Building a Minimal Convex Hull - <AUTHOR> http://kukuruku.co/hub/algorithms/building-a-minimal-convex-hull

<comment><USER2> I became pretty interested in this topic not too long ago. Convex hulls are pretty well understood. I wanted to figure out a decent notion of "concave hull" (which is not a uniquely defined construct, unlike the convex hull). It turns out alpha shapes are pretty well suited to this:

[http://bl.ocks.org/zpconn/11387143](http://bl.ocks.org/zpconn/11387143)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a hard time understanding why the author go out of his/her way to rename standard definitions.

1\. The definition of convex hull of a set S in the article, is the boundary of a convex set that contains all the points in S. The standard definition is the "intersection of all convex sets that contains S". Edit: Yes, this is not a good definition for the article, but there is a equivalent for finite set of points in 2D which is much better suited: "The smallest convex polygon contain all the points in S"

2\. The definition of minimal convex hull in the article, in the standard terminology, is the boundary of the convex hull.

The article links to wikipedia which clearly explains what is a convex hull, but still decides to come up with new terminology. As a warning, the "convex hull" in this article is not equivalent to the "convex hull" in wikipedia(or any other textbook definitions I have seen).

<comment><USER4> I don't think the writer is really doing anything much wrong. In the Wikipedia article on the topic "convex hull" is defined as you suggest for sets in abstract, but for a _finite set of points_ , as being the polygon (and not the interior of the polygon), which is consistent with the writer's terms and it is rather closer to both the intuitive understanding of the matter at hand and the algorithms under discussion.

It seems to me that the term "convex hull" is ambiguous, even among geometers -- sometimes meaning the set and sometimes the boundary. A hull tends to be hollow, so I'd suggest that the boundary definition is nearer normal usage and intuition. In any event, the writer defines the terms and uses them as defined.

I think the two algorithms he examines are interesting. The second is the one I first think of. The two methods are _almost_ duals of each other. It seems to me that if you start by taking the top, left, right, and bottom points as your initial hull and then add on for any points not in that hull, it's almost certainly faster than either algorithm (especially in practice).

<comment><USER3> Of course, using the most abstract definition is not the best idea, but anything equivalent to the standard terminology is ok. For example, in 2d, we can san say the convex hull of a finite set of points is the smallest enclosing convex polygon.

The name convex hull is related to linear hull and conic hull, therefore defining it to not contain the interior is strange, but reasonable because in many applications we only care about the description of the convex hull by describing the polygon.

<comment><USER4> Well in abstract there are plenty of possible spaces where a set can be bounded but its boundary does not exist within the set (e.g. consider the transcendentals between 0 and 1) so talking about the "hull" as a boundary is completely useless. Even so, picking the word "hull" was perhaps careless.

A lot of people, even mathematicians, are confused on the definition of circle vs. sphere (the circle is the boundary, the sphere is the volume), so even if you use these terms "correctly" you probably want to define your understanding of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's also Chan's algorithm ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan%27s_algorithm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan%27s_algorithm))

<comment><USER6> Output-sensitive algorithms are pretty interesting in general. Previous to Chan's algorithm there was the Kirkpatrick-Seidel algorithm ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkpatrick%E2%80%93Seidel_alg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkpatrick%E2%80%93Seidel_algorithm)), which is more complicated but runs in the same time complexity. Their paper also provides a proof of optimality.

For interested students, Dave Mount's computational geometry notes ([http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mount/754/Lects/754lects.pdf](http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mount/754/Lects/754lects.pdf)) provides an excellent overview of algorithms used for most things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another good source for convex hull code (I was using this recently): [http://marknelson.us/2007/08/22/convex/](http://marknelson.us/2007/08/22/convex/)</comment>


Kent Beck on why he charges for JUnitMax - <AUTHOR> http://www.threeriversinstitute.org/blog/?p=231

<comment><USER2> _I've encountered the same attitude from other large, profitable companies and large, profitable conferences. [..] My hosts are clearly planning to gain value from my talk or they wouldn't have said yes. In total they will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars paying programmers to listen to the talk, discuss it afterwards, and experiment with the ideas. But pay the presenter? Inconceivable._

At RailsConf this year, I heard that the non-keynote speakers weren't paid and weren't having their accommodation costs covered either. This _might_ be entirely untrue (?) but I heard it more than once. If true, this decision seems to have come at the expense of paying people like Tim Ferriss to espouse truisms at big-bucks-per-hour instead.

I certainly hope that programming heroes like Kent aren't being left high and dry because the money is going on pointless eye and mind candy at some of these conferences..

<comment><USER3> The compensation for speakers depends on the _cost_ of the conference for attendees, and also things like how many speakers they're bringing in.

I've helped organize a couple [small Perl workshops](<http://www.frozen- perl.org>) where we charged $20/40 for the early bird rate.

At that cost, we really barely covered the workshop costs (venue & food mostly) with some additional sponsorship. There was no way we could afford to pay speakers at all. People come to support the Perl community and because it's fun.

OSCON, OTOH, pays airfare, one hotel night, and $500 per tutorial to tutorial speakers. But for "regular session" speakers, they just get in free. Of course, OSCON costs $1740 with tutorials, and speaker can attend tutorials, so it's not like you're getting nothing!

I would assume ORA did something similar for RailsConf. If you think the conference is worth what they're charging, then free admission is a significant value.

ApacheCon is a bit odd. When I spoke there way back in 2000 they paid airfare, hotel, and something extra for all speakers. They can do that because it costs about the same as OSCON but they have less than half as many tracks.

So each conference has a different value proposition for speakers and attendees. Personally, I love the small community conferences, and will happily pay out of pocket to go speak at them, because it's fun.

<comment><USER4> I have had good experiences getting paid by O'Reilly sponsored conferences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with trying to reason using the concept of "creating value" is that "value" is such a transient, subjective, and ephemeral thing. Human beings don't fully use logic when they assign value.

"Value" from the standpoint of markets is not the same as "actual benefit." I'm not sure you can really measure the latter. If you try, you start living Zen parables.

Let's take Adult Friend Finder as an example. It has "value" according to the market. We know because it makes money. But the vast majority of its users probably don't get what they think is the "actual benefit" they would've wanted. But is even that an actual benefit? I now have a relationship with mutual respect, love, and trust. I now see the goal of Adult Friend Finder as a trap. The opportunity cost and risk of disease involved with finding casual sex makes it seem less of a "benefit" to me.

It's like that story of the farmer and good luck/bad luck. <http://www.timesquotidian.com/2009/04/17/good-luck-bad-luck/>

So where does this leave economics? There's still all of the game theory, but the need for a more sophisticated outlook on human motivation is acknowledged by the field.

<comment><USER6> I don't think Beck claimed it was a provable lemma; it was a leap of faith.

<comment><USER4> It was a leap of faith at first, but I also had 20 some years of data to back it up after that.

<comment><USER7> Kent: I looked at your website and saw the price. 10usd per month for a desktop product? That's pretty strange if you ask me. Subscriptions are usually for server based installs or online value added services.

Price it like every other desktop dev tool on the planet: one off purchase + with minor version upgrades + optional annual maintenance. Look at other established players in the java dev tool market. Copy their pricing models.

Even though it's cheap I wouldn't consider it because of the pricing model you are using. It just feels wrong.

<comment><USER5> _Even though it's cheap I wouldn't consider it because of the pricing model you are using. It just feels wrong._

As I said above: human beings don't use logic when assigning "value."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _I proposed through a friend to give a talk on the project to his employer, the research arm of a very large computing company.

If I insisted on being paid (as I have in the past) they would have said, "Good-bye"._

Before forming an opinion, or recommending a solution, I need to get clear on the situation: He's insisted on payment in the past, but he believes this time they'll say "Goodbye". But he didn't ask them... so, it seems he's imagining getting knocked back, without checking out the reality. Is that what he's saying?

<comment><USER4> Thank you for following up before judging. I'll try to summarize more clearly. I offered to give the original talk for the opportunity to get feedback on new ideas and the opportunity to present JUnit Max (although it seems to me the chances of significant sales are small). I also told them of my need for revenue, to which they replied they had no budget. Then they asked to expand the talk to a much larger audience and record it. I said "no" to that, which triggered the post, because I haven't been in the habit of creating less than the most value I could imagine.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like your talk was _partly_ a sales pitch... in which case distributing it for free actually creates value for you (in terms of this one aspect). By this interpretation, they _were_ reciprocating (in the only way they could, given they have no budget).

"Technical skills make a technical success, but business skills make a business success" - business skills being about how to make your product "easy to buy". For example, a higher price can make it easier to buy, especially if it fits into a category of products that the organization is used to buying - and in the _way_ they are used to buying them. It's part of "positioning" it in the customer's mind. This is all simply seeing it from the customer's point of view. These things don't directly improve your product, but they do help to communicate it to other people, which is also intrinsically worthwhile.

The economy is bad and perhaps also comp sci is finally ending its multi- decade growth phase. There's always a place for anyone who creates value, but perhaps the days of "it's raining soup grab yourself a bucket" are over, and a different strategy is needed (Disclaimer: this is a guess. I'm not yet sufficiently deluded to think I can predict the future).

More generally, I think I have had exactly your dilemma (and still do). I don't have a solution, but perhaps some camaraderie. It's the philosophy of doing whatever does the most good. It feels good (and I think it is good). I believe that if you create value, someone will work out how to pay you. It's a wonderfully inspiring and freeing philosophy - and it makes me feel happier and feel like a pure, innocent person. Also, people want to help you. And for me, it was also inspired by Bucky (his epiphany by the lake - which some spoilsport pedant has apparently debunked as the exact place for it, claiming it's more like a constructed founder's story. Anyway).

