Rust required to build Gecko - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/Gzwh1IbxvHE/7RlO21I6DwAJ <comment><USER2> > Rust language in Gecko is an important part of Project Quantum.

For anybody who missed this, Project Quantum is a Mozilla project to dramatically improve Gecko. Part of this project is to bring in Servo components like CSS and WebRender, hence the Rust dependency.

More awesome info:

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum)

[https://medium.com/mozilla-tech/a-quantum-leap-for-the- web-a...](https://medium.com/mozilla-tech/a-quantum-leap-for-the- web-a3b7174b3c12#.9tuvysk2r)

[https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/mozillas- quan...](https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/mozillas-quantum- project/)

<comment><USER3> Awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gecko is already dependent on a lot of things so adding Rust might not be that big of a change, but IMHO a long and large list of dependencies and complex build processes are what can really put off those wanting to contribute to browsers (among other software) by fixing bugs or whatever else. I have personally experienced a few times where it was easier and faster to just patch the binary than figure out how to compile everything from source and go through the whole configure/install/etc process again.

Especially with browsers, which not everyone agrees on how they should be and desires to customise, only to find that the option to do so has been removed or a source change must be performed, is subsequently delighted to know that it's open-source so they should be able to do it easily, but then get overwhelmed and give up after they realise the effort needed just to build an _unmodified_ version of the software themselves. They then fall back to merely complaining on the Internet, and reluctantly accepting their "fate"... somehow, I feel like some of the visions of open-source didn't quite turn out as well as hoped.

<comment><USER5> Uh, yes, it is a big change, Rust is huge. I for one am dropping this bloatware for a WebKit browser once the changes hit Gentoo.

<comment><USER6> V8 seems a bit more bloated to me than what comes bundled with Firefox.

<comment><USER7> Maybe yes, maybe no. But Webkit doesn't use V8 anyway :)

<comment><USER6> True, I may have assumed they meant Blink, and something something Chromium, which breaking away from V8 isn't particularly easy, even if one is the CSS engine, and the other the JS engine. Sorry for leaping to conclusions.

But they may have meant Midori or similar which actually uses WebKit, through WebKitGTK+... Which means linking against GTK+, probably GTK+3 to get the main benefits like single-page not whole application crashing.

Which depending on your custom build, may or may not be an absolutely huge overhead.

It could be a tiny change to add to an OS. Or huge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats Mozilla! It's fantastic to see Rust becoming a cornerstone of Firefox. Rust has such a bright future ahead, and it's going to lead to great productivity and safety gains.

<comment><USER9> > Rust has such a bright future ahead

I believe it'd be mutual - Firefox would have a bright future because of Rust...and vice versa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does Mozilla plan a new Firefox based on Servo, or simply to replace parts of Gecko with Servo parts? And if the later, why not to make a new browser from Servo as a parallel project that will eventually match Firefox in functionality?

<comment><USER11> Matching Firefox in functionality is quite an undertaking, so for the short to mid term, the former is far more likely to be successful.

That said, I think Servo has a bright future ahead as well, even before the long term. For example, matching the functionality of embedded rendering engines for hybrid apps is far more likely, and Servo has its speed as a major advantage over the competition. And who knows, it might make it into Firefox for Android :)

<comment><USER12> I tried Servo a few days ago, and it matches my experiences with the single- digit milestone releases of Mozilla ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Application...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Application_Suite#Release_history)): I could easily make it crash in just a few minutes.

Back then, it didn't take long until Mozilla was stable and usable enough that I could use it as my main daily browser, and I expect the same to also happen with Servo. Of course, Firefox is far ahead in functionality, but Servo doesn't need all of Firefox's features to be successful.

<comment><USER13> > Servo doesn't need all of Firefox's features to be successful.

The problem is that the modern web is complicated. You have a lot of features like svg which don't get used pervasively but are enough for it to impact experience.

As for Servo crashing, we don't really prioritize crash fixes since it's not a product at the moment. But please do file bugs for it if you think it's not a known crash.

<comment><USER12> Already filed, [https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/14575](https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/14575)

(I was going to the Wikipedia article on "Animated GIF" because I wanted to see how well Servo worked with animated images, and I knew I'd find one there. Sadly, it panics every time.)

<comment><USER13> Doesn't seem like it's a bug with animated gifs, actually (though it could be).

But you're right, we don't support animated gifs.

<comment><USER12> It's worse: from the error message, it seems to be a bug with floats. From my experience editing Wikipedia, floats tend to be a pain. Do you know why the [edit] link on the sections is on the left? It used to be on the right, as a float, and its interaction with the right-aligned images (which are also floats) often caused problems. I've blanked out the several templates we had to use to try to make floats behave themselves.

And there was also that Mozilla bug where IIRC some kind of rounding error caused 1-pixel misalignments with floats. Took a long time until that one was fixed.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, floats are in flux right now in Servo. I'm not sure if pcwalton's new stuff is completely finished. I'd suspect the edit issue is also a float bug or just a CSS property not being implemented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looking forward to the day when builds no longer require a C/C++ compiler.

<comment> Null-Set Rust itself depends on clang to build the llvm backend it runs on top of, so you can't get away from c++ that easily.

<comment><USER15> If Gecko is ever able to get rid of all of it's C++, it won't happen for quite a while, that will be an enormous undertaking. I would expect, if Rust is successful enough that that is feasible, then by that time there would be multiple different Rust implementations, and some of them may be written in pure Rust.

There's no fundamental reason that the Rust compiler has to be dependent on LLVM. It's just a good strategic decision as it allows the Rust developers to focus on the parts of the compiler that are unique to Rust, and use a well tested backend with lots of existing optimizations and targets for the parts that aren't particularly unique to Rust. There is actually some discussion already of using a faster, pure-Rust backend for debug builds, and maybe far in the future for release builds as well ([https://internals.rust- lang.org/t/possible-alternative-compi...](https://internals.rust- lang.org/t/possible-alternative-compiler-backend-cretonne/4275)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great! Now use a build system that downloads the compiler too. For example, Bazel will download a copy of the Go compiler if you are using it to build Go programs.

<comment><USER17> Actually, no, please don't. Build system _should not_ download shit from the internets. Build system should only _build_.

<comment><USER18> I've already read this refrain: it seems to make sense, but I cannot really justify why "build systems should only build" should be the case

What's the advantage over a build system that downloads the dependencies, but which gives you the ability to prefetch all the dependencies (so you can reliably do work without connectivity after prefetching)?

<comment><USER17> To clarify: I'm not against managing (downloading) dependencies. I just want two separate steps: [download things] and [compile things].

This separation allows to build the project off-line, which is not an uncommon scenario. There are environments that have the direct internet access prohibited e.g. by a company policy. There are environments that have it difficult (e.g. are behind a proxy). There are distribution package builders (RPM, DEB), which have a policy of only working on local sources.

And then there is _build reproducibility_. If external network is involved, the whole reproducibility idea goes out of the window. Remember the left-pad farce? Part of the cause was idiotic split to microdependencies, but part was that everybody used external network for their build process.

<comment><USER18> > To clarify: I'm not against managing (downloading) dependencies. I just want > two separate steps: [download things] and [compile things].

Fair enough, but if you have outdated dependency artifacts, it doesn't make sense to compile without fetching them, and so I think it's reasonable to make the 2nd step depend on the 1st one (and thus make it execute automatically)

I understand that keeping the 2 of them too-close might inadvertently conflate the 2 concerns (the build step becomes impossible to run without the download step) even if the design goals explictly thought of them as being able to be run independently, so this might be an argument for "builds should only build", but I'm not sold on it yet

> And then there is build reproducibility. If external network is involved, > the whole reproducibility idea goes out of the window. Remember the left-pad > farce? Part of the cause was idiotic split to microdependencies, but part > was that everybody used external network for their build process.

Well, the build systems that I have in mind are Stack ( [http://haskellstack.org/](http://haskellstack.org/) ) and Nix ( [http://nixos.org/nix/](http://nixos.org/nix/) )

Both of them have an heavy emphasis on reproducibility, and yet both of them automatically download dependencies.

(the Hydra Nix continuous integration systems OTOH run build and test steps with limited/no network connectivity, to enforce that separation of concerns)

(the microdependencies btw wasn't a problem that caused build non- reproducibility, microdependencies only made it worse when the shit hit the fan)

Also, there are 2 different reproducible build failures: it doesn't build (bad) or it builds but the artifact is not identical (worse)... downloading dependencies from the internet can only cause problems of the first type, if you have a sane way of fetching them

sane means: either you have the hashes of the dependencies to check, or you can trust the archive to always give you the same files when you ask it for a snapshot... and for security reasons you'd still check the crypto signature on the hashes to verify that nothing has been tampered in the mirror from which you downloaded

(Unfortunately, not only Npm but also Hackage afaik have that anti-feature that allows you to reupload a "bugfix" with the same version number... so we cannot always trust that the systems that we're using are sane, which OTOH is impossible also due to DMCA or other law/court shenanigans: if your dependency violates someone's copyright, it might end up disappearing from the snapshots)

<comment><USER19> > if you have outdated dependency artifacts, it doesn't make sense to compile > without fetching them

I am sorry, I'd contest that. There are often cases where one might not want to use the most current version of some library (incompatibility, undesired features, etc.).

