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michaelhoffmanon Structural pattern matching in Python 3.10

    elif cmd.op == 'TUPLE':
        arity, = cmd.args
        stack = self.data_stack

        text = ', '.join(str(stack.pop())
                         for _ in range(arity))
        
        stack.append(f'{{{text}}}')

michaelhoffmanon The Little-Known Genius Who Helped Make Pixar Possible

14 years ago, Alvy Ray Smith wasn't listed with the other people in Wikipedia's Pixar navbox. I added him a couple of times but someone kept deleting him without comment. I found it so odd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Pixar&di...

Thankfully someone else seems to have added him back in and it has stuck now.

michaelhoffmanon Show HN: HN Badges – Displays game-like badges for your HN profile

>> Does this imply that you can get another badge just by using the word fuck in a comment?

> Perhaps, but it would be a bit immature to do so. Or even to quote someone else doing so.

Yeah I shudder to think about how gamification in this way will change the discourse here.

michaelhoffmanon Show HN: HN Badges – Displays game-like badges for your HN profile

Oh apparently you have to use fuck in two comments. And it has to be over a certain percentage of your total comments. Also you can get a badge by mentioning Rick Astley. Hilarious.

michaelhoffmanon Show HN: HN Badges – Displays game-like badges for your HN profile

Does this imply that you can get another badge just by using the word fuck in a comment?

michaelhoffmanon Extreme Ironing

People will also do all sorts of things for fun.

michaelhoffmanon Why are hyperlinks blue?

I believe OS/2 1.2's help system used a different color for hyperlinks but it's hard to find a definitive screenshot.

michaelhoffmanon Job opening at U.S. Embassy in Kabul

Given that spouses and domestic partners of U.S. employees posted abroad have preference for hiring here, they might have someone in mind already.

michaelhoffmanon Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app

I love SumatraPDF. I use Acrobat Reader for most stuff, but while working on TeX documents SumatraPDF is invaluable because it:

- is fast AF

- supports SyncTeX

- doesn't unnecessarily lock the files it has open

michaelhoffmanon California sues Activision Blizzard over unequal pay, sexual harassment

Not the Blizzard workplace of today, but according to the DFEH, it IS the Blizzard workplace of a time within the statute of limitations.

michaelhoffmanon List of Special Elevator Modes

The prohibition is on doing work generally, with a specific prohibition on kindling a fire, which was quite a lot of work millennia ago.

Does using a device that allows you to avoid walking up many flights of stairs really violate the spirit of a law prohibiting work on the sabbath?

michaelhoffmanon Apple pays out millions to student after repair techs shared her personal images

Put the OEM RAM back? Hard to do otherwise when it's soldered to the laptop.

michaelhoffmanon Scientific Data Repositories

Zenodo is a great place for code and datasets. For every paper we put any associated code, and any data that doesn't have a place in a more specialized repository:

https://zenodo.org/communities/hoffmanlab/

GitHub even provides a guide to depositing a GitHub repo in Zenodo:

https://guides.github.com/activities/citable-code/

michaelhoffmanon Scientific Data Repositories

Every university institution in Canada either has an institutional repository or access to adoptive repositories for those without.

https://www.carl-abrc.ca/advancing-research/institutional-re...

michaelhoffmanon Scientific Data Repositories

I don't understand the question. Maybe you could give an example of the sort of metadata you want to share.

I recommend these article for discussions of how to share when you can't share all your raw data publicly because of participant privacy:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2766-y (I am a co-author)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-020-0257-5

There's some more discussion in the article linked in the parent to but it's mostly not about that.

michaelhoffmanon Scientific Data Repositories

We recently wrote a commentary describing how to share biological data and describing some of the specialist and generalist repositories where one might do so:

https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1873-3468.1...

michaelhoffmanon E-Prime – English without the verb “to be”

English uses "to be" even further where other languages like Spanish would use another verb—for example statements about the weather are "it is hot" rather than Spanish's "hace calor".

michaelhoffmanon Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

Thanks for answering the most obvious question anyone would have about this phenomenon that was inexplicably totally missing from the article itself.

michaelhoffmanon "To our surprise"

"strikingly"

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=strikingly

michaelhoffmanon The Slackware Way (2012)

Thank you for this comment. This is the first time I think I have really understood why people like (or liked) Slackware, despite having read "The Slackware Way" before.

michaelhoffmanon The Slackware Way (2012)

Why does it suck compared to Slack?

michaelhoffmanon Webamp: Winamp 2 in the browser

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/11/a-brief-history-of-the-wi...

michaelhoffmanon A Bayesian Approach to the Simulation Argument

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI#Controversies

michaelhoffmanon Reverse engineering a mysterious UDP stream in my hotel (2016)

I loved the conclusion!

michaelhoffmanon Google Took Down My Chrome Extension for Using Lodash

Whatever this web site is doing to break the page down key is extremely annoying.

michaelhoffmanon No Us Without You: elifdef and elifndef

What was in the email that caused such a change in heart?

michaelhoffmanon The Quirks of Gmail UI

I have a similar keyboard problem. With relative frequency the focus is stolen from a text input box to the top level. Usually this is just an annoyance, but sometimes it happens right as I'm typing an "m" (which results in me accidentally muting a conversation) or an "e" (which results in me accidentally archiving a conversation).

michaelhoffmanon When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

Newspapers have been laying off copy editors right and left in recent years. A reduction in the quality and clarity of writing is an obvious and predictable outcome.

https://j-source.ca/article/copy-editors-laid-off-more-than-...

https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2017/by-dismantlin...

michaelhoffmanon Python’s tug of war between beginner-friendly and advanced features

Oops! Good point! Unfortunately too late for me to edit.

michaelhoffmanon Python’s tug of war between beginner-friendly and advanced features

Whitespace helps too! And I think using `sorted(key=)` is more Pythonic than a generator expression ;)

   from operator import itemgetter

   def maxWidthOfVerticalArea(self, points: List[List[int]]) -> int:
       xs = sorted(points, key=itemgetter(0))
       x_pairs = zip(xs, xs[1:])

       widths = (right-left for left, right in x_pairs)

       return max(widths)

NumPy also has stuff to solve this sort of thing built-in:

   from numpy import diff

   def maxWidthOfVerticalArea(self, points: List[List[int]]) -> int:
       xs = sorted(points, key=itemgetter(0))
       widths = diff(xs)

       return widths.max()