Mahmoud

“he’s right though; his ego was utterly unassailable.”

New Movies with Mikey

Mikey returns with a new MwM, taking on Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005).

I have been obsessed with these for years and have never seen one in person. They are more sophisticated than I thought! The little ones work on simple biomechanics like you'd expect, but the big ones, as far as I could determine, actually include hydraulic digital logic -- like, there's a proboscis with a flat foot next to it, and when each is compressed it closes a valve. 00? Waving in the air. 11? Hard ground. 01? Soft ground, reverse gears. The +5v analog(ue) is a series of water bottles pressurized by the wind and some valves.

But it's all just so weird that I doubt he realized he was building logic gates and a Turing machine. If I were a biochemist I might read this as reaction-diffusion interactions or enzymes. Or if I was a psychologist, I'd think it was id and superego.

These things are glorious.

PS: I tried to make this post from my phone and it basically rolled on its back and wiggled its legs in the air because apparently sending a 63 MB email to my own damned mail server is unreasonable and this is not the future I was promised. What the what.

"Liftblr" is the informal, amorphous community of shoplifters who post their hauls to Tumblr using pseudonymous accounts, offering each other support and encouragement. Most seem to be young women, and their community's discourse often circles back to class war, politics, gender and consumerism. (more…)

Hovertext: As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself to be a REAL BOY!

So while PyCon 2016 starts in less than 48 hours, some kind of anticipation compelled me to polish off the last of the talks from last year. For some reason I went for a keynote. I'm not typically a keynote attendee, and this time I'd missed something big.¹

Jacob Kaplan-Moss, the herald of Django, really laid something out. I'll give you the short version, but here's a video in case you want a look:

To summarize, Jacob sets out to explain why mediocrity is acceptable. Bell curves rule everything around us. He holds up his record as a middling ultramarathon runner as proof. He surmises that lack of passion for work is leading people to feel untalented. This, combined with "brilliant asshole" programmers, is shaming people out of the industry. He wraps up with a message of inclusivity, especially toward women. Now, you can probably make sense of any other details with the slides.

Above all, Jacob and I are in complete agreement with his opening and closing. If you consider yourself an average programmer, that is fine and probably better than the alternatives. Also, as a field, software must continue reaching out to and integrating more underrepresented groups, especially women.

That said, I'm not sure how one could have put more missteps between those two points.²

The 10x Programmer

If Jacob makes one thing clear from the keynote, it's that years of being called a 10x programmer has made him very uncomfortable. He rejects the concept, as many have. Now I, too, have at various points been called a rockstar, ninja, and 10xer, and even though I also don't identify with those labels, I will tell you that the 10x programmer is very real.³

Every 10x programmer I know spends most days as a 1x something else. Most 10x code is the result of observing and accumulating 10x more domain knowledge, then being in the right place at the right time. You do what ten developers off the street could never. I've been there, and I have the commits to prove it. And when other aspects of my life take priority, I'm an average programmer, focusing on my job and its share of 1x work.

10x programming is a matter of insight and inspiration, confidence and autonomy. This is a circumstance so unique that it creates an obligation to teach software to the world. You never know when the right 1x programmer is going to be in the right place to transform their surroundings with a 10x moment. Many of the most creative people I know understand very little about programming, and one can't help but wonder what programming skills or insight might bring to their process.

The great thing about Python is that you can teach so much programming with so little overhead. You give those highly creative people even a taste of programming and it opens up vast opportunities. Even just the shared vocabulary is a huge boost to cross-pollination of ideas between disciplines.

Look at Python use among biologists, neuroscientists, and other academics and analysts. Their amazing results speak volumes. Yet by strict accounts their engineering skill wilts next to experienced Python systems engineers working at YouTube, PayPal, Dropbox, Continuum Analytics, etc.

It's inexcusable to put such a diverse group on this single bell curve when their goals and disciplines are so different. Our language is the same and our cultures are mutually beneficial. Seeing people measured along this single dimension keeps me up at night.

Putting it all in terms of employment is harmful. Maximizing employee utilization only creates more 1x programming. Software is more than the industry of churning out code. A programmer is more than someone who is paid to write software. A person is more than their profession.