The disillusionment for me was in open source: for a developer tool I wrote, people took the help I provided, but didn't give anything back [1] . I did have sales [2], but because there was no pressure to pay, huge organizations would take 3 months to pay [3]. I really hated waiting for the other shoe to drop [4].

Today, I believe that if I create value, it is OK for me keep some of that value. This seems to be right and true... but it doesn't make me happy, and it isn't inspiring or freeing.

I'm currently working on a patentable enterprise developer tool, that I plan to initially sell at a high price to large organizations. As the tool becomes more general, I will lower the price, until eventually it is cheap enough for anyone to afford. I think this is good, and sensible... but it also makes me feel a little sick at heart. So I don't know the answer, but hopefully I've offered some camaraderie. Do let me know if you work out an answer! :-)

        [1] which is part of the open source deal - I just didn't like it
        [2] dual licensing, like Ghostscript
        [3] to be fair: everyone who said they'd buy it, did eventually buy it
        [4] I'd much prefer they didn't tell me they were going to buy it,
        so I didn't have to worry for 3 months.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I do feel a sense of camaraderie. Doing things that are valuable and not receiving value is out of balance. Not being funded to create the next increment of value is seriously wrong (non-optimal for society).

I'm not asking anyone else to fix this for me. It's my responsibility to find my place in this new market in a way that let's me contribute and benefit. I'm glad to know my observations aren't just loony (or at least that I have company).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading this story makes me wonder as to the basis for his complaints. Did the environment really change (and is it more than the current slowdown)? Did Beck's expectations gradually change? Are other leading consultants encountering thin times? Is there reason to think they will persist? It's hard to reason from anecdotes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Something like TipJoy (even if TipJoy isn't the first to find the right formula) should eventually work for these free-floating givers-of-value.

But, somewhat as with musicians, there may be a lot more people who would like to follow this path than the market needs -- meaning the financial appreciation will be spread pretty thin.</comment>


I am deeply sorry - Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/palmer.luckey/posts/10209141115659366 <comment><USER2> You know what's scarier than anything else happening these days? The fact that showing even the slightest hint that one holds the wrong opinions can _cost you your job_.

Note that I'm not endorsing any side or candidate in my argument here (I take issue with both of them.) What I don't understand is how people can contribute to this situation and still think we live in a free country.

<comment><USER3> > Note that I'm not endorsing any side or candidate in my argument here (I > take issue with both of them.) What I don't understand is how people can > contribute to this situation and still think we live in a free country

We're free to speak as we choose, however, the flip side is that we must also accept that there are sometimes consequences for doing so.

Being a racist or a misogynist is a thing we are. A job is just a thing we do. Finding a new job is far, far easier than changing the fundamental building blocks of our selves.

If Luckey loses his job, it will be because society has said "we don't like what you said and here's the consequence of that." If not, well, lucky him.

<comment><USER2> If Luckey loses his job, it will be because society has said "we don't like what you said and here's the consequence of that."

"Society" can do that? Who holds "society" accountable for right and wrong? (I need not remind you of how some societies have done vicious things in the past.)

<comment><USER3> Yep, society can do that. German society once said "kill all the Jews" and the rest of society said "No."

We, collectively, hold society accountable for it's actions. We're not always right, society is not always wrong. There are laws and rules that govern society, not all of them stated, and they can take a lifetime to learn.

Way I see it, Luckey just got a lesson in the rules. You probably shouldn't worry - he's a billionaire. That's more than most people have when they get a sudden, harsh schooling.

<comment><USER4> >Way I see it, Luckey just got a lesson in the rules.

Same for those actors who were fired during the Hollywood blacklist era. No problem with that, right? They just got a lesson in the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a weird non-apology (though I frankly would be disgusted by someone actually apologizing for holding unpopular opinions). Sounds like he's saying his views were misrepresented and that he was impersonated, so what exactly is there for him to apologize for?

<comment><USER4> There is nothing for him to apologize for. But our masters at Gizmodo apparently require their pound of flesh.</comment></comment>


Blind + Linux = BLINUX - <AUTHOR> http://leb.net/blinux/ <comment><USER2> A lot of blind users don't use Linux because the major reader vendors only support Windows. And, Windows has historically had a lot more assistive technology built-in.

I'm kinda disappointed in the lack of support in the Open Source world for this kind of thing, but I've been guilty of it myself in the past. These days, I always ask, "How does this effect users with no or limited sight? Limited mobility? Limited hearing?" I don't always know how to resolve the problems, but I'm always thinking about it and trying to learn. I recently implemented a rule for myself that I won't publish any new video without complete and accurate captions (the automatic captioning at YouTube is insufficient to satisfy this requirement, but it's wonderful that they make captioning so easy and fast). Likewise, we have a new theme that's been developed by a third party which is miles ahead of any UI we've had in the past, but we're not gonna make it the default until we've at least made a clear path for reader users to get to a theme that will work well for them (our old mobile theme uses a hierarchy of menus and is surprisingly useable by screen readers, so we continue to support it just for that reason).

This may be something I should try just so I can wrap my head around how one would use our software without being able to see it. It's been around for a long time. I wonder, however, if Emacspeak would give me anywhere near a realistic average user experience.

<comment><USER3> I recommend it.

I just had eye surgery, so I had a 48 hour "blackout" period where I tried different screen readers and methods of programming. I have an iPhone and a Macbook air. I configured emacs and emacsspeak ahead of time.

Many apps on the iPhone work really well- reading email and sending texts was very easy. Writing email was difficult: I noticed how nonlinear composing email was, and browsing the web was either fine or impossible with nothing in- between.

Some apps had no assistive-technology support and were completely unusable (giving only a "thunk" for feedback). This was very frustrating and is something I will check when evaluating mobile apps in the future.

When someone made a typo, it confused the reader. There wasn't an easy way that I could find to get it to spell things out and I needed to ask for help reading something from someone sighted.

Programming was interesting.

CL (with paredit) and K/Q were no more difficult without eyes (although the choice of words for symbols left some to be desired; I would create a special minor mode if I had to do this again).

Java/C/C++ was "okay". I felt like I could do better with more practice, but it was difficult to figure out where the cursor was sometimes.

Python and Haskell were impossible: I kept having to "re-speak" each line and move the cursor around putting extra spaces in to figure out the indention level. I could only hold small functions in my head and I forgot frequently. -1/10 would not recommend python to blind people.

<comment><USER4> "would not recommend python to blind people."

Kudos to you for undertaking this task. I think a lot of folks would have simply not used their devices for 48 hours rather than learn the assistive tech.

That said, please don't fall into the trap of assuming that your experience is definitive, and of recommending/not recommending things to those of us who may be blind for our entire lives based on your 48 hours of experience. Case in point, I know a number of blind Python developers. I myself did a lot of Python during college, back when Zope was huge and Plone didn't exist. It's no more or less difficult than any other high-level language. Just about every screen reader I've used has the ability to speak line indentation (I.e. "8 spaces def fn(...") and this makes tracking scope easy. Holding a function in your head based on hearing it spoken is a skill that improves with practice. I've coded to varying degrees in every language you've listed, and while some of them do have their unique accessibility challenges (Haskell in particular I find dense because "f . g $ h i" packs a lot of meaning into something with little to break it up) I've learned to audit orally parse them over time.

FWIW, as a blind person, I imagine that coordinating the motion of a 2-ton block of metal and glass, down a strip of asphalt surrounded by a number of other chunks of metal and glass, moving as fast as baseballs and prone to factors like weather and surface conditions,, is a very fragile process that terrifies the hell out of me if I really think about it for any amount of time. I wouldn't not recommend driving to sighted folks just because I can't imagine how it routinely gets solved, though. :)

<comment><USER3> Thank you.

I promise I don't actually mean to speak for anyone other than myself.

I have observed assistive technology before and wondered just how effective it is. I suspect many sighted programmers (like the parent poster) have wondered this as well, and the point of my post was, to use your metaphor, to point out it is a very different experience riding in a car versus driving one.

That said, some of your report surprise me.

Do you program in K?

You wrote you programmed in all of the languages that I mentioned, but you made mention of how dense Haskell seems and K is much more dense than Haskell.

For example, and I'm sorry if your screen reader doesn't like this, in K I can write:

        c:{+(.#:'=x;?x)}

Q sounds better on a screen reader to me, but is harder for my eyes to parse:

        c:{flip(value count each group x;distinct x)}

Here's a Python implementation of "c" above:

        def c(v):
            h = {}
            for el in v:
                h[el] = h.get(el,0) + 1
            a = []
            for el in h.keys():
                a += [[ h[el], el ]]
            return a

Now I don't know if you know K or Q, but I must say that I don't find this easy to read. Not with my eyes or with my ears. When I pointed to the fact that Python functions are longer and delimited by whitespace caused me a great deal of frustration, I hope that if you don't know K or Q that this gives you a better understanding of what I'm comparing it with.

On the other hand: If you do know K or Q, then I'm wondering if you could explain how you experience a python program like that in your environment is preferable to the K or Q example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have earlier tried the Oralux Linux distribution, as a non-blind user but not looking at the screen, to see how far I could get.

It was slow going, but I managed to follow the instructions at boot to start an emacs tutorial and get to the point of being able to open, edit and save a text file.

