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Comment by Svip | Hacker News Reader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've started to despise revealed preference for precisely this scenario. When it's applied accurately it rarely says anything normal reasoning couldn't already make abundantly apparent but it's soooo easy to inaccurately apply and then the conversation goes off the rails to focus on what the revealed preference does/doesn't say.

Why is it so hard to set our schedules instead of our clocks? Can't we just agree that school starts an hour later in winter, for instance?

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

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

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

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

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

I understand the sun enveloping the earth is inevitable and the fate of our species depends on shedding our earthly bonds but, I think we can conform our daily habits to our present reality without sacrificing a distant future spacefaring civilization.

Rigid timekeeping does not preclude compensation for the sun.

Eh, we still have timezones, and a spacefaring civilization will most likely at least use a time that matches their planet’s cycle.

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

We have given it a try. It’s how most of the world worked until industrialization, and how much of the world still works (like my dad’s village in Bangladesh). It’s a recipe for poverty.

Not sure I buy the cause and effect here.

It's co-evolution. As the society advances, it develops rigid timekeeping to enable further development.

Parents already have to make adjustments to their schedules for when their children are out of school in the summer, right? It's not like society isn't used to parental schedules shifting based on the time of year.

One of my favorite life hacks (which really isn't a hack) is to not change my clock, go to sleep and wake up at the exact same time (solar wise, not wall clock), and just view the shift as a shift in schedules as opposed to time.

This is somewhat what it is like for me in Arizona. There is no clock change here, so I just watch my out of state meetings shift around twice a year.

Because the opposite is true. Schedules used to be earlier in the past. People simply want them later, despite stating otherwise.

It’s a majority of people who aren’t farmers and don't wake up at 6AM to feed the chickens in the dark (chickens would wake up with the sun anyways). They’ve done polls on this and it comes up to cities want permanent summer time, and farming communities don’t.

There is no absolute value of when to do things. People used to get up at 6am or even earlier. Over the past century everything became several hours later, so the opposite of the stated preference of doing everything an hour earlier.

This just seem to be another case of people tell you different things, than they do.

> They’ve done polls on this and it comes up to cities want permanent summer time, and farming communities don’t.

...and then when they actually try most of the people who said they wanted it find out that they don't actually want it.

The best part of winter for me is waking up in the dark, going to work in the dark, and driving home in the dark. I don't get affected by SAD and it's much more pleasant to me when it's not sunny.

i mean us night owls have been used to society fucking us over with their schedules for our whole lives, it's nothing new

Just go to sleep with the sun. Whatever we do to your clocks won't affect the sun.

4h 40m in midwinter, 20h 20m in midsummer :D (plus nearly permanent twilight) - i suppose that might work if i was a bear that hibernates (and i believe the bears are right about this).

That is too soon. I would go to sleep before kids come back from after school activities. Most of the colleagues would still be at work when I go to sleep too.

The sun won't be affected by what you set your clock to. If you want to optimize your schedule for sun exposure, you can do so. You can even travel twice a year near the poles to get sun all day everyday. Or no sun ever, if that's your jam.

Around here, that would be pretty much hibernation.

...so go to sleep while I'm still at the office at 4:30pm?

So change when you get up.

(assume when you say "permanent DST" you mean "permanent Summer Time" since "DST" is just a description of the overall switching convention, not any particular season)

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

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

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

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

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

I think daylight time refers to the winter because it's emphasizing daylight? Always struck me as terribly named and never learned to differentiate until now

In the US, I also only say summer time/winter time because I can never keep straight which is which.

You have it backwards, DST is for the Summer.

Winter is the standard clock. DST would be pointless in Winter - at latitudes where it matters you'd be shifting daylight from one active working hour to another.

Alberta is doing the same November 1st as well - they are even getting their own timezone...

(lots of rush work, Microsoft is still "validating" this new TZ in M365/SPO/OneDrive, users who tried to use that new TZ yesterday, changing their SPO sites end-up broken and unable to load without hitting system pages via URL... users who had changed their desktop OS TZ couldn't edit List items... it was a "fun" day...)

Mornings are still dark doesn't really matter

Norway. Same.

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

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

It apparently mattered enough that Russia reverted it's decision to stay on DST.

Russia reverted to stay on PST, permanent standard time aka winter timezone. Which is what most people recommend for northern places. Southern places you'd probably want the reverse of that.

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

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

Here in Argentina we are in permanent summer time GMT-3 since a long time, but we should be in GMT-4. For some time during summer we had double summer time GMT-2.

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

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

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

The closest answer to your question is probably: Malaysia.

Of course there is no such thing as "summer" or "winter" in Malaysia, as they are pretty close to the equator. For the same reason, they have about 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness — every day, every season. In this situation, the reasonable options for setting clocks with regards to sunlight are either 6-18, or 7-19. Malaysia went with 7-19 option. "Solar noon" happens in Kuala Lumpur around 13:10, with the earliest at 12:56 (beginning of November) and the latest at 13:27 (middle of February).

the closer you are to the equator, the less DST makes a difference. further north if anything you'd want permanent winter time. there (i.e. here, de_BY) DST gets you 1h more light in the afternoon evening when there is plenty of daylight available, i.e. March-Oct.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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