Daily English Article — July 18, 2026

The United States House of Representatives has passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent, eliminating the twice-yearly clock changes that most Americans find burdensome. Under the current system, clocks spring forward one hour in spring and fall back in autumn to give people more evening daylight in summer. An AP-NORC poll found that only 12% of adults support the semi-annual change, while nearly half oppose it. President Trump has expressed support, though the bill still faces significant hurdles in the Senate.

The proposal has notable backers, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, both of which emphasize the importance of stable daily rhythms. However, the legislation faces strong opposition from some Senate Republicans. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton has been particularly outspoken, warning that permanent daylight saving time would make winter mornings unbearably dark for millions of Americans, highlighting a genuine tension between evening convenience and morning safety.

America has experimented with permanent daylight saving time before. In 1973, Congress enacted a law establishing it as a trial measure beginning January 1974. However, the experiment collapsed by October 1974 — less than a year in — after widespread public outcry. A central concern was that children would be forced to commute to school in complete darkness during winter months, a situation many parents found dangerous and deeply unsettling for daily life.

Kevin Birth, an anthropology professor at Queens College who researches cultural concepts of time, recalls the 1974 experiment from his own childhood in Syracuse, New York. He vividly remembers waking before sunrise and walking to school in pitch darkness, a stark illustration of why the public turned against the policy so quickly. His account underscores that while people dislike switching clocks twice a year, they equally dislike darker winter mornings.

Supporters argue that the modern context is different. More Americans now work from home, reducing early-morning commuting concerns that plagued the 1970s experiment. Additionally, advances in sleep science offer a more nuanced understanding of how consistent light exposure affects human health and productivity. Whether these shifts are sufficient to sustain permanent daylight saving time — and win enough votes in the Senate — remains to be seen as the debate continues.

Linus Torvalds, the creator and chief maintainer of the Linux kernel, has publicly declared his strong support for the use of artificial intelligence tools in the development of the long-running open source project. Writing on the Linux kernel mailing list, Torvalds stated unequivocally that Linux is not an anti-AI project and challenged those who object to simply fork the project — creating their own separate version — or leave entirely. His blunt message underscored a deepening divide in the open source software community over AI integration.

The controversy was triggered by discussions around Sashiko, an AI-powered system designed to autonomously review Linux kernel code. Its creators claim it can independently identify 53.6% of bugs that human developers would later fix. However, the tool also generates false positives — erroneous bug reports — at a rate estimated to be within the 20% range. The debate centered on whether kernel maintainers should be subjected to a continuous flood of automated bug report emails, many of which would prove unfounded and time-consuming to investigate.

The dispute took on a broader ideological dimension when one participant cited the Software Freedom Conservancy's statement arguing that open source contributors should have the right to self-determination regarding AI-generated code and that the community should support those who reject large language model systems outright. Torvalds pushed back firmly against this position, insisting he would not force anyone to use AI tools but would equally refuse to side with those who pressure others not to use them.

Torvalds framed his stance as pragmatic rather than ideological, grounding it in technical merit and practical utility rather than enthusiasm for novelty or fear of new tools. He characterized AI as simply another useful instrument in a developer's toolkit, comparable to other established tools, and stated that its value is now beyond dispute. He acknowledged that AI is not perfect but challenged critics to honestly evaluate human code maintainers with the same scrutiny they apply to AI-generated output.

Research on AI's actual impact on developer productivity presents a complex picture. A study by METR found that open source coders using AI tools were 19% less productive than those who did not, even though AI users reported feeling 20% more productive — a notable perception gap. However, a February 2026 follow-up from the same researchers suggested productivity gains from AI tools are likely growing, reflecting the rapidly evolving capabilities of these systems and their increasing integration into real-world coding workflows.