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Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 271

Yeah that changes the context somewhat. There's a difference between "We should remove the bi-annual time change, it's unhealthy" (which I agree with and would like to happen) and the wishful thinking "WhAt iF iT wAs SuMmEr aLl yEaR rOuNd" crap that seems beloved of legislators and others who sort of agree that the bi-annual time changes need to go, but have the worst idea of how to implement it.

This paper isn't advocating for keeping bi-annual time changes. It's advocating for standard time. And I agree standard time is probably a better approach, even if some people get butt hurt about the idea of it not still being light at 9pm in the middle of August.

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.

Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 271

Here's a solution for you. Universal coordinated time. UCT is the same time around the world. You don't have to ever change what time it is.

Fuck it - let's go epoch time all around the world no more DST, no stupid 720 degree clock or timezones. While we're at it - let's get rid of days of the week, month and years as well. It's 1791452533 right now, I'll see you at 1791452533.

Never thought of epoch time! The ultimate revenge of the nerds! 8^)

I'd say another drawback to getting rid DST is that any tradesman working outside would have to start banging hammers an hour earlier to miss the heat of the day waking people up whilst construction projects miss an hour per day, per person, per project because exhaustion leads to fatal work accidents.

During the longest days many of the outside contractors in my area tend to tie their workday to the light/dark cycle. There are times here in PA where it is getting light at 4 in the morning! That's like bonus time toward meeting the schedule. And you are correct about the heat. We have the added humidity (it hung around 100 percent this past summer) Upper 80's and 100 percent humidity plays hell on construction workers.

Then there is the additional energy consumption required for lighting in the evening that would have been provided by the sun for free.

Although it is mainly a transfer of energy use. But what makes me laugh is just how the intersection of solipsism and stupidity runs so deep in these matters.

Even the name "Sunshine Protection Act" the hill politicians have chosen to die on, is 100 percent wrong. The amount of sunshine in any 24 hour cycle is a matter of physics, not something politicians can vote on.

But a person who gets up at 7:00 A.M. and works a day shift. sees how it is light longer in the summer, and is stupid, thinks that all that is needed is to keep DST, and the day will be longer. And their solipsism has them thinking everyone else would benefit from that. I meant who could oppose a longer day? There are times here when it is getting light at 4 in the morning. Then it makes some sense to shift, people who work outside like that, especially in temperate zones. Hours wasted in the morning, unless you want to start work at 4 AM. But on the other end of the stick, if DST becomes permanent, in my area, during December and January, sunrise will happen around 0830, with 0835 being the latest. And I'm in PA. Around 40 degrees North, not even halfway up the latitudes.

But the solipsists don't care, and stupid is not fixable.

Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 271

yes, because it didn't kill you, obviously it doesn't kill anyone.

Personally I think the "killing people" is largely bullshit, but your reasoning is flawed.

I've been on planes with hundreds of people per flight. Their experience is the same as mine. No one keeled over. This ain't just me homie. And I'm not going to provide citations with everyone I ever flew with - that's thousands of people. I only relate that people don't die because they changed timezones. If this was a regular occurrence across many people, people would notice.

That you think that my relating a personal experience over many years is flawed reasoning only shows you didn't have anything useful to say, but that didn't stop you from saying something. Good work, coward.

Comment Re: Summary ... (Score 1) 271

"You are a rather solipsistic fellow aren't you? You never got on or off a bus in the dark so no one does."

Literally the opposite of what I said. Are you having Gemini write your comments?

Must be Drinkypoo derangement syndrome. That was a misread on my part, mea maxima culpa's all around But.....

Validate your claim that DST kills people. Shifting a timezone should have exactly the same effect. One hour plus or minus, should be showing dead people as a direct cause. And I don't take back that you are solipsistic.

Shifting one timezone should have exactly the same effect. Death. Explain why it does not.

Comment Re:Alternatively ... (Score 1) 271

Go to bed at night, and get up in the morning, at the same 'natural times' every day regardless of what the clock is set to. Move an hour of chores from evenings to mornings if you are awake too early for school or work. DST or not might have to be an issue for school, work, and shopping. It doesn't have to define sleep.

So when we are on permanent DST, I have to go to work late in December? Or at 4 in the morning during the summer? And across time zones and latitudes, making corrections for everyone?

