
EU to recommend that member states abolish daylight saving time - bkfh
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/31/eu-recommend-member-states-abolish-daylight-saving-time
======
jlangenauer
As an Australian who lives in Berlin, I find this hilarious, remembering the
(cretinous) debates about daylight saving back in Australia, particularly
Queensland where I was born.

For 30 years, Queensland has been in a different time zone to NSW and Victoria
during summer, because it has never adopted daylight savings. For this, such
wonderful arguments were advanced such as "It will fade the curtains" (Wait,
wat) and it will upset the cows to be milked at a different time.

And across the other side of Australia, Western Australia (always a, er,
special place) has had FOUR referendums in the last 50 years on whether to
adopt daylight savings. All were rejected.

So watching Europe deal with this pragmatically and quickly is quite pleasing
to watch.

~~~
ams6110
Growing up in Indiana, we never had daylight savings time. Standard time year-
round. It was finally adopted after tireless arguing about how it was
difficult for business to be an hour different from the rest of the country
for half the year. Those against adopting it did use the "milking the cows"
argument also.

I don't think at the time people could foresee the impact of online business,
when it really doesn't matter where you are or what time it is.

~~~
BeetleB
Indiana was the worst. The western part (Purdue) were on central time. The
rest on Eastern. For people in neighboring states it was painful.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
When was the Lafayette (The purdue area) on central time? At least 23 years
ago it was on eastern, though I think a couple counties to the west was
central time, which was pretty common with cities dependent more on cities in
Illinois than greater Indiana or Ohio. (Gary, for example, or Terre Haute
might have been as well, though that memory is fuzzy).

Source: Graduated high school about an hour from there, then lived in
different small towns outside of the area. Was pretty popular for folks to go
party at purdue on the weekends if you knew someone there and had willing
enough parents. This was both before the adopted DST and after.

~~~
BeetleB
Hmm... I may have been wrong. I guess the confusion is that some counties
followed DST, and some didn't. And then some were on Central and some on
Eastern.

~~~
collinmanderson
> And then some were on Central and some on Eastern.

Currently are

------
bjourne
About time! If people want to get up earlier or later, then they should do
like the Iranians and go to work one hour earlier in the summer. Don't change
the clocks.

~~~
_han
I agree, and you could even extrapolate that thought to getting rid of
timezones altogether and adopting UTC everywhere.

Also, I'm not sure if it was intentional, but I appreciate your pun. It is
indeed about time.

~~~
sametmax
Time zone are very useful for news, travelling, business, etc. Because if you
know it's 3pm somewhere or 3am, you can make assumptions. If you know it's 3am
everywhere, what does that mean that your plane land at 8 am in this countey
or that the strike will start at 10 on that one ?

~~~
lmm
How often do you travel to another country compared to how often you phone
someone in another country? Local timezones do indeed make a lot of sense for
travelling in person, but global time is much better for scheduling conference
calls etc., and these days that's the more common case.

~~~
beojan
It's terrible for scheduling conference calls. Instead of just converting
timezones, you have to remember what a reasonable time of day is in each
locality.

Or do you just expect Australia to adopt a nocturnal working pattern so they
can use UTC?

~~~
jtolmar
Remembering what's a reasonable time of day in each locality is the same
amount of information as remembering what their timezones are. Instead of
asking what timezone, you'd just ask when are work hours, or when is noon.

~~~
msla
> ask when are work hours

"Nine to five, what a way to make a living... "

> or when is noon.

12 PM. Noon means 12 PM. Changing this isn't really an option.

More to the point:

> Remembering what's a reasonable time of day in each locality is the same
> amount of information as remembering what their timezones are.

