House passes bill to enact year-round Daylight Saving Time across the country | Hacker News Reader

House passes bill to enact year-round Daylight Saving Time across the country

cnn.com

54 pointspseudolus82 comments

I think saying on one time is better than switching back and forth, but we should really stick to Standard time.

I know people like it to be light out later in the evenings, but they tried this before in the 1970s and it didn't last long[0]. It turns out not only do people not like it to be dark late into the morning, but it also makes it unsafe for kids going to school.

Looking at sunrise and sunset times[1], people will spend a significant portion of the year with dark mornings.

Historically, year-round DST was done to conserve energy during war time and other energy crunches. Standard time seems like the more balanced choice for year-round use... that's probably why it was the standard to begin with. As difficult as these things are to pass, and as disruptive as they are (especially now with software update requirements), getting it right instead of making the same mistakes of the past seems important.

[0] https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-...

[1] https://savestandardtime.com/maps/

I hate to say it, but you're the problem. One time is better than switching, but we switch because no matter which time standard we choose, some group of people takes issue. The only way we can get one time standard is if we all let go of our highest preference and allow the second-best thing to succeed. Otherwise we'll be doomed to third-best (devolving into worst--see Indiana and Arizona and all the other carveouts within carveouts) for eternity.

This is why I think we have to switch. Everyone should be equally miserable

I mean, I'd rather us keep switching than have perma-daylights savings time. At least then things aren't messed up for at least half of the year.

> I hate to say it, but you're the problem. One time is better than switching

I’m not the problem, we agree. That’s the first thing I said in my post (thought I realize now I had a typo… “saying” = “staying”).

My concern is that if we choose a new standard that was already shown to be problematic when implemented previously, that we’ll end up reverting back in 2 years. Then it will be another 50 years before we try again.

If we go to daylight time and stick with it, I’m still happy. I just worry that people are so focused on that evening sun that they are forgetting where that time comes from and some of the issues that come with it.

Okay, well said. Maybe we should try one year of each and then put it to a popular vote.

Start school and work later, "problem" solved. Also another great argument for WFH, don't waste an hour in commute, spend it in bed getting the rest you need!

I mostly just want the time change to end, but I definitely prefer DST since the afternoon sun is something everyone can enjoy in the winter. I don't get how dark mornings (when a non-trivial percentage of the population is just asleep anyhow) are worse than a dark afternoon, especially when you'll probably wake up in the dark regardless. Plus sunrise even earlier in the summer is useless.

Kids already go to school in the dark in the winter (at least where I'm from). I can see how in the 70's it was more of an issue to increase the number of dark days because many more kids walked to school than they do now (another poster noted it's 10% of children compared to 50%, not sure if that's correct). And DST would be better for afternoon commutes. Plus DST has been pushed to being used during more and more of the year: the spring switch was in late April in the 70s and early 80s, then early April in the late 80s, now early March (since 2007 I think). 75% of the year is DST, let's just make it 100%.

But hey, the morning people out there are never going to be pleased with year-round DST, just like how people like me will never like standard time. But either is better than what we have right now.

Well studies show that early school start times are bad for kids anyway so schools should fix their schedules. Kids also naturally like to stay up later these days so more daylight would better match that rather than keeping awake with artificial light.

I also dispute that site's claim that everyone starts before 8am. Here on the west coast I'd say most jobs start at 9am unless they are retail. A lot of schools have also switched to later start times.

Not to mention: DST is already in effect for 65% of the year.

Permanent DST has been introduced in congress every year since 2018. A few years ago it passed the Senate but the house didn't take it up. This time the house has passed it but who knows if the Senate will take it up. I'd prefer to be on permanent DST but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

People who work in finance and certain fields of law on the west coast start their day at 9AM eastern time.

And those people are optimizing for money, "prestige" or something other than having a healthy schedule. We definitely should not dictate the entire country's sleep around west coast financiers.

But we're cool with this bill pushed by people whose primary concern is more tee times in Florida in January?

I lived most of my life in a place that already has days with post 8AM winter sunrises on Standard time and can only really get up with the sun. Permanent DST forces many people to start their day long before sunrise and somehow I'm supposed to believe that's the 'good for sleep' option.

Yep, we're cool with it because changing the clocks twice a year is ridiculous. People should live in an environment they're comfortable in. We should also push for a culture of not having to wake up at absolutely insane times in the morning. Like I said in another comment, this is a huge opportunity for many people to WFH and just ditch the commute. Positive changes all around.

