Doxin

I've used hypothesis in practice for testing a slugify function. When someone signs up for our product our software produces a subdomain based on the organisation name you input. People put all sorts of weird things in that field, and we want to be pretty broad in what we'll accept.

The hypothesis test for this is near trivial. Pass some text to the slugify function, and check it either a) throws an invalid input error (e.g. input too short etc) or b) return a string that's a valid domain name.

Doing this found me so many odd little edge cases around length truncation and idna encoding. The one bug I would've never found myself is the fact that lowercasing "ß" turns it into "ss" which broke truncation, resulting in an invalid domain only if it includes ß and is exactly 64 characters long.

hypothesis is a pretty niche tool, but boy when it's the right tool it's the right tool.

Those would output absolutely blisteringly hot water as well. Almost boiling. As I recall they'd often also have the tap directly attached to them. We kept the pilot light on ours always lit, though I can totally see people turning them off fully when not in use for a bit. The fancy ones had a button to light them. The less fancy ones involved a match and a startle as the gas caught fire.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I had forgotten all about those!

For everyone in the comments assuming these will be unrepairable I... don't think they will be? As far as I can tell this has zipper teeth on cord instead of tape. I don't see why that'd be impossible to hand-sew. It might be a bit more fiddly because it'll be more flexible. If anything it'll be much easier to seam rip existing zippers because you can just put the seam ripper between the teeth and cut the cord instead of the stitching.

The proprietary sewing machine does seem like it's not amazing competition wise, but if you think Chinese manufacturers aren't going to have a clone the second this becomes popular you haven't been paying attention. It'll basically be a sewing machine that does a zigzag stitch with a modified transport so the needle doesn't hit the teeth.

The one thing I do think is a disadvantage is that this style of zipper would put limits on how thick the fabric it's attached to can be. Normally the tape goes between the sides of the runner, but now it's the actual garment fabric. Might have implications for wear too.

Stretch denim drives me insane. Not only is it much thinner and more fragile it's also just straight up a time bomb. Given enough time the elastic just deteriorates and you get super weird wrinkles all over. Not to mention that pants that fit just fine in the morning need a belt in the afternoon because the whole thing stretches out.

Back in the olden times overcharging like that would be dealt with the same way as theft would. I'm not entirely convinced it's the wrong way to go about things. It's how the concept of a bakers dozen came to be. Better give everyone 13 in a dozen, just in case you ever miscount.

Even modern entry level Rigol scopes have external trigger inputs. I've got like one step up from the cheapest model and it has an external trigger input. I think the idea there is that you'd use a bunch of these scopes for the QA on an assembly line. there's a bunch of pass/fail features I've never once touched too.

If anything google providing a VPN would give them more insight in your traffic, not less.

To be clear the specific intervention used here is very rare. It's really not business as usual, but it's also not nation state shenanigans luckily. Just regular old grift.

We've also currently got an outgoing cabinet, meaning they aren't really supposed to make major decisions outside of emergencies. That has always been one of those things where it's basically up to the honor of the politicians to actually not make major decisions as far as I can tell, so I'm unsure whether this is politicians politicianing or if there IS some emergency requiring intervention. I'm sure it'll all get more clear in the coming days.

You do realize this is china trying to abscond with European tech? Not the other way around?

Believe it or not, but the dutch government has agency. It's not impossible for US pressure to be a factor, but I think it's more likely the management of the company was planning to move production to china or something like that. That'd (rightly!) spook the government into some quick action, especially given the political climate around Russia seemingly not being content with having their war confined to Ukraine.

Unfortunately we seem to be living in interesting times.

I've started programming later than DOS (probably around win95 or so) but I still have a reflex to hit ctrl-s three times basically any time I stop typing.

You only need to lose hours of work once or twice to learn that lesson!

I've had teachers that'd waft a binder at the board while continuing to talk. you can get a decent part of the chalk board dry in under a minute doing that. It's not like you're getting the board soaking wet either. A whiff of water is plenty to clean the board.

