
Morocco abruptly drops clock change - Someone
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-45995634
======
neonate
I'm glad they decided to keep summer time. I live in fear that we'll decide to
abolish DST but keep the darker evenings all year round.

~~~
jstanley
Your timezone does not dictate how dark your evenings are. The days have
exactly the same amount of daylight regardless of what numbers you choose to
label the hours with.

~~~
iav
Quite a few people work relative to market trading hours and customary times
to hold earnings calls and roadshows. Sales people work around their store
business hours. Schools have fixed schedules. Hours sadly dictate schedules
for most people

~~~
thaumasiotes
Tangent: what's the purpose of closing the financial markets overnight? Why
not just have them open all the time?

~~~
conanbatt
Surely thats a regulation thing, not an actual desire by the market.

~~~
thaumasiotes
That just shifts the question around. Why, as king, would you want to make
sure that there's a period every day when no one is supposed to trade
financial instruments?

~~~
conanbatt
Because the king doesn't want to take the responsiblity of overlooking the
transactions everyday: just when he feels like it.

~~~
thaumasiotes
How does the one relate to the other?

------
rossdavidh
The assertion that the countries which do not use DST are "mostly in Africa
and Asia" is an odd way to put it. The countries that DO use DST are more of
the exception now:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#/media/Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#/media/File:DST_Countries_Map.png)

~~~
alexdumitru
Almost all of Europe will abolish DST this year.

~~~
isostatic
Very unlikely. Next year perhaps, seems a fairly popular proposal.

------
ocdtrekkie
I assume a out-of-band Windows update will be imminent then. Half of out-of-
band Windows updates are zero-days, the other half are frantic attempts to
cope with countries changing their time zones on short notice.

------
umeshunni
Brazil abruptly decided to delay the start of daylight savings time by a few
weeks due to elections and a number of (unpatched?) Android phones showed the
wrong time: [https://androidcommunity.com/brazils-dst-change-
inadvertentl...](https://androidcommunity.com/brazils-dst-change-
inadvertently-affects-millions-of-android-phones-20181022/)

~~~
cesarb
It wasn't abrupt, tzdata 2018c from January already had that change:
[https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2018:0232](https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2018:0232)

What was abrupt was that this month they decided to delay it even more due to
the ENEM
([https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exame_Nacional_do_Ensino_M%C3%...](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exame_Nacional_do_Ensino_M%C3%A9dio)),
and a few days later went back on that, keeping only the previous delay due to
the elections.

What happened with smartphones is that most are configured to automatically
track the timezone from the carrier, and some carriers didn't set it up
correctly. So when the normal date for DST arrived this Sunday, these phones
entered daylight savings time, even though this should happen only two weeks
later.

(And of course, there's always the servers with unpatched software from 2016,
and the servers with the Oracle JVM which for some reason uses its own copy of
the tzdata database...)

------
sys_64738
I'd also like to see New England move to Atlantic Standard Time. I was there
last winter and it got dark before 5pm!

~~~
xxpor
Youd love Seattle, where sunset is at roughly 4:20 in late December.

Otoh, it doesn't get truly dark until 10 in June.

~~~
iFred
I absolutely fucking love it. It makes up for the lack of snow or cold and dry
days.

Four months where the sun is under 30°, where the color temp from daylight
casts everything with a golden evening glow. A glance outside feels timeless
as your brain tells you that it should be 2pm, but it looks like evening. It’s
even more magical in the winter with that rare snowfall. The colors shift to a
purple and grey when the sky is dark and filled with ice. When it clears, the
spectrum shifts to thousands of shades of blues over a hundred minutes after
sunset. There is an added bit of splendor when the world is awake and
continues with its work but the sun is down.

I just moved back from 40° north to 48°, and those early sunsets, colorful
days, and summer twilights were sorely missed.

------
sonnyblarney
Maybe a few months heads up would be nice. You know the world is integrated
now: flights, trains, shipments etc. etc..

~~~
toyg
I think that’s the only real objection to this move. Any country is entitled
to do what it wants regarding DST, but transitions should be orderly and
planned well in advance, not imposed from one day to the next.

I guess it shows how Morocco is not exactly a democratic country, so you get
the classic tyrant-style decision-making here and there.

~~~
sonnyblarney
I think it has nothing to do with Democracy. Frankly, central authority should
make this kind of stuff easier because a central entity can take into
consideration all of the bureaucracies and do what needs to be done.