It looks like it's not developed anymore, but hopefully there are still active distros that come with out-of-the-box usability for the blind.

[http://cd.oralux.net/](http://cd.oralux.net/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I am actually working on a large project involving the new 2016 braille standard for the blind with regard to translation, text editing, and a few other factors. It's nice to see other people care about the demographic and are trying to help out. I think its a really valuable experience to go through your own page with a screen reader and see how it feels. a11y is a whole different world of UX.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've always been surprised by the lack of work put into systems for the blind, because systems for the blind can (sometimes) also be used by the normal- sighted-who-have-to-or-could-be-looking-somewhere-else.

<comment><AUTHOR> I stumbled, well ok I basically spent a couple of minutes googling, on this when thinking about this thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9277945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9277945)

Whose protagonist was not blind, but rather felt that dyslexia prevented using the command line and kept them on the Microsoft stack. In fairness, not using the command line is the only really sad part of it as far as I'm concerned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've recently been working with a blind Windows user, and started wondering if a terminal interface would be easier to use. More linear, would need the ability to skip the narration back and forward, but the power of "ls filenameIAmLookingFor*" as even a simple example, vs trying to scroll around a GUI, seems obvious

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a wonderful portmanteau, but the all important question is does the pronunciation split happen on B + Linux to emphasize 'Linux' or or Blin + ux to emphasize 'Blind'.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another project : [http://sonargnulinux.com/](http://sonargnulinux.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Man their website is bland, how do they expect to attract users?

<comment><USER12> I wish all websites where like this. I'm not blind, but I do value the power of a text only interface.

<comment><USER13> I agree, I visit sites for there info and not how they look. The simpler and easier to find the info the better.

<comment><USER14> Me too!

[http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Excuse me but it's GNU/BLINUX.

<comment><USER15> I see, so we should maintain a tragic and somber appearance because this is about blind people and therefore very serious stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> horrible name :D</comment>


Comcast promising 160 Mb/s Internet  - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/01/08/ces.comcast.ap/index.html <comment><USER2> They should worry about reliably delivering the 6 Mb/s they promised me first. Preferably at the price they initially agreed on. And without throttling.

I signed up for their $99 Triple-Play package and my first several bills have been for $185. And the tv and internet service is out about 80% of the time. I had to arrange for satellites to be installed in order to conduct business while they try to sort it all out.

Bastards.</comment>


Why It's Impossible to Actually Be a Vegetarian - <AUTHOR> http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/why-it-s-impossible-actually-be-vegetarian <comment><USER2> Oh my. This article is just a bunch of rethorical fallacies and flawed arguments.

"For example, many vegetarians cite the sentience of animals as a reason to abstain from eating them. But there's good reason to believe that plants are sentient, too. In other words, they're acutely aware of and responsive to their surroundings, and they respond, in kind, to both pleasant and unpleasant experiences."

Whenever you read something like this in a piece about vegetarianism/veganism, run as fast as you can. Your own QI is at risk from the exposure to such bullshit.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. I don't know if you read the studies cited, but there is good reason to believe that plants are sentient as animals are. Besides the fact that they are aware and responsive to their surroundings.

They also make friends have self-awareness and can feel pain.

I think it is a mistake to just discard the entire article based on the misconception that he is making a flawed argument, specially if he is citing resources to back up his claims.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> By the same argument, it's impossible to avoid drinking dinosaur urine, and for that matter, meat is also vegetable.

Redefine anything enough and you can win any argument.

<comment><USER5> Especially if you redefine "win".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Experienced Node/React developer should I take a Django job? - <AUTHOR> I'm a Node/React dev with 3years experience.
I've been getting into Python because of ML and I've recently been offered a role that works with Django, real-time data, and very basic frontend via Bootstrap.
Just wanted to gather opinions on Django the stack. Would love to increase my tech knowledge with this so it could be interesting. <comment><USER2> Django is a a nice framework to have in your toolbox. It'a a "batteries included" framework that gives you a consistent API for common things you need while developing an application like sessions, database access (it provides an ORM and an autogenerated admin UI based on those models), HTML template rendering, etc. You can extend it with Django REST Framework to expose a REST API (and there's Graphene for GraphQL, though I would not recommend GraphQL for other reasons).</comment>


Find Email Addresses in Seconds - <AUTHOR> https://mailshunt.com <comment><USER2> I entered an invalid address on my own server into the verifier form and received:

      deliverable: Yes
      valid format: Yes
      disposable: No
      server status: Yes
      role: Yes
      free: No
      email user: nobody
      email domain: zzo38computer.org

I don't know what all of that means, but the address is not valid and you cannot send messages to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> An interesting result when you put in mailshunt.com</comment>


59% of America's "tuna" isn't actually tuna - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/55629/china-has-a-spectacularly-silly-new-plan-to-fix-its-pollution-problem/ <comment><USER2> What is it? Seahorse?</comment>


Harver raises $8.1M to replace the tedious trawl though résumés with an AI - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/30/harver-raises-8-1m-to-replace-the-tedious-trawl-though-resumes-with-an-ai <comment><USER2> Do you know of anyone using Harvor today? who are some of their largest customers? Have you used the service yourself?</comment>


Things I recommend you buy and use - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/things-i-recommend-you-buy-and-use-rob-edition-1d7b2ce27d68 <comment><USER2> It's a Medium post of adverts, and it feels bizarre. At certain points I wondered if it was a joke or intended as art.

Things the author recommends you "buy and use" include McDonald's coffee; airline loyalty schemes (yes, they use the word "schemes"); getting a bunch of credit cards for the signup bonuses, which they even present with the same wording as get-rich-quick schemes ("make a few thousand dollars a year, or $50–100 per hour of work"); and several kinds of medication, including antidepressants:

> Are you not happy all the time?

> Maybe you should look into trying anti-depressants and see if they make you > more cheerful.

They do mention it's serious medication, but instead of recommending you see a doctor, point you to another post (by the same author, in a Google Docs file), were they talk about their own experience with what seems to be (didn't read past the start) self-medication.

<comment><USER3> So, it doesn't recommend buying a Medium subscription?</comment></comment>


Nigel Farage denies shorting value of sterling on night of Brexit vote - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/25/nigel-farage-denies-shorting-value-of-sterling-on-night-of-brexit-vote <comment><USER2> Are people really this upset over Brexit that they have to make stuff up?

<comment><USER3> Not made up: "The Brexit Short: How Hedge Funds Used Private Polls to Make Millions"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/brexit- bi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/brexit-big-short- how-pollsters-helped-hedge-funds-beat-the-crash)</comment></comment>


Twitter's API keys and secrets for its official apps surface - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2013/03/07/twitters-api-keys-and-secrets-surface-for-its-official-apps-what-should-we-do-with-them/

<comment><USER2> Isn't option 3 the same as option 1? Just requires slightly another sort of reverse engineering.

So, Twitter has only two options: a) play all sorts of cat-and-mouse games until either users give up or Twitter gets exhausted, or b) give up on pseudo- exclusivity and open up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Option 4: they do nothing

<comment><USER4> I hope they do nothing because all my little home automation hacks with twitter interface at home run on their 'secret' X-Auth credentials.</comment></comment>


Why does /usr/share/dict/words contain "manbird" on OS X? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55437219/why-does-usr-share-dict-words-contain-manbird-on-osx <comment><USER2> Since some might miss the comment linking to it, I want to highlight this related question as well: Who or what compiled /usr/share/dict/words?

According to Wikipedia [1]: "In 1934, the New International Dictionary was revised and expanded for a second edition, which is popularly known as Webster's Second or W2, although it was not published under that title."

[0] [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/286787/who-or- what-...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/286787/who-or-what- compiled-usr-share-dict-words?rq=1)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster%27s_Dictionary#Webster...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster%27s_Dictionary#Webster%E2%80%99s_New_International_Dictionary_\(second_edition,_1934\))

</comment><comment><USER3> I am using the wcanadian-insane wordlist under Linux, and it is also in there.

First I thought it would be related to ladybird, which is another common name for the ladybug. But after a few pages of internet meme crap, I discovered manbird is the same as birdman - an aviator.

When I think of birdlady, I can't help thinking of Kids In The Hall [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YwnAdT9I_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YwnAdT9I_o)

</comment><comment><USER4> For anyone wondering this is the source dictionary of the look command.</comment>


New developer looking to help - <AUTHOR> Hello I am a new developer and I want to help for example foodbank, gov, school with code and build my experience(not github). <comment><USER2> [https://github.com](https://github.com)

There are A LOT of projects that could use your help there. Trust me, it works!

</comment><comment><USER3> hey sergiored. My co-founder/CTO can use some help for a little bit. Can't pay Send me some projects. You like sports?</comment>


Personal flight, once a pipe dream, is within our reach - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-jetpack-movement-finally-taking-off-1465221130 <comment><USER2> Looks like a nice competition:

Jetpack Aviation JB-9/JB-10 (from this article): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3AwBSwFV2I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3AwBSwFV2I)

* Specs from [http://jetpackaviation.com/](http://jetpackaviation.com/):

      - Up to 10,000+ feet
      - Top speed > 100mph (>160kph)
      - Max flight time: 10+ minutes

Flyboard Air: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEDrMriKsFM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEDrMriKsFM)

* Specs from [http://zapata-racing.com/flyboardair-en](http://zapata-racing.com/flyboardair-en):

      - Up to 10,000 feet
      - Top speed of 93.2 mph (150 km/h)
      - Max flight time: 10 minutes

<comment><USER3> The Flyboard Air is an extreme sports device. It's really cool, but very hard to fly. It's from the people with the water-jet Flyboard. Here's someone really good on that.[1] The Flyboard Air people insist that people get good on the water-jet version before even trying the jet-powered one.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JhUSu8v2N4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JhUSu8v2N4)

<comment><USER4> Hard to fly for a human for sure, but I would guess it could be augmented with some avionics to reduce the skill needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As much as I appreciate the Flyboard Air, and really truly think it's impressive, my inspiration for a personal flight device is more along the lines of what Jetman has been using. Vertical take-off and landing - in my opinion - are stupidly wasteful "necessities" that only compound the problem of being able to have a decent amount of flight time.

