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Intellectual Fly Is Open

https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2025/12/05/your-intellectual-fly-is-open/
36•cyb0rg0•40m ago•5 comments

Isar Aerospace reaches orbit and deploys payloads on second flight

https://isaraerospace.com/press/history-for-european-spaceflight-isar-aerospace-reaches-orbit-and...
290•mpweiher•5h ago•70 comments

Doomscrolling Ourselves to Death

https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/doomscrolling-ourselves-to-death
20•shubhamjain•43m ago•3 comments

M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
46•gurjeet•4d ago•14 comments

Cloud in a Bottle: making self-hosting accessible to everyone

https://cloudinabottle.org/blog/launch-post
472•zplizzi•12h ago•231 comments

The revolt of the reader

https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/05/the-revolt-of-the-reader/
414•chmaynard•14h ago•186 comments

The pencil case model of creativity

https://dub.uu.nl/en/column/pencil-case-model-creativity
5•jruohonen•31m ago•0 comments

I asked astra to make playable 4D chess

https://4d-chess.pages.dev/
11•mikiyas•1h ago•3 comments

Music Theory for Programmers

https://runjs.app/blog/music-theory-for-programmers
188•birdculture•3d ago•97 comments

IBM Quantum Nighthawk R2

https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/nighthawk-r2
29•fuglede_•3d ago•11 comments

I Changed My License

https://bergie.iki.fi/blog/eupl/
70•jllyhill•1h ago•78 comments

The ColorChecker, photography's most important 24 squares, turns 50

https://www.dpreview.com/news/the-colorchecker-photographys-most-important-24-squares-turns-50/
83•sohkamyung•4d ago•12 comments

Don't Use a gmail.com Address

https://crookedtimber.org/2026/09/03/dont-use-a-gmail-com-address/
14•jruohonen•47m ago•2 comments

AI, Tools and Transformation

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/9/3/ai-tools-and-transformation
84•firexcy•10h ago•35 comments

AMD Based FreeBSD Desktop Reloaded

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/09/06/amd-based-freebsd-desktop-reloaded/
72•vermaden•10h ago•9 comments

"We Have to Assume That the Internet Will Go Offline in the Next Few Years"

https://www.trendingtopics.eu/emad-mostaque-ai-internet-outlook-english/
31•gumby•4h ago•32 comments

Household Laser Cuts

https://cceckman.com/writing/household-laser-cuts/
6•evakhoury•1d ago•0 comments

Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board

https://collusion.wiki/
2206•moultano•2d ago•1555 comments

Learn Programming with OCaml

https://usr.lmf.cnrs.fr/lpo/
271•elvis70•19h ago•106 comments

OpenBSD Stories: Strange Medieval Devices

http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/smd.html
71•zdw•3d ago•14 comments

The Empire of Information

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/data-empire-roopika-risam-information-organize-control-dominate/
9•Petiver•4d ago•4 comments

A Computer History Time Capsule

https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/27/a-computer-history-time-capsule/
18•mooreds•4d ago•0 comments

The "$60 Gaming PC" – AMD BC-250 (2025)

https://devquasar.com/hardware/the-60-gaming-pc-amd-bc-250/
353•networked•23h ago•103 comments

Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/9/1.html
452•ExMachina73•12h ago•73 comments

Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/isar-aerospace-second-launch-norway-a...
650•bookmtn•16h ago•347 comments

LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03344
299•canjobear•16h ago•211 comments

'Old Person Smell'

https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2026/sep/03/old-person-smell
10•bookofjoe•1h ago•2 comments

Visualizing Rust's Vtables: How dyn Trait Works In Memory

https://sofiabelen.github.io/projects/visualizing-rusts-vtables-how-dyn-trait-works-in-memory/
184•torutofu•23h ago•40 comments

Topologist's Map of the World

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/09/01/small-world-20/
104•beardyw•4d ago•27 comments

New all in one 6502 computer (Neo6502kbd)

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2026/09/04/new-open-source-hardware-variant-of-neo6502-now-includes-...
5•AlexeyBrin•45m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Elliptical Python Programming

https://susam.net/elliptical-python-programming.html
184•sebg•1y ago

Comments

benob•1y ago
TIL that in python, 1--2==3
seplox•1y ago
It's not a python thing. 1-(-2), distribute the negative.
qsort•1y ago
In most C-like languages that would be a syntax error. E.g. in C and C++ as a rule you tokenize "greedily", "1--2" would be tokenized as "1", "unary decrement operator", "2", which is illegal because you're trying to decerment an rvalue.

Python doesn't have "--", which allows the tokenizer to do something else.

nyrikki•1y ago
In C, that is really because Unary minus (negation) has precedence over binary operations.

    +a - b; // equivalent to (+a) - b, NOT +(a - b)
    -c + d; // equivalent to (-c) + d, NOT -(c + d)

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/operator_arithmet...

