EU to stop changing the clocks in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.dw.com/en/eu-to-stop-changing-the-clocks-in-2019/a-45495680 <comment><USER2> 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.

<comment><USER3> > 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)

<comment><USER4> 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.

<comment><USER2> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 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?

<comment><USER6> > 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!

<comment><USER7> > 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)

<comment><USER8> I think the proper academic term for it is "American exceptionalism"

<comment><USER9> Even American chauvinism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 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.

<comment><USER11> Can we go back to calling it GMT as well?

<comment><USER12> UTC and GMT are similar but not the same.

GMT does not observe leap seconds for instance.

<comment><USER13> 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).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 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 :(

<comment><USER15> 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.

<comment><USER16> _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.

<comment><USER17> Indiana started observing DST across the whole state in 2006.

<comment><USER16> Ah. Thanks for that. I haven't been up there in a while. Apparently longer than I thought!

<comment><USER18> I commented on this shift here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18009875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18009875)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 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.

<comment><USER20> "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)

<comment><USER19> 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.

<comment><USER21> 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)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 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.

<comment><USER23> How do you feel about [https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish) , "So You Want To Abolish Time Zones"

<comment><USER24> 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.

<comment><USER25> 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.

<comment><USER26> Can you ELI5 this?

<comment><USER27> 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).

<comment><USER28> We don't have that problem with "Midnight on Saturday", so we'll solve it for "lunchtime on Saturday"

<comment><USER29> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 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.

<comment><USER31> They could push the school start time back. It would be better for kids everywhere, not just Scotland.

<comment><USER32> 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.

<comment><USER24> 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.

<comment><USER33> 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.

<comment><USER24> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> >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)

<comment><USER35> 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.

<comment><USER36> 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.

<comment><USER37> 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).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> >> 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?

<comment><USER39> 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.

<comment><USER40> _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.

<comment><USER41> TimeZone McClockFace

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> 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.

<comment><USER16> 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.

<comment><USER43> _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?

<comment><USER16> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> 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_\(2018\))

</comment><comment><USER45> 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.

</comment><comment><USER46> 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.

<comment><USER47> > 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> 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.

</comment><comment><USER49> 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.

<comment><USER50> 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.

<comment><USER51> And then some idiots do a referendum and the state ends up voting itself out of the union?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> 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."

<comment><USER53> 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.

<comment><USER54> And you just reinvented timezones yet informally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> 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?

<comment><USER56> 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.

<comment><USER57> 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...

<comment><USER55> 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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> 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.

<comment><USER59> 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.

<comment><USER58> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> 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.

<comment><USER61> 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.

<comment><USER62> 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.

<comment><USER63> Bad libraries that are written by people who think they don't need the tz.db to keep track of time, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> 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.

<comment><USER65> 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 ;)

<comment><USER64> At home, your best bet would be some kind of DIY Arduino / Raspberry Pi + temperature sensors.

<comment><USER65> 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.

<comment><USER64> I did mean personal thermometers in the expansion port, not room thermometers.

<comment><USER65> I'd rather keep it as an expulsion port.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> 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.

<comment><USER67> My body, however, does not update automatically to a one-hour loss in time.

<comment><USER66> 1 hour's time difference spread over six months. We could even change it daily.

<comment><USER68> And how is that better than not changing at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> 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.

<comment><USER70> >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.

<comment><USER69> Not sure whether that reply is aimed at the right parent; if I'm wrong, can you elaborate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> 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)

</comment><comment><USER72> 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.

<comment><USER73> It's a conspiracy to get consultants contracts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> 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.

</comment><comment> 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.

</comment><comment><USER75> 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)

</comment><comment><USER76> 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?

</comment><comment><USER77> 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)

</comment><comment><USER78> 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.

<comment><USER79> That's why nearly everyone voted to keep DST year-round. Given that, I don't understand what you're trying to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> 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.

<comment><USER71> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> 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.

</comment><comment><USER82> 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/)

<comment><USER83> This was a year round DST. How about having a year round correct time instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> 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.

