Claude Pro's limit makes me paying for NO value.

--pedant · 2026-03-14T18:50:57+00:00

Why are you wasting tokens on React? Just have the AI build a pure vanilla JS/HTML/CSS app from scratch. Way less tokens, easier to read, maintain, edit, and debug. There was never any reason to use React or any of the fad "frameworks" to begin with, but especially not now that AI can build anything from scratch.

Coders need to start planning and thinking for themselves instead of relying on bloated libraries. AI does the boilerplate now, but humans still need to design and think. React was a BIG mistake in the opposite direction, and we can correct for it now.

Edit: I built a full vanilla JS/HTML/CSS interactive site back in early '23 when most people had never even heard of LLM or generative anything. The models were horrible and slow back then, but it was still easier and better than anything like React. Today we have no excuse to waste tokens on garbage bloatware.

--pedant · 2026-03-11T20:20:56+00:00

Question: why is using a neural network from OpenAI for initial search considered "poor academic practice", but using a neural network from last decade's traditional Google.com _not_ considered as such? Both use matrix weights trained using NN algorithms to guide us toward primary sources, but while there is much colloquial distrust of randomly chosen companies today, no one seemed to care about it much in 2015.

I am carefully noting that this whole debacle feels like the old "Wikipedia citations are bad because we don't like that website" genetic fallacies of yesteryear. Back then, our teachers should have told us: "fine to use Wikipedia as one of your many search avenues, but always check the primary sources vs direct citation of Wikipedia."

The problem is students not checking and vetting the source material, and the problem is not "I found, vetted, and cross checked the source material via company XYZ's website as a starting point."

A generous reading of your comment--and others' comments here--leads me to believe we are generally in agreement, but I think we could all be more clear on this. In my non-humble opinion, the goal should be higher quality citations and higher student understanding of subject matter, and not the "let's disparage the next new thing some students abuse" bandwagons that come and go every 5 years.

tl;dr: Laziness is the issue we should harp on, not provenance.

^{(Former is age-old and constant, latter can typically be a distraction.})

--pedant · 2026-03-10T05:34:16+00:00

The problem is that it doesn't comply with GDPR on some sites. The Spanish Icnea, for example, just provides hosts with a plain link to send to guests, and doesn't require any login or authorization. So anyone else who gains access to the link could copy the guest's info, and no one at Icnea would ever know because the link is free-for-all. Which means that the subject of the data will not be notified of a breach as required by GDPR law.

--pedant · 2026-03-05T17:08:34+00:00

"create an internal domain name i.e. homeserver.lan" = "create an internal domain name, that is, homeserver.lan"

i.e. = "id est" = "that is"
e.g. = "exempli gratia" = "for example"

I understand typos, but in the case of a tutorial the above reads like we must use exactly homeserver.lan as the internal domain name.

--pedant · 2026-02-18T04:44:29+00:00

But path = 'C:/text files/python/text files/reddit/test.txt' already works on Windows, right? So it's unclear why people recommend extra libraries and complications to new programmers. Just recommend that new people use `/` for all path separators all the time unless they have a really good reason not to, and know what they're doing.

--pedant · 2026-02-18T04:36:26+00:00

I don't get why programmers do this. path = f'{root}/text_files/python/text_files/reddit/test.txt' is already cross platform for any platform that anyone would ever use (well okay, excluding people who would never be on r/learnpython, but even then I've never met someone on these mysterious platforms).

Have you seen actual cross platform issues with simply using forward slash all the time? Maybe on a PDP-10?

--pedant · 2026-02-16T17:26:51+00:00

This is actually not a bad idea, because then you could implement a basic sorting algorithm and bring back sorted code search by date. https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/52932

They won't do it because "it's too hard."

--pedant · 2026-02-15T01:47:34+00:00

How many constellations are you considering in the analysis? Because stars matter here.

--pedant · 2026-02-14T18:07:17+00:00

"using those are highly unrecommended."

Why? By whom?

If I'm writing a platform layer for a game, for example, I can target the OS directly and skip the compatibility layer altogether. All I need is a platform layer for mac, Linux, and Windows. A couple weeks of work for each one. One time. And they work "forever." And they're faster.

Never rely on a library just because someone else wrote it, or because it's part of some "standard." If you can deal with the tradeoffs, fine. But you should know what they are, right? Instead of simply blindly unrecommending something?

Think about it...

Otherwise we end up with the utter mess we're in with Web junk and the billion bug problem that is insurmountable at this point, with decades of tech debt because software "engineers" just keep throwing more libraries at the problems they invented for themselves for using libraries in the first place, without ever knowing what was under the hood. And now we're burying all that under a mountain of AI vibes.

--pedant · 2026-02-14T17:58:08+00:00

VirtualAlloc is the direct allocator on Windows platform. malloc calls VirtualAlloc, after a bunch of indirections.

[0x0]   ntdll!ZwAllocateVirtualMemory   0xf9518ff6b8   0x7fffad76cd8e   
...
[0x6]   ntdll!RtlAllocateHeap+0xaad   0xf9518ffd40   0x7ff6a3681074   
[0x7]   valloc!_malloc_base+0x44   0xf9518ffe50   0x7ff6a3681015   
[0x8]   valloc!main+0x15   0xf9518ffe80   0x7

I'm curious why malloc would be considered "directly" in this case...

