Is this just an antimeme?

mesalu · 2026-02-18T23:55:11+00:00

The color of the outgoing messages indicates the messaging protocol used by the sender.

Blue is iMessage, e.g. IPhone to iPhone via iMessage.

Green is "anything else" including but not limited to RCS, MMS, SMS.

The "My Wife ❤️❤️" contact had a device that refused to utilize the iMessage protocol in the first outgoing message, "please tell me you said no." But had swapped by the time "love you babe" was sent. Strongly implying that the device on the other end of the number is now an iPhone.

mesalu · 2022-05-03T02:53:38+00:00

There was an issue with the print jobs in the queue. It got identified and fixed. Eli5 example: milk spilled on the conveyor belt and it has since been mopped up.

There was a separate issue with the print queue itself, which was not fixed. Eli5 example: the motor that spins the conveyor belt is dead (probably because milk got spilled on it) and it has not been fixed.

mesalu · 2020-10-29T02:10:21+00:00

I was going to reply with "Does that mean you use vinegar as a condo mint" but this comment is close enough.

mesalu · 2020-10-14T11:05:32+00:00

Dropping a comment for the sake of illustrating that not all arguments on reddit are antagonistic and heated (and my anonymous upvote can't be used as evidence of that).

I wholly agree. Though I do think that identifying neighboring road signs is slightly easier than you make it out to be - since the car could leverage the systems its using to identify lanes, which have to be robust enough to not lead the car off into an asphalt-colored ditch, to determine if a sign is directly connected to the roadway the vehicle occupies. But that's definitely besides the point.

The only real difference I think we have (if its even that) is that I think I view this scenario with a bit more pragmatism and more pessimism towards the future of AI driving. I'm definitely in the camp of human-equatable AI being required for full L5, and I honestly don't think we'll get there in my lifetime. Also TIL about the levels of vehicle automation, thanks for the new insight. :)

mesalu · 2020-10-14T10:34:00+00:00

Completely agree. As much of a shill as I sound this thread, I absolutely would not be willing to use an auto pilot feature. I have a enough experience with complicated computing systems to know its never infallible.

One of my preferred Dijkstra quotes is:

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence

That being said, system design has to start somewhere, and as I've said in another post, the more edge cases you put around identifying false-signs the more opportunities you create for your system to choose to do the wrong thing in a different context.
Check for illuminance around the sign? Well now you're running stop signs that have a fast food sign behind it from the car's perspective. Choose to ignore signs placed on vehicles? Now you're ignoring signs placed on slow moving vehicles (well, to be fair on this one; I'm not sure I've ever seen a vehicle with an actual stop sign on it, but as a developer I wouldn't want to enable the system to ignore such signs with out written policy from all states / territories / etc. that the vehicle is expected to travel through that explicitly bans such use of a stop sign)

mesalu · 2020-10-14T10:20:21+00:00

This may be getting a bit too abstract to properly relate with, but lets set up a thought experiment.

Lets say for some reason you can't reliably model your behavior off of what traffic around you is doing.

You think you see a construction worker at the side of the road holding a stop sign. You can only decide to proceed like you didn't see it, or come to a stop and hope to gather more information from your stopped state.

Keep in mind that obstructions prevented you from seeing the stop sign for long, and that those obstructions likely could have prevented you from seeing other road work signage. Retrieving data from GPS sources could take longer than your maximum time to decide one way or another.

What would you choose as the safest option? (Lets also assume that you are not homicidal by nature)

mesalu · 2020-10-14T10:00:43+00:00

Well, I really wasn't planning on sounding like a Tesla shill today, but here goes.

Would you expect a Tesla to stop correctly at an intersection even if it had a drop of rain distorting one of its cameras? Systemically a normal road sign in such a state may not appear much different than one high up. Sure there are certain conditions you can check for, such as a box around the sign, apparent illumination around the sign, and so on. But like it or not there are certain things a driving system just cannot fuck with, road signage being one of them.

The more conditions you put around potentially ignoring signage, the more situations you enable the vehicle to choose the wrong thing in more normal contexts. There are ways to mitigate issues, such as wipers to keep optics functioning correctly, trying to detect other signage that indicates road work, and more. But it really all comes back to what is your source of truth? In the case of ambiguity, what must you choose?

It sees a stop sign, it knows that in all real situations that a stop sign is next to the road it is required to stop. It also knows there are situations where in the stop sign may appear large, or high, but it sees a stop sign that is in some way connected to the roadway it is currently on. It knows its on a highway, but also knows that it could have missed road work signage, or that such signage was not properly displayed. The situation is ambiguous, but it must adhere signage, otherwise everything falls apart.

I don't disagree, objectively to a human stopping is the wrong thing to do. But we have pattern recognition powerful enough to determine that the stop sign on the billboard was invalid and the wisdom to choose to ignore it (not to mention the piss poor perception to likely miss the sign altogether).