Edit: note you can also write on a wet chalkboard just fine. The tactile experience is just a little worse.

Some more context from a dutch news source[0]:

The ministry of economic affairs intervened out of a fear that crucial technological skills and capacities will leave the Netherlands and Europe. The ministry stated in a press release[1] that there was a threat of a "knowledge leak" (w/e that means exactly) and a possible threat to the European economy.

After this intervention the Dutch government can now stop or reverse decisions within the company. That's only allowed if those decisions are harmful to the interests of the company, or for the future of the company as a Dutch or European business, or to the retaining of this crucial value chain for europe.

The company can appeal this decision in court.

For context, the law that allows this all to happen was passed in 1952 and has never before been used. As much as I think our government is currently ran by a bunch of nincompoops, I am inclined to believe that something quite significant was about to happen for this law to get invoked. What exactly that was can for now only be speculated about.

I can recommend you run google translate (or equivalent) on the press release. It's as close as you can get to the source of this news for now. I can only imagine the government is going to be having plenty of debates on the topic coming up, seeing as this is a very rare use of a very heavy-handed tool.

[0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2586270-kabinet-grijpt-hard-in-bij-ch...

[1] https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2025/10/12/wet-b...

if you're forced to see ads, it makes sense to opt for ads for things you might actually want. Of course that's ignoring the whole tracking business and that "targeted ads" are still a complete crapshoot.

For what it's worth VAT isn't uniform across the EU either. IIRC the EU specifies minimums, but countries are allowed higher rates and can manage their own exclusions too.

> if you're still in the "the problem is other people" phase

While I'm sure there's plenty of people who adhere to that theory, I'm worried you're getting that confused with the theory that a bunch of handicaps (among which is autism) are mostly just handicaps because the world isn't accommodating them.

You can imagine if everyone in the world was in a wheelchair it'd be real easy to get around in a wheelchair. Similarly if everyone in the world had autism it'd be much easier getting around having autism.

Whether you like it or not, to people with autism "other people" are a large part of the problem. Having sensory issues around shaking hands isn't inherently a huge problem, but fuck me if people don't make it a huge problem. Your options are basically to either have people think you're a gigantic asshole or to be deeply deeply uncomfortable whenever it comes up.

You can get an android phone for $30. It won't be an amazing high end phone obviously, but it'll work.

There's definitely a subset of people out there that are using CoCs as a way to install levers in organisations they can pull. I'm not completely burnt on the concept of CoCs but I definitely am very wary about them and the people who insist on them.

I think the core difference there is that the holodeck character feels like a character that is playing a person (because it is of course) whereas the LLM feels more like someone lying to you about who they are.

When watching a play the actor pretends to be a specific character, and crucially the audience pretends to believe them. If a LLM plays a character it's very tempting for the audience to actually believe them. That turns it from a play into a lie.

For what it's worth GPT-OSS-20b thinks about the puzzle for a LONG time and then comes up with a... solution of sorts? It doesn't peg the puzzle as not making any sense, but at least it tries to solve the puzzle presented, and doesn't just spit out a pre-made answer:

> It turns out the “child” isn’t a patient waiting for an operation at all – the child has already been lost.

> In the story the boy and his wolf friend go to the river for a picnic with a sheep that happens to be there. They decide to use a small boat to cross the water. The problem is that the boat must stay on the surface of the water while it “connects” the nine points (dots) across the river – essentially it has to stay on the river without ever leaving it, which makes a safe crossing impossible.

> During the attempt the boat hits something and sinks; everyone in it dies. The surgeon who arrives at the scene says, “I can’t operate on this child!” because the child is already dead from the accident. The mention of the wolf and the sheep is simply part of the scene that led to the fatal crossing; it isn’t relevant to the medical impossibility.

Interestingly in its thought process it does come across the classic puzzles, but discards them as not quite fitting:

> Maybe it's about the classic lateral thinking puzzle: "A man is found dead, he was a surgeon. The surgeon said 'I cannot operate on this child because the child is my own daughter', etc." But not.