The Privilege

It's said that the most sure sign of privilege is ignorance. Jacob drives this all the way home, but not for lack of trying

From the beginning of the talk, he considers the immediate situation. He disclaims most of his reputation, describes his origins as unremarkable, and points out that his biggest contributions weren't actually his. Later on in the talk, while showcasing the face of the privileged programmer, the 10x archetype, the person most likely to be able to ride on their identity, he shares a chuckle at his own resemblance.

Moving into Jacob's running-programming analogy, the anecdote got off to a false start, but just kept going. Nobody stopped him to point out that by virtue of simply being an ultra-runner, he is the top tier. If you're in the 68th percentile of ultrarunners, then you're in the top 1% of people who run, period. Even finishing a normal marathon faster than the median time demonstrates talent and tremendous physical gifts.

Jacob trimmed the y-axis, measured himself among the top tier, and found himself only slightly better than mediocre. The sort of guilt-inducing behavior that he claims leads people to leave the field, unfolding right on stage.

The Corporatism

Throughout the talk, Jacob cites some statistics. The one that stuck with me was about an impending employment deficit. The U.S. government projects 1.5 million unfilled programming jobs in the year 2020. This becomes a central motivation for Jacob encouraging people to go into software⁴. Programming is immediately linked to coding for money.

Jacob says software is a skill, like any other. Programming is like running marathons. Individuals are responsible for their own training. But Jacob bears a message of hope: bosses will pay you to run, even if you're not the fastest.

Too many managers are like Jacob, subtly redirecting the creative potential of software into commodity labor. "We" need as many people as possible to learn and teach programming because some a small portion of society has decided to gamble money on software eating everything in a very particular way.

On the contrary, people need exposure to programming for its fundamental concepts. Software offers new ways of decomposing problems and creating solutions, new approaches that are necessary to understand an increasingly fast-paced and connected world. That is totally irrespective of employment. Software design is a new way of thinking, for all people, employed as programmers or not.

In short

Jacob is a much better runner than he gives himself credit for, but programming is not running.

Software is much more than an industry. You don't need a programming job to be a good programmmer.

This brings me back to reiterate the central thought we share: One doesn't need to compare favorably to other programmers in order to make a difference with software. So, we must accept and support programmers of all walks and skill levels.

Riding Light:

In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective.

I've taken liberties with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually "sees" or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall I've kept the size and distances of all the objects as accurate as possible. I also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter as I wanted to keep the running length below an hour.

We know Anthony Burgess for having written A Clockwork Orange, but in total, according to Shaun Usher’s More Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience (a book based on the well-known blog), he “published 33 novels, 25 nonfiction titles, produced poetry, short stories and screenplays, composed three symphonies, wrote hundreds of musical pieces, and spoke nine languages fluently.” Yet even such a “prolific, versatile, and highly intelligent” man of letters faces writer’s block now and again.

Take the Rolling Stone thinkpiece Burgess couldn’t manage to write in 1973. Conceding defeat — “things are hell here,” he wrote of his life in Rome at the time — he offered the magazine “a 50,000-word novella I’ve just finished, all about the condition humaine, etc.” in its place. Surely his editor would understand? Alas, unluckily for Burgess, his editor turned out to be one Hunter S. Thompson, who fired back the characteristically blunt but eloquently vitriolic reply you see here:

Dear Mr. Burgess,

Herr Wenner has forwarded your useless letter from Rome to the National Affairs Desk for my examination and/or reply.

Unfortunately, we have no International Gibberish Desk, or it would have ended up there.

What kind of lame, half-mad bullshit are you trying to sneak over on us? When Rolling Stone asks for “a thinkpiece”, goddamnit, we want a fucking Thinkpiece… and don’t try to weasel out with any of your limey bullshit about a “50,000 word novella about the condition humaine, etc…”

Do you take us for a gang of brainless lizards? Rich hoodlums? Dilettante thugs?

You lazy cocksucker. I want that Thinkpiece on my desk by Labor Day. And I want it ready for press. The time has come & gone when cheapjack scum like you can get away with the kind of scams you got rich from in the past.

