
EU to stop changing the clocks in 2019 - joshdance
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-to-stop-changing-the-clocks-in-2019/a-45495680
======
bsimpson
I seriously considered taking time off a few years ago to lead a multi-state
referendum to get the whole Pacific time zone to join Arizona in opting out of
time changes. While researching it, I learned that you can legally either
switch to PDT in the summer or remain on PST year-round, but the federal
government doesn't allow a state to permanently be in PDT.

So, if the western states opted out of daylight savings time changes, they'd
be an hour behind Arizona year-round, which would mean earlier sunsets year-
round too. I gave up when I realized the choices were either lobby the federal
government to change the regulation or change the entire culture of the
western US to start and end its business day earlier.

~~~
xahrepap
> but the federal government doesn't allow a state to permanently be in PDT.

I mean this sincerely: I don't understand how the federal government gets away
with stuff like this. I don't see where DST is in the constitution. And
according to the 10th Amendment[0], that means that decision belongs to the
States or the People, right? So the federal government, I suppose, could make
the law, but the states _should_ have the ability to say no to anything the
Feds say without an Amendment being passed. What am I missing here?

0:
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/tenth_amendment](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/tenth_amendment)

~~~
unholiness
Do you think a city should have the power to ignore daylight savings time
entirely, or should the state have the power to regulate all its cities? Where
do you draw the line?

In practice, I imagine if California passed a state amendment fixing
themselves to PST, the federal government would either change the law or
refuse to enforce it. Opposing such an amendment would be pretty unpopular.

But in theory, the federal government does have power to "fix the Standard of
Weights and Measures" nationwide. I see no reason for a court to rule this as
being outside federal jurisdiction.

~~~
bsimpson
Many border cities observe the timezone of the closest major metro, even if
they are supposed to be on the same time as the rest of the state.

West Wendover, NV (for instance) follows Mountain Time to synchronize with
nearby Salt Lake City. So far as I know, they never asked for federal
permission.

------
mrb
After the EU does this, 90%+ of the world population will have abandoned DST
changes. The only holdouts will be North America, a few Middle Eastern &
African countries, some Brazilian provinces, and 4-5 other small countries or
provinces.

Sounds like a repeat of the Imperial vs Metric system divide. Why does the USA
always have to be the odd major modern country using obsolete customs? Is
there a cultural explanation?

~~~
purpleidea
> Is there a cultural explanation?

Yes they're lacking in culture. :P

Seriously though, I think culturally they think whatever they're doing must be
"the best", irregardless of whatever the rest of the world thinks. And it
caused NASA disasters too!

~~~
lloeki
> they think whatever they're doing must be "the best", irregardless of what
> <others> think

The word that comes to my mind is "arrogance". Is there a better fitting word?
(Honest question, not a native speaker)

~~~
afroisalreadyin
I think the proper academic term for it is "American exceptionalism"

~~~
kmano8
Even American chauvinism.

------
kabacha
Can we move to UTC exclusively next please? Enough with vague abbreviations
only people who use them understand like EET, PST and whatnot.

"I live in UTC+2 and you live int UTC-5, meeting at 15:00UTC?" ain't that
easier? I add 2 hours, you take away 5 - math a 6 year old can do. And yet we
refer to timezones with some made up meaningless words like Easter European
Time - what does that even mean? It's not even accurate description as not all
Eastern Europe follows it - pure madness.

~~~
gadders
Can we go back to calling it GMT as well?

~~~
dijit
UTC and GMT are similar but not the same.

GMT does not observe leap seconds for instance.

~~~
welterde
UTC only has leap seconds to keep within 0.9s of UT1, which is the mean solar
time at 0° longitude (based on Quasar measurements). GMT is essentially
equivalent to UT1 (and in modern usage either means UTC or UT1).

UT1 essentially doesn't need leap seconds, because it is the correct mean
solar time and not an 1Hz approximation of it (which UTC pretty much is).

------
hcnews
Nice, I hope US can do the same one day. DST changes twice a year are an
unnecessary burden.

I am also not too hopeful about US changing considering its federal-state
model. In EU, multiple countries can agree on a decision, but US states are
adept at bikeshedding and not getting anything done :(

~~~
kibwen
This is a bit needlessly cynical, because individual states already have the
power to choose whether or not to observe daylight savings time. Arizona and
Hawaii already don't, and there are bills in the Florida and Massachusetts
legislatures to do the same.

The only federal regulation that applies here is that states wouldn't have the
option to choose between summer or winter time as their permanent time, as the
EU states can. IOW, US states are allowed to disregard the observance of DST,
but they can't change their time zone without federal congressional approval.

~~~
reaperducer
_Arizona and Hawaii already don 't_

And Indiana. Except for the part that's part of the Chicago market.

And about a quarter of Arizona actually does change time. The Navajo Nation
goes with New Mexico/Denver time.

~~~
zamadatix
Indiana started observing DST across the whole state in 2006.

~~~
reaperducer
Ah. Thanks for that. I haven't been up there in a while. Apparently longer
than I thought!

~~~
stochastic_monk
I commented on this shift here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18009875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18009875)

------
andrepd
I know this is against the bandwagon but still: it was just fine the way it
was. Changing the clocks (that is, society's timetable) to match the suntime
is a good idea. And countries should absolutely have the freedom to choose
what suits them best.

Now we're going to have to pick either summer time or winter time, to be on
all year. Pick the latter? Bye-bye awesome summer afternoons with the sun
setting down at 8:30. Pick the former? Say hello to waking up in darkness with
the sun rising at 9 during winter.

~~~
fsloth
"it was just fine the way it was."

I agree. Before the nonsense about turning the clock twice a year was
"invented".

"During World War I, in an effort to conserve fuel, Germany began observing
DST on May 1, 1916." [0]

See, there was shortage of fuel, and they thought DST would save energy. I
don't think anyone has any credible data to support that it does. This has
been an ongoing experiment for a century. Maybe we all can declare the
experiment over.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States#1966%E2%80%931972:_Federal_standard_established)

~~~
andrepd
I don't see how invoking the original (flawed) rationale has any relevance on
whether or not it ended up being a good idea for other reasons.