> Here on the west coast I'd say most jobs start at 9am

If you work on things for banks, financial markets or the federal government, you may be starting as early as 5~6am on the west coast.

Great! Just think about how much daylight they can soon enjoy after work! Say goodbye to vitamin D deficieny and SAD in Winter!

the solution has always been adjusting the school/business hours as seen fit, not adjusting the clocks.

DST is one of those things our descendants will be baffled by the sheer stupidity of.

Couldn’t you say the same thing about time zones? Why adjust the clock when you can adjust all aspects of society instead?

that's a reductio ad absurdum, the opposite of which would be adjusting our clocks by some seconds every day so the sun would always rise at 6:00:00 AM. both extremes are equally neat in some way and painfully inconvenient in many others.

I am all for my sundial working 12 months a year.

> dark late into the morning, but it also makes it unsafe for kids going to school.

This is such bullshit.

What is unsafe for kids is human drivers driving their death machines into kids. The solution is not messing with clocks. The solution is convincing human drivers that they should not drive their death machines into kids.

You are presumably based in some location where "standard time" has year-round daylight around the time school starts. Guess what, many people live in locations closer to the poles where this is not the case. What do you do in a location where winter daylight hours are only between (say) 10:00 and 15:00? Have school start later and later, and have school days be shorter and shorter? Do such locations have the sides of their roads littered with child corpses, or do such locations enforce better driving?

Also, even in locations with longer days but all-day school, it's often dark when kids get out of school, especially after any extracurricular activities. At that point it's dark, and the kids are tired after a long school day, and the drivers are also tired after a long day at work. If anything, that would make them even more dangerous. The fact is, for many locations it's simply impossible to enforce that kids only go to and from school in broad daylight. Any problems arising in the dark (not from the dark!) must be solved in other ways than magically wishing for the sun to shine when it simply doesn't.

Could you please omit swipes like "this is such bullshit" and flamebait like "driving their death machines into kids"? These things are against the site guidelines because they poison the kind of discussion we're trying for here.

You're welcome to make your substantive points thoughtfully, of course.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Fair.

> but we should really stick to Standard time.

There are some arguments to stick with "half-way" time -- 30 minutes in the middle between standard and summer time. It does not necessarily solves all the problems but makes a reasonable compromise with farmers who want standard time and many others who prefer summer time.

> But detractors say it could have economic consequences, particularly for farmers who would have to wrestle with later sunrises.

I genuinely don't understand the "farmer's like DST" argument. Farmer's schedules are dictated by the sun not the time and the sun changes continuously year round. If the argument is about commercial coordination that follows the same logic of being difficult regardless given constantly shifting sunlight, at least without DST there's year-round consistency by the other businesses.

It also varies depending on where in a time zone you are. The eastern and western sides of a timezone could see sunrise and sunset at significantly different times.

DST was never about farmers, it was to conserve energy for the war effort. Farmers also aren't punching a clock at an office. They can start and end work when they want, based on the weather and daylight that suits the work.

If you have animals you are up with the sun, nothing about when you want to work.

That is really only true if you are milking animals. Crops don't care when you plant them or fertilize them or spray them. The closest thing you can get with crops is certain grains you want to sell at certain percentage levels which the sun helps bring down. But even that is 50% just so the mill doesn't rip farmers off.

The “went you want” part was more about in relation to the clock. The sun will rise and fall just the same regardless of how we set our clocks. The farmers are completely unaffected. Their days don’t shift just because the time shifts.

Yep. I mean I knew Amish growing up in PA who didn’t observe daylight savings time and just kept it the same year round. And they’re living off the land more than most.

I grew up in rural Oregon, if there was rain forecasted and the farmer was in the middle of a alfalfa or wheat harvest, they would be up in the middle of the night with a combine or bailer to get the harvest done before it gets soaked and potentially destroyed.

THIS. To quote Wikipedia:

> It is a common myth in the United States that DST was first implemented for the benefit of farmers.[40][41][42] In reality, farmers have been one of the strongest lobbying groups against DST since it was first implemented.[40][41][42] The factors that influence farming schedules, such as morning dew and dairy cattle's readiness to be milked, are ultimately dictated by the sun, so the clock change introduces unnecessary challenges.[40][42][43]

Cool. We did this before 1974 and immediately went back, and I never understood why. I guess I'll find out.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-happened-the-...

