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by ta1243 639 days ago
I wanted to know when the clocks went back in the US and UK earlier.

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when do clocks go back uk and us

ChatGPT said:

In 2024, clocks go back on Sunday, October 27th in the UK and most of Europe, marking the end of Daylight Saving Time (DST). At 2:00 AM, clocks are set back one hour to 1:00 AM, giving people an extra hour of sleep. This marks the shift back to Standard Time and will last until spring when clocks go forward again.

In the United States, the clocks will go back a bit later, on Sunday, November 3rd, 2024.

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Compare to using a search engine to find this out, which involves one search, then clicking another page, then finding out the dates for the UK, then searching for the US, multiple pages, multiple paragraphs of text

First result was the evening standard

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What date do clocks go back in 2024 and when does British Summer Time end?

Brits will get an extra hour of sleep from next month as the days get shorter and shorter.

The temperatures are starting to drop, marking the end of summer – even if it’s not going quietly. Nonetheless, autumn is well and truly on the way and that also marks the end of British Summer Time (BST).

For those who aren’t a fan of dark mornings, that means you’ll gain one hour of sleep.

The custom of changing the clocks twice a year has been around in the UK for over a century, taking place once in March and once in October.

There’s still a little while until the clocks change but the date is already known, as it always happens on the last Sunday of October.

In 2019, the European Parliament voted to scrap mandatory daylight saving but Britain has no plans to, err, see the light.

This is what it all means for the UK.

When do the clocks go back?

The clocks go back on Sunday, October 27 at 2am.

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All that nonsense to parse and I still haven't got the US date

2 comments

Because a search engine is not an answer engine. I just type 'daylight saving time uk' and 'daylight saving time us' and the answer was right at the top [0].

You're supposed to give a query, not a question (even though google et al. have worked hard to trick people into that). Which is why search engines works for me even if there are lot of garbage filled sites.

[0]: https://ibb.co/GpZ19nK (screenshot)

> Because a search engine is not an answer engine.

People have come to expect that though, and until a few years ago Google had actually gotten really good at it, partially because people finally started using structured metadata to give context.

Strange experience. I tried to replicate it by typing "US daylight savings time" into my URL bar and Duck Duck Go's summary blurb at the top of the results says "Daylight Savings Time Ends Sunday, November 3rd, 2024" and the first result is Wikipedia. Without even following it, the summary on the search page says "in the US, daylight savings time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November."

Hacker News commenters seem to consistently have far more trouble searching for things than I do and I don't get it.

They do questions-based, not query-based search. The trick is knowing the right keywords, which is fairly easy.
Tiny nit: it's daylight saving time.