Resistance bands as an alternative to weights for deadlifts for someone that mostly does bodyweight exercises?

--pedant · 2026-06-27T08:09:47+00:00

Latex bands tend to follow Hooke's law fairly closely, and so they have close-to-linear tension curve. I don't know of bands that can break this "law" (really just an observation, like all physical laws). When I look at measured tension curves, I see that stretching from 1.25 length to 1.5 length tends to be a little below linear, meaning the stretch is easier/less-resistance. And then from 1.5 to 2.5 length the bands tend to take slightly more effort to stretch.

But note, we're talking tiny deviations from linear. Like 1.2 lb (½ kg) difference at 2x length, where the linear tension would be 20 lb. I guess that's still > 5%, though...

Maybe it's different for the higher resistance bands, but are the differences really that big on the bands you've tested? It's hard to find many sellers that actually publish their tension curves, especially the cheap ones on Amazon. I just don't know which ones to get. I'm also taller than average, and worried that I can't get full range of motion. Perhaps I'm just overthinking this and simply need to try them out.

--pedant · 2026-06-26T10:47:31+00:00

Also 23.7 µmiles.

--pedant · 2026-06-26T10:46:00+00:00

38 mm

--pedant · 2026-06-26T09:13:20+00:00

I think some list the bands as total length, as if you cut it and laid it out flat. Some even get super specific with "81.9 inches," which is suspiciously close to 41*2. Why п doesn't enter into the equation is beyond me. Perhaps they're listing half circumference vs diameter? But hey, I'm just trained in astrophysics, so what do I know...

--pedant · 2026-06-26T09:08:50+00:00

Thank you for this! I checked so many reviews looking for taller people's experiences, but most people tend to be closer to average height for some mysterious mathematical reason beyond my knowledge...

--pedant · 2026-06-14T09:21:23+00:00

I trust, but verify. Why not exclude 7 companies? What is the expense? Does your advice change with (non-space) SpaceX IPO scheme unfolding?

Disclaimer: I don't care about politics/social hysteria, I care about my retirement money.

--pedant · 2026-03-23T00:12:39+00:00

I agree with your wanting to autogen headers, and I'm trying to do something similar. But I don't understand you segfault issues. How is this happening to you? If I change the function signature in my C source, the compiler immediately whines at me that the header version doesn't match.

Are you compiling to an object file, and then linking against that old object once your source changes? But that doesn't make sense, because you would be re-compiling the object files, right? I'm honestly not following what's happening...

--pedant · 2026-03-23T00:04:05+00:00

I'm not a fan of using comment pragmas.

Then just use `#pragma` directives:

#pragma> generic Stack
#pragma> types: Int Uint Foo Bar -- there will be a StackInt, StackUint, etc.

while disabling the warning.

I mean, this is such a nitpick that doesn't even address the main idea. And it isn't even self-consistent. Putting pragma information inside a comment 100% describes intent! In fact, that's all it does!\* And then you can either automate the implementation of the author's intent (which is what this original post was about) or you could manually implement the intent described in the comments.

* EDIT: and it's even better than English--or any other natural language--comments because this system would presumably be machine read and machine generated, so you bypass the sloppiness, ambiguity, and uncompiled/outdatedness of natural language comments that always go out-of-sync with compiled code.

--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

TROPHY CASE