HackiNews

• Svip
  This article mentions that Cuba tried permanent summer time in 2004-06. This makes me wonder, has anyone ever tried permanent summer time and not given up? I know Russia attempted in 2011-2013[1] (before switching to permanent standard time), and the US did it in 1974[2] before going back. I know British Columbia did it this year, but I wonder how long that will last. BC is pretty North, and I wonder how local Canadians will feel about the very dark mornings in winter.

  [1] https://timeinrussia.com/daylight-saving-russia/ [2] https://www.newsweek.com/the-us-tried-permanent-daylight-sav...

  Edit: Updated comment to say "permanent summer time", since "permanent DST" is rather incompatible a statement.

  • mhitza
    I'm very much the kind of person that prefers the sun extending in the afternoon than the downside waking up in the night. The current "normal" makes the days feel more easily as "lost".

    • irdc
      There is likely a minority of people who are not significantly affected by a lack of morning light and therefore prefer having light in the afternoon. However, the way we set our clocks must work for society as a whole, and there is an abundance of medical research demonstrating the importance of morning light.

      • mhitza
        Glad to hear that the tyranny of majority works at a societal norms level. Hopefully at some point that will be the case with democracies as well, instead of serving the privilege of few very wealthy individuals :)

        I'd like to imagine a parallel universe where society has decided that given shorter days, as law, working hours must be reduced during the winter period to allow people to wakeup and leave work while the sun is still up. And for those unfortunate ones that work during night shifts the bonuses are significant for their added Vitamin D deficiency and life disruption.

        • bryanlarsen
          The stated preference of the majority in surveys is permanent daylight time, more sunlight in the evening and less in the morning.

          The revealed preference is the opposite. Most people, when given the option for flex time, will start and end work later, increasing their morning sunlight and decreasing their evening sunlight.

          Voting works on stated preference, so we'll likely end up with permanent daylight time.

          • Izkata
            I see that example as the opposite, people just like to sleep in in general, and later sunrise/sunset gives them more light in the times that matter. They don't cancel out, doing both gives the best result.

            You have to know ahead of time whether people value their sleep over sunlight, or sunlight over sleep, to know which version makes the most sense.

            • zamadatix
              I've started to despise revealed preference for precisely this scenario. When it's applied accurately it rarely says anything normal reasoning couldn't already make abundantly apparent but it's soooo easy to inaccurately apply and then the conversation goes off the rails to focus on what the revealed preference does/doesn't say.
      • vintermann
        Why is it so hard to set our schedules instead of our clocks? Can't we just agree that school starts an hour later in winter, for instance?

        • sokoloff
          Then parents who do morning routine or drop off have to come in an hour later, and their partner also wants to wake an hour later so they can stay up with the family an hour later, which means they don’t want to open the coffee shop until an hour later, so now the random commuter wants to start later so their coffee shop is open, and pretty soon it’s just as easy to say “ah screw it, we’re just going to change the clocks twice a year…”

          • christophilus
            Or, we come up with a system that actually follows the rhythms of nature, rather than forcing a standard schedule year round. Like, I get up later and go to bed earlier in the winter like pretty much every other mammal on the planet, and the 9-5 can shove it. This has nothing to do with clocks changing. Just our patterns changing.

            I’d like a single, consistent way to mark time, but that shouldn’t dictate my seasonal schedule and rhythms.

            • rayiner
              > Or, we come up with a system that actually follows the rhythms of nature, rather than forcing a standard schedule year round.

              The clock-driven day is one of humanity's greatest inventions. You can't build a spacefaring society on "following the rhythms of nature."

              • vintermann
                Eh, I say give it a try. Worst case we don't get to space but have a good time.

                • rayiner
                  We have given it a try. It’s how most of the world worked until industrialization, and how much of the world still works (like my dad’s village in Bangladesh). It’s a recipe for poverty.
      • rolosa
        The best part of winter for me is waking up in the dark, going to work in the dark, and driving home in the dark. I don't get affected by SAD and it's much more pleasant to me when it's not sunny.
      • thousand_nights
        i mean us night owls have been used to society fucking us over with their schedules for our whole lives, it's nothing new
    • OroPla
      Just go to sleep with the sun. Whatever we do to your clocks won't affect the sun.

      • nonamesleft
        4h 40m in midwinter, 20h 20m in midsummer :D (plus nearly permanent twilight) - i suppose that might work if i was a bear that hibernates (and i believe the bears are right about this).
      • vintermann
        Around here, that would be pretty much hibernation.
      • watwut
        That is too soon. I would go to sleep before kids come back from after school activities. Most of the colleagues would still be at work when I go to sleep too.
    • bluGill
      So change when you get up.
  • lucideer
    (assume when you say "permanent DST" you mean "permanent Summer Time" since "DST" is just a description of the overall switching convention, not any particular season)

    Interestingly, in Ireland, the time definitions are reversed from most places - summer is standard, "Winter Time" is the deviation. This has the effect of aligning the "official" time with mainland Europe (Irish Standard Time = Central European Time) in theory, but never in practice.

    Given that, if Ireland were to adopt the EU's plans to drop DST, there's a reasonable chance they could keep summer time.

    • jprjr_
      In the US we switch between "(zone) standard time" to "(zone) daylight time" - Eastern Standard Time to Eastern Daylight Time.

      So "permanent daylight saving time" makes sense to us since we use the term "daylight time" where Europeans tend to call it "summer time."

      Still true that DST really just describes the overall time-changing process, just giving some insight into why the phrase makes sense to us.