<comment><USER85> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> That site has Ireland's time zone wrong. It's actually GMT+1 with DST in the winter.

In computing, it actually matters.

</comment><comment><USER87> 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)

</comment><comment><USER88> 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.

<comment><USER89> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> I might be one of a dozen people who enjoys a good 4pm winter sunset or a 10pm summer twilight in Seattle.

</comment><comment><USER91> 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?

<comment><USER92> > 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

<comment><USER91> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> And another problem to solve in Spain, I bet you all they haven't reached an agreement by April.

</comment><comment><USER94> 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).

</comment><comment><USER95> 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.

<comment><USER96> In the survey, most people said that they want to keep summer time all year. In Germany, this is what is currently favoured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> 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.

</comment><comment><USER98> 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.

</comment><comment><USER99> 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.

</comment><comment><USER100> 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.

<comment><USER62> What was the y2k transition?

<comment><USER101> 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.

<comment><USER62> Oh, it's that after all. I thought there were some timezone changes also put through in 2000 or so.

<comment><USER101> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> 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.

<comment><USER25> And western Chinese have their own unofficial timezone because it's an annoyance.

<comment><USER102> 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]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> 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 :)

<comment><USER54> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> 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.

</comment><comment><USER105> This is going to be terrible to program against

<comment><USER106> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> what a relief ! At long last ! Thank you EU. This should help a lot of people including me sleeping better !

</comment><comment><USER108> I never understood why the time is not just forwarded an half hour, and then kept there. Best of the 2 worlds

<comment><USER62> 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).

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> 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.

</comment><comment><USER110> So, we have to make sure we update our datetime librairies, right?

</comment><comment><USER111> Programmers, rejoice!

</comment><comment><USER112> Let's just get the world to UTC already.

</comment><comment><USER113> Finally some good news out of the EU

</comment><comment><USER114> 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.

</comment><comment><USER115> UTC everywhere. No dst, no timezones.

<comment><USER116> That is impossible. UTC also implies ... Earth and its rotation ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> 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]

</comment><comment><USER118> Benjamin Franklin's worst idea.

</comment><comment><USER119> about TIME

</comment><comment><USER120> Good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER121> Yay gigantic centralized authorities!

<comment><USER122> 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).

<comment><USER123> 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.

<comment> 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.

<comment><USER101> There's a reason airlines work with "Zulu" time.

<comment><USER122> 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.

<comment><USER101> 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.

<comment><USER124> 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.

<comment><USER101> 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.

<comment><USER124> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> Good.

</comment><comment><USER126> Bike shedding at its finest.

<comment><USER127> 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"

<comment><USER128> This is a good summary in a 4-minute video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER129> next thing you know, they'll drop the penny.

</comment><comment><USER130> 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.

</comment><comment><USER131> 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!

<comment><USER132> Not a fan of GDPR, I'm assuming? Or wait, is that what you meant by cookie laws?

<comment><USER131> 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.

<comment><USER63> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 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.

<comment><USER133> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> 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.

<comment><USER135> 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.

<comment><USER136> 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).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER137> 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.

<comment><USER138> 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)

<comment><USER137> Well, I still think DTS is a good thing.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why did I receive a reply from startup school – to add co founders - <AUTHOR> I submitted my application without a co founder. but I go this as a reply - "We noticed you have not added any co-founders to your Startup School application. If you have co-founders, please invite them to fill out their profile and complete your application."<p>what does it mean? I know, y combinator people strongly advice on getting a partner, is it like a band handed way of saying add a co-founder to be considered? <comment><USER2> Y/C is a little funny about that recommendation. I'm guessing it serves their interests better than your business. There's some statistical evidence that says you might be better off without a co-founder: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders- optional/](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-optional/)

<comment><USER3> How does it serve their interests better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I received one also, unfortunately I don't have a co-founder but have been seeking one out

<comment><USER3> What've you tried to seek one out? I notice there's no contact info on your profile.

<comment><USER4> I've searched local circles to see if there's someone I'm not best friends with, someone I can argue with, with no long term feelings in the line, and can feel I trust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I received the exact same message, when I applied to Startup School.

