I suppose it depends on the language? For the most part I think you’re right. Exceptions are only used (if at all) in situations where a program diverges unexpectedly from its normal flow. But take a language like Python. They’re just everywhere. Even your plain old for loop ends on an exception, and that’s just business as usual.

I tried one of those surveys before the last election, and it concluded that I was most closely aligned with the Green Party. Alas, they don’t have a chance in Hell where I am. They are so far off the radar I wasn’t even aware they were fielding a candidate in my district. But it does make me wonder though. If such surveys actually informed how people vote, would the balance of power shift? I think it would help if our voting system (I’m in Canada) changed to something other than first-past-the-post?

Oh wow thank you so much!

I got super busy today and only just got back on now to see the idea seems to have some traction. I will try to post/comment there to get ball rolling.

I was thinking actually, you could have posts that, like I suggested, describe a strange situation and invite people to speculate on how it came about. But you could also give some sort of narrative that describes the circumstances instead and leads up to a point where you go “…and you’ll never guess what happened next!” or something to that effect.

Awesome. I will add it to my list of places I want to visit just based on name alone. A few others include Batman, Turkey, Shitterton, England, and Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Québec.

I’ve been playing around with the disabled GIL build and though I use threads fairly extensively in my projects, it’s been smooth sailing so far. I feel like my GUI scripts might be a bit more responsive now? (I tend to farm out user events to dedicated threads, so this is entirely possible.)

But overall, everything is stable and awesome! I’m so excited! This has been a long time coming for Python.

Yeah it’s kind of an arm’s race with people feeling they need to be the biggest thing on the road to feel safe. I’ve driven a few larger vehicles as airport rentals when they had nothing else in stock, and I’ve noticed they also tend to have a lot more blind spots than what I’m used to.

I remember when I was taking lessons, my instructor said I should think of the airbag as being a spring-loaded spike that will impale you if you screw up. I guess he was trying to impress on me that it’s not good to feel safe and smug when you’re driving? And actually, I’ve read since that air bags can be pretty violent when they go off, so he may not have been as far from the truth as I thought?

Totally agree. Some people seem to think it shows moral fortitude to stick to your guns and never admit fault, but these are really the weak-willed people in society.

Another lesson of adulthood it has taken me an embarrassingly long time to learn is that when you are enjoying something and see someone—particularly a younger person—looking interested, bring them in on it. If it’s something you bought for yourself, let them have a go. This may entail a small amount of sacrifice if you let them borrow it for a time, but the joy it brings will make it worth it, and the world needs more of that today. I think about people who have done this for me in the past, and I have mad respect for all of them.

Holy shit that was one intense week! I really feel for you. Glad you got it looked at in time and hope for calm seas ahead.

Take it easy for about half an hour or so after eating and then do some kind of physical activity. I learned that this has the best effect for lowering blood sugar in battling type 2 diabetes, but I think it’s generally good advice for anyone? It doesn’t have to be a heavy workout or anything. Even just getting up on your feet and walking around a bit makes a difference.

I wish there were more regulation on the size of private vehicles, particularly in North America. It’s pretty clear at this point that what is contributing to higher pedestrian/cyclist fatalities despite better urban infrastructure is the increasing curb weight and ground clearance of automobiles. We can hope that collision-avoidance tech in newer models may reduce human-error type accidents, but at the end of the day, kinetic energy is a bitch.

I wonder how the EV transition will affect things? On the one hand, an EV would weigh more than an ICE of the same class since batteries are heavy. On the other hand, batteries are also the most expensive component by far and you need more in a larger vehicle, so from a dealer’s perspective, the margins may not necessarily grow the bigger you go like with an ICE. The sweet spot might actually be something smaller. (In fact, for me, it’s actually ebikes.)

If you haven’t been there yet, OneZoom is fun to explore. I am continually surprised by what I find there going down some random branch.

But the mining, milling, and production of nuclear fuel, as well as the construction and decommissioning of nuclear plants, emit greenhouse gases at levels ranging from 10 to 130 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of power — lower than fossil fuels but higher than wind and hydroelectricity (and roughly on par with solar).

That’s interesting. The article they link gives a bit more detail:

These energy intensities translate into greenhouse gas intensities for LWR and HWR of between 10 and 130 g CO2-e/kWhel, with an average of 65 g CO2-e/kWhel.

While these greenhouse gases are expectedly lower than those of fossil technologies (typically 600–1200 g CO2-e/kWhel), they are higher than reported figures for wind turbines and hydroelectricity (around 15–25 g CO2-e/kWhel) and in the order of, or slightly lower than, solar photovoltaic or solar thermal power (around 90 g CO2-e/kWhel).

The wide range for nuclear apparently comes from difficulties in estimating the carbon footprint of mining/processing the uranium, but that nuclear is sort of in the middle of the pack in carbon footprint relative to renewables in spite of the fueling costs is good to know.

I suppose these sort of numbers may change dramatically in years to come. Take solar. A lot of focus seems to be on the efficiency of panels, which would almost certainly lower the carbon cost per unit of energy as it improves, but a breakthrough in panel longevity would also do that in an amortized emissions sort of way.

My most common use case is probably looking up stuff that may or may not be in a dict.

if (val := dct.get(key)) is not None:
    # do stuff with val

I guess that’s pretty similar to what you were doing?

Sometimes I also use it in some crazy list comprehension thing when I get backed into a corner, though it’s hard to think of an example off the top of my head? It usually happens when I’m in a rush and desperate to get something working, but it has an uncanny way of being just the thing you need at that point.

Wow that looks so involved! Will definitely look into this.

Any recommendations on games using this engine? I’ve been playing Java Edition again lately but am always open something new.

That’s pretty sad when you have to pirate a game just to make it playable. I probably shouldn’t admit to having cracked games in the past for this reason. Yarrr!

This is actually the first I’ve heard of Denuvo, but if Wikipedia’s page on it is any indication, it sounds pretty awful! Anyway, I’ve checked the dealbreaker box on the survey.

I guess the central premise of capitalism is that while every society has its haves and have nots, capitalism is supposed to encourage the haves to invest in the economy rather than hoarding their wealth. In return, they stand to get even wealthier, but a stronger economy ought to generate more employment and generally improve the lives of commoners as well.

Unfortunately, in a never-ending quest to make wealth-generation more efficient and streamlined, employment is being eliminated through automation, outsourcing, etc. and the system is eating itself out from the inside. I doubt it can persist much longer, but what will replace it remains unclear. I pray that it will be something sensible that ensures everyone has their basic needs met and can still find rewarding pursuits in life. But there are so many ways it could go very wrong, and that includes staying on the current course.

I once knew a guy from the deep south who’d say stuff like yoostacud. I yoostacud run a marathon. I thought that was marvellous! Another one was fixina. I’m fixina get tickets to the game tonight. You in?

Sounds useful in Minecraft. Like you put a sign in a cave “exit widdershins” to tell people to follow the left wall.