47 of Python's core developers participated in this year's Core Development Sprint, according to this report — "but what's more important is the very real and necessary community building that seemed to have taken place..." It's an especially critical time for Python, which switched to a steering council model in February of 2019, after Guido van Rossum had stepped down as the language's "benevolent dictator for life...." [During the Python Steering Council and Core Developer Q&A] core developer Ned Deily asked a question which had probably been on everyone's minds: how is the steering council experience working, now that van Rossum is no longer serving as the language's benevolent overseer? And core developer/councilmember Carol Willing was the first to respond. "I've been involved in a lot of governance organizations, and I would say the Steering Council has been towards the top in terms of sticking to the agenda and being thoughtful and collaborative in how things are working." They meet every week for an hour — with a pre-set agenda — and "in general, I think it's working quite well. If there's anything I take away from it, it's I'm amazed that Guido was able to do this function as a single person for as long as he had been. Because it's a lot of work, even amongst five people...." Core developer/councilmember Barry Warsaw agreed. "A couple of us have been on the Steering Council since its inception. And there was a lot of things that the governance PEPs didn't really cover. So we really had to figure out the process for a number of things. I couldn't be more happy to work with both the first year of Steering Council members, and this year of Steering Council members. I think everybody is doing this for the right reasons — because we love Python, and we love the Python community..." Deily agreed with their assessments. "My impression is things are going really well, better than might be expected. I was very proud how we as a community met the challenge of coming up with a governance, kind of from scratch. And I think — I don't know for sure all of Guido's motivation for doing it, but I think in a lot of ways he did it the right way, just kind of forced the community to come up with things. And I think all in all that worked out really well...." About 48 minutes in, there was a question from van Rossum himself about the issue tracker at Bugs.python.org (affectionately known as "BPO"). "So I'm desperately curious about the status of the BPO to GitHub migration." He paused, then asked delicately, "Uh, how much is the Steering Council willing to share of what they know, and how much do you actually know?" Cannon responded, talking about the group hired to run it, and thanking the groups whose donations had funded it. And then Deily suggested van Rossum volunteer for the working group, "because it's going to affect all of us." van Rossum asked if it would be appropriate if he volunteered, everyone agreed, and he responded, "Okay, I'm game."

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Facebook's employees and executives "are battling over how to reduce misinformation and hate speech without hurting the company's bottom line," reports the New York Times, after employees had spotted false and misleading election-related misinformation going viral on the site. The solution? Make temporary changes to the controversial algorithm "which helps determine what more than two billion people see every day" by highlighting "big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart and Occupy Democrats, became less visible, the employees said." The Wrap reports: Zuckerberg's decision came after Facebook employees, seeing President Trump claim the election was rigged against him, "proposed an emergency change" to make "authoritative news" more prominent. It's unclear how long the changes were in place for, but they appear to have ended. Facebook vice president Guy Rosen told the Times "there has never been a plan to make these permanent...." Since making the changes a few weeks ago, some Facebook employees have pushed for the "nicer" News Feed to become permanent, the report added. The New York Times argues the incident "illustrates a central tension that some inside Facebook are feeling acutely these days: that the company's aspirations of improving the world are often at odds with its desire for dominance.... "Even as Election Day and its aftermath have passed with few incidents, some disillusioned employees have quit, saying they could no longer stomach working for a company whose products they considered harmful."

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"PHP version 8.0 has arrived, bringing with it a major update to the 25-year-old programming language..." writes Tech Republic. New language features include the nullsafe operator and attributes (commonly known as annotations in other languages) to add metadata to classes — and more: The JIT compiler is designed to bring performance improvements to web applications by turning code into instructions for the CPU at runtime. Meanwhile, union types is a feature that allows data of more than one type to be held by a variable. Named arguments allow developers to assign values to a function by specifying the value name, allowing optional parameters to be ignored. Alongside these, version 8.0 of PHP brings optimizations and enhancements to the language's type system, syntax, error handling and consistency.... Commenting on PHP 8.0, PHP programmer and stitcher.io developer, Brent Roose, noted that the latest version of the language may require developers to review code for any breaking changes.

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If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own.

We've wasted a shitload time repeatedly "learning" about the personality of an asshole foisted on us by the shitheads who voted for him. There's a certain symmetry to it.