~~~
piyush_soni
It hasn't been a good idea for other reasons too. In fact, it has been a
terrible idea for various.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw)

------
ergothus
I've always wanted to abolish not only DST, but time zones in general. Sure,
it's cool that noon means the sun is high, but increasingly the cost of
managing anything across zones (or across days, or both) is notably higher
than the relatively rare cost of learning "I moved to a new state, my work
hours are during daylight, 3pm-11pm".

When coordinating we can just use the same times. "Conference call will be at
5pm." "That's early for me, can we make it 6pm?" Instead of "Okay, call will
be at 9am" "In what time zone?" "Eastern". "that's 6am for me, can we make it
8?" "You mean 10am? Sure".

I had a road trip to the grand Canyon. Nothing like crossing from Pacific, to
Mountain, to AZ (with no DST) and into federal land in AZ (with DST).
Coordinated with another couple coming to the same spot from a different
direction. It was...non-trivial...and we often gave up on actually knowing
when something was, being happy if we were coordinated within a few hours.

~~~
koala_man
How do you feel about [https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish) ,
"So You Want To Abolish Time Zones"

~~~
golangnews
The article poses the question:

I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there?

Google tells me it is currently 4:25am there, so I'd better not call.

The answer without time zones would be:

It's 18:30 UTC

Google tells me business hours are 23:00 to 03:00, so I'd better not call.

Abolishing time zones would make little difference to this kind of question,
it will always rely on knowledge of local hours and on top of that your
Uncle's schedule.

It would simplify a lot of coordination though.

Unlikely to happen any time soon IMO as people are attached to the status quo
and have no big reason to change.

~~~
mywittyname
There's still the issue with a single solar period spanning multiple days in
regions.

This alone is a good enough reason to abandon the idea, since whomever gets
stuck in the regions with diurnal day changes will absolutely refuse to use
it.

~~~
bmer
Can you ELI5 this?

~~~
amptorn
In many parts of the world it will e.g. turn from 23:59 Friday 17th to 00:00
Saturday 18th in the middle of lunch.

This means a simple term like "lunchtime on Saturday" is suddenly
ambiguous/useless, since it could mean around 00:30 Saturday (shortly after
local solar noon) or it could equally mean around 23:30 Saturday (shortly
before local solar noon the following solar day).

~~~
ajmurmann
We don't have that problem with "Midnight on Saturday", so we'll solve it for
"lunchtime on Saturday"

~~~
function_seven
We do have the midnight problem. Every time I say something like, "Midnight on
Saturday" the response is "Friday night or Sunday morning?"

Yes, midnight technically "belongs" to the day that follows, but it's often
used informally to mean the end of the day.

Also, "midnight" has a defined time. It's 12:00 AM. "Lunchtime" does not have
a defined time. It's sometimes 11:00 AM, or sometimes 12:30PM. It's a fuzzy
time of day.

And the problem isn't just with lunch on a "split" day. What about phrases
like, "After work on Friday" (when Friday begins at solar 17:00)? Is that
gonna be a different day for Suzie who ends her shift at 23:00 UTC vs. Tommy
who clocks out at 01:00 UTC?

What would quickly happen is that people would still use the Sun's position to
demarcate the days, and we're back to days starting at different times of the
clock in different places. And back to confusion when scheduling across large
distances.

Look, the Earth is round and the sun rises at different times for everyone.
Having discrete time-zones is probably the most elegant way of dealing with
that problem. Any attempt to enforce UTC across the world just moves all the
math to the shadows. We're still gonna have to do it, though. At least let's
standardize it.

------
matthewmacleod
I was casually in favour of this; I recently mentioned it to my mother in
passing, and she pointed out that the UK had trialled this in 1968-1971. She
was (surprisingly to me) immediately opposed to it - living in Scotland, she
recalled that it was basically dark until 10am, and resulted in a bunch of
upheaval as children were no longer able to travel safely to school by
themselves, among other things.

~~~
renjimen
They could push the school start time back. It would be better for kids
everywhere, not just Scotland.

~~~
yegle
I figure it will not be easy to change the school start time, since parents
are also need to change behavior with the school start time change.

In the end maybe this will be easier to just have a consistent schedule to
change the school start time. In the end we invent DST again.

~~~
golangnews
It really would not be difficult to move school later - school hours are
already out of sync with 9-5 of 9-6 or the other hours parents work, if
anything it’d be welcome.

~~~
de_Selby
Of course it would. School starts at roughly the same time as normal work
hours. Most schools start a little before here to allow parents get to work
after dropping off their kids.

You couldn't just change school hours in isolation without causing a lot of
disruption.

~~~
golangnews
School hours are 9-3:20 where I live, so they are nowhere near in line with
working hours as you need time to get to work and not many jobs finish that
early. Most schools run breakfast clubs and after school clubs as a result.

------
bdz
>given member states until April to decide if they will remain on summer or
winter time

Oh this will be fun. Imo every country should be in the same time zone but I
can imagine say Netherlands stay in summmer, Belgium in winter, Germany in
summer, Poland in winter. Sounds fun!

I hope it's just a vague article and they mean member countries from the same
timezone should decide together where they stay. Given there are 3 timezones
in the EU it shouldn't be a big problem (or yes)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_European_Summer_Time#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_European_Summer_Time#/media/File:Time_zones_of_Europe.svg)

~~~
pavlov
It’s not like EU countries are all in the same timezone now...? Presumably the
big countries will coordinate and the small ones will follow suit where it
makes economic sense.

This is also an opportunity to fix timezone assignments that don’t work very
well at the edges: for example Spain shouldn’t be on CET.

