Denis Kyashif has a nice post on how he uses the Org mode agenda to handle his task management. He has two main requirements:

1. It should be easy to add tasks to his task list.
2. It should be easy to read his task list and figure out what to do next.

He said that it took him a while to find a task management system that met those needs but like many of us, he settled on Emacs and Org mode.

The salient feature of Kyashif’s Org work flow is that the Org configuration is pretty much out of the box. He doesn’t have a lot a special configurations or special functions. He just uses Org and Org agenda in its default mode. It’s a nice example of how powerful and useful Org mode is for task management.

The real structure on his workflow comes not from Org or its configuration but from his self imposed restraints. He says, for example, that not everything needs to be on the task list. He keeps everything in a single file with each “project” having a top level heading. He tags those so that each sub heading will inherit it making search for the project tasks easy.

It’s a nice workflow and his post is worth reading if you’re searching for your own task management system.

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Karl Voit made the excellent comment on my post, “Defining Org Agenda Tasks”, that using a repeated timestamp can be more trouble than is worth. Instead, his guidance is to make multiple copies of a task using the org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift function, so that uniquely tracking each event is trivial.

Because there are a multitude of attributes that one can apply to an Org headline, it might be instructive to draw out a state machine to see under what conditions a headline will be displayed by a default agenda view. For clarity, we will describe this state machine with an abbreviated set of transitions, where each transition is a single Org task attribute change. Transitions where an attribute change is reverted are not included also for clarity. In the diagram below, note that the states todo and repeating todo have qualifications when displayed in a default agenda view.

The following tables describe the above states and transitions respectively.

From the above diagram, using a repeating todo might not be the right approach to describing your task. Making copies of the same task, which Org makes easy with the command org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift, might be the better fit for you.

References

• UOMF: Recurring Events with Org Mode

This week the Breaking Points team looks at Partisan hatred reaching all time highs and how we got here, a report showing less than 60% of American homes are owned by someone living in them, millionaires claiming they too feel financially insecure, Counterpoints looks at the controversial kiss from a Spanish Soccer chief, and the Late Night hosts have formed a new podcast during the strike called "Strike Force Five".

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The Grayzone's Anya Parampil joins Bad Faith fresh from her trip to South Africa for last month's BRICS summit. She weighs in on what Victoria Nuland was surprised she found there, and what it means for Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, & United Arab Emirates to have joined the economic alliance. She also applies her foreign policy chops to Vivek Ramaswamy's recent takes on Taiwan/China, and the state of the 2024 primary post-RFJ Jr.s Palestine plummet.

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Produced by Armand Aviram.

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Hosted by Rhys James (Mock The Week, The Now Show), ‘What Are You Talking About?’ investigates the major issues of the week before solving them perfectly forever. Rhys will be joined by a gaggle of comedy’s fastest rising stars, including Alasdair Beckett-King and Celya AB, to look at the news and ask ‘Why?’, ‘How come?’ And ‘Why though?’

Listen to the full interview on our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/full-audio-can-w-88623146

How much of a challenge to Western hegemony does the expansion of BRICS actually pose?  How much of this has been brought on by the West’s own hubris? What should we make of the ideological differences among the BRICS countries? Could India and Saudi Arabia act as spoilers? Or are we witnessing the symptomatic decline of American hegemony, with US allies turning toward Washington’s rivals? What does this mean for the rise of China? 

To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was  joined by Prahbat Patnaik, marxist economist, professor emeritus at JNU, and author of many books including A Theory of Imperialism and the more recent Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present, both co-authored with Utsa Patnaik. 

This is just the first half of this episode. The second half is available for Breakthrough News Members only. Become a member at https://www.Patreon.com/BreakthroughNews to access the full episode and other exclusive content.

Some rapid fire takes on a smörgåsbord of topics: Blake Masters eyes another Senate bid; Cruz drinks beer; cuisine culture wars; Tim Scott’s single status; BookerTok; Trump assassination threats; Vivek on castes; Will Hurd brings Afghan-style competence to the southern border; Our busted medical system.

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Brendan & Noah a.k.a. The Blowback Boys stop by to discuss their new podcast season, covering 40+ years of covert crimes and international disorder flowing through Afghanistan. We discuss the emergence of political Islam, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Safari Club, BCCI, Charlie Wilson’s War, Rambo III and much more.

