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> This is a valid criticism of the Python community and something the core language maintainers should look to address.

The author didn't include one of his custom source libraries that's not needed to understand the code, so that makes this a valid criticism of the Python community? lol


One million percent yes.

The code shouldn't build, go green, or be in any shareable state. This is horrifically bad practice.

A language should remove all of these thorns in a first-class manner.

Until you use a package manager like Cargo, you probably can't intuit the wide gulf here. A good analogy might be imagining the world before version control.

Dependency control matters immensely. Hermeticity and repeatability matter immensely. We should strive to build these into the very foundations.


Until they start blocking VPNs like other streaming services? Piracy is a solution that doesn't end up a cat and mouse game. Sounds like op is paying for the content but it's region locked, so the dumbest form of pushing your customers to piracy.


You didn't have to convert voltages all the time for things you did in a car until relatively recently. All the typical 12V stuff could've run at 48V no problem. By the time we wanted to put computers in cars and charge our cell phones, switching supplies were readily available. The only part of the system now that really benefits from lower voltages are semiconductors.


Your maneuvering system just needs to be able to get tanks spinning.


Rotating the pair of (tank and vehicle) around a common center, and pumping "up" through the center, could work. But the pair would be very off-center most of the time, and unstable unless attached end to end.


Are flexible couplings (like a hose) not possible to use, in these cases?


Flexible couplings are hard to keep flexible at -200 C. But the real issue is keeping the fluid pooled around the pump intake, and not distributed in blobs throughout the tank, interspersed with gas.


Why cut it in half? Spray (or Mylar) on the outside.


A parabola isn't the same shape as a hemisphere. (Although, I'm not convinced the antenna under discussion actually is a parabola and not a catenary, or something in between.)


Some other comments posted a diagram-the actual reflector is inside the balloon. the balloon is there to keep the reflector in the right shape.


A sudden discontinuity like that but continuing the same curve and jumping back... that's equipment malfunction 99% of the time.


And yet, they published that instead of figuring out what is possibly wrong with their gear which in turn may invalidate the rest of the their results. I'm not going to second guess their motivations though, they probably know what they are doing but it is interesting and deserves explanation.


Seems reasonable, then again we're dealing with a potential superconductor where sudden discontinuity is the expected result.


Why publish this graph without running the measurements again though? Serious question since I’ve no idea about the effort needed to get this data.

I’ve got a small hope that they actually did and found the effect didn’t go away. They’ll still say ’equipment malfunction’, there isn’t any downside, only upside if it gets reproduced somewhere else.


> It's a travesty how this has been handled. Massively rich corporations deflecting blame, lying to the public, and trying to cover up their own malfeasance in the pursuit of relentless greed. Profits over people, as usual.

Do you have any evidence of this being mishandled, or is this just parroting the reddit narrative?


eh poor example imo; that's guaranteed by the Constitution, not legislation.


oh? where, exactly? Is that why we needed Obergefell, and Loving, and … ?


Backing this up- I see that complaint all the time about US education, but I know me and all my peers had this impressed on us throughout our (public) schooling. People just don't care because to them, the word is right but the spelling part is a formality that can be ignored.


Are you kidding me? Government law enforcement sent her a cease and desist and threatened to charge her for protected speech. It's not a gray area. The purpose of the letter was to harass and intimidate a citizen for criticizing their government and to create a chilling effect on free speech. I don't know what potential legal remedies she has since the government would have to waive sovereign immunity, but at the very least, this special agent and everyone on his team needs to undergo some civil rights training. At best, public employees like this agent and the chain of command pushing policies like this need to be completely removed from public service.


In what sense is calling on government buildings to be burned down and the occupants slaughtered "protected speech"?

The only way I could see it being protected is if it was clear hyperbole. Which...not in this day and age.


The question is not "how is something someone said considered free speech?"

The default is that what's said is protected.

The question should be "why is this speech not protected?" Does it incite violence if no violence occurred? Was it some kind of targeted threat or just impotent rage?


SCOTUS has outlined tests to determine whether speech is protected or not. These don't necessarily require violence to actually taken place as a result.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action


> Under the imminent lawless action test, speech is not protected by the First Amendment if the speaker intends to incite a violation of the law that is both imminent and likely

This very obviously doesn't apply in this case.


