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Comment Summary ... (Score 2) 31

The following was in my submission on the firehose, but the editors opted to remove it ...

Some of the key points, from the published article's summary:

  1. Permanent DST preserves later evening light that may facilitate commuting, recreation, social participation, and some economic activity, but it also prolongs darkness on winter mornings, with potential adverse effects on circadian alignment, sleep, mood, education, and productivity.
  2. Permanent ST is more closely aligned with circadian biology, although earlier dusk may limit some evening activities.
  3. Choosing Permanent ST is supported by accumulated evidence related to health and the recommendations of major sleep and chronobiology societies; if Canadian jurisdictions choose to adopt Permanent DST, implementation should include anticipatory mitigation, protection for disproportionately affected groups, and transparent surveillance of population health impacts.

Unfortunately, it seems that politicians and a good chunk of the public prefer Permanent DST.

Submission + - Canadian Analysis: Permanent Daylight Saving Harms Sleep and Mental Health

kbahey writes: With the push to eliminate the twice yearly clock change, Permanent Daylight Savings Time has emerged as the favourite for most states/provinces.

An analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal

Key points: From the summary:
  • Permanent DST preserves later evening light that may facilitate commuting, recreation, social participation, and some economic activity, but it also prolongs darkness on winter mornings, with potential adverse effects on circadian alignment, sleep, mood, education, and productivity.
  • Permanent ST is more closely aligned with circadian biology, although earlier dusk may limit some evening activities.
  • Choosing pST is supported by accumulated evidence related to health and the recommendations of major sleep and chronobiology societies; if Canadian jurisdictions choose to adopt pDST, implementation should include anticipatory mitigation, protection for disproportionately affected groups, and transparent surveillance of population health impacts.

Sci.News also has a good overview.

Comment Re:Uncomfortable truth (Score 1) 129

I used various Raspberry Pi's over the past decade, starting with the Pi B+, then Pi 3 B , then Pi 4.

The Raspberry Pi's have support in mainline distros (e.g. Debian and Ubuntu), so that is why their support is good, compared to the more powerful SBC's that have 'one hit wonder' Linux releases (Odroid, Banana Pi, Orange Pi, ...etc), then no support after that.

Although, something similar happened to me on the Pi 3 B: I am stuck with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, and can't upgrade to 24.04 LTS or later, because they stopped support for 32bit ARM.

And the Pi suffer in other ways:

Power consumption used to be the Pi's forte, but now when you buy a mini PC, say with an Intel N100, you get low power consumption, and the difference between that and Pi's is negligible. For example, the N100 TDP is 6W, and the i5-1135G7 is 15W. Both are found in mini PCs these days, as well as other Intel and AMD CPUs.

6W means if you run it 24/7 at 25% utilization, and electricity cost is $0.25/kWh (Ontario's summer rate), your consumption is a whopping $3.28 PER YEAR.

Then there is hardware support. When you buy a mini PC, you get things included, such as a case, a fan (for some models that require it), upgradeable RAM, SATA connectors, an M.2 slot, and so on. Some of that is available on Raspberry Pis, but usually as a HAT or kit, for extra dollars ...

The experience with a mini PC is just as seemless as a laptop or a desktop: there is no difference at all in installation, upgrades, ...etc.

Comment Re:Kubuntu (Score 1) 82

I was on Kubuntu for many years as my sole desktop.
Then I ran into trouble upgrading (though I always stuck with LTS releases, never in between ones).

I switched to Xubuntu (XFCE), and never looked back.
There are sure some areas with more functionality in KDE, but I don't miss them at all.
XFCE stays out of the way, and allows you to focus on the applications.

Comment Lecture by Subir Sarkar (Score 2) 88

The corresponding author is Subir Sarkar.

He is a professor at Oxford who has done some interesting work about the expansion of the universe is NOT accelerating.

Instead, he is saying that there is a dipole effect because earth, and the galaxy cluster that we are in, are all moving in space, and that gives the effect of accelerating expansion!

He provides compelling evidence (for a non-specialist at least) for what he says and also casts doubts on the evidence for acceleration by analyzing their data (supernovae as standard candles, and their red shift), since a dipole effect is observed on that.

If his hypothesis is confirmed by other research and observations, then the 2011 Nobel Prize for Saul Perlmutter and Adam Reiss maybe for nothing ...

Watch his lecture on Beyond The Cosmological Standard Model.

This latest paper is yet another analysis towards that.

Let us see which hypothesis is supported by the evidence, current and future ...

Comment Re:Ethics (Score 1) 51

2. Those who don't give a damn about ethics at all and make no bones about it.
...
People who don't give a damn aren't really a problem either, since in a world populated by mostly good people, they'll ultimately be shamed and marginalized or end up in jail.

Or, they get elected president, twice ... destroy the economy, country's reputation, and start a war they can't end.

Comment Re:4GB has been insufficient for many years now (Score 1) 116

Totally agree with you ...

But it is not only libraries, there are other factors at play, me thinks ...

Developers don't have a culture of being economical with resources.
It is not taught, nor do first jobs they get care about those aspects.
For example, don't get me started on the infinity scroll which eats up RAM like crazy, rather than a pager of Next/Previous page.

There are also the layers involved, specially with web development.
It used to be HTML only, then CSS was added, then Javascript was added for certain smarts.
Then whole frameworks were invented and used for JS.

Anyway, there is no easy way out of this.
Maybe RAM shortage will compel developers to use RAM sparingly?
Nah, that is a pipe dream ... unfortunately.

Comment Re:Or ... N100 or old Intel NUCs (Score 1) 45

But how much of that is paying for the case and power supply?

Didn't get what you meant there.

NUCs usually come with a case and a power supply.

I bought one a couple of months and it came with those, as well as RAM.
It didn't have any storage though, because it was from a corporation, and didn't want to risk selling SSDs with data on them.

Comment Or ... N100 or old Intel NUCs (Score 1) 45

Raspberry Pi's are the right fit in specific cases.
For example, you need to interface the GPIO pins to some devices.

But there are issues with it in other cases.
For example, the cost rises as you include accessories, such as a case, fan, various hats, and so on.

If you just need a low(er) power x86 platform to run a stock Linux distro, then plain mini PCs or older models of Intel/ASUS NUCs will fit the bill nicely.

You can get a 2018 NUC for ~ $100 or so.

They already come with M.2 slots, and some have SATA connectors.
They have SODIMM slots so you can upgrade RAM later if you want.

Running Xubuntu or Ubuntu Server is a breeze.

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