~~~
_ph_
If you look at the map in the article, currently the largest part of the EU is
in one timezone, which is increadibly convenient. It would be sad to have that
split apart. Especially if that means, that the time zones are split apart in
any other matter than an clear east-west sorting.

~~~
pmontra
Countries in the north have long hours of light in summer and long hours of
darkness in winter. Shifting time by one hour doesn't seem to make any
difference, but I live in the south so I have no direct experience. We have
light from about 5 AM to 10 PM in June with DST. That's very convenient. Maybe
I'd go for double DST, even more convenient: people still sleep here at 6 AM.
DST in winter would mean to get out in the dark at 8 AM, Scandinavia like. I
don't look forward to it, but I don't look forward to darkness at 9 PM in
summer and useless light at 4 AM. So I voted for keeping the current system (I
lost) and for permanent DST (a useless vote because it will be decided country
by country).

------
logifail
>> The decision to tackle the issue was prompted after the Commission launched
an online survey. Some 4.6 million Europeans answered the survey — three
million of those respondents were from Germany — with 80 percent of them
voting to scrap the practice.

At first glance that approach appears to be a deeply flawed way to make policy
which affects 28 member states.

What would happen if the commission started asking for more policy-making
input from citizens via online surveys?

~~~
dabockster
Online surveys are a horrible idea for this kind of information gathering. You
have effectively zero idea if the respondents are even in the EU. All it takes
is a VPN subscription to completely trash an online survey of this nature.

~~~
gaius
_Online surveys are a horrible idea for this kind of information gathering_

It skews the demographic towards people who spend alot of time online and like
to do surveys. Most working people won't have the time or even know it's
there. They might as well set policy by which memes get the most likes.

~~~
liveoneggs
TimeZone McClockFace

------
rootbear
I'm not in favor of permanently being on Summer time, which is one of the
options. Humans are already too disconnected from the physical world, I'd hate
to see us completely lose the association of "Noon" with the Sun being at it's
highest point in the sky. Yeah, I know. Hopeless romantic...

But I'd love to see the end of Daylight Saving Time. I hate the biannual
screwing of my body clock.

~~~
reaperducer
I'm with you. We should be more in tune with the world and natural
measurements rather than less.

But the EU also thinks that the metric system is the bee's knees, even though
it's just as arbitrary as the imperial system.

At least lengths in the imperial system are based on natural averages, and not
some bureaucrat that decided to use a distance to Pairs. The equator, I could
understand. But using Paris just proves that it's all about political control,
and not actually improving a system of measurement.

~~~
leni536
_The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum
in 1 /299 792 458 second._

 _The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the
distance from the equator to the North Pole._

I don't know where you got the "distance to Paris" idea. From what?

~~~
reaperducer
Thank you for that. I stand corrected.

I once looked up (probably pre-Wikipedia) the standard for the length of a
kilometer and saw that it was 1/1000th of the distance from Paris to the North
Pole.

That's what I get for believing the internet.

I rescind my bureaucratic criticism of the metric system.

But I still like using easy-to-remember natural conventions like inch=thumb,
foot=forearm, yard=arm's length.

Mile still seems arbitrary, though. I'l have to look into that one.

------
JoblessWonder
FYI, California is voting on no longer changing the clocks this November. It
requires the federal government to sign off on it... but it will be voted on
at least:

[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_7,_Permanent_...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_7,_Permanent_Daylight_Saving_Time_Measure_\(2018\))

------
jofaz
I have lived in Phoenix, Arizona my whole life. I didn't know what DST was
until I was in high school. The entire concept feels bizarre to me.

The only time I've run into confusion when coordinating a meeting with another
time zone is during the DST change. Yes, this week we are two hours behind but
next week it is only one, etc.

------
wiredfool
Summer time really only matters for a few weeks of the year in the farish
north of Ireland. (Coincidentally, right around now) when the sunrise and
sunset are changing the fastest. We're losing 4 minutes of daylight a day now
as we slam towards equinox. Middle of the summer? Sky never really gets dark.

Though, with brexit over the horizon, it's conceivable that Ireland and
Northern Ireland will end up on two different sides of daylight savings. Which
will be all sorts of annoying.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
> it's conceivable that Ireland and Northern Ireland will end up on two
> different sides of daylight savings. Which will be all sorts of annoying.

This won’t happen, both NI and ROI would oppose it on both the union and
republican sides. It makes no sense, neither does brexit and the NI browser
will stop brexit, it is an unsolvable problem.

------
zmmmmm
I find the passion on this topic really weird. Yes, it's a minor annoyance
twice a year. On the scale of annoyances I have to deal with, it doesn't rate
in the top thousand. The traffic every single day, the late trains, random bad
weather when I'm not expecting it.... are all significantly more annoying.

And for the price of that inconvenience I get an extra hour after work where I
can enjoy the outdoors during summer for a whole 6 months of the year.
Gardening, dining outside, going for walks, playing sport etc.

I can get people find it a little annoying and even disagree with it ... but I
am perplexed by _how_ passionate people seem to be about it.

------
elihu
My first thought reading this article was: "I can't believe the EU uses
daylight savings time. I thought the US was the only country that would ever
go along with that kind of nonsense."

Then I read this part:

> The practice, which was used as a means to conserve energy during the World
> Wars as well as the oil crises of the 1970s, became law across the bloc in
> 1996.

> All EU countries are required to move forward by an hour on the last Sunday
> of March and back by an hour on the final Sunday in October.

...and my second thought is: "wow, the EU members must give a lot more control
to their central government, in the US the states do whatever they want with
their timezones and would scoff at that kind of micromanagement."

Now, you're saying that the states actually are substantially constrained by
federal regulation and I am much less optimistic than I was about our current
mechanisms of government and democracy when it comes to dealing with timezone
policy.

~~~
ThJ
I don't see how this is different from what the United States federal
government attempted with the Metric system back in the 1970s. Granted, the
effort failed, but more due to cultural inertia than due to any resistance
from the states, as far as I'm aware of.

