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Comment by rolosa | Hacker News Reader

People don't even know if it's currently daylight savings time or not, and I certainly don't. All I care about is whether or not I need to change the hours. And I think most people care about that too. They don't really care about the label. They just don't wanna have to change the time every year.

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It depends where you live. In Ireland it makes a world of difference if the sun sets before 5pm or 6pm.

Staying on Summer time means additional sun after work for an extra month. Can go for a walk or do something outside in the sun.

And for those further South it doesn't matter anyway.

I'd like to see what the additional vitamin D from that extra sun does to sleep etc. I imagine that's not part of the study.

and not only in ireland.

It is so depressing to wake up, go to work in the dark and go home in the dark.

The acceptance that life has to be primarily work as a sociatal norm is the true issue. If the norm was ~20hrs/wk work this issue would vanish. I have no illusion it will improve from here.

I live in Ireland too, and I would hate permanent DST in the winter. I have to get my kids to school in the morning and the sun is just barely rising in the winter months by the time I drop them off. If I had to wake them and drop them to school in the pitch black I would lose my mind.

By the time it's winter it's dark in the morning regardless of DST. Still can be a pain in Autumn I'm sure, the cold wet mornings for me are tough regardless.

The age old morning people versus evening people. Sounds like the kids aren't morning people either.

It is dark, but it is starting to get light. If it isn't even going to start getting light for another hour after you leave the house you might as well be getting up in the middle of the night. It would be horrible.

This is the existing graph for Dublin. Sadly it already feels like that to me waking up in winter regardless. You can see the Twilight phase is much less prominent in the mornings.

https://cdn.worlddata.info/graphs/sunshine/ireland-m2.png

https://www.worlddata.info/europe/ireland/sunset.php

Young kids are often morning people, but teenagers biologically have something going on that makes them almost universally not morning people. Forcing teenagers to go to school in the dark for several months of the year can make it very difficult for them to get to school, and leave them half asleep during school. This will have an impact on their grades, which can have a follow-on impact on their whole life.

We should probably start high school later in the morning even if we stay on standard time ; it's way more important if we switch to permanent daylight time.

What makes no sense to me, is that secondary school starts earlier than primary school? Or am I out of touch.

> What makes no sense to me, is that secondary school starts earlier than primary school?

It starts earlier so it can end earlier so that there is time for sports and other extra-curricular activities?

Teachers spend time with students doing these activities, and the teachers have lives too. If high school ends at (e.g.) 2:30 pm, there's 60-90 minutes that stuff can happen and teachers still have 'regular work hours' of 8-4 (a shifted 9-5) so they can do things in their lives.

Doing the activities before school makes a lot more sense. It adds another selection filter, the exercise wakes up the students and calms them, and it gets rid of the excuse for starting school so early.

Activities also can stop during the really dark weeks around the solstice in a way school can't.

> Doing the activities before school makes a lot more sense.

Don't necessarily disagree, just laying out a (possible) reason for early start/early finish.

> In Ireland it makes a world of difference if the sun sets before 5pm or 6pm.

It also makes a world of different how earlier you get exposure to light in the morning:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology

That little picture is telling me DST all year round is perfect. 07:30 melatonin secretion stops. Will rise with the sun in winter :).

This doesn't really match my experience living in Canada. Most people I speak to in the winter are most concerned about losing an hour of daylight in the evenings - the immediate darkness after work is obvious after the change.

100% agreed. Stick to either. Stop changing it.

> People don't even know if it's currently daylight savings time or not,

Can't blame em: Daylight Saving is a terrible name for something that happens during the time of year when there's more daylight

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