> Alternatively maybe it's about the famous "Nine Dots" puzzle: Connect nine dots with four straight lines without lifting pencil. Here boat connects nine dots over river... So maybe it's the "connect the dots" game but with a boat?

> Could this be a riddle about "The River and the Sheep" referencing a children's rhyme or fable? Maybe it's about "Jack and Jill"? Not sure.

and so on and on. When asked if the puzzle makes sense it largely concludes that it doesn't.

It's definitely interesting to see which LLMs fall for what pitfalls. It's far from universal as far as I can tell. GPT-OSS-2b definitely has some wonky logic in it's answer, but at least it's not assuming it's a puzzle it knows the answer to. Gemma-3-27b immediately pegs that the puzzles elements seem disconnected, waffles on a bit, and then also comes to the conclusion the child is already dead, discarding roughly all of the puzzle as distracting facts. llama-3.2-1b (a very small model) immediately a) misunderstands the riddle and b) tells you it doesn't have enough information to solve the riddle. When pressed it "solves" the riddle thus:

> The surgeon says "I can't operate on this child!" because the child is in a precarious position on the boat, with only nine lines connecting them to other points on the riverbank. If you try to attach any two lines that form an "X" shape (i.e., two lines connected by a single point), it would create a triangle that would leave space for another line to connect one of the child's dots to a nearby point on the riverbank, allowing it to be attached.

> The surgeon is not saying that the child is in immediate danger or can't be saved. Instead, they're suggesting that there might be an alternative solution where all nine lines can be connected without leaving the water. However, this would require some creative problem-solving and flexibility with the geometry of the situation.

I fully did expect at least llama-3.2-1b to fall for this sort of context-baiting, but it seems even a small model like that managed to figure out that there's something nonstandard about the riddle.

The problem is not the significant whitespace. It's producing serialized data using a templating language. That's never going to be a good solution to anything.

I'd assume getting roughly anything in your lungs frequently enough is carcinogenic.

As far as I can tell from previous failures, teslas will only attempt to avoid obstacles they recognize. How anyone could set up a self driving system like that and think it's a good idea is beyond me.

While true, it's also important to remind that until the 70s we were on a path to MORE car traffic, MORE traffic deaths, etc. It took a significant protest for the tide to turn. Google around for "Stop de kindremoord" -- which translates to "Stop infanticide" -- to see the sheer scale of it all. There's plenty of english language articles on the topic.

Long story short: change is possible, but rarely easy. Even in places where it seems like things have always been like they are now.

> let alone the ones full of dark patterns to nag you into accepting anyway.

In fact the law pretty explicitly disallows dark patterns like that. Of course tech companies have a loosy-goosy relationship with the law at the best of times.

it also doesn't track where you left off inside an episode at all. Their content is pretty good, but the site is VERY minimal.

I've been learning to draw lately and I was having some serious "getting started" issues every time. For me the trick was to not go "I will now practice drawing" but to go "I will now hold a pencil and browse through my old drawings". It ends me up holding a pencil and looking at a blank page.

I know it ends up with me drawing anyways every time and yet lying to myself that I'm not intending to draw works wonders.

I've heard it described as 3d having the effort front-loaded: you make models that need to look good from ~all angles, but then you can basically play with them like dolls.

2d on the other hand has the effort more spread out: you don't need to do much up front, but you need to do a drawing for every single frame.

I can see how 3d would be worth it, even if more effort total, if you expect to make sequels.

I think another issue is there's too much design by committee going on, too much aiming for "sure things", too many studio notes. Not enough trying to make something good. It's hardly surprising that if you don't aim to make something good you won't make something good. That's not a dig on the animators etc involved, I'm sure they are giving their best but they are operating in a system that does not have as goal to make art.

Oh yeah on a human scale there's plenty of VERY hard plastics.

It's still pretty soft and gummy when compared to a LOT of materials. It's all relative and whatnot. You'll often find machinists using descriptors like "chewing gum consistency" for stuff like copper. On that scale plastic is pretty soft and squishy.