It makes sense for a trade bloc to maintain the same changeover dates for
timezones, while leaving the timezone offsets up to each country, because this
makes timezone conversions predictable, which I imagine is handy whenever
cross-border scheduling is needed.

You could call it micromanagement, but do remember that the member states vote
over these things, so it's not like they didn't have a chance to reject it.

One thing to remember about the EU is that anything that can be implemented at
a higher administrative level is something that you, the government of the
member state, are no longer responsible for. If you need to implement an
unpopular but necessary measure, all you have to do is get the bigger member
states to go along with it, and presto, you can wash your hands of it, with
responsibility diluted across the Brussels bureaucracy and no one in
particular to blame.

~~~
KayEss
And then some idiots do a referendum and the state ends up voting itself out
of the union?

------
bcheung
This is great news for simplicity. I hope that we can eventually just all use
UTC.

> asked the President and Congress to pass an act that would allow California
> to adopt year-round DST

The states need to ask permission for that? What ever happened to "The powers
not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it
to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

~~~
Lxr
Everyone using UTC would be chaos. Imagine organising a remote meeting - you’d
have to figure out which hours each party would be awake, by googling “waking
hours in Germany” for example.

~~~
anticensor
And you just reinvented timezones yet informally.

------
baxtr
Summer time is really difficult for kids in winter. How are they supposed to
be awake when it’s 8:30am and still dark outside?

~~~
lagadu
I take it you don't live anywhere a fairly northern latitude. Up here DST or
not makes no difference, it'll still be night at that time and kids do just
fine.

~~~
henrikschroder
It's so funny to watch these discussions and seeing people who absolutely
cannot conceive of things being different for different people. Things they
see as problems are just everyday life for other people, and it turns out that
people cope just fine.

When I grew up you went to school in the dark during winter, and when you went
home from school it was already dark again. You got a little bit of sunlight
during lunch break, and that was it. It's not like you had a choice...

~~~
baxtr
You are totally right. That’s something I realized too, when reading all the
comments. Also, I think another thing I realized is that country cultures
adapt to “normal” times, eg dinner in Spain is very late also due to the fact
that they actually live in GMT...

Re your point: just because it used to be that way doesn’t mean it should stay
like that. If we can optimize now, I think we should

------
prerok
I always thought that DST is unnecessary and did not really understand the
rationale behind it. I mean, sure, in 1916 it might have made sense to
conserve those cca. 3% in home electricity consumption. Today, however,
spending more time at home in the heat may introduce additional costs through
higher use of air condition. I guess wikipedia's article on DST rationale can
explain better than I can :)

That said, doing away with DST is IMO not necessary. People are already used
to it and there is little confusion, even if people have to be reminded each
year. How the benefits compare to the drawbacks I cannot judge, there are
different arguments either way.

But...

The way the EU decided to approach this is worse. Every country will be able
to decide whether they want to keep summer time or they want the "normal"
time? I think that's another example where the compromise just destroys every
benefit of the proposal.

I live in a small country where a lot of our businesses work with neighbouring
countries. There is even a significant percentage of people that live here but
go to work to another country. So, the kids' kindergarten will use a different
time than your workplace?

I think this will create much more confusion and stress if the different
countries choose different times than the problems we have now with the
switching.

I guess there are countries that have this problem already (if the
neighbouring country is in a different time zone) but still we may introduce
the problem to places that did not have it before.

~~~
asenk
I don't think that's a highly informed comment. As far as I'm aware choosing
time zones has always been a member state decision, where as clock time
changes have been regulated by EU in order to be uniform. Nothing changes in
regards to time zone regulation. It's just a political expression to say that
you can choose to be in "summer time". In reality there's no such thing as
permanent summer time.

The reason why it's politically expressed this way is because there is a
strong majority consensus that summer time probably isn't useful, but there's
isn't one about which time zone should be used. So expressing it this way
makes it easier for the politicians.

~~~
prerok
Agreed, thanks for the correction :) I guess I just used the terminology
that's currently being thrown around (in the article and in the media here).

I just wanted to say that this will open up a discussion on which time to use
(i.e. which time zone should apply :) ) and that if we are not careful it may
complicate some people's lives.

------
egwor
There's a significant cost to this work. Machines have to be upgraded: OS's
changed, libraries updated. They did this in Russia and it caused us a
headache due to python libs that needed updating and then OS changes. etc.
etc.

~~~
webdevetc
time zones change all the time. Most OS's automatically take these changes
into account, I believe. ( see
[https://serverfault.com/questions/192858/updating-systems-
ol...](https://serverfault.com/questions/192858/updating-systems-olson-
timezone-database-version) for a bit of info, but I think it is often included
in OS updates rather than having to do it manually normally.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database)
[https://www.iana.org/time-zones](https://www.iana.org/time-zones)

But of course there will be many legacy systems that assumes that all of
Europe is on the same zone.

~~~
lucb1e
At no point since the invention of timezones has Europe (the continent) been
in a single timezone. Even if you only look at the EU, only time all of the EU
was in the same timezone, was back in 1957 when "Belgium, France, Italy,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome, which
created the European Economic Community (EEC)", and it wasn't even called EU.
I would wonder which library makes that assumption.

~~~
zaarn
Bad libraries that are written by people who think they don't need the tz.db
to keep track of time, obviously.

------
Raphmedia
I have a delayed circadian rhythm. Managing to live on time is already really
hard for me. Changing the clocks twice a years for me means a few weeks of
jetlag every year. I wish I lived in the EU.

~~~
comboy
Just based on your observations? I'm asking because I wanted to check how mine
looks like. Smartwatch heart rate doesn't seem to be a good enough measure and
I have no easy way to check my core temperature every hour. So is there any
scientific way to check one's own circadian rhythm at home? Preferably without
stopping drinking coffee ;)

~~~
Raphmedia
At home, your best bet would be some kind of DIY Arduino / Raspberry Pi +
temperature sensors.

