It all depends on who you are optimizing for.

• Parents with kids would do better on standard time, because they have to take their kids to school before work.
• Everyone else with a 9-to-5 job may do better on DST, assuming a short commute distance, because sunrise at 7:20 instead of 8:20 just adds useless time before the morning commute, while sundown at 5:53 means driving home before dark.

There is no one correct answer, because which one fits your circadian rhythms better depends entirely on what time you wake up.

... the female AIs are more likely to quit in mid project to spawn a child process.

(Ducking and running.)

The "preceding year" bit doesn't seem to get much respect either, because it takes longer than that to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Exactly. And Vmware's calculus is that as long as it has a dozen gigantic clients (governments, huge enterprises) that it can charge whatever it wants, then the small fish aren't worth it.

... Miskatonic University?

The problem comes with hardware which doesn't have a way (or, at least, a user-friendly way) to update its locale data. I recall having problems a decade or so ago with discrepancies between two computers because one of them hadn't been updated with the then-very-recent changes to Chilean law about summer time and the other one had.

But maybe an authoritarian dictatorship isn't a great example. Then turn your eyes to France and Spain.

On a point of order... Spain was in GMT until an authoritarian dictator decided that being in the same timezone as Nazi Germany would be convenient. France changed when it was occupied by Nazi Germany. Where you arguably get away with the examples is that there is a question as to why they haven't changed back.

Instead, we could have kids playing outside after school in the dark. At least when they are walking* to school, I know where they'll be.

*People actually make their kids walk these days? If you don't drive them in the Land Rover, Child Protective Services will be called.

So, traditional Japanese time.

True, to a point. Perl made _some_ commitments to maintaining the "multiple ways of doing things". Which led to a lot of unreadable code (intentionally, at times). And like Python, Perl was a glue language. And proud of it as well. The problem will become that in the step to Rust, there are things that Rust can't do (efficiently, at all, or without "unsafe" keywords). And then where will we be?*

Larry Wall is a linguist as much as anything else. He didn't have a PhD thesis and associated reputation on the line with "a new thing".

*I lived through the era of things that just worked on various flavors of UNIX and Linux. And then the Microsoft consultants came in, picked up our requirements documents and a red Sharpie and started to cross out anything that Windows can't do. Just to get it in the door.** History repeats itself?

**I worked in a secure facility with armed guards. At one point, I asked the boss how these people even got in the door. "We gave the guards guns. Why can't they use them?"

There are people still using VMWare?!?!? And their main issue is COST, rather than the fact that VMWare is like a thousand years old?

Except that nobody is really desperate to get on broadcast TV anymore in urban and suburban areas. Other than to get onto the cable systems via "must carry" rules. For free, to boot. There's no quicker way to get your Sunday Morning preacher carried all over the city than to put up a crappy low power transmitter and ask no remuneration. The Word of the Lord spread far and wide is sufficient compensation. Same for the shopping channels. They ask no money, so they can't get bounced off the cable. And they make plenty by advertising cheap jewelry, silver (plated) coins, personal injury attorneys and CBD infused everything.

Somebody needs to look at the economics of cable and broadcast and figure out which way the value is really flowing. Without input (coke and hookers) from cable or the NAB.

What happened to the "must carry" rules? Where the Big, Bad cable companies had to carry local broadcasts? Including every 500 Watt Jesus Channel in town. It's getting so you can't tell who's on the receiving end of this corporate daisy chain anymore.

Here's an idea: Everyone divest themselves of content providers and studios. And become common carriers for local regions. Then let the big boys fight for room on your cable, fiber or r.f. spectrum with their cash. Which will go quite a ways toward funding local news and programming.

There are use cases you're not covering. Last month I needed a photo of my sister-in-law's ID card to prove that I'd correctly transcribed her address (bureaucrats don't always understand that other countries do things like addresses differently) when applying for a document to make it easier for her to visit. If she'd had to be there in person we'd have had a circular dependency.

Well then, I'm taking my Tannerite and going home.