Hey, admitting your proposed change is a Bavarian Fire Drill is the first step
towards recovery.

~~~
jtolmar
Noon also means when the sun is highest in the sky. If everyone uses the same
timezone, one of these two meanings must be broken. It makes more sense to
keep the definition that doesn't have an alternative name (you can always call
12:00 12:00).

> Nine to five

No? If everyone's on the same time zone, the answer to this is different
everywhere.

------
snarfy
The reality is the time the sun rises changes throughout the year. To fix
reality, we adjust the definition of time.

If an activity depends on the sunrise, and not the position of the hands on
the clock, then maybe they should, I dunno, schedule around the sun instead of
the clock. I know, seems like crazy talk. Farmers should have farming clocks,
not break everybody else's clock to align with the sun.

~~~
thomastjeffery
There's no need to change time itself.

All you need to do is change your schedule.

~~~
spookthesunset
> All you need to do is change your schedule.

Easy for you to say. Not so easy when you work in an industry with shifts
(nursing, doctors, retail, manufacturing, etc). Not everybody gets the luxury
of a flex schedule.

------
CalRobert
If it means people stop telling me I'm in UTC in the summer, this would be
fantastic.

"we'll meet at four your time"

"great!"

"why weren't you there?? I googled 'current time utc!!'"

"because we're on BST, aka IST, aka UTC+1 in the summer"

But this rando website says UK/Ireland is UTC!!

Someday, somehow, we'll teach people that if you're using PST in the summer,
there's a 99% chance you're wrong.

~~~
hopeless
yeah, I've had Americans say 6AM EST during the summer when it's EDT

~~~
ISL
This error can be sidestepped by stating "Eastern".

~~~
jrockway
Problem is that there aren't any widely-accepted acronyms for time zones in
the United States that don't include the current daylight savings time status.
Eastern is way longer than EDT.

~~~
ISL
7 PM ET [1]

6 PM CT

5 PM MT

4 PM PT

? :)

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%227+pm+ET%22](https://www.google.com/search?q=%227+pm+ET%22)

------
ddebernardy
The most surprising here isn't the landslide 80% in favor. It's the 4.6
million responses [0] for this type of citizen consultation. That's huge.

Hopefully t's will get crossed and i's will get dotted before winter time
kicks in this year.

[0]: [https://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2018/08/31/la-
commissi...](https://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2018/08/31/la-commission-
europeenne-prone-la-fin-de-l-heure-d-hiver_5348420_3214.html)

~~~
pmontra
I answered the poll. I'm happy with the current system but I answered that if
we have to change it I'd take permanent daylight savings, which is what they
are proposing now. The rationale is that I like to have light late in summer.
Early morning will be colder in winter but it's always too cold anyway so who
cares.

As a reference, Spain has been in the wrong time zone for decades (GMT+1
instead of GMT) but they have no problems with that.

~~~
gsich
>As a reference, Spain has been in the wrong time zone for decades (GMT+1
instead of GMT) but they have no problems with that.

Only that their lifestyle is approximateley 1 hour shifted. Stuff like eating
at 21:00 or 22:00.

~~~
lagadu
Portugal eats at that same time and aren't shifted one hour. Dinner is just
later than most for us southerners.

------
jventura
I see that most people here (and people I know) would like to keep the "summer
time" all year, because they like to get out early from work. But why not
start working at 7am instead of 8am, while keeping the "true" solar horary,
instead of our clocks be almost 1,5h away from the reality? Time is relative,
I guess.. :)

~~~
aleksei
If your job requires no interaction with the rest of society, that would work.
As it is, people's lives ironically revolve around the clock and not the sun,
so you're expected to be available from a certain hour of the day to a certain
hour of the day regardless of the position of the sun.

~~~
e12e
In general I suppose I'd prefer to get off work around 10 am or so (if we're
adjusting work to fit daylight to our free time). But I suppose there's indeed
a cultural bias towards dragging everyone (in offices anyway) to 8-16 rather
than 7-15 or 9-17.

------
chrisper
They are also saying that each country then can choose if they want to keep
winter or summer time... That's going to be chaotic!