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As I’ve often suggested—most recently here and here—I try to minimize my use of the mouse as much as I can. Mostly that’s been in the context of Emacs where it’s easy. My desire to avoid the mouse is not ideological. It’s a matter of ergonomics. I find it faster and easier to to do my navigating from the keyboard.

Recently, I was reading an excellent article by Gwern on Internet Search Tips. It’s about how to optimize your Google-fu and search for hard to find papers, books, and other pieces of information.

One of the things that struck me was his insistence that your search has to be very easy to make or you won’t bother. The first part of his article is about keyboard shortcuts that he uses to initiate a search. He almost never needs to use a mouse for this. He’s a Linux user so much of his specific workflow doesn’t apply to me but I did take the general principle to heart.

I’ve had Alfred installed for a long time but hardly ever used it. I used it mostly to launch an application without having to click on its icon. After reading Gwern’s article, I tried to internalize this as a way of minimizing my mouse use. It turns out that the real power of Alfred resides in a subscription based plugin. I signed up for that and was amazed at how easy it made avoiding mouse use. For example, instead of clicking on 1password, scrolling down to the site I needed the password for, clicking on menu, and then clicking on the link to login page for the site, I merely brought up the Alfred prompt, typed 1p <site name> and I was taken right to the login page with all the password data filled in.

I’m still learning Alfred but already it’s essentially eliminated mouse use for everything except my browser. Browsers are the ultimate mouse-centric application for most of us and I’ve yet to find a reasonable way of avoiding the mouse when I’m in Safari. I’ve tried Keys for Safari, which tries to provide mouse free usage but it didn’t work for me.

The main point of this post is that whatever platform you’re on there’s something like Alfred that helps you avoid the mouse. If, like me, you like to avoid using the mouse, it’s worthwhile taking a look at one of the applications like Alfred that are appropriate for your platform.

Ryan and Emily discuss Hurricane Idalia hitting Florida, McCarthy reportedly supporting Biden impeachment, DeSantis heckled after racist mass shooting, climate protesters confronted by police, Biden makes dubious Civil Rights Act claim, US declassifies Nixon era Chilean coup docs, Jen Psaki contradicts herself on abortion, and Alex Lawson joins to break down Biden's new pharma price negotiations.

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One of the most unfortunate things about learning Python is that there are so many different ways to get it installed, and you need to choose one before you even begin. The differences can also be subtle and require technical depth to truly understand, which you don’t have yet.¹ Even experts can be missing information about which one to use and why.

There are perhaps more of these on macOS than on any other platform, and that’s the platform I primarily use these days. If you’re using macOS, I’d like to make it simple for you.

The One You Probably Want: Python.org

My recommendation is to use an official build from python.org.

I recommed the official installer for most uses, and if you were just looking for a choice about which one to use, you can stop reading now. Thanks for your time, and have fun with Python.

If you want to get into the nerdy nuances, read on.

For starters, the official builds are compiled in such a way that they will run on a wide range of macs, both new and old. They are universal2 binaries, unlike some other builds, which means you can distribute them as part of a mac application.

The main advantage that the Python.org build has, though, is very subtle, and not any concrete technical detail. It’s a social, structural issue: the Python.org builds are produced by the people who make CPython, who are more likely to know about the nuances of what options it can be built with, and who are more likely to adopt their own improvements as they are released. Third party builders who are focused on a more niche use-case may not realize that there are build options or environment requirements that could make their Pythons better.

I’m being a bit vague deliberately here, because at any particular moment in time, this may not be an advantage at all. Third party integrators generally catch up to changes, and eventually achieve parity. But for a specific upcoming example, PEP 703 will have extensive build-time implications, and I would trust the python.org team to be keeping pace with all those subtle details immediately as releases happen.

(And Auto-Update It)

The one downside of the official build is that you have to return to the website to check for security updates. Unlike other options described below, there’s no built-in auto-updater for security patches. If you follow the normal process, you still have to click around in a GUI installer to update it once you’ve clicked around on the website to get the file.

I have written a micro-tool to address this and you can pip install mopup and then periodically run mopup and it will install any security updates for your current version of Python, with no interaction besides entering your admin password.

(And Always Use Virtual Environments)

Once you have installed Python from python.org, never pip install anything globally into that Python, even using the --user flag. Always, always use a virtual environment of some kind. In fact, I recommend configuring it so that it is not even possible to do so, by putting this in your ~/.pip/pip.conf:

1
2

[global]
require-virtualenv = true

This will avoid damaging your Python installation by polluting it with libraries that you install and then forget about. Any time you need to do something new, you should make a fresh virtual environment, and then you don’t have to worry about library conflicts between different projects that you may work on.