Interestingly, I am 99% certain that I added my co-founder to the list, the day I applied. Then I got the "reminder" message, the same as you.

There are dozens of articles, outlining the success of multiple founders. Single founders do not succeed (statistically speaking) as often as multi- founder companies.

I Founded the company about 14 months ago. I found my first investor and named him a co-founder about 12 months ago. I hired a CEO about 10 months ago, and also made him a co-founder.

Finding the right people, (early) is a critical component to your ongoing success.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. that's why i think you should not settle for suboptimal people.

I would work on my own rather than compromising

<comment><USER4> Precisely the key, you need in my opinion:

1\. Someone you can trust 2\. Someone you're not afraid to speak up with or against, without fear of repercussion personally within reason (ie, if you call each other crap every day, you're not a good match most of the time)</comment></comment></comment>


Is a domain name worth $3,000? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN Community,
I have a dilemma and I figure that you guys/gals are the best people to turn to for advice.
Currently, I'm working on a very early stage startup.  I own a domain name for it that I don't particularly like, but it was available on GoDaddy so the price was right.  However, I just recently found a domain name that I love.  I really think that I can build a great brand around this domain and I'd buy it right now... except for the fact that is costs $3,000.
I currently have $6,000 in the bank, so this will take half of my account, but I will be able to secure funding from friends and family in about two months and will have no problem covering the cost then.
What are your thoughts?  How valuable is the domain and brand to a startup's success?  Would you take the risk? <comment><USER2> Given that you are severely undercapitalized, cutting your runway in half for a domain name makes no sense. Particularly since there will be plenty of domain names for sale in 3, 6, or 12 months when you are ready to bring the product to market - or have angel funding.

There is no point in spending money on something today which you don't need and may not need...Pivots happen.

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> ^great advice. there's a good chance the business will morph with time so i wouldn't drop anywhere near that kind of money until you've started making money with a product.

actually wrote a quick blog post about this subject as we were battling the issue recently: [http://adamwexler.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/why-does- naming-a...](http://adamwexler.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/why-does-naming-a- startup-have-to-be-so-difficult/) it's a bitch-and-a-half to find a great URL these days, but try not to let it get in your way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you truly believe this is a critical branding element, do it. And don't cheap out -- trying to chisel for that last $200 of savings isn't worth it in the long run.

No one can tell you whether the branding is critical or not. From my perspective it is immediately obvious that the name puts you in a completely different state of mind about the project. That positive-outlook state of mind is probably worth $3,000.

Side note: I spent money on a vanity phone number for myself because it is amazing what a cool cell phone number does to being memorable in my clients' minds.

</comment><comment><USER5> >I'm working on a very early stage startup. >How valuable is the domain and brand to a startup's success?

At your stage, it's worth ZERO. Worry about this later. Do not blow half your load on a domain name. From one Max to another, don't do it.

</comment><comment><USER6> My advice would be to try and come up with a name that's not registered. You don't want to lock up half your capital speculating on a domain, when you can spend a weekend brainstorming to come up with a domain you'll be happy with. Also, remember that the domain won't be unavailable forever if you should miss it this time around. It might come available again if and or when you get funded.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't buy it on the assumption that you can get funding or resell the domain. Do you currently have an income? How long could you live for if you lost your job? Do you have a business plan / code / design for your product? Have you discussed the domain name with a few other people?

$3,000 isn't a lot of money for a domain, but it is when you don't have the money :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Build a prototype first under a dev name, ours was 'Festy' until we unveiled the name. If it's a Premium Domain for $3,000+ on GoDaddy, it won't likely sell anytime soon. But, even if it did, it isn't the end of the world.

Wait until you have the 50k in the bank. And even then, think twice about that investment.

In short, prototype first.

</comment><comment><USER9> Imagine if Flickr blew most of their seed money on Flicker.com and then failed because they couldn't execute their idea?

My advice: Why not just hire a good copyrighter to generate a list of 100 domain names? That can't cost too much money (under a $1000) and you can then rank the list and see what's available.