This entire forced update approach is already unpleasant enough in the context of applications (most notably on Android and IOS) but becomes unbearable for software development. While one might argue it could still make some sense for the former, as average users might stay forever with old versions and potential security issues, that argument should not be valid in a "professional" context - where the "users" know about the implications - as it should be given with software engineering.

<comment><USER18> > I am sorry, I'd contest that. There are often cases where one might not want > to use the most current version of some library (incompatibility, undesired > features, etc.)

I think we're misunderstanding each other.

What I meant is that if you have foo-1.2 in your dependencies.conf, and you have previously downloaded foo-1.1 it doesn't make sense to compile, because the result of the compilation will most likely not be what you want

<comment><USER20> Sure, but that doesn't mean you need to combine downloading and building.

You can just have the build say "foo-1.2 not found. Latest version is foo-1.1", and the developer can decide how to respond.

<comment><USER18> Well, there are 3 cases:

\- "usual" case (if you agree): dependencies will be downloaded from the Internet, single command download+build is useful

\- in a bank/SC environment: the developer configured a proxy/local mirror of the package repositories, and the dependencies will be downloaded automatically, single command download+build is useful

\- in a bank/SC environment: manual process to obtain and add locally the dependencies, the build/dev system has limited networking: automatically download fails, single command download+build is not useful but not harmful either

Having a "prefetch" and "offline-build" commands are perfectly fine, but I don't see the reason why the default shouldn't be a "build" command that does prefetch+offline-build</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recommendation for desktop workstations - <AUTHOR> I am looking for something that has a high core count (> 8) and large amounts of ECC RAM (32GB+). Around the $4k-7k price range.  Is it better to just build one? <comment><USER2> OEMs charge insane amounts for RAM. If you buy you can save a lot by ordering a separate RAM upgrade.</comment>


Show HN: Show Your Medium's Recent Article in GitHub Readme - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bxcodec/github-readme-medium-recent-article <comment><AUTHOR> Maintainer here:

\- I just made a simple plugin for Github Readme to display your recent published article from Medium.

\- Simple usage, paste this to your readme.

\- <a target="_blank" href="[https://github-readme-medium-recent- article.vercel.app/mediu...](https://github-readme-medium-recent- article.vercel.app/medium/@imantumorang/0"><img) src="[https://github-readme- medium-recent-article.vercel.app/mediu...](https://github-readme-medium- recent-article.vercel.app/medium/@imantumorang/0") alt="Recent Article 0">

\- Change `@imantumorang` with your Medium's username</comment>


Opt-out of RapLeaf - <AUTHOR> https://www.rapleaf.com/opt_out

<comment><USER2> Gee thanks, who is rapleaf and why would I want to opt out of something I've never joined or even read about up until this very moment?

I'm assuming, from reading their page, they are some kind of person-tracking outfit for advertisers. Pretty much the same thing that Google, Microsoft, and any other advertiser does on the internet. How are they more different or more evil?

<comment><USER3> You don't have to join, that's the point. They know your name, age, likes, dislikes, demographics and more. Opting out stops you from being targeted by their partners. I'm actually trying to get an API key right now just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

<comment><USER2> I see. Don't all ad networks do this anyway? It seems like a giant waste of energy to pursue each one and opt out as you could be doing that for the rest of your life. Wouldn't it be better to block their cookies or images in your browser?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone with an account could tell me if there's anything in their system about me? I sure don't want to register and log in just to opt-out...</comment>


Twitter Fails Macworld Keynote Test - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/15/twitter-fails-macworld-keynote-test/ <comment><USER2> Cue the Chicken Littles:

"ZOMG! I told you Rails doesn't scale -- back to PHP for me!"

<comment><USER3> I certainly wouldn't blame this on anyone but twitter. Twitter has probably the highest popularity/uptime ratio in the web 2.0 industry.

The site is routinely down during regular hours -- it was just a matter of time until they went down during a high profile event.

<comment><USER4> Is it still a rails app? just seems silly to take a message, store it in a database, and then read it out again almost instantly (and over time there is no point to even have it in a database).

Bizarre use of rails.

<comment><USER5> The data they store is so simple and non-relational that they should be making heavy use of memcached and/or BerkeleyDB and/or flat files and/or something else extremely fast and simple.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I Write Concept Software - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2010/09/concept.md#readme <comment><USER2> I'm somewhat puzzled how a designer could, when confronted with the task of creating a real-life product with real-life constraints, do so with compelling results if they had not already spent time thinking about assorted what-ifs involving various self-imposed constraints.

Are there good designers (and for that matter, good developers) who do not spend time sketching out assorted concept whatevers to play with ideas and stretch their imagination?

Often, while working on a less than thrilling project, I'll come across some chunk of code that works and solves an immediate problem, but gets me wondering if there's some other way to accomplish the same thing. Often, this sort of thing gets tagged as "too clever" coding, and often that's exactly what it is. But these exercises lead to a better understanding of how to use this or that language, or how to think about this or that problem, so that later on, when I'm solving a real problem, I have more ideas to draw from.</comment>


Sublime package control is down - <AUTHOR> https://packagecontrol.io/ <comment><USER2> How long has this been? I couldn't find any tweets either. Was just going to dust of Sublime Text and then this happens.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's back up again.</comment>


Shortcut Learning in Deep Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07780 <comment><USER2> Interesting read.

Odd OT question: how did you end up including annotations in the bibliography? I found that super useful but it's incredibly uncommon in what I normally read.</comment>


American Academy of Sleep Medicine calls for elimination of daylight saving time - <AUTHOR> https://aasm.org/american-academy-of-sleep-medicine-calls-for-elimination-of-daylight-saving-time/ <comment><USER4> No... make daylight savings time _permanent_ instead.

As the paper states, the biggest problem is with the _transition_.

The paper also argues that standard time aligns more naturally with our circadian rhythm... but doesn't bother to compare that with the psychological benefit we get from hanging out with friends in daylight after work in the summer, or the psychological benefit of it not being dark when you go home and have dinner with your family.

I totally get that people who wake up early in the winter prefer standard time... but it really seems that for the population as a whole, permanent DST is the better option. And implementing it is so easy: once we're already in DST in the summer... you just never "fall back" to standard in the fall.

<comment><USER5> I find it really funny that a lot of people are supporting keeping DST. Basically, we wanted to sleep in so we started to shift our work time from 6 to 7, then to 8 and now we start work at 9. Then we realized that we have no time in the evening so let's shift the clock so that 7 o'clock is actually earlier.

At normal time, on an equinox the night is from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning and midnight is actually in the middle of the night. With DST it's from 7 to 7 and midnight is at 1. So keeping DST basically means you are shifting to a different "non-natural" time zone.

Let's just stop the DST keeping the natural local time and get up earlier anyway.

<comment><USER6> While I agree with your sentiment, in practice that's a harder goal because it means changing millions of people's daily rituals and businesses schedules. Everything from daily meetings, times of worship, business opening hours, class schedules, shared spaces (eg conference rooms, hired gym spaces for yoga, karate etc)...everything would have to change and everyone would be required to make that change themselves for it to work.

There is no "just" in "just stop the DST keeping the natural local time".

<comment><USER7> Intentionally making time be permanently stupid is a bit stupid, IMHO. Lots of existing scientific standards that are stuck with old cruft that makes things annoying (like the definition of electrical minus/plus poles), why add more cruft?

<comment><USER8> It's all just conventions anyway. Why does it matter if solar noon doesn't match with wallclock noon? The perception of the solar time varies wildly with season, latitude and even weather (how 6pm feels like nighttime in January but the end of the afternoon in July for instance). Sundials are not exactly in widespread uses these days.

There's also plenty of precedent for countries and blocks of countries using "unnatural" time zones for convenience. Warsaw is currently in the same timezone as Berlin, Paris, and Madrid. I mean look at this map, many countries are already offset by one hour from their natural time zone, DST or not: [http://www.trbimg.com/img-56c3a997/turbine/la-fi-mh-your- tim...](http://www.trbimg.com/img-56c3a997/turbine/la-fi-mh-your-time-zone-is- your-destiny-20160216)

That's true for a big chunk of the USA too.

I'm also in favor of keeping DST full time, I think it's the pragmatic choice. That being said it's been pointed out to me that part of the reason I like DST is because I don't have kids since when you have children going to school you typically need to get up earlier to prepare them and bring them there. Having DST year-round would mean that it would probably still be night time when the kids arrive to school.

<comment><USER9> > It's all just conventions anyway. Why does it matter if solar noon doesn't > match with wallclock noon?

