Mexico Abolishes DST | Hacker News Reader

Mexico Abolishes DST

timeanddate.com

52 pointsJackMcMack18 comments

DST makes no sense to begin with, but it makes even less sense as you get closer to the Equator. On the other hand, permanent DST is a disaster for high-latitude places, where you’ll have kids walking to school in the dark. Russia trialed permanent DST for a short time, and then switched to permanent standard time.

With so many caveats related to DST, why even bother with it at all?

I don't see DST as a disaster in this (relatively) high-latitude place. And I have kids.

Here in Sweden, we switch to standard time this weekend.

Right now, sunrise is 8.16 and sunset is 17.32, so yes, I'm taking the kids to school in the dark, and it's still light when I pick them up around 16.45.

Next week, yes, it'll be light in the morning. But sunset will be 16.19, which means I'll be picking the kids up from their after-school program in the dark.

On December 10, the sun will be up 8.46 - 15.20, so it'll be dark for both drop-off and pick-up -- and neither DST nor Standard time will change that.

If it's really a walking-to-school-in-the-dark issue, then maybe the school start time is the problem. "Schools Start Too Early" - https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/features/schools-start-too-early.h...

> The American Academy of PediatricsExternalexternal icon has recommended that middle and high schools start at 8:30 a.m. or later to give students the opportunity to get the amount of sleep they need, but most American adolescents start school too early.

I’m not sure what the culture is in Sweden but in America most kids get to school on their own, usually by walking. Also kids are off for the shortest days, so if they live at a high latitude they’ll only see maybe a couple weeks where they have to walk in the dark. Sure schools could start later, but it seems simpler to just get rid of DST, and if you shift start times by one hour you’re offsetting the hour head-start you were getting from DST.

> in America most kids get to school on their own, usually by walking.

Citation needed. I don't believe that is remotely true from my own experiences or kids experience.

Sorry for responding so late. It's fall break here and I've been with the kids this week. - And coming home after sunset. :)

anikom15 used Russia as an example of high-latitude. Most of the US is below the 49th parallel. That's about where Paris is. Very little of Russia is below the 49th.

I'm at 58 degrees north, about level with Juneau, Alaska.

So I don't think the people in the lower 48 live in what anikom15 regards as "high-latitudes." Certainly I don't think that.

For another example to think of, Iceland uses UTC, although it's west enough that they are about 1 hour ahead of mean solar time.

In the US were making it DST only.

Kids don’t really walk to school here so it’s not actually an issue in that regard.

It does mean people get more sunlight hours after work though.

US Senate passed Permanent DST unanimously: https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/us-permanent-dst.html

Once that goes through US states will have the option of DST/standard time switching, standard time only, or DST only.

This is going to be a nightmare. It's hard enough to keep track of which state is in which time zone even with them (mostly) grouped by geography

At the very least, even if everyone agrees after a month or so that the idea is horrible, we will have so many new timezones forever in the tz database! :D

At least you won't have to also take into account the date when the clocks go back or forward.

Good on them! I wish Denmark would do the same.

Though, as a software developer, I'm slightly worried how many weird/interesting side-effects it will have, how many places are there strange hardcoded edgecases due to this..

Indeed, although I would imagine most software really relies on OS-provided Time/date API these days. It's probably some ancient legacy antics that would need some fixing, but then again, such legacy antics is way more difficult to fix in the first place.

I hope the US will follow suit.

And Canada should follow once the US does it.

I like how DST switches things up twice a year. But unfortunately there’s a very big and dramatic lobby against it.

Great!

I wish Canada would make DST permanent year round.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com