 people that will actually look at his policy record that he is protecting Florida, or the bill is intended to make daylight savings time permanent. To tell you the truth, I favor the latter interpretation.

wjamesg• 5 years ago

I totally agree

lsllc• 5 years ago

Reminds me of the story from Australia about the former Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen's arguments that the curtains will fade due to the extra hour of sunlight:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/academic-battles-for-qld-day...

quickthrowman• 5 years ago

Deep down, he did realize that changing the clocks doesn’t change the amount of daylight..right?

CraftThatBlock• 5 years ago

I agree, but branding for bills is an important part. For example, "The Patriot Act" sounds better than "Spying on Citizens Act"

zeta0134• 5 years ago

I don't even particularly care if we standardize on DST or non-DST. Just... pick one. The constant clock changing is silly.

gh123man• 5 years ago

DST has become my favorite "holiday" as an adult. Seasonal depression evaporates when I can see the sun after I finish working for the day. I can go work in my yard, or wash my car after work instead of having to cram it in the middle of the day. I feel more motivated to go do other things in the evening instead of feeling like its time for bed at 5pm.

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc72• 5 years ago

The same could be achieved by having different work hours in different seasons, no need to change the underlying metric of time to achieve this.

It's as if we redefined the density of water in winter so when you measure a frozen container of it the different volume yields the same weight.

It might have made sense when there was a single clock in a whole village!

But now with the planet probably containing 10x as many clocks as humans this is just complete lunacy.

ravi-delia4• 5 years ago

Honestly, you're absolutely right. But we don't get to decide between a permanent DST and a unified switchover of business hours across the nation, we get to decide between a permanent DST and the crappy situation we have now. I, for one, would be measurably happier if I had more daytime after 5, because getting one bill passed is a whole lot easier than convincing every single scheduling body that has power over me to switch on a seasonal basis.

saalweachter4• 5 years ago

It's as if we redefined the density of water in winter so when you measure a frozen container of it the different volume yields the same weight.

Oddly, this is exactly how the US "bushel" was defined -- it measures a mass of a specific type of grain at a particular moisture content, the idea being that the "quantity" of grain shouldn't change as it is dried.

hitpointdrew2• 5 years ago

The same could be achieved by having different work hours in different seasons, no need to change the underlying metric of time to achieve this.

This is a mere pipe dream. Business aren't going to change their hours to different seasons. It would be much easier to just stay on DST then try and coerce business to change their employee hours based off the season.

tshaddox6• 5 years ago

The same could be achieved by having different work hours in different seasons, no need to change the underlying metric of time to achieve this.

Sure, but that’s just like saying that any two people could arrange things to do something at the same time and place by communicating a precise astronomical phenomenon at that place, like the azimuth of the Sun, then both people can work out when that will be relative to their personal schedules.

Of course, the point of widely-used regional standards for timekeeping is simply to avoid the need to communicate and calculate precise phenomena to represent a local time.

Lammy• 5 years ago

The Sun is the original clock. It used to be that “noon” in any given town was when the Sun was directly overhead, so redefining our fake time to give humans more sunlight doesn’t feel weird to me at all. We only invented time zones so our trains would stop running into each other lol

ctdonath• 5 years ago

DST drives me nuts. Just as spring morning light finally brightens the start of my day, it gets plunged back into darkness. Light persists into evening when dusk should be persuading all to bed.

And coding embedded systems to handle DST edge cases just gets obnoxious when unnecessary.

You want to shift your hours? Adjust your own schedule, don’t demand imposing a change that disrupts mine.

lproberts3• 5 years ago

I agree with this. DST also ruins the summer evenings, because you have to wait too long until the sky turns into that beautiful dark blue before getting entirely dark.

ijidak• 5 years ago

Lol. So I'm not the only one!

I tell people, Daylight Savings in March is my favorite day of the year.

I hate that in the part of year we need daylight the most we give up more daylight?!?!?

We now have electricity and few of us need to milk cows or plow fields.

The 8-5 for us is stationary.

It is never enjoyable to leave the inside of a building (factory or office) in darkness. Unless you just finished the night shift, I guess ..

I'll let the politicians decide what they want to do, but I know I'll never fully understand why we take away evening sunlight with our stationary 8-5.

ghaff5• 5 years ago

The switch to DST for me is something along the lines of: "I've been noticing how it's getting measurably lighter in the evenings and now it's really light."

(Of course, ST is the opposite effect.) I care less about light in the morning as I tend not to be a particular early bird and where I live it's pretty dark first thing in the morning even with ST.

phaedryx2• 5 years ago

I grew up around farms and farmers. I never understood how DST was supposed to benefit them. The farm animals can't read a clock, they just follow their circadian rhythms and the farmers follow suit.

aksss3• 5 years ago

Counterintuitively, I believe increased sunshine is more associated with depression and suicide than decreasing amounts of it. Suicides are higher in the spring and early summer than in the fall and winter. It's speculated that the increasing light may screw with sleep patterns more than decreasing amounts of light. Not claiming to understand it, but studies in multiple countries across the hemispheres seem to show the same pattern.

RaaSontheblock• 5 years ago

the way I've had this rationalized to me was two-fold: - some people commit suicide when the change of seasons doesn't fix their depressive episode - others were so lethargic that the added sunlight gives them the necessary evidence/cognitive fuel to plan and execute

pkulak4• 5 years ago

Just wait until it's permanent and the sun doesn't rise until nearly 9 in the morning all winter. Not sure we can say how spending your whole morning in the dark will effect your SAD. Personally, sunlight greatly helps me wake up, and darkness helps me go to sleep.

willidiots• 5 years ago

As someone who struggles with seasonal depression as well, but who also wakes up early and starts his day early, DST is my enemy for all of the reasons you love it. I'd prefer no DST.

I think we can't "win" with time-related legislation. Is this apple cart something our govt really needs to be upsetting right now?