It passes the imminence test which was further defined in Hess. It might fail the likelihood test, but of course, there was no legal action taken against this person so we're just making hypotheticals about what would happen if they did take legal action.

1A protects you from laws or actions that prohibit your speech, they don't protect you from people asking you not to engage in that speech.


It does protect you from the government asking you not to engage in speech. The fact that no legal action was taken is what makes this behavior blatantly unconstitutional. If it was against the law, DHS would have arrested her- instead they made vague threats about charging her under a law dealing with conspiring to murder federal law enforcement. Any government policy that creates a chilling effect on a protected right is unconstitutional, regardless of any charge or court case.


LE can use discretion when investigating cases that they believe may break the law, and they can give people warnings.

As I understand, other SCOTUS rulings on chilling effects all pertain to political speech that were otherwise clearly and unquestionably legal.

I think we’d need to have more information about the process and procedure that took place here to determine whether this letter was sent in bad faith or not.


Using the words "right now" may have been the icing on the cake for this one.

The court ruled in Hess v. Indiana that similar speech was legal because:

> [it] "amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time."

It's still probably vague enough in specificity and context that I doubt SCOTUS would rule against it, but it's also plenty close enough that law enforcement wouldn't be out of line by following up on. It's also worth noting that this person simply got a letter, they weren't thrown in prison.


Standard first amendment exceptions:

  * Incitement to imminent lawless action
  * True threats
  * Solicitations to commit crimes
While this tweet doesn't quite meet those exceptions IMHO, it isn't an unreasonable position to take.


It has a chilling effect on everyone who reads about it. Threats against someone else for their political speech could mean something happens to any of us.

At what point do we consider this an act of terrorism on the part of HS?


It is plainly not terrorism for a law enforcement official to send someone a letter asking them not break the law. Even if it is questionable in its legal merit. LE are not lawyers or judges. It is entirely normal for law enforcement to arrest and charge people when they believe a law has been broken, even if they are wrong about it. That's the entire purpose of our court system.


It's not terrorism, and LE are not lawyers or judges, but they have a fundamental duty to have an understanding civil rights. Sure, maybe not understand the nuances of more complicated stuff in the moment- but that wasn't the case here. DHS obviously took some time to "investigate" and had ample opportunity to run all this by a government attorney or judge and didn't because the entire point is to curtail speech. Every beat cop knows "speech" is very broadly protected with very few exceptions, and this wasn't some random beat cop, it was a federal agent and so our expectations should be even higher.

Again, no one was arrested or charged. The courts were never involved on purpose; it was an extra-legal abuse of power.


I think you’re jumping to some conclusions that aren’t necessarily merited. We don’t know what DHS did or didn’t do beyond this letter, so I’m not going to speculate on that.

It is completely legal and common for LE to ask someone to stop doing something that approaches the limits of the law or could potentially lead to trouble. We have had recent attacks on federal buildings, in that context, asking someone not to incite further violence is hardly an abuse of power. I’m all for law enforcement reform, but this is a stretch.


I think the only conclusion that I'm jumping to is that it was malicious. At best, it's a bad and very likely unconstitutional policy.

Framing it as "asking" is dishonest- a cease and desist is a demand that you stop with an implied legal action if you don't. It didn't say "hey if this progresses, you might be criminally liable"- it calls out this specific tweet as potentially criminal and threatens federal charges.

As a side note, I tried to read the tweet again and it's been deleted, so who knows. Maybe all this was made up and maybe there was more to it or maybe DHS disappeared her. Either way, without more context I'm 100% unwilling to budge on this being an abuse of power.


If it was a malicious attempt to chill speech, why is it one letter sent to some rando on Twitter? Unless we see more people coming forward with the same experience, I’m more inclined to presume that this is more simply just a isolated instance of a whacky person posting whacky shit.


In the replies, other people are expressing that this happened to them, too. Here's one example: https://twitter.com/_the__snowflake/status/15427023930617774...


That link is dead for me.


Looks like the chilling effects are working. Here's an archived copy: https://archive.ph/aPlL5


It’s a photo of two business cards. I don’t see a letter or any claim of what it was about, let alone an accusation of misconduct.

The most obvious explanation here is that the guy made an illegal threat and the feds showed up to check out whether it was legitimate. That’s completely normal and legal, and not even refuted by anything at that link.


No this very clearly falls in the limitations of free speech since it calls for directly for violence against others. I want my government telling people to be careful about this


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