A wing for lift is, to me, essential if a personal flight device is ever going to be compelling. I'm working on a different invention right now, but in time I do hope to return to my ParaWing concept, which combines modern scientific findings and design with composites in mind to have a lot of performance potential. Seems dangerous as all get out but that's the fun.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want to be able to fly around like this at low altitude, why not just get a powered paraglider? Cheaper, safer, longer flight time and you can buy one today?

<comment><USER7> VTOL and speed would be two major differences I see, but I agree with the overall theme that existing solutions tend to get unjustly ignored. I especially liked this bit:

"There is some talk of having two jetpacks on top of every skyscraper in China."

Sure, you could have a near-experimental jetpack which requires significant training to fly safely and which costs a quarter of a million dollars, or you could spend $2,500 on a standard airplane emergency parachute which any random bozo can use safely with about three minutes of "here's how you buckle the straps, and here's the ring you pull."

Same basic thing for a these weird hybrid car/airplane contraptions they call "flying cars." For less money you can buy a great car, a great airplane, another great car for your most frequently visited destination, and have enough money left over for rental cars for all your other destinations for the rest of your life.

<comment><USER8> And yet, WRT your last paragraph, SUVs still sell, so there remains some kind of market for swiss-army-knife-cars.

<comment><USER7> The vast majority of SUVs on the roads are just larger cars. They're minivans without the stigma of sliding doors.

<comment><USER9> Which is too bad, because sliding doors are one of their best features. As a parent, I've taken to parking next to minivans at the grocery store and whatnot, because I know how careful kids typically are when opening doors. Sliding doors = no dings.

<comment><USER10> I've driven a minivan, and I've driven a few SUVs, and even before I was a parent, I knew that I'd much rather have a minivan than an SUV.

Now I just have to fight my wife about it, who'd rather have a small SUV...

<comment><USER11> Small SUVs are curious things. Being large would seem to be somewhat essential to the function and nature of an SUV. Making it small would seem to make it just a regular car but with external styling that mimics the look of an SUV...

<comment><USER7> That styling tricks people into thinking they have more space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Is the Jetpack Movement Finally Taking Off?" TLDR; No

</comment><comment><USER13> Where's Pentagon in all this? I would think they'd be the first to find a practical use for it. Much faster than a paraglider, and much easier to deploy than a helicopter.

I can imagine a group of commandos crossing the enemy lines at 100mph to sabotage something or other, or a spy escaping back to the safety of his own side. At least there has to be a movie based on this. Like, a jet-troops vs. jet-troops fire-fight.

<comment><USER14> > I would think they'd be the first to find a practical use for it.

Problem is, the pilot is SUCH an easy target. A helicopter can survive pretty heavy fire, and a glider doesn't care about a couple bullet holes in the wings.

Hit the jetpack, though, and the pilot goes either up in flames or dies of massive impact deceleration.

<comment><USER15> That would make Just Cause 3 a war Sim. Crazy Imagery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Always was so fascinated by this until I got my PPL. Now I just fly and wonder why I was waiting for a mystical new machine. In retrospect it was just a weird mental block.

Just go fly a glider, UL or, VLA. Buckling up feels like putting on a wing backpack, I promise. They become an extension to your body after about 50h of flying. Most importantly these flying machines are available right now. Also they work really well. Mindbogglingly well. There are ULs that can fly 1000km on 15 gal. With about 100h of experience you can fly a glider 500km and more.

I hear you say but it's expensive. Glider flying can be quite affordable, like 2000 bucks/year affordable. It's more flying anyways especially when you live in a mountainous area. Many clubs also let you reduce the fees when you help maintain the gear.

I hear you say it takes a lot of training. Well, you are pretending to be a bird. Chances are you will welcome the training until you feel very comfortable in the air. I never thought the required training is tedious. It's really part of the fun.

In short, If you want to to fly it's more doable than you may think and tiny flying addons (aka jetpacks) are generally overrated.

</comment><comment><USER17> And we thought leaf blowers and car alarms were bad enough. I really, really hope I don't have to listen to one of my neighbors firing up one of those things in his backyard, any time soon. And I'd even more hate to be... a "resident" of his goldfish pond.

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone notice 11 gallons of fuel for 10 minutes of flight? Calling this a gas guzzler would be kind!

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't know why, but the flyboard has a waaay much cooler "air" to it...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNKRxsNyOho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNKRxsNyOho)

<comment><USER20> Felt like a tiny personal spacex barge landing ceremony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This looks like a really fun toy. Like others I've wondered when material science and miniaturization were going to span a credible jet engine at "backpack" sizes. The noise has to be pretty incredible though.

My take on them is that they won't be practical but like supercars I'll wish I owned one anyway. Now if I could just challenge Elon Musk into making it electric and practical ...

</comment><comment><USER22> How about gyrocopters for personal flight? They seem stable, and inexpensive. And I think you get stovl?

</comment><comment><USER23> Unfortunately it's still really, "Personal flight [for fun and thrills]..." We're still not any closer to everyone jetting around as a general mode of getting from point A to B, and won't with anything like this kind of technology.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've just seen this.

I wonder if a version of this (with computer assisted flight) could be come a personal commuting device?

</comment><comment><USER25> Fun thought experiment is imagine the jetpack had infinite fuel and was 100% safe what would you do with it?

For me I'd probably just go get a slice of pizza heh

<comment><USER26> Fly through canyons, dance around clouds, land on skyscrapers, troll some eagles...

<comment><USER27> That's interesting, I wonder what happens if you take one of the current prototypes and hover off the ledge of a canyon... Will you drop suddenly and go splat, or will you keep altitude? Intuition says the former, but I'd like to know objectively.

<comment><USER26> If you're flying high enough before going over the cliff, you'd keep hovering... it's no different than a helicopter. These jets can definitely fly that high.

That said, if you're not flying high enough... if it's just the jet pushing air against the ground... you will go splat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The original title did not use the word "practical," which this manifestly isn't.

<comment><USER29> Yes, the submitted title ("A practical jetpack is just around the corner") was rewritten, which violates the HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Submitters: the rule on HN is not to rewrite a title unless it is misleading or linkbait. If a subtitle is more informative, it's ok to use that. (We've done so here, because the title is a question and we all know what that triggers.)

<comment><USER30> Omg, Hanlon's razor totatlly predicts that Occam's razor will says that because of Betteridge's law of headlines the original title of the article is soooooo clickbait...

;)</comment></comment></comment>


Why isn't Dropbox releasing a client for RaspberryPi? - <AUTHOR> It's one of the most often requested feature from Dropbox: a RPi client. See https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/202894235-Client-for-Raspberry-Pi for example.
It doesn't seem to be technically challenging since they already have linux clients, and also clients that run on ARM architectures (see Android).
Why isn't Dropbox releasing a Raspberry Pi client? <comment><USER2> Dropbox solves the problem of synchronizing files between devices for people who do not possess their own file server to act as intermediary.

So, Dropbox is the service you use when you don't own a Raspberry Pi.

<comment><AUTHOR> A file server has nothing to do with syncing across devices. If this was the case, they wouldn't have a x86 Linux client either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The NSA doesn't want them to...</comment>


Unicorn Directive for AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://btford.github.com/angular-unicorn-directive/

<comment><AUTHOR> Because sometimes you need unicorns in your AngularJS project...</comment>


USB NeXT Keyboard with an Arduino Micro - <AUTHOR> http://learn.adafruit.com/usb-next-keyboard-with-arduino-micro

<comment><USER2> liked this? want more? you might want to also read my kinect reverse- engineering how-to article at <http://learn.adafruit.com/hacking-the-kinect>

<comment><USER3> It even has a Facebook like and unlike button. Amazing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quite a large number of keyboards, including some surprisingly obscure ones, have available USB converters using free software on hardware of this class. <http://deskthority.net/> is probably the best place to find out more.

<comment><USER5> What I'd love is a kit that converts PS/2 keyboards to wireless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I will gladly buy a Space Cadet keyboard converter. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard>

<comment><USER6> Apparently someone already built such a converter for a different type of symbolics keyboard. [http://netzhansa.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-convert- your-sy...](http://netzhansa.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-convert-your- symbolics-keyboard.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found the first NeXT keyboard was very uncomfortable to use, as the keys had very little spring and you would ram home hard against the 'end stops' all the time. I suppose keyboards are pretty subjective.

They did a second ADB based version for the later model NeXTStations, which I found a lot better to use. It had an interesting 'command bar' feature too, with a long bar like a space bar at the bottom for typing command sequences.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is great...I have a full NeXT Turbo Slab (Color!!), and I was wondering if this had been done. The NeXT Keyboard is on-par with Model M's in my opinion.

<comment><USER9> "But the Model M has more stopping power."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> mmm. The original NeXT keyboard had one of the most physically pleasing feels to it ever, along with a beautiful sound.