Get your worthless ass out of the piazza and back to the typewriter. Your type is a dime a dozen around here, Burgess, and I’m fucked if I’m going to stand for it any longer.

Sincerely,

Hunter S Thompson

“The desired thinkpiece never appeared in the pages of Rolling Stone,” writes the International Anthony Burgess Foundation’s Graham Foster, “but the essay referred to in these letters, ‘The Clockwork Condition’, was eventually published in the New Yorker in 2012.” In it, Burgess recalls the origins of his best-known novel and considers the causes of the societal conformity he took as one of his themes, arriving at the Orwellian notion that “the burden of making one’s own choices is, for many people, intolerable. To be tied to the necessity of deciding for oneself is to be a slave to one’s will.”

That goes for “where to eat, whom to vote for, what to wear” — and, of course, for what to write a thinkpiece about as well as how to write it. “It is easier to be told,” Burgess writes. “Smoke Hale — ninety per cent less tar; read this novel, seventy-five weeks on the best-seller list; don’t see that movie, it’s artsy-shmartsy.” He even remembers, with a certain fondness, his time in the army: “At first I resented the discipline, the removal of even minimal liberty,” but “soon my reduction to a piece of clockwork began to please me, soothe me.” Fair to say, though, that no matter how demanding the officers above him, the experience didn’t prepare Burgess for a superior like Thompson.

via More Letters of Note and Esquire

Related Content:

Read 10 Free Articles by Hunter S. Thompson That Span His Gonzo Journalist Career (1965-2005)

Read 18 Lost Stories From Hunter S. Thompson’s Forgotten Stint As a Foreign Correspondent

Hunter S. Thompson, Existentialist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Finding Meaning in Life

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ballsy & Hilarious Job Application Letter (1958)

Johnny Depp Reads Letters from Hunter S. Thompson

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

Hunter S. Thompson Writes a Blistering, Over-the-Top Letter to Anthony Burgess (1973) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

You know that old quote:

The wider the net you cast, the wider the variety you catch.

Was it a wise old fisherman? Or a dogged Python programmer? Either way, words don't come much truer than those.

Few, if any, programming languages have embodied the description "general-purpose" as wholly as Python. And with the wide net of that applicability comes a wide variety in use -- and environments.

Library and framework developers rarely get to control how their code is used, and thus have to think about how their code fits into the whole ecosystem. From writing hybrid code for Python 2 and 3 to inserting shims for Pythons without threading support, there's no rest for the rigorous. Until now.

Announcing ecoutils

Ecosystems differ. Widely. Academic Python tends to be more Windows-heavy, corporate Python will probably forever be entrenched in Python 2, and one can never predict the arrival of that oddball user with the super old version of Python on Cygwin. But these are generalities and we can do better.

Enter ecoutils. ecoutils is a pure-Python module that, using nothing but builtins, generates a semantic, Python-centric profile of the environment that's running it. This includes:

• Host operating system: Windows, OS X, Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, RHEL, etc.
• Language version: 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, ..., 3.4, 3.5, ..., etc.
• Executable runtime: CPython, PyPy, Jython, etc., (plus build date and compiler)
• Features: 64-bit, IPv6, Unicode character support (UCS-2/UCS-4)
• Built-in library support: OpenSSL, threading, SQLite, zlib, and more
• User environment: umask, ulimit, working directory
• Machine info: CPU count, hostname, filesystem encoding

Now, instead of crossing platform support bridges when users bring them to you, you can be proactive. Now, instead of guessing how developers are using the code, you can design for their needs and watch those needs change.

ecoutils only gets more valuable when code goes to production. If you manage your own machines, you know the risk of version drift and missed boxes only goes up with machine number and time. If you don't manage your machines, it's just a matter of time until someone is being trained on your boxes.

So what does a profile look like?

Generating a profile

Profiles are generated by ecoutils.get_profile().

