Pass
Pass is a lightweight, command-line password manager for Unix-like operating systems, adhering to Unix philosophy by storing passwords as GPG-encrypted plain-text files in a hierarchical directory structure under~/.password-store.[1] It supports operations such as adding, editing, generating, retrieving, and removing passwords via simple shell commands, with built-in clipboard integration for temporary access and optional Git versioning for change tracking and backups.[1] Developed by Jason A. Donenfeld and licensed under the GNU GPLv2 or later, Pass integrates seamlessly with tools like GPG for encryption and provides extensions for features like QR code generation or passphrase creation, making it a standard choice for users prioritizing minimalism, security through encryption, and scriptability over graphical interfaces.[1] Its design avoids proprietary dependencies, enabling broad compatibility across Linux, BSD, and macOS environments while fostering community contributions through a mailing list and IRC.[1]
Geography
Mountain passes and landforms
A mountain pass constitutes a gap or break in a mountain ridge or range, providing a navigable route through otherwise impassable terrain. These features primarily form through erosional processes, where glaciers, streams, or rivers wear away rock and sediment between peaks, often exploiting weaknesses in tectonically uplifted structures. Tectonic forces first elevate mountain ranges via plate collisions or crustal compression, creating the raw topography, after which prolonged erosion—driven by water flow, ice abrasion, and gravity—sculpts lower saddles or cols suitable for human traversal.[2][3][4] Prominent examples illustrate the interplay of geological formation and historical utility. The Brenner Pass, traversing the Alps between Austria and Italy at 1,370 meters elevation, exemplifies glacial and fluvial erosion in a tectonically active fold-thrust belt; its relatively low gradient has enabled its use as a trade conduit since Roman legions exploited it around 15 BCE for military logistics and commerce southward to the Mediterranean. By the Middle Ages, it integrated into the Via Imperialis network, sustaining trans-Alpine exchange of goods like salt and metals, with modern infrastructure including a railway completed in 1867 underscoring its enduring accessibility despite seasonal snowpack.[5][6][7] In the Hindu Kush, the Khyber Pass—eroded by ancient river systems through resistant metamorphic rocks—links Afghanistan's Kabul region to Pakistan's Peshawar at approximately 1,074 meters, serving as a chokepoint for migrations, trade along the Silk Road, and invasions dating to Alexander the Great's crossing in 327 BCE. Its narrow defiles, averaging 1-2 kilometers wide with sheer cliffs, have repeatedly funneled armies into the Indian subcontinent, amplifying defensive advantages for local forces while exposing invaders to ambushes, as seen in Persian, Mughal, and British campaigns where control of the pass determined logistical feasibility.[8][9] Higher-altitude passes highlight extreme erosional limits in younger orogenic belts. Thorong La Pass in Nepal's Annapurna region, at 5,416 meters, represents glacial scouring in the Himalayan arc formed by Indo-Eurasian plate convergence; it forms the apex of the Annapurna Circuit trek, where thin air and avalanche-prone slopes demand precise timing, yet its formation via Pleistocene ice flows created a viable saddle between the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri massifs. Strategically, such elevations historically constrained mass migrations to elite or acclimatized groups, with passes acting as natural filters in trade and conflict by imposing altitude sickness risks and seasonal closures on unprepared forces.[10][11][12]Settlements and regions
Pass Christian, a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, lies along the Gulf Coast, where its name originates from a navigable deepwater channel separating the mainland from Cat Island, initially designated Passe aux Huîtres by French-Canadian explorers in 1699 for the profusion of oyster reefs that marked the coastal geography and supported early maritime activity.[13] The "Christian" suffix commemorates Nicholas Christian Ladner, a French-Canadian settler and sailor whose colonial-era activities in the vicinity tied settlement to the pass's strategic waterway features.[14] The 2020 U.S. Census recorded a population of 5,686, indicating modest growth from 6,307 in 2000 despite devastation from Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005, which produced the U.S.-recorded highest storm surge of 27.8 feet and destroyed much of the waterfront, yet spurred resilient reconstruction through community cohesion and federal aid, restoring economic reliance on tourism, fishing, and harbor operations.[15][16] Passaic, a city in northeastern New Jersey, derives its name from the adjacent Passaic River, stemming from the Lenape pahsayèk, denoting a valley or bifurcation in the terrain, accurately reflecting the river's course through a geological rift that colonial surveys from the 1670s onward mapped for Dutch settlement patterns and industrial potential. Originally known as Acquackanonk under Dutch patent in 1678, the area's toponymy shifted to emphasize the river's dividing geography, facilitating early mills and later textile factories. The 2020 U.S. Census reported 70,537 residents, a decline from 69,781 in 2010, amid ongoing urban density and economic shifts from manufacturing to services in this river-valley hub.[17]Permissions and access
Travel and transit documents
Boarding passes serve as critical transit documents in air travel, confirming a passenger's reservation, seat assignment, and eligibility to board following security verification. Issued digitally or in paper form after check-in, they integrate with identity checks to enforce post-September 11, 2001, protocols established by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which mandated enhanced screening to prevent unauthorized access to aircraft. Prior to these measures, no boarding pass or government-issued ID was required to reach aircraft gates, allowing broader public entry to terminals.[18][19] This evolution reflects logistical necessities for border-like controls within aviation, where serialized barcodes or QR codes on boarding passes facilitate fraud reduction through real-time validation against airline manifests and passenger manifests. In public transportation systems, transit passes authorize repeated access to buses, trains, and subways, optimizing fare collection and movement efficiency. London's Oyster card, a contactless smart card introduced on June 30, 2003, by Transport for London, exemplifies this by enabling pay-as-you-go deductions with daily and weekly fare capping, replacing paper tickets that were prone to loss or duplication. These passes incorporate embedded radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips with unique serial numbers, allowing operators to track usage and prevent revenue loss from counterfeit or shared tickets, a common issue in analog systems.[20] Similar monthly or multi-ride passes in other networks, such as those for U.S. bus systems, provide unlimited travel for a fixed period, grounded in economic incentives to boost ridership while maintaining verifiable access logs.[21] Hall passes function as internal transit documents in educational institutions, granting students temporary permission to move unsupervised through hallways during instructional time for purposes like restroom visits or administrative errands. Typically issued as paper slips or digital approvals by teachers, they enforce disciplinary oversight by documenting absences from classrooms, thereby minimizing disruptions and unauthorized wandering.[22] This practice stems from institutional needs for controlled circulation in shared spaces, with modern variants incorporating digital tracking to enhance accountability and reduce misuse, akin to broader transit verification principles.[23]Authorizations and privileges
Authorizations and privileges, often manifested as specialized passes or permits, enable selective entry to restricted domains or exemptions from standard oversight, balancing security needs against individual rights. Backstage passes, for instance, serve as credentials granting access to performer areas at concerts or theaters, typically issued to staff, VIPs, or purchasers of premium tickets, thereby controlling crowds while facilitating exclusive interactions.[24] These passes exemplify tiered privileges, where higher payment levels—such as all-access laminates—afford broader backstage mobility, underscoring how market-driven allocations can efficiently manage access without blanket prohibitions.[25] In media contexts, "free passes" denote instances where journalists withhold criticism of certain figures or entities, effectively granting unearned exemptions from scrutiny, a practice critics attribute to cronyism rather than journalistic rigor. Such leniency has been observed in coverage favoring aligned political actors, allowing policy failures or ethical lapses to evade accountability, which erodes public trust when empirical inconsistencies in reporting emerge.[26] This form of privilege highlights risks of institutional bias, where source affiliations influence narrative framing over factual dissection, deviating from first-principles demands for consistent evidentiary standards across subjects.[27] Concealed carry permits, functioning as regulatory "passes" in various U.S. jurisdictions, authorize law-abiding individuals to bear firearms for self-defense, rooted in the extension of property rights to personal protection against aggression. Empirical analyses, including John Lott's county-level data from 1977 to 1992, demonstrate that shall-issue concealed carry laws—which mandate approval for qualified applicants—correlate with reductions in violent crime rates, such as a 5-8% drop in murders and 7% in aggravated assaults per additional percentage point of permit holders.[28][29] These findings persist across updated studies, attributing deterrence to criminals' uncertainty about armed victims, without evidence of heightened accidental shootings or escalations.[30] Discretionary "may-issue" regimes, by contrast, exemplify overregulation, as officials subjectively deny permits to eligible citizens, thereby restricting mobility and self-defense capabilities absent proportional safety benefits. Data from right-to-carry expansions show no causal uptick in crime from eased permitting, challenging assumptions of universal peril from armed civilians and revealing how such barriers infringe on causal chains of effective deterrence without empirical justification.[31] This regulatory friction prioritizes administrative control over verifiable risk reduction, aligning self-defense privileges more closely with inherent rights to preserve life and property than with precautionary restrictions lacking substantiation.[32]Education and evaluation
Academic and testing outcomes
In academic assessments, passing typically denotes achieving a minimum competency threshold, often set at 60-70% of total points in U.S. educational systems, with 70% serving as a common benchmark for a C grade or equivalent in many institutions.[33][34] This standard reflects an absolute mastery requirement rather than relative performance, though variations exist; for instance, some colleges accept 65% as passing while high school alignments may hold at 60%.[35] Pass/fail grading systems, by contrast, incentivize minimal effort sufficient for the threshold, potentially reducing deeper engagement compared to letter-graded formats that reward excellence through differentiation. Empirical studies indicate that mandatory pass/fail policies correlate with diminished student effort and lower performance in affected courses, as students sort into less rigorous options or exert reduced instructional quality without grade incentives.[36][37] Rigorous, merit-based grading promotes advancement based on verifiable skill acquisition, whereas normalized leniency in pass rates—often exceeding 80-90% in professional licensure exams—may mask competency gaps by prioritizing progression over mastery.[38] In standardized testing, such as the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN), passing requires demonstrating entry-level proficiency via computer-adaptive questions, with 2024 first-time U.S.-educated candidate pass rates at 82.19%, down slightly from pre-2023 averages amid Next Generation NCLEX updates emphasizing clinical judgment.[39][40] High aggregate pass rates, sustained above 70% overall, reflect adaptive difficulty adjustments ensuring no fixed percentage passes, yet longitudinal data reveal potential dilution: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) long-term trend reading scores for 9-year-olds declined 5 points from 2020 to 2022—the largest drop since 1990—amid broader post-2010s softening of standards.[41][42] These trends suggest that elevated pass thresholds, while facilitating access, coincide with empirical evidence of eroding foundational skills, underscoring the tension between inclusivity and rigorous evaluation.[43]Grading systems
Grading systems incorporating a "pass" designation often employ binary or threshold-based evaluations, where achievement is categorized as sufficient for progression ("pass") or insufficient ("fail"), contrasting with scaled systems that differentiate levels of performance. These frameworks prioritize completion and basic competency over nuanced excellence, with empirical evidence indicating reduced student stress but potential trade-offs in motivational depth and long-term outcomes.[44][45] In higher education, pass/fail options emerged as responses to competitive pressures, exemplified by Harvard University's introduction of an elective pass/fail system in December 1967, allowing students to opt for Pass (equivalent to A through D-) or Fail (E) in up to four courses per year while retaining letter grades elsewhere. This reform aimed to alleviate grade obsession and foster broader intellectual engagement, yet faculty critiques highlighted risks of diminished rigor, as pass/fail obscured performance distinctions needed for graduate admissions and professional evaluations. Studies on similar systems, such as in medical education, confirm pass/fail grading lowers anxiety and enhances group cohesion without harming core academic performance, though it may complicate competitive selections like residencies by limiting granular feedback on excellence.[46][47][45] Internationally, the United Kingdom's GCSE reforms phased in numerical grading from 2017, replacing letters A*-G with 9-1 scales where grade 4 denotes a standard pass (roughly equivalent to prior C) and 5 a strong pass, intended to raise standards and better signal readiness for further study. In 2017, the proportion of entries achieving grade 4 or above fell to 66.3% from 66.9% the previous year under the old system, reflecting tougher assessments, while progression to A-levels showed 70.7% of 16-year-olds attaining at least five passes including English and maths. This threshold approach ensures minimum competency for vocational or academic advancement but has widened attainment gaps, with disadvantaged pupils experiencing sharper declines in pass rates across subjects.[48][49][50] From causal analysis, binary pass systems incentivize threshold compliance over superior achievement, as students allocate effort to secure passage rather than surpass peers, corroborated by research showing graded scales foster greater intrinsic motivation for high performance compared to pass/fail, which correlates with reduced surface learning avoidance but no uplift in subsequent academic metrics. Empirical comparisons reveal that while pass/fail mitigates short-term stress—evident in lower anxiety scores and higher well-being— it yields lower innovation proxies like patent outputs or elite placements in cohorts favoring minimal standards, underscoring how scaled differentiation drives excellence by rewarding marginal gains beyond adequacy.[51][52][53]Law and governance
Legislative processes
In the United States, the legislative process for passing a bill requires securing a majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as outlined in Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, followed by presidential approval or a two-thirds override of a veto in both chambers. This bicameral structure serves as a check against hasty enactment, with empirical data showing that fewer than 5% of introduced bills become law across recent Congresses, reflecting deliberate inefficiency to allow for scrutiny and amendment.[54] For instance, in the 118th Congress (2023-2024), only about 0.37% of introduced bills had enacted into law by mid-term, underscoring how the process filters out most proposals through debate and partisan opposition.[55] Presidential vetoes provide an additional layer of restraint, with historical records indicating 2,597 vetoes from 1789 to the present, though Congress has overridden only a small fraction—approximately 7% of regular vetoes—demonstrating the high threshold for overrides that preserves executive input on fiscal and policy matters.[56] Partisan gridlock often amplifies this filtering effect; the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 exemplifies a rare successful passage via budget reconciliation, which bypassed the Senate filibuster after initial House approval on March 21, 2010, and Senate passage of the base bill on December 24, 2009, culminating in presidential signature on March 23, 2010.[57] Subsequent repeal efforts, including over 60 attempts from 2011 to 2017, largely failed due to insufficient Senate votes, illustrating how divided government enforces fiscal caution by blocking expansive reversals without broad consensus.[58] This low enactment rate—contrasting with state legislatures where passage exceeds 10% on average—positions federal inefficiency not as a flaw but as a designed bulwark against unchecked expansion, prioritizing deliberation over volume in enacting binding laws.[59] In other parliamentary systems, such as the United Kingdom, "passing" similarly demands majority support in the House of Commons and Lords review, though without a formal veto, yet empirical outcomes show comparable selectivity, with under 10% of introduced bills reaching royal assent in recent sessions.Judicial and administrative actions
In judicial proceedings, to "pass judgment" refers to a court's formal rendering of a verdict or decision based on evidence and law.[60] Appellate courts, for example, pass judgment by reviewing lower court rulings, either upholding them or overturning them in light of precedents. A landmark instance occurred on June 13, 1966, when the U.S. Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona passed judgment in a 5-4 decision, holding that custodial interrogations require informing suspects of their rights to silence and counsel to protect against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment.[61] [62] This ruling overturned Ernesto Miranda's conviction and established the Miranda warnings as a procedural safeguard, influencing subsequent cases where courts have passed judgment on compliance with these requirements.[63] Administrative actions involving a "pass" typically encompass bureaucratic approvals, such as zoning variances or permitting decisions, where applications must clear regulatory hurdles to proceed. These processes often entail multi-stage reviews by agencies, with "passing" signifying compliance and authorization. However, empirical analyses reveal that extended delays in such approvals—sometimes spanning months or years due to fragmented coordination and litigation—exacerbate housing shortages by inflating costs and constraining supply.[64] [65] For instance, economists Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko's research quantifies that zoning and land-use regulations, rather than raw construction expenses, dominate housing price escalation, with restrictive permitting acting as a barrier to new development in high-demand areas.[66] Such delays reflect instances of regulatory overreach, where procedural requirements outpace evidence-based efficiency, correlating with reduced housing output as documented in studies of U.S. markets.[67]Sports and games
Athletic maneuvers
In American football, the forward pass, legalized in 1906 to curb excessive injuries from mass formations, enabled aerial attacks that diversified tactics beyond linear rushing, with early implementations like George Parratt's completion on October 27, 1906, for the Massillon Tigers marking pro football's adoption.[68] This technique demands synchronized blocking, route precision, and quarterback decision-making under pressure, as incomplete passes risk turnovers or stalled drives. In the 2024 NFL season, league-wide completion rates averaged 65.3%, reflecting advancements in protection schemes and receiver separation but also persistent challenges from defensive coverage.[69] Soccer's assist pass constitutes the conclusive touch—typically a through ball, cross, or header—by a teammate that sets up the goal scorer without intermediary deflections altering intent, per Opta standards used in FIFA-sanctioned competitions.[70] Execution prioritizes vision, weight control, and timing to exploit defensive gaps, often in transition phases where numerical advantages emerge. While individuals like Lionel Messi have amassed 398 career assists across club and international play as of October 2025, such outputs depend on systemic support rather than isolated brilliance.[71] Team-level pass accuracy exhibits robust correlation with victories across both sports, prioritizing collective execution over star dependency. In soccer, squads sustaining above 80% completion frequently secure top league positions, as higher accuracy facilitates sustained possession and chance creation, with winning teams outperforming losers by metrics like shots on target tied to passing efficacy.[72] [73] NFL data reinforces this, where offensive passing efficiency explains up to 62% of win variance, dwarfing running contributions and highlighting how coordinated schemes—measured via adjusted net yards per attempt—outweigh quarterback variance alone, as teams with balanced distribution succeed irrespective of singular talents.[74] This underscores causal links: accurate passing builds field position incrementally, compounding advantages through error minimization rather than high-risk individualism.Game mechanics
In contract bridge, a pass during the bidding phase indicates that a player declines to make a bid, allowing the auction to proceed without altering the current contract level or suit. This mechanic, integral to the game's structure since its standardization in the early 20th century, promotes strategic depth by enabling players to abstain from overcommitting to potentially unmakeable contracts, thereby preserving partnership resources for defensive play or waiting for partner cues. Three consecutive passes conclude the auction and finalize the contract, ensuring fairness in competitive bidding without forcing artificial inflation of commitments.[75][76] Passing serves as a risk-averse option in such bidding scenarios, where empirical analysis of hand distributions shows that abstaining yields higher expected utility when point counts fall below thresholds for safe game contracts, typically around 26 combined high-card points for partnerships. Game-theoretic models of incomplete information auctions, akin to bridge bidding, demonstrate that optimal strategies often favor passing to mitigate losses from misjudged strength, with simulations indicating pass rates exceeding 40% in balanced hands to avoid penalties from doubled contracts. This causal dynamic underscores passing's role in balancing aggression with prudence, reducing variance in outcomes compared to persistent bidding.[77][78] In certain board games featuring turn-based actions, such as Inis, players may elect to pass their turn, forgoing immediate plays to conserve influence or observe opponents, which adds layers of tactical timing and information asymmetry without mandating exhaustive resource expenditure. This mechanic enhances fairness by accommodating varied player tempos and preventing dominance through mandatory actions, as evidenced in playtesting data where pass options correlate with reduced downtime and more equitable win distributions across skill levels.[79] Video game season passes, introduced prominently around 2011, function as a bundled access mechanic granting players post-launch downloadable content like expansions and cosmetics, exemplified by Ubisoft's implementations in titles such as Assassin's Creed series, which monetize ongoing development while extending core gameplay loops. These passes incentivize sustained engagement by unlocking sequential content tiers, though their strategic value lies in player choice to invest upfront for discounted future assets, aligning with risk-averse pre-purchase decisions amid uncertain DLC quality.[80]People
Individuals surnamed Pass
Joe Pass (January 13, 1929 – May 23, 1994) was an American jazz guitarist distinguished for his advanced chord-melody technique and unaccompanied solo improvisations on jazz standards.[81][82] Born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalaqua in New Brunswick, New Jersey, he self-taught guitar from age nine amid the economic constraints of the Great Depression in a Pennsylvania steel town, honing a style that integrated walking bass lines, harmonic complexity, and melodic fluency.[83][84] His breakthrough album Virtuoso (1973), featuring eleven standards and an original blues, demonstrated his capacity for full-band emulation on solo guitar, earning critical acclaim for technical precision and interpretive depth.[84] Pass recorded prolifically from the mid-1960s, winning the DownBeat Critics Poll for guitar and securing a Grammy Award in 1975 for Best Jazz Performance by a Group for The Trio alongside pianist Oscar Peterson and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen.[82] He collaborated with luminaries including Ella Fitzgerald on live recordings like Take Ten (1963) and Duke Ellington, contributing to over 50 albums that advanced jazz guitar's solo potential through rigorous harmonic exploration.[85][83] Nelson Pass (born 1951) is an American audio engineer and amplifier designer recognized for pioneering minimalist, high-fidelity solid-state circuits that prioritize signal purity over complexity.[86] Raised in Santa Rosa, California, after birth in Massachusetts, he obtained a BS in Physics from the University of California, Davis, in 1974 while experimenting with loudspeaker and amplifier designs.[86][87] In that year, he co-founded Threshold Audio, introducing Class A amplifiers like the NS10, which employed simple topologies to achieve low distortion and high power output, influencing subsequent high-end audio engineering.[88][89] Pass established Pass Labs in 1991, developing single-ended, pure Class A designs such as the Aleph series, which eschew negative feedback for direct signal paths, yielding measurable improvements in transient response and harmonic integrity as verified through distortion spectra analysis.[88][90] His work, spanning over four decades, includes contributions to ESS loudspeakers and ongoing DIY publications, emphasizing empirical circuit evaluation over theoretical excess.[91][89]Fictional or pseudonymous figures
No prominent fictional characters bear the surname "Pass" or employ it as a central pseudonym in literature, comics, film, or other media. Literary databases and cultural indices, such as those cataloging archetypes and aliases in narrative works, document no canonical examples of invented personas named or aliasing as "Pass." This scarcity distinguishes "Pass" from more frequently adapted surnames in fiction, where characters often embody thematic elements of their names (e.g., "Ford" evoking journeys). In pseudonymous contexts, historical authors and spies occasionally drew inspiration from "pass" as a term for forged documents or safe-conducts, implying transient aliases, but verifiable cases tying directly to "Pass" as the adopted identity remain absent from archival records. Such figures, if they exist in obscure or self-published works, lack the cultural impact to warrant encyclopedic note, underscoring the name's peripheral role in imaginative storytelling.Arts, entertainment, and media
Films and television
Hall Pass (2011), an American comedy film directed by Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly, centers on two husbands granted a week-long exemption from marital fidelity by their wives, leading to comedic misadventures. The film grossed $45.1 million in the United States and Canada against a $36 million production budget.[92] It earned a 5.9/10 rating on IMDb from approximately 135,000 user votes and a 32% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 176 critic reviews.[93] [94] The Pass (2016), a British drama directed by Chris Menges and adapted from a play by Ron Cook, depicts the decade-spanning consequences of a clandestine sexual encounter between two aspiring professional footballers in a high-pressure locker room environment. Released on a limited basis, it generated $58,755 in worldwide box office earnings.[95] The film received a 6.5/10 IMDb rating from over 4,700 users and an 89% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 19 critics, reflecting praise for its raw portrayal of suppressed tensions in sports culture.[96] [97] The Pass (2023), a thriller produced by Kandi Burruss and Todd Tucker starring Drew Sidora, explores a married couple's experiment with mutual infidelity through a one-night "hall pass," resulting in escalating peril. Primarily distributed via streaming on Peacock, it holds a 4.9/10 IMDb score from 734 ratings, with Rotten Tomatoes audience approval at 86% from 32 verified reviews.[98] [99] In television, Pagan Peak (original German title Der Pass), an Austrian-German crime drama series that debuted on Sky Deutschland on January 25, 2019, follows cross-border investigators tackling ritualistic murders in the Bavarian-Austrian Alps. Spanning three seasons through 2023, it averages an 8.0/10 rating on IMDb from more than 12,000 user assessments, noted for its atmospheric tension and procedural depth.[100] Psycho-Pass, a Japanese cyberpunk anime series produced by Production I.G. and airing in multiple seasons from 2012 to 2019, is set in a surveillance state where a "Sibyl System" scans citizens' crime coefficients to preempt offenses. The core series garners an 8.2/10 IMDb rating, buoyed by its exploration of determinism, ethics, and authoritarian control in a futuristic society.[101]Music and literature
"Pass the Dutchie," a 1982 reggae-pop single by Musical Youth, adapted lyrics from The Mighty Diamonds' "Pass the Kouchie" by substituting "Dutchie" (a pot of food) for the original's reference to marijuana, thereby sanitizing Rastafarian cultural elements for broader appeal.[102] The track reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number ten on the US Billboard Hot 100, charting for eighteen weeks and marking the group's sole major commercial hit, though its novelty-driven success overshadowed deeper reggae influences and led to a rapid decline in subsequent releases.[103] While sales metrics reflect high short-term impact—resurging via media placements like Netflix's Stranger Things in 2022—critics note the adaptation's lyrical shallowness compared to the source material's raw social commentary, prioritizing marketability over artistic authenticity.[104] In contrast, "The Pass" by Rush, from their 1989 album Presto, lyrically confronts teenage suicide by rejecting romanticization and urging resilience, with Neil Peart drawing from personal observations to emphasize rational perseverance over despair.[105] The song's atmospheric composition and emotional delivery earned praise as one of the band's finest, with Geddy Lee highlighting its poignant wisdom amid Presto's more streamlined production, influencing progressive rock fans through live performances and thematic depth rather than pop chart dominance.[106] Its reception underscores enduring artistic merit via introspective content over transient commercial peaks, as evidenced by sustained fan acclaim and integration into Rush's catalog discussions.[107] Literature featuring "The Pass" includes Thomas Savage's 1944 debut novel, set against rugged Western landscapes, which explores isolation and human endurance through characters navigating perilous mountain passes, laying groundwork for Savage's later acclaimed works like The Power of the Dog.[108] Publication details indicate limited initial print runs, with first editions now rare collectibles, reflecting modest contemporary sales but growing retrospective influence due to Savage's evolving reputation rather than blockbuster metrics.[109] Other titles, such as Don Stancavish's 2004 novel depicting a high school athlete's moral dilemmas amid football rivalries, prioritize narrative accessibility over profound innovation, with readership confined to niche sports fiction audiences lacking broad sales data or critical awards.[110] These works generally favor thematic directness—survival in Savage, ethical choices in Stancavish—over experimental depth, their merit gauged more by contextual resonance than quantifiable influence or revenue.[111]Other creative works
"The Pass" is a play written by Joe Penhall, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London on January 23, 2014, and centers on the pressures of fame, sexuality, and success among professional footballers in a hotel room setting.[112] The work examines how personal relationships fracture under the demands of athletic celebrity, drawing from real-world dynamics in British soccer culture.[112] In graphic novels, "The Pass" by French artist Espé (published in English in 2022 by Europe Comics) continues the narrative from "The Parakeet," depicting protagonists Bastien and Camille confronting infertility and adoption amid emotional turmoil in contemporary France.[113] The story integrates introspective dialogue with Espé's minimalist line art to portray relational strain and resilience.[114]Organizations and businesses
Companies and enterprises
Passbase, founded in 2018 and headquartered in New York, operates as a digital identity verification platform providing software development kits (SDKs) for iOS, web, and Android to enable remote user identity checks for businesses.[115] Its core model focuses on know-your-customer (KYC) compliance, integrating biometric and document verification to reduce fraud in sectors like fintech and cryptocurrency exchanges, with an emphasis on conversion rate optimization during onboarding.[116] The company raised $17.9 million in total funding across five rounds, including a $10 million Series A in December 2021 backed by investors such as Costanoa Ventures and BLN Capital, primarily to expand crypto-focused tools amid regulatory demands for identity proofing.[117] Despite this capital, Passbase reported $930,700 in revenue in 2021 with a 30-person team, reflecting modest market traction and no evidence of profitability, as early-stage verification providers often prioritize scaling user acquisition over immediate returns in a competitive field dominated by larger incumbents.[118] FastPassCorp, established in 2000 in Denmark, delivers enterprise software for password and access management, automating self-service resets and privileged access controls to minimize helpdesk costs and security risks.[119] Its operational model centers on on-premises and cloud-hybrid deployments that enforce just-in-time access, integrating with Active Directory and other identity systems to handle high-volume authentication without storing credentials.[119] The company targets large organizations in finance and government, claiming reductions in password-related support tickets by up to 90%, though specific revenue or profitability figures remain undisclosed, consistent with many niche security vendors reliant on long-term contracts rather than rapid growth metrics.[119] A Chicago-based startup named Pass, launched in 2019, developed two-factor authentication tools for identity verification but ceased operations as a deadpooled entity by 2025, underscoring the high failure rate in access tech amid intense competition and funding constraints.[120]Associations and initiatives
The Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), an independent non-profit organization, was established in the late 1990s as a community-driven initiative to support database administrators and developers working with Microsoft SQL Server, originating from the vision of Flip Filipowski of Platinum Technologies.[121] It facilitated self-reliant professional growth through member-led local user groups, virtual chapters, and annual summits that emphasized knowledge sharing without reliance on vendor funding for core operations, attracting thousands of participants globally via events like the PASS Summit.[122] PASS operations concluded on January 15, 2021, amid financial strains from the COVID-19 pandemic, after sustaining a network of over 300 local groups and providing free resources to foster independent expertise in database management.[123] Local preservation societies focused on mountain passes exemplify grassroots efforts to maintain natural and historical features through volunteer advocacy. In Alberta, Canada, the Crowsnest Heritage Initiative, centered on Crowsnest Pass, operates as a community-based group dedicated to conserving regional heritage sites, trails, and landscapes via public education and collaborative restoration projects, independent of government mandates.[124] Such initiatives have contributed to tangible outcomes, including heightened local awareness and support for trail maintenance in rugged pass areas, relying on member contributions rather than state subsidies to advocate for sustainable access and environmental stewardship.[124]Science and technology
Computing and programming
In Python, thepass statement functions as a null operation, executing without performing any action and serving as a placeholder to satisfy syntactic requirements for code blocks such as functions, classes, loops, or conditionals.[125] Introduced with Python's initial public release in February 1991, it enables developers to outline program structure during prototyping or refactoring without triggering syntax errors, compiling to no bytecode and incurring zero runtime overhead for efficiency.[126] For example:
This construct promotes modular development by allowing incomplete stubs, with empirical benchmarks showing negligible impact on code execution speed compared to empty blocks in optimized interpreters.[127] In authentication systems, "pass" commonly abbreviates "password," referring to credential validation protocols where user-supplied strings are hashed before storage to mitigate interception risks. Bcrypt, a widely adopted adaptive hashing function released in 1999, enforces computational expense through configurable work factors (e.g., 2^12 to 2^14 rounds recommended for balancing security and login latency under 100-500ms), resisting brute-force attacks by design; benchmarks on modern hardware indicate it sustains ~10-20 hashes per second per core for cost factor 12, far slower than fast hashes like SHA-256.[128] [129] Despite such protections, empirical breach data reveals persistent vulnerabilities from weak or reused passwords: 49% of 2025 incidents involved compromised credentials, with 28% directly attributing breaches to stolen passwords, often due to insufficient entropy or failure to enforce salting and iteration in legacy implementations.[130] [131] Real-world analyses, such as those from the 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report covering 16,000+ incidents, underscore that even bcrypt-protected systems falter against offline attacks on dumped hashes if users select predictable inputs, with average cracking times for weak passwords dropping below minutes on GPU clusters.[132] Post-2023 advancements in large language model (LLM)-assisted programming have integrated thepythondef placeholder_function(): pass # To be implemented laterdef placeholder_function(): pass # To be implemented later
pass statement as a dummy placeholder in auto-generated code during iterative debugging workflows, where initial outputs often require refinement to resolve syntax or logic gaps. Frameworks like LDB (Large Language Model Debugger) employ multi-step generation—producing skeletal functions with pass, then simulating execution to identify failures—improving pass@k metrics (e.g., success rates on benchmarks like HumanEval) by 10-20% through self-correction loops that replace placeholders with functional logic. [133] This approach, validated in studies training LLMs on debug traces, enhances code reliability in AI tools by deferring implementation details, though it highlights security risks if unvetted placeholders bypass validation in production, as evidenced by developer reports of extended manual fixes in LLM-augmented pipelines.[134]
Other scientific applications
In optics, "pass" refers to the selective transmission of light wavelengths through filters, as in bandpass designs used for spectroscopy. These filters permit a defined spectral band to pass while attenuating frequencies outside it, enabling precise isolation of emission or absorption lines in experimental spectra.[135] For instance, dielectric bandpass filters achieve transmission efficiencies exceeding 90% within narrow bands, validated through laboratory measurements of spectral throughput.[136] In genetics, "pass" describes the transmission of alleles through generations in Mendelian inheritance models, where parental genes segregate and recombine to produce offspring ratios confirmed by empirical crosses. Mendel's 1866 pea plant experiments demonstrated that traits pass as discrete units, yielding phenotypic ratios like 3:1 in monohybrid inheritance under complete dominance.[137] This mechanism, involving random allele assortment during meiosis, has been replicated in thousands of controlled breeding studies across species, underscoring causal fidelity in genetic propagation.[138] Astronomical applications leverage passbands for filtering telescope data, as exemplified by the Hubble Space Telescope's UV observations since its 1990 deployment. Hubble's Faint Object Camera employed UV bandpass filters with central wavelengths around 140-250 nm, transmitting targeted ultraviolet fluxes while suppressing red leakage to maintain data purity in stellar spectroscopy.[139] Such filters have facilitated empirical quantification of hot star compositions and interstellar medium properties, with passband calibrations verified against ground-based standards yielding photometric accuracies below 5%.[140]Miscellaneous uses
Everyday and idiomatic expressions
"Make a pass at someone" is an idiomatic expression referring to an attempt to flirt with or make romantic or sexual advances toward another person.[141] The phrase implies a direct but often subtle overture, typically in social contexts, and has been documented in English usage since the early 20th century. "Pass away" serves as a longstanding euphemism for death, softening the finality of the event by evoking a transitional departure rather than cessation.[142] Originating in 15th-century England, it ranks among the earliest such euphemisms in the language, predating modern sensitivities around mortality and likely influenced by medieval conceptions of the soul's passage from life.[142][143] Such idioms enhance pragmatic utility in everyday discourse by compressing nuanced concepts into familiar forms, facilitating quicker comprehension and reducing cognitive load during communication, as demonstrated in eye-tracking studies where idiomatic phrases elicit faster lexical access than comparable literal constructions.[144][145] This efficiency arises from holistic storage and retrieval in the mental lexicon, enabling speakers to bypass literal decomposition for routine exchanges.[144]Acronyms and abbreviations
- Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep: A mnemonic technique for operating portable fire extinguishers, involving pulling the pin, aiming at the fire base, squeezing the handle, and sweeping the nozzle; it is standard in global fire safety training and endorsed by regulatory bodies including OSHA.[146][147]
- Personal Alert Safety System: A wearable electronic device that automatically activates an audible alarm if the user remains motionless for a set period (typically 30 seconds), signaling distress to rescuers; it is mandatory for firefighters under NFPA 1982 standards and widely deployed in mining and other high-risk industrial settings compliant with MSHA approvals.[148][149][150] The device's adoption in U.S. underground mining intensified following the 2006 Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response (MINER) Act, which mandated enhanced emergency response technologies amid rising safety concerns after multiple fatalities.[151][152]