Sorry, but perhaps in prehistoric times up to the early 1700's your "natural" system might work. It definitely does not in an interconnected world. A whole lot of us have to know what time people show up for work in cities and countries we communicate with. Example: One place I would call was on the west coast. Their workday was 7:30 to 4:30. They were 3 hours behind my time. So if I need to call them at my time, I have to wait until 10:30 Eastern Time. If I have to call Mumbai Adding an element of randomness is just going to make the juggling worse

Comment Alexa already "does whatever it wants" ... (Score 1) 47

I have a set of 5 Echo Dots around the house and ever since I "upgraded to Alexa+" -- it's a train-wreck. Sure, the AI gives much smarter answers to questions. But they continuously forget my preferences for the voice I chose for them to use. (My wife and I both prefer their "female 2, relaxed" voice, as most similar to the original and more "professional" sounding than the others.) But no, it keeps going back to a voice that sounds like a bubbly, annoying teenage girl. Worse yet, there's no way to set a voice as default for all devices. You have to go around changing it for each one independently.

And that's before all the creepy, info-stealing behavior it has. EG. Someone will come over and ask it a few questions. Next thing you know, it's asking them to share their name since it's a voice they don't recognize.

Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 271

People sure are afraid of change - this is what led to DST in the first place instead of doing the right thing and adjusting school and work hours in the summer. So that means that parents have to change their work schedule, and it would change constantly. Seems like a solution that causes more problems.

You think changing the clocks twice a year fixes everything?

Of course it doesn't. Low latitudes have almost no difference in day night cycle, and the higher you go in latitude, the more the dy night cycle shits over teh year, and at the highest latitudes, no adjustment is actually possible that would do anything.

We have modern tech that lets us have flexible scheduling, even schools are now flexible enough that on bad weather days the children take classes from home (yes that is proving to not work but the tech is here). So your fix is making working parents continually change their workday, and hiring an au pair? And each day will be a little different. What is more, everyone who works will have to calculate the start time for any place they call. If I need an answer when I get into work, but the person I'm calling won't be in for another hour, that's cray cray.

Sounds more like chaos to me.

I had an assistant who at one point would call me when I was out of town. He'd call at 8:00 East coast time, while I was on the west coast. 5:00 in the morning. After the fifth time, I told him I was going to smack him if he did it again when I got back. Three hours difference.

Now your solution amps that up to the point of randomness. Time zones is fairly simple. Time zones plus different times of work depending on latitude - that's just chaos.

Keep the time where it belongs - unchanging - and fix your work and school hours to match the time of year. This is no longer a problem with modern technology that is stuck on your nose all day - thanks to the smart phone we no longer need the dumb clock gymnastics that is DST.

Here's a solution for you. Universal coordinated time. UCT is the same time around the world. You don't have to ever change what time it is. Then you can do the adjusting in your work times, and you don't have to guess what time it is to do business. I use UCT all the time, because my business is all around the world. If DST is an insufferable experience, You'd faint in the gymnastics needed to say, find a time to call Mumbai, and would have a heart attack when you found to that some places are actually tomorrow at times while you are at some time today.

Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 271

You make it sound like not having DST is terrible, but most of the world doesn't bother with it.

It's basically Europe, the US, and a few random others including half of Australia for some reason. Everyone else gets by just fine without DST, and much of the world gave it up when they stopped being colonies.

Look up the differences between latitudes.

Why don't we all have our personal times? Don't let the man tell you what time it is. 8^)

Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 271

It's no surprise that most Slashdotters have lost their sense of wonder, as they've forgotten what it was like to be children.

Despite DST existing, I clearly remember waiting for the bus in the dark for part of the year.

DST doesn't do what it's supposed to do, and it kills people. It's weird to celebrate that.

You are a rather solipsistic fellow aren't you? You never got on or off a bus in the dark so no one does. Look up the day night cycles. Here in PA, the sunrise is at 7:35 A.M. on December 30th. Add permanent DST, and it becomes 8:35 And it gets worse further north. https://sunrise-sunset.org/ Consider other people

Right, DST kills people. Here's your problem. If DST kills people, then why aren't people who regularly shift time zones drop over dead? I regularly did 3 time zone shifts, back and forth between the home in the east, and the west coast, even some to Alaska. I got on a plane, and got off a plane, and no one died.

I had Jet lag, for sure, but never felt ill, just a little strange.

If one hour kills people, then 3 or 4 hour shifts should have a greater effect. Explain why not?

