So Citizen Musk is cutting staff at his company Space X’s direct competitor NASA, while performing blowjobs on the president to run DOGE. Totally healthy democracy you guys gave over there.

I find myself doing that when camping too. But for the rest of the time, it is utterly shit. The London royal parks are closed until 6am so no walking the dog there. The cafes and restaurants are closed until 7am or 8am so no nice breakfast and coffee. Tube and overground trabsport options are less frequent, although there is more space. Meeting people at the pub at 9pm feels a bit jet lagged, because you are about 4 hours out from everyone else, so it is like being an old person. The problems are very obvious if you get past the idea that other peoe should just “get past the idea that a clock should rule your life”. But yes, it works well while camping.

A FIXED-point format has a fixed absolute error and the representable values are distributed linearly. For example, 0/255, 1/255, 2/255 and so on, up to 255/255 would be an 8-but fixed point format with range [0,1]. Large numbers gave more relative precision. Whereas a FLOATING-point format has (approximately) fixed relative error and the representable values are distributed (approximately) logarithmically. It has the same number of values available between each power of two. Large and small numbers have the same relative precision, An 8-bit float is exactly 8 bits long, and uses some bits for the exponent and some for the mantissa (like other float formats).

* 3am

* 3am to 5am

Civilisation doesn’t adjust though. We are talking about a country that can’t even switch to metric. What all these Dr Spock “time is just arbitrary construction, numbers aren’t real, just get up at 4am if you want more sunshine during waking hours” type posts fail to appreciate is that time is deeply embedded in society. Most people, whether they are aware or not, would prefer more sunlight in summer evenings rather than unused sunlight from 3am to 5pm. And in winter they would prefer sunlight around the time they need to commute or begin activity, rather than dark mornings. DST helps provide this.

Underrated comment. I see what you did there.

Where will the extra time go? The Earth is still rotating at the rate that doesn’t exactly equal a standard year with leap year corrections (which are effectively leap days on February 29). If you remove leap seconds then an error will accumulate:

Here (London) it begins getting light before 3:30am GMT in June, 90 minutes even before rare individuals that rise at 5am are awake. By defining 3:30am GMT as 4:30am BST (British Summer Time) and adopting that as the civilian time zone during summer, one hour on sunlight is effectively redistributed from when almost no one benefits (0330-0430) to instead be available in the evening when it can benefit society and be enjoyed (2030-2130).

Who are you quoting? I didn’t say that. Quite obviously the total annual solar insolation does not change. However, DST (or BST here in UK) allows more sunshine DURING USEFUL HOURS, for example 2030--2200 instead of 0330-0500. For those of us that are actually in society, employment, education family and friends, sunshine is more beneficial at 9pm rather than 3pm. Of course, for the average Slashdot user who has nothing better to do than masturbate or recompile the Linux kernel at 3am, and no friends to meet at the pub at 9pm, the societal benefits of the redistributed sunlight hours are probably less apparent.

I don’t want permanent DST. That’s just dumb, I want the benefits of clock changes: more hours of useful daylight in summer evenings for leasure and drinking at the pub, along with reasonable early sunrise times in midwinter for morning commutes rather than bleak darkness. People who don’t want any clock changes really don’t get this.

* millions

Get up at 4am? Bizarre take.

Meanwhile down here on planet Earth, for normal people living in a society in a city of million, where daily life involves coordination with transport, work, shopping education, family and friend we prefer summer sunlight at 9pm when it is useful and improves life quality and wellbeing, rather than at 3am when it doesn’t.

The hot climates you mention are generally tropical or equatorial, and not good candidates for summertime.. Those regions do not have a reason for summer/winter time, in fact even summer and winter season definitions are ill defined and irrelevant near the equator. In areas around 45N or higher (I am in London 51N) having sunlight from 3am onwards in midsummer is a wasted resource on most of the population, and is better used in the evening to offset the psychological impact of the winter months (seasonal affect disorder etc). Subjecting children to adverse conditions so they don’t become “whiny bitches” is just dumb. If you want to subject your children to darkness, go live in a cave. No one I’ve ever met would prefer less sunlight in summer evenings as a tradeoff to have the sun rise at 3am.

I live in a village too. There are nine million people in my village and 15 million in the greater urban area. My employer and my children’s schools have timetables.