</comment><comment><USER10> NO!

I think these days all domains are over valued, how often do people type a url into a browser these days? And how often do they just 'google' it?

Consider color.com, they spent a huge amount of money on that domain, and it hasn't helped them one bit.

</rant>

Best of luck with the start up :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I have bought many domains and $3k is cheap for a brand you love. However if you have only 6000, it is too much. I have started my open source project OpenDomain that lets people use domains for FREE (Drupal.com and OsCon.com) contact me domains at OpenDomain dot org.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the resource! I'll check it out.

One thing I'd like to reemphasize is that, although I only have $6,000 in the bank, the friends and family round is a lock for a minimum of $50,000. Does that change your answer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Check out <http://www.bustaname.com/> and <http://domai.nr/>. Both great sites to find new names that might fit your needs so you don't have to shell out $3k.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll definitely look into those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No. Build a prototype first. Don't be like Color.

<comment><USER14> Where Color's problems caused by spending $350,000 to buy the color.com domain, or were they caused by either A. having a lousy idea to begin with, and/or B. failing to execute their plan?

And besides, it's a pretty big hop from $3,000 to $350,000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> is it something generic? if the startup fails, could you sell the domain name and get a big chunk of that money back?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the name is pretty generic and U believe that it will have a high resell value if things don't work out. However, that also depends on finding the right buyer...

<comment><AUTHOR> I _

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are you also sure it's worth a firm $3k? Perhaps you could negotiate it down a bit.

</comment><comment><USER17> We paid hundreds of times more for our domain names than this, and we are glad we did.

It depends on your market, though. And it should be noted that we started out with a medicore domain name.</comment>


IWantMyName launches "Domains for Apps" with support for 17 web apps & services - <AUTHOR> http://iwantmyname.com/features/custom-domain-applications-and-dns iWantMyName is a user-friendly domain registration and management service that makes it easy to connect domains to the most popular web apps. <comment><USER2> Does it just do the DNS support (i.e. CNAMEs) for those services or does it somehow register you for them and get them setup for that domain? The screencast stopped short of showing what it actually did. I assume it's just setting up the CNAMEs for you?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's setting up the respective CNAMEs, A-records, MX etc. for these services.</comment>


Britain's Ministry of Nudges - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/business/international/britains-ministry-of-nudges.html?ref=business&_r=0 <comment><USER3> I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I like the somewhat scientific approach to the little things that government does - I think that approach is sorely lacking in many areas of government.

On the other, just the idea of governments using behavioral science to 'herd' us is a little worrying. To be honest though, I don't find that nearly as worrying as the idea that such small differences in the phrasing of a letter, for example, can have so much influence on the decisions we make.

<comment><USER4> Ah you mean when many "nudges" are pandering to the prejudices of the tabloid press and UKIP?

Some of these nudges have unplesent side effects the bed room tax has lead to several suicides.

<comment><USER5> The bedroom tax is not a nudge.

Cultural note: UK has a benefit called "Housing benefit". It pays rent for people in certain circumstances. Years ago people renting from a private landlord had limits imposed about the size of property they could rent - <USER2> were not allowed to be over accommodated. (Or they could be, but they wouldn't get that rate for the property and they'd need to make up the difference). Recently this rule has been applied to people renting from the public sector - local council housing and housing association properties.

In theory it creates liquidity in the property market, and makes sure people are in the right size homes and getting the right amount of benefit. In practice people who can only afford to live in council housing cannot afford to move, even if there were other properties available for them. (And there usually aren't, and even less so now that so many people are looking to move.)

In this situation a nudge would be finding the sticking point of why people stay in properties with too many rooms and finding a way to help them move. Offering to ebay extra possessions, allowing them to fit into a smaller home, would be a nudge. Offering help with removal vans or other logistics might be a nudge.

Cutting benefit to poor people is a kludge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It really makes you question the structure that puts in place the original polices this group "nudges". There needs to be an incentive structure in the government itself, that encourages every department to improve how they function continuously. You shouldn't have to create a special department that focus on one tiny portion of the government at once for improvement.