~~~
comboy
I have enough of those at home.. in every room.. But as far as I understand
it, even measuring temperature with a medical thermometer like when you do
when you have a cold wouldn't be enough. You need a core body temperature. And
I don't feel like inserting thermometer in my ass every hour. Installing
arduino there is also not something that I'm willing to consider.

~~~
Raphmedia
I did mean personal thermometers in the expansion port, not room thermometers.

~~~
comboy
I'd rather keep it as an expulsion port.

------
noja
My phone updates automatically. My computer updates automatically. My alarm
clock uses a time signal. Only my oven needs adjusting.

If we wanted to, we could change the clocks every month.

~~~
RussianCow
My body, however, does not update automatically to a one-hour loss in time.

~~~
noja
1 hour's time difference spread over six months. We could even change it
daily.

~~~
hannasanarion
And how is that better than not changing at all?

------
mikejb
I wonder how long it will take people to complain that it gets dark too soon
in summer/it's too dark in the morning in winter.

I understand the frustration and inconveniences that occur with the time
changes, but I worry that people voted based on the downsides of the status
quo without considering the downsides of the alternatives.

~~~
lolikoisuru
>In the past, academic computer science was useless but practical programmers
were good.

At least here in Finland I doubt anyone will even notice the difference.

~~~
mikejb
Not sure whether that reply is aimed at the right parent; if I'm wrong, can
you elaborate?

------
tzs
Here's the fundamental problem:

1\. In places far enough from the equator but not too close to the arctic or
antarctic (which includes most of the US and Europe), most people want
seasonal changes in when things start relative to sunrise.

2\. This can be accomplished by changing the clock times of things (e.g., the
office opens at 8 AM in winter and at 7 AM in summer), or by changing the
clocks (the office opens at 8 AM, and we set the clocks forward an hour in
summer and set them back in winter).

3\. In the past, changing the clocks was definitely easier than changing the
times of things. Times showed up on signs and in print. Changing all of that
would be a pain. Clocks, on the other hand, are designed to be easy to change.
(Signs could be dealt with by a one time change to show both summer and winter
time, but it would probably still cause confusion to people around the date of
the switch each year).

The places with static schedule displays are somewhat diminishing now. Many
places that would have once been on paper are now only on a website. Many
signs are now actually easily changeable electronic displays that simply do
not change often. We are getting to a point where changing the times might
actually become as easy as changing clocks. But we probably aren't there yet.
(On the other hand, clocks are getting easier to change, too, with them often
handling it automatically now).

In an earlier discussion here on this, which I got to too late to say anything
that would actually be read, I proposed (mostly seriously, but a little bit in
jest) a thing I pretentiously named "TZS Time" (name definitely in jest) to
address the above issues, and as a side effect also put us in a position to
use UTC for coordinating times between time zones while still having an
approximation of local time for referring to events in our time zone.

Here was the TZS Time proposal:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17887952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17887952)

------
nomercy400
One year to change/update all computer systems dealing with time! Have they
gone mad? I'd expected at least a few years before this would be implemented,
so that society could adjust to this.

Actually, 5-6 months, because EU countries can decide to delay the decision
until April.

~~~
hugg
It's a conspiracy to get consultants contracts!

------
Solar19
Why is being an hour behind Arizona a negative? Pacific Time is already an
hour behind AZ/Mountain Time during the winter, when you're off DST.
California has always been in a different time zone than AZ.

As an Arizonan, I like that we don't have to change our clocks. DST doesn't
make sense for us – we don't need more hours of sunlight.

DST leads to subtle bugs. On Android, Google Calendar changes the times of
events/appointments of Arizona users when DST starts. It's insane, and they've
been doing it for years. They've screwed up so many schedules that I'm
surprised there hasn't been a class action suit.

------
another-cuppa
The clocks changing really does mess up my sleep for a good couple of weeks
every time. This year I might just ignore the change and continue operating an
hour out of phase.

------
botverse
I think this is a step in the good direction, but I think getting rid of the
time zones altogether is the right thing to do[0].

[0] [https://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-forget-the-
day...](https://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-forget-the-daylight-
savings-time-debate-we-need-to-get-rid-of-time-zones-altogether)

------
hmf
There was the EU wide poll wether or not to keep DST. Roughly 80% voted in
favor of abandoning DST.

Can someone enlighten me what happened just now and what will happen next? EU
Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc made some announcement, but did the
commission vote/decide on the matter just now? (If not, what is the news in
the article?) What are the next steps?

------
flatfilefan
Interesting enough Russia adopted DST changes following Europe in 1981-4 (then
as USSR) and finally dropped it in 2014. Looks like a data point for DST
efficiency study.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia)

------
xnomad
This is just like the Brexit vote. The populous doesn't know what they are
voting for. When they realise all that daylight at 4:30 AM is wasted while
they are sleeping it will be too late. As others have mentioned a lot of the
DST opponents are confused and actually hate the switch from DST to standard
time. I love DST I look forward too it every year.

~~~
StavrosK
That's why nearly everyone voted to keep DST year-round. Given that, I don't
understand what you're trying to say.

------
encoderer
After the DST transition last fall I did some analysis using our dataset at
Cronitor: After removing jobs that ran every hour, just a little under 20% of
jobs ran twice. Most versions of Crontab handle DST changes correctly but
there are a lot of ways to scheduled jobs and this will be a win for a simpler
spec creating more reliable systems that are easier to reason about.

~~~
tzs
In 1984 I had a coworker who booted his Unix workstation and found that the
date was Jan 1, 1970. The battery that powered the clock that kept the time
when the system was off had died.

He set the time to the correct time.

Cron then tried to start every cron job that would have run between Jan 1,
1970 and the current date in 1984.

That's about 120k instances for every hourly job, 5k instances for every daily
job, 700 instances for every weekly job, and a mere 170 instances for every
monthly job.

That completely locked up the workstation.

It was hilarious.

------
DonHopkins
Hurray! I'm going to have a Daylight Saming Time party on that day, and there
will be no excuse for arriving an hour late or early.