Zak2• 5 years ago

One thing that comes up every time this is discussed is that it has different impacts on people depending on their latitude. A solution that does not come up all that often is adding latitude-based time zones, and I'd be interested to read some thoughts on it from the HN community.

Edit: as this was ambiguous to at least one commenter, I'm not proposing replacing the current longitude-based time zones, but splitting them or shifting their boundaries based on latitude.

Ensorceled3• 5 years ago

So London, England would be in the same timezone as Moosenee, Canada and Irkutsk, Russia?

EDIT: This checkerboard would be very difficult to deal with. Also, people in northern or southern latitudes are used to extremes in day lengths.

But, fundamentally, timezones are so that "noon" is about when the sun is overhead for you. People at the same longitude still have the same noontime regardless of when the sun rises or sets.

ogre_codes3• 5 years ago

Not the above poster, but I suspect they were referring to the fact that in higher latitudes day lengths are affected much more by seasonal swings than areas closer to the equator. So the reasons for having DST to begin with becomes more exaggerated at those latitudes.

Zak2• 5 years ago

No, but Moosonee, Canada might be in a different time zone from Key West, FL (they are currently in the same time zone).

oblio3• 5 years ago

I think you're misunderstanding his proposal. He's not advocating for <<getting rid>> of longitudinal timezones, he's proposing <<adding>> latitudinal timezones.

Timezones now are kind of long lines from pole to pole, he wants them to be more like checkerboards. He does have a point, the same timezone that's ok at the Equator makes for kind of awkward periods of the day around the 50th meridian.

ogre_codes3• 5 years ago

When I moved to Oregon I was a little surprised at how long the evenings were in the summer time and commensurate shortening of the day in the winter, but it’s only about 20 minutes less light in the morning at the worst part of the year.

madcaptenor• 5 years ago

It seems like if you let small enough geographical areas decide their own time zones, this should happen naturally. For example I could imagine Scotland and England choosing different time zones because Scotland, which is further north, might be particularly interested in not having winter sunrises be too late.

trashface• 5 years ago

As a (former) programmer, the idea of changing to latitude based time zones in every current software package in existence gives me nightmares. But if you are looking for "Basic Jobs for Programmers" policymaking, it would do the trick.

staunch3• 5 years ago

This would be great. Could we go so far as to have the entire whole world operate on UTC, so we could have an Earth Time?

wbc• 5 years ago

agreed! based on the amount of "time" i've wasted converting timezones in code, i tell everyone that'd listen we should just teach kids to memorize unix timestamps and these problems would all go away

lucasmullens• 5 years ago

Sounds great in theory, but it becomes too hard to know what times are "early" and "late" for people. When telling people what time it is, you'd also have to include where you are so they know what's early/late, and at that point you've just reinvented timezones.

staunch3• 5 years ago

For the billions of people with smart phones, wouldn't this be very easily solved with a default app?

makeworld• 5 years ago

Abolishing time zones has a lot of problems.

https://qntm.org/abolish

staunch3• 5 years ago

Yeah, of course there are trade offs, and that's not a balanced run down of them. Most of the issues raised there seem easily addressed in the modern world.

JoshTriplett• 5 years ago

https://qntm.org/abolish

alborzb• 5 years ago

Our European visitors are important to us. This site is currently unavailable to visitors from Europe ...

Does anybody have an alt mirror for this please? Genuinely interested, but can't view the news update from Europe.

samizdis• 5 years ago

Here you go: https://archive.is/femP9

A bit disappointing, though. There's not much to the article.

Edited to add: There's more substance in this article in the Boston Globe:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/10/nation/think-daylight...

mdaniel• 5 years ago

Are they all doing that, or just the one URL in the link? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sunshine+Protection+Act&iar=news&i...

fattybob• 5 years ago

rather silly i feel, why not spend money on researching slowing the earths rotation! or maybe just wake up later all year round. Or - abandon GMT and pick a spot like Paris, maybe you can call it the new "Euro time" - that way Britain can happily ignore it and stay with GMT.

falcolas• 5 years ago

Like they've done (or Congress has done) every year for the past decade or so, only for it to die in-situ.

Thorentis• 5 years ago

I much prefer sleeping when it gets dark, and this fits in much better with our body's circadian rhythm. If doing things in the dark is such an issue, why not change business/school hours to work around that? Who decided that 9-5 is the optimal time to do business? Why should we disrupt our body's natural attunement to daylight just because our bosses won't let us leave until it's already dark? Why not look at "summer business hours" instead of "daylight time"?

ravi-delia4• 5 years ago

All of that is correct, very smart, and impossible to implement from the top. At this point the idiotic way to do things is just too ingrained. All that can be done is play with DST a little.

watwut9• 5 years ago

Most od the year, if not whole year, there is dark long before going to sleep.

lproberts3• 5 years ago

So the morning people may win yet another round, after having so many advantages already.

Of course they cannot go to work at 7 instead of 8. No, everyone has to jump and tamper with the natural time.

seniorsassycat5• 5 years ago

Are you arguing for adjusting clocks by an hour twice a year as natural time?

lproberts3• 5 years ago

No, I'm for keeping the natural time that is called "winter time" these days all year long.

People who want their DST in the summer should just get up one hour earlier; laws would need to be made that jobs have to accommodate that choice.

I think most jobs are that flexible these days.

watwut9• 5 years ago

What are you talking about. Everyone praises a guy who stays late basically regardless of when he came in. No one praises dude that comes in soon.

seniorsassycat5• 5 years ago

At the very least let states choose to use daylight or standard time. Federal law allows states to permanently adopt standard time, but prohibits the year-round adoption of daylight time. Washington passed a law to adopt permanent daylight savings in 2019 but it was contingent on changes to Federal law.

I'm not familiar with the federal laws governing timezones but I've wondered if Washington could have adopted Mountain Standard Time, which is the same as Pacific Daylight Time, without Federal approval.