      • throwaway27448
        I think daylight time refers to the winter because it's emphasizing daylight? Always struck me as terribly named and never learned to differentiate until now
  • gus_massa
    Here in Argentina we are in permanent summer time GMT-3 since a long time, but we should be in GMT-4. For some time during summer we had double summer time GMT-2.

    But 20% of the surface of Argentina should be at GMT-5. It's easier fot transport and communication to ignore it, instead of splinting the country in two time zones in particular because it includes there are only a few big cities there. Anyway, they usually have double summer time but during that period they had triple summer time! There were a lot of complains from Mendoza and other cities there, and for some time we had a few actives time zones.

    It was a nightmare to configure the time in the computer, because we didn't have a timezone and Greenland was not making random funny changes. We also canceled one of the switches a week before the date, so whoever is in charge of that in each OS still hate us.

    I'm not sure if it's related, but we had very popular TV shows at "midnight".

  • dubcanada
    Mornings are still dark doesn't really matter

    • birdsongs
      Norway. Same.

      At the peak of the shift (usually when DST comes into or out of effect) we're either losing or gaining an hour of daylight per week.

      Throwing an hour shift one way or the other does nothing for us. And in peak winter the sun isn't up for me until 10 anyway, and it's down by 3, so what are we even saving?

    • konimex
      Ah, the perks of living on the equator. Sun rises at 6, and sets at 6 (give or take 15-30 minutes).

      I was a bit surprised when I visited a country in the northern hemisphere in the winter since it's still dark at 7.

    • mrweasel
      It apparently mattered enough that Russia reverted it's decision to stay on DST.
  • froh
    the closer you are to the equator, the less DST makes a difference. further north if anything you'd want permanent winter time. there (i.e. here, de_BY) DST gets you 1h more light in the afternoon evening when there is plenty of daylight available, i.e. March-Oct.

    https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/cuba/havana

    https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/germany/nuremberg

    https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/finland/oulu

    and then you have the east west axis and itnernation collaboration and itnernational teams. which is why europe has a single CE(S)t from spain to poland and everything in-between, except for the apostates on the island.

  • jefftk
    Many places are permanently ahead by at least an hour, including Spain, western China (+2), and Argentina.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone#/media/File:Solar_ti...

    • Svip
      In China it's due to the state wanting all of China to be at Beijing time, and for Beijing, it is standard time. As for Spain, Franco switching to German time, because he liked Hitler, and Spain never switched back. Besides, Spain observes DST like the rest of the EU. Argentina is however an example of a country that switched to permanent summer time and sticking with it (since 2009).

      • jefftk
        Whether we call it "permanent summer time" or "aligning with the political region to the east" it's the same thing: late sunrise, late sunset.

        (Spain is effectively using single-double DST, based on the delta from solar)

  • ralphm
    Well, most of western Europe stayed on CET after World War II. Initially the Nazis forced this upon The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and occupied France in May 1940, including DST. Double summer time! As The Netherlands was on Amsterdam time before the war, it went from +00:20 to 02:00 in one go. Spain followed as a gesture of political solidarity. DST remained year round until 1942.

    After the war DST was abolished again, and then reintroduced in 1977 because of the energy crisis.

    There has been talk about having permanent (double) summer time again, but the problem is that in winter, sunrise would be around 10 am.

• Yizahi
  Imo the obsession with "solar/astronomic" time is weird. I kinda get the reason - a) we humans hate any change, b) we humans reaaaally like pretty and symmetric concepts. By why exactly it is "a must" that high point of the sun matched with 12:00 precisely? Who cares about that for a valid reason instead of tradition and fear? Why not match it with 11:00 or 13:00 or literally any time point?

  Countries have long singe transitioned from the rural lifestyle and should adjust life and healthcare conditions for a majority, not for minority. A majority of population should get as much daylight as possible, for the best long-term health outcomes.

  It should be a pretty simple and easy task for professional statisticians. Compile average outside time for every age and every job cohort, overlay them and we will get a nice graph with two nice normal deviation peaks - morning and evening. Then shift a daylight graph (which would be a single very wide "peak" of sorts) overlaid over that outside time graph by adjusting timezone point/center. Play with it until the area matching on both graphs is maximized and bingo - that's the optimal timezone for a majority of population.

  I suspect with AI help it can be done in a week by a tiny team, instead of years and decades of baseless shouting and finger pointing and name calling in press, parliament and random social networks.

  • rayiner
    It's actually extremely logical. It makes sense to line up the day with the actual sunlight hours at any given time. But people have millions of events keyed to specific times. It's much simpler just to shift the time base for everyone than for everyone to remember "the kids' karate practice is at 4 pm in the winter and 5 pm in the summer."
• wafflemaker
  If they still move time back in spring, they will gain 1h per person.

  If they keep doing it indefinitely, they're looking at some serious profits and boost to GDP.

  • Leonard_of_Q
    Not to mention they'll need far fewer candles cause it'll be light at night. Nobody burns candles during the day, sun's up at night so no need for them, profit.

    • jamesbfb
      This made me giggle. Living in Australia，being from a state where we do have DST, we loved to make the joke that Queenslanders (who do not have daylight savings) would enjoy the lack of daylight due to their curtains (drapes for those across the ditch) lasting longer.
  • throw-qqqqq
    Haha I know a skit from 1990, where the comedian makes this exact point.

    He even takes it a step further:

    “Why settle for turning back time just one hour? Think about how much we f*cked up the world in the past 30 years! Let’s turn time back 30 years and fix that mess!”

