Basically, but not quite. :-) The original result for b is:
0, (1, [...]), 2, 3]
vs your version:
[0, [...], 2, 3]
The equivalent statements to the original chained assignment are:
a, b = 1, [0, 1, 2, 3]
b[a] = 1, b # relies on cpython implementation detail¹
¹: Using 1 works because the integers -5 thru 256 are interned in cpython. Otherwise, or if you don't want to rely on an implementation detail, to be truly equivalent (i.e. `id(b[1][0]) == id(a)`), it's this:
I've been programming Python since 1.5.2 days and indeed, I didn't know the order of evaluation of chained assignments.
That said, it's the self-referencing list in your example that's the more confusing part. It's atypical to have self-referencing data structures, so that's something I'd comment in the design if I needed one.
I couldn't remember when I joined, but it turns out 2014 too. From that date and dang's comment below, I found the HN submission that motivated me to join:
FWIW, the context of the Franklin quote is him defending the ability of the legislature to tax a family that was trying to bribe/lobby the governor to do otherwise.
The quote is in defense of the government: WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.
That context didn't change the meaning at all for me.
Probably because Franklin most certainly thought himself to be writing on behalf of the people and was making a direct appeal that they assert their right to govern themselves rather than letting powerful private interests do as they wished.
That's not equally relevant everywhere the quote gets used, but it seems pretty relevant here, no?
the phrase fits the modern usage, even if it's been decontextualized. kinda like "who watches the watchmen?" originally being about cheating wives bribing the folks keeping her locked up in the house.
This dynamic always happens with quotes and attempts to deploy the founding fathers in arguments. Most of the founding fathers (except Thomas Paine) were terrible, horrible, no good people. I’d have been a loyalist in that era.
Maybe I'm just America Pilled but I'll support almost anyone against a hereditary monarchy. The idea should be fundamentally disgusting to any self-respecting human being.
There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy, nor any so effective at destruction as a malevolent one.
If our democracy is sufficiently broken, if supermajority voter policy preferences continue to be dismissed by both parties, it might be that we just cannot survive under the old Constitutional order. The Right's open move towards a post-democratic future, and the proceduralist Center's continued failure to fully utilize their popular mandate to fix things that need fixing, implicitly authorizes a Left to develop that is more obsessed with expression of the popular will and with good governance, than it is with a 250 year old bureaucratic structure and "norms". Norms of restraint are a consensual exercise, and cannot persist unilaterally.
The way things are going, the trajectory, make even most 20th century hereditary monarchies look pretty decent. Especially ones that devolve most power to parliamentary bodies.
> There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy
Autocracies have lots of issues around eg building a sufficiently capable bureaucracy that isn't too corrupt to do things. It can make it harder, not easier. Democracy can lean on democratic legitimacy, constitutional traditions, and a history of allowing power transitions without anyone losing their heads or launching a civil war over it. Those are all really useful things that autocracies have to cope without. It's not like it's easy mode.
All of those can be mooted by the sort of dysfunction currently on offer.
Almost every bill for the past 15 years has been filibustered. More than half the Supreme Court is part of an organized partisan conspiracy, and a third has worked specifically fighting election laws to advantage their guy. The DHS stands as a rogue paramilitary that can be deployed when politically convenient as de facto martial law, the DOJ openly persecuting ethnically defined political opponents and daring Congress to do anything about it, when they're not trying to charge Congresspeople with crimes. People are being disappeared into concentration camps. We are unilaterally withdrawing from the military and economic empire that has served us since the 1940's, in the name of ethnic hatreds and Hitlerian brinksmanship. The economy now has more to do with the Fed chair than any pathetic exchange of goods and services we can string together.
This doesn't end well, and it's broken enough already that a return to Biden/Obama/Clinton type leadership couldn't possibly hope to fix it unless they can lock down leadership for the next couple generations; More damage can be done in a month than they can fix in four years. "Just win every election from now until the end of time" isn't a real strategy.
I don't know what comes next, but if we choose to burn the house down today rather than practice good maintenance, the next homeowner cannot succeed by employing good maintenance.
Similarly, if the neighbor burns your house down deliberately because he hates you, and you start the rebuild process without doing anything about your neighbor's existence, you shouldn't be surprised if you end up with more ashes.
> There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy
This is untrue.
The world is so complex that a single person or group can adapt and develop fast enough. We've seen what happens to planned economies. Their ineffectiveness is not due to malevolence.
Distribution of power not only serves as a protection to autocratic takeover but allows the system to be more flexible. The concentration of power can make some things more efficient but you trade flexibility.
̶N̶e̶t̶s̶c̶a̶p̶e̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶i̶m̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶G̶I̶F̶s̶. Edit: Netscape added looping to animated GIFs per reply. She apparently led that effort. The press is misreporting her actions as having invented GIF in the first place, which is wrong. That happened at CompuServe in 1987.
GIFs already had animation. Netscape added an animation loop counter.
For a rough idea of the complexity involved, when I wrote a GIF decoder and renderer a few decades ago, implementing the loop counter extension took me about 10 minutes.
It varies by city. In some cities, mayor is barely more than a figurehead.
But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater.
Mamdani in particular is a celebrity right now, and with the reputation of the Democratic party in shambles, many eyes are on him.
> But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater.
The only "greater" things any recent NYC mayors have done are bankrolling presidential campaigns and failed coup attempts.
Looking back at it, the last NYC mayor who held a notable political position after their mayoral term was Robert Wagner.
In fact, the last mayor I can find who served in a superior political office after their mayoralty was John T Hoffman, who was mayor from 1866-1868 and then NY Governor from 1869-1872.
> WWVB clocks running off the 60KHz pretty much solve the clock problem in the US.
YMMV depending upon location. I've never gotten a WWVB clock to work in North Carolina. On the East Coast, the signal maybe sorta works for a few hours overnight:
T̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶D̶S̶T̶ ̶a̶u̶t̶o̶m̶a̶t̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶p̶u̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶w̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶u̶n̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶U̶S̶ ̶l̶o̶c̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶d̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶D̶S̶T̶ ̶s̶i̶l̶l̶i̶n̶e̶s̶s̶. Edit: My bad, they can switch in/out of DST automatically, at least when they can work at all.
I have a few WWVB clocks. The ones that are on the north/south walls will never sync on their own, but east/west walls will sync just fine. I just take down the north/south clocks twice a year and lean them on a west facing wall and they'll sync overnight.
I think that most WWVB clocks just don't have the size to have an omni-directional antenna.
If I have to take the clock off the wall and move it outside, I may as well set it by hand. In any case, I've tried leaving one outside facing west and it still doesn't work. I've literally never had one of these clocks work from NC.
Meanwhile, the WiFi NTP clock I purchased just works, like I always hoped the WWVB clocks would have.
We do, but I've never had a WWVB clock work for me in North Carolina. I've tried a few of them. The US is a big place and for whatever reason, there aren't that many clock signal transmission towers (AFAIK, the only one in the US is in Colorado).
This is great. I spent years looking for an affordable battery-powered WiFi clock that syncs via NTP since where I am, the WWVB clocks never pick up the radio signal.
I never considered making my own. Anyway, about two years ago this option popped up on Amazon. I've been happy with it:
Thanks for sharing this. I, too, have spent years trying to find an analog-style clock that is completely hands-off for adjustments (power outage, DST, drift correction) and it looks like this one handles it all.
It feels like in 2026 this should be something default and assumable, but alas, it is not.
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