Imho the summertime should be abolished for all member states..

~~~
mpweiher
Nah...summertime is actually the better one. You get more light in the
evening, rather than at 4 in the morning.

~~~
hrktb
In the end does it matter though?

I mean, if it had a proven benefit for kids, schools could start at different
hours depending on the seasons.

Companies can decide to start at 10 or 8 instead of 9, etc.

More light in the evening doesn’t seem to make sense to me as we are the ones
deciding when is “evening”

~~~
VLM
Serious question: In other parts of the country or world, do "companies" all
open at the same time? They certainly do not, anywhere I've ever lived. If
that is the case, that must be an interesting lifestyle. How does anyone get
anything done if there's never a non-overlapping interval of "the bank is open
but my employer is closed" type of problem?

I've also lived almost all my life in a "recreational paradise" state far from
the coasts where its totally normal for there to be at least one, often many,
"in-season" work hours vs "out-season" work hour thru the year. Much like
agonizing over average temperatures is heard but isn't an issue, its not a
problem for the millions who live around here.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> How does anyone get anything done if there's never a non-overlapping
> interval of "the bank is open but my employer is closed" type of problem?

This is a fairly big problem in modern life, as far as I can see.

Traditionally, I assume what happened was that you worked at your employer,
and your wife went to the bank.

------
baldfat
Can we just stick to the Daylight time year round?

I am 100% for getting rid of this dumb system.

~~~
mrweasel
Russia tried switching to summer time permanently, it didn't work. If you need
to pick, you need to go for winter time all year round. Otherwise you get
really dark winters in Northern Europe, but people forget that, because they
want sunlit evenings in the summer time.

~~~
akvadrako
This doesn't make any sense. I'm in semi-northern Europe and we get like
6-hours of light at the lowest point. How does it make the winter darker if
that light is from 10-16 rather than 9-15 ?

Better to have the light even later in winter, instead of while inside during
work, like 14-20.

~~~
mrweasel
It may seem like it would be better, but the russians actually tried it, and
it turns out that's it's not. The argument in Russia was that permanent summer
time cause stress and health issues
([https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/russia-abandons-
perman...](https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/russia-abandons-permanent-
summer-time.html)).

The part that's weird is that everyone have arguments as to why DST would be
better, but the country that actually tried it switch to permanent winter time
after few years.

Between 1948 and 1981 Denmark didn't even have summer time and Germany managed
just fine without DST from 1949 to 1980, so why can't we go back to not having
it?

------
cpfohl
Thrilled they're considering this, but my first thought was "I wonder how many
time and date libraries will fail to adjust correctly?"

I'm sure that for the well designed ones it's just a matter of configuration
somewhere ... But there will definitely be some fun and weird time bugs in the
near future

~~~
nicolaslem
DST rules and timezones in general already change all the time. This is why
having automatic updates for packages like tzdata or pytz is important.

~~~
rimunroe
Another example: unlike leap days, leap seconds don’t get added at predictable
intervals.

~~~
Dylan16807
The vast majority of systems can ignore leap seconds, though.

~~~
rimunroe
Can you elaborate? Most of the date time libraries I've encountered support
them, and it seems like knowing when something happened would be pretty
important generally.

------
drinchev
On top of that DST is one of the nastiest things when dealing with time / date
in CS.

I’m scared as well that there will be another edge case when the DST is being
demolished from EU as the time calculation in the past and the future will
have another “if” clause.

~~~
narrowtux
tzdata is a database about time and it has all this builtin. Even dates when
countries switched from one system to another. So if your code uses the tzdata
database through a library, you probably don't have to do anything.

~~~
secabeen
Yeah, and as a database of time changes over the last 50 years, it's not going
to go away, as you'll need it for historical dates, and for other time zone
changes that occur anyways.

------
protoster
Fantastic! Though I'm getting a vision of the future ~50 years from now where
the US is one of the two countries in the world still practicing daylight
savings.

~~~
dev_north_east
Some states in the US already don't switch.