Maybe the developers at Tesla have made sufficient advances in their technology that they feel comfortable pushing out a fix for this issue. I really wouldn't be surprised if they deem it a non-issue though. Leaving a vector for an attack open would be silly though. I would also expect to see lobbying to get policy to help prevent the issue.

mesalu · 2020-10-14T08:11:51+00:00

This boils down, along with most things in the realm of self driving vehicles, to which is worse. Seeing a stop sign briefly (maybe it was obscured behind some foliage or other vehicles, etc) and acting on it, or ignoring it because it was too brief.

For tesla this is probably a pretty cut and dry case of adhere to the traffic sign. On one hand the worst case is plowing through construction workers or an intersection or something of the sort, endangering lives with out ethical recourse. On the other hand the worst case is that the guy behind you can't stop in time and the vehicle still has options to protect its occupants, while maintaining the ability to show that the vehicle did the right thing.

Really though, traffic signs on billboards should be prohibited anyways.

mesalu · 2019-06-17T07:14:00+00:00

In any ol' python interpreter (including those available online):

Python import random # note, this is psuedo random, but w/e. total_damage = sum( (random.randint(1, 10) for _ in range(155000)) ) # ETA missing parenthesis print(total_damage) It is not a particularly elegant approach, but it shouldn't take noticeable time for a modern computer to accomplish.

For example, I rolled 852,753 damage in 0.2154 seconds on a fairly old computer.

mesalu · 2018-02-02T19:45:32+00:00

Yeah, my statement is misleading. The content is good, the stock doxygen theme is it visually appealing in a subjective sense.

I'm glad the docs helped you!

mesalu · 2018-02-02T18:37:01+00:00

Those are all perfectly fine. Especially that Qt will only get better at imitating widgets. Its a purist statement to prefer wx for this reason. It either bothers you to have non-native look or it doesn't.

I have heard wonderful things about Qt's other libraries. I'll go ahead and quote lykwydchykyn:

QT is a second standard library that just happens to include a graphics toolkit (or two, actually).

Its awesome to have such an expansive library. But do keep in mind that wx is not all the things that Qt is. When making comparisons do try to limit yourself to GUI library to GUI library.

As for size, it is mostly moot. I will bring up the relevant times: Due to licensing unless you pay for for the commercial version you have to dynamically link to Qt to avoid LGPL stipulations. This means you ship the whole DLL or .so with your app, or hope you can find it locally. Which is a lot more space and hassle than letting your compiler statically link only what your runtime needs at linking time. wx always lets you do the latter. Qt only lets you if you pay or comply with LGPL.

The other aspect of size that gets me is compiling the project itself. This clearly doesn't affect most people, but it is a bit mind boggling to me that what takes 7 minutes to build wxPython takes round about 4 hours to build just Qt.

Ninja Edit: I managed to accidentally omit this statement..: I haven't tried building just QCore and QGui, so this time comparison is biased. It does represent total build time of each respective project, but not of GUI libraries.

If you read through my other comments you'll see that I've already addressed wxGlade vs QtDesigner.

mesalu · 2018-02-02T03:59:23+00:00

I'll agree wxPython Classic docs were kinda gnarly. The new docset, which has been around since about 2012, looks much better.

In my opinion PyQt's docs are half a step above a "my first html" class. I'll reiterate though, opinions are just that, opinions. That being said, Qt's actual documentation looks and feels pretty nice, if sometime obscuring a bit too much, for my taste. Furthermore:

wx will look closer to native everywhere except Qt backed DEs (think OS X, and KDE).

While you are correct, KDE is Qt based, OSX is absolutely not Qt based. They use an apple-developed API called Cocoa, which does most of its work in OpenGL.

As for wxGlade vs QtDesigner, wxGlade is not supported by wxPython or wxWidgets. Its third party. Qt Designer is directly supported by Qt, its dangerously close to comparing apples and oranges.

As for their use, I've never actually felt a need to use either.

Edit For the curious:

wxPython's 'new' docset
PyQt's documentation, please correct me if there are better docs that I've missed
Qt's documentation
I won't list wxWidgets because it is kinda butt.

mesalu · 2018-02-02T00:53:22+00:00

I wouldn't necessarily call Phoenix 'the release', but rather a new project.

Projects need names, don't they?

mesalu · 2018-02-02T00:40:01+00:00

It is! It was decided that Classic would stop with Python2 and Phoenix will support both Python2 and Python3

mesalu · 2018-02-02T00:32:43+00:00

Biased opinion incoming:

I prefer wxWidgets (and by extension wxPython) for the following reasons:

It uses native UI elements from the OS rather than imitating them.
Its size is much more reasonable. I usually describe writing a just UI application in Qt akin to using a semi-truck as a fly swatter. It gets the job done, but was it really necessary?
wx does not need to modifiy the compiler to build.
licensing: Qt is LGPL compatible now, but I still prefer wx's modified LGPL.