------
User23
Canceling seasonal time change is a terrible idea. How do I know this with
certainty? Because the experiment has already been run.
[https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-
sav...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-saving-time-
went-too-far/)

~~~
jackjeff
This was a year round DST. How about having a year round correct time instead?

------
ako
I don’t understand the reasoning behind getting rid of DST. Why do people find
it easier to change office and school times, than to change sleeping times?

Why not sleep from 11-7 in winter, and 10-6 in summer. If you do this, there’s
no sleep impact due to DST.

If you can’t make this adjustment, changing office hours will also be
impossible.

~~~
jeltz
As a Scandinavian DST gives me little benefits, we have to cope with the huge
difference between winter and summer anyway, so having to learn how to handle
a sudden jump in time too is just annoying.

Maybe DST is worth the hassle for people in the US and Southern Europe, but as
a Scandinavian I am happy it is will be gone.

------
flingo
That site has Ireland's time zone wrong. It's actually GMT+1 with DST in the
winter.

In computing, it actually matters.

------
pvorb
So let's also switch to the International Fixed Calendar and make it dead
simple to reason about time.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar)

------
NeoBasilisk
I've never understood people having significant trouble adjusting their sleep
schedule by one hour twice per year. Do these people never travel? You don't
fly somewhere 3-4 time zones away and stay there for a week and then come home
and adjust? I barely even feel a one hour change.

~~~
jedberg
The increased incidence of both heart attacks and car accidents after each
time change would indicate that yes, a lot of people have trouble with the
change.

------
iFred
I might be one of a dozen people who enjoys a good 4pm winter sunset or a 10pm
summer twilight in Seattle.

------
martimarkov
It’s stupid to allow countries to select their own zone. If you are enforcing
this you might as well just say you are stuck in UTC+1/2/3 and that’s that.
You shouldn’t have Bulgaria and Greece be in different time zones. Or am I
missing a reason why that would make sense?

~~~
glibgil
> Bulc said EU member states would have until April 2019 to decide whether
> they would permanently remain on summer or winter time

> "In order to maintain a harmonised approach we are encouraging consultations
> at national levels to ensure a coordinated approach of all member states,"
> Bulc said.

Why pick a fight before even knowing what every country wants? Maybe they all
want winter time or they all want summer time. It sounds like they are talking
about that now

~~~
martimarkov
Aaah wait... I might have misread/misunderstood. So all countries will be in
either summer or winter time? Then that makes sense. My bad. I thought each
one can individually choose which seemed like a bad choice.

------
FullMetalBitch
And another problem to solve in Spain, I bet you all they haven't reached an
agreement by April.

------
_nalply
Probably Switzerland will follow. The head of the federal institute of
metrology declared in a newspaper that there are good reasons to avoid time
differences to neighbouring countries. It will be more difficult to organise
traffic (for example railroad traffic).

------
elwesties
I am truely astounded by the support to abandon DST. I absolutely love being
able to come home and play with my daughter at the beach before it gets dark
in summer those are the best times of my life. That extra hour of light is
incredible.

~~~
lower
In the survey, most people said that they want to keep summer time all year.
In Germany, this is what is currently favoured.

------
yAnonymous
The EU should introduce a law that requires the sun to adjust to our time, not
the other way around.

Considering the technical expertise of the parliament members, I'd fully
expect it to pass.

------
beerlord
I hope that nightclubs and parties recalibrate their hours. Now that we have
lost an hour of daylight in Summer, we will have to wake up and go to work
earlier manually.

------
CalRobert
If europe goes to all dst it means we won't have the 9AM California/5 pm
London meeting time. It'll probably go 8/5 or 9/6 half the year.

Not looking forward to it.

------
southerndrift
It took years to prepare for the year 2000 transition. Is it really wise to
make that transition within several months? There should be plenty of systems
that have to be updated.

~~~
lucb1e
What was the y2k transition?

~~~
astrodust
From two digit dates like 99 to four digit dates like 1999.

There was also the 2005 DST extension that screwed up everything because
Windows XP didn't get a patch in time and everyone's calendars were screwed up
for months.

~~~
lucb1e
Oh, it's that after all. I thought there were some timezone changes also put
through in 2000 or so.

~~~
astrodust
There was a sort of rivalry in the Pacific to jockey to the front by wrangling
time-zones:
[https://www.csmonitor.com/1999/1201/p1s4.html](https://www.csmonitor.com/1999/1201/p1s4.html)

Other than that I don't think there was anything remarkable in play. Everyone
was too busy patching systems for Y2K to deal with other issues.

------
walrus01
it's certainly not the weirdest thing that has ever been done, the Chinese
government has tried to enforce a single time zone across a incredibly wide
range of longitude.

~~~
mywittyname
And western Chinese have their own unofficial timezone because it's an
annoyance.

~~~
walrus01
Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder, here's a copy and paste
from the Wikipedia article for Chinese time zones.

Currently, timezone usage within Xinjiang is roughly split along the ethnic
divide, with most ethnic Han following Beijing time and most ethnic Uyghurs
following Ürümqi Time.[10][unreliable source?] Some local authorities are now
using both time standards side by side.[11][12] Television stations schedule
programmes in different time standards according to their nature.[5]

The coexistence of two timezones within the same region causes some confusion
among the local population, especially when inter-racial communication occurs.
When a time is mentioned in conversation between Han and Uyghur, it is
necessary to either explicitly make clear whether the time is in Xinjiang Time
or Beijing Time, or convert the time according to the ethnicity of the other
party.[13][14][15] The double time standard is particularly observable in
Xinjiang Television, which schedules its Chinese channel according to Beijing
time and its Uyghur and Kazakh channels according to Xinjiang time. [16]

------
FrankyHollywood
I never understood why this is such a binary discussion, either wintertime, or
+1 hour for summer.