Why does this thread exist? Because some scientists/doctors studied this very question and concluded that there are negative health and safety implications to continuing to do what we are doing. Conventions have consequences.

<comment><USER10> The problem is with the change and transition, not the fact that solar time doesn't inherently match wallclock time.

Even the actual position statement doesn't have a strong argument for which one should be the permanent time, and is worded as a hunch:

> _Although chronic effects of remaining in daylight saving time year-round > have not been well studied_ , daylight saving time is less aligned with > human circadian biology — which ... _could_ result in circadian misalignment

[https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780](https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780) (emphasis mine)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Most people seem to have missed that this association of experts in _sleep_ are saying it is better for us to have solar noon and official noon more closely aligned. It's not a popular position, but overall I think it would be better for us to move to standard time permanently and shift our society to accommodate the _sun_ rather than pretending it isn't there.

<comment><USER12> At my previous job we were discussing this, I think because it was up for a vote in California. My friend's argument was that children would be walking to school in the dark and more would end up getting hit by cars. It was really funny to me that we won't consider that our school schedules are stupid, or that our driving requirements or vehicles are somehow inadequate, but no, in fact it is time that is wrong.

<comment><USER13> What's the difference between changing the time and changing our schedules?

<comment><USER14> 2 things I can think of right off the bat are that changing schedules can be done per-person, per-industry, etc. and doesn't have to be forced upon everyone whether it's good for them or not. Another reason is the technical difficulties of readjusting all time keep devices, scheduled software, etc. is a nightmare that should be avoided if you can. It's hard not to see that adjusting individual schedules is the easier and more effective implementation.

<comment><USER13> This reminds me of the idea that we could cut traffic if we staggered office hours. In theory it would work but in reality businesses don't operate that way.

I feel fairly confident that the end result of this would just be that everyone changes their schedules together. Too many industries are linked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just wanted to say that here in the EU we have voted to abolish time changing, with the countries deciding if they want to stick with the summer time or winter time. [https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/summertime_en](https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/summertime_en)

<comment><USER16> I'm not holding my breath for the implementation of this decision. After the public poll, politicians quickly claimed to want to implement this right away. Just to descend into the usual inability to decide upon anything (who wants which time zone, how do we align neighbouring timezones, do we want a timezone-difference between France and Germany (that geographically should be there, etc) that is characteristic for the EU.

My prediction is that the abolition will be delayed for another 7 or 8 years, after which they will just decide to drop the matter since "it's already a decade old".

<comment><USER17> EU laws have fixed implementation deadlines and financial penalties for failing to implement them. If it completes the legislative process, it will happen. But indeed said process could be slow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Imagine there's no time zones. It's easy if you try. No AM or PM. And no Daylight Saving Time.

Imagine all the people... using UTC.

You--ooh--ooh-ooh-ooh

You may say I'm dreamer. Because I set my alarm wrong. I hope someday you will join us. And the world will live as one.

<comment><USER19> [https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish)

<comment><USER18> Just wait until we become a multi-planet species...!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The natural change in daylight hours is pretty sudden, actually. Either sunrise or noon (or both) have to move. DST is a compromise to keep them from moving too much. But sunrise is a more important time than noon.

So I've proposed something I call Sunrise Standard Time. It abolishes DST and splits the 24 primary longitudinal time zones into as many as 120 zones by cutting at the tropics and polar circles. Clocks adjust gradually each day to keep sunrise near 6am. The tropics would follow sunrise at the equator, and the temperate zones (between the tropics and polar circles) would follow sunrise at ~ 30deg N or S. That adjustment is about 1 minute per day.

To refine things slightly, sunrise can be fixed at the latitude which divides the population in half in each zone (with the constraint that the N and S zones are mirrored). Those latitudes are approximately: 13.5deg for the tropical zone, 34.5deg for the temperate zones, and 68.5deg for all 2 million people living in the polar zones.

A further refinement is to split the per-capita sunrise aberration instead. This pushes the boundaries to slightly higher latitudes. For the temperate zones, the minimum per-capita offset of sunrise from 6am on the solstice is achieved by following sunrise at 37.5deg. That's pretty close to Washington DC (39deg), Beijing (40deg), and Tokyo (36deg).

I suggest the tropics use the equator for simplicity.

SST will improve sun tracking for the vast majority of the world's population with no sudden changes. It will also be easier to understand than DST. There are no dates to remember and, because the N and S zones are mirrors, it's easy for someone in e.g. New York to understand what's going on in Sydney.

Supporting links:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Hours_of...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Hours_of_daylight_vs_latitude_vs_day_of_year_cmglee.svg)

[http://world.andersen.im/](http://world.andersen.im/)

<comment><USER21> _" Clocks adjust gradually each day to keep sunrise near 6am"_

While your idea might be very good, this is the reason why it won't be used. Nobody is going to be happy to adjust their analog clock every day.

<comment><USER22> Who still uses analog clocks though? If you don't care for modern tech, just wake up with the sun and you're on time anyway.

The idea of keeping track of this system in software sounds terrifying though. Getting rid of DST would simplify things, but this would ramp up the complexity a lot.

<comment><USER23> You can replace "analog clock" by "clock" in general. My computers update on their own, but none of my bedside clock, oven clock, HVAC clock, … do, and all of them are electronic.

Also many people do, in fact, enjoy wristwatches or analog wall-clocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Either eliminate it (preference) or make it permanent. Either choice is better than this fall back / spring forward nonsense.

A - with kids it was super annoying having to deal with this

B - noon is defined as when the sun is at the highest point in the sky (with allowance for timezones), simple

C - just let people figure out sleep patterns that work the best for them, do we really need a national law around this?

<comment><USER25> with respect to C, probably, because many people don't choose the clock time at which they have to be at work, at school, etc.

<comment><USER26> But surely they have the agency to choose the clock time at which they go to bed, no?

<comment><USER27> Neighbors and city noise ordinance dictates when you can go to bed. Neighbors, city noise ordinance, work and school hours dictate when you have to wake up.

<comment><USER28> One of the reasons I had to leave SF was because the sleepable window was just too squeezed. Between people making noise in the evening, cars and motorcycles racing at night, and sunlight, cars, and construction in the morning, there just wasn't enough time to wind down (this can take a long time depending on chronotype) _and_ get enough sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder what the logistical challenges would be to adding an hour of actual daylight to a medium-sized U.S. city around dusk by means of orbital mirrors?

Sunlight irradiance is about 1000 watts per square meter if the sun is straight up. We'll say that a city center is about 10 square km, and that 300 watts per square meter is an acceptable afternoon-evening light level. So, if I did the math right, that's 3 billion watts if we wanted to illuminate electrically with 100% efficient bulbs, or 3 million kwhs to provide one evening of light, which would be $300,000 per night at 10 cents per kwh.

On the other hand, a giant sheet of mylar in space, correctly positioned, might have a similar effect with no recurring energy cost. I imagine the orbital mechanics and optics situation would be challenging, but could at least be fun and interesting to talk about.

<comment><USER30> Sounds like the Norwegian town Rjukan that doesn't get any sunlight during winter, so they put a huge mirror on a mountain top.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/rjukan-sun- nor...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/rjukan-sun-norway-town- mirrors)

<comment><USER29> I like that kind of problem solving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't see a mention of the spike in accidents directly attributable to DST anywhere in this post on HN. I recently read "Why we sleep"[0] and there's a fascinating section on the spike in accidents following the shift in timings. I can't quite find the exact article but this[1] study showed a 6.3% increase in number of _fatal_ accidents in the 6-day period after DST kicks in compared to (presumably) other days. And this was consistent over a 10-year period!

So... given the pros and cons(especially around health and safety) .. what would be your answer? :) [0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we- sleep](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep)

[1] [https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/does-daylight-saving- tim...](https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/does-daylight-saving-time-cause- auto-accidents)

<comment><USER32> I'm not saying that specific section of the book is wrong, but you should be aware that both the book and author have come in for some pretty serious criticism, including misrepresenting research

[https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep](https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep)

<comment><USER31> Thank you for this :) . Will read this article get the opposing views as well and hopefully improve my thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This thread is exactly why it will never change - you'll never get consensus which time to choose.

I don't care which we pick, I just don't want to flip my (and my kids) schedule every 6 months

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm generally in favor of keeping DST permanent, as others have said.

But if you wanted to make it more consistent and strike a balance, would it make more sense to flip the adjustments? Pull back on the nighttime daylight during summer, and add to it during winter.

In NYC during summer it would get dark around 7pm, and in winter around 5:30pm... instead of 8pm and 4:30pm like we have now.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't care which we pick but I personally find a centrally managed shift in everyone's daily rhythm twice a year highly draconian, i have the somewhat luxury that I don't really need to shift my sleeping pattern immediately but it's highly disruptive to have to shift my daily routines.

So yes please let's all stop this archaic ritual.

</comment><comment><USER36> No DST is definitely something I love about living in Phoenix.

</comment><comment><USER37> Given that today most people do:

\- Use smartphones as a primary (or major) clock

\- Have clocks at home which automatically sync the clock.

I wonder if we can just split the one large change of 1h to 6 smaller changes of each 10 minutes spaced apart by a week or two.

I guess people with traditional wristband clocks or similar would be really annoyed by it.

But then if you forget you are only 10min late/early ;) (which yes might be fatal if you miss a train or so).

Anyway research shows that permanent summer time would have bad biological consequences especially for people with a social jet lack, i.e. people which need to stand up before their inner clock likes it.

Ironically this tend to also be the people which often favor permanent summer time as it allows them to better use the reduced sunlight time in winter. Except that this has a very good chance of making their social yet lack worse. Which can have all kind of negative health effect from reduced mental capacity over mode swings to overweight (or at least correlates with such negative effect, and I know correlation is not causation).

<comment><USER38> > Have clocks at home which automatically sync the clock.

I'd say not. Your computer has a clock in it, yes, but it's unlikely to be your main method of telling time. Same for any smart devices you have. There's several analog wall clocks and several digital alarm clocks with battery backups in my house; none of these sync the time. In comparison, there's only 4 rooms with computers in them, and these are usually off or on screensaver. The time on a computer is small and only shown in the status/menu bar, making it hardly convenient to check from the doorway. Smart speakers only respond to their owners, and require stopping what you're doing to hear a response.

The average user on HN is far more likely to have such devices than the average person in general; most of my friends have at most one such devices in either their living room or bedroom, and that's it. Half the people I work with wear and use a wristwatch at work (_not_ a smartwatch).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> My point is kind of off-topic, but as a financial analyst, I really want every country to stop using DST.

It is such a hustle to cope with financial tick data taking DST into consideration... If you focus on only one country, it is not a major problem. However, when you start looking at various markets (e.g. London, U.S., Japan etc) at the same time, things get crazy...

<comment><USER40> It adds to the confusion for meetings as some places don't change time, others at different times of the year. I am happy to take Russia's lead on this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I would love to see a new standard of time that talks about sunrise+1hr instead of artificially moving our antiquated wall clocks around. We have enough technology to make it happen and what we really care about is when the Sun comes up on a particular part of the globe anyway.

The whole time zone + offset is such an antique way of looking at things.

<comment><USER42> [https://qntm.org/continuous](https://qntm.org/continuous)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Like many others, I agree with summer time year-round; but oppose staying on wintertime year-round. This is a trade-off between time at work/school versus free time, socialization time, outdoor leisure activities, etc., and how the two categories split the limited resource of daylight.

<comment><USER44> What if we did winter time but switched to 8-4 workday? :O :O :O

Once we stop switching, the numbers are arbitrary.

<comment><USER45> What if we did winter time but switched to a 1-5 workday? The 9-5 schedule came from an era when roughly half as many people (per capita) were in the workforce. :)

<comment><USER44> Hahaha, easy there, can't propose too many good idea at once or the argumentative experiment looses it's controls. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The obvious solution is to just surround the earth in a giant spherical LED source that is on for the entire globe for 16 hours, then off for 8.

Repeat for all 365 days.

<comment><USER47> Instead of evenly distributing the lights on the inner surface we could distribute them at random. That way at "night" we could turn the LEDs to very low and still have "stars". Then during the day we would turn them up and it would be pretty cool to have thousands and thousands of micro suns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Can we just all go UTC and be done with this nonsense? Let organizations change their hours throughout the year. People would get used to the cycle fast enough, you know, after they're done killing people like me who think this is a good idea.

<comment><USER49> Then there would be a thousand timezones and no one would agree what normal business hours are.

<comment><USER50> business hours would just follow whatever the national stock exchange settles upon, like they do now. people in finance in SF keep eastern time.

<comment><USER51> It would most certainly not. What does a fruit stall in Minnesota care about the NYSE's opening hours?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Right on. We live in Arizona where daylight savings time is not implemented. Much nicer and there is not time transition twice a year.

Off topic, but monitoring your sleep can serve as a training resource for improving sleep. My wife and I allow our AppleWatches to share sleep data with our iPhones (data never leaves the watch/phone, never goes to the cloud). My sleep is so much better now because I have learned habits that improve my sleep metrics. Recommended.

</comment><comment><USER53> Next: make the actual time where you are located closer to the actual solar time instead of being several hours off (plus or minus) versus the actual solar time.

</comment><comment><USER54> Here openening hours have been "liberalized" a lot during the last 5-10 years. Bars are open until 4 - 5 am, supermarkets even 24/7\. And an increasing amount of people are using those, otherwise businesses wouldn't offer them. Many travel over timezones more than once year just for fun. All that disrupts sleep patterns. The one hour twice a year seems minor in comparison.

<comment><USER51> I think if you look up the actual facts, less than 10% of the world's population travels internationally in any given year. Check your privilege please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Let's switch to the metric system too!

In today's political climate I could totally see this becoming political. " it's unamerican" to want to the metric system!"

<comment><USER56> I have to constantly look up US imperial amounts. I like that the imperial system is sometimes based on twelves, the problem is where it isn't (volume is based on doubling, inches are successive halving). It's really easy to divide things into halves, quarters, and thirds in imperial, where in the metric system you have to round.

Honestly, a system completely standardized around twelves or sixties would be near optimal.

<comment><USER57> I forget where I first saw the idea, but I have adopted it as my own: the really sane thing for the French revolutionaries to have done would have been to switch to a duodecimal ('dozenal') counting system, not to base things on ten (which is a really terrible number).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Lots of geographical locations in my time zone (AST), including Puerto Rico and USVI, don't observe DST [1]. It's nice to not have to care about it for a change, as opposed to when I was living stateside.

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Time_Zone#Areas_cover...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Time_Zone#Areas_covered)

<comment><USER59> There are different issues in PR... Like how long it takes to get power back after a hurricane

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> There was never any proof or big evidence that DST has any advantage in any aspect. It was implemented using pure ignorance.

In Brazil it was suspended last year and I hope this year too. No one was upset by the change, much to the contrary, and as far as I know no one said anything about noticeable changes in energy consumption or anything.

</comment><comment><USER61> What I love about living in the tropics, is that the time of sunrise varies very little. In my location in South India, sunrise is between 5:45 AM and 6:30 AM and sunset similarly between 5:45 PM and 6:30 PM. Twilight is short. So essentially, I don't need an alarm to wake up. Sunlight streams through my windows in the moringing, and when it's dark I know that its time to stop working. I love that. I used to live Seattle earlier, and never got used to the wide variations in when sunrise and sunset actually happened.

</comment><comment><USER62> I don't even think we need time zones. India and China do not observes DST or time zones and they aren't having any problems waking up, going to work, or living due to the hour on their clocks.

<comment><USER42> Some people in India think it's a problem.[1] Some people in western China unofficially use the same time zone as neighboring countries.[2]

[1] [https://qz.com/india/1542969/indias-single-time-zone-may- eff...](https://qz.com/india/1542969/indias-single-time-zone-may-effect- education-and-poverty/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time)

<comment><USER62> Looking at the article the Xinjiang Time looks more political than functional with the result being confusion and nonsense. Political divisions are the only practical reason why people maintain time zones. There are people through out the world who do just fine living on UTC or Zulu time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Another reason to love Puerto Rico and move here - our time zone, Atlantic Standard Time, has no daylight savings. All my fist shaking at the clouds in EST/EDT, welp, I solved it!

</comment><comment><USER64> It often happens during my night shifts. You cant imagine how many plannings can go wrong. Finishing work in 1 hour less is just about as funny as spending an extra hour at work without actual work to do.

I wonder how much fun people who have to communicate plannings across borders get to have: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_by_countr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_by_country)

</comment><comment><USER65> Would love for this pointless hack to be abolished. One less reason for confused aliens to declare our civilization an evolutionary dead end and vote for our recycling.

</comment><comment><USER66> Have they examined the effects of the sun rising at 4:30am in the summer (if we adopted permanent standard time) or 9am in the winter (permanent daylight time)?

What our current system does is keep sunrise time more consistent at the expense of more variation in setting time. I think this is reasonable compromise: work and school schedules are fixed, most people like to awake near when the sun comes up, and most people have a fixed morning regime.

<comment><USER67> I feel that the current system makes it more difficult to have a fixed morning routine since it totally throws off my sleep rhythms. Plus, DST introduces a pretty abrupt change in when the sun rises and sets. If there were no DST, then it would be a very gradual shift in those times, which I think would be easier to handle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> So I keep seeing more and more support for getting rid of DST and a consensus seems to be building. Who are the holdouts? What's their reasoning?

</comment><comment><USER69> A lot of the people here clamoring for permanent Daylight Time get to set their own hours and often wake up at 10am. But is a less powerful socioeconomic class that has to wake up at 3am to take two hours of public transit to open a coffeeshop at 6 before we get there. They don't have much political power but they need to be considered in this decision.

</comment><comment><USER70> The problem is more complicated than that IMO. For any of this stuff to make sense at all, our life and work patterns need to be able to adjust to the fluctuation in circadian rhythm throughout the year. I do not see how this could be done if we insist on 9-5 workday (and rigid scheduling for schools, childcare, etc).

</comment><comment><USER71> Luckily I don't have to put myself into all of this nonsense since I'm living in the equator area.

</comment><comment><USER72> I never understood the appeal. If you want to do things earlier or later in the day, do it. What's it for to do with the clocks? My school used to have different summer and winter timings. No need to decide a horribly convoluted system of changing clocks every year.

</comment><comment><USER73> > _63 percent support the elimination of seasonal time changes in favor of a > national, fixed, year-round time, and only 11 percent oppose it_

This is some early-bird conspiracy BS. Those stats obviously don't mean people want to eliminate daylight savings time, it means they want to eliminate the change itself. I think a much higher % would prefer making daylight savings time permanent (staying light out later).

Also, their justification for earlier darkness is sleep related health issues. But what about the health issues related to hearth disease: the #1 cause of death in the USA?[1]....think about the amount of exercise done between the hours of 5pm-9pm (after work jogs/walks/gym, youth sports, etc). There's no doubt in my mind there would be less overall exercise if it were constantly dark out earlier.

[1] - [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of- death.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm)

<comment><USER74> waking up two hours befor sunrise is miserable no matter how dark it stays. In anycase, for anyone in the northern US the sun would still set before or at 5:30.

<comment><USER40> No, it is glorious watching the sun rise each morning. I miss it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Call me entitled, but Why not just get up with the sun and go to bed with the sun. If the time of year makes "8" on a ticking device too early, maybe wake up a 8:22? Core hours make sense for businesses, but at the fringes we should just let it float.

<comment><USER76> This is what I used to do. It was glorious.

Unfortunately with a partner, and being a light sleeper, it's simply not possible anymore. My bedtime is up to me, but my wake up time now has a hard ceiling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> We should also renormalize time zones or use modern technology to eliminate them. It's obnoxious having the sun rise so late in the western edge of time zones or so early in places (like the Eastern seaboard) that should be one zone ahead.

<comment><USER78> Well getting rid of daylight saving time will be one step to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Down with timeshifting. Add more timezones, and possibly move some boundaries around.

</comment><comment><USER80> Daylight saving is not observed in few Australian states like Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Christmas Island or the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. They seem to be doing well.

<comment><USER81> We have daylight savings time in Melbourne, Australia.

Without it the sun would set at 4:07pm on the shortest day of the year, which is incredibly depressing.

I'm so glad we have DST.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Serious question: The people who are sensitive to the DST swap, do they avoid crossing into other time zones and sleep there, as that has the exact same effect on the clock.

</comment><comment><USER83> Just came here to give props to the title of the article, using the proper Daylight Saving Time (A system of Time for Saving Daylight) and not the commonly heard Daylight Savings And Loan Time.

</comment><comment><USER84> This entire thread is full of anti-DST madness, and since it's HN, I can only assume you're all from areas that don't have a massive swing in the length of days. DST is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER85> This is something everyone wants, but I suspect many would hate in the middle of winter.

Folks seem to think that the day is static and we shift it. It is a bit more complicated than that.

<comment><USER86> I'm confused. Standard time is already the time in winter, so abandoning ST won't change anything about the middle of winter....

That said, I agree with an above comment to just be DT year round. I _do_ hate afternoons/evenings in the middle of winter.

<comment><USER85> Apologies, I had to cut my comment short. You are right that the folks getting rid of it would be fine for winter. But summer would have issues.

I was anticipating the folks that want it permanent. Who would then complain on winter.

You could probably go for _more_ divisions in the year nowadays. Almost like it would be if you were doing true sun clocks. But there really are no panaceas here.

<comment><USER86> I like more divisions. I'm sure it fails large subsets of the population, but for many of us time is told to us by an always internet-connected device. NOBODY claims to be 3 minutes late because their watch was off anymore - <USER2> all see the same time to the second.

So, why can't we just have our devices just gradually shift the time by a few seconds each day? So that in our time zone noon stays roughly when the sun is overhead. We have (supposed?) benefits of switching our time, without the dangerous and disruptive discrete 1-hour events!

Not realistic, implementable, but fun and preferable to the current rough transitions.

<comment><USER85> Agreed. As someone that have used an alarm clock ever in my life, I can most relate to folks that want the day to be with natural light.

And now that I have kids convincing them that it is bed time when the sun is out, is not easy. My sympathies to folks way way off the equator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> For non-dst reader [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aWtseb2-4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aWtseb2-4)

</comment><comment><USER88> The best solution would be to keep DST but change "spring forward" to occur not on Sunday night, but instead, an hour before lunchtime on Monday.

</comment><comment><USER89> How about split the difference and keep that permanently..

</comment><comment><USER80> I read that "every year on the Monday after the springtime switch, hospitals report a 24% spike in heart-attack visits around the US.". Source: [https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is- dead...](https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is- deadly-2018-3)

If this is true then daylight saving is a bigger killer than covid-19.

Why is this even up for a debate when we killed every country's economy for Covid but here we are debating how our lifestyles will need to change if we remove daylight savings.

</comment><comment><USER90> We could go further. We could use a nonn-based clock.

Wake at -5, or -6; Lunch around 0; bed around +10. (Or whenever suits.

I'm not too serious about this. I've not thought it through.

</comment><comment> jim-greer Without DST, I either bike my kids to school in darkness at 8am, or the sun rises before 5am in summer. This is in San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER91> While we're at it, mandatory staggering of school open times and flexibilization of work times would also be a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER92> Can we nix time zones while we're at it?

If I want to eat breakfast when the sun comes up, what does it have to do with the numbers on the clock?

</comment><comment><USER93> The whole genesis of DST was to save energy costs (particularly during 70s oil crisis). I don't see that mentioned anywhere

<comment><USER40> It is a fallacy. The only real reason I ever found were people in positions of influence and power wanted another hour in the evening for a round of golf. Though we can make DST permanent, keep the hour and eliminate the horrible time changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> I have been rallying around this for a long time. I think we should eliminate time zones while we are at it.

</comment><comment><USER95> For me the big issue with DST is the stress to the organism it's causing at every transition from winter to summer time. So I was wondering instead of picking between Winter and Summer time, can't we make the transition less stresfull? I.e. instead of shifting the time by 1 hour twice a year, shift it by 15 minutes 8 times in a year? Maybe this way the organism won't feel it so much?

<comment><USER96> Everybody would be confused and late. It's much simpler to stick to one - <USER3> - and not change it at all

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Usually when this kind of article comes up there are 3 things that pop up and are just unresolved by the next day and after enough time that no action will be had.

1\. Make it so that we're all on ST.

2\. Make it so that we're on permanent DST.

3\. Make it so that we're all on GMT.

So can we cut the crap with these yearly things and just live with the fact that because we invented the internet nothing in this area is going to change?

</comment><comment><USER98> imagine the opposite: suppose we do not have the clock switching, killer (literally) chaos twice a year.

someone proposes it, with predictable deaths to ensue every year, forever.

who would support it?

i would not!

</comment><comment><USER99> Pick either one, but stop switching it back and forth.

</comment><comment> 867-5309 I wonder if they name-drop themselves in every headline..

</comment><comment><USER100> Just move to Arizona, we never had it!

</comment><comment><USER101> Can we get rid of timezones next?

</comment><comment><USER59> the person who invented this must not like gradual changes like the sun provides naturally

<comment><USER102> I've wondered if at some point it would be feasible to add a second, sunrise based time system (SBT) for use within time zones in addition to the standard zone based time (ZBT).

You'd use ZBT for things that need to by synced or coordinated across time zones, and SBT for things like school hours, work hours for businesses that only have to deal with things within the time zone, store hours, local concerts and shows and games, and similar.

The key feature of SBT is that sunrise would occur at a fixed time, say 06:00, every day. Yes, this means that on an SBT clock, noon would not necessarily correspond to the point of highest sun, and even more radically the interval from 06:00 one day to 06:00 would not necessarily be exactly 24 hours.

This is essentially a continuous form of DST. In many places this would actually give you more sunlight after work than the current DST system does, and has no disruptive transitions. Another advantage is that it would let more people go on schedules that let them wake up naturally from sunrise instead of having to use an alarm.

It would be computationally more complex than what clocks currently do, but we are at the point where it is cheap and easy to include sufficient computing power in clocks to handle it.

<comment><USER42> [https://qntm.org/continuous](https://qntm.org/continuous)

<comment><USER102> Note that what that page is talking about is quite different from what I was wondering about.

It's talking about replacing time zone based clock time with local noon based clock time. Each current time zone would go from having one time within it to having 3600 times within it (assuming clocks only keep time to 1 second resolution).

That has many drawbacks which your link ably covers.