In Democracies, pushing through such changes has to be a nightmare - so many
competing interests, populism, you have to find the right legislative window,
legislation is burdened with irrelevant stuff, bureaucracies are resistant to
change etc..

~~~
robertAngst
Its crazy to me that this style of thinking is re-surging.

Between this and recent nationalist movements, I'm concerned that our
generation will be responsible for a regression in progress.

~~~
sonnyblarney
What's 'crazy' is that people would think this is crazy. Or even a new idea or
an idea that ever went away.

And what does this have to do with Nationalism? Nothing.

Someone suggests something not normative and people yell 'Trump'?

Consider how South Korea, Japan, France, UK, Germany, Poland, Belgium were re-
built after the war?

It was mostly centrally planned management by powers, taking a lot of orders
from Washington. 'post war' is a great opportunity for central power as most
of the value creating enterprises are obvious, and very low hanging fruit:
i.e. 'we need schools, and roads, and electricity where all that has been
undone'.

Nobody is suggesting totalitarianism, some people just point out that in many
cases, a well organized and efficient control system is much better than
bureaucratic kludge.

~~~
toyg
For Italy, it’s actually the opposite: centrally-managed efforts have
typically failed, while grassroots-led initiatives are pretty solid. We did
get tons of money after the war, but reconstruction was not a coherent effort.

------
Symbiote
Can't we keep the link with solar noon?

Morocco should be on UTC, most of the cities fit neatly in that timezone. They
could have made this decision on Monday

~~~
kmm
I'm curious to know, what is the point of linking to solar time? What
advantage is there to the Sun reaching its highest point at 12 'o clock?

Most people are awake for about 6 hours before noon, and about 10 hours after.
Most social events also happen after the work day. So our day is already
shifted from what would logically follow from our clock. Being on +2 already
feels like a compromise between the two.

I'd love it if getting up at 4am and going to bed at 8pm was the norm, and
solar noon was the exact midpoint of the day, but as I am not a recluse I
cannot start that trend, and therefore shifting the timezones seems more
reasonable.

~~~
cmroanirgo
As I presume you know, Solar noon represents the highest point of the Sun in
the day. It seems fitting that the 'work hours' should be 4 hrs either side of
that (8am-4pm).

Being a 'sunlover' I'm regularly up before dawn so that I can catch the first
rays of Sun as it crosses the horizon. To me it's the most beautiful part of
the day. Unfortunately, we have semi-arbitrarily defined 'zones' that
fluctuate 1hr because of the propagandist notion that extra daylight at the
end of the day means more people will be outside enjoying the Sun. This DST
causes my work day to suddenly shift so that I'm forced to go to work earlier
than normal, & I miss a lot of sunrises as a result.

I like this idea of solar noon for times... Especially for overseas
communications too... because we'd just need to know the longitude of the
person to know their exact time. (Currently, I'm forced to use timeanddate.com
to work out relative overseas times).

Where I am, the state to the North of me doesn't follow DST (Qld), whereas
mine does (nsw) and it creates havoc around the beginning/end of DST.

So, at least for me, there are three reasons to use solar noon based time
rather than the current system. I'm sure I could come up with more.

That said, I go to bed early too, and acknowledge that isn't the way most
people live.

~~~
nikanj
Most working professionals I know are working 9 to 5, not 8 to 4.

~~~
gdfasfklshg4
This is country dependent. Across the Nordics for example 8 to 4 is very
common.

------
aritraghosh007
And here we are still putting this to vote in California
[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_7,_Permanent_...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_7,_Permanent_Daylight_Saving_Time_Measure_\(2018\))

~~~
masonic
It's silly to worry about the 1949 law now, given that we've been violating it
for decades.

------
plantain
Obligatory link to the tireless volunteers who maintain the timezone databases
and cope with the last minute, sometimes even retrospective timezone changes.

[https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2018-October/027099.html](https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2018-October/027099.html)

~~~
dmitrygr
example retroactive change:
[https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2018-October/027092.html](https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2018-October/027092.html)

this stuff really is fascinating

~~~
8bitsrule
"El Pasoans were time rebels" :)

Oh that Johnny Yuma.

------
seanalltogether
Can't imagine any part of Africa would benefit from daylight savings changes.
Morocco only fluctuates between 10h and 14h of daylight at its extremes.

~~~
Arubis
Morocco in particular would benefit from synchronizing time changes with Spain
as a major trade partner.