~~~
r3bl
From what I can find, only two at the moment: Arizona and Hawaii (and most of
the overseas territories).

Florida is on its way to abolish switching, but it's not there yet.

~~~
DerpyBaby123
Indiana just fully switched over to _using_ DST in 2006[1]

[1][https://www.timeanddate.com/time/us/indiana-
time.html](https://www.timeanddate.com/time/us/indiana-time.html)

------
NKosmatos
It's worth noting that Greece, Cyprus, Malta and in a lesser extent Italy were
the only ones supporting the existing system. All the other countries are
clearly in favor of abolishing the change. Strange that Spain and Portugal
didn't vote like the remaining southern EU countries.

Here is the official link to the preliminary results:
[http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-18-5302_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-18-5302_en.htm)

Not a lot of people participated, less than 1%, so the results should be taken
with a grain of salt.

~~~
Piskvorrr
4.6 million people is "not a lot"?

~~~
contravariant
Not as much as the 512.6 million it might affect.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Well, it's representative enough for an _opinion poll_ , which this was.

~~~
contravariant
If it were truly random it would be more than enough even, the real problem
here is bias which is hard to rule out.

Frankly if you could guarantee a truly random sample you wouldn't need much
more than a few thousand people to give their vote on pretty much anything,
but the reason we still have elections is because it's nigh impossible to rule
out any kind of bias.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Sure. Which is, again, why this was not an election - the resulting
_proposal,_ if any, will need to be ratified by each of the member states.
(Which is where elections, referenda etc. come in)

~~~
Piskvorrr
_Et voila_ :

"How and when would these changes become effective?

The European Commission's proposal will now go to the European Parliament and
the Council for their agreement.

To allow for a smooth transition, under the Commission's proposal each Member
State would notify by April 2019 whether it intends to apply permanent summer-
or wintertime. The last mandatory change to summertime would take place on
Sunday 31 March 2019. After this, the Member States wishing to permanently
switch back to wintertime would still be able to make one last seasonal clock
change on Sunday 27 October 2019. Following that date, seasonal clock changes
would no longer be possible.

This timeline is conditional on the European Parliament and the Council
adopting the Commission's proposal by March 2019 at the latest."
[http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-18-5709_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-18-5709_en.htm)

------
rectang
Dammit. If they made daylight savings time permanent, I'd be thrilled.

The switch is only a brief adjustment. But having an extra hour of daylight in
the early evening for half a year makes a huge difference.

~~~
prairiedock
If you read the article, you will find that they _do_ propose to make daylight
saving time (they call it "summer time") permanent.

------
Wildgoose
Fantastic! Changing the clocks wrecks people's sleep cycles and indirectly
causes accidents. Pick a time and stick to it!

~~~
wott
> Fantastic! Changing the clocks wrecks people's sleep cycles

By this logic, let's suppress week-ends, and holidays. And evenings out as
well.

------
RegBarclay
Daylight time or standard time -- I don't care. Just pick one and stop
changing it twice a year. There's plenty of evidence that messing with the
clock doesn't do any good.

------
DyslexicAtheist
I wonder if anyone has looked at the complexity¹ of maintaining timezones in
software before raising as a solution for every member state decide for
themselves whether to abolish or not. It will be an absolute nightmare. It's
going to be hours of code audit and consulting gigs like it's 1999 (I mean
Y2K).

__

¹ The Problem with Time & Timezones [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-
gesOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY)

~~~
aleksei
TBH, if you've rolled your own time handling logic you were already in a
special kind of hell. But time zone changes aren't that irregular, so it
should be pretty straightforward for library maintainers to fix the timezones
up.