From what I'm reading, it was a big factor that children were walking to school in the dark. One stat I read was that since that time the percentage of kids walking/cycling to school went from almost 50% to now 10%. Maybe that could make the difference this time around.

They still have to walk to the bus stop.

Buses here go door to door. Or almost anyway. I guess it's because the school age population has declined.

This is a bad change.

I think it’s bad for kids to have to walk to school before sunrise.

Fundamentally it is useful to have more sunlight later in the evenings in the summer. It’s also useful to have sunlight early enough in the morning for conventional “start of day” times.

Changing the clocks meets these. Yes, time is arbitrary and throughout the year we could collectively change the times we do things at to better match daylight hours but this is obviously much worse and harder to coordinate than changing the time for everyone all together’

There are plenty of northern climate countries that get by just fine without DST. Also, if it’s genuinely a problem in a specific location for some reason, that specific location can just say, “Let’s all start work at 9 rather than 8 for the winter months” rather than impose an absolutely absurd song and dance on the entire time zone.

The majority of the US population lives at latitudes that would be affected by the “sun rises after 8am in winter” problem.

As I said before, changing the clocks is a much more efficient approach than getting every school and workplace (etc) to change their hours.

It’s not true IMO that “plenty” of northern countries do without it. Russia doesn’t (since 2014) but their time zones are a mess anyway. Iceland doesn’t. Otherwise pretty much every European country does.

Hm. A quick search suggests that 70 countries out of 195 have daylight savings time, with a fair number of those considering abolishing it. Most of those are in Europe. 73 countries have abolished DST, and 106 have never had it in the first place.

Not 100% sure on those stats. They come from AI, and I only spot-checked it. But yeah. Most northern climate countries do currently have DST.

Or we can just start school later because kids no longer need to leave at 2:30 to go help on the farm.

Northern countries have a lot of light in summer and a lot of darkness in winter anyway. I saw the Sun setting at 23:00 in Iceland at the end of June and rising at 02:00 and pitch black in Denmark at 15:30 in December. What can DST change there?

On the other side, equatorial countries have about the same sunset and dawn all year long. Again, DST is useless.

Where DST is useful is in a place like the one I'm living at, at 45 degrees North. I'd go with permanent DST plus an extra DST in summer. Basically it's what Spain have been doing for almost a century.

It's cloudy and still reasonably bright outside here. It will be dark past 22:00. I'd take an extra hour of light in the evening and darkness until 6:00 in the morning. It matches the time people goes to sleep and wake up here.

I'm glad we're agreed that changing the clocks twice a year is a bad idea, but I don't understand why we should abandon Daylight Savings Time by adopting it permanently. What's so wrong with Standard Time?

Oh, well: whether we put the clocks back or leave them permanently off-by-one, either is better than changing them around over and over.

The reason for permanent daylight savings (versus permanent standard) is to provide for later sunsets in the winter. By clock time, the sun would be rising later (after 8am in many places) but setting later as well giving people some late afternoon or evening sun. Which is better is ultimately subjective, you get short days in the winter regardless when you live far enough north.

The late sunrise can be more dangerous with a lot more people traveling in the dark (especially if there's mixed vehicle, bike, and pedestrian traffic, like around schools). So that's also something to consider, and a drawback to this particular choice.

Morning commutes are way less worse than afternoon ones so it makes sense to prioritize later daylight.

> Which is better is ultimately subjective

Most folks subjectively prefer having light after work because that's when it's more fun to do stuff. Unfortunately, the health impacts are (objectively!) worse under permanent daylight saving time.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7954020/ https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/prevention-wellness/s... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6436388/ (I've heard there's been some debate on this one, though the association positions stay the same)

Most people also prefer to wake up a bit after the sun rises. Daylight Savings approximates having the sun come up at the same time each day. People do not want to wake up in the dark.

If you wake up in the dark you are ensured to use the maximum amount of daylight possible. You also have the added benefit of being able to sleep until you need to get up instead of being woken up early by the sun.

Most people just go to sleep at a time such that they get enough sleep and they get up some time after sunrise. Our bodies naturally wake up with the sun. The modern clock defined world messes with our biology, and daylight savings helps correct this mismatch. Before people had clocks or times they had to show up to work, they would just get up with the sun.

