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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

For those that want to make a permanent change, let's stop talking about "DST". That's too confusing for a lot of people, and results in many favoring the wrong outcome.

We should instead ask people if they want "summertime" or "wintertime" sunrise and sunset.

Wintertime proponents use the animosity against the time change to argue against DST, but they seldom mention this means an earlier sunset.

This comes down to whether you want to enjoy your time before work or after work. Early risers might prefer early sunrise, but business and leisure activities after work benefit from a later sunset.

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> We should instead ask people if they want "summertime" or "wintertime" sunrise and sunset.

As a near Seattlite, this question makes it even more confusing. It doesn't matter what you do to the clock in winter, the sun is up for 8.5 hours, you can't have it up when you leave for work and when you get home for work; and if your commute is long enough, you won't see it from home at all; anyway, it's going to be cloudy so tough. In the summer, the sun is up for 16 hours; again you can do whatever you want with the clock, and the sun will be up.

Yup, same here in Finland.

Timing anything based on sunrise and sunset is completely futile. During winter the sunrise might be at 10 and sundown at three in the afternoon. You won't be seeing the sun no matter how you flip the clocks - humans invented the lightbulb for this exact purpose. Use it.

Again in the summertime the sun will be up most of the day, so you can't plan anything by its movement.

I agree that 'daylight saving' time is misleading. DST status quo enjoyers say that of course they love the extra time in summer... when its obvious that you get that extra light in summer vs winter regardless of any clock changes. Long days in summer is what you get for free. The question is what we do with winter.

Do we intervene to increase the chance of an hour of light at the start or the end? I think there's a general agreement that starting and ending your day in the dark is rough. We can shift it either way.

It would be great to see some data about when people are more active (from fitbit and others). I suspect that many more people are active outside in the afternoon, including all kids sports, than would be using the morning light outdoors. A permanent DST would give people more chances to get out and exercise if nothing else and should be the norm.

I live near Seattle. It is NOT uncommon in the summer for the sun to still be relatively bright out relatively late at night; though the problem seems to mostly be summer, and DST is useless.

This website has a nice interactive graph that shows how obscene summer days are. https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/seattle

And there is a compromise to be had here... a one-time 30 minute change, and we’re done. There is strong consensus to eliminate the time change, but which time to choose as permanent seems quite divided. Compromise and let’s move on.

There absolutely is not. Most people agree that extra sunlight in the afternoon is more useful than in the morning.

Polling doesn't back up your opinion[1]. 40% preferred extra sunlight in the morning year-round, 31% preferred it in the evening year-round and 28% preferred switching.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/14/politics/daylight-saving-time...

Except there is no year-round extra sunlight for most people in the US, at least if the workday is entirely during sunlight hours. The only time we get to choose when we want our extra sunlight is in the summer.

I used to want to abolish the time change, until I looked at the year long plot of sunrise and sunset time, and realized what happens without DST and switching. I changed my mind, because I discovered I like the outcome and I don’t actually want the alternative. https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/san-francisco

You haven’t heard from parents whose kids would be walking to school in the dark? They’re very persistent.

https://xkcd.com/1292/

>There is strong consensus to eliminate the time change

Yes, but I'm not sure if those people have thought through the ramifications fully. When we went permanent DST in the 70s, it was quickly repealed 383 to 16 due to the problems it caused.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-tried-year-round-daylight...

Officially there is no Wintertime, that's the real time. Summertime is the anomaly here and it drives me crazy that people want to stick to that forever.

> but they seldom mention this means an earlier sunset

I thought normal time meant a later sunset and later sunrise in the winter. That's why DST was enacted no? So that in the winter the sun rises earlier and sets earlier?

Anyways my preference would be for later sunrise and sunset, so that more of the day can be enjoyed around work. Which I think means staying on standard time the whole year.

>I thought normal time meant a later sunset and later sunrise in the winter.

It depends on what you're comparing against. Stuff is usually compared against normal time. So from that reference, normal time isn't a later or earlier sunset or sunrise at any time of the year. It's the standard. Normal=normal.

>That's why DST was enacted no? So that in the winter the sun rises earlier and sets earlier?

DST didn't change the winter, it only changed the summer. If you want to compare the current status vs a hypothetical permanent DST, then yes, the current status means the sun rises earlier and sets earlier in the winter compared to permanent DST.

>Anyways my preference would be for later sunrise and sunset, so that more of the day can be enjoyed around work. Which I think means staying on standard time the whole year.

No, that's staying on daylight time the whole year. Daylight time means the summer has a later sunrise and sunset. If we switch to permanent daylight time, then winter will also have a later sunrise and sunset. This was tried in the 70s, and was repealed 383 to 16 because people didn't like it:

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-tried-year-round-daylight...

Sounds like it makes sense, but nope.

Currently winter is "normal time", and wasn't changed when DST was created.

DST just pushes the day later in summer. If you woke up at sunrise on the winter equinox, that means you woke up awhile after sunrise on the summer equinox, so I guess we are "saving that wasted sunlight" by waking up an hour early in the summer.

You've got it backwards, DST is later sunrises and sunsets.

I can't be bothered to research it, but was always told as a kid the naming was for longer daylight hours after school, so the kids could help farm.

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