EDIT: seems Department of Transportation can assign timezone based on petition from state government.

https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/procedure-moving-...

cafard2• 5 years ago

Arizona does not change its clocks. It could therefore be considered to be on PDT or MST depending on the season.

seniorsassycat5• 5 years ago

https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/usa/arizona

Most of Arizona observes Mountain Standard Time (MST) all year. However, because the Navajo Nation observes Daylight Saving Time (DST), the corresponding DST designation, Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) is also listed here.
There is a common misconception that Arizona is on Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) during the summer and on Mountain Standard Time (MST) during the winter. Because MST and PDT have the same UTC offset of minus 7 hours (UTC-7), Arizona has the same local time as neighboring states California and Nevada during the summer season.

SamBam5• 5 years ago

I find the idea crazy.

I get DST, I understand its benefits. But I think it only makes sense because it's not the norm. Because it's not the norm, we get used to the time for half the year, stick with our long-established timetables, and then want more evening sunlight in the summer.

Making it permanent means we are saying that even 100 years from now, children will ask "why isn't the sun at the top of the sky at noon?" and we'll say "a hundred years ago people thought it was easier to permanently change the clocks because businesses would never, ever let people go home at 4:00."

I think that, if the pandemic and a year from remote work and school has taught us anything, it's that getting people to stop work or school an hour earlier is actually within our grasp.

(Speaking of which, it's 4:00. I'm going to get off the computer now.)

treespace88• 5 years ago

While I agree moving to permanent DST is kinda nuts. It’s less nuts then flipping clocks twice a year.

Once we have stopped flipping we can then move back to Standard time at a future date.

Fighting insanity one battle at a time.

weaksauce• 5 years ago

Where I am there is a two fold component to it... you have shorter usable days in the winter AND you also have earlier darkness for people because they shift it one hour earlier. that means that you go to work when it's dark out and come home when it's dark out. having an "extra" hour after work to relax would be a win. permanent DST is a win in my book.

brainfish• 5 years ago

What tangible benefit does society gain from the sun being straight up at noon? Furthermore, how is this a valid argument when timezones are +/- an hour wide, meaning that even if local noon == noon in one part of the timezone, that is not true in other parts of the same timezone? This is the worst reasoning to base this decision on.

throw0101a6• 5 years ago

It helps with circadian rhythms. I seem to post this for every DST story, so I might as well continue the tradition:

The folks who study this:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology

Seem to have come to a consensus that if we're going to get rid of DST, then health-wise it is best to have Standard Time year-round:

As an international organization of scientists dedicated to studying circadian and other biological rhythms, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) engaged experts in the field to write a Position Paper on the consequences of choosing to live on DST or Standard Time (ST). The authors take the position that, based on comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently.

* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...

For a longer-read, referencing quite a bit of academic literature, but a conclusionary snippet:

In summary, the scientific literature strongly argues against the switching between DST and Standard Time and even more so against adopting DST permanently. The latter would exaggerate all the effects described above /beyond/ the simple extension of DST from approximately 8 months/year to 12 months/year (depending on country) since /body clocks/ are generally even later during winter than during the long photoperiods of summer (with DST) (Kantermann et al., 2007; Hadlow et al., 2014, 2018; Hashizaki et al., 2018). Perennial DST increases SJL prevalence even more, as described above.

* https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.0094...

Other position papers that I've dug up over the years when curiosity got the better of me:

Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) is dedicated to advancing rigorous, peer-reviewed science and evidence-based policies related to sleep and circadian biology.

* https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/

* (refs, with pro and con): https://srbr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/DST-References-S...

European Sleep Research Society:

* https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...

American Academy of Sleep Medicine (with 36 footnotes if you want to dig further):

* https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780

* https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8780

The Centre for Chronobiology, based at the Psychiatric University Hospital (University of Basel):

* http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-D...

* http://www.chronobiology.ch/

Asooka• 5 years ago

Circadian rhythms are fixed to the sun, not to the number on a dial. For a concrete example on how permanent DST will mess up people, look at Spain. The entire country should be on GMT+0, instead it's on GMT+1 because of Hitler not wanting separate timezones across the Reich. Spain has a reputation for getting up late, having lunch late, etc. The truth is, the Spanish people do all these things at the usual time, but their clocks are one hour fast. I doubt America will be pragmatic enough to just shift everything one hour forward, so you'll end up torturing school children to rise early to appease some desire for the clock to be showing 6 when you wake up. I certainly don't want office hours to start at 8 all year round. For another example - Russia tried permanent DST but after a year changed to permanent astronomical time because of such problems. DST is tolerable in summer, but awful in winter.

Still, maybe if that's the only way to kill switching clocks twice a year, it might be worth it and we could end up with later hours like Spain.

nomercy400• 5 years ago

Does it matter if it is on top of the sky at 11h, 12h or 13h? Noon or mid-day is still when the sun is at its highest point. Only noon does not have to be at 12.

heleninboodler2• 5 years ago

No, it doesn't matter. Where I live, the time the sun is at its highest varies from 11:53 to 13:18 and at no time in the history of my city (I checked all the records) has a child ever asked why the sun isn't directly overhead precisely at noon.

SamBam5• 5 years ago

What? Is there any place in the world that distinguishes "noon" and 12:00pm in everyday speech?

You're asking for a lot more trouble if you want to separate them.

How about "afternoon" -- can that start at 11:00 am?

(Yes, scientists can use the term "solar noon," but I'm talking about everyday speech.)

Jedd4• 5 years ago

I wonder what your preferred answer would be to these hypothetical children that noticed the sun's location at noon is not 'at the top of the sky' for half the year already.

And where do you live such that the sun is at the 'top of the sky' at noon?

Timezones aside (which basically average out an arbitrary time for the 1/24th of the planet you are standing in) there's the 23.5 degree axis, which means there's nowhere on the planet where the sun is at the 'top of the sky' all year.

puzzledobserver• 5 years ago

'Top of the sky' is often the colloquial phrase for 'on the meridian line'. Which is valuable to know in itself.