It just doesn’t work. It starts getting light around 4-5am in the summer and 8am in the winter where I live

I do live far enough north, which is probably part of the reason "daylight savings" strikes me as a bit silly: no arrangement of clocks can work around the fact that there's not enough sunlight for all we want to do in a winter day. Both getting up before dawn and leaving work after sunset are undesirable, but during midwinter you can't avoid either one. I figure you might as well just learn to deal with the darkness, and if you can't, move south until you have enough daylight you don't need to "save" it!

The “savings” in “daylight savings” doesn’t refer to the winter part of the schedule. It refers to the summer part, where daylight that occurs during typical “sleeping” hours is “saved” by shifting the clocks so it occurs in the evening instead.

Oh, well, that's even more absurd in the north; in summertime the sun rises long before one wants to get up and lingers well after the day is done. What's to be saved? We have an irritating superabundance of daylight. Blackout curtains are often not enough.

The golf industry prefers daylight savings: https://gbej.org/golf-industry-fights-to-preserve-daylight-s...

So do restaurants.

We're not agreed. In a few years, we're gonna be. For a while.

Why do you think it's a bad idea ?

What's the downside other than having to take a minute to update your microwave clock twice a year ?!

This was passed in 1974, then repealed a few months later by popular demand.

https://www.joshbarro.com/p/this-week-in-the-mayonnaise-clin...

I finally built my side project and the government finally does something to make it pointless! Yay?

https://www.daylightsmearings.com/

There's a life lesson there somewhere.

We'll see if it passes the Senate.

Curious how this affects date/time algorithms and software libraries, particularly those that do not have a way to sync with an external authoritative source of time. I guess they all need to be updated to account for this change?

They need to be updated anyway, and always have been: somewhere in the world, someone changes time rules basically every year, or even every few months. All current OSes already have support for stating "locale X will not use daylight savings / will always use daylight saving, starting from day yyyymmdd at hhmm" through simple updates.

An updated tz database.

Or you set your timezone location to one that’s false, but matches what is now true (like Arizona, for example).

Yes there’s databases like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database that track this and that are included in libraries that do the arithmetics. It’s why those libraries are often relatively bulky.

>though its chances in the upper chamber remain unclear

Now they need to get it through the Senate. Maybe we'll see something useful passed during this admin :)

It still needs to pass the Senate.

The Senate passed in a few years ago[0]... then the House did nothing. Now the House passes is and we have to hope the Senate does something again. If only Congress could get on the same page and do these things at the same time.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...

Passing the senate back then was because of shenanigans; not popularity.

They played tricks with the “unanimous consent” procedure where senators didn’t know it was happening until after it was too late to object. Multiple senators said afterwards that they were opposed to it.

This will save a lot of lives! Hope it passes.

The shift is a relic of an older economy and damages folks' lives through worse mental health and driving outcomes [0].

[0]: https://www.coveragecat.com/blog/daylight-saving-time-car-in...

It's not the step change in time that's the gratest danger of DST, it's the entire time people are waking up early, increasing cancer rates and all-cause mortality: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6436388/

Fascinating, had not seen this research thank you for sharing.

Great. This will break every last log, timestamp, and record everywhere.

We don't need any of that.

I remember this exact debate going on in the south pacific in 2007.

Why would it?

Who is logging in a local time zone rather than UTC?

Something I genuinely don't understand: everyone is saying that with DST, the sun rises later in the day. But as someone who doesn't work first shift and regularly goes to bed anytime between 04:00 and 06:00, I can tell you with certainty that in the summer time (when DST is active), the sun always comes up *way* sooner. I typically despise DST because I always struggle to fall asleep due to the damned sun coming up right as I go to bed.

Meanwhile, in the winter, the sun typically doesn't start to rise until closer to 08:00.

The sun would come up even earlier without dst. It’s just the earth’s tilt that’s causing the sun to come up earlier after spring, nothing we did to the clocks.

So what you're saying is I have it backward. In the summer, without DST, the sun would rise like an hour earlier than with DST.

Is that correct?

Yes. You advance the clock 1 hour. So 06:00 becomes 07:00, so the run rises 1 hour later.

So getting rid of DST makes it 06:00 instead of 07:00

Oh.

Hey, thanks y'all for explaining it to me. :)

_This_ is the great herculean push for workers rights from Gen X — abolishment of the cruel Standard Time! What a fucking joke that this is what we send people to washington for, while citizens are summarily executed in the streets and cost of living skyrockets.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com