Interesting Links for 31-08-2018

[andrewducker]

Unmarried mother wins access to a widowed parent's allowance in a landmark Supreme Court ruling.

(tags: law marriage relationships uk pensions )

Ever wanted to see “beyond” the NES game screen? With WideNES, you can

(tags: games emulation )

"I won’t cheer if Wonga fails. I was grateful it was there for me"

(tags: loans poverty )

Panasonic to move Europe headquarters from UK to Amsterdam

(tags: business europe uk doom )

People who are religious gain happiness from believing there is a deeper meaning to everyday events

(tags: religion meaning psychology )

Microsoft will require suppliers to offer paid parental leave

(tags: parenting holidays Microsoft usa )

Earth quickly heading for 'point of no return' unless we takes immediate action, climate scientists warn

(tags: globalwarming thefuture doom )

Calm down. Barnier's words were not a green light for Brexit deal

(tags: uk Europe doom )

Ireland to hold referendum on women's role in the home

(tags: Ireland referendum women )

AI Can Make Anyone Look Like a Professional Dancer

(tags: dance video ai )

Google reportedly bought Mastercard data to link online ads with offline purchases

(tags: advertising surveillance Google mastercard shopping )

Once you've fallen for someone else you're not likely to be able to save your relationship.

(tags: relationships psychology )

New centrist party backed by LoveFilm founder splits before launch

(tags: politics uk )

The new Edinburgh St James shopping centre is now half finished

(tags: edinburgh construction shopping thefuture )

EU to recommend that member states abolish daylight saving time

Although the article seems unclear if we're abolishing Summer Time or moving to it always being Summer Time. (Because Daylight Saving Time is summer time.) Which would be odd, if only because it would mean that it was never Greenwich Mean Time in Greenwich any more. I'll look forward to more details coming out.
(tags: Europe summer time )

Comments

[xenophanean]

I really hope they don't lose BST. Daylight hours are valuable to me and shoving 5 of them in the morning before anyone gets up is a waste. I'd probably prefer to stay on BST rather than GMT tbh.

Still probably won't matter, seems unlikely that the UK will pay attention to a recommendation from the EU.

[stormclouds]

Was the research carried out in Singapore only? I'd like to know if it's the same in other countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Singapore

[drplokta]

We went for four years from 1968 to 1971 with Greenwich never being on Greenwich Mean Time, and we seemed to survive the experience.

[zotz]

In functional terms, though, it's exactly the same. Seems odd to think that it's better to start work before dawn if you call it Nine o'clock but not if you call it Eight.


According to another article, whether to go to permanent summer time or permanent non-summer time would be a matter for individual governments.

[drplokta]

It's better to start work before dawn when it's called nine o'clock than when it's called eight o'clock because the schedules for your public transport and your TV broadcasts and your children's schools and so on are all set up for most people to start work at nine o'clock, not at eight o'clock. Having all of those coordinate changing their schedules twice a year on the same day would be very difficult, so it's much simpler just to change the clocks and keep everyone's timetables the same.

[calimac]

Interestingly, for the same reason - the tiresomeness of changing clocks twice a year - there's a referendum measure on the ballot in California this fall (California is where ballot referenda were invented, at least in US usage, and we have them constantly) to institute permanent summer time.

However, we can't do this unilaterally. US Federal law gives states two choices: change clocks on the federally-mandated days, or stay on standard time all year. We'd need Congressional permission to do something different.

Besides, I'm opposed to permanent summer time for reasons I'm not going into here. I'd vote to drop summer time altogether, but not to institute it altogether.

[andrewducker]

Interesting. I'd love to know too!

[andrewducker]

I'm sure we'd survive. It'd just be odd.

[redbird]

The article notes that while the UK might ignore an EU recommendation, if Ireland accepted this, Northern Ireland would then be out of sync with either the Republic or the rest of the UK for part of the year. (Is Daylight Saving Time a devolved power?)

[doug]

One thing I've noticed over the last two decades is increasing costs to the changeover: more systems that need care taken to shepherd them safely across the transition, more firefighting of systems where yet another unconsidered edge case has bitten. Obviously, my experience isn't remotely representative, but it does seem very plausible that we are adding systems that can break at a time change at a faster rate than we are getting better at engineering them robustly enough to handle it smoothly.

(I have similar conflicted feelings about leap seconds.)

[birguslatro]

"Once you've fallen for someone else you're not likely to be able to save your relationship." ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDise_Em_Ug