What I'm talking about is adding a second kind of clock time within each time zone. Each time zone would have two times within it, the current time, which I'll call zone based time (ZBT), and a time that keeps sunrise fixed, which I'll call sunrise based time (SBT).

It's not meant as a _replacement_ for time zones like the thing in the link. It's meant to address the same issue as daylight savings time--better utilization of daylight during the summer.

Many proponents of eliminating the twice yearly DST time change acknowledge that we probably still should have some kind of seasonal schedule adjustment at latitudes where there is a big different between the amount of daylight in summer and winter, and usually suggest we do it by changing the hours of things like work and school.

E.g., instead of working 8 to 5 year around, we'd work 8 to 5 part of the year and 7 to 4 part of the year.

You can divide everything into two categories: (1) things whose times change between winter and summer, and (2) things whose times do not change.

The idea then is to put these categories on separate clocks. Things in category #2 are on a clock that does not have any notion of standard or daylight time. It just ticks on, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Things in category #1 are on a clock that does get adjusted.

So instead of having to note the date, recall if that is in the range of dates during which we shift work an hour, so you know if you need to be in by 7 or by 8 that day, you'd just have to remember that your work schedule is on the SBT clock, not the ZBT clock, so you go to work the same time every time, year around, on your SBT clock.

But why stop there? If the SBT clock just changes by an hour twice a year it has all the disruption that the daylight savings time has. If we are going to have a separate clock for those things we want to vary seasonally, and that clock is going to automatically adjust, why not go all the way and make it adjust daily?

For each region, we can figure out the best way to make use of the available daylight for each day throughout the year, and have SBT time make it so 8 to 5 on the SBT clock each day fits in with that.

Do this right and there are no more big schedule jumps, and most people will be able to have a sleep schedule that allows them to wake up naturally due to the brightening morning instead of having to regularly use an alarm clock.

This might seem like it would be pretty inconvenient because you'd be constantly dealing with some things on SBT and some on ZBT...but would you? Most things you do locally that aren't directly tied to work or school are still going to be influenced by them, because we need to fit other things around them.

So I think we'd end up using SBT for most of the stuff we deal with in our region. We'd most use ZBT for things outside the region. For instance, TV networks would be on ZBT. But most people do things like watch TV in the evening. I think what would happen is that you'd use SBT during the work/school day, and when doing other things in your city, then after dinner you'd stop looking at your SBT clock and start paying attention to your ZBT clock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> (German, sorry) Since communication yt channel which sums up the facts quite good:

\- Sleep: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LprmzAzarRU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LprmzAzarRU) \- DST: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwmQ6RhWk7g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwmQ6RhWk7g)

But here is a view things (Sleep):

\- we don't have a fixed inner clock, but a cyclic one which can be adjusted "early birds" have a cycle <24h and "late owls" a cycle >24h (this means that _only_ the abrupt change is fundamentally bad)

\- society is biased to benefit "early birds"

\- but in current society more then half of all people are "late owls"

\- using a alarm to forcefully wake you up has negative effects even if you got enough sleep

\- the amount of sleep you need is independent of weather you are an early bird or late owl

\- forcing owls to stand up early causes sleep deprivation

\- you can manipulate your inner clock through light exposure, food and sport.

\- the best light to affect you is the natural sun, going out (Added by me from context:in the morning) can be especially useful

\- How your long your inner cycle is depends on your age, this effect seems to be biologically based and appear in all people around the world

\- Sleep scientist try to convince (middle) schools to start at 9am instead of 8am because of the previous point.

And for DST:

\- 80% of people in a EU questionnaires "voted" in favor of the removal of DST

\- more people wanted to keep summer time then winter time

\- But this should be decided based on since as this has major biological effects on the body

\- In Germany "common time" is winter time, summer time was set as sun rises earlier in summer. (Me: No idea if that's the case in the US to or if it's the other way around, people in Germany also use the terms summer and winter time so "common time" isn't really a thing anymore)

\- Recap of previous points ("early birds"/"late owls"), (btw. the terms where freely translated by me, in Germany they use Lark and Owl as terms, Lark is known as the "early bird")

\- Explanation of Yet Lack and why it can a bit of time to fix it. (The inner clock is a "strong oscillator")

\- More details of how the clock self calibrates itself.

\- The differences in the inner clock are often just a view minutes but due to how it synchronizes with the day the actual differences are larger

\- Just the sunlight rising difference in the same time zone can lead to noticeable differences in when people "naturally" stand up.

\- There is a social yet lag (your inner clock being out of sync with society)

\- Having sleep deprivation (e.g. because of social yet lack) is correlating with all kind of problems from reduced mental capacity/abilities over mode swings to overweight.

\- Permanent summer time would make it worse for people already being affected by social yet lack (i.e. late owls).

\- _Because of this the scientific consensus is that (most?) scientist in that field warn that permanent summer time would be a very bad idea for health reason._

\- Me: Interestingly I did observe that late owls tend to more likely to have strong opinions about permanent summer time even through this would be biologically bad for them.

\- Most people are neither "early birds" nor "late owls" but somewhere in between, there are more people edging in the direction of late owls.

\- Hardly anyone (<2%) has a negative social yet lack (most likely through indirect effects). While much more have a positive social yet lack, i.e. stand up earlier then they should. Which is way to reason why permanent summer time would be generally bad for society due to negative biological effects on many people.

\- _How_ bad permanent summer time is for people in general isn't clear, but we know it is bad.

\- The negative effects are tricky to measure as they appear long time.

\- We should get away from ideas like "the early bird catches the worm" or starting schools at 8am.

\- Due to the _potential_ serve (accumulated) consequences of choosing the wrong time (i.e. permanent summer time) the decision should be based on scientific analysis not of opinions about how people feel about it.

</comment><comment><USER103> Depends on the latitude. DST makes amazing sense in the latitudes between Sicily and Moscow.

And I never had problem with switching. Takes a night sleep or two at most.

I think the issue just moves into culture war territory.

<comment><USER104> > And I never had problem with switching. Takes a night sleep or two at most.

Don't bother to try arguing that here or on Reddit.

Apparently 99% of people in those conversations go to sleep, fall asleep and wake up at the exact same time every single day of the year. No week-end, no trip, no dinner, no special thing to care about, no sport, no entertainment, nothing. Nothing ever changes their habit. And in that parallel world, they must also all leave under the equator, since the sun does also rise at the exact same time all year long, rising time doesn't shift much more than a one- hour change (heck, actually even under the equator, you get a similar span of variation).

Also, energy savings are usually dismissed as being tiny. Except that we spend years investing billions and billions in order to save energy / reduce CO2 emissions and barely reach this "tiny" level of savings which is obtained by simply shifting the needle of a clock twice a year, in a simplistic process which has been working for decades.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I have no friends so I created Strangers for Dinner to make friends - <AUTHOR> http://strangersfordinner.com <comment><USER2> When I go to your site, I feel like no one is using it, because I can't see any other users information. As a potential user, I want to see that other people are using the site (in my area) before I actually start using it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most excellent suggestion! I've always thought a Google Maps with pins showing the number of people in cities would be a cool idea.

Hmm, who knows, if I have the time tomorrow I shall implement it

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Overall I like it. I do agree that hosting it at your house is going to be a big barrier of entry. I WOULD do a dinner with random people but NOT in my house! Also after I signed up and added a party, there was really no clear indication of where to go next. I didn't get any confirmation or messaging or next steps. I had to go back to the dashboard and figure out that I might get an email by the 15th of the month. Is it fully functionally? Am I going to get an email tomorrow with up to five people? And what about couples ? How are you appealing to them? Couples might be more likely to do this (for example if a new couple moved to a new town), might get rid of the 'brave' factor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Roy, good questions. Let me answer you now:

1) You don't have to have it in your house. It is very free form. After you have been matched up to your 5 strangers, you are shown a communications box, where you communicate with them as a host, on where and when you want to have the dinner party. It can be a lunch, it can be brekkie at the top of the hill, or it can even be a night out at the pub. That's where you describe it in the party description.

2\. Not knowing where to go? That's a usability problem and it's our onus to fix it. We'll do that. The flash message that says your dinner party has been saved is clearly not doing enough. We WILL fix it.

3\. Yes it is fully functional. You might get an email IF within your vicinty there are more than 10 people.

4\. Couples. That's what the Plus One button is for. When you get a list of people to rank, you'll be notified if the potential attendee is bringing a Plus One.

<comment><USER3> 1) So after I signed up to host or join, it's really a waiting game until the 15th, right? Is there a way to make it stickier that would encourage me to come back? Some kind of game dynamics?

2) Great!

3) What happens if there are no matches? I would expect an email anyway to let me know it's still working on finding matches.

4) Okay great. Maybe it's just based on personal experience but I'd like you to flesh that out more. My wife and I throw dinner parties for our friends all the time but they are always "guests" and not "hosts" so the lack of reciprocation can be tiresome. Depending on how you figure out the secret sauce, I think people like us would be some of the early adopters/evangelists.