Just a shame it didn't have pgup/dn, home/end keys for fast maneuvering. Otherwise, so very tempting.

<comment><USER11> You can get "similar" Model M retros from Unicomp: <http://www.pckeyboard.com/>

They're 104 key (pg up/down, win key, etc). I had one until my cat killed it with a cup of water, I got a das keyboard afterwards.

<comment><USER10> Not quite. The unicomp/model M's were clicky. The NeXT keyboard had a nice plastic "thonk", with an echo to it, but no click. It also had a very solid (no twist/wiggle) travel.

I am considering getting one of those keyboards with the coloured Cherry key switches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> i wish there was an easy to use NeXT emulator for my Mac — it's somewhat sad to me that i'm running Windows in VMware yet trying to emulate NeXTstep is major pain (i tried to find the OpenStep CDs on eBay too!!!).</comment>


JSON5 – Modern JSON - <AUTHOR> http://json5.org/ <comment><USER2> Interesting... why 5 ?

<comment><USER3> The tagline in the left column says " _JSON for the ES5 era_ ". so I assume that's where the 5 comes from (as in, it brings an ES5 level of usability to JSON).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Spurlo – A place to show your love in gadgets, gears, books and more - <AUTHOR> http://www.spurlo.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.spurlo.com](http://www.spurlo.com) is the place for discover, collect and curate inspiring products from your favorite stores and brands across the web.

If you are into outdoor gears, electronic gadgets, inspiring books, cool games/apps, great movies, etc. [http://www.spurlo.com](http://www.spurlo.com) might be a great place for the passion.

We are running a giveaway (of worth $100) now to help growing our community. Sign up with us for a chance to WIN. If you refer a friend, and they win, you win one too! Just so you know, the giveaway ends on Jan 22nd and could be found here [http://www.spurlo.com/invite/join/](http://www.spurlo.com/invite/join/)

</comment><comment><USER2> The site is fast, and clean. Good job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yep, special thanks given to our dev and ops folks for their great work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, really appreciated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks cool

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for visiting us!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks cool

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @mkliu!</comment></comment>


Mint 17: The best Linux desktop to date - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/mint-17-the-best-linux-desktop-to-date-7000029823/

<comment><USER2> > "Another potential problem for some users is that to install Mint 17 on a > Windows 8 PC with Secure Boot, you'll need to turn turn Secure Boot off. > Since I find Secure Boot much more of an annoyance than a benefit this > doesn't bother me in the least."

If only it were that easy.</comment>


USPS Discrimination Against Atheism? A Study by Atheist Shoes (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.atheistberlin.com/study <comment><USER2> I've been shipping over 1000 packages per month (mostly domestic, within US to within US, but probably about 10-15% of those are from the US to other countries) for the last several years. Always via USPS. The USPS loses a lot of mail, in my opinion... At least 1% though probably closer to 2 or 3%. But even worse, their delivery times can be _extremely_ erratic. Delays/losses vary _heavily_ depending on location, especially with international mail.

So 178 items sounds like a ridiculously limited amount of shipments to consider. The Atheist post seems to imply that they only sent 1 package to Michigan. At best, on average, 178 shipments is a shade over 3 shipments per state. Hardly enough for good statistics, and definitely not enough to draw any strong correlations.

Also, it's important to note that in the comments, Atheist mentions that they did not have tracking on their packages. In my experience, more people lie or are mistaken about their package delivery than packages actually being lost. Year after year, I'm continually surprised by how many people end up finding their packages after you tell them "According to the tracking number, it's been delivered. Could you check with anyone in you live with or share a building with who may have accepted it?"

TLDR: As bad as the USPS is, 178 packages sent internationally without any tracking seems like _far_ too few to draw any correlations about wide spread religious bias in the USPS.

Edit to add: Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that atheists aren't discriminated against in the US. (I'm pretty sure we're quite a few years away from even the possibility of a POTUS being an atheist.) I _am_ arguing that the post by Atheist (the company) doesn't indicate discrimination.

<comment><USER3> Stats below:

If there is no bias, the lost packages reports would have equal probability of having come from the athiest group or the non-athiest group.

The (frequentist) probability that the ratio would be 9:1 or worse (given 10 lost packages) is 10/(2^10) which is approximately 0.98%. If you're the type to care about p-values, here we have p < 0.01.

Suppose there indeed exists this bias as it appears (9 times more likely to lose athiest package), we might be curious to ask: how likely is it that we would have detected a statistically significant (p < 0.05) bias with just 10 packages lost total?

Doing a similar calculation as above can check that we only see a statistical significance bias if the loss discrepancy is (10:0, 9:1, 1:9, or 0:10). Now if we suppose the bias is 9:1, how likely are we to have seen one of those events? If we add up the probability of these events (10:0, 9:1, 1:9, or 0:10) occurring under a biased scenario, we get about a 74% chance of us detecting the bias.

A standard requirement is for this number to be at least 80%, our result is close but would like to see more data before publishing in the Journal of Atheist Footwear.

The latter metric is called statistical power or the probability of not getting a false negative, whereas p-value is the probability of a false positive.

<comment><USER2> I appreciate the statistics even though I don't really understand them all that well. Since you seem fairly knowledgable of statistics (though I know a lot of people here are too, so other chime in too if you want), could a case be made that we shouldn't be comparing 9 lost decorative tape packages out of 178 with 1 lost non-decorative tape package out of 178, but instead be comparing 9 directly with 1? When 10 packages

And if you're curious, please see my other reply as to why I think, even including statistical significance of one type being lost more than the other, we can't really draw a "religious bias" conclusion.

<comment><USER3> Yep, the numbers I ran are already doing exactly what you suggest. Looking exclusively at the 10 lost packages and considering how likely it should be that 9 of them would belong to one category, compared to our expectation (which is that they would be equally likely to have come from either category, coming from the fact that the same number of packages were shipped with Atheist labeling as without).

The statistics is entirely identical to flipping a coin 10 times and asking the following questions: * Given that I saw 9 heads and 1 tail, how likely is it that the coin is a fair coin. This is the p-value which was about 0.0098 (less than 1% chance) * Given that we are only tossing 10 coins, how likely are we to have seen a statistically significant bias with the predicted bias in place. This is the statistical power, which was 74%.

As you suggest in your other comment, the stats only point to a bias, the origin of the bias is left for people to decide. That said, the packages were sent in pairs, so subdividing the country into states and offices is irrelevant since a given states saw the same number of packages from each category as did each given office, the statistics are saying that on average (across the whole country) there is a bias.

To ease your worries a little, this is not saying the USPS hates Atheist packages 9x more than non-Atheist packages, most of the packages were delivered successfully. All this is saying is that, for the ones that were lost, it is very likely that they were lost because of their labeling. This is the effect you would expect to see if 97.3% of USPS employees treated the packages identically and the other 2.7% have a strong bias.

If we had more specifics about the delayed packages as well, we could get a more nuanced picture, I suspect we would find that 80+% of USPS employees are unbiased, some 10-15% might have some bias against Atheist labeling (would delay an Atheist labeled package), and 2-3% have a strong bias against Atheist labeling (would lose an Atheist labeled package).

If I was at USPS, I would push to conduct an experiment to try to identify which offices were most likely to have some bias one way or another (not necessarily specifically about Atheism, one could test whatever they wanted presumably).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Pew Research Center surveyed 3,217 randomly selected U.S. adults[0] and asked them to rate how positively they viewed each belief group. Here's the ranking from most positive to least positive:

1\. Jews

2\. Catholics

3\. Evangelical Christians

4\. Buddhists

5\. Hindus

6\. Mormons

7\. Atheists

8\. Muslims

Surprisingly (at least to me), Atheists is second to last.

Interestingly enough, the low ranking of Atheists persists across party lines. Both Republicans and Democrats rank Atheists only slightly higher than Muslims, and by similar margins too: 2 points in the former and 1 point in the latter.

[0] [http://www.pewforum.org/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel- about-...](http://www.pewforum.org/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel-about- religious-groups/)

<comment><USER5> Since they didn't seem to specify religious jews, their survey is just mixing ethnic with belief group, which doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER6> Isn't this the case with most of the groups? I would imagine even atheist Jews have been to synagogue at least a few times. I would consider Catholics who only go to Easter and Christmas mass to not be religious.

<comment><USER7> The difference is that Jewish is actually an ethnic group as well as a religious group. There is some overlap between them of course, but for example there are Asian Jews and Jewish Catholics.

The Jewish ethnic group are people historically descended from the people of Eastern Europe and the Middle East who practiced ancient Judaism (the religion). That's why 23andme can identify someone as X% Jewish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Although I agree with their conclusion, I'd like to see how it would go with other names rather than "atheist" as a group control to eliminate the possibility of a difference between branded and non-branded differences.

<comment><USER9> I agree. If you could add the same tape with different words it would eliminate the possibility that the worded tape was interfering with some auto- sort functionality.

<comment><USER10> They definitely should have tried it with Arabic, Cyrillic, and maybe Wingdings for a control group.

<comment><USER11> >Wingdings

95% package loss rate incoming

<comment><USER12> If you want all your packages to be lost, print the addresses in Wingdings

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They only state the average when they should also state the median along with the entire data set. Let's say they sent 10 shoes of each type. Nine shoes of each type took exactly the same time. But one pair of Atheist shoe was delayed by 100 days. Now, on _average_ , atheist shoes take 10 days longer to arrive because _one_ of the pairs took 100 days longer to arrive.

