Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 583 posts

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#491

Post by stetrain »

bloak wrote: post #470

These discussions are always very annoying. People tend to state their preferences without mentioning their latitude, their longitude, or their current time zone. Anyway, here are my preferences: GB should switch to UTC+0 all year. UTC+1 all year was tried (1968-1971) and was very unpopular in Scotland. School hours are roughly 09:00 till 15:00 and they only get about 6 hours of sunlight in winter up north so local n…

> GB should switch to UTC+0 all year. UTC+1 all year was tried (1968-1971) and was very unpopular in Scotland. School hours are roughly 09:00 till 15:00 and they only get about 6 hours of sunlight in winter up north so local noon has to be at around 12:00.

Couldn't you adjust the school schedule by an hour to achieve the same effect?

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#492

Post by briffle »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #80
esoltys wrote: post #35

Why now? From the Govt of BC press release: "The Interpretation Amendment Act, which is the legal framework that enables the Province to adopt permanent DST, became law in 2019. At the time, government chose not to bring it into force in order to co-ordinate timing with neighbouring U.S. states in the same time zone. Recent actions from the U.S. have shifted how B.C. approaches decisions that merit alignment, includi…

Notably Washington state legislated the same change to DST years ago (instead of standard time, the morons!) but the federal government never approved the switch. AFAIK it's still pending. I remain unclear what authority the federal government has over such a matter and why Washington (or any other) state has opted to respect it. What are they going to do if a state just ignores them and switches their clocks? Someti…

I believe both Oregon and Washington have passed bills, but both require CA to also pass so that the whole west coast moves. CA has still not passed a bill.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#493

Post by bloak »

Pirate-of-SV wrote: post #479
bloak wrote: post #470

These discussions are always very annoying. People tend to state their preferences without mentioning their latitude, their longitude, or their current time zone. Anyway, here are my preferences: GB should switch to UTC+0 all year. UTC+1 all year was tried (1968-1971) and was very unpopular in Scotland. School hours are roughly 09:00 till 15:00 and they only get about 6 hours of sunlight in winter up north so local n…

What is your latitude, longitude, current time zone?

Fair question, I suppose. I'm in England. It's a small country so that's sufficient precision!

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#494

Post by Yizahi »

emptybits wrote: post #15

I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset. Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset and the solar cue of "high noon" is also a real thing. I'm sure I've read that sleep health experts have historically supported a change to permanent Standard Time, not DST. I respect there are economic arguments for pe…

There is no significance to the number 12 on the analog clock outside it being painted on top of the clock face. And even that is completely absent in the digital clock, where hour 11:00 is the same as 12:00 or 13:00 in significance.

So there is zero astronomic reason to fixate noon to a particular number if doesn't suit us, humans.

I'm just saying that astronomic argument is kinda meaningless for the DST discussion, the only thing that matters is manual allocation of light time for the most people as possible, so that a majority of population would receive highly beneficial natural light as much as possible. When the solar high point would happen in that scheme should be entirely irrelevant.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#495

Post by jdr23bc »

Chances are it will get repealed because it isn't standard time.

Examples of failed permanent daylight switches:

- USA 70s

- Russia 2010s

- UK 70s

The only examples of failed switches to permanent standard time are Egypt and Jordan.

There are 12 prominent examples with permanent standard time, including most of Mexico, Argentina, Russia, and parts of Australia.

Only the Yukon, Turkey, Jordan, Morocco, and Syria are on permanent daylight time.

DST is popular because people associate it with summer, so it is chosen as the permanent time. Then the population experiences reality of no sunshine when they get up in the winter and hate it.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#496

Post by jp191919 »

kelseydh wrote: post #418
pkulak wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what everyone says. But it turns out people hate spending their morning in darkness for more light at night. Which makes perfect sense: https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-... > the inkling of light they get during their winter commute It's not an inkling. Unless you roll out of bed and instantly onto your commute, you're getting natural sunlight through all your windows for hours every…