When run as a module, ecoutils calls get_profile() and prints a JSON-formatted profile. On my fully-updated Ubuntu 14.04LTS machine, python -m boltons.ecoutils yields:

{
  "_eco_version": "1.0.0",
  "cpu_count": 4,
  "cwd": "/home/mahmoud/projects/boltons",
  "fs_encoding": "UTF-8",
  "guid": "6b139e7bbf5ad4ed8d4063bf6235b4d2",
  "hostfqdn": "mahmoud-host",
  "hostname": "mahmoud-host",
  "linux_dist_name": "Ubuntu",
  "linux_dist_version": "14.04",
  "python": {
    "argv": "boltons/ecoutils.py",
    "bin": "/usr/bin/python",
    "build_date": "Jun 22 2015 17:58:13",
    "compiler": "GCC 4.8.2",
    "features": {
      "64bit": true,
      "expat": "expat_2.1.0",
      "ipv6": true,
      "openssl": "OpenSSL 1.0.1f 6 Jan 2014",
      "readline": true,
      "sqlite": "3.8.2",
      "threading": true,
      "tkinter": "8.6",
      "unicode_wide": true,
      "zlib": "1.2.8"
    },
    "version": "2.7.6 (default, Jun 22 2015, 17:58:13) [GCC 4.8.2]",
    "version_info": [2, 7, 6, "final", 0]
  },
  "time_utc": "2016-05-24 07:59:40.473140",
  "time_utc_offset": -8.0,
  "ulimit_hard": 4096,
  "ulimit_soft": 1024,
  "umask": "002",
  "uname": {
    "machine": "x86_64",
    "node": "mahmoud-host",
    "processor": "x86_64",
    "release": "3.13.0-85-generic",
    "system": "Linux",
    "version": "#129-Ubuntu SMP Thu Mar 17 20:50:15 UTC 2016"
  },
  "username": "mahmoud"
}

Weighing in at just over 1KB, it's not too daunting! ecoutils is part of the boltons package, so pip install boltons and see how yours compares.

By virtue of being in boltons, the ecoutils module is also fully standalone, and can be used without the rest of the boltons package. ecoutils has been tested with Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.4, 3.5, and PyPy on Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, OS X, FreeBSD, and Windows. File an issue if something seems to be broken. Compatibility is the goal.

Transmission and collection

Now, ecoutils is really just part of the solution. Sure you can write out a quick profile it at the top of every log file, and you won't regret it. However, real ecosystem management means running a sort of Python analytics shop.

For those familiar with browsing the Internet, your browser is a virtual machine that has likely been participating in a similar arrangement all day today. Like Google Analytics or Piwik, the setup involves collecting relevant data, and then sending it to a central server for storage and querying.

Collection is handled by ecoutils. As far as transmission is concerned, in development environments, we have a dead-simple, side-effect-minimizing, single-file HTTP client that sends ecoutils profiles to a central analytics server on application startup.

In production environments, our framework serves this information for queries on a special port, through SuPPort's MetaService, through clastic's MetaApplication, where this all started. Here's an example of it running in Wikipedia Hashtags Search, on a managed Wikimedia environment, over which I have minimal control, and need maximum information.¹

Push or pull, all the data is stored in a simple SQL (or JSONL) format, as demonstrated by espymetrics, the example project for my Enterprise Software with Python course. Nothing more enterprise than having literally dozens of environments by design, and even more than that by debt.

One last note, data management is all about audience and context. If you're an administrator in a professional setting, the data above is great. But there are understandably some cases where you might want something less identifiable. get_profile has a scrub flag that handles that. See the docs for details.

Success stories

Originally designed for easier remote administration across multiple environments, a little bit of info has had far-reaching impacts. For a few examples from my work at PayPal, this approach enabled us to:

• Deprecate and remove production Python 2.6 support from our framework, simplifying our build matrix without customer impact.
• Actively engage new users attempting to use our framework with unsupported Pythons or OSes.
• Improve utilization through designing for observed CPU counts.

In practice, ecoutils combines well with psutil data to go even further in utilization.

Building for variation

Some of you probably came here expecting to read yet another great post about virtualenv, tox, and maybe even conda envs. I'm glad you've already heard of them, because they're a big part of the story. If you haven't yet explored these tools, check them out, because they are invaluable for cross-version Python testing and packaging.

Also, if you're working on an open-source library, I can vouch for Travis CI (Linux) and Appveyor (Windows) as very valuable providers for cross-platform testing. I use both of them on boltons, and it makes it easier, not harder, for contributors to submit pull requests with confidence. Most outfits can't afford to have a team member leading support for each platform, like we do at PayPal.