</comment><comment><USER9> This post is from (2013) but I doubt there has been any change in the past 3 years. It is concerning that there is any difference at all in shipping times when tape with the word "atheist" on it is used. The difference was significant (p<0.001). I would love to see a similar study with a variety of packing tape ("Atheist", "Christian", "Muslim", etc).

<comment><USER14> I'd be interested in trying "Happy Holidays" vs. "Merry Christmas". I assume this only happens with hand-sorted mail as well. I'd be interested in breaking it down by zip code too.

I have a related anecdote. I live in Chicago, which has the slowest mail delivery in the country. I've lived in a number of zip codes, and I've never found the mail to get lost, merely delayed. However, I recently moved to a new place, and I've started losing mail. I've generally liked my mail people, but I'm convinced that the mail people at my new place are lazy. I've had issues with mail getting rained on because they never shut the top of the mailbox, I've had mail go missing. They have "signed" for certified mail for me. They'll leave a package on my steps, but they won't close the gate on the way out. They ignore the name printed on the mailbox and deliver mail for old tenants, despite mail regulations forbidding them to do so. Plus, I've tried talking to my mailperson, and she is always on the phone and refuses to talk to me. I know delivering mail isn't the most glamorous job, but have some pride.

<comment><USER15> >Plus, I've tried talking to my mailperson, and she is always on the phone and refuses to talk to me.

As much as we like to try to fix problems systemically, and place blame or praise on organizations as a whole, an awful lot comes down to the bottom of the pyramid/the top of the tree. I would blame most of those complaints on the one person who actually brings the mail to your house when the giant machine spits it all out.

I am fortunate to have a great relationship with our mail carrier. If you're reading this, Patricia, thank you!

<comment><USER14> > I am fortunate to have a great relationship with our mail carrier.

In all fairness, this is the first time I've had problems with my mail carrier. Normally I've found my mail carriers friendly, helpful and conscientious. I appreciate how hard the job can be, especially in Chicago, where the weather is all over the place, and the traffic is a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The results are interesting.

But as a godless guy, I don't get it. Why would I care about the theological stance of the people who make my shoes? Why would a shoemaker want to advertise its religion, or lack thereof, on its shipping boxes? We can't leave tribal politics out of shoes now, even?

<comment><USER17> >I don't get it

Let's say you're gay. You shoe maker belongs to the Mormon Church. When you purchase shoes from her, 10% of her income typically goes to the church[1]. The Mormon Church then uses that money to lobby the government to deny your civil rights, and succeeds[2]. It's not rational to contribute to your own oppression. That's why some people don't want to "leave tribal politics out of shoes". You're asking someone to leave politics out of politics.

[1] [https://www.mormon.org/faq/church- tithing](https://www.mormon.org/faq/church-tithing)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/politics/15marriage.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/politics/15marriage.html)

<comment><USER18> I suspect what you fund has an impact similar to what you vote.

Like movies? Ethical companies? Give them money.

Dislike what a corporation is doing or donates to? Don't give them money.

I'm just about to attempt switching my soap supply to Dr. Bronners. Family owned business with a 5X earning cap from the lowest paid employee to the CEO. They do some neat stuff: [http://www.triplepundit.com/2016/09/dr-bronners- says-bye-bye...](http://www.triplepundit.com/2016/09/dr-bronners-says-bye-bye- to-organic-trade-association/)

<comment><USER19> I used their soap for years. As much as I like the company and what they do, I just don't like their soap for saily use. It's great for camping trips, though.

<comment><USER20> Have you ever tried the lavender scent? I can't handle most of their fragrances for daily use, either, but that one seems significantly easier on the nose and skin for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if printing a tv on the box would help. Or maybe it only works for large boxes.

<comment><USER22> Are you referring to the article where a Bicycle manufacturer put "Television" on the box and saw a considerable change in the number of damaged goods received by the customers? :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> No surprise, it's a well known fact that Americans in general despise atheists, left to right. No amount of PR bullshit will change that fact, US is a extremely religious country.

</comment><comment><USER24> Just use non branded tape. Problem solved.

<comment><USER25> A better solution would be to shut down the USPS.

<comment><USER2> How is that a solution?

<comment><USER26> Nothing is expected to get through; nothing gets through. No problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> (2013), please.

</comment><comment><USER28> (2013)

</comment><comment><USER29> it's completely understandable, especially for those missing cases, angel Gabriel took them by the lord's command.

eat those stinky shoes, you atheist scums, none can escape the lord's wrath.

</comment><comment><USER30> Oh, man!! you accuse other people of having prejudices about yourself while making prejudices yourself.

Your control experiment was "we put labels and we did not put labels". That is a very weak one.

People in customs anywhere are going to stop and look at anything out of the ordinary. That is their job because drugs, diamonds and so on use to be in out of the ordinary packages.

We send 3d printer pieces around the world. We are part of an engineering NGO that promotes education using new technologies, specially in poor countries.

At first almost anything we sent was stopped, opened and inspected(and delayed). Now everything goes smooth.

Difference? We asked customs or people in other countries the actual reasons for being delivered late and the reasons made a lot of sense. Reasons like terrorism in Colombia for example.

They also teach us ways to improve our packaging so next time we send it much better. Around the world there are different conventions for putting serializing address for example. You put it in wrong order and the postman will have serious problems.

There is also people there(in customs or in the companies), when they know you it is way easier. Not because you are atheist or not, but because you can be a drug dealer and they could lose their job if they don't detect it.

Seriously, you are not that important. They have bigger problems to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER31> While this is an interesting story, and it's sad to see this sort of stuff happening, I'm kind of more focused on what makes a shoe atheist. Are holy shoes blessed in some manner, or are all shoes naturally religious and some process is applied to the atheist shoes to make them secular? Based on what I can tell from the site, atheist shoes really just need to say "I'm an atheist" on the sole, but I want to believe there's more than that, because what sad individuals are buying shoes just for that. (And if people only buy the shoes because of the style, why do the shoes need to have such sacrilegious soles?)

<comment><USER32> People buy clothes with religious, political, and identity writing all the time.

Why would you call atheists "sad individuals" for doing the same?

<comment><USER33> As an agnostic, I wouldn't call them "sad," but it's like Neil deGrasse Tyson said. [0] It's fine to see people interested in golf congregating and talking about it, but it'd be stranger to see a bunch of anti-golfers congregating and talking about how they don't like to play golf.

[0] [https://twitter.com/jonathan_blow/status/273582094448476161](https://twitter.com/jonathan_blow/status/273582094448476161)

<comment><USER34> If golf were responsible for as much tragedy as religion, congregations of anti-golfers would make a lot of sense.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mars to Earth at an average of 29 kbits/s - <AUTHOR> http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/communicationwithearth/data/ <comment><USER3> It's awesome that they've been involving the public so much in the details of how the rover mission really works. I'd actually been wondering about this exact question, since it seems to be one of the limiting factors for the quality of images and such. From a physics standpoint, sending data is clearly a lot more complicated than I'd previously assumed.

<comment><USER4> > It's awesome that they've been involving the public so much in the details > of how the rover mission really works.

It must be mission critical to spread awareness since their budget cuts are getting worse and one way to correct that is to get people excited about space exploration. They now put a considerable effort in PR, involving people in the mission, sharing most of the information and making professional videos. And i believe this is why we see twitter accounts of most astronomers, satellites, rovers and other NASA properties. The NASA's ustream has been very popular lately and they have presence on every major social network. And curiosity was named after an essay written by a student in a competition organised by NASA for school students.

<comment><USER5> "And curiosity was named after an essay written by a student in a competition organised by NASA for school students."

Nasa has been doing this for some time now, Sojourner[1], and MERs (Spirit & Opportunity) have also been named by student competitions.

[1] <http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/rover/name.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So one wonders at what point you uplink to a satellite with ejectable flash drives which, when full, detach, make a gravity sling shot pass to leave orbit and then burn for a rendezvous with earth 9 months later. If I did the math right a 1TB drive returned from Mars in 9 months would be an effective bandwidth of 470K bits per second (or 47K bytes per second)

<comment><USER7> While we are dreaming, it would be better to have said flash drive picked up by a spacestation, refueled in orbit, and shot back to Mars.

Hmm. If storage continues to improve as fast as it has been, once the space infrastructure is there, this might be cost effective. We have a lot of data to send.

In particular, we are going to need to have a local cache of the internet on Mars. At best, the average minimum latency is 225 million kilometers / the speed of light = 12.51 minutes.

Vast data barges, roaming the solar system, keeping everyone in sync....

Building an interplanetary Internet is going to be very, very fun.

On a related note, never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck filled with...

Well I was going to say blueray disks. But the cheapest I can find bluray disks are 3 cents per gigabyte. 3 TB harddrives are easily had at 5 cents per gigabyte. If the data only needs to go 60 miles, then 120 drives ($18,000) in a truck would get 1 TB/sec, or 8,000 mbps...

Ouch. I'll go with a megabit connection. Once upon a time that sort of thing worked for bulk data ;)

<comment><USER8> > In particular, we are going to need to have a local cache of the internet on > Mars.

I predict somewhere today at Google an engineer just got an idea for his 20% project. "Red Cache"

<comment><USER7> I hope so. The trick would be, after there is a cache of the Internet on Mars, to only have to send the changes, not the whole Internet again.

Straight snapshots would probably be the only viable option though. And maybe make the policy, once a decade do a complete update. And every year, do "any webpage accessed by colonists in the past year will be updated. And the top 5-15% of webpages by popularity on Earth."