  • vasco
    This is Cuba we're talking about. Profits only matter if they go to the ruling family and friends.

    • berkes
      That's unnecessary political stereotyping.

      But what does matter in Cuba, is Savings.

      The country is in shambles, beyond bankruptcy, in cases literally starving. Because of it"international" sanctions. Severe shortages of petrol, water and energy.

      So it wouldn't be surprising if, by moving the clock every year in just one direction, petrol, water and electricity is saved. And it wouldn't even be suprising if that actually happens.

      • stavros
        It's not stereotyping when it can be applied to basically every country in the world, including the US.
• torvald
  From what I've gathered, this is the plan for all EU countries as well. But the pandemic has stalled the overall process.

  https://jp.ibtimes.com/eu-clock-change-plan-stalled-104949

  • w3ll_w3ll_w3ll
    In EU it's currently stalled because some countries want to stay permanently on their DST time (south europe) and others (north europe) want to stay on their solar time.

    It's better to make a common decison about this, so we are stalled.

    • mcv
      It's weird to standardise on summer time instead of standard time. It moves you one timezone to the east. And in western Europe, a lot of countries are already on central European time. Permanent summertime would put them on eastern European time, same as Kyiv. In winter the sun wouldn't come up until 9:30.

      • LluisGerard
        In Spain most people I talk to want permanent summertime because they like having sun late at the evening during summer, and they can't stand it when in winter the sun sets at 17:00. I think the issue is that a lot of offices work from 9:00 to 13:00 and 15:00 to 19:00. I remember when working on an office in Barcelona and having to drive 1 hour. I would leave home in darkness and drive back home in darkness.

        • mdlxxv
          Spaniard here. I'm one of those few weirdos that desperately need daylight in the mornings to properly function, especially in autumn and winter, and couldn't care less if it gets dark earlier in the evening. I might even welcome it, especially in summer. We are rare, but we exist!

          Spain is already in the wrong time zone for standard time, and when DST hits, it's two hours off the time we really should have. It's unnatural for daylight to last until 22:00 or nearby in june and july in Spain's latitude. A bit more and we'd end up with some kind of midnight sun, like we were in the Arctic Circle. It's ridiculous.

          I mean, it's usually so hot, and getting hotter every year, that you can only go outside somewhat comfortably after nightfall anyway, so I'd actually prefer if it got dark at 20:00 or earlier in the summer, as it should be. On the other hand, it's horribly demoralizing for me when it's almost 8:30 in the morning in mid-october and it's still so dark. Going back to standard time, like we did a few days ago, gives me a brief respite, but unfortunately dark mornings will soon return in a month or so.

          • mrweasel
            > Spain is already in the wrong time zone for standard time

            That's probably even more of an issue for Spain, made even stranger by the fact that Portugal is in the "correct" timezone.

            • pjmlp
              Yeah, it is even more weird when going from Portugal to Galicia, as the longitude kind of doesn't change.

              Even if it was a political decision, as answered on sibling comment, moving east at least makes some sense for the common person.

            • atherton94027
              This is a consequence of WW2, Spain and France moved to CET to align themselves with nazi germany. Portugal and the UK didn't.
        • CiaranMcNulty
          It’s also because Spain being on CEST makes little sense, with its longitude

          • cromka
            I personally think we'd be better off without summer time but with more timezones in EU.
      • Yizahi
        It is not weird when the standard is either outdated or meaningless. Why exactly a sun high point "must" match precisely 12:00 mark? Literally no one needs that precise match for any valid reason (if it were the case then DST would be impossible, and it is obviously just fine).
      • wongarsu
        Moving time "east" of our actual timezone is pretty appealing to me because of how evening-heavy standard schedules have gotten. The sun might behave symmetrically around 12:00, but most people don't get up at 4:00 and go to bed at 20:00. Most people's days are shifted 2-4 hours to the evening compared to that symmetric schedule, which makes sunlight in the evening more useful than it is in the morning

        • bryanlarsen
          That's natural. Without clocks and artificial light humans wake up with the sun and gather around the campfire when the sun goes down.
      • tedodor
        I would rather stay on permanent summer time and give up one hour of sun in the morning for one more hour of sunlight in the afternoon, even if it places us "wrong" geographically. The recent change from summer to winter time was brutal moving the sunset from 17:30 to 16:30, meaning it's dark when going home from work.
      • Thlom
        By end of year the sun comes up around 10 here. If we were on permanent summer time it wouldn't come up until 11. But at least the sun wouldn't set until 16:00 instead of 15:00 as it does now in December. :D
      • matwood
        Maybe I’m an outlier, but I’d rather it stay light later. Sunset at 16:30 in the winter is horrible and depressing IMO.
      • sdevonoes
        Yeah but the sun would set later in the evening. That’s a nice tradeoff
      • fossilwater
        Every summer, DST destroys my sleep. I find it hard to get into "sleep mode" when there is still some sunlight at 22:30
      • watwut
        > In winter the sun wouldn't come up until 9:30.

        I dont care when it goes up. What sux is that it goes down too soon. I would gladly take a shift where it goes up later if I get to have more sun afternoon.

      • stavros
        And it would also set later, which is my personal preference as a Greek.
      • karlosvomacka
        > In winter the sun wouldn't come up until 9:30.

        Much better than having sunset before 16:00.

        • nkmnz
          Depends on your personal preference. It's ridiculous that the politic topic is the question "should most of us suffer in the morning or should most of us suffer in evening", instead of "how could we allow for more flexible individual schedules", especially when it comes to school, opening hours of public services, and store hours.