Now, of course, there are differences between the mean solar day and the actual day, and the analemma, and all that, but to a first approximation, the sun is really closest to the top of the sky at noon, local time.

mdavidn• 5 years ago

"Top of the sky" means equidistant from sunrise and sunset.

ravenstine• 5 years ago

The pandemic, in my opinion, has revealed that a lot of the things we used to say "can't be done" could actually be done. Vaccines in a year? Check. More white collar jobs working from home? Check. Closing down a huge portion of businesses without economic armageddon? Check. I think we can handle getting rid of DST. (or just making it permanent)

SamBam5• 5 years ago

But you're saying we couldn't handle communities starting to transition to school and work an hour earlier, without changing the clock?

globular-toast4• 5 years ago

want more evening sunlight in the summer.

This is so backwards... There's loads of evening light in the summer. I want more evening light in the winter.

SamBam5• 5 years ago

We'd all like more light in the evening if it came for free, but an hour more light on the evening in the winter means an hour less light in the morning. Depending on where you live, that could mean the sun rising an hour after you get into work or school.

Waking, eating breakfast, and commuting before the sun rises sucks. Making it worse would, well, make it worse.

In the summer we don't have that problem, as even with the time change the sun usually rises before most people do.

meepmorp• 5 years ago

Just take things to the logical conclusion - everyone should switch to UTC and quit all this screwing around with timezones and clock changes.

oblio3• 5 years ago

Time is a super sensitive topic.

If you want to take things to their logical conclusion, we should be using a sort of UTC decimal time (10 hours in a day, 10 (was it 100? can't remember) minutes in an hour, 10 (same question as for minutes) seconds in a minute.

Switching to a single timezone would mean that days are upside down. Imagine some timezone where the sun rises at 23:00 and sets at 13:00. Let alone the fact that a decent chunk of the world doesn't even use 24 hour time (I'm looking especially at you, US!).

function_seven2• 5 years ago

Imagine some timezone where the sun rises at 23:00 and sets at 13:00

You just might convince me to adopt that kind of timekeeping, if "Monday" didn't suddenly become "Tuesday" while I was eating breakfast!

But seriously, every time someone floats the idea of worldwide UTC, I can't imagine they've thought through all the new problems that would arise.

We have different time zones, not because we're dumb. It's because the Earth is round. The time zones are an intrinsic property of {ball Earth} + {human biology}

If we lived in Flatland, it wouldn't be an issue. If we were robots with no circadian rhythm or desire, then it wouldn't be an issue. But we're humans on a globe. Different locations are going to be out-of-sync no matter what. Might as well reflect that in our timekeeping.

(EDIT: I'm agreeing with you, BTW. Just re-read this and it sounds kinda like I'm arguing with your comment. I'm not. I'm yelling at the strawman :)

butisaidsudo• 5 years ago

Oh, this segues nicely from my DST, my favorite bikeshedding topic into my second favorite one!

Base 12 is better than decimal in every way. It divides cleanly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12. Compare that to decimal, where you have 1, 2, 5, 10. It's much better for scheduling. With decimal you couldn't have a nice, clean schedule for a factory with 3 shifts per day for example. 60 minutes (which is a multiple of 12) gives you a lot of ways to break up an hour, vs 100 minutes.

I had a friend once rant about how we should switch everything to base 12. It's obviously crazy given the effort vs reward, but I think we would have been better off to have done so way back when.

jiri• 5 years ago

Haha, this is mainly "programmer" viewpoint, for most people around the globe, timezones works flawlessly. And for programmers, they do/should use UTC everywhere already ;-)

DesiLurker• 5 years ago

also just switch to metric system while we are at it.

tzs• 5 years ago

Since switching to universal UTC would not also change the Earth from an oblate spheroid to a flat Earth, it would not eliminate the need for timezones. At most, it would perhaps cause us to rename them to spacezones.

pseudalopex10• 5 years ago

Not logical at all.[1]

[1] https://qntm.org/abolish

stjohnswarts5• 5 years ago

Our American freedoms would never allow that. Nor do I suspect any countries other than dictatorships would get the cooperation of their citizens.

bjt2n3904• 5 years ago

Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled The battle outside ragin' Will soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'

Hehe

acjohnson55• 5 years ago

As a night owl, I prefer DST. But PST would work too. Just please get rid of the time change.

Breefield• 5 years ago

Here is the link to the actual bill. I have it bookmarked https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/69?s...

SloopJon• 5 years ago

The first few articles I could find on this topic neglected to identify the senators co-sponsoring the bill. Here's a list from boston.cbslocal.com:

* Roy Blunt (R-MO)

* Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)

* James Lankford (R-OK)

* Ed Markey (D-MA)

* Marco Rubio (R-FL)

* Rick Scott (R-FL)

* Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

* Ron Wyden (D-OR)

Wikipedia has some history on similar, short-lived efforts in the past:

Seasonal observation of DST was first enacted in the US during World Wars I and II, as an attempt conserve fuel. The practice was unpopular and promptly repealed after each war; however, lobbyists from the petroleum industry lobbied to restore DST, as they had noticed it actually increased fuel consumption.
Permanent DST in the US was briefly enacted by President Nixon in 1974, in response to the 1973 oil crisis. The proposal was initially supported by an estimated 79% of the public; that support dropped to 42% after its first winter, owing to the harshness of dark winter mornings that permanent DST creates. An estimated six school children were also killed by motorists due to the new law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_...

On the eastern edge of the enormous Eastern time zone, I'm sympathetic to permanent DST, but I'm not sure it's a good idea nationwide. I would probably be in favor of the proposed Atlantic time zone, though.

ddlatham• 5 years ago

Wow that's a huge shift in public support after the experience of a single winter. I wonder if we're doomed to repeat it.

pwg3• 5 years ago

I suspect if this were to go into effect, that yes, after the first winter on year-round DST, public opinion about the shift will change dramatically in a negative direction.

