British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time • Hacker News Board

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#521

Post by WorldMaker » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:39 PM UTC

hnlmorg wrote: post #516

WorldMaker wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of why people's preferences get so different in different sides of a timezone is as much because the hour-wide timezone is too wide. If you asked people to use a thirty-minute timezone or fifteen-minute timezone agreement would be a lot easier, and a lot easier to match local noon to timezone noon for the most people covered. Of course, there would be just as many arguments against that because people wo…

I do like your optimism but most of modern communication isn’t done via meeting invites from Google / MS Office. I might say to someone on Slack: are you free at 14:00 UK time? Or organise a time on a Zoom call. Because so much of modern technology is already soulless, I’d hate to see a future where the only practical way to organise some time with someone becomes via business productivity suites.

In Discord you have Time tags for things like like "Are you free at ?". There's a well known tool called Hammertime [1] to make it easy to create those tags and copy/paste them into place.

(I miss Hammertime sometimes daily when using Slack at work.)

We could standardize such tools. We could make them easier to use like or . We have the technology (decades of date parsing experience and date math libraries).

Will we? Probably not. Unless we did something wild like move to 15-minute timezones and force ourselves to.

[1] https://hammertime.cyou

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#522

Post by asmosoinio » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

padjo wrote: post #389

asmosoinio wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Can't people adjust their schedules as needed? Schools don't have to always start at the same time? And many jobs also not? It's not like 9-17 work hours are set on stone?

And coordinating that change would be easier you think?

Coordinating that change for the RELEVANT parties, yes. IMHO that's a tiny part of a society.

Instead of everyone EVERYONE having to adjust clocks and their natural schedules. I think (and some studies agree with me) the stress and negative effects of that switching twice a year is much more on aggregate.

I don't personally see any benefit from daylight savings. But I also live at around 60+ degrees North: at peak summertime there is 19 hours of full daylight (barely gets dark the other hours), wintertime less about 5. Daylight saving does not really make a dent.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#523

Post by tgv » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

dalmo3 wrote: post #469

tgv wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what time the sun rises in BC, but during the summer the sun rises here at 5 o'clock in DST. That would be 04:00 without. That means people (not everyone can darken their room sufficiently) waking up really early, and that can't be healthy.

Eyemasks are extremely cheap and effective.

That's admitting it's bad for your sleep. So why would sleep experts say otherwise? Why do they think an early sun rise is better? Perhaps it's situation dependent.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#524

Post by taeric » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

computomatic wrote: post #319

fhars wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That method wont work, that is a too large change that happens to seldom. What you want is a leap second every hour for five months to switch between standard and daylight savings time and back, with a month of constant time around each solstice. That gives you a smooth transition without perceptible discontinuities.

Seems to me the most obvious answer is to return to sundials, no?

Only works during the day? Which, come to think of it, I'm not entirely clear how humans kept time at night long ago. I'm assuming they learned roughly where some constellations were?

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#525

Post by dade_ » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

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…

Great, wake up at 5 in the morning.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#526

Post by eigenspace » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

ndr42 wrote: post #430

PhilippGille wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very dishonest take, as I'm sure you know that Sommerzeit proponents have reasons other than "summer sounds better than winter". For example most people just wake up and go to work in the morning, but in the evening they meet friends, BBQ, hike/run through nature, do sports etc., and prefer doing those activities while it's bright outside.

My "very dishonest take" is the result of the polls after the EU parliament voted to stop the time change. The question in these polls had been which time the person would prefer. A big majority in Germany chose "summer time". So without any reasons given/discussed/researched the preference is summer time. Of course there are proponents with reasons for or against this or that time but this doesn't matter as the majo…

What's dishonest about your take is your strawman interpretation of the poll results. Just because you disagree with the majority of people does not mean they simply misunderstand the question and think

"hurr durr summer better than winter, me choosey summer"

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#527

Post by linkregister » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

stouset wrote: post #459

ewgoforth wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sometimes hear that farmers are behind Daylight Savings Time, but that's not true. Farmers are self-employed and can set their hours to be whenever they want. If they need to work longer hours at harvest time, they can just do it. They don't need to monkey around with clocks to do this. "Big Golf" has been super active in lobbying for DST. https://businessjournalism.org/2020/10/the-stakeholders-of-d... I'd person…

Maybe just once we can not bias literally everything in life towards morning people and throw night owls a bone?

That is literally what permanent DST is— benefitting people who like to wake up before sunrise. Night owls want to wake up after it's been light already.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#528

Post by Izkata » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC

alpinisme wrote: post #183

allknowingfrog wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm not one of those people. I like waking up with the sun and driving to work in the daylight. The idea that DST solves anything absolutely blows my mind. If you want the ability to start your work day earlier and end it earlier, that seems like a worker protection bill that needs to be passed. DST is the kludgiest kludge that ever kludged.

Where I live June sunrise (with DST) is 5:11am and sunset is 8:21pm (a city on the American east coast). I just can’t imagine a majority of people would want 4:11 rising and 7:21 setting.

It's always annoyed me a bit how everyone talks about sunrise in winter and sunset year round, but sunrise in summer is almost never mentioned. This is the sole reason if we settle on one or the other I want sunrise later.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#529

Post by dec0dedab0de » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

jorvi wrote: post #143

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…

> Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset I'd bet people would happily trade away the inkling of light they get during their winter commute before locking themselves into their office for some extra daylight when they leave that office. Daylight is most enjoyable if you can actually make use of it.

When I commuted that inkling of light was the only thing that kept me going some days.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#530

Post by AlexandrB » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #219

jorvi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset I'd bet people would happily trade away the inkling of light they get during their winter commute before locking themselves into their office for some extra daylight when they leave that office. Daylight is most enjoyable if you can actually make use of it.

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…

This whole debate is cyclical[1]. I expect in a few years everyone will be complaining about not enough daylight in the mornings and DST seasonal changes will come back.

> Permanent daylight saving time was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in January 1974, but there were complaints of children going to school in the dark and working people commuting and starting their work day in pitch darkness during the winter. By October 1974, President Gerald Ford signed a law repealing year-round daylight savings time.

It's a perfect example of "the public" not really knowing what they want or perhaps different factions (unknowingly) wanting different things and not realizing this until the change actually happens. This isn't helped by how these ideas are often oversold as having no downsides instead of being realistic about what the trade-off is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#History