          • myersj
            How, specifically, would you solve for "just show up like, whenever you want" for kids in school?
        • nkmnz
          P.S.: it's not even a question of personal preference. It's a question of scientific evidence. Even if you don't believe that most of these benefits apply to most people, you're free to bring evidence about the benefits of early-evening light exposure...

          Evidence-backed benefits of morning light exposure:

          Advances the circadian clock, helping shift the body's biological night earlier. Randomized controlled study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24179293/

          Promotes earlier sleep timing and may improve subjective sleep quality. Systematic review of 45 studies: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30670164/

          Improves alertness, attention, and reaction times, although average effects are small. 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 150 studies involving 5,401 participants (daytime light, not exclusively morning): https://doi.org/10.1080/15502724.2025.2493669

          Helps treat seasonal depression (SAD). Systematic review and network meta-analysis of 17 randomized trials involving 773 patients: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40629637/

          Can improve outcomes in nonseasonal depression when bright-light therapy is added to treatment. 2024 meta-analysis of 11 randomized trials involving 858 patients: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39356500/

          Natural daylight exposure helps synchronize the biological clock with the solar day. Experimental research found that exposure to natural light-dark cycles advanced circadian timing compared with modern indoor lighting environments: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23910656/

          • watwut
            There is no morning light exposure either way. Seriously. You are talking about "scientific evidence" from completely different time zone with completely different light conditions and completely different lifestyles. There are multiple hours of dark between sunset and going to sleep in the winter anyway. You are waking up into dark and going to school/work anyway.

            And only very few people are like leisure or outside sport activities in the morning before going to school or work. It is just not that relaxing when you have to watch the clock or take longer shower after.

        • flohofwoe
          What? No! I find it utterly depressing to get up in the morning and it's still completely dark outside. A dark late afternoon is much nicer IMHO.

          • watwut
            It is not dark late afternoon. It is dark early afternoon

            • flohofwoe
              How early it gets dark in winter depends on how far up north you are of course. On my latitude (Germany) it gets dark around 4:30pm and 5:30pm in winter, which for me is late afternoon (6:00pm would then be early evening)
    • lgrebe
      I dont see how having multiple timezones in europe would be disadvantageous.

      • 4thguy
        Exactly. It's not like there aren't multiple timezones in Europe already
      • _ph_
        We do have multiple time zones in Europe. They have been agreed upon for a practical compromise. It is not clear to me what would be the advantage of calling off that compromise and have a costly rearrangement.
      • mantas
        At least in my whereabouts it's more about split opinions inside the country.
    • not-kinsale-joe
      I think there is also an issue with Ireland needing to stay in the same time zone as Northern Ireland.

      • bloak
        That's right. I think for political reasons Northern Ireland has to have the same time as Ireland and the same time as Britain.

        And Scotland has to have GMT in the winter so that school children don't have to walk to school in the dark. (Suffering and deaths were caused when they experimentally tried UTC+1 in the Scottish winter.)

        Therefore, if you want to get rid of clock changes it really has to be GMT for the whole of the British Isles. I think that would work for me. But I'd rather stick with the current system than make any other change, like UTC+1 all year or Britain different from Ireland.

        • ninalanyon
          > Scotland has to have GMT in the winter so that school children don't have to walk to school in the dark.

          This gets brought up every time the discussion happens, yet we manage perfectly well even further north here in Norway.

          Also why should people need government permission to vary the time at which they do things?

          As far as I'm concerned I just want the clock to not change every spring and autumn. Institutions can surely be left to decide for themselves what working hours they have? After all shops, cafes, restaurants, bars, etc., already do that.

          • Hamuko
            >This gets brought up every time the discussion happens, yet we manage perfectly well even further north here in Norway.

            Yeah, try going to school in Lapland. If school starts at 09:00, you're walking to school in the dark. If school ends at 14:00, you're walking home in the dark.

    • Someone
      > and others (north europe) want to stay on their solar time.

      Closer to their solar time, for quite a few. As an extreme example, most of Spain lies West of the prime meridian (some parts of it even west of Great Britain, the island), but its time zone is an hour ahead of that of London.

      • mantas
        But does solar time matters nowadays? In modern day-to-day life noon is not 12:00. People wake up at 5-6-7. And go to bed at 10-11-12. Even for early risers, middle of the day is well past 12:00. Having DST time makes solar mid-day closer to factual mid-day. I'd even argue to for +2 hours DST :D

        • _ph_
          Yes, solar time matters as your biological rhythm depends on it. The most important part of it being able to have daylight when you either rise in the morning or at least have the sun get up quickly after that. Another important point is, that there is plenty of experimental evidence that shows that starting schools before the pupils are really awake is not effective.

          It is a misconception, that "noon" is the middle point of your awake time. That was never the case. Our day usage most of the time is asymmetric: start the day and especially the work with the sunlight, spend the evening time off after work after sun set.

          Using the high point of the sun as the reference for the daytime is a very practical choice, as this is the one easily observable time point which doesn't move much over the course of the year (a few minutes, but that is symmetric).

        • DocTomoe
          IT matters when you have an economic zone in which some have 9am being 'basically mid-day', while the others have '9am being 'oh, the sun just went up'.

          This traditionally has been solved in two ways:

          1. do the split and accept that you will have costs associated with different time zones and sleep/wake cycles in your population (e.g.: USA / Soviet Russia)

          2. don't do the split, and have the cost by putting a time/light adjustment burden on the population (e.g.: PRC, European Union)

          My preferred solution would be to abandon all time zones and use something like UTC, or yet better: .beat / Biel Mean Time [1], which does not come with a 'oh, 12 means midday' penalty.