Have you guys thought about "ratings"? I guess you wouldn't want to introduce the idea of negatively rating someone but I think there's something to be learned from Facebook ( _gasp_ ). After an event, can I like some of the other participants or something similar (+1 good dinner convo dude, etc) to rise those people to the top of the next matches and to start cultivating a community of leaders, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) We will email you when you have potential matches to rank, and the subsequent matches. We designed the system to work around the lives of busy people (think young urban professionals). The whole point is for you to do your stuff and get you OUT of the site. Game dynamics would defeat the purpose. I've actually written a blog post about designing the user flow [1]. Is this a wrong decision? Probability says it is very likely that we're wrong. When the tests show so, we will pivot so.

3) We've given that some thought and we've decided against sending emails saying you're FOREVER ALONE (btw if you DO want to see it, head over to /rank- people to see how many potential matches you have. However, your insight has shown us that thought alone is not useful in making decisions. On this, I'd like a show of hands who think that it's a good idea to send update emails to tell you that the system is working on finding matches for you?

4) Haha, we've actually ran into this problem in our 2 week beta test. We're currently working on a system to incentivize users to host dinners.

5) Yes we have a post-facto rating system in place. It has questions about security, friendliness, our match qualities... In fact I can tell you there is a system that is pretty much like Xbox's TruSkill that is powering the rating system, except with more fun stuff.

[1][http://blog.strangersfordinner.com/2012/05/out-of-the- way-1-...](http://blog.strangersfordinner.com/2012/05/out-of-the-way-1-user- flow/)

<comment><USER4> Regarding 3:

I live in a smaller city, and it regularly takes a while for location based web stuff to catch on around here. I sign up for them, but since thresholds of usefulness take a while to be met, I completely forget about the service -- then one day I'll hear about it from someone local, decide to give it a try, and rediscover my existing account. As such I like the occasional email reminding me of the existence of these things. Preferably something in the form of:

Hey, thanks for signing up. We are still waiting for more people in your area to sign up, currently there are only n users, which doesn't quite meet our threshold[1]. We just wanted you to know we haven't forgotten about you. If you have any suggestions on how to get more users near you, let us know!

[1] _alternately: n other people are using it, spread the word and get even more!_

A frequency of once a week on that seems pretty reasonable, rather than once a day. In this particular situation I think a balance between "forever alone" spam and "hey, we still got your back" emails is a nice goal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this. It is a good suggestion. I'll look into it and discuss with the team on how to integrate something like that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just wondered why it is that so many people complain about the app wanting a FB login - now here's a hypothesis: (Some?) People who are interested in this service don't like Facebook and look for other ways of finding other people to have fun with. I don't think anything is wrong with Facebook login only, but in this demographic it's obviously a bad approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, normally I hate facebook logins too. There are apps out there who want you to login via facebook so they can spam your wall and your friends' feed.

Strangers for Dinner won't do that. The main reason we use facebook is as I mentioned below: authentication and a not-too-good verification system

<comment><USER5> Well if you really hate it, then I wonder why you did it. Stand by your preferences ;) As an enduser I do like FB login for apps which I trust (like Spotify) because I don't have to use a password manager for logging in. If an app asks only for conservative permissions this outweighs all the privacy could-bes and ifs for me.

<comment><USER6> LastPass is free, you know...

<comment><USER5> I don't get it - there are some free password managers, but what's that to do with me not wanting to constantly type in my (long) master password on a soft keyboard, clicking through, and copying username and password to and fro?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One little thing: the ordering for "how far you are willing to travel" is a bit messed up. It goes 10, 5, 20, 30, 50.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was actually a usability thing. We've started with 5,10,20,30,50 kilometres, and it turned out our initial beta bunch would typically select 10km as the distance they're willing to travel, so we've rearranged it.

<comment><USER8> In terms of usability, how does this compare to leaving the ordering unchanged and instead setting 10 as the initially-selected choice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes grubwithus is doing something similar, nobody really owns this space yet though. I would reconsider the name, the word "strangers" doesn't help with people's anxiety towards meeting new people or hosting dinners. One thing is for sure, most people like to eat and most people like good company, good stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, that was one of the feedback we've received. A very good advisor of mine even suggested New Friends for Dinner. Ultimately though we hope the morbid humour of the phrase "Strangers for Dinner" or even worse: "Strangers for Donner "[1] would pull through.

[1] <http://xkcd.com/30/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a bit off-topic but I would encourage everyone to read Strangers for Dinner's privacy policy[1]. It is a fantastic example of being fully transparent about what they are collecting and why, and doing it with plain language. I like this example so much not only because of the execution but also because they are collecting some very sensitive information (gender, political preferences, etc.) and not hiding the fact.

The only nit I would make to improve it is to not bury the privacy policy link in the footer but say something like "We collect some sensitive data, please read our privacy policy for details." To make sure people see it up front.

Don't underestimate the power of building trust with new users.

[1] <http://strangersfordinner.com/privacy>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry. HN crashed the VPS. Trying to call the VPS hosting solution to get the server rebooted. This is the full text:

Our Privacy Policy

Your privacy is of utmost importance to us, and we would like to inform you about our policy for protecting your privacy online. As a business, we DO collect information from you, and we do it in two ways: Information we get from your usage of the system (see Google Analytics) and information you give us (see Facebook)

Google Analytics

We collect data using Google Analytics. We use it to analyze how users use this site, and make decisions to improve the website. Google Analytics uses 'cookies', which are not food, unfortunately. Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard information about users in an anonymous form. The information collected from site will then be transmitted to Google, which then compiles statistical reports based on user activity for Strangers for Dinner

We will never share this data with any third party. Google does not associate your information with any other data held by Google. Neither will we nor Google link or seek to link the collected anonymized information with the identity of the user. More information about Google's stance on privacy can be found here.

Facebook

We use Facebook to authenticate users. Asides from authentication, we also request some specific information about users. They are: Name, Age, Sex, Location, Political view, Religious View, Relationship Status, and Interests. As part of the terms of use, we require these basic information from users as those data are required for security purposes. These data are pulled from Facebook to reduce the need for users to fill in forms.

We will never share any of these information to any third party except for law enforcement, should the need arise. Your data is safe with us.

A Note on Personally Identifiable Information

We realize that we are storing personally identifiable information by virtue of you providing us those data. We work hard to protect them. Nobody has, and will have access to your name or your relationship status, even as part of the matching processes. In the place for names and personally identifiable information, we require nicknames, which serves a dual purpose of preventing personally identifiable information from being shared, as well as a barrier to lower discrimination. However, these data may be used for analytical purposes to improve performance of the site.

Last Modified: 30th April 2012

</comment></comment><comment> angry-hacker I can't test it because when trying to register I get "internal server error".

What I would like from a startup like that would be following:

1) Post an invitation that you are interesting in meeting (x day, x time) 2) Choose a place 3) Choose a topic you want to have a conversation about 4) Meet up

So if you are in other city for an example and have a spare time, you would have a chance to meet new people to have a coffee with... maybe there are startups like that already but I guess it's always a chicken/egg problem when it comes to finding people to use the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry if I perpetuated your anger, it turns out that I have limited number of processes that I'm allowed to use on the VPS so as a stopgap measure until I can move SfD somewhere else, I've written a chaosmonkey like script to randomly kill processes to throttle users. I'm going to bed soonish though, so, again, sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 'Host' and 'join' are identical apart from 'Tell us your dinner party idea'.

Why not just give one simpler option to 'attend' a dinner party? Each attendee can then submit an idea/vote on the best.

</comment><comment><USER12> Similar idea is Tastytum (<http://www.tastytum.com/>), though not much has happened there lately.

I was a "beta tester" host last year, and it worked really well and was a very fun evening. The idea works if you're brave enough to try.

But Tastytum's site also seems a lot friendlier to me, has a less scary name ;) and it doesn't require a FB account. "connecting travellers with locals" just sounds safer than having "strangers" come to your house. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool idea. Guess we're not original afterall.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Watching traffic live now. It seems many people drop out at How It Works. Anyone care to share some insights as to why?

<comment><USER13> I was hoping for another way to sign in.

I killed my Facebook account a couple weeks ago and would rather not reactivate. Also 'strangers for dinner' makes me think of cannibalism. Not something I particularly want to be thinking about when getting the opportunity to meet new people in my own home.

It also doesn't seem particularly safe.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've always felt dark humour works. :P

As for safety, we've actually fretted over it for a few weeks before finally writing it. Facebook as it turns out, can be quite useful in terms of safety.

We've put in place a system where we will work with authorities should security and safety be an issue (for example, if someone gets robbed). This is where we figured Facebook information would be quite useful.

It's a debate we constantly have internally though, and we aren't quite clear about how far is too far yet

<comment><USER7> Yeah, Facebook does make it quite safe. Personally, and I know that this is a bit silly, but the thought of all my actual Facebook friends seeing that I have signed up to this put me off at first. Then I was like "fuck it, I'm curious!" - but it doesn't mean that others will come to the same conclusion. It's similar to announcing on Facebook that you've just signed up to a dating site. Lots of people do it these days, even talk about it quite a lot, but it's not something you'd make a status update about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, your friends won't know about it. Facebook is used for authentication and verification only.