And during the year, the top 5% of webpages, and any webpage with specifically Mars relevant content would be updated "wirelessly."

The numbers would change constantly, depending on bandwidth and costs and whatnot. But the question "how to build the best asynchronous shadow Internet given such and such constraints" is fascinating.

<comment><USER9> Did you know -- there are more ports on the internet than just 53 and 80?

\-- A message from your friendly local hacker wizard

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So those are the lander->earth and lander->sat speeds. How fast can the satellites transmit to earth? If we somehow always had a sat in reach of the lander, how much data would we be able to send?

Edit: Did the research. MRO's antenna can handle .5 to 4 megabits depending on the distance between planets. Wow, having to wait for flybys is a huge bottleneck. [http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/mission/communications/commxban...](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/mission/communications/commxband/)

<comment><USER11> I wonder if it's possible to launch an orbiter in Mars synchronous orbit. That'll eliminate the bottleneck.

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't just a higher orbit achieve the same thing? You'd be in sight for longer periods, right? Without locking you into a location the way synchronous would.

The current orbiters are primarily for imaging, so it makes sense that they're as low as possible. If you were always going to have several surface missions, it might make sense to have higher orbiters primarily tasked with communication relay.

<comment><USER13> As someone explained to me on another thread, the orbiters they have now are in polar orbits. A more equatorial orbit would create very frequent uplinks.

One thing is that they didn't know Gale Crater was where they were going to land until pretty soon before launch. There were a number of other sites. And if they chose one further from the equator, that satellite wouldn't necessarily be in the right place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I read this the other day and found it interesting: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet>

Apparently NASA had plans for launching an orbiter specifically as an optical communications hub for Mars but scrapped it in 2005:

 _"As of 2005, NASA has canceled plans to launch the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter in September 2009; it had the goal of supporting future missions to Mars and would have functioned as a possible first definitive Internet hub around another planetary body. It would use optical communications using laser beams for their lower ping rates than radiowaves."_

<comment><USER15> Now it's ESA's turn to try it: <http://www.esa.int/esaMI/ESOC/SEMM5IHWP0H_0.html>

(OT: Note the picture at the bottom, the astronaut is one of ours: Austrian Space Forum, a private space R&D org.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm wondering how do they prevent non-NASA entities from sending commands to the rover - are they using some sort of cryptographic signatures when sending the commands?

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure about Curiosity in particular, but I work in the space industry and can say that commands are normally timestamped and encrypted. The encryption stops someone from commanding the spacecraft, the timestamp stops someone from recording a transmission and resending it later.

<comment><USER18> So there's basically a real Goldeneye key. And you could really use a Goldeneye key duplicator before leaving Severneya!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm guessing there is a lot of data that never gets sent to earth. Do they send thumbnails of the images to determine what is interesting? Is there a software tool available that creates a thumbnail and then creates a copy of the original image that is dependent on the thumbnail to be recreated. If you can't tell I wasn't really sure how to word that last sentence. Basically, less data would be required to transmit because you are only sending the data required to reconstitute the real image. Depending on the size of the thumbnail this might result in a negligible difference.

For example, a very naive implementation might create a thumbnail from every pixel where x or y is odd and then when/if you want the original image you can get the data required to put the image back together (it would be a similar sized thumbnail but with the even pixels) For this naive approach the thumbnail would likely be much larger than you want and would not help at all :)

</comment><comment><USER20> This may be a silly question, but I don't understand why the bandwidth is so low. I understand the latency will be high, since you're limited by the speed of light; but wouldn't you be able to get more bandwidth just by increasing the spectrum of light used, as well as the baud of the transmitter/receiver?

<comment><USER21> Even with optimal coding you are still limited by achievable signal over noise due to the Shannon limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Using Sloppy to view websites gives a reasonable idea of how slow this is.

(<http://www.dallaway.com/sloppy/>)

<comment><USER23> Very cool concept. Unfortunately, this only proxies the starting hostname and doesn't rewrite absolute URLs, so on most modern websites, image/CSS/JS resources (being served from subdomains or S3 etc.) will load unproxied and not get slowed down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The high gain system they have for curiosity has an upper end of 2Mbps - <USER2> the orbiter.

The orbiter can talk to earth at up to 6Mbps depending on how far away we are at that time.

6Mbps at that distance is a staggering feat of engineering.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know more about the architecture of this space radio network? For example does it use tcp/ip on top over radio or is it packet switched as with amateur packet radio?

<comment><USER26> Here's some publicly available technical information about how the DSN works: <http://eis.jpl.nasa.gov/deepspace/dsndocs/810-005/>

<comment><USER27> Up in Sweden they have DTN's for reindeer farmers. A helicopter which brings food supplies acts as the data transfer relay.

DTN book for anyone interested in the area. <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1596930632>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A friend of mine used to work at JPL on transmissions from one of the older explorers. Maybe Voyager?

Anyway, he compared the energy used to transmit from the probe to that of a flower petal falling from a height of six feet.

</comment><comment><USER29> What's the latency of that data connection?

<comment><USER30> The real question is if its has an IPv6 address yet or if its still stuck using IPv4?

<comment><USER31> It doesn't use IP... it uses a protocol called CCSDS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There must be some amateur radio people out there able to receive these signals, no? With the protocol stacks mentioned in the other comments, I wonder if they're able to extract the encrypted data. Which leads me to think there have got to be people/governments trying to figure those out.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nice, just like my first modem back in 1996. Now let me host a dedicated QuakeWorld Server on Mars!

<comment><USER34> You might find that the 1700 second round trip latency is a tad higher than your modem in 1996.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I love this statement (from the Preventing Busy Signals page): "The Deep Space Network (DSN) communicates with nearly all spacecraft flying throughout our solar system."

</comment><comment><USER36> My suggestion is a satellite going around the Sun between Earth and Mars, so that there would be more visibility.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's faster than my work's connection!

<comment><USER38> You are joking but in 2003 I had to live with 6 kbps (yes SIX KILOBITS) at a time when my monopoly telco was advertising broadband speeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So, it's basically like dial-up back in the day.

</comment><comment><USER40> what if they open sourced all of their components on github..</comment>


The PEPs of Python 3.9 - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/819853/ <comment><USER2> Sometimes I wish that python strings weren't directly iterable...

this article sums it up better than I ever could [https://www.xanthir.com/b4wJ1](https://www.xanthir.com/b4wJ1)

...then str.strip and variants could be cleanly and logically extended to allow this functionality, because passing a string and a sequence of strings would be distinguishable.

Alas, clean and logical function design can be hard to do late in a languages life.

PEP 593 and PEP 585 are clean and logical... glad to see that :)

<comment><USER3> You can easily distinguish them:

        if isinstance(msg, str)

So I don't think that's a good argument for not accepting iterables of strings in str methods. Things like replace() would benefit a lot and it's not that hard to do, you can even accept regexes optionally: [https://wonderful- wrappers.readthedocs.io/en/latest/string_w...](https://wonderful- wrappers.readthedocs.io/en/latest/string_wrapper.html)

I agree that iterating on string is not proper design however. It's not very useful in practice, and the O(1) access has other performance consequences for more important things.

Swift did it right IMO, but it's a much younger language.

I also wish we stole the file api concepts from swift, and that open() would return a file like object that always gives you bytes. No "b" mode. If you want text, you to open().as_text(), and get a decoding wrapper.

The idea that there are text files and binary files has been toxic for a whole generation of coders.

<comment><USER4> The issue is that

        if isinstance(msg, str)

will clutter code that is otherwise clean. A single type has to be specially handled, which sticks out like a sore thumb.

As a second point, do you have more on your last sentence? ("The idea that there are text files and binary files has been toxic for a whole generation of coders."). I have been _thoroughly_ confused about text vs. bytes when learning Python/programming.

The two types are treated as siblings, when text files are really a child of binary files. Binary files are simply regular files, and sit as the single parent, without parents itself, in the tree. Text files are just one of the many children, that happen to yield text when their byte patterns happen to be interpreted using the correct encoding (or, in the spirit of Python, decoding when going from bytes to text), like UTF8. This is just like, say, audio files yielding audio when interpreted with the correct encoding (say MP3).

Is this a valid way of seeing it? I have to ask very carefully because I have never seen it explained this way, so that is just what I put together as a mental model over time. In opposition to that model, resources like books always treat binary and text files as polar opposites/siblings.

This leads me to the initial question of whether you know of resources that would support the above model (assuming it is correct)?

<comment><USER3> The open() API is inherited from the C way, where the world is divided between text files and binary files. So you open a file in "text" mode, and "binary" mode, "text" being the default behavior.

This is, of course, utterly BS.

All files are binary files.

Some contains sound data, some image data, some zip data, some pdf data, and some raw encoded text data.

But we don't have a "jpg" mode for open(). We do have higher API we pass file objects to in order to decode their content as jpg, which is what we should be doing to text. Text is not an exceptional case.

VSCode does a lot of work to turn those bytes into pretty words, just like VLC into videos. They are not like that in the file. It's all a representation for human consumption.

The reasoning for this confusing API is that reading text from a file is a common use, which is true. Espacially on Unix, from which C is from. But using a "mode" is the wrong abstraction to offer it.

If fact, Python 3 does it partially right. It has a io.FileIO object that just take care of opening the stuff, and a io.BufferedReader that wraps FileIO to offer practical methods to access its content.

