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Comment by PopAlongKid | Hacker News Reader

> If it's all just an automated and finite offset, there's no reason for daylight savings policies to hew to 60 minutes adjustments.

For as long as clock sync for electronic devices has been common, I have suggested to anyone who would listen that we should adjust forward 10 minutes on the first Sunday of each month for six months, and then back 10 minutes on the first Sunday of the other six months. A ten minute change once a month is not only easier to adjust to (almost unoticeable), but if you miss it, it's not as big a deal as being off by an hour would be.

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Moving up and down at a linear rate would result in a saw-tooth-like wave, but the length of days change in a sine wave. Why not have the clocks sync themselves to sunrise time based on their timezone and latitude? I don't think this would be much different, in practice, than changing times at a linear rate.

This would lead to a monumental amount of confusion.

The primary time keeping device in my house is the clock on my stove; I wear old school watches a lot; and most of my cars are old and have old clocks in them. I can't be the only one, so multiply this by at least a few million other people in America alone.

Sure, you can tell everyone they need to ditch dumb clocks and replace them with internet-enabled smart clocks. But I think that's a far more onerous undertaking than just dealing with the fact that solar time and clock time are mismatched.

More than one car per individual seems already such a waste but multiplying this at million people level, is that a real thing in USA or are you just extrapolating in your own social bubble? I mean, I must admit that I had the thought that this was just a troll that leverage on gross exaggeration of some American stereotypes, but actually I just can't decide if you are plain serious about these statements.

I have two cars (just for me, not family). Paid about $6k in total for them. You can have multiple cars without being in any particular social class

Adding to my sibling comment, time is also mostly used as a coordination system. Being offset by a few minutes would make aligning meetings with your remote coworker an even bigger nightmare than it is now.

Why don't we take it to the extreme then? Just make the time the Sun rises 6am always. And make seconds longer or shorter to adjust.

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