          [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

          • iggldiggl
            > My preferred solution would be to abandon all time zones and use something like UTC

            Which means that

            a) textual time references in stories would stop working unless also specifying a location, which would cause a lot of weirdness, especially in fiction

            b) perhaps more importantly for day-to-day life, it causes a lot of weirdness around the change of the calendar day and the weekday. It's a rather useful property of the current system that the change of calendar day happens at a time when most people are asleep or otherwise not too fussed about the exact calendar date.

            If you completely abolish time zones, that means that for everybody not lucky enough to live near wherever the meridian ends up (which would always be a significant fraction of the world's population, no matter where you'd place the meridian), the change of calendar date would happen during the middle of the waking hours, which causes a lot of weirdness (do public holidays now actually start and stop in the middle of the working day?) and makes date references vastly more cumbersome because a single calendar date can now refer to both solar n in the afternoon/evening and solar date n+1 in the morning.

            So you'd have to start using rather awkward double dates for referring to a certain solar day ("the event will take place from the 22/23rd to the 24/25th", "see you on Thursday/Friday" [which isn't the same thing as "see you on Thursday or Friday" today, because that'd become "see you on Thursday/Friday or Friday/Saturday" under the new system properly]), or else develop some convention based on the local solar noon/midnight, which is basically reintroducing time zones through the back door.

    • OroPla
      Why do we all need to have the same time? And if we do, we should just use UTC around the globe.
    • mantas
      It's more complex than north vs south.

      I'm quite north (but not the far north) but I'm strongly for DST. If we went for solar time, we'd loose long bright evenings in the summer but have sun at 3am. Spring/fall evenings would be much darker too. I hate time switching. But I'd rather switch then loose DST summer evenings. Otherwise we'd loose a lot of outdoorsy socialising on weekdays

      But some people don't go outdoors after work. And they prefer brighter mornings for couple extra weeks. During the winter the mornings are dark with or without DST.

  • _ph_
    Well, actually not. What was voted on was the plan to end the DST shift. The reason it stalled on was, that there was no decision about how exactly to end the shift.

    In my personal opinion, the only reasonable decision would be to permanently return to the standard time before the introduction of DST. Because otherwise the whole European timezone would have to be redesigned.

• presentation
  I thought that DST was dumb until I moved to Tokyo and find it sad that sunset is at 4pm in the winter

  • nkmnz
    Sunset isn't changed by DST. You adjust your schedule. You're free to do so on your own terms, without the government forcing everyone to do the same shift at the same time for the same amount of time.

    • maratc
      It only works when you don't have children (kindergartens and schools start at 8) or spouse (who can have a different schedule) or office work (so you don't have to be at the office at 9.)

      Time has stopped being an astronomical fact, and is a social contract nowadays. It's possible that you can afford to opt out of that contract, but most people can't.

      • nkmnz
        That's mostly true(*), and we should work on making the opt-out a standard procedure where ever possible.

        Instead, the public discourse centers around which minority can force the majority to follow their preferred terms in the social contract. At best, it's a zero sum game - most likely, it's a net loss for everyone if we include all externalities, especially the suppression of discussions about more individuality.

        (*) DST is not a social contract, it's entirely made up by the law.

        • maratc
          You can take it in any direction you want, but I have pretty low expectations of schools willing to teach my kids from 10 to 16, or mechanics willing to fix my car at 20, or doctors willing to take my blood exam at 22 — all that just because that would be convenient for me.

          The modern society started with the Industrial Revolution, when the people understood that there are some very tangible benefits when everyone starts working at the same hour, and started building around that. This building included discarding "local time" (an astronomical fact) in favour of standard time (social contract.)

          • OroPla
            > or doctors willing to take my blood exam at 22

            There used to be a system in my country where there were large doctor offices and you didn't really have your doctor, as you had your clinic. (I'm not talking hospital, but doctor's office.)

            It was staffed around the day. Each doctor had a work life balance and you could come in whenever. I'm pretty sure this approach works for most service professions.

            School can be transitioned to be purely online. Watch video lectures when you want and take online tests regularly. There is really no point to lock all kids up at school for hours each day if the goal is merely to teach them. People leave school illiterate these days, so it's not like it could get any worse.

          • ninalanyon
            But not everyone does start working at the same hour. I went to a supermarket today that opens at 07:00 and closes at 23:00, a cafe that opened at 10:00 and closes at 18:00, and a charity shop that opened at 12:00 and closes at 16:00.

            When I was working I worked from 08:00 to 16:00 with a half hour break for lunch. But several of my colleagues in the same office worked 07:00 to 15:00. All of us worked with other engineers in countries across the world. My children went to school at 08:30 until 13:30 until they were in senior high school when it was 08:00 to 15:30

            The local buses start running at 05:30 and stop at 22:30.

          • TheOtherHobbes
            It would be possible to split the day into shifts and have the night owls providing services for other night owls.

            Medical emergency cover is 24 hours already. Some factories run 24 hours. So do some transport networks.

            There would be huge benefits for commuting because traffic would be spread out.

            The practical issues have more to do with noise and energy use, not the "social contract."

            • maratc
              Most working adults are also parents, and so their working hours are wrapped around the daycare hours.

              In any case, you’re talking about a societal change which is much broader than just a clock-setting issue.