<comment><USER7> Well actually how it works is X knows that Lord Y hasn't got a position in the government at the moment so the funny hand shake club[1] gets together and comes up with a new position. In this case the Ministry of Nudges with chief nudger, a whole staff of public servants, a budget, and a whole pile of expenses like duck houses.

[1] masons, Eton alumni etc.

<comment><USER8> Are the masons still a thing? I know it was a big deal back in the day, but none of the masons I know (well, that I know are masons; I'm not one myself) are as well-connected as, say, I am.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I actually posted that from inside a masonic Lodge ironically (dinner party that was basically a throw back to 1970). I'm not a mason but one of my relatives is. Have escaped now, thank fuck.

Masons still tend to be well connected in traditional professions if they admit it or not and they do leverage their connection regularly. The appearance I get is that they are downplaying themselves as a "happy little drinking club" rather than a formal organisation.

The basic promise of the masons is that they will always put another mason first. That first means before the law and before ethics.

I've witnessed this (with respect to the law). They can make your life very difficult if they want to so I'm keeping out of their business past the formality.

<comment><USER8> >Masons still tend to be well connected in traditional professions if they admit it or not and they do leverage their connection regularly. The appearance I get is that they are downplaying themselves as a "happy little drinking club" rather than a formal organisation.

Huh. I totally bought the "happy little drinking club" story - maybe I was too distracted trying to come up with a proper William Morgan joke.

<comment><USER7> I came up with numerous jokes today (not William Morgan ;-) but my relative is entirely devoid of a sense of humor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most of it is just A/B testing infringement notices:

"The wording of letters sent to those owing income tax was changed to inform them that most people in their town had already lodged their return. Rewording letters has resulted in an extra £200 million ($290 million) being collected on time, practically cost-free." [1]

A friend of mine works for a nudge unit within the New South Wales state Government in Australia, they're seeing some really interesting results.

[1] [http://www.smh.com.au/comment/what-a-difference-a-nudge- in-t...](http://www.smh.com.au/comment/what-a-difference-a-nudge-in-the-right- direction-can-make-20130406-2hdab.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I urge everyone to listen to this in counterpoint to the recent hype of nudge:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02144zz](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02144zz)

(may be IP-limited to uk, apologies)

</comment><comment><USER11> I much prefer the Ministry of Silly Walks.

<comment><USER12> Say no more.</comment></comment>


The FCC won't allow T-Mobile customers block anonymous calls - <AUTHOR> https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/scam-id-and-scam-block#heading2 <comment><AUTHOR> I remember watching the hearings in the 1980s when caller-ID was coming to NY state on some UHF channel.

There were two groups of teary-eyed women, one arguing for caller ID (so they'd know the numbers of people calling to harass them!) and one arguing against it (suppose they were in a "safe house" but needed to call their abusive ex- to ask something! They could be identified!) I think the "anonymous" option was to appease both sides. And that's why they can't be blocked.

</comment><comment><USER2> If only the customers knew of the unpublished GSM setting in the HLR that forces all calls to not be anonymous. :-) I had it when I worked in the cellular industry. Sales companies and scammers despised it. And yes, if you had your own SS7 link, you could spoof caller-id, but that could be fixed with a law by holding telco's accountable for mismanagement of their SS7 signalling network and bumping switches off the network that repeatedly violate policies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clue: Don't answer anonymous calls.</comment>


Why women leave tech: It's the culture - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/women-leave-tech-culture <comment><USER2> > Elite institutions like Stanford and Berkeley now report that about 50% of > their introductory computer science students are women

In the discussion of this story at Reddit [1], there were some interesting comments pointing out reasons that the article might be wrong in surmising that 50% women in introductory classes means they are entering the tech-as-a- profession pipeline at the same rate as men.

Computing has become sufficiently important in other engineering fields, science, finance, social science, and even some of the humanities that people interested in those areas can greatly benefit by introductory CS and programming. Introductory CS has become a course you can reasonably expect anyone to take now, and so it should have demographics that are close to that of the campus as a whole.

