Comment by davidgh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidgh | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Since 2018, 13 states in the US passed resolutions to get rid of the semi-annual clock changes but also that daylight saving time become permanent. Of course, federal law doesn’t allow them to do such (a state only has the option to not observe DST, but not the option to permanently observe it).

It probably depends somewhat on latitude and longitude, I for one would prefer year round daylight saving time as I like the extra evening light in the summer and it’s dark when my kids leave for school in the winter anyway. I don’t golf.

The idea of shifting working hours to account for the season changes might work in some contexts but not others. Sure, if I’m an office “information worker” it’s probably not a big deal to shift to 7-4 in the summer. But I don’t think that’s going to work for retail, grocery, post office, restaurants, gyms, pharmacies, etc. where the public isn’t going want to constantly adjust to and guess at changing opening and closing times.

But the public does adjust to changing opening and closing times.

We just all change the clocks as well and pretend that we didn't. And it's stupid.

The previous discussion was talking about adjusting work hours as an alternative to daylight saving time. My comment is that’s not viable a alternative as I don’t think people want to try to determine if the post office closes at 4:00 or 5:00 depending on the date. Additionally, if everyone shifts working hours based on the time of year, how is that different than just changing the clock?

My point is not for or against daylight saving time, just that shifting work hours is not a viable alternative to it. And if we do get rid of changing clocks, there’s a decent chunk of the population that has expressed a preference for permanent daylight saving time rather than standard time.

It’s worth nothing that in Russia they experimented with permanent daylight time some years ago, and at first it was highly supported. However, after some years support for it dropped and they moved to permanent standard time. However, Russia deals with some unique geographical scenarios such as cities with extreme northern latitudes.

I don't know what you mean by "pretend we didn't". We don't pretend anything - we change the clocks and observe that change.

> a state only has the option to not observe DST, but not the option to permanently observe it

Do state have the option to change their timezone altogether?

Permanent DST is the same as shifting one tz over and not having DST and this would make more sense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com