------
jandrese
As someone who deals with date/time on computers I can only say "about damn
time". Time is a goddamn mess already, no need to complicate it even further.

~~~
kevinherron
You shouldn't be too happy until the entire world gets on board. Now you just
have another conditional branch to follow for a certain region. Complexity
increase :(

Even with the entire world on board there's probably a conditional branch per
region where you do things differently based on whether the date is before or
after the change went into effect. Maybe this is just a problem for the
authors of Date/Time libraries though :)

~~~
jandrese
That complexity is already there. Different regions have different rules
already, even in the US there are states/municipalities that don't do DST so
their relative offset from their neighbors changes twice a year.

The day I am made God Emperor of Earth I will institute a single time standard
for the entire planet. No timezones, no AM/PM nonsense, no daylight savings
time, nothing. If it means you're getting up at 14:00 and going to bed when
the sun sets at 06:00 then that's just how it is. I would also not worry about
leap seconds until you get 60 of them and need to do a full minute change.
This would be about a once a century thing. Leap years sadly still need to be
a thing to prevent the calendar from wandering off.

------
minikites
I'm going to go against the grain and advocate in favor of daylight saving
time, mostly because the alternatives are worse. Dr. Drang lays out the
reasons nicely:

[http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-
dst/](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/)

>If we stayed on Standard Time throughout the year, sunrise here in the
Chicago area would be between 4:15 and 4:30 am from the middle of May through
the middle of July. And if you check the times for civil twilight, which is
when it’s bright enough to see without artificial light, you’ll find that that
starts half an hour earlier. This is insane and a complete waste of sunlight.

>If, by the way, you think the solution is to stay on DST throughout the year,
I can only tell you that we tried that back in the 70s and it didn’t turn out
well. Sunrise here in Chicago was after 8:00 am, which put school children out
on the street at bus stops before dawn in the dead of winter. And if you’re
wondering why I’m not accounting for predawn light in this case, it’s because
winter skies tend to be more overcast and don’t provide as much twilight as
summer skies do.

~~~
pluma
I wasn't aware Chicago is in Europe.

Jokes aside, as a kid growing up in Germany I already went to school in the
dark in winter even with DST. Having permanent summer time won't change that.
It's also a total non-issue because Europe isn't as dangerous to pedestrians
as the US and fears of "stranger danger" aren't nearly as widespread.

------
jemfinch
Their recommendation is not to "abolish" Daylight Saving Time, but to _commit_
to it and make it the year-round standard.

------
jlj
As a parent with young kids will tell you it takes a couple weeks for our
family to recover from the twice yearly switch. It is also depression for me
when I lose that hour of daylight in the fall. My body doesn't get the benefit
of a gradual change in daylight from season to season.

I hope that it can be abolished in the US too.

~~~
Markoff
this was exactly my reasoning when participating in this survey, you could
provide additional comments for them and small children was my reasoning

it's annoying but bearable for adults, but it's torture for children who need
routine

------
lylecubed
Everybody should abolish DST. That 1 hour loss in sleep time spikes the rate
of heart attacks by 24%. Reversing DST decreases the rate of heart attacks by
21%.

[https://openheart.bmj.com/content/1/1/e000019](https://openheart.bmj.com/content/1/1/e000019)

------
vatueil
California will also vote in November on whether to stop daylight savings time
changes, either by getting rid of daylight savings time or making it
permanent:

* [San Francisco Chronicle] California voters will get a say on year-round daylight-saving time: [https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/amp/California-voters-will-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/amp/California-voters-will-get-a-say-on-year-round-13035491.php)