What you'd want to look at to see the real rate women are coming into the CS pipeline in college is the demographics of the first CS class that is generally taken only by people going into CS.

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2ibeqk/why_women...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2ibeqk/why_women_leave_tech_its_the_culture_not_because/)

<comment><USER2> > It is popular to characterize the gender gap in tech in terms of a pipeline > problem: not enough girls studying math and science. However, there are > several indications that this may no longer be the case, at least not to the > extent that it once was. High school girls and boys participate about > equally in STEM electives. Elite institutions like Stanford and Berkeley now > report that about 50% of their introductory computer science students are > women. Yet just last year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that men are > employed in STEM occupations at about twice the rate of women with the same > qualifications.

Looking more into this, there are some other problems.

The link cited for "High school girls and boys participate about equally in STEM electives" says "Girls are taking many high level mathematics and science courses at similar rates as their male peers, with the exception of physics and engineering, and are performing well overall". Note that part about engineering being an exception. For engineering, their source says the ratio of boys to girls is 6 to 1.

I'd expect engineering is most relevant for most tech jobs, and in that boys outnumber girls 6 to 1 in high school. That sure doesn't sound like the pipeline problem is no longer a major factor.

Their same source also has stats for college. Women earn 50.3% of the science and engineering bachelor's degrees, but like high school this varies by field. It was 18.2% in computer science and 18.4% in engineering. I don't see any sign here either that the pipeline problem is diminishing.

Interestingly, women get 43.1% of the bachelor's degrees in math and statistics. I'm surprised there is that big of a difference between math and CS.

In the workforce, the same source says that women are 13% in engineering, and 25% in computer and mathematical sciences (it is very annoying that CS and math are separate in the college stats and combined in the workplace stats).

Note the significant drop from degrees to workforce. In engineering, women are 18.4% of the degrees, but only make up 13% of the working engineers. I wonder if that gap could be due to the difficulty of having children while maintaining one's career, which is definitely harder for women than men since women are the ones that actually give birth?

I'm beginning to think that the main causes of the gender gap in tech are the pipeline problem and the atrocious maternity and paternity leave standards in the US.

Most of Europe, I believe, has much much much much better maternity and paternity leave than the US does. Does anyone have any stats on if women who go into tech in Europe are more likely to stay compared to US tech women? Note that the data we want for this is not just the percentage of women in tech there compared to the US, because the pipelines into tech might be different. I think the number we want is, for various tech areas, percentage of women getting degrees in these areas and percentage of women in the workforce in those areas.

If maternity and paternity leave make a different, my prediction is that the percentages in the workforce will be closer to the percentages getting degrees in Europe than it is in the US.

One more interesting thing. The source the article cites for the pipeline data also gives a breakdown of the workforce by various science and engineering fields. Here are the percentages:

       45.9% of chemists and material scientists
       28.9% of environmental scientist and geoscientists
       22.3% of chemical engineers
       17.8% of industrial engineers
       13.1% of civil engineers
        8.8% of electrical and electronics engineers
        5.5% of mechanical engineers

I can see traditional differences in the way boys and girls are raised explaining why women are better represented in biological sciences than in physical sciences or engineering, but I cannot think of anything that would explain why the representation of women various so much between different engineering fields. I can't think of anything that would have made me guess that women would be much better represented in chemical engineering than civil engineering, and in civil engineering than electrical engineering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Coincidentially, I'm working on something which is very relevant to this topic: [http://i.imgur.com/dGZk26W.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/dGZk26W.jpg)

<comment><USER4> That is not relevant - sample all the stories posted to HN over a month and we might seem something interesting, but if you put all samples into one beaker, except for one all we will see is how different that story is from the norm.

Take the ebola thread posted earlier - there is clearly no ebola words in your first sample, while there would be in one taken soly from that story.

Look women just aren't mentioned that often on your average HN story because we assume them to be humans.

<comment><USER3> > _Take the ebola thread posted earlier - there is clearly no ebola words in > your first sample, while there would be in one taken soly from that story._

That's...not how word clouds work.