Why not settle right in the middle, +0.5 hour = EU time :)

~~~
anticensor
These should have been new timezones:

    
    
      UTC: UK, Faroese, Ireland, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Iceland
      UTC+40' (Hamburg time): Corsica, Germany, Switzerland, Italy (Rome and west), Norway
      UTC+1h (Görlitz time): Austria, Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia, Italy (east of Rome)
      UTC+1h 20' (Krakow time): Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Montenegro, Albania, Sweden
      UTC+1h 40' (Braşov time): Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia
      UTC+2h: Belarus, Turkey (west of Ankara)
      UTC+2h 30': Turkey (Ankara and east), Cyprus, Ukraine
    

More timezones but not needing daylight saving.

------
jbhatab
I'm so confused why everyone is against DST. It is such a benefit to all of my
friends who live on farms and do physical labor.

------
kenv5
This is going to be terrible to program against

~~~
insulanian
Why?

------
zyngaro
what a relief ! At long last ! Thank you EU. This should help a lot of people
including me sleeping better !

------
OliverLassen
I never understood why the time is not just forwarded an half hour, and then
kept there. Best of the 2 worlds

~~~
lucb1e
I think having whole-hour timezone offsets is much easier. The only exception
is if every nation on earth agrees and shifts by half an hour, which I very
much doubt is going to happen: some countries even have regions that do or
don't observe DST (such as the USA).

------
coding123
It's funny - we have time, which is this uniform stream of numbers that is
ever changing. Then we have the time of day, which is a function that takes
the current "time" and formats it for different areas in the world. And
instead of placing laws around how the flow of time works, we place laws on
how people are allowed to render it and display it.

------
enz
So, we have to make sure we update our datetime librairies, right?

------
bayesian_horse
Programmers, rejoice!

------
edoo
Let's just get the world to UTC already.

------
hnal943
Finally some good news out of the EU

------
blendo
If we stayed on a single time zone, my life would be easier.

First, I wouldn't have to avoid starting starting a cron/scheduled job between
1am and 3am -- once a year a 2:30am job may not run, when we skip from 2am to
3am, and once a year a 1:30am job may run twice, when we skip back from 2am to
1am. Your operating system may vary.)

Second, most of the world's database date/time fields are in local time. I
hate seeing event volumes double for the fall-back hour, and drop to zero for
the spring-forward hour.

TL;DR: date code sucks.

------
Td5g
UTC everywhere. No dst, no timezones.

~~~
bad_user
That is impossible. UTC also implies ... Earth and its rotation ;-)

------
AceyMan
Well, isn't this something. Lots to consider (and I'm behind on all the
comments atm.)

I worked in aviation operations for a number of years (prior profession) and
lived and breathed UTC.

I wrote this then, so it's ... from last century. (Not in the wayback machine
anywhere. I had to dig it back up.)

>>>THE UNIVERSAL CLOCK : EXPLAINED

by The AceyMan

Most anyone who can read a language (as you are doing now) is familiar with
'time' and 'timekeeping'. This short essay hopes to explain the concept of
non-local, or universal time, and promote its standardization.

Until 1993, the clock that was set as a reference for all local time zones was
kept in the United Kingdom. Due to its position at the Greenwich meridian, it
was refered to as 'Greenwich Mean Time', or GMT.

This clock was the world standard for all time zones, and never changes, ie,
no savings time, no adjustments, except for accuracy. It is _defined_ as the
world standard for time.

So, when a nation or geographical area decides what local time is, they still
must have a reference to set it against. (Time is relative, remember). GMT is
that standard. For example, in the eastern United States, local (non-daylight)
time is 5 hours behind GMT. That is to say, if GMT is 1800 hours (and yes, it
uses a 24 hour, or 'military' clock), then US eastern time would be 1300
hours, ie, 1800-500=1300 or 1:00 pm.

Now the confusion with local time occurs mainly when either of two things
happens. First, when a person moves from time zone to timezone frequently and
must make constant calculations to determine what time it 'really' is, or how
long he's been awake, driving, burning fuel, running his computer, accruing
hours, charging his customers, or any various other important numbers. This is
frequent in transportation, especially aviation, where many time zones may be
traversed in a short period.

Second, when one is working with a worldwide communications system and may be
talking with persons outside of your local timezone, sometimes FAR OUTSIDE
your local time zone. In this case, GMT is especially useful, because by
referring to GMT, one can still know what time that person is referring to,
without asking where he is.

For example, if you know what GMT is, and I know what GMT is, and I say, "I
have to leave to go to a meeting at 1400 GMT", then the other person knows
when that person will be leaving. S/he won’t have to ask "well, what's your
local time now, so I can figure out how long it is before you go". GMT spares
all parties from such time-consuming calculations.

GMT should, and this author hopes WILL BE the clock for the world in the near
future, as it should be. We owe the widespread use of global communications,
particularly the Internet, for this expectation.

###

I stand by most of that now (but I would do at least one rewrite says older
me, heh).

Doing time sums and differences on the fly across multiple time zones is loco.
For both fuel and personnel planning. It's not just weather reports and
ETD/ETA times. We are crunching time ALL time in air ops, and you have to have
a pinned baseline.

I think the time has long past to go unified. Then the only question you have
to ask someone is "What's your UTC offset?" E.g., in your .plan file or S4B
header text.

Problem handled.

/Acey [edit: unix errata]

------
skookumchuck
Benjamin Franklin's worst idea.

------
vectorEQ
about TIME

------
openloop
Good riddance.

------
djschnei
Yay gigantic centralized authorities!

~~~
ghaff
Right. Just do like China and make it all one timezone.

ADDED: </s> in case it wasn't obvious (as was, I'm assuming, the parent).

~~~
Aunche
For the sake of argument, what is the use of having time zones at all? I think
it would be a lot easier to think about time internationally everyone lived in
the same time zone.

~~~
david-cako
I agree, but that's fundamentally a matter of how you think about time.

The more globalized your daily affairs are and the more "scientifically" you
think, the more you will be drawn to a unix-time style of thinking.
"Humanistic" times are designed to unify everyone around particular rhythms
that have the same "names" for when work starts (9), when work ends (5), the
middle of the day (12/noon), etc, regardless of where they live (and at the
cost of actually meaning the same time wherever you live).

Those are even less meaningful if your schedule is based in weeks and months
rather than days, though.

The humanistic factor of time zones is most useful for in-person, social
stuff. In every other case I would prefer to tell someone what GMT time I
wanted to get on the phone with them.