If you need to install tools written in Python, don’t manage those environments directly, install the tools with pipx. By using pipx, you allow each tool to maintain its own set dependencies, which means you don’t need to worry about whether two tools you use have conflicting version requirements, or whether the tools conflict with your own code.²

The Others

There are, of course, several other ways to install Python, which you probably don’t want to use.

The One For Running Other People’s Code, Not Yours: Homebrew

In general, Homebrew Python is not for you.

The purpose of Homebrew’s python is to support applications packaged within Homebrew, which have all been tested against the versions of python libraries also packaged within Homebrew. It may upgrade without warning on just about any brew operation, and you can’t downgrade it without breaking other parts of your install.

Specifically for creating redistributable binaries, Homebrew python is typically compiled only for your specific architecture, and thus will not create binaries that can be used on Intel macs if you have an Apple Silicon machine, or will run slower on Apple Silicon machines if you have an Intel mac. Also, if there are prebuilt wheels which don’t yet exist for Apple Silicon, you cannot easily arch -x86_64 python ... and just install them; you have to install a whole second copy of Homebrew in a different location, which is a headache.

In other words, homebrew is an alternative to pipx, not to Python. For that purpose, it’s fine.

The One For When You Need 20 Different Pythons For Debugging: pyenv

Like Homebrew, pyenv will default to building a single-architecture binary. Even worse, it will not build a Framework build of Python, which means several things related to being a mac app just won’t work properly. Remember those build-time esoterica that the core team is on top of but third parties may not be? “Should I use a Framework build” is an enduring piece of said esoterica.

The purpose of pyenv is to provide a large matrix of different, precise legacy versions of python for library authors to test compatibility against those older Pythons. If you need to do that, particularly if you work on different projects where you may need to install some random super-old version of Python that you would not normally use to test something on, then pyenv is great. But if you only need one version of Python, it’s not a great way to get it.

The Other One That’s Exactly Like pyenv: asdf-python

The issues are exactly the same as with pyenv, as the tool is a straightforward alternative for the exact same purpose. It’s a bit less focused on Python than pyenv, which has pros and cons; it has broader community support, but it’s less specifically tuned for Python. But a comparative exploration of their differences is beyond the scope of this post.

The Built-In One That Isn’t Really Built-In: /usr/bin/python3

There is a binary in /usr/bin/python3 which might seem like an appealing option — it comes from Apple, after all! — but it is provided as a developer tool, for running things like build scripts. It isn’t for building applications with.

That binary is not a “system python”; the thing in the operating system itself is only a shim, which will determine if you have development tools, and shell out to a tool that will download the development tools for you if you don’t. There is unfortunately a lot of folk wisdom among older Python programmers who remember a time when apple did actually package an antedeluvian version of the interpreter that seemed to be supported forever, and might suggest it for things intended to be self-contained or have minimal bundled dependencies, but this is exactly the reason that Apple stopped shipping that.

If you use this option, it means that your Python might come from the Xcode Command Line Tools, or the Xcode application, depending on the state of xcode-select in your current environment and the order in which you installed them.

Upgrading Xcode via the app store or a developer.apple.com manual download — or its command-line tools, which are installed separately, and updated via the “settings” application in a completely different workflow — therefore also upgrades your version of Python without an easy way to downgrade, unless you manage multiple Xcode installs. Which, at 12G per install, is probably not an appealing option.³

The One With The Data And The Science: Conda

As someone with a limited understanding of data science and scientific computing, I’m not really qualified to go into the detailed pros and cons here, but luckily, Itamar Turner-Trauring is, and he did.

My one coda to his detailed exploration here is that while there are good reasons to want to use Anaconda — particularly if you are managing a data-science workload across multiple platforms and you want a consistent, holistic development experience across a large team supporting heterogenous platforms — some people will tell you that you need Conda to get you your libraries if you want to do data science or numerical work with Python at all, because Conda is how you install those libraries, and otherwise things just won’t work.

This is a historical artifact that is no longer true. Over the last decade, Python Wheels have been comprehensively adopted across the Python community, and almost every popular library with an extension module ships pre-built binaries to multiple platforms. There may be some libraries that only have prebuilt binaries for conda, but they are sufficiently specialized that I don’t know what they are.