Each bucket is taken from thousands of comments in hundreds of HN submissions, which each phase in the cloud appearing with over 100 times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm kinda surprised these companies feel they can afford to treat their employees poorly despite the labour market being so competitive.

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406912)

<comment><USER7> A valid reason to kill this one. But there seems to be the problem that controversial storys get flagged of the frontpage very fast, which then makes other people repost them. Probably because the story is relevant to them/they want to discuss it.

In addition to this, there seems to be a heavy penalty for posts that get more comments than upvotes, which sometimes kills quite inspiring discussions.

How about introducing a "controversial" tag that gets added on posts with lots of comments and flags and having a setting (similar to showdead) to make them invisible for people who don't like to discuss. This would also solve a part of the repost problem and the "censorship" accusations hn sometimes gets.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, moderators didn't touch this story. It fell in rank because users flagged it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > It was too hard to juggle everything. Her manager had pressured her to > return from leave early, and was pushing her again to take a business trip > and leave her nursing infant at home.

Chose family over career. Had to make predictable work sacrifice in order to have time for family.

> I was the first and only person at my small company ever to take maternity > leave. They had no parental leave policy previously even though they had > been around for about a decade, and, having under 50 employees, weren't > covered by FMLA. I (cluelessly!) agreed to go back to work part-time > starting when my daughter was six weeks. There was no set place for me to > pump [breast milk] while I was at work, so it was perpetually inconvenient > and awkward to work at the office for longer than a couple hours at a time.

Was aware that her small company didn't have structures in place, yet seems surprised they didn't have structures in place. Was accommodated about maternity leave, then quit because they didn't also have an extra room just for mothers.

> She is one of 484 [67% of the sample] women to cite motherhood as a factor > in her decision to leave tech.

Two third of the women choose a larger family role over a more demanding job, yet complain about the work place consequences of doing so.

> Rather, it was the lack of flexible work arrangements, the unsupportive work > environment, or a salary that was inadequate to pay for childcare.

According to the article, most women seem unwilling to accept that they have to make sacrifices associated with a family, and seem to think that its the obligation of the corporation to make their life choices work, rather than just continue to employ them if the situation is mutually workable.

> Of the 716 women surveyed, 465 are not working today.

Indeed, about two thirds of them opted not to return to a job immediately following their decision to place family over career. This strongly indicates a sampling bias towards women who would have left /any/ industry with a demanding work load in preference of family duties, and calls in to question if this is anything particular to tech.

> Some women felt that their work environments were discriminatory, but most > reported something milder: the simple discomfort of not fitting in in an > otherwise homogenous setting.

In fact, the article admits that it's not actually about any kind of discrimination in tech, but rather, that companies aren't going out of their way to favor women enough to get a critical mass of them employed and overcome this effect that trickles the qualified women back out of the field, keeping them from ever reaching that mass on their own.

This article seems to mostly complain about a lack of privilege, and not actually complain about anything actionable on anyone else's part.

<comment><USER9> I'm so surprised how the society keeps saying how women/people leaving the workplace to have kids is a bad thing. Personally, I would love to have the opportunity to stay at home and not need to go to work. However, being a man, the institutional, cultural and sexual factors compound and make it very unlikely that I will be so lucky.

Maybe I should move to the Netherlands - there, most women and a lot of men only work part-time jobs, as they earn enough and are able to have a better work-life balance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > It was hard enough being the only woman on most projects.

> Try being the only woman over 40. Doesn't matter how good

> you are, or even if your colleagues respect you.

> Eventually you get tired of being the odd duck.

What i read is: "even if everything is fine, my coworkers respect me and i get a nice paycheck, i feel the need and urge to be bitching about something".

Is it just me ?

</comment><comment><USER7> Ok, I'll probably get downvoted to death (therefore new account), but I am really interested in your opinion on this:

Things like "Try being the only woman over 40." for me sounds like desperately looking for an excuse for not wanting to work there without really having one - similar to "I'm the only tall guy with black hair and blue eyes - I can't work there".