          • watwut
            And before industrial revolution, people were even more in sync. Whole families/groups slept in one room, so one of you wakes up, everyone wakes up. One insist on staying up, everyone is bothered.
        • jprjr_
          I'm thinking of a time I worked a university help desk and had to deal with a professor that considered himself a night owl and didn't understand why we weren't staffed during his preferred working hours of 10pm-8am. He was literally the only one on campus working those hours, besides things like security.

          There's wanting to work a bit earlier or a bit later than everyone around you but there's a limit to how out-of-sync you can get.

          • OroPla
            For work it doesn't really matter. If your company is large enough you'll have offices around the world and have to deal with some colleagues not being available during your working hours. Just keep all communication asynchronous.
    • WinstonSmith84
      Exactly, the time on the clock is just a number, can't understand people complaining about this.. If one wants to have its dinner at sunset then so be it, whether the sunset is at 4PM or 9PM. I mean I get it some people don't have a freewill unfortunately but many people can dictate how their day shall look like
  • 3form
    Note that DST doesn't change that. It makes the already long days feel longer, not the short ones. Or you could view it as your mornings being brighter in winter perhaps. But yeah, as such it never made much sense to me, though maybe my view is too much mid latitude driven.
  • pezezin
    I also live in Japan and I have yet to find a foreigner that likes the Japanese time zone. What is the purpose of having the sunrise a 4:00 in Summer if all the shops and businesses are closed until 9:00?

    • Shank
      I guess you found me! I like it. No change is better than changing any arbitrary time.
  • tokai
    That has nothing to do with DST and doesn't make it less dumb at all.
• gvieri
  I really hope that Italy will follow... Every single time adjustment (or jet lag) is a drama for me.

  • canpan
    Everyone in Europe wants to abolish DST, the problem is the consensus for what comes after. So the discussion is stuck since 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_time_in_Europe

    • simoncion
      > ...the problem is the consensus for what comes after.

      When one can't decide between two roughly equivalent options, there's a really cool way to choose between them! Assign each option to a side of a fair coin, flip the coin, and select the one whose side is face up.

      It's really neat how many thorny problems can be either eliminated or made substantially less thorny with the careful addition of some randomness.

      • OroPla
        They're not equal. Summer time is awful in summer and it would be even worse in winter. We as a species need daylight in the morning and darkness in the evening. Not the other way around.
      • user43928
        I'd fight tooth and nail for them not to take an hour of sunlight from me during summer evenings.

        It is not roughly the same if the sun rises an hour earlier instead, at 04:30 instead of 05:30.

        I don't get up before 08:30 and I will not somehow adjust my schedule by three hours to use the sunlight in the morning.

        • ninalanyon
          The sun rises when it rises, it has nothing to do with the clock. How does what the clock say take an hour of sunlight away from you? It is surely your employer doing that not the clock.

          • user43928
            My employer, my family, the TV's schedule, or whatever else.

            At the end of the day I lose an hour of sunlight without good reason.

    • f6v
      I barely even noticed it happened.
  • Heliosmaster
    Fwiw last week my and my family kept our clocks in CEST. My son sleeps an hour longer in the morning. But we go to bed before 21. Aiuto!

    • mystifyingpoi
      I hate DST switching, and since last 3 days I've tried to live as if DST didn't happen, go to sleep super early etc.

      It completely fails when you account for everyone else around you. Could work if you live alone with flexible working hours. But having a semi-active social life and kids makes it impossible.

  • paganel
    > Every single time adjustment (or jet lag) is a drama for me

    As a counter-point, I personally don't even notice it. Also, I live in Romania, so every trip West of the border, even just to Hungary, means a one-hour change, so, again, no big deal.

• WinstonSmith84
  If we could just all stick to UTC in the world... DST is just a (North) American and European invention, nobody in the world follow that non sense. And whether DST or Winter time, it doesn't matter, just choose one or the other, it can only be better than the current situation

  • jprjr_
    Going with UTC doesn't work all that well.

    Time zones give a rough idea of where the sun is and whether people are more likely to be asleep or not.

    Like I know if I schedule a meeting at 8am in New York, that's 5am in California so I'm unlikely get people from California to attend. Or at least it's pretty rude of me to expect people in California to attend

    If I schedule a meeting at 12 UTC - that gives no indication of where the sun is in New York or California (or anywhere).

    The fact is people tend to do things with the sun is up and sleep when it's down. Time zones are a compromise so your clock is still kind of in sync with the sun while still being able to synchronize with larger areas.

    • OroPla
      Not sure what the position of the sun has to do with when people work. If you schedule a meeting with me before 11am, I probably won't make it, since I'm still sleeping. You can schedule a meeting with me at 11pm if you want, though.

      Or, we could skip the meeting. I won't mind.

• therealfigtree
  I'm curious how disruptive this would be from a database perspective ? For eg, All the flight bookings to/from Cuba needs to be updated because it would have originally accounted for DST.

  • 15o9o
    well https://www.iana.org/time-zones/releases/2026f has the right info. If they stored everything in the DB as UTC... this is like a DNS change. Downstream partners need to have a TTL on it.
• ComSubVie
  I hope the EU will follow soon. Or at least my home country. Since the EU already has different time zones, the stalling because "all should have the same time" doesn't make sense.

  • jillesvangurp
    I wouldn't mind either. But I do see the point of different countries wanting to be in different time zones. I live in Berlin. My parents are in the Netherlands. We're in the same timezone but there's a good 30-40 minute difference between when we have our sunrise and sunset. Very noticeable when you do a video call around that time. I'll be sitting in the dark and it's still light on their side. The central European timezone spans from Spain in the west to Poland in the East. that's roughly 9 degrees west longitude to 24 east. A normal timezone should be about 15 degrees (360/24), not 30. That's about two hours difference between when the sun sets/rises from east to west.