More Americans travelled Wednesday than on any other day in the last eight months — 1.1 million Americans — continuing the country's long-standing annual tradition of gathering to give thanks. The same week the Pope apparently felt compelled to publish an opinion piece in one of the country's largest newspapers to share his own thoughts about the pandemic. First, the Pope remembered life-saving medical procedures he'd had when he was 20 — including a wise nurse who'd doubled a dosage recommended by a doctor "because she knew from experience I was dying... Because of her regular contact with sick people, she understood better than the doctor what they needed, and she had the courage to act on her knowledge." And he also remembers another nurse who'd prescribed him extra painkillers for intense pain. "They taught me what it is to use science but also to know when to go beyond it to meet particular needs. And the serious illness I lived through taught me to depend on the goodness and wisdom of others. This theme of helping others has stayed with me these past months." Then he points out the great sacrifices made during the pandemic by doctors, nurses, and caregivers: Whether or not they were conscious of it, their choice testified to a belief: that it is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call. That's why, in many countries, people stood at their windows or on their doorsteps to applaud them in gratitude and awe. They are the saints next door, who have awakened something important in our hearts, making credible once more what we desire to instill by our preaching. They are the antibodies to the virus of indifference... He contrasts this with groups opposing government measures protecting the public health: [S]ome groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate. It is all too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom — and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything... Our fears are exacerbated and exploited by a certain kind of populist politics that seeks power over society. It is hard to build a culture of encounter, in which we meet as people with a shared dignity, within a throwaway culture that regards the well-being of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and the unborn as peripheral to our own well-being. To come out of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity. Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More Americans travelled Wednesday than on any other day in the last eight months — 1.1 million Americans — continuing the country's long-standing annual tradition of gathering to give thanks. The same week the Pope apparently felt compelled to publish an opinion piece in one of the country's largest newspapers to share his own thoughts about the pandemic. First, the Pope remembered life-saving medical procedures he'd had when he was 20 — including a wise nurse who'd doubled a dosage recommended by a doctor "because she knew from experience I was dying... Because of her regular contact with sick people, she understood better than the doctor what they needed, and she had the courage to act on her knowledge." And he also remembers another nurse who'd prescribed him extra painkillers for intense pain. "They taught me what it is to use science but also to know when to go beyond it to meet particular needs. And the serious illness I lived through taught me to depend on the goodness and wisdom of others. This theme of helping others has stayed with me these past months." Then he points out the great sacrifices made during the pandemic by doctors, nurses, and caregivers: Whether or not they were conscious of it, their choice testified to a belief: that it is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call. That's why, in many countries, people stood at their windows or on their doorsteps to applaud them in gratitude and awe. They are the saints next door, who have awakened something important in our hearts, making credible once more what we desire to instill by our preaching. They are the antibodies to the virus of indifference... He contrasts this with groups opposing government measures protecting the public health: [S]ome groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate. It is all too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom — and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything... Our fears are exacerbated and exploited by a certain kind of populist politics that seeks power over society. It is hard to build a culture of encounter, in which we meet as people with a shared dignity, within a throwaway culture that regards the well-being of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and the unborn as peripheral to our own well-being. To come out of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity. Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DevNull127 writes: Earlier this year the governor's order had "restricted the size of religious gatherings in certain areas of New York where infection rates were climbing," reports the New York Times. But Wednesday night (in a close 5 to 4 decision) America's highest court ruled against the governor — and in favor of two religious organizations challenging him. "[T]hey tell us without contradiction that they have complied with all public health guidance, have implemented additional precautionary measures, and have operated at 25% or 33% capacity for months without a single outbreak," the ruling points out. CNN notes that the court's majority believed that the governor's enjoined regulations were "'far more restrictive than any Covid-related regulations that have previously come before the court, much tighter than those adopted by many other jurisdictions hard hit by the pandemic, and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus' at the religious services in question." The Times concludes that "If unconstrained religious observance and public safety were sometimes at odds, as the governor and other public officials maintained, the court ruled that religious freedom should win out." Jeffrey D. Sachs, a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, argues the court's ruling "proved the dangers of scientifically illiterate judges overturning government decisions that were based on scientific evidence."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A reminder from late October, the Dems must be worse than the Repubs.

I’ve been right about a lot when it comes to networking our culture and politics. I’m sure I’m right about where politics needs to go, and have been waiting for decades for the Democratic Party to take a risk and try to win against the lunacy of Repubs.

I’ve been right about a lot when it comes to networking our culture and politics. I’m sure I’m right about where politics needs to go, and have been waiting for decades for the Democratic Party to take a risk and try to win against the lunacy of Repubs.

For journalism, the Trump cash cow era is over. He’s like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz, dissolving into a puddle of ooze, self-pity and depression.

I'm in the middle of The Undoing, an HBO miniseries. It's not terrible. After the second episode I wondered if it was worth it, so I asked on Twitter and was told other people felt the same. But there's a quality to HBO dramas that you don't see elsewhere. The stars, acting, music, everything is first-rate, even the writing, even if the plot is just so-so. The series finale is tomorrow night. I expect there will be a surprise in the end, if not, the time won't have been totally wasted. Nicole Kidman is fun to watch, and Donald Sutherland, as her father, is still Donald Sutherland.

There's a controversy on Twitter, a disagreement between tech and journalism as to whether people and companies should speak for themselves. The reporters generally say it's "tone deaf" to do so -- the reporters are going to nail you anyway. That's such nonsense. We do so many things, create so much good, and reporters' ability to judge it is so limited. Paul Graham, who I rarely agree with (sorry) said something I totally agree with, citing several founders. It's a familiar theme to readers of this blog. Sources Go Direct. Here's what I tweeted: "My own experience supports Paul Graham's advice. If you depend on journalism to let you do the great thing you’re doing, if they didn’t think of it first it’ll never happen. By going around them I was able to make blogging and podcasting happen. Create the media you need." That last sentence may be another motto in the making.

Not much in the way of sports happening now. In normal years this would be NBA season, and I'd be hunkered down in front of the TV zoning out. Never been much of an NFL fan, and this year it's ridiculous. So many games canceled due to virus outbreaks.