~~~
toyg
Spain will likely drop DST in a year or two, like most EU countries, but it’s
not clear which side it will “land”. In this context, maybe Morocco is using
this leap forward as a lobbying effort to nudge Spain towards the timezone it
prefers.

~~~
alexdumitru
Aren't they dropping it tomorrow?

~~~
toyg
Not afaik - the EU recommended to stop switching at some point, it did not
mandate when or how. Spain will switch as usual this weekend.

------
Raed667
I remember when Tunisia went off DST in 2008, phones struggled for a few years
after.

------
watersb
My old iPad 4 (iOS 10.3.3) just asked for a reboot in order to apply timezone
changes.

------
expathacker
Türkiye did this a few years ago. Working remotely from here for a California
company has been less than fun during the winter as my work day now ends at
21:00, severely hampering evening social / music outings.

~~~
egeozcan
You are working remotely, I'm sure you will find the flexibility to adjust
your working hours by at least 1-2 hours?

By the way, is there a reason you called it Türkiye instead of Turkey?

~~~
toyg
It’s the native spelling, a bit like Beijing vs Peking. I reckon he’s a Turk
and so he’s entitled to call his homeland what he wants :)

~~~
umanwizard
No, the native spelling is 北京. Beijing and Peking are two different foreign
spellings.

The commenter who called it Türkiye claims to be from the USA in his or her
bio.

~~~
toyg
Beijing is the transliteration preferred by Chinese authorities [1], not just
“a foreign spelling”.

[1] [https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/11/11/beijing-or-
peki...](https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/11/11/beijing-or-peking)

~~~
umanwizard
Okay. Regardless, it is the commonly accepted English spelling (whereas Peking
is not), and is not used in Chinese (except in unusual situations). So
comparing it to Türkiye vs Turkey makes no sense, which was my point.

~~~
toyg
It is the word the Chinese would like non-Chinese to use when talking about
the city. It’s a classic example of modern cultural re-appropriation, because
Peking _was_ the widely-accepted transliteration - until attitudes (and power)
changed and the Chinese asked the world to use Beijing instead. It wouldn’t be
particularly far-fetched to imagine Turks might also ask the world,
eventually, to use their own spelling to refer to the country - especially
considering the unfortunate overlap of the word “turkey” in English.

~~~
gsich
Still "Peking" in german.

~~~
realusername
Same in France, it's still "Pékin", I suspect Beijing will never take off
since it's harder to pronounce.

~~~
johnchristopher
You could spell it "Beijing" and keep pronouncing it "Pékin" :). I remember
hearing "Bé-ying" and "Bé-jing" once on french radio/TV.

------
pmarreck
PROGRAMMERS:

We have timezone homework to do again :/

~~~
Freak_NL
No you don't. Only the maintainer of tzdata. All we have to do is make sure we
use an up-to-date version of tzdata, which all modern operating systems do
automatically (although probably not quite before tomorrow).

~~~
pmarreck
I know, but you ruined my joke.

------
zzo38computer
I don't like DST and think that instead the time zone offset should be set so
that 12:00 is at approximately solar noon, and then count the seconds without
changing for DST or anything else.

~~~
glandium
Where I live, solar noon is around 11:30am. The sun rising at 4:30am and
setting at 6:30pm in the summer is sad. It's even worse in the winter when the
sun sets at 4:30pm.

(And I come from a country where solar noon is 2pm in the summer, making
evenings quite enjoyable)

~~~
zzo38computer
My opinion is, if you do not want to have dinner when it is dark, then have
dinner when it is not dark. It is dark or light depending on what season, and
what location, rather than the clock, anyways, whether you use DST or not.

The clock is good can tell you the time and how much time is passed and to
synchronize the schedule for TV shows and cron events on computer and
whatever, but is dark independently from that. If solar noon is at
approximately 12:00 then the time doesn't jump (causing many problems with
appointments and complications with other stuff that it doesn't need), and it
will match with a sundial approximately and closely enough, but also that
between for example 01:00 and 13:00 is going to be twelve hours, without
needing to deal with DST.

(Avoiding DST is simplifying the computer programming too, as well as many
other stuff too, so that is also good.)

~~~
raquo
That's not how real life works. For most people it's exactly the clock on the
wall that determines when they go home and have dinner.

------
zouhair
Well it didn't live long. We were always at GMT and now ten years later of
ever using DST we are stuck with it. Not complaining. I hate having to fix the
microwave clock.

------
petre
Good. They had 4 yearly DST changes previously, two during summer/winter and
two during Ramadan. Must be exhausting. Algeria dropped DST since 1980.