No one has yet experienced DST in the winter, owing to the present practice of shifting to standard time over the winter months. The change in morning daylight in the winter months will be a big shocker if this is adopted.

ryandrake4• 5 years ago

So tragic that children had to die rather than just changing school start times a little later during the winter. People were so ridiculously dogmatic about starting at a particular number that lives were lost. Insane.

nichos• 5 years ago

Govtrack is a fantastic resource for things like this: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s623

vinay427• 5 years ago

Thank you for mentioning this resource. I just found their cartogram map of House votes which provides a rather fascinating district-based map of the US, colored by vote.

For instance, the cartogram map of the recently passed "American Rescue Plan" relief act: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/117-2021/h72

bookmarkable• 5 years ago

As a Floridian, I am suspicious of anything co-sponsored by Rubio and Scott and look forward to reading how they and the rest of our fine state’s Congressional clown car profited from this bill.

px43• 5 years ago

No, no, no. Just kill DST.

Noon should be about when the sun is highest in the sky, not 1pm.

Sunrise and sunset math is so much easier if solar noon happens around clock noon too, because sunrise and sunset are equally distant from noon. If the Sunset is around 7pm, then sunrise will be at (12-7) 5am.

It makes no sense at all to have solar noon shifted one hour for the entire country, especially because for most of the world, solar noon happens around noon, for obvious reasons.

echelon2• 5 years ago

Noon should be about when the sun is highest in the sky, not 1pm.

That's impossible to achieve across all latitudes and longitudes, and it's totally arbitrary and has zero benefit.

Solar noon matters to precisely nobody. No one is looking at the sky to tell time.

People want sunlight after work. They don't want to be depressed because they finish the day and it's dark outside.

This benefits restaurants, retail, and many industries that thrive on increased leisure activity.

jmwilson• 5 years ago

That's impossible to achieve across all latitudes and longitudes, and it's totally arbitrary and has zero benefit.
Solar noon matters to precisely nobody. No one is looking at the sky to tell time.

That's why the OP said "about when the sun is highest" not "exactly when the sun is highest". And it matters if you like the idea of midday being at, well, the middle of the day. Deliberately adding another ~4% error on top of whatever is there because of arbitrary time zone boundaries, and things begin to add up and eventually you end up like Spain.

People want sunlight after work. They don't want to be depressed because they finish the day and it's dark outside.

To state the obvious, changing the clocks doesn't change the amount of daylight available. As another commenter said, if we've learned anything from the pandemic, maybe it's that we can be flexible about work hours instead of warping our sense of time and the rhythm of the day because managers and office workers can't fathom the idea of seasonal work hours.

thehappypm5• 5 years ago

Did you know that DST is 2/3 of the year? If we're going to remove something, we should extend DST to 100%, not shrink it from 65% to 0%.

pkulak4• 5 years ago

I don't see how more of a bad thing makes it good.

glennpratt• 5 years ago

Still, I'll take all DST over switching twice a year.

8note2• 5 years ago

Up north, is it noon all day during summer? Or does noon move around a whole bunch?

globular-toast4• 5 years ago

You're not alone in seeing the madness but it looks like it's a losing battle. I think fundamentally people can't disconnect themselves from the clock on the wall. The day starts around 09:00 and ends around 17:00. You can only start work at 08:00 if the clock is set to 09:00 and you can only leave at 16:00 if the clock says 17:00. Apparently everyone believes that everyone else is too dumb to just get up an hour earlier, so they feel more comfortable into tricking everyone into doing it by setting their clocks for them. It's the only explanation I have. It really says a lot about how much faith everyone has in the rest of society.

salawat2• 5 years ago

...I still to this day wake up more reliably to sunlight than my alarm. I wish I could decouple from gigantic fusion ball time, but there's just something about that sudden uptick in sensible energy...

The crack of dawn is too...darn...loud!

chkaloon• 5 years ago

Most of Alaska is already an hour "further east" than it should be during standard time. This just makes it even worse. Mid day is between 1 and 2pm for much of the state during ST, and between 2pm and 3pm during DST.

salawat2• 5 years ago

Okay. I'm sold. Geometry AND an increase in vocabulary's ability to apply to the world. We're cross-disciplinary, and done here.

Everyone can move along.

ahmedtd• 5 years ago

Super nitpicky, but... sunrise and sunset are not equally distant from solar noon, because of the eccentricity of Earth's orbit around the Sun. Since the orbit is an ellipse, Kepler's law means that our orbital speed is constantly changing.

wruza3• 5 years ago

Did anyone consider pros and cons of shifting just by 10 minutes every month? 60 minutes per 6 months divides so nicely (and maybe unleashes hell to time duration calculations, but who cares). Edit: same for timezones.

ravi-delia4• 5 years ago

Pros: - No increase in heart attacks

- Nice fluid shift from month to month

- Minor errors less important

Cons:

- Rewriting of timezone code takes 8 years, claims over 800 lives as every programmer either quits or commits suicide after working on project for a few weeks

- The staggeringly difficult to detect under low load timestamping errors cause constant stress for distributed systems engineers, making the job among the most deadly in the world.

wruza3• 5 years ago

Re cons, we already have tzdata with all irregularities like DSTs and leap seconds built in. I believe that it wouldn’t be so hard for libraries who already use tzdata. And those who don’t, they couldn’t handle time intervals properly anyway.

adolph• 5 years ago

What's wrong with just using NTP?

http://www.ntp.org/rfc.html

https://pypi.org/project/ntplib/

https://www.npmjs.com/package/ntp-client

https://www.nuget.org/packages/Rebex.Time

mtinkerhess• 5 years ago

Let's take it one step farther, and have each second be 99.999% of a second from December 20 and June 20, and be 100.001% of a second from June 20 to December 20. Problem solved!

mminer2373• 5 years ago

Imagine having to adjust every clock in your house every single month.

wruza3• 5 years ago

Honestly my only non-internet clock doesn’t tick for few years, since I moved in and stopped it because silence. But yes, that is a valid con.

ziml77• 5 years ago

I'd do what I always do when we shift our UTC offset: mentally add or subtract to get to the real time until I finally stop being lazy.

