I live in Southern Norway and during the morktide (dark time) the sun doesn't rise until well after school starts even with daylight savings time. Sometime in early November is the last time you can see the sun before or after school. In North Norway the sun doesn't rise at all during the dark time. We've come up with good solutions like plastering kids with reflectors and teaching children to pay attention to cars. We also teach drivers that pedestrians have the right of way in intersections NO MATTER how STUPID they are acting. Though we still do the stupid DST dance, it really doesn't change much of anything. The sun goes away, the morning is dark and for the most part kids are pretty safe.

Making timezone calculations in an application is ridiculously painful even with helpful TZ libraries. In my last program I just decided to ignore DST in my calculations and just fudge everything. This is particularly annoying because it needs to calculate the time in New York, but the computer it lives on is currently in Norway and North America and Europe switch their clocks at seemingly random times each year.

For this particular program it doesn't matter *too* much, but it does lead to weird failures occasionally. Fortunately it's not in a production environment, it's just something that runs around the house.

Aaaand one more time XKCD: NOW

Obligatory relevant XKCD: NOW

What evidenced based arguments can you site? The rationale I have read for DLS involve saving electricity, but as this article suggests, not only does DLS not save electricity, it may actually use more. It also goes on to cite studies that suggest that DLS may actually cause heart attacks. Farmers tend to hate DLS because they get up when the need to get up with no relationship to the clock. When the time jumps around, they still get up when they need to get up, they're just suddenly one hour out of sync with the wall time.

Though to be fair, it may save some traffic accidents due to allowing more people to drive home in the daylight and it may provide more revenue for some retailers. Though there's plenty of evidence to suggest that sleep disruption (like moving someone's wake and sleep time) causes more accidents. The cited article studied shift workers, but it applies to anyone who's regular sleep cycle is suddenly disrupted.

All in all, it looks like DLS shifts on whole causes lots of hassle, probably costs money and lives and should its self die a quiet death in retirement.

Excactly!

There's no logical argument for the time change. None. The farming argument doesn't make any sense. Farmers don't give a rip what the wall-time is. They get up when it's time to get up and get the work done. They go to bed when the work day is done and they're sleepy. If you have to get up at 3:30 to milk the cows, you get up at 3:30. If the wall clock suddenly says it's 4:30, you still get up at the same time because the cows, corn, and sun don't give a flying FSCK what the wall clock says.

As far as providing more natural light in offices, that may have been true in 1930 when buildings were built without central HVAC with window access for everyone in mind. Though there's precious little evidence that DLS made a bit of difference in the then either. Now all but the "greenest" buildings (and some WalMarts) have their lights on during the work day weather the sun is shining or its pitch black outside.

And my rant continues with the horrible effects on your health. Suddenly changing humans sleep patterns is terrible for general healthfulness and sleep cycles.

In short take your DLS and shove it where the sun will never shine

Adding RFID tags to equipment and encouraging people to swipe it out as it is used might be a good idea. But short of adding a supply clerk or using a badge system I don't see many other options. Maybe there's some work-study budget for a freshman to sit in the lab and check out equipment?

I heard on Freakonomics about putting up web cams and paying someone in a far-off land to ensure hand-washing compliance. Perhaps a system like that might work.

What the hell was that? They threatened to shut down the Guardian if the media wasn't handed over; it appears though that they didn't have the balls to go through with the threat. Instead they came up with this bizarre compromise that involved 'destroying' the data. Why do this? Was it just a way for the government to save face and not have to back down from some crazy ass redline that threw out there? They must know that the files were immediately duplicated and spread around the world. That was by far one of the strangest things I've ever seen a newspaper do.

A trusted executor is really the way to go here. Store the passwords in an encrypted format and then give the key to a trusted party that will only unseal the encrypted database in the event that you are incapacitated. For added security, split the key into multiple parts and give it to multiple parties. It would probably be best to transport the key in a physical format and make it clear that the importance of the document.

In a work place setting, give the keys to supervisors that are mutually responsible for the systems in question. In a personal setting, give the keys to family members that are trusted. Be sure to provide step-by-step instructions as to how to decrypt your data. If you are so unfortunate to not have trusted family or friends, pay a law firm to administrate this service and act as your executor. For a fee, the law firm can be instructed to only unseal the data in the event that certain standards are met (such as a declaration of incompetence by N medical professionals).

What do you mean? Embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word.

We're almost half way to having a working teleporter! Woot!

Meh. ABS is an alright material and it's pretty tough. It's not unlike the stuff cafeteria trays are made out of. A 3D extruded-noodle case will never be as tough as a case made through injection molding due to the inherent sheer weakness between the fused layers. That being said, in my very unscientific and shoddy testing with vice grips, shop scissors and hammers applied to borked pieces, 3D prints are pretty tough to break. A rectangle of say 50x50x5 mm printed with an infill of 50% is surprisingly dense and difficult to crack by hand. I had to use a two pair of vice grips to snap it in half.

As far as protection, I wouldn't count on the ABS providing much in the way of fall protection. Fall protection is all about DV/DT (acceleration), or rather the change in velocity over time. A phone wrapped in a pillow dropped from 1 meter will experience a much lower acceleration than a phone wrapped in a rock when it hits the ground. ABS is definitely squishier than a rock, but it can't compete with something like silicone.

If you're just interested in surface protection, ABS is a pretty solid choice as it's relatively soft and won't bite into the phone finish too much and should offer a bit of protection from your pocket. A 3D printed case won't have quite the same finish that an extruded case has and definitely needs morem cleanup at the end.

I haven't worked much with PLA, but the little that i have worked with it, it appears to be stronger but more brittle (think glass versus steel). Probably not what you want in a case as Apple discovered with their magnificent glass backs...

Though I'm not a fan of "the use it the way we intended, or die a death of 1,000 cuts through our inflexible configuration" mentality of Apple, they do make some awesome decisions when it comes to marketing. For quite some time they have been providing specs on their devices for case designers. I suspect this is to help encourage the whole Apple ecosystem. You can find all the specs over at the Apple Developers Page

A quick search over at The Thingiverse yields many printable cases based on these specs.

I wish other manufactuers such as Samsung, HTC and LG would release their designs specs. Instead I'm left here with my vernie calipers and a crapload of guessing.

CyanogenMod breathed a whole new life into my 2 year old Nexus one. It was snappier, appeared to get battery life and had a whole host of awesome new features. The only reason I finally upgraded to a newer phone was because the power button broke (again!) and the headphone jack wore out. If you're sitting on an older Android device, consider trying CM. It really turns your phone into a geeksphone.

And martian shadow. Also cool!