It's interesting that, with Python, the reference implementation is the implementation

yeah there's Jython but really, Python means both the language and a particular interpreter.

Many compiled languages aren't this way at all

C compilers come from Intel, Microsoft, GNU, LLVM, among others. And even some scripting languages have this diversity

there are multiple JavaScript implementations, for example, and JS is...weird, yes, but afaik can be faster than Python in many cases.

I don't know what my point is exactly, but Python a) is sloooow, and b) doesn't really have competition of interpreters. Which is interesting, at least, to me.

Did the developer use any version control though? SCCS has been around since the early 70s, RCS and CVS since the 80s. The tools definitely existed.

Also, it was a single dev, which makes SCM significantly simpler!

California doesn't allow "use it or lose it" vacation policies. Vacation rolls over up to a reasonable amount, which apparently isn't super well defined, but my employers have generally set a limit of 2x annual.

No doubt related to Johnson noise.

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

Richard P. Feynman

I think the same is true for a lot of folks and self hosting. Sure, having data in our own hands is great, and yes avoiding vendor lock-in is nice. But at the end of the day, it's nice to have computers seem "fun" again.

At least, that's my perspective.

It's kinda a weird take? Like if I'm in a discussion about some scary things AfD are doing and a left-of-center German joins the conversation, I'd like to think I'd have the ability to...you know...hear what they have to say about things.

There are a bunch of Americans who asked for this; there are a bunch who stood by and did nothing to stop it; and there are a bunch who tried to stop it, did not, and are devastated.

I guess at the end of the day it's just a meme.

When I took some astronomy classes in the early 2000s, Jocelyn Bell was absolutely credited. In her own words:

It has been suggested that I should have had a part in the Nobel Prize awarded to Tony Hewish for the discovery of pulsars. There are several comments that I would like to make on this: First, demarcation disputes between supervisor and student are always difficult, probably impossible to resolve. Secondly, it is the supervisor who has the final responsibility for the success or failure of the project. We hear of cases where a supervisor blames his student for a failure, but we know that it is largely the fault of the supervisor. It seems only fair to me that he should benefit from the successes, too. Thirdly, I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them. Finally, I am not myself upset about it - after all, I am in good company, am I not!

That said, yeah, I think she absolutely should have been awarded the Nobel prize. But while she did not, she has the admiration

rightly so

of many a budding astronomer.

Reminds me of that West Wing episode where he "accidentally" makes an offensive gun analogy comment; Harris doesn't really alienate any supporters here, and she appeals to the undecided gun crowd voters. As a bonus, she's "telling it like it is" for folks who are self-described as being "fed up with PC culture."

I like the sentiment, but there are non-peer reviewed papers that are real science. Politics and funding are real things, and there is a bit of gatekeeping here, which isn't really good IMHO.

Also, reproducibility is a sticky subject, especially with immoral experiments (which can still be the product of science, however unsavory), or experiments for which there are only one apparatus in the world (e.g., some particle physics).

I just tried that and got the same result. It's from a site that just quotes a snippet of an Onion article 🤦

One of the real downsides of ARM is, it seems, the relative lack of standardization. An x64 kernel? It'll run on most anything from the last ten years at least. And as for boot process, it's probably one of two options (and in many cases one computer can boot either legacy or EFI).

ARM, on the other hand...my raspberry pi collection does one thing, my Orange Pi does something else, and God help you if you want to try swapping the Orange kernel for the Raspberry (or vice versa)!

Similar with Y2K

it was only a nothingburger because it was taken seriously, and funded well. But the narrative is sometimes, "yeah lol it was a dud."