131–140 of 190 posts
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Designed by Porsche, built by VW. Called plain "Porsche" in the U. S., "VW-Porsche" everywhere else.
The 914/4 was a four cylinder VW built by Karman, the 914/6 a six cylinder built by Porsche in Zuffenhausen.
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I was told this was a potential last-ditch way to escape if you stalled while crossing railroad tracks. In hindsight, stalling while crossing railroad tracks, like quicksand, is a much less common danger in adulthood than I was lead to believe as a younger person.
what's the thing with quicksand? I was born in 1980 and it seemed people would get stuck in quicksand on tv regularly when I was a kid, but it seems a kind of danger that has almost disappeared from the collective narrative. Why was it popular before? Why isn't it anymore? This baffles me.
TV Tropes suggests the idea whilst even existing in fiction for hundred of years before TV, is now "discredited".
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Personally I prefer more interesting madcap cultural theories. Here's one from the top of my head:
Quicksand refers to anxiety about the natural world from an increasingly urbanised and ecologically disconnected population. Or maybe Quicksand represents an increasing urban populations attitude towards nature. It represents the opposite of a safe, technology, capitalist, consumerist industrial world of the post WW2 era. Nature was literally seen as hostile. Nature can make a person stuck, capture them, and kill them. It's allied with getting lost in the woods stories, a trope which emphasizes both physical and existential disorientation in the face of nature's indifference
Quicksand on TV existed throughout the early ecological hippy inspired new age of the late 20th century but the seeds were being sown. This changed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as we witnessed the convergence of environmental concerns (e.g. plastic bags, straws, global warming) with the logic of neoliberal capitalism, together with an increase in bureaucratic management on behalf of people. Nature is not scary but something to be protected from harm. Nature is reconfigured from a place of danger to a place of stewardship. Avatar, the movie represents the change the most.
Thus, the role of cities and technology as agents of death and destruction have changed. It is not nature that entraps or destroys, but rather the infrastructures of urbanization, capitalism, and technological progress. Ironically this valorisation of nature is happening at the same time as increasingly technological manipulation of the rural environment - mechanisation of farming, house building, terraforming, weather modification. Nature is no longer wild, is not even tame, it's another resource to be shaped and used.
Quicksand not only is discredited as being inaccurate, it's ideologically impossible for nature to be dangerous anymore.
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These kinds of histrionics are really uncalled for. Virtual environments are easy to work with. https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-envi... is a solid tutorial.
Virtual environments are an incomplete solution at best. In particular, they really don't help much with the use case of wanting to install a tool : if you're installing a tool and not just setting up a development environment for working on a specific project with its dependencies, then you probably want to make that tool usable without activating its venv. The virtual environment capabilities shipped with Python it…
You can `uv tool install your_package`, add a dir to your PATH, and then you can launch the tool appropriately, with it installed in its own venv
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Virtual environments are an incomplete solution at best. In particular, they really don't help much with the use case of wanting to install a tool : if you're installing a tool and not just setting up a development environment for working on a specific project with its dependencies, then you probably want to make that tool usable without activating its venv. The virtual environment capabilities shipped with Python it…
I don't get it. Then you just install the tool outside of venv? then it's installed for your user account.
One thing you can do (I'm not saying it's user friendly) is set up the tool in a virtualenv and then set up an alias like
alias foo-tool=/home/blah blah/tools/something/env/bin/python -m foo-toolI feel like this could be adopted for your homegrown "whatever" framework (eg: UI framework, Auth framework, …) Congratulations on getting hired to this team! You probably count yourself lucky, but don't. We had been trying to fill this role for the past 5 months and every candidate would run away as soon as we showed them our homegrown auth framework. But don't run yet please, do give it a try. So, you are still her…
> Make sure you don't have anything else relying on Python because they will probably never work again. This is why when I see some clever open source tool discussed on HN and I go to the repo and see it's written in Python I close the browser window and pretend I never saw it. Yes I know there are ways to protect yourself when using Python in much the same way that lead-lined glove boxes protect you when working wit…
I stick with Python.org packages for macOS, and the official Python packages on Ubuntu, and everything seems to work just fine.
I feel like this could be adopted for your homegrown "whatever" framework (eg: UI framework, Auth framework, …) Congratulations on getting hired to this team! You probably count yourself lucky, but don't. We had been trying to fill this role for the past 5 months and every candidate would run away as soon as we showed them our homegrown auth framework. But don't run yet please, do give it a try. So, you are still her…
> Make sure you don't have anything else relying on Python because they will probably never work again. This is why when I see some clever open source tool discussed on HN and I go to the repo and see it's written in Python I close the browser window and pretend I never saw it. Yes I know there are ways to protect yourself when using Python in much the same way that lead-lined glove boxes protect you when working wit…
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> Make sure you don't have anything else relying on Python because they will probably never work again. This is why when I see some clever open source tool discussed on HN and I go to the repo and see it's written in Python I close the browser window and pretend I never saw it. Yes I know there are ways to protect yourself when using Python in much the same way that lead-lined glove boxes protect you when working wit…
Is Python still that bad? I remember the big problems were during the Python 2 -> Python 3 transition, but in the last few years I've managed to get away with a single Python install and haven't really had any compatibility issues. I stick with Python.org packages for macOS, and the official Python packages on Ubuntu, and everything seems to work just fine.
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Virtual environments are an incomplete solution at best. In particular, they really don't help much with the use case of wanting to install a tool : if you're installing a tool and not just setting up a development environment for working on a specific project with its dependencies, then you probably want to make that tool usable without activating its venv. The virtual environment capabilities shipped with Python it…
I don't get it. Then you just install the tool outside of venv? then it's installed for your user account.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get it. Then you just install the tool outside of venv? then it's installed for your user account.
But then all the tool's dependencies have to play nice with the dependencies of all your other unrelated Python-based tools. One thing you can do (I'm not saying it's user friendly) is set up the tool in a virtualenv and then set up an alias like alias foo-tool=/home/blah blah/tools/something/env/bin/python -m foo-tool