    So, I can see that how some countries like Spain and Poland might want to make different choices when it comes to losing or keeping the hour permanently as Spain is basically in the wrong timezone. If you want to have noon occur when the sun is highest in the sky, you need to be close to 15 degrees east (roughly the Polish border with Germany).

    Much of Spain is technically west of Greenwich (0 degrees longitude). Which means it should be GMT. You could make the same argument about France and the Netherlands being closer to Greenwich than the Polish border with Germany. I'm at 13 degrees east in Berlin, so pretty close.

    Countries further north tend to care less about this because most of the year it's either too dark or too light most of the time. I used to live in Sweden and Finland. Daylight saving doesn't do anything useful there. There's not much to save when sunrise is just before noon in the winter and shortly after midnight in the summer. In Helsinki, the sun is already rising around 2am in the summer and it's still dark at 10am in the winter.

• revengerwizard
  Why not first fix the clock back as it was before the DST, and then abolish it completely?

  I personally am not a fan of playing around switching clock hours, it's annoying every single year and as a result of the clock change I always feel more sleepy during the winter.

• RandomSwedish
  God, I would love if the EU actually got going with it.
• dsign
  Does anybody what's the status with solar power there? Seems like the country would have plenty of sun to use. I know that some private people in the island are running almost 24x7 on solar and batteries, but most private people, companies and specially the government are still in blackout.
• dofm
  This is so they can get an hour’s jump on Rubio’s invasion force.
• dzonga
  daylight savings came as a result of fuel shortages.

  just unnecessary pain of switching clocks back n forth twice a year. people should move on from that system.

• throwaway27448
  I don't understand the obsession with keeping the perfectly vertical sun at noon given we all work from dark to dark under winter time. What would actually help us experience daylight would NOT be moving the clocks or moving work an hour earlier or a few hours later
• igleria
  Here in Ireland we already changed the clock on 25/10
• phgn
  Nice! I don't really care if we end up on daylight savings or not, just stop this time change madness finally please!

  • Boltgolt
    If you read the article it's the worst of both worlds: Keep clock time the same but start work and school 30 minutes later?

    • genxy
      Shouldn't we just get up when the sun comes up? And if you can't see the sun, everyone can stay home.

      • ninalanyon
        Not much use at 60 degrees and more away from the equator.

        Sunrise today was 07:31, sunset will be at 16:32 here.

        On 22nd December it will be 09:17 and 15:16.

      • Daneel_
        No thanks. That's like 5:30am in the summer. I need my beauty sleep.

        • OroPla
          You can go to sleep with the sun still up. Getting up in the dark is a lot harder than going to sleep when there's light.
  • ssl-3
    This is the only reasonable and measured take.

    (Unfortunately, it always gets derailed by highly-polarized discussions about whether to stay on DST forever or get rid of it forever. They'll be showing up here again soon enough.)

    • oddIdentities
      It is a reasonable take but it is not the _only_ one - I think it is arguably more reasonable to transition away from DST to ordinary "best TZ granularity approximation to zenith-occurs-at-noon" time once, and then stay (and manage) that time over the millenia to come.

      • ssl-3
        I like this idea. I like it quite a lot.

        But can we... uh... can we keep that as some kind of tertiary issue to solve later after we successfully stop screwing up the clocks twice every year? We don't really need to build a singular omnibus clock overhaul that will most assuredly never come to fruition, do we? :)

  • mhd
    Swatch Beat time.
• boonzeet
  40 odd lines just for handling Cuba alone, amazing
• OroPla
  I hate daylight saving time or summer time or whatever. Can't we all just have normal time all around the year?
• timonoko
  I have totally solved all issues. I have additional pointer on my watchface for the true position of the sun. https://photos.app.goo.gl/M95bW4XWR2NDUup46
• OsrsNeedsf2P
  manually rolled datetime library screams

  • xnorswap
    They're all over it before we hear about it:

    3 days ago: https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/5b5b39dae16f787740b8c0d4...

    It's not even the latest change to the library!

• aussieguy1234
  This makes sense given all of the power outages largely caused by U.S. sanctions. You would in this scenario want to have more daylight extending into the night time hours.
• zombot
  WTF. They should abolish DST.

  • F3nd0
    Why?

    • mrweasel
      I don't know it this will be the case for Cuba, as it's somewhat differently placed on the map, but Russia tried DST only and had to switch to standard time and then stayed there.

      Some people absolutely loves DST for some reason, but it creates stress and mental problems for people, especially in the north. The long mornings are somehow worse than the short evenings. Technically it shouldn't matter what the clock shows, but when society insists on things happening at a certain time, whether or not the sun is out becomes important.

      For the Russian case see: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-28423647

      • paganel
        > especially in the north

        We don't care about the people living in the North, there are more of us living not in North and as we live in a democracy (the EU) the majority vote should cound on this.

        • mrweasel
          But I do live in the North and in the EU... I care a create deal about not being stress and depressed.

          It is actually an issue and in some sense I think there is a case to be made for a timezone split between northern Europe and southern Europe. So e.g. putting Scandinavia in UTC +1 and Spain and Italy in UTC +2. Where we draw the line is tricky, because I doubt that nether France or Germany would want two timezones.

          • maratc
            > there is a case to be made for a timezone split between northern Europe and southern Europe

            There absolutely is. The north is getting very little sun in the winter (about 6 hours) and very much in the summer (about 19 hours), while the south has a lot less variance (10 vs 14 hrs for south of Spain.) My argument would be that the south needs DST more than the north.