BrandoElFollito2• 5 years ago

This switching is finally over in France (and in the EU, each country had a choice).

One last switch in March to summer time and we are done!

I am fortunate to leave on the western edge of the timezone though.

fanf2• 5 years ago

The abolition of DST in Europe has not yet been confirmed - it seems to be stalled in the Council

https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/summertime_en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_time_in_Europe

BrandoElFollito2• 5 years ago

Ah crap, you are right. I was not aware that COVID stopped the DST decision, thanks.

I was actually quite admiration of the EU to have made a decision, something they never do. But the the reality of this deeply dysfunctional institution hit again.

To be clear, I am all for the EU as a concept, it is just that one can hardly expect the bureaucratic dinosaur that rules it to make swift decisions. Not to mention that the anti-EU parties that are not elected in the member countries, do get elected to the EU parliament. This is a heap of nonsense.

binarymax• 5 years ago

I love that in 50 years, the youth of that time will be taught that we used to change clocks twice a year, and they can laugh and wonder at the old-timey silliness of it all.

aksss3• 5 years ago

well, it's largely automated now days.. I think my stove clock (aka the power outage event recorder) is the only clock I manually adjust these days.

theli0nheart• 5 years ago

well, it's largely automated now days

This almost makes it sound more ridiculous. It shows that we could easily switch to a different system and yet choose not to.

maerF0x02• 5 years ago

well, it's largely automated now days

Sure, but somehow far too much of our code doesn't work right during time changes. Also for timezones at all while we're being honest.

Grimm665• 5 years ago

aka the power outage event recorder

Man this is so true lol

thehappypm5• 5 years ago

This would benefit the Northeast quite a lot.

Assume that your average adult works 9-5, and your average school child is in school 8-3. Broad strokes, these are the two groups to focus on. I know most adults commute earlier than 9, and most students are up earlier than 8, but it's safe to say that most Americans are up-and-at-'em from 8-5.

On the shortest day of the year in Boston, sunrise is at 7:10am and sunset is at 4:14PM. Including civil twilight ("it's still kind of daytime") extends it to 6:38am to 4:46PM.

Even on the shortest day of the year, if you wake up even before 7 you're waking up in daylight. But, sunset is super early. Every working adult is commuting home in actual nighttime.

Shift that forward 1 hour, and it gets light at 7:30AM and gets dark at 5:45PM. While slightly darker for students in the morning, it's immensely better for working adults, who at least get some daylight in the evenings, and not actual nighttime before 5PM.

3JPLW• 5 years ago

Benefits are highly regional. Where I live, the current latest sunrise is 8:06 am on December 5. I can't imagine a sunrise after 9am being very fun.

thehappypm5• 5 years ago

Agreed. I bet a lot of places would simply switch timezones if DST was removed.

randomswede• 5 years ago

I grew up with my shortest "daylight day" starting at about 08:40 and finishing at about 14:50. This basically meant that both morning and evening commute happened in basically darkness. No matter of time-shifting would've accomplished "get both ends of the school/work-day in daylight", although making them shorter would've worked.

stevehawk2• 5 years ago

and it would absolutely F the state of Indiana. We'd have to switch time zones.

eholk• 5 years ago

Would that mean Indiana goes back to the way they were before they started doing Daylight Savings Time?

mbreese• 5 years ago

Yeah, but Indiana is a good case study for why daylight savings time isn’t very effective. Didn’t they end up using more energy after switching to DST? I mean, they really changed because the show The West Wing had an entire episode about it, and nominally it was to keep in better sync with the East Coast. But they were able to measure actual energy changes as opposed to the theoretical benefits that are normally cited for DST.

(I lived in Indiana at the time they switched to observing DST, but I was on team central time zone)

thehappypm5• 5 years ago

Why would switching time zones F you? Your neighbors are in Central time, what's keeping you in Eastern?

mfer• 5 years ago

What interests me the most about this is that the times people use for work and school are set while the way we relate time to the cycle of the sun is the thing we want to change.

treyfitty• 5 years ago

It’s probably easier to change behavior that’s arbitrarily done twice a year (changing clocks) than to change institutions (schools, corporations)

basch• 5 years ago

I've thought the same thing about temperature. In many places where the temperature and weather are unbearable during the day, the nights are beautifully comfortable. Alas, everything is closed. It would be amazing if "open hours" could shift with the weather, keeping people inside when it was bad and outside when it was nice, and if humans didnt need a 24h sleep schedule.

ryandrake4• 5 years ago

I’ve always found it hilarious that we consider the 5PM end of work day so fundamental, constant and unchangeable that changing every clock in the country twice a year is easier to do.

plantain• 5 years ago

It's not a global constant. Across Central and Eastern Europe it's quite common to work 7am-3pm. You have half the afternoon in the sun at any time of year to enjoy. In winter it's a bleak commute to work though.

neilparikh2• 5 years ago

I mean, in a way, you are changing the end of the work day (the work day will end a hour earlier in the previous time zone at one shift, and one hour later in the previous time zone at the other shift), it's just that the time zone shift is the mechanism we use to do it.

If we use the approach of having the workday end at 5 PM during one half of the year, and 6 PM in the other half, people have to ask themselves "Are we in the 5 PM half, or the 6 PM half?" This confusion will probably last for a few weeks, similar to the confusion when a year changes (I write the old year for at least a month).

On the hand, changing the clocks is a one time change, and then you don't need to constantly check which half you're in.

shados2• 5 years ago

It's also somewhat problematic: the above poster made a lot of assumptions about work day, but they're less and less true. Empty nesters, people without kids yet, childfree folks, all that rules out the school schedule (looking at the size of the school in my town, it's a small minority of people who have school aged childrens).