One of the most depressing days of the year in B.C. is when daylight savings ends, and clocks are switched back an hour in November. The sun goes from setting at ~6pm to ~5pm, and you officially end work with it dark out. I'm very happy we are switching to permanent daylight time. There's nothing more glorious than those late summer solstice sunsets w/ daylight time, where the sun doesn't set until 10pm. Great for fe…

I agree, pretty close to the same thing here in WA state. I'm jealous of you guys up there now.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#497

Post by bloak »

stetrain wrote: post #491
bloak wrote: post #470

These discussions are always very annoying. People tend to state their preferences without mentioning their latitude, their longitude, or their current time zone. Anyway, here are my preferences: GB should switch to UTC+0 all year. UTC+1 all year was tried (1968-1971) and was very unpopular in Scotland. School hours are roughly 09:00 till 15:00 and they only get about 6 hours of sunlight in winter up north so local n…

> GB should switch to UTC+0 all year. UTC+1 all year was tried (1968-1971) and was very unpopular in Scotland. School hours are roughly 09:00 till 15:00 and they only get about 6 hours of sunlight in winter up north so local noon has to be at around 12:00. Couldn't you adjust the school schedule by an hour to achieve the same effect?

You mean switch to UTC+1 all year while doing +1 on the timetables of all schools and anything else that might directly or indirectly depend on them: childcare for younger children, working hours of teachers and parents, sports activities, public transport, ...? Compared to switching to UTC+0 all year and leaving the timetables as they are, the disadvantages would seem to greatly outweigh the advantages.

The other confusing thing about this discussion is that when you include timetable changes there are quite a lot of options and it's not always obvious which alternative people are comparing an option against. To be honest, the current system with clock changes isn't the worst possible option. Perhaps it's the second best.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#498

Post by albert_e »

michaelt wrote: post #405
baq wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clock is a social contract. China has just one time zone and it seems to work fine.

The thing about DST is it makes every scheduled event move, all at the same time. It shifts my contracted start time at work, my first meeting, when places start serving lunch, when my kid needs to get to ballet class, when my sportsball club meets, and when the supermarket closes. All at once. Lawmakers changing the time shown on clocks is, I think, a lot easier than society changing the social contract.

The equation change a bit when you have distributed teams.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#499

Post by orloffm »

jdr23bc wrote: post #495

Chances are it will get repealed because it isn't standard time. Examples of failed permanent daylight switches: - USA 70s - Russia 2010s - UK 70s The only examples of failed switches to permanent standard time are Egypt and Jordan. There are 12 prominent examples with permanent standard time, including most of Mexico, Argentina, Russia, and parts of Australia. Only the Yukon, Turkey, Jordan, Morocco, and Syria are o…

It didn't fail in Russia, it's permanent day time there and no one complains at all. The only problem is +1 hour difference with Europe during Winter.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#500

Post by stetrain »

bloak wrote: post #497
stetrain wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GB should switch to UTC+0 all year. UTC+1 all year was tried (1968-1971) and was very unpopular in Scotland. School hours are roughly 09:00 till 15:00 and they only get about 6 hours of sunlight in winter up north so local noon has to be at around 12:00. Couldn't you adjust the school schedule by an hour to achieve the same effect?

You mean switch to UTC+1 all year while doing +1 on the timetables of all schools and anything else that might directly or indirectly depend on them: childcare for younger children, working hours of teachers and parents, sports activities, public transport, ...? Compared to switching to UTC+0 all year and leaving the timetables as they are, the disadvantages would seem to greatly outweigh the advantages. The other co…

Sure, my point is just that all of those schedules are arbitrary. We made them all up.

One way might require less rescheduling, and that's valid, but these discussions out in the world tend to go to "but everyone does X at Y time and it will be dark out!" as though this isn't all made up and changeable.

I also think that learnings from previous attempts decades ago may not apply as strongly today. In the US at least I think people's schedules tend to be much less fixed on the rigid 8am/9am to 5pm in-office schedule than they were 10 or 20 years ago. The number of people out driving at all hours of the day all week speaks to that.

The world used to revolve around everyone being in-office next to their phone during defined expected business hours. Today my mortgage broker is texting me from a coffee shop.

Post reply on HN