<comment><USER7> Great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's what you want to do:

Host these dinners at some local sushi place. Have the owner give you 10% off given that you're giving them 6-7 new customers. Maybe even do something where you collect some $$ from the restaurant as you're bringing them, say, 10 new customers every month...

Love the idea btw!

<comment><USER15> www.grubwithus.com is doing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perfect_Host>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieT3dMT7Xzo>

<comment><AUTHOR> Strangers for Donner anyone? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_party>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Overall I agree with comments here - the site feels rather lonely. Take a look at GrubWithUs and see how they've solved this problem. Theirs is much more inviting - there's activity, social proof etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> I got an "internal server error" when I tried to sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm so sorry. HN crashed the VPS

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recently realized I have the same problem.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sign in with facebook

kthxbye

</comment><comment><USER21> Facebook login only... will avoid.

<comment><USER22> Except for this app, it kind of makes sense. Strangers meeting for dinner can be vetted by their profiles.

<comment><USER23> If they don't have any friends, what would they be using Facebook for? The Facebook login might filter out a good portion of the prospective market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really liked the idea, too bad I'm too paranoid to host strangers at my home :(

<comment><USER25> I have had really great experiences inviting strangers into my home during the Eyjafjallajökull eruptions when they were stranded at my local airport, credit cards maxed out and with young kids in tow.

Then I tried Couchsurfing, where vetted strangers sleep in the spare room, and hang out and chat. Awesome, awesome, awesome - I have made new friends for life, people I never would have met otherwise, with different life stories and views on the world.

Even in São Paulo, a rather dangerous sort of city, I've made new and unexpected friends by visiting after a casual invitation, after assessing the risks and discussing it with local friends.

I suspect that most people, in most societies, are good and nice. There are some bad people though, and it is sensible to take reasonable precautions, but do try to ask yourself "what are the real chances of something going wrong?" and compare that to the risk of a car accident during your daily commute.</comment></comment>


The Rise, Fall and Survival of Ashton-Tate's dBASE - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/database/30-years-ago-the-rise-fall-and-survival-of-ashton-tates-dbase.html <comment><USER2> OK so do you want the real story? The genius behind dBase was Wayne Ratliff. When George Tate died of a heart attack on 1984 at age 39 the company's new CEO was Ed Esber.

While Tate had a productive relationship with Ratliff and realized he was important to the companies success. Ed Esber fought with Ratliff. He famously told dBase's inventor that his contributions to the company were no important to the success of Ashton-Tate than the guy on the loading dock.

Ratliff quit and started Migent to compete against Ashton-Tate. Esber sued the young company over appropriation of trade secrets. You can trace the company's decline from this point. Ratliff introduced an innovative client server database called Emerald Bay but lacked the marketing chops to succeed. SQL was beginning to take off and when Microsoft introduced Access and made it easily accessible to the same customer base that dBase targeted it was the death knell.

</comment><comment><USER3> My first programming language was dBASE, soon after which I started using Clipper, a superset of dBASE which compiled to p-code based binaries. It had a thriving third party library market, and supported code blocks (anonymous functions) and much more.

Clipper was also abandoned by Computer Associates who bought it from the original Nantucket Corporation. There are however two open-source projects that are still being actively developed: Harbour ([http://www.harbour- project.org/](http://www.harbour-project.org/)) and xHarbour ([http://xharbour.org/](http://xharbour.org/)). Both are being used by enterprises that still has xBase apps around.

</comment><comment><USER4> I did my first contracting gig getting paid by the hour hacking DBase business programs. On the side I wrote a checkbook program, calendaring app, and RPG character generator.

I have fond memories of DBase, especially DBase III+. I remember when computers had "turbo" buttons and you could make a dog program run like lightning by simply hitting the button. I also remember compiling DBase programs in Clipper, and all sorts of other fun stuff. I worked for one guy that bought faster crystals to make his CPUs run better -- the very first PC overclocking that I ever saw.

Eventually, the home/small business database market went to Microsoft, who released MS Access. All of the "real" programmers said it was a toy and wouldn't deign to use it, but consumers bought it up and started creating their own apps. This was great news for me, because most of the time they created a mess and somebody had to come in and clean it all up. DBase was a big part of how I went from high school kid to independent programmer.

Good times.

<comment><USER5> I start with foxpro/visual foxpro. I still think was the MOST productive environment, bar none, for complete, end-to-end app development (for desktop).

I still miss it. I work with Delphi and later python (I like so much python) but still feel cheated by how much extra work is necessary.

I'm dreaming in a new language that mix python/foxpro and have sqlite integrate directly, so database and app development were as natural as with fox.

I still consider the Visual FoxPro REPL and debug window THE golden standard! NO even iPython is superior. It was so out-your-way and dam practical (you can use it directly from your own apps!, talking about easy solving on your running apps)

<comment><USER6> A good history of the start of FoxPro: [http://www.hentzenwerke.com/catalog/ftale.htm](http://www.hentzenwerke.com/catalog/ftale.htm)

I still end up using VFP occasionally to port our older clients to our newer software.

Python/SQLite is almost as productive, you can do some sweet stuff with a few lines of code. Not as REPL, though. Throw in some pandas, IPython and some SQLAlchemy and your are rocking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you've never read it, "In Search of Stupidity" ( [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001C6MQA8/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=de...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001C6MQA8/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=dedasys-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B001C6MQA8&adid=0MSE8NYVRGS325S3A6WX&) ) covers this and other companies that rose and fell. His thesis is that the most successful companies weren't really all that brilliant and visionary - just less stupid than some of their competition.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, almost every company rose (at their level) and fell. For the few survivors you can check [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies)

<comment><USER9> Ryokan hotels are clearly the business to be in, if you're in it for the long term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This brings back memories.

My first DB system was dBase III+. Eventually I ended up doing some work in Clipper Summer 87, followed by Clipper 5.x with some OO even!

I remember playing around with CA's Visual Objects "evolution" of Clipper, but never did anything with it.

By then, I was more interested into Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ for Windows 3.x.

As anecdote, maybe shared by other HN members, I remember having some problems migrating from the dBase mindset of what a DB is, into the SQL model.

<comment><USER11> Wow, Clipper brings me some memories... I remember APPEND BLANK and REPLACEs, and also having to tell customers to reindex (and regenerate the dreaded .NTX index files) every day before starting operations. Good times!

One nice thing about Clipper is that it had "code blocks" that was the first time I had contact with what we today call Closures. It had a syntax close to Ruby blocks: { |X| ... }

<comment><USER10> We always made an option into our application settings for index regeneration. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Until last year, I was a daily user of dBase IV for DOS at work. Amazingly stable and easy to use, and to this day, Excel can read and write those .dbf files. I really liked it.

<comment><USER6> The later versions of Excel dropped support for the .dbf format.

<comment><USER12> That must have been with the recent versions that switched to the ribbon bars. Those versions we never used at my last job.

<comment><USER13> AFAIK Office 2003 SP3 also disables dBase II support by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember starting a new job in 1989 and seeing a copy of a dBase III+ book on my boss's secretary's desk. Blew through it in two weeks and was referred to Clipper by a co-worker, still a developer 24 years later (SMF!).

Clipper's constrained class system (de-constrained by a third party library) is still one of my favorite dev environments. Brian Marasca's ObjectDb library was an eye-opener and a great tool--thanks mate!

CA-Visual Objects, wow, talk about a missed opportunity. I co-wrote one of the first (and few, in the end) books about it during the beta phase. As the years went on I came to understand that with Clipper in the CA stable there was little chance of any different outcome but still a huge disappointment.

</comment><comment><USER15> PC-file FTW. I created a stock tracking app for our electronics R&D department with it. It was one of the original shareware apps. Must have been about 1985.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-File](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-File)

</comment><comment><USER16> The article in one page [http://www.eweek.com/print/database/30-years-ago-the- rise-fa...](http://www.eweek.com/print/database/30-years-ago-the-rise-fall- and-survival-of-ashton-tates-dbase.html/)

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems that a dos version is still being sold ([http://dbaseclassic.com/](http://dbaseclassic.com/)) and the company claim for more than 7 million active users.

</comment><comment><USER18> dBASE was my first "real" programming language (.bat & basic don't count) and we used Clipper. (circa 1993)

Of further note was the mention of FoxBase, which became FoxPro and is what we used to develop one of the first online offender databases for our state sheriff's department. For some reason using FoxPro seemed less like "programming" than using Clipper. (too much like Visual Basic)

Thanks for the walk down memory lane!

</comment><comment><USER19> dBase III is the program that taught me as a 10-year-old not to just flick the switch on my IBM XT like it was a light when it was no longer needed, but to save and exit gracefully first.</comment>