* [Ballotpedia] California Proposition 7, Permanent Daylight Saving Time Measure (2018): [https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_7,_Permanent_...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_7,_Permanent_Daylight_Saving_Time_Measure_\(2018\))

~~~
SllX
Just to clarify for anyone that hasn't clicked through.

Even if this passes, two conditions must apply first:

1\. The US Federal Government has to change the law to allow States to make
DST permanent. You can choose to not have DST at all, or you can apply DST on
an annual basis, but presently Federal law makes no provisions for making DST
permanent.

2\. A Bill would have to be drafted and passed through the California
legislature with a two-thirds majority after the Federal law changes.

All this does is give the legislature the option, to maybe change to permanent
DST, if Federal law ever changes to make it legally possible.

Personally I will still vote for it, I enjoy long Summer evenings with sunsets
at 9pm and walks along Ocean Beach, but if you are planning to vote for or
against it, just want everyone reading this to know what you are really voting
on. By itself, this ballot measure does nothing.

------
callesgg
Good, the switch fucks with my internal day/night clock every time. Takes
several days to adjust.

------
nicolas_t
I'm in the minority here but I like DST. I like it when it's 11 and still
sunlight outside when I'm coming out of dinner.

The advantage of DST is that all the times of other shops changes in a way
that makes the summer time ideal for me in Spain and France

~~~
brianpan
Do you like DST or do you like evening light? Because those don't have to be
the same thing. When I was in France, it was still bright out after 9pm. You'd
have to add another hour on top of DST to get that in the States.

~~~
nicolas_t
I like the evening light which means that DST is great in France and losing it
would reduce evening light by one hour.

To be fair, if I had a choice, I would prefer DST to also apply in winter so
to switch the timezone of France by one hour.

~~~
brianpan
The first sentence of the article:

"The European commission will recommend that EU member states abandon the
practice of changing the clocks in spring and autumn, with many people in
favour of staying on summer time throughout the year."

------
amai
Russia has done this already in 2014:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia#Daylight_saving...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia#Daylight_saving_time)

------
dghughes
Many people in northern countries or parts of countries farther north like
using DST. It was noted some parts of Scotland wouldn't otherwise see daylight
until 10am.

I'm in Canada at about 46 degrees latitude and it's quite dark here in the
morning in winter once DST ends in November (it used to end in October).
London and Glasgow are 51 and 55 respectively so their much worse than my
region.

------
tallowen
I think it's interesting how there are two common threads in the comments:

1) People don't like switching twice a year.

2) People have a preference for summer time or winter time based on the
perceived benefits of the existing system in the summer or winter.

I wonder if there is a certain wisdom to time shifting that people are
ignoring. For those of you who would prefer permanent summer time would you
rather get permanent winter time or the existing system?

------
insulanian
Finally! It was about time to end this annoying practice.

------
Aardwolf
My order of preference:

Summer time only: great, less dark winter evenings!

Daylight saving: meh... why do they make the already dark winters even darker?

Winter time only: nooooooooooo!

~~~
Asooka
Well, this change will piss off half the population, because my preferences
are exactly the other way around. Astronomical time is the best, because it
syncs with the sun. Summer time means having to get up too early and doesn't
play well with my biological clock. Heck, it will be even worse on teens going
to school who need their sleep the most and whose biological clocks absolutely
do not respect our silly numbers. I always loved when summer ended and I
didn't have to wake up so early to go to school. Those few months on summer
time were torture. I wouldn't want to inflict it on everyone year-round for
any reason.

~~~
Aardwolf
In winter it gets dark at 16h to 17h. Nobody (except those with night shifts,
...), not even the earliest bird, goes to sleep that early, so you don't lose
that light.

In the morning, half the population loses that lightness, so they should shift
it to where most people can benefit from it.

------
deathanatos
Everyone wants to abolish DST; fine. But they want to "abolish" it by making
it _permanent_. They want that evening light in the summer far too much to
give it up. Now, in the winter, the already short day will start an hour
later; you will wake up at night. Sunrise is 8:13am, for example, in Boston,
at its extreme, under such a scheme.

And as an engineer, it is just so arbitrarily decoupled from anything natural,
like the sun. Sure, standard time was already based on mean time which was
based on solar time … it's already quite removed. But the reasons for those
steps were much more sound, IMO.