------
gstaro
Is there a service where you can pull constantly updated info about time zones
etc? Like a library?

~~~
crtasm
I believe you want
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database)
or something that uses it as a source.

------
noobermin
Right now, this DST discussion will hang low on the front page, but a few
months from now when we reverse it, you can bet that once again a discussion
about DST will be the top story for at least a day and linger in our minds for
two weeks until we promptly forget it.

------
beeforpork
Good, please everyone do this, time, date, and life are chaotic enough without
DST.

And now drop the leap second crap and insert a leap hour every 7200 years, OK?

------
ravenstine
Aren't enough clocks connected to the internet that the clock change could
happen gradually rather than abruptly?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
You could do something like Google has done with the Leap Smear on a larger
scale, but the better question is why does the clock change need to happen at
all? There's really no reason for it.

It would be vastly easier for businesses which wish to let their employees out
early enough to enjoy the sunlight to change their hours for a few months than
for the entirety of society to change their sense of time.

Also, you'd be surprised how many clocks are not Internet-connected, as a lot
of people still rely on clocks on their microwave, oven, car radio, etc. And
in my case, I am absolutely reliant on one (or, often, like three) completely
dumb alarm clocks, because they aren't subject to the whims of my phone doing
dumb things like not ringing when it should.

~~~
sbov
> It would be vastly easier for businesses which wish to let their employees
> out early enough to enjoy the sunlight to change their hours for a few
> months than for the entirety of society to change their sense of time.

Actually it wouldn't, because businesses have their hours set based upon the
entirety of society's sense of time.

~~~
viraptor
This only really matters for customer-facing roles in specific-hours
businesses. Anyone working in the background, in admin, or on project work
likely doesn't need to be available in person 100% of the working hours.

------
failrate
I love Morocco that much more.

------
notjustanymike
Moroccan web developers right now:
AAaAAAAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaaaAAAAAaaaAAaaAAAaAAAhhhHHHHHHH!!!!!

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
The developers I least envy are any that are tasked with maintaining a library
that has anything to do with dates and time.

------
nancyp
US should do the same. Drop DST please! but not abruptly with a Trumpy Tweet.

~~~
umanwizard
Time zones in the US are a matter for the sovereign states, not the federal
government.

There already exists at least one US member state that doesn’t practice DST:
Arizona.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Not exactly, they do not have complete control. States can choose their
timezone, they can choose whether to adopt DST or not. They cannot choose to
switch to DST all year round though.

Edit:

[http://timezonereport.com/?page_id=313](http://timezonereport.com/?page_id=313)

The bottom line here is that a state (or other political subdivision — see the
Wayne County, KY reference below) can only:

\- Opt out of DST

\- If not opted out of DST, you must advance an hour starting on the second
Sunday of March and ending on the first Sunday in November.

\- Petition the Secretary of the Department of Transportation and request a
change of time zone designation.

~~~
function_seven
Can't they just move to the neighboring time zone and not adopt DST? (i.e. If
California wants permanent summer time, they can switch to MST and sync up
with Arizona ("America/Phoenix"))

~~~
InclinedPlane
See my edit, they have to petition to change their time zone.

~~~
isostatic
Bit confusing as you open the post with "States can choose their timezone"

------
ganonm
Why can't we just get rid of time zones altogether and just use UTC
exclusivsly? The amount of productivity lost to dealing with them is
immeasurably high. I proposed this over dinner with some friends recently and
they thought it was nuts, but within 20 minutes of discussion I think I had
convinced most of them (or they just wanted me to shut up). Maybe once we
colonise Mars and the meaning of a day becomes more vague, this will become
the de facto way of communicating time.

~~~
jimktrains2
Because that still doesn't solve the problem of having to know the local
offset to know if a proposed time is reasonable for them, for say a meeting.

It also makes it easier to talk to others, if they say "6pm" you think "dinner
time" or "just off work" without having to know the location of the person, at
the time they're talking about, which may not even be where they are.

~~~
ganonm
Surely people would just start using some sort of utility that tells them
'people in X are usually awake between these hours'. It replaces an existing
problem with a slightly different problem but the net gain is you remove all
the annoying edge cases people currently have to deal with when converting
between time zones. For example, no longer being confused about how long your
flight lasts that traverses time zones.

~~~
function_seven
And you introduce weird edge cases because days now change while you're eating
lunch or driving home.

The phrase "Dinner on Thursday" would become really confusing. ("Do you mean
after work on Wednesday? Or before the football game on Friday?")