Then the 9-5 work day. Tradefolks often start much earlier. People working late shifts at restaurants and other service industries are very unlikely to do simple 9-5. People in tech are all over the place. "Early bird gets the worm" because if you're not at the default or earlier, you're basically fucked: hope you didn't need to sleep 7+ hours after that night shift, because you certainly aren't going to when the neighbors let the dog out to bark!

subsubzero• 5 years ago

Another added benefit is getting sunshine/vitamin D during these 'newly found' daylight hours. This will lead to people not having as severe colds/flu symptoms, and more time being outside which leads to better general health altogether. I really hope this passes.

SomewhatLikely• 5 years ago

"Except during the summer months, the skin makes little if any vitamin D from the sun at latitudes above 37 degrees north (in the United States, the shaded region in the map) or below 37 degrees south of the equator. People who live in these areas are at relatively greater risk for vitamin D deficiency." https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/time-for-more...

That roughly corresponds to San Fransisco on the west coast and Richmond, VA on the east coast. So, the impact will probably be minimal for many people.

teeray• 5 years ago

This would be such a boon for skiing in the Northeast. At some ski areas, the sun doesn’t strike the ground until 10am (because mountains cast shadows). It would be brighter during the best skiing of the day. Also, by 4p the Apres Ski scene is well underway, so the setting sun would probably help that along further.

Shivetya• 5 years ago

My state of Georgia has been trying this a few times and acknowledge that even if the state passes it the Federal Government says that it is illegal to do so, though 13 states have done so.

It certainly would also benefit our and other IT support staff as it never ceases to amaze me how many modern day applications trip up when the time changes

pmcollins• 5 years ago

wow, username checks out

stjohnswarts5• 5 years ago

This would benefit all the USA quite a bit. I like my sunlight after I get off from work. It's a huge quality of life improvement to get another hour of sunlight. In the morning most people don't care about that since they're headed to work anyway. I suppose it might affect morning joggers and other like that but ask yourself if the early bird should always get the worm?

tony1014• 5 years ago

It's the opposite problem where I live. With DST the sun does not rise until 8 AM.

In fact, in January, the sun rises here at 7:40 AM Standard Time. Which would be 8:40 AM Daylight Time.

It would be terrible to have to wake up an hour before sunrise.

gegtik• 5 years ago

Has anyone considered how many IT systems are going to need to be updated to account for this change? This is a little Y2k IT bubble waiting to happen.

If this is proactively folded into overhauling systems for the 2038 problem I could stomach it

mynameisvlad• 5 years ago

Time zone updates happen all the time. The latest version was released in January: https://www.iana.org/time-zones

erichurkman• 5 years ago

This happened in 2005 when the federal government changed the start & end dates of DST. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005#Chan...

mattmanser2• 5 years ago

This happens all the time. Governments regularly change DST start dates with little to no warning.

If you think this is a problem, you don't deal with dates.

lowercased• 5 years ago

Gear everybody up to split the difference and at one point, push the time either 30 minutes forward or back, and be done with it, forever. Give everyone... 18 months to prepare.

tempestn4• 5 years ago

I support the change, but the timeline seems a bit unrealistic to me. There are a lot of systems that will need to be updated to not expect time changes, and knowing how long such things tend to take, expecting everything to be ready within a few months (minus however long the bill actually took to pass) seems unlikely. Plus ideally you'd give other jurisdictions like Canada and Mexico a chance to see if they want to come along. I'd think planning to keep DST in 2022 would be a lot more realistic than planning to never change again as of now.

jedberg3• 5 years ago

Time zones change multiple times a year throughout the globe. For example, the time zone database changed five times in 2020.

If your time code doesn't already depend on an externally updating time database, you're already doing it wrong.

tempestn4• 5 years ago

Yeah, I know in theory that's the case (although I didn't realize how often time zones changed). I still expect there will be problems on that timeline. As for how serious they would be or how much difference an extra year would make, I don't know.

Stratoscope• 5 years ago

Anyone interested in this topic may enjoy this book:

Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1582434956

Alas, there is no Kindle edition nor a "look inside" preview, but I found the book very interesting.

SeanLuke• 5 years ago

Why are we making DST permanent rather than making the standard time permanent?

mminer2373• 5 years ago

People like the sunshine. Getting rid of DST means you're always getting off work at 5:00 either in the dark or an hour or two before dark. Making it always DST means 5 o'clock will be before sunset year-round.

briandear• 5 years ago

Why is five o’clock the arbitrary getting off work time?

theodric2• 5 years ago

Light in the evening when you can use it, rather than during the day when you're stuck on conference calls.

Also, 'standard' offsets to GMT are fairly arbitrary anyway. We're not going to get employers to change operating hours, so it's paradoxically simpler to change the hours themselves.

globular-toast4• 5 years ago

What about all the people who work outside and need sunlight?

breck• 5 years ago

In Hawai'i time only goes in one direction and it makes life easier.

jedmeyers• 5 years ago

Some states, like Washington, have already introduced permanent DST. The only thing they lack is federal permission to stay on DST. States can already permanently stay on non-DST time, like most of AZ does.

mey• 5 years ago

I'm not sure if this would introduce more or less bugs in software. It would at least make this Google Cloud SQL for MySQL issue less annoying. They don't support tz_info, so you have to manually adjust for DST offsets. Guess what I'm doing this weekend at 2/3am PDT/PST?

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/74600960

annoyingnoob• 5 years ago

Yes, please.

baron8162• 5 years ago

Just abolish time altogether

shmerl• 5 years ago

Dropping the switch itself is a good idea. But to which one to stick to is more moot.

Robotbeat• 5 years ago

I don’t care if you eliminate DST or make it permanent. One or the other. Just do it.

khalilravanna• 5 years ago

I'm another in the camp of "Why not standard time?" It seems like a lot of experts agree Standard Time is more healthy. Plus two whole countries (admittedly in Europe) tried permanent DST and either stopped it or flipped to permanent Standard Time. So is this just an uninformed position we're pushing forward or is the US truly unique?

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

tonfa• 5 years ago

At least france and spain are at DST or more the whole year (winter is DST and summer is DST++). I haven't heard people clamoring for moving out of winter DST (actually permanent DST++ is kinda popular since it's now part of the culture to have late leisure time)

presentation• 5 years ago

Also, I'm based in Asia, and it would help me have more times for meetings with my US teammates without having to wake up super early :) Not looking forward to next week onward...