Comment Re:What is left to change besides oven and microwa (Score 1) 271

What is left to change besides oven and microwave times?

One...the most IMPORTANT one....my internal clock....

That really takes close to a week to get fixed every time.....it throws all of us humans off to some degree.

Oh...and my dog....I have to adjust her schedule twice a year too....

It does that, but a lot of us regularly shift several time zones and back.

Jet lag is real and it doesn't feel all that great. But it is the price we pay. On short trips, I could just keep my regular cycle. If it was longer than a week, the body just adapts no matter how hard I try.

What is interesting to me is that after a career with a lot of extensive time zone shifts. a one hour change doesn't bother me at all.

Probably the biggest PITA is dealing with the pets. I try to just adapt a bit earlier or later, each day, until they are on what the think is their schedule aligns with the clock again

Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 4, Informative) 271

I seem to be in a small minority on this issue

Skipping the mod points to specifically agree. The time switch has always been a minor thing to me. It's effectively crossing *one* time zone.

And I regularly felt coast to coast USA, That three time zone difference should have killed me outright, if the westward flight didn't coming back east should have. Here's the truth. The earth is a oblate spheroid rotating on a tilted axis relative to the sun.

As it orbits the sun, that tilt creates different light/dark cycles. over the course of the orbit

Near the equator, there is not much difference over the course of the year. And it is not unusual for people living there to find the clock changes silly.

As the latitude increases, people there experience larger and larger changes in teh day/night respective lengths. Here in PA, it is significant, some hours one way or the other between summer and winter.

A bit further, like say Canadian cities, it becomes even more extreme. DST to ST? . You'll probably Go to work in the dark, and drive home in the dark. But it still helps

Finally, at the really high latitudes, no amount of correction helps. Their summers, there is no dark cycle, and the winters, no light cycles.

We tried permanent Daylight savings time during the Arab Oil Crisis. And people hated it, we went back to ST/DST pretty quickly.

Oddly enough, permanent DST was sold as the way to save money on fuel. It didn't. Some politicians seemed to even think that it would somehow make the day longer. I do not see that the general IQ and smarts these days.

So we have stupid people wanting permanent DST, we have ostensibly smart people who didn't think about the latitude issue, and solipsistic people living at low latitudes that don't care about those at the higher latitudes.

Comment Re:Maybe It's Unreasonable Public Records Requests (Score 1) 51

The private sector has a solution to all of this that "just works". You acknowledge the supply and demand. Swamped with public record requests? Great! Hire more people to handle them as their job description/title, and charge enough for them to cover their salaries or hourly contractor rates.

IMO, asking one group to pay $2.3 million for a records request is unreasonable. But why can't you ask all of them to pay a fair share so the process works smoothly and effectively for everyone involved? A qualified govt. contractor hired to fulfill FOIA requests is typically paid a midpoint salary of about $88K per year.

Comment re: TX as "The Republican state" (Score 1) 51

Fact of the matter is, TX has been more the extreme, modern Facist-Republican governed state than "traditional Republican" for decades now. It took a lot of people some time to come to that realization. But definitely by the 1990's, watching what was happening in Texas made me solidify my views as more Independent/Libertarian than Republican.

As just a couple of examples?

- TX passed a law requiring people get a permit to legally possess Pyrex glassware. (Thought was, if you weren't a research lab or a school, you probably only had it around your residence if you were making illegal drugs.)
- TX was well known for their "Vampire cops" who were legally allowed to hold a person down after they were pulled over, and draw their blood to check for alcohol.

The general populace of Texas doesn't necessarily reflect this at all, especially with so many liberal-minded people who moved there from places like California in recent years. But the people in political power there operate with a lot of support from those who like the traditional ideals Texas claims to stand for, while acting in ways contrary to some of those ideals.

Comment Re:GrapheneOS ftw (Score 1) 44

So good your interaction went the only way it ever goes for anybody ever. Because it never happens any other way, of course.

So how do you plan to make every single interaction go the way you want it to go? A world gone perfect, never any adversity.

What is so very interesting is that I was falsely accused, and I wasn't tased, tortured, sent to jail or shot dead.

And that my friend, seems to trigger you tremendously. Especially when th story was that despite the Standard slashdot Narrative, not every policeman or woman is a bloodthirsty monster, just itching to kill people, or whatever your belief is.

Yes, there are bad cops. But your narrative makes them all bad, and my story just pisses you off. That's pretty obvious.

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