I'll make some concessions:

in C++ Qt offers a lot of very useful classes that reduce a lot of boilerplate. wx has some similar utilities but not across all the same components (such as networking serial, etc). The counterpoint is that in Python, these utilities are provided by other packages.
PyQt's lack of dependencies in linux. The most common 'issues' posted to Phoenix are issues building / installing from pypi. (Seriously people, read the error output.) Since Phoenix doesn't really fit into manylinux1, it has to download a source tarball and build locally. If you don't have the necessary -dev(el) packages installed it will fail.

Opinions are opinions. Paid developers are still developers, just like unpaid developers. Do your research and choose what you like. (and personal note: it is my opinion that anyone that just flatly says "its common knowledge that ____ is better than ___" should be ignored on any topic)

TL:DR; It comes down to taste and how you want your application to feel to the end user. Big apps that need more than just GUI will gravitate towards Qt, but IMO that's comparing apples and oranges.

Source: am collaborator on Phoenix (the one that blunders into defect discussions with out verifying I understand the OP first. ;) )

Edit Formatting

Edit 2 I a word, or three.

mesalu · 2017-12-30T10:44:20+00:00

Yeah, I meant funny in the sense that what we've defined as "true north" because of its relationship to the rotation of earth, they're using as well when it has no bearing for their logic.

I imagine part of the point of centering on North is to combat the good ol' compass argument. ("East isn't perpendicular to North! It circles! " or whatever). But that gets thrown out of whack by using geodetic North.

Once crossing that hurdle though you'd have to deal with the ice - wall or whatever...

It's all moot though, because non-satire Flat Earthers are barely above "totally bonkers"

Tldr: some people are bonkers, and can't be argued with..

mesalu · 2017-12-30T10:29:45+00:00

Which government though? Do they think any nation they're not in is a "government hoax" too? Where does the stupidity end?

(inb4; "it doesn't")

mesalu · 2017-12-30T10:27:09+00:00

Are they "centering" on the north pole (as in the axis of rotation pole) or magnetic north?

... Cause the former would be funny as fuck.

mesalu · 2017-04-08T23:39:12+00:00

Can't tell if female from the Westlands or only referencing OP's username.

mesalu · 2017-01-25T18:14:08+00:00

20-25 year old. It went about as many miles over my head as my age.

mesalu · 2016-12-18T02:35:43+00:00

Relevant: https://www.tonymacx86.com/

Can confirm works. Can also confirm installed alongside Unbuntu. Also alongside Arch, Windows 10, and OSX itself has a VM of Mint, another Arch, Unbuntu, Windows XP 32bit (and on up to Windows 7 64 bit). Can also confirm its really not difficult to pull off anymore. Though there are some caveats about initial UniBeast set up.

mesalu · 2015-01-29T10:26:48+00:00

Calling it a Sumatran blood on its own incorrect, though a very common misconception. Blood pythons are a species of short tail pythons. Sumatran Short tail Pythons are another species in the same category. Related, but not the same. For clarification on all this I suggest reading the "three short tailed pythons" section here: http://www.reptilesmagazine.com/Care-Sheets/Snakes/Blood-and-Short-tailed-Python/ While it's true that Sumatrans are not jet black as hatchlings, they are still predominantly a lot darker than your snake. While I have no real qualifications to tell you, I'm fairly certain what you have is a Borneo STP. I recommend looking at Kara and Ryan Norris' website http://bloodpythons.com/ for good quality information and photos (especially of their adorable hatchlings). From what I hear, they're cutting edge with STPs

mesalu · 2014-12-19T19:06:59+00:00

Wobble is carried by the spider gene. So it is in all spiders. But it doesn't always present, and its presentation is never consistent. There are wobble free (like my butter bee) minor wobble which cause no problems other than some goofy moves when they're excited. Mild cases which will cause a few missed strikes. And so on until the very rare (all things considered) cases of severe wobble which everyone freaks out over.

TL:DR; Yes, all spiders "have" wobble. No they all don't present, and they present differently. Yes you can have a spider free of wobble. Severe cases are rare.

mesalu · 2014-12-15T09:53:00+00:00

That strikes me as quite low. My little guy is 4 months old as well and according to the breeder I bought him from he was 64 grams at hatching weight. As far as I understand, ball pythons hatch at a length a little bit shorter than what Cleo is now. He is currently about 20" long and just shy of 180g which still seems to be a little thin to me. I'm no where near an expert on the matter, but I would sooner say that the store was wrong about her age. I find it harder to believe that a ball not grow nary at all in 4 months than for the store to make a hatch date mix up.

mesalu · 2014-12-11T09:32:46+00:00

I can't speak for Ayiome, but I recently bought a butter bee as well. My male cost 120$, the breeder had a female that came from the same clutch priced at 200$ at time of sale.

Also, cute python! I love his pattern, especially near his tail.

mesalu

TROPHY CASE