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Comment by bdz | Hacker News Reader

>given member states until April to decide if they will remain on summer or winter time

Oh this will be fun. Imo every country should be in the same time zone but I can imagine say Netherlands stay in summmer, Belgium in winter, Germany in summer, Poland in winter. Sounds fun!

I hope it's just a vague article and they mean member countries from the same timezone should decide together where they stay. Given there are 3 timezones in the EU it shouldn't be a big problem (or yes)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_European_Summer_Time#/...

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It’s not like EU countries are all in the same timezone now...? Presumably the big countries will coordinate and the small ones will follow suit where it makes economic sense.

This is also an opportunity to fix timezone assignments that don’t work very well at the edges: for example Spain shouldn’t be on CET.

If you look at the map in the article, currently the largest part of the EU is in one timezone, which is increadibly convenient. It would be sad to have that split apart. Especially if that means, that the time zones are split apart in any other matter than an clear east-west sorting.

Working with team with 1h time zone difference on a daily basis. Makes little difference. I guess 2h would be more noticeable but still fine.

OTOH 6h difference is a real killer. You have very small window for real time communication. The fallback is email but that can be very inefficient.

Countries in the north have long hours of light in summer and long hours of darkness in winter. Shifting time by one hour doesn't seem to make any difference, but I live in the south so I have no direct experience. We have light from about 5 AM to 10 PM in June with DST. That's very convenient. Maybe I'd go for double DST, even more convenient: people still sleep here at 6 AM. DST in winter would mean to get out in the dark at 8 AM, Scandinavia like. I don't look forward to it, but I don't look forward to darkness at 9 PM in summer and useless light at 4 AM. So I voted for keeping the current system (I lost) and for permanent DST (a useless vote because it will be decided country by country).

From somebody living in Spain - we quite enjoy our extra hours of useful (evening) sunlight, thank you very much!

Those "extra hours of sunlight" you "have" are defined by the time you start to work, not by timezone. If you have tendency to start late and you want to hack the tendency by re-numbering hours, you will get to the same situation you are now soon.

It's a mechanism very similar to inflation, but somehow more silly. Who would say that the only way to enjoy sun in the evening is to get up early!

I do agree, but the time I start work is unfortunately decided by society, not me.

You can change the time zone or simultaneously change all schedules for all public transport, all schools, all kindergartens, all universities, all hospitals, all work places, all industries, all radio & TV channels, and so forth and so on.

I hope you get the point.

Spaniard here. CET is perfectly fine. Time is just a convention, and sharing a timezone is better.

Spain has adapted to living in the "wrong" timezone by doing many activities one hour or so later than is common in other countries, in order to match the sun's actual position.

A lot of stereotypes come from not understanding that we don't do things late, we do them at their proper time and it is the clocks that are wrong.

This would be a good opportunity to fix the timezone.

It's not just a matter of economic sense, it's also an issue of whether children are walking to and from school in the dark (or how dark, or how much time spent in the dark, etc).

Compare Naples: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/italy/naples

And Stockholm: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/sweden/stockholm

Some people in HN seem to have the opinion that businesses should just adjust their working hours... but isn't that what DST does? It coordinates the change of business working hours across many businesses.

Children will walk to+from school in the dark regardless of summer/winter-time in Sweden.

So glad we are about to get rid of this nonsense.

But why should we have to lose this benefit? If Sweden or Germany doesn't want DST, good. Vote to abolish it. In your own country. But why should Italy and Spain be forced to do the same?

It's obviously a rhetorical question, and unfortunately it just demonstrates with comical intensity how the EU works.

> If Sweden or Germany doesn't want DST, good. Vote to abolish it. In your own country. But why should Italy and Spain be forced to do the same?

Currently they can't because DST is an EU regulation. This action is about removing the regulation. Individual states are then free to do whatever they want.

This is why this whole EU thing began - Finland wanted to get rid of DST but couldn't due to the EU regulation so Finland went to the EU to have it removed and now it will be.

Kids walking to school in the dark is normal in Sweden, especially in the northern parts, so as a Swede I am not sure what the big deal is. Just make sure they get plenty of breaks during the school day when the sun is up.

There's tons of legacy timezone pickers that bundle together cities like Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, etc etc... Often, users in smaller countries have to pick a neighboring country's capital city since their own is not listed.

I really hope countries who are currently sharing a time zone don't split ways, or computer clocks and calendars will be doomed to be "maybe off by one hour?" for a decade at least.

If you're handling timezones, and you're not using tz files, you deserve any pain heading your way. Timezone rules change constantly and trying to roll your own is disastrous. (And I say that in the grave baritone voice of personal experience.)

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

Tz is great indeed but what if you have to interface with code/devices not using it and relying on a static timezone database ?

Well, the only workable solution for those is to never change any timezone again ever. According to the changelog of tzdata on my system any such device/code older than four months is fucked already.

I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect society to freeze because "assumptions in legacy code".

Obviously! But that doesn't help users of legacy systems!

Not to mention not really cleverly designed connected devices. I work with connected meteorological stations which use the local timezone where the station is installed instead of UTC to label their records...

Not a chance that the Dutch won't follow whatever the Germans will choose.

Now Belgium... I could see Flanders move to summertime and the Walloons join the French in going for wintertime.

I'd imagine the Benelux countries would stay together as there is so much cooperation between them.

I know that here in Belgium the decision will also keep the choices of our neighbouring countries in mind and likely involve talks with them. I do think this will eventually will be the case for a lot of countries.

I find it also kind of ironic because when Europe does not give countries the individual choice people complain about how it forces its will. And now countries have that choice it’s also not good.

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