Conclusion

Python is more than just an expressive, succinct programming language. In a diverse world, Python is a tremendous force, made so by its wide deployment, cross-platform support, and external library integrations. Python gives you SQLite, JSON, SSL, Unicode, and much more, but with many necessary strings attached to Python version, build, or environment. ecoutils offers an experienced look at the real features that affect the value of Python components and teams.

Don't leave ecosystems and their constituents to chance, whim, or fad. Collect the data that makes your ecosystem unique, and make measured decisions based on the realest demand: actual usage.

The new mural on the wall of Ace Hardware at 3rd and Clement was completed a few weeks ago. And on Saturday, May 28, there will be an official celebration to welcome the mural to the neighborhood. Mural artist Jason Jagel will also be at the event.

The mural, dubbed “Mr. Foggy”, was a collaboration between Supervisor Mar’s Office, The Clement Street Merchants Association, The Richmond District YMCA, Standard Plumbing Ace Hardware, The SF Arts Commission, and Jagel.

The event takes place May 28 from 4pm to 6pm at Ace Hardware, 152 Clement.

Sarah B.

“it’s not loaded — we’re hoping satan will be so surprised to see you, that he’ll just do the thing where you kneel, and put your hands on your head. then you can arrest him.”

I would like more customers. This requires me more sales and marketing. I am bad at sales and marketing.

The solution is of course to have someone else do it for me. Which is why you’re all now on commission.

Starting from today, I’m offering literally everyone the following deal:

If you introduce me (personally, rather than just a scattershot “You should talk to these people”, though I’ll probably figure out some way to reward the latter too) to a business or anyone else who becomes a customer of mine, I will pay you 20% commission on up to the first £5000 I invoice to that customer. i.e. 20% of whatever I invoice, capped to giving you a maximum of £1000 per customer you introduce me to. This will apply to all invoices to that customer up to the cap.

The main things I offer customers are listed over on hypothesis.works but in particular I offer:

• Training
• Consulting and development services
• Support contracts
• Licensing for extending Hypothesis with Python 2.6 support

I’m also potentially available for similar work for things that aren’t necessarily directly Hypothesis related. e.g . I have a ScalaCheck related contract coming up soon, and I can offer consulting on a variety of algorithmic or design problems. The commissions aren’t limited to anything in particular – it’s for any paid work (of course I may not accept any particular work just because you suggest it).

If you want to introduce me to someone or have any questions about this, please email me at david@drmaciver.com.

Notes

• For the sake of avoiding this being outright bribery, I’m not going to offer commission for introducing me to a company that you actually work for. I might change that later once I’m clearer on the implications.
• If for some reason you are not able or willing to accept money from me I am happy to donate the commission to a charity of your choice.
• What I invoice depends a lot on the project and the customer, but hitting that £1000 limit is definitely not implausible.
• Neither this nor the 10% of each invoice that I donate to charity come out of each other. You get 20%, charity gets 10%, I get 70%.

By superimposing a rectangular grid on the earth surface, a grid built from exact square miles, the spherical deviations have to be fixed. After all, the grid has only two dimensions. The north-south boundaries in the grid are on the lines of longitude, which converge to the north. The roads that follow these boundaries must dogleg every twenty-four miles to counter the diminishing distances.

Hovertext: Oh, wait, it's both.

What? You can’t be serious!  I know we rip on Facebook a lot, but the idea that 63% of Facebook users consider it a news service is frightening.

Among Facebook users, 63 percent consider the platform to be a news service, according to a Pew Study. - New York Times

That’s not to say that people don’t get news from Facebook.  We know that they do.  But when did people give up on the process of getting informed?  I mean actual pursuit of information and knowledge.  Hanging out on Facebook, browsing US weekly in the checkout aisle, and watching John Oliver really shouldn’t count.

Seriously though, it’s fine.  You can read or not read whatever you like.  At least you can on a non-biased platform.  And I’ll step up to Facebook’s defense on this one and say that as a closed private network they can serve whatever the heck they want.  If conservative publications want more coverage, all they have to do is pay.