The One for Being Consistent With Your Cloud Hosting

Another way to run Python on macOS is to not run it on macOS, but to get another computer inside your computer that isn’t running macOS, and instead run Python inside that, usually using Docker.⁴

There are good reasons to want to use a containerized configuration for development, but they start to drift away from the point of this post and into more complicated stuff about how to get your Python into the cloud.

So rather than saying “use Python.org native Python instead of Docker”, I am specifically not covering Docker as a replacement for a native mac Python here because in a lot of cases, it can’t be one. Many tools require native mac facilities like displaying GUIs or scripting applications, or want to be able to take a path name to a file without elaborate pre-work to allow the program to access it.

Summary

If you didn’t want to read all of that, here’s the summary.

If you use a mac:

1. Get your Python interpreter from python.org.
2. Update it with mopup so you don’t fall behind on security updates.
3. Always use venvs for specific projects, never pip install anything directly.
4. Use pipx to manage your Python applications so you don’t have to worry about dependency conflicts.
5. Don’t worry if Homebrew also installs a python executable, but don’t use it for your own stuff.
6. You might need a different Python interpreter if you have any specialized requirements, but you’ll probably know if you do.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my patrons who are supporting my writing on this blog. If you like what you’ve read here and you’d like to read more of it, or you’d like to support my various open-source endeavors, you can support me on Patreon as well! I am also available for consulting work if you think your organization could benefit from expertise on topics like “which Python is the really good one”.

The National Security Agency, the shadowy hub for the United States’ electronic and cyber spying, has instructed its employees that foreign targets of its intelligence gathering “should be treated with dignity and respect,” according to a new policy directive. The directive, released this summer as internal guidance, is for the NSA’s vaunted signals intelligence, or SIGINT, division, which is responsible for covert surveillance and data collection worldwide.

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“In recognition that SIGINT activities must take into account that all persons should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their nationality or wherever they might reside,” says the previously unreported directive, which was issued by NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone. 

“Mass surveillance is fundamentally incompatible with basic human rights and democracy.”

Civil liberties experts say the PR-friendly directive is an attempt to mollify European partners and American critics amid a simmering congressional debate over whether to reauthorize the NSA’s broad surveillance authorities. Experts also pointed to the absurdity that the NSA, an intelligence agency that specializes in electronic eavesdropping including the interception of text messages and emails, could do so respectfully.

“This is like the CIA putting out a statement saying that going forward they’ll only waterboard people with dignity and respect,” Evan Greer, director of the digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, told The Intercept. “Mass surveillance is fundamentally incompatible with basic human rights and democracy.”

The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last month, President Joe Biden’s own advisers recommended imposing some limits on the warrantless surveillance programs of the U.S. intelligence community. The administration, though, rejected proposals that the U.S. obtain a warrant before sifting through certain information collected from Americans. That so-called Section 702 information, the repository of surveillance data established in the wake of the September 11 attacks, gets its name from the legal provision that authorizes it — the same statute that is being debated in Congress and among privacy advocates.

The NSA directive follows an executive order issued by Biden in October 2022 titled “Enhancing Safeguards for United States Intelligence Activities.” That directive, along with other Biden administration requirements, seeks to provide the same privacy and civil liberties protections to foreign intelligence targets — even to targets like Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Experts, however, say the safeguards are largely window dressing intended to head off critics in Congress and Europe, where NSA surveillance is a sore issue. European governments and leaders were incensed when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the staggering power — and lack of checks — on the spy agency.

“The U.S. government wants to be able to warrantlessly spy on whomever it wants with no independent checks, no matter the scale or threat to privacy,” Sean Vitka, senior policy counsel for Demand Progress, a civil liberties advocacy organization, told The Intercept. “The government is putting up Potemkin villages to try and trick Europe — and the American people — into thinking the U.S. government’s out-of-control spying is somehow fixed, despite the fact that Congress hasn’t even had the chance to consider any serious reforms — which, it must be noted, the government is ferociously lobbying against right now, and has been all year.”

The post NSA Orders Employees to Spy on the World “With Dignity and Respect” appeared first on The Intercept.

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump going down in polls after missing debates, Trump's mugshot raising millions for his campaign, Putin confirms Wagner Leader's death, US military blasts Ukraine Tactics, Bloomberg TV Panics over well paid UPS drivers, Oliver Anthony calls out Republican Elites over his song, Media simps for Neocon Nikki Haley after GOP debates, and China declares war on US hegemony with BRICS expansion.

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