    +-e; // equivalent to +(-e), the unary + is a no-op if “e” is a built-in type
     // because any possible promotion is performed during negation already
The same doesn't apply to, !! Which is applied as iterated binary operations (IIRC)

I am pretty sure the decriment operator came around well after that quirk was established.

seanhunter•1y ago
Peter van der Linden’s book “Expert C Programming” (which is awesome btw) says that one of them (Kernighan, Richie or maybe Ken Thompson I forget) realised early on that the c compiler had the wrong operator precedence for bit twiddling and unary and boolean operators but “at that stage we had a few thousand lines of C code and thought it would be too disruptive to change it”
j2kun•1y ago
Also worth noting that `1 - -2` works and produces 3 in C because the space breaks the operator.
plus•1y ago
For those who are curious, `...` is a placeholder value in Python called Ellipsis. I don't believe it serves any real purpose other than being a placeholder. But it is an object and it implements `__eq__`, and is considered equal to itself. So `...==...` evaluates to `True`. When you prefix a `True` with `-`, it is interpreted as a prefix negation operator and implicitly converts the `True` to a `1`, so `-(...==...)` is equal to `-1`. Then, you add another prefix `-` to turn the `-1` back into `1`.

`--(...==...)--(...==...)` evaluates to `2` because the first block evaluates to 1, as previously mentioned, and then the next `-` is interpreted as an infix subtraction operator. The second `-(...==...)` evaluates to `-1`, so you get `1 - -1` or `2`.

When chaining multiple together, you can leave off the initial `--`, because booleans will be implicitly converted to integers if inserted into an arithmetic expression, e.g. `True - -1` -> `1 - -1` -> `2`.

> There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.

This article is obviously completely tongue-in-cheek, but I feel the need to point out that this sentence is not meant to be a complete inversion of the Perl philosophy of TIMTOWTDI. The word "obvious" is crucial here - there can be more than one way, but ideally only one of the ways is obvious.

pletnes•1y ago
Numpy actively uses … to make slicing multidimensional arrays less verbose. There are also uses in FastAPI along the lines of «go with the default».
abuckenheimer•1y ago
excellent explanation, to add to this since I was curious about the composition, '%c' is an integer presentation type that tells python to format numbers as their corresponding unicode characters[1] so

'%c' * (length_of_string_to_format) % (number, number, ..., length_of_string_to_format_numbers_later)

is the expression being evaluated here after you collapse all of the 1s + math formatting each number in the tuple as a unicode char for each '%c' escape in the string corresponding to its place in the tuple.

[1] https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#format-specifi...

elijahbenizzy•1y ago
Ok do this but for JavaScript
voidUpdate•1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSFuck
mariocesar•1y ago
If you're curious, the code in ellipsis results in executing:

    print('hello, world')
mturmon•1y ago
Thank you!

I noticed some ** and * in the thing sent to eval(), which (given that the building blocks are small integers) seemed related to prime factorizations.

The initial %c is duplicated 21 times (3*7, if I read correctly), and then string-interpolated (%c%c%c...) against a long tuple of integers. These integers themselves are composed of products of factors combined using * and **.

There is also one tuple "multiplication" embedded within that long tuple of integers -- (a,b)*2 = (a,b,a,b). That is for the 'l' 'l' in "hello".

It's all very clever and amusingly mathy, with a winking allusion to the construction of natural numbers using sets. It made me Godel.

callamdelaney•1y ago
I think we're really starting to over crowd pythons syntax and I'm not a fan.
noddleah•1y ago
you're telling me you never program in python elliptically??
acbart•1y ago
Pretty sure this would have been possible in Python 2.6. The Ellipsis object has been around for a very long time.
MadVikingGod•1y ago
This behavior can be replicated with any class that has two special methods: __neg__ that returns -1 and __sub__ that accepts ints and returns 1-other.

For example if you make this class:

  class _:
       def __neg__(self):
           return -1
       def __sub__(self, other):
           return 1-other
You get similar behavior:

  >>> --_()
  1
  >>> _()--_()
  2
Fun python for everyone.
maxloh•1y ago
You can do this on JavaScript too.

  alert(1)
  // equals to:
  [][(![]+[])[+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]][([][(![]+[])[+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]]+[])[!+[]+!+[]+!+[]]+(!![]+[][(![]+[])[+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]])[+!+[]+[+[]]]+([][[]]+[])[+!+[]]+(![]+[])[!+[]+!+[]+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]+(!![]+[])[+!+[]]+([][[]]+[])[+[]]+([][(![]+[])[+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]]+[])[!+[]+!+[]+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]+(!![]+[][(![]+[])[+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]])[+!+[]+[+[]]]+(!![]+[])[+!+[]]]((![]+[])[+!+[]]+(![]+[])[!+[]+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[!+[]+!+[]+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]+([][(![]+[])[+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]]+[])[+!+[]+[+!+[]]]+[+!+[]]+([]+[]+[][(![]+[])[+!+[]]+(!![]+[])[+[]]])[+!+[]+[!+[]+!+[]]])()
https://jsfuck.com/
nomel•1y ago
Expanding on this a little, I will be replacing all occurrences of 2 with two blobs fighting, with shields:

    >>> 0^((...==...)--++--(...==...))^0
    2
rmah•1y ago
>> There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.

Except for package management, of course. There, we need lots and lots of ways.

blooalien•1y ago
And apparently string formatting which should have an ever growing number of ways to handle it. :shrug: