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Obviously it depends what you're working on, what your patterns are, and so on. But my experience is that PHP involves so much array wrangling that devs are more likely to have a handle on what an array will do in this context (an empty array is falsy).

It's the string ones (in particular that in addition to the empty string, "0" specifically is the only other falsy string) that tend to catch people out.


So, they didn't face any consequences. Did they at least keep the original grade or was this so well explained they also got the re-grade?

Unfortunately, I don't remember except that it seemed unjust to all the students who didn't cheat.

She certainly wasn't penalized, but I don't remember if she was given credit for her answer to Q2.

iirc, the student stopped attending my recitation after that.


The US hasn't formally declared war since World War II.

I encounter a few native Linux games from time to time on Steam, mostly indies and other smaller games. There was a time there was a medium-sized push for this, Steam was pushing it, lots of Humble and GOG stuff came out with Linux versions...

But yeah, Proton is so good now that I don't think there's much impetus to port. Test on Deck/Steam Machine/Proton, sure, but not so much port. Steam Play also handles runtime container stuff for native Linux games so that can be pretty good and stable itself, but I've definitely had situations where switching over to the Windows version via Proton is a better result than the native Linux one.


They do also run actual commercials if you're crazy enough to show up before the showtime.

AMC is also interesting because even in the "real" trailer period they have a long ad for AMC itself but also for Coke, then another for themselves telling you to sign up for the loyalty programs, then another for themselves with Nicole Kidman in the theater with her suit with the silver pinstripes. A little thing for the theater is normal but they're going way overboard with it and it's hard to believe it's really effective.


One of the joys of having Moviepass in that brief period where it was very cheap but still worked was going to random late-night showings of stuff I'd have never otherwise seen, sometimes being the only person there.

Of course you can still do that with the surviving "all you can eat" plans, but they're way more expensive and aren't quite as generous.


MoviePass was one of the most absurd ideas for a company ever. I don't know what they were thinking.

Unlimited movies and they ate the entire cost? They didn't arrange any special deals or anything - they just paid the full price of the movie. It was insane.


The idea was they'd bootstrap it by giving you a credit card that could buy one ticket (which is all it was, a weird debit/credit card with a $15-20 authorization limit and a limited number of merchants accepted) - and then get the theaters onboard so that the theaters would be paying for it.

So (in theory) it's a "win win" if they get everyone onboard - the theater gets to sell popcorn, the movie studio gets a buck or two instead of nothing, and movie pass collects the subscription.

However, it needs them all to agree that the $15 ticket for "the empty theater" is really only worth $1 - which would go to the movie studio. That part never happened.


AMC was one of the theater chains that did figure it out, but was also smart enough to realize that they didn't need the middle man and had a large enough chain to leverage. AMC A-List still exists. (Up to 4 movies per week at $23-35/month.)


This is the one I was thinking of... I didn't know of a separate "MoviePass" than what AMC and a few other theaters did that was similar.


Yeah, "MoviePass" was its own SV startup that tried to be the generic version of this pass and apply to "all" theaters. It burnt through a bunch of VC funds just to fail and it shouldn't have been a huge surprise that big chains like AMC decided to do their own similar passes on their own without a middleman.


I'd say it is indeed a huge surprise that a struggling company refused to do business with another entity which was trying to purchase tens of millions of dollars of its product.


> "smart enough"

AMC is the dumbest company (or more specifically, its CEO Adam Aron is the dumbest executive). MoviePass came in out of nowhere and became the largest purchaser of movie tickets... millions every week. And AMC actively fought against them, refused to even let them buy tickets at full price, and led the charge to drive them out of business. For what alternative? Mostly, nothing but empty seats.

AMC's stock price is $1.59 as I write this vs $50-70 while MoviePass was peaking around 2018. AMC had to do a 10-to-1 reverse stock split to avoid being delisted, they may need to do another one. They even got a brief "meme stock" spike over $250 and managed to do absolutely nothing productive (except pay the CEO more) with this new capital access.


There were also people abusing it to simply earn loyalty rewards at the theaters, e.g. people that lived close enough to theaters just going there, buying tickets, and not even seeing the movie just to pile up rewards points for free food/drink when they did actually go to see movies.


Actually, there was the kernel of a sound business idea.

The plan was that as you went to movies, you probably also went out to eat at a nearby restaurant, maybe stopped and had a drink, took transit to get there, etc. If they could hoover up all of that location- and merchant-tagged data, they could build a valuable profile for marketing.

Also, they believed that after you subscribed and gorged yourself on tons of movies for a couple months, the novelty would wear off and you'd revert to a more typical couple movies a month.

So if they could break even or make a small profit on the subscription, the data is where all the gold would be.

The problem was that they did not have the technology to gather all this info, not to mention the privacy/regulatory restrictions around essentially tracking your every movement and spend through a phone app.

There were a lot of other sketchy things about the company as well. Wall Street Millennial (a wonderfully entertaining channel) did a video on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4vmCKIXOyw


See the site for TFA... most screenings are at least half empty at most theaters and have been for decades. You have 18 screens showing 7-10 movies throughout the day, but most days people are working, or at school... most evenings are mostly empty too.

Not only that, but the bulk of the ticket charge goes to the distributer. Why NOT offer MoviePass screenings with the option to see a couple movies a week... it's the concessions that make you the money.. more butts in seats, more concessions.

Of course, many now have pretty acceptable home theater experiences... though I'd say more have large screens and sub-par audio. That changes the dynamics a lot with streaming options what they are. I don't know what the future of movie theaters is... luxury/dinner theaters are a pretty nice option, but when food costs in general are going through the roof it becomes something you just don't do as much. I mean, how much is a large popcorn and two drinks at this point? Let alone a mid-level pub meal at theater upcharge.


1 movie per day I believe FWIW. I had it briefly as well. But they kept making changes it’s hard to remember exactly what the first iteration was.


I am mostly only familiar with the AMC version of this (A-List) which I had pre-covid, but since there haven't been multiple movies I'd want to see most months at all.



They watched Silicon Valley and really liked Slice Line's business model lol...


AMC have taken to just saying outright that everything will start 25-30 minutes after the posted time. Which is interesting, I guess they're trying to blunt the negative effect of the long trailers but I'm sure the advertisers don't like it.


It being readable is the default configuration most places, after all the purpose is to call it from a non-privileged user. But I could see it being made non-readable since its use is discouraged nowadays... though then I'd expect sudo to be readable as an alternative.


My `sudo` is also not readable. Files/directories don't need to be readable to be executed. I can still use `su` and `sudo`.


Oh yeah, duh.

Still every machine I've looked at, and I've since looked at a couple more, has it r-x for world.


Not at least slapping a pixel font on there is an odd choice given the purposeful nostalgia goal.


If you slapped a pixel font in, you'd really want to rework the whole UI to not look jarring with the aliased font you'd most likely use to evoke the nostalgia, and that's a substantial rabbit hole, but also not one you necessarily need to rework the underlying functionality to do, e.g. it's easy to do later if you build it right initially.


Yeah, I want to say you could press the number keys or F keys or something like that to toggle layers on and off, and it was absolutely necessary in some misty forest/jungle/waterfall type areas.


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