Viliam1234• 5 years ago

Could there be a compromise solution possible like, dunno, using Standard Time half of the year and Daylight Saving Time the other half?

Just kidding, of course. Yeah, I'm in the same camp. If you need to wake up earlier, tell people to wake up earlier, do not redefine time. What's next, redefining meter, because sticks shorter than one meter are more convenient to use? Businesses would probably lobby to redefine time, so we can work more, while nominally having 8-hour workdays.

abandonliberty• 5 years ago

"Tried it and flipped" is pretty weak. They had complaints. I'm sure there were complaints both ways. Maybe arguing that something is 'default' is easier. This evidence isn't really compelling in either direction.

In any case, we should just all switch to UTC. Software development and global trade would benefit.

MattSayar• 5 years ago

I'm just so, so thankful I don't maintain any kind of time zone libraries

https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b...

tshaddox6• 5 years ago

Fair enough, I probably wouldn’t enjoy that work either! But it’s important to note that changes in the local timekeeping rules of various regions is precisely what the tz database is designed to handle. As far as I can tell, this rule change would be straightforward to enter into the tz database and to use for any software that’s already using the tz database.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database

FunnyLookinHat• 5 years ago

For the sake of every parent of a child under the age of 5 - please pass this. Twice a year we have to spend an entire week slowly shifting sleep schedules in the hopes of a successful switch. :)

jedberg3• 5 years ago

Melatonin is safe for kids. It's what we use for the spring time change (and international travel).

jb7752• 5 years ago

Opponents of the bill say DST makes it hard on school children and parents who have to wait at the bus stop in dark hours of the morning.

We should also push back school start times at least 1 hour. Studies have shown kids benefit from this, mostly as a result of getting more sleep.

School starting times have historically been pegged to the time most parents begin their work commute. Since many parents no longer have a commute, it makes even more sense to push back starting times.

pkulak4• 5 years ago

Push back school, and you have to push back work (no, not everyone can work from home). And then you have to push back entertainment. And then everything else. And then you've changed the clocks, but in a worse, more complicated way.

shados2• 5 years ago

Not everyone can work from home, but tons and tons of people can't work 9 to 5 either. We can instead start agreeing that the current system is pretty broken.

When I was in elementary school, my parents had to start work much earlier than school started (at some point my mother was a school bus driver. Kinds of rule that out no matter how much you shift the school day!). So I was just waiting alone for the bus for a few hours. It was boring as hell, not gonna lie.

jb7752• 5 years ago

We should push back work, but still end at the same time. We've been programmed to accept 9-5 salaried jobs (which is actually 8-5 or 9-6 for most people not including commute) but on a macro level it's been proven employees are receiving less and less of the pie. Fuck them, let's work less and enjoy more of life with ppl you care about.

VoodooJuJu• 5 years ago

Respect waking with the rising sun and banish DST for good. We should instead be working toward adjusting that archaic and arbitrary 8-4/9-5 versus changing the clocks around.

tomekjapan• 5 years ago

Yes, this is the right way to solve it. Forcing DST on everyone in winter without adjusting school starting times is a horrible and selfish idea.

fitzie• 5 years ago

anyone who works with people in other countries will appreciate this, recurring meetings are always an issue with various countries going in an out of daylight savings.

after fixing this, I'd like to see the entire country move to a single timezone. that would be a vast improvement as well.

happyconcepts• 5 years ago

Such priorities for these politicians. While people are sick and dying they merely... adjust their watches.

But that's not enough so they legislate it for the rest of us too. Such priorities.

jazzdev• 5 years ago

Fatal car accidents in the United States spike by 6% during the workweek following the "spring forward" to daylight saving time, resulting in about 28 additional deaths each year. [1]

1 = https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200130144410.h...

stjohnswarts5• 5 years ago

I would suggest that is correlated with sleep deprivation rather than lightness/darkness as following weeks evidently the rate returns to basically the same. That would not be true if the darkness was the issue.

jobigoud• 5 years ago

Just move to the standrad time of the next timezone. Why make it so complicated by using this bastardized "Permanent DST"?

If your timezone is officially UTC-5+1 all year long, you might as well simplify to UTC-4...

PhilosAccnting• 5 years ago

I would love for someone more well-versed to correct me on this, but I remember reading a decade ago about how the Roman priesthood (the calendar-keepers) would fudge with the dates to conform to their political desires, ranging from 200-500 days at the most extreme.

The fact that we can consolidate this down to only disagreeing on how to set our hours is what I'd call progress![1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_calendars

amai• 5 years ago

Russia did that in 2011 and then reverted the decision in 2014. Now Russia has standard time all year long.

"The 2011 move to impose permanent “summer time” ... forced tens of millions to straggle to their jobs in pitch darkness during the winter months. In the depths of December, the sun didn’t clear the horizon in Moscow until 10 a.m."

https://apnews.com/article/7b85f8edc6d84ee087d3aa3880cc6af7

robotcookies• 5 years ago

All this is really doing is forcing everyone to wake up earlier in the morning. You're basically calling what is now 7am, 8am. Instead of forcing schools and companies to start earlier, you just repaint the clocks so these institutions will go with this without resisting.

We already know that many children suffer academically, socially, psychologically because they don't get enough sleep. How many employees also suffer because of this? About a third of people are not "morning people" and get most of their productivity and mental clarity later in the day. These people will suffer the most and at the expense of those who are naturally inclined to be most productive earlier in the day.

We shouldn't do this. We should do the opposite and end daylight savings for even half the year. Let companies choose to start earlier if they want in March if they want more light for their employees. Some companies will do this and some won't. Those companies that do will attract those who are morning people. The companies that don't will attract the opposite. Stop allowing a small group of morning people force what works for them onto everyone else.

U.S. senators reintroduce bill to make daylight saving time permanent

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