~~~
astrodust
There's a reason airlines work with "Zulu" time.

~~~
ghaff
There is but how airlines and armies operate doesn't have a lot to do with how
regular people operate--even those who are frequently coordinating and
traveling across time zones.

~~~
astrodust
Armies and airlines are filled with regular people, so it absolutely could
work.

The resistance is cultural, not because people can't deal.

I'd love to be able to say we could schedule a call next Tuesday at 1900 and
everyone knows exactly what that means without having to consult a look-up
table.

Imagine coordinating between teams spread across Arizona, which doesn't do
DST, New York, which does, Brazil, which does but for the southern hemisphere,
and Europe, which has its own thing going on. Getting people on the same page
is not trivial, each week can be a whole different set of time-zone offsets.

It'd be like switching from °F to °C which, once done, is not a problem,
except of course if you have a stubbornly regressive administration like the
US did in the 1980s.

~~~
chrisfinazzo
Great, now you just need to convince every single clock in the United States
to display 24-hour times, confiscate all the old clocks, and rewire the brains
of ~300 million people to ignore the fact that it might be pitch dark at the
same time that another location wants to discuss something important.
Productivity would plummet among those people who aren't at all "night owls".

The resistance is cultural, and, let's just say people have strong opinions
about these sorts of things. The fight against Celsius would be similarly
difficult.

Good luck with that.

~~~
astrodust
Yet somehow the entire world moved from °F to °C without freezing to death or
dying of heat.

Honestly, it only takes one generation, they'll deal with the change and then
the rest is history. of those ~300 million people, 20% are old and will never
change, they'll always use legacy time, and 40% are young enough it's no big
deal. The remainder will be inconvenienced, but will get by.

Besides, it'll give people something to complain about.

One of Obama's biggest missed opportunities was day 1 declaring the US was
metricizing. This would've given conservatives something other than tan suits
and mustard to rage against for the subsequent four years.

~~~
chrisfinazzo
Except that we live in a physical world where not everything is perfectly
measurable. Imperial units reflect this in their real-world analogues.

Moving to metric units would still result in the same fight, even if there is
a greater possibility you could actually win.

------
shmerl
Good.

------
crististm
Bike shedding at its finest.

~~~
shmageggy
Definitely not. Changing clocks has known connections to health risks
including traffic fatalities. Lots of people hate it for good reason. A couple
of internet searches should be enough to convince you that it's a real issue.
If you are unsure of what search terms to try, I suggest "fuck dst"

~~~
majewsky
This is a good summary in a 4-minute video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw)

------
trumped
next thing you know, they'll drop the penny.

------
achalkley
First they ban memes. Now the ban changing clocks. What happens if I travel
from Spain to Italy. I'd still need to change my clock.

------
Reason077
It’s nice when the quasi-democratic corporatocratic union that gave us the
cookie laws, the link tax, upload filters, and dieselgate does something
useful that will actually improve and simplify many people’s lives. Well done
EU!

~~~
komali2
Not a fan of GDPR, I'm assuming? Or wait, is that what you meant by cookie
laws?

~~~
Reason077
I do support many of the data protection principles of the GDPR but not the
pop-up requirements for consenting to very ordinary and reasonable uses of
(typically anonymous) data.

The cookie law predates the GDPR and requires pop-ups to consent to cookie
setting, something which duplicates browser functionality and is just really
silly and annoying.

~~~
zaarn
No and No.

Anonymous data doesn't require consent and neither do some reasonable uses
(ie, shopping carts that work via cookie don't need consent). This has been
the case for the "Cookie Law" in the past and now for the GDPR.

------
reaperducer
I've always felt that if you can't handle changing a clock twice a year, then
there's probably something fundamentally wrong with your ability to handle
much more complex problems. Like deciding what's for lunch.

~~~
ljm
Well, turning a dial on your wrist or pressing a few buttons is one thing, but
when it comes down to code you're looking at a lot more complication than
that.

Knowing how to correctly handle time as a programmer is anything but trivial.
It's so not-trivial we even have a database of historical changes in timezones
and DSTs in order to maintain backwards compatibility for it.

------
geoalchimista
While I think moving away from daylight saving time (DST) is generally a good
thing, but why _EU_ not individual nations? Do nations under EU have no
authority to determine whether they observe DST or not? In the US, the federal
government does not dictate whether a state observes DST or not.

~~~
Fiahil
A nation could choose to keep DST, but it would be frowned upon as it would
hinder the cohesion with other countries. They have no incentives to do so,
nobody likes DST on the whole continent.

~~~
petre
Morocco changes the clocks four times a year. During Ramadan they switch to
winter time, so the night falls earlier and they can have a snack (iftar).

------
fuzzbuzz
I dont really think this is a good idea. It boils down to when do you want the
sun to be up? 4 in the morgning to 21 in the night, or 5 in the morning and 22
in the night? Since the majority of the people like to be up later at night
than waking up early, it is better for everyone to turn the clock one hour.
Its better for people. Its wellfare.

The clock is turning an hour automaticly any way. Its not a big deal for the
clocks, but it is a big deal for the poeple seeing less day light.

~~~
akerro
There was a survey from EU
[https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations/2018-summertime-
arra...](https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations/2018-summertime-
arrangements_en)

and afair over 80% people voted for ending the DST
[https://uk.blastingnews.com/world/2018/08/eu-to-propose-
endi...](https://uk.blastingnews.com/world/2018/08/eu-to-propose-ending-
daylight-saving-time-after-public-survey-002701193.html)

~~~
fuzzbuzz
Well, I still think DTS is a good thing.