Next, the "Halle Berry" thing: I'm not really into the specifics about her, but I'm not aware of anything negative. I only think of her as being really successful in her job. There is nothing about being a woman in there - when a guy with a huge beard would break the server there would be jokes like "Oh look, Gandalf broke the website today" which isn't bad either.

I do not understand their problem about "being different" \- I think of it as one of the biggest reasons for having people to do the job instead of 1000 equal robots (only second to "robots are not that far yet"). In addition to this: Isn't the diversity thing one of ideas a lot of "feminists" preach to convince people to look for "women who could do this job" instead of "everyone who could do this job"?

And the last thing: In the article they complain about not getting a baby leave, which is totally valid, but doesn't that contradict the the other "we want to be treated equally" stuff?

<comment><USER11> I shouldn't even get involved in discussions about sexism or racism on HN. It always turns into a 3 page meta-meta-meta debate with no resolution. The whole tech scene needs to collectively take a sensitivity training course to regain its humanity.

1) _> >"Try being the only woman over 40.... similar to "I'm the only tall guy with black hair and blue eyes - I can't work there"._

The fact that you see those 2 things as anything approaching remotely similar is an error in social perception that I cannot begin to explain.

2) _> >Next, the "Halle Berry" thing: I'm not really into the specifics about her, but I'm not aware of anything negative._

Halle Berry is a black woman; that's why her co-workers are using it. Calling her that is pretty much equiv to saying "Oh, the black woman broke the build this morning." Yes, she's black, she's a woman and it may very well be the fact that code she pushed broke the build. But, in the context of American history... and being the only black woman in an office of white males... that kind of phrasing is a problem and it's a subtle reminder that she's not _" one of them"_ and they probably haven't accepted her. It's not at all the same as a bunch of same gender, same race people calling out one guy with a beard. Context is important.

3) _> >And the last thing: In the article they complain about not getting a baby leave, which is totally valid, but doesn't that contradict the the other "we want to be treated equally" stuff?_

Humans are not computers. It's not 1 or 0. You can treat someone as an equal while also gracefully resolving particular situations. What this article is probably alluding to is the vibe of an office where you're made to feel guilty taking care of your own child. For a mom, their are real biological things like recovering from child birth and choosing to feed the child naturally. If, say, a man broke his leg skiing he'd probably get some time off and the guys would joke about it and smile. The typical vibe of a tech office won't make him feel guilty. If a woman needs some time off for a new child... it's not usually the same vibe.

______

P.S., I won't be replying anymore in this thread because I already know someone will come along with specious meta-debate and the thread will become like 3 pages long splitting hairs and debating the nature of the universe. I'm just posting here for the other HN readers who never post to let them know there are some in tech who do _get it_ and understand what these women are expressing is a real issue and not something just made up in their heads.

EDIT:....and boom, off the front page in like 5mins. HN itself is an example of these problems. Someone should write an article about how HN can't handle any discussion about racism or sexism in tech and really shine a bright light on it. I use to collect examples; I might have to start that up again.

<comment><USER7> To 1) and 2) That was kind of the point I was trying to make here: Being a woman and being 40 or being a woman and being black is a characteristic of someone - having blue eyes is one, too. You only feel different when you look at it specifically and point out it is "important" (for example "being a woman" compared to "having blue eyes"). And then you feel alone because of it. So why make it "important" in the first place?

<comment><USER12> Because it gives them something to bitch about.

I bet that all guys in that company had nicknames. She got one for someone who was considered the most beautiful person the planet - and she's upset about it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Xiaomi story: from zero to US$16B in seven years - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2142130/rise-xiaomi-inside-humble-chinese-start-poised-become-years <comment><USER2> What's the quality of Xiaomi phones compared to the ZTE's and the Huawei's from China?</comment>


Risks Abound with Ethereum and Its Application Developers - <AUTHOR> https://hacked.com/risks-abound-ethereum-application-developers/ <comment><USER2> Article seems to be behind a login/pay wall once you begin to scroll</comment>


The Environmental Impact of Email Attachments  - <AUTHOR> http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/08/are-email-attachments-bad-environment

<comment><USER2> This doesn't seem like a realistic way to measure environmental impact.</comment>