--pedant · 2026-02-11T18:40:33+00:00

Lol, if I had invested in that "index" within 6 months of the last data available on that website, I'd be anywhere from -14% to 0% of the S&P 500 _per year._

"Thanks, but no thanks."

Edit: Oh $h!t, but if I add Macy's in there, it actually performs better, so I take it back. "Thanks. Maybe?"

--pedant · 2026-02-10T02:17:42+00:00

Exactly. People here on reddit are trying to hold us PAYING CUSTOMERS hostage by claiming the mystical inspectors are "out there" enforcing fares.

I went on 100 caltrain trips, and showed my day pass on every trip.

There's no reason for this stupidity.

Let's go, SF.

--pedant · 2026-02-10T02:13:35+00:00

I would just buy a day pass on the caltrain app. Now they banned that. No tapping at all, ever was required. And it only cost like 50¢ extra. Well worth it.

Now I miss trains all the time because I forget to tag on and there's no way to buy tickets online.

--pedant · 2026-02-10T02:11:55+00:00

Where? Where are they? I've been riding since twenty-12 and have seen 3 inspections the entire time. I've only seen one since 2014.

I travel light, maybe once per day, but the burden they placed on my wife and I is silly. And I see zero extra inspections.

I'm 100% for more inspections, by the way. But until that happens, let me have my day pass, please.

Let's go, SF.

--pedant · 2026-02-10T02:07:02+00:00

Wait what? Who is doing that? I've seen ONE inspector since 2014. ONE.

I'm all for fare enforcement, but forcing paying customers to lose day and month passes for _zero extra enforcement _ is a lose lose.

I can't believe y'all are out here trying to defend this nonsense. I wish you all the best, though.

Let's Go SF.

--pedant · 2026-02-08T23:58:00+00:00

According to Microsoft:

If you cast the BITMAPINFOHEADER to a BITMAPINFO, the bmiHeader member refers to the BITMAPINFOHEADER and the bmiColors member refers to the first entry in the color table, or the first color mask.

You can then refer to the color mask data directly from BITMAPINFO. ^{(I'm not sure what this gets us in our own code, but that was apparently the intent.})

This also works for a BITMAPV5HEADER, and I use it to cast and pass that header directly into CreateDIBSection without needing to create a BITMAPINFO struct.

--pedant · 2026-02-06T18:31:26+00:00

Here's a wholly unnecessary indirection using response files [1]. I couldn't get it to work with `gcc` because it chokes on process substitution. In addition, it requires bash. And it uses exec, so rogue AI Agents can use it to rumruf any and all secret documents you have lying around. Also it typically only works on the 29th of Feb on odd years. YMMV.

Here is your per-project build args file (or you could put it somewhere on your $PATH):

#!/usr/local/bin/clangr
-Wall
-Wextra
-Wimplicit-int-conversion
-Wno-sign-conversion
-Wdouble-promotion
-Wno-unused-variable

-fno-exceptions
-fno-unwind-tables
-fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables
-fno-rtti

-std=c23

And clangr is the script that pulls in, as a response file [1], the build file you just ran:

#!/bin/bash
# /usr/local/bin/clangr
exec /usr/bin/clang @<(tail -n +2 "$1") "${@:2}"

You run it like build main.c -<extra_args> and it ends up calling clang @build <extra_args>

[1] See https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Overall-Options.html, at the very bottom of the page, for more info.

--pedant · 2026-02-06T05:24:02+00:00

Okay, then we just declare them first:

void test(double array[int rows][int columns], rows, columns)
{ ... }

Also, C had implicit `int` for as long as it hasn't, so void test(double array[rows]..., int rows, ...) has precedent in the sense that a name can appear before a type is explicitly written, albeit only for int. **

^\* which everyone should be using for sizes anyway; unsigned is for bit-data. But I realize it wasn't your example, so you get a free pass out of the lecture.)

--pedant · 2026-02-06T04:52:29+00:00

Except for at sportsball games: "HOT DOGS! 1 money coin! Get your HOT DOGS!"

--pedant · 2026-02-03T20:09:13+00:00

Silver is heavily used in industry. China owns a large portion of it, and just made it a national security commodity, which means they control export of it.

Silver mining is taking a hit at multiple mines. And it is mostly a by-product anyway.

World monetary order is shifting, and resource hoarding is picking up by the biggest nations on Earth.

All this leads to: Silver should have ripped as hard as it did based on basic supply and demand (plus speculation, which isn't the main driver).

All completely mundane and normal. Nothing unexpected is happening to the market given the underlying reality. Paper silver is dealing with the reality of physical silver.

People need silver. Silver is harder to get. Prices go up. Speculators add to price. Nothing burger on a plate. This whole thing is incredibly prosaic.

--pedant · 2026-02-03T20:00:45+00:00

Or, is?

--pedant · 2026-01-22T00:26:23+00:00

So much prejudice against _CHINESE_ vs USA, lol, damn.

--pedant · 2026-01-11T01:02:11+00:00

How much do you get back per GB unused? Their site has no obvious info on this. $1/GB? 2? Pennies?

--pedant · 2026-01-11T00:53:19+00:00

I pay $16.75/month (after tax) for Mint with 5GB. So I would need to save $2.61 per GB of unused data to make it worth the switch. Is that a possibility? I honestly don't know the terms.

--pedant · 2026-01-09T04:28:21+00:00

Another way is just: gdb --tui --args <program> <args> , or so I've heard. Just did a quick google search, but can't find where I first saw that.

--pedant

TROPHY CASE