          • paganel
            > But I do live in the North and in the EU... I care a create deal about not being stress and depressed.

            I understood that and I genuinely sympathise with the daylight-related syndromes people up there in the North have to deal with, but you also have to understand that further South we also become depressed if the Sun comes down too early, especially in the summer. So from an utility and democracy point of view the wellbeing of the majority (and the vote of said majority) should take prevalence over the wellbeing of the minority.

            • mrweasel
              > So from an utility and democracy point of view the wellbeing of the majority

              Or you know, you could just put countries in different timezones. Apparently that's easier than convincing people that the workday doesn't need to start at 8:00 (or 10:00 in the case of many in Southern Europe).

    • skeledrew
      Because it's generally senseless, and particularly for them even more so given their location.
    • oddIdentities
      Because DST is the wrong time; if you look at the legal implementation of DST, most countries carve out exceptions for fields where lying about the time can obviously lead to death and destruction - navigation being perhaps the main one.

      What everyone missed is that DST could itself lead to much greater loss of life than we might have lost had the use of DST been mandated all the way through to e.g. large naval, air or spacecraft.

      And as research into DST continues, this seems to have been not merely an abstract possibility was missed, but _the actual outcome_. DST is quite literally killing people by the thousands.

• notabotiswear
  Eh. Sudan has had a de-facto, _permenant_ DST from 2000 to 2017. Had absolutely no effect iirc save for the expected confusion in the first few months, especially considering that the change was made in winter.
• thendrill
  So... Cuba is the voice of reason?

  Yehh Europe is loosing its mind..

  I belive this whole clock fliopity flip twice a year is a huge contributing factor to people's "unbalance", and worsening mental state... Especially the northern parts....

  We humans are creatures of habit... Mess with the circadian rhythm of en entire population and expect no adverse effect.... Mhm checks out.

  • GuB-42
    The thing is: everyone has an opinion, but the scientific evidence that one system is better than another is weak.

    And it is weak because people are different. Some people tolerate clock change better than others, some people function better in summer time, others function better in winter time. Any decision you make (keep clock change, summer time only, winter time only) will benefit some people and will hurt others. And there is not even strong evidence that one solution is better on average.

    For the disruption caused by clock change itself, it is indeed noticeable, like an increase in traffic accidents, but it is just one day, but the effect of being in summer time vs winter time lasts 6 months. So if the clock change makes even a small improvement for 6 months, it may be worth the disruption for 2 days a year. I am not saying there is, it is just that there is no real consensus.

    So, by default, when a change may have negative consequence for some people and may not lead to an overall improvement, you don't change.

  • Boltgolt
    Calling canceling a time change mere days before it was going to happen "the voice of reason" is rich

    • lloeki
      "Days" is plenty of time, IIRC some tz changes happened hours before they had to come into effect!
  • sschueller
    Switzerland never wanted it: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/daylight-saving-time-wh...
  • input_sh
    Most of the world is the voice of reason actually.

    This is a very European / North American problem for some reason. There are some exceptions, but in general Asia, Africa and South America don't do this.

    • gonzus
      If you mean "changing time in summer", Chile has been doing this for a while, and I think other countries in South America do to.

      If you mean "changing the rules a few hours / days before they should be applied", Chile (again) did this a few years / decades ago, and it wreaked havoc: all scheduled meetings were off by one or two hours, you could not rely on your calendar, etc.

      Plenty of stupidity going around in Chile / South America, rest assured.

  • marliechiller
    I remember reading somewhere that we see an increased incidence of heart related ailments around the clock change, hypothesized due to this change in sleep patterns.

    • ninalanyon
      Also road accidents.
  • paganel
    > a huge contributing factor to people's "unbalance", and worsening mental state.

    This is surely an exaggeration.

    • thendrill
      https://clin.au.dk/display/artikel/the-transition-from-dayli...
  • jansan
    The EU again is all talk and no action on this topic. 84% said in a poll to get rid of it back in 2018, parliament voted to end it by 2021. But here we are at the end of 2026 turning the clocks back again. Next march same thing. Honestly at this point I don't think it will ever happen, they will still be "discussing"it in 2040.

    • leipert
      Actually “only” Germany voted back then. Like 3.79% of Germans voted. So that comes out to ~3.18M of 4.6M votes cast by Germans.

      https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_18_...

      • OroPla
        A vote was held and a conclusion reached. Voting is not mandatory, but generally the outcome of a vote should be followed.

        I voted to permanently abolish daylight saving time/summer time and am very unhappy that it isn't gone already.

        • _ph_
          So much confusion about this. There was never a "vote" about it. It was more like a poll, which wasn't advertised across the EU, and on top of it was severely plagued by server failures. To have a binding vote:

          - it needs to be properly announced to all eligible voters

          - be declared as binding, you can't tell people it isn't a vote and later on declare it is

          - the platform for voting needs to work

          • jansan
            Who cares? On 26 March 2019 the European Parliament voted 410 to 192 in favor of dropping the DST requirement in the EU by 2021.

            Nothing happend. All talk, no action, as I wrote above.

    • tchalla
      That’s the downside of EU decision making.
  • echoangle
    > and worsening mental state

    How would something that has been in effect for at least 60 years still lead to a worsening mental state over time?

    • wiseowise
      Yeah, because humans existed for only 60 years.
• tomkarho
  Good for them. Hope that shames the rest of the world (looking at you EU) to action too.