I look forward to the day in the far future when the malcontents, dissatisfied
with waking up at night, create a system to shift an hour from the evening to
the morning in the winter, and establish Winter Saving Time, or WST…

------
metalrain
Here in Finland, sunrise and sunset shift quite a bit. During year sunrise
shifts from 4AM in summer to 9AM in winter and sunset from 11PM to 3PM.
Shifting one hour for DST doesn't really fix it.

------
fh973
Title is wrong. They want to go on permanent daylight saving time.

------
1023bytes
Hopefully all the countries will agree on this together. It would be quite
inconvenient if ever country would have a different time.

~~~
dudul
Not all EU members are on the same timezone already.

~~~
apexalpha
But most _are_ and breaking up that big CET block would be inconvenient.

~~~
patrickmcnamara
The CET should be smaller. Spain should be on the western time.

------
zeveb
> The European commission will recommend that EU member states abandon the
> practice of changing the clocks in spring and autumn, with many people in
> favour of staying on summer time throughout the year.

Eliminating the annual time change makes huge amounts of sense, but _why_ stay
on incorrect time all year? Why not just be on the real time year-round?

~~~
toyg
Define "real".

Time is arbitrary anyway.

------
gamesbrainiac
Thank goodness, this is the most annoying thing that I've had to face.

------
cwkoss
What percentage of software development work will this eliminate?

~~~
archgoon
It will increase it, as now any local time calculations will need to take into
account which country the user is currently in, whether the country has passed
a law terminating daylight savings time, and whether the law has now taken
effect (which may or may not be as simple as checking the year).

So basically, it creates a bunch of additional time zones that will activate
depending on the current year.

~~~
danirod
> Any local time calculations will need to take into account which country the
> user is currently in, whether the country has passed a law terminating
> daylight savings time, and whether the law has now taken effect.

I mean, isn't this why stuff such as tzdata exist? Countries already do this.
Not every country in the world is already following DST, so you must know
which country the time calculation being performed on, because the result may
vary. In fact, it's interesting to navigate through the public tz mailing list
[1] because it turns out that countries or regions along the world still like
to change whether DST is being enforced or not, and if they enforce it, at
which point of the year the clock shifts forward or backward.

Any local time calculation that doesn't already take into account the region
and the current year could be wrong, that's why getting timezones right in
software is difficult.

[1]: [https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/](https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/)