This what what open(mode="b") returns.

If you do open(mode="t"), which is the default, it wraps the BufferedReader into a TextStream that does the decoding part transparently for you, and returns that.

There is an great explanation of this by the always excellent David Beazley: [http://www.dabeaz.com/python3io_2010/MasteringIO.pdf](http://www.dabeaz.com/python3io_2010/MasteringIO.pdf)

What it should do is offering something this:

        with open('text.txt').as_text():

open() would always return BufferedReadfer, as_text() would always return TextStream.

This completly separates I/O from decoding, removing confusion in the mind of all those coders that would otherwise live by the illusionary binary/text model. It also makes the API much less error prone: you can easily see where to the file related arguments go (in open()) and where to text related arguments go (in as_text()).

You can keep the mode, but only for "read", "write" and "append", removing the weird mix with "text" and "bytes" which are really related to a different set of operations.

<comment><USER5> Let's be clear here that the fault is not with Python but with Windows.

Python uses text mode by default to avoid surprising beginners on Windows. If you only use Unix-like OSs you will never have this problem.

<comment><USER3> The problem is not "text mode by default". The problem is that the API offers a text mode at all.

Opening a file should return an object that gives you bytes, and that's it.

This "mode" thing is idiotic, and leak a low level API that makes no sense in a high level language with a strong abstraction for text like Python.

Text should decoded from a wrapping object. See my ohter comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Eric Fahlgren amusingly summed up the name fight this way:

> > I think name choice is easier if you write the documentation first:

> > cutprefix - Removes the specified prefix.

> > trimprefix - Removes the specified prefix.

> > stripprefix - Removes the specified prefix.

> > removeprefix - Removes the specified prefix. Duh. :)

I actually don't agree that it's so obvious, since it returns the prefix- removed string rather than modifying in-place. I think Fahlgren's argument would work better for `withoutprefix`.

<comment><USER7> I would have preferred 'stripprefix' for unity with 'strip', 'rstrip', and 'lstrip'

<comment><USER8> That's discussed in the article: the "strip" methods don't interpret strings of multiple characters as a single prefix or suffix to be removed, so it was felt to be too confusing to use "strip" type names for methods that _do_ interpret strings that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Another kind of clean up comes in PEP 585 ("Type Hinting Generics In > Standard Collections"). It will allow the removal of a parallel set of type > aliases maintained in the typing module in order to support generic types. > For example, the typing.List type will no longer be needed to support > annotations like "dict[str, list[int]]" (i.e.. a dictionary with string keys > and values that are lists of integers).

I think this will go a long way toward making type annotations feel less like a tacked-on feature.

<comment><USER4> Looking "back" now, it never occurred to me that importing List when there is list is particularly strange. Now it sticks out sorely. Very glad this change is happening.

<comment><USER10> That's because we're conditioned to think of constructors as functions rather than as types. I think that's not that odd honestly but I do see how counterintuitive it is for people that don't work much in typed languages. I'm not a Haskellite but there you can clearly see the distinction when defining/instantiating sum types (where the type and data constructor live in different namespaces).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Am I the only one who wants multi-lined anonymous functions in Python? I find myself really wanting to reach for arrow functions sometimes while writing Python, and end up disappointed that they aren't available.

<comment><USER12> What's wrong with using a nested named functions instead?

You may already be aware, but not everyone is: they capture variables from outer scopes in exactly the same way that lambdas do.

<comment><USER13> It's wrong because naming is hard. When writing inline, it is possible that not having a name does not impact readability. When defining the function out of line, naming it casually may confuse readers.

<comment><USER14> When we use lambdas, don't we usual end up assigning them to variables? In those cases, your point about naming will still hold!

<comment><USER15> Lambdas are assigned to function arguments/parameters. Pretty sure assigning a lambda to a variable is an anti-pattern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No PEP 554 (subinterpreters). That's been moved to 3.10: [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0554/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0554/)

<comment><USER3> Given how heated was the debate about those, it's good we didn't try to go too fast with it.

I'm full of hopes for this feature, but it's going to be a slow hard work, and we'll only rip the benefit on the long run. So no use to rush it.

I feel like we rushed asyncio and type hints, and it took years to make them usable after they were introduced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I welcome the terser type hints for generics. I was wishing for something terser, like:

        {str: [int]}

being equivalent to what is currently dict[str, list[int]] in the PEP, but I guess it will have to do.

<comment><USER18> `{key: val}` does look nice indeed, but then it takes more effort to replace e.g. `dict` with `Mapping`. Everything would look much nicer with Haskell-like syntax: `dict key val` or `list val`. Or maybe even prefer `{} key val` and `[] val` (no that doesn't look good, I agree).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was quite surprised — only a few days ago in fact — to discover the standard Python library has no support for Olson (as in _tzdata_ ) timezones. Time arithmetic is impossible without them.

The ipaddress library also has no support for calculating subnets. It is quite hard to go from 2a00:aaaa:bbbb::/48 to 2a00:aaaa:bbbb:cccc::/64\. It would be less weird if the essence of the documentation didn't make it sound like the library was otherwise very thorough in the coverage of its implementation.

Can anyone write a PEP? Maybe I should get off my behind and actually submit a patch for proper IP calculations? Or maybe I missed it in the documentation (which, aside, I wish wasn't written with such GNU-info style formality.)

<comment><USER20> Unless I misunderstand what you're looking for, I think that functionality is in there.

        original_net_48 = ip_network("2a00:aaaa:bbbb::/48")
        desired_subnet = ip_network('2a00:aaaa:bbbb:cccc::/64')
        subnets_64 = original_net_48.subnets(16)
        print(f"{desired_subnet} is one of the computed subnets: {desired_subnet in subnets_64}")
        #=> 2a00:aaaa:bbbb:cccc::/64 is one of the computed subnets: True

<comment><USER19> Thanks, but your second line kind of has the answer in it already. It's more like...

      site = ip_network('2a00:aaaa:bbbb::/48')
      subnet = f(site, 64, 0xcccc)

...and I don't think _f()_ is in the standard library. But maybe I just index the calculated subnets, from your example? I'll give it a go!

Edit: yes! But it's a bit slow...

[https://repl.it/repls/PoshPapayawhipNaturaldocs#main.py](https://repl.it/repls/PoshPapayawhipNaturaldocs#main.py)

<comment><USER21> Well, you can speed it up slightly by using the iterator directly instead of forcing the whole generator into a list.

But on the other hand, you can make it WAY faster by doing it with bit manipulation instead like you're writing C:

[https://repl.it/repls/ClearcutElaborateEmbeds](https://repl.it/repls/ClearcutElaborateEmbeds)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Could someone explain to me what kind of new language features the new parser will allow? I'm curious and very incompetent when it comes to understanding what LL(1) grammar would imply for the end-user (the python programmer like me).

<comment><USER23> The linked LWN article[1] mentions context-sensitive keywords, ie. a way to treat certain words as language keywords only in specific contexts. For example, a new match statement that wouldn't require reserving the `match` word as a language keyword, which would require a breaking change and break all existing code that uses `match` as a variable name.

Such a feature requires support from the parser.

[1]: [https://lwn.net/Articles/816922/](https://lwn.net/Articles/816922/)

<comment><USER24> One good example (for those who do not want to read the full article) is the async keyword. Introducing it as keyword broke a few libraries which were already using them as kwarg in some functions (e.g. pytorch).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is the next release still planned to be called Python 4? I seem to recall GvR saying that at one point, though I could be mistaken.

<comment><USER26> And very importantly, would Python 4 be a new language, or compatible with Python 3? (compare Python 3 vs Python 2)

<comment><USER3> There is no Python 4 planned for now.

Python broke compat once in 25 years and gave 13 years to migrate.

It's a very conservative language.

<comment><USER26> I'm struggling to think of any other language that has done something like this.

It might seem like a quibble, but it seems better to describe Python 3 as a different language versus Python 2. Newbies seem to get that.

(Or, alternatively, "How many Python 2 scripts will run on a Python 3 interpreter?" Answer: "None of them.")

<comment><USER27> > Or, alternatively, "How many Python 2 scripts will run on a Python 3 > interpreter?" Answer: "None of them."

That's obviously untrue. For example, consider the following Python 2 script:

        with open('a.txt', 'r') as a, open('b.txt', 'w') as b:
            for line in a:
                b.write(line)

It works identically on a Python 3 interpreter, and it doesn't even use "from __future__ import ...".

<comment><USER26> Yes, I should have said, "a vanishingly small proportion, and even then mostly by accident".

My guess is that if you sweep GitHub for Python2 code and push it into Python3, that proportion would be under one percent.

<comment><USER28> how will that number look when you first autoconvert via 2to3?

I did two migrations of >500k loc projects in an afternoon each, and admittedly some days of testing to gain confidence since there where few unit test. But i found it to be very smooth sailing.

I was very familiar with both projects, so that helped a lot.

EDIT: I also want to add that i did this using python3.5, when to ecosystem seemed to be at a sweet spot of dependencies supporting both 2 and 3 mostly. I guess if one has been waiting until now, the divide between library versions will be a lot bigger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Eventually, removeprefix() and removesuffix() seemed to gain the upper hand, > which is what Sweeney eventually switched to.

Great naming...missed their chance to make the functionality of strip/lstrip/rstrip more clear by name the new methods stripword/lstripword/rstripword. Which would also had the benefit of consistence.

<comment><USER30> stripwords could (/would) imply that it acts on words. As in, whitespace separated things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> re.sub?</comment>