------
coding123
3 minutes till a comment suggesting we all be on GMT

~~~
anoncoward111
Already happened lol. Come visit our shop, open from 01:47 UTC to 16:23 UTC!

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tzs
OK, time (no pun intended) for something new, which address most of the
concerns both with keeping DST and getting rid of DST, with the added
advantage of providing a reasonable path to making eventually shifting our
clocks to UTC acceptable. I'll call it "TZS Time".

If we want to change the starting time of schools, the opening time of
businesses, etc., twice a year to accommodate the changing daylight patterns
of the seasons--and apparently we do want to because most proposals to get rid
of DST seem to include proposals to seasonally change the clock time when
those events occur--there are two obvious ways to do it.

1\. Change the clock time at which things start twice a year.

2\. Change the clocks twice a year.

Start times are printed on signs and in documents, which are a pain to update.
They are also on web sites with are not as hard to update, but still often
require manual intervention.

Clocks, on the other hand, are designed to be easy to update. For an already
large and ever growing subset of the population who get all their time from
their computers, mobile devices, and other internet-connect devices that sync
with time servers, updates are automatic.

Changing clocks twice a year, therefore, is probably a lot easier than
changing start times twice a year, unless something is done about the
difficulty of updating signs and the rest.

At the cost of one annoying update year, we could address the sign problem by
replacing them with signs that print both the summer hours and winter hours.
That would probably cause problems around the transition dates as many people
do get confused for a few days then over whether or not things have switched.

That brings us to TZS Time.

1\. We define a new time of day called "DAY START" (D).

2\. In places that do not want to do seasonal changes of starting times, D is
6:00 clock time. In places that do want to do seasonal changes, D changes
between 6:00 and 5:00.

3\. Clocks would be enhanced to display both regular time, which does not
change seasonally, and to show the difference between the current time and D
[1]. E.g., if you are in PST on the day before the seasonal change and it is
11:34, your clock would tell you it is 11:34 and it is D+5:34. 24 hours later,
after the seasonal change, your clock would again say the time is 11:34, but
now it would say that is D+6:34.

4\. Signs would have to be updated once to include D times. E.g., a sign that
under the present system where the clocks change says:

    
    
      Open:  9:00 AM
      Close: 8:00 PM
    

would need a one time change to:

    
    
             Winter    Summer 
      Open:  9:00 AM   8:00 AM   D+ 3:00
      Close: 8:00 PM   7:00 PM   D+14:00
    

(For signs that you don't want to expand, I'd omit the Winter and Summer
columns and just show the D times).

5\. D times would be more convenient than clock time when talking about local
events. E.g., instead of asking for a lunch with someone at 12:00 PM or 11:00
AM, depending on the time of year, you'd say D+6 all year.

6\. Over time, people would end up using D times for most of their daily time
keeping. Direct clock times would be mostly used when dealing with things
outside your time zone or things that should NOT change seasonally. At that
point it might become easier to have your clock show UTC instead of your time
zone's clock time. For example, if you are in UTC-8, your clock would show
UTC, and D+0 would be at 14:00 in the winter and 13:00 in the summer.

7\. (Optional) None of the above addresses the DST problem of the one hour
sudden change in start times twice a year messing up sleep schedules and other
biological rhythms. At some point almost everyone will be getting their times
(clock and D) from devices that have decent computing power and internet
connections to time servers. At that point, we might want to consider changing
from a one hour jump twice a year to smaller jumps more often.

If it is handled automatically by all the clocks, I don't see any reason that
the offset between D and UTC in a given time zone should not change
frequently, even daily. This should eliminate all disruption of sleep
schedules and other biological rhythms.

[1] For 7 segment displays, or other displays that don't have room for an
extra symbol, we could reserve 3 special 7 segment patterns, such as 1, 2, or
3 horizontal bars, to indicate that the display is showing D time. The display
could be Hx:MM where x is one of the special patterns. x = 1 bar could mean it
is D+0H:MM, 2 bars could mean D+1H:MM, and 3 bars could mean D+2H:MM.

------
rostigerpudel
Obligatory XKCD reference:

[https://xkcd.com/673/](https://xkcd.com/673/)

------
bovermyer
oh thank god

------
informatimago
Yay!

------
Nursie
So long as here in the UK (you know, as if we were part of the EU anyway...)
we could stick with BST all year round, then definitely!

~~~
m4r35n357
Nah, we will hang on to GMT on some sort of half-arsed "principle" and hang
the inconvenience. Anything else would be admitting that the EU is right about
something.

~~~
gaius
GMT is the time from which all other times are derived. It’s not going
anywhere.

~~~
netsharc
But BST (British Summer Time) is GMT + 1 hour.

So e.g. London and Berlin always has a constant 1 hour difference (they both
switch to summer time and back at the same moment). I used to live at GMT+7, I
just realize now that this doesn't mean I was always 7 hours away from London,
in summer I would've been 6 hours away.

Edit: I just realized you're replying to a comment about GMT, not about BST.

GMT is theoretically the old name anyway, it's UTC nowadays.

~~~
matt4077
But do hey switch at the same moment... or one hour apart?

~~~
tialaramex
They switch at the same moment, they're both defined to switch at 0100 UTC. So
in London it will go from 0059 to 0200 in the Spring, and from 0159 to 0100 in
the Autumn

In Berlin it goes from 0159 to 0300 in Spring and from 0259 to 0200 in the
Autumn.

Making the change at 0100 UTC is pretty convenient if your timezone is close
to the zero line, because most people will be asleep or at least in bed and
won't care. It's not so practical near the dateline where 0100 UTC is the
middle of the day.

