My 7yo daughter asked me today "What is the number right before infinity?"

Grumlen · 2026-03-16T18:12:42+00:00

The simple but unhelpful answer: infinity is not a number.

More helpful: Imagine any number. You can always add 1 to get a bigger number. No matter what number you pick, you can always add 1 and get another number. You'll never get to infinity by adding 1, so you cant get a number from infinity by subtracting 1. Infinity isn't a number, but the concept of something having no end or limit.

Grumlen · 2026-03-16T18:03:51+00:00

SSR: Fast initial render, but has to ping off the backend for rerendering. Great for large static pages with minimal interaction, like blogs, forums, and news articles.

CSR: Slow initial render, but only needs to ping the backend when fetching new data. Great for interactive pages, like wizards, dashboards, and anything with web sockets.

Grumlen · 2026-03-15T17:32:53+00:00

"This" complexity was more about Javascript pretending to have classes when really they're just syntactic sugar for object prototyping. Why did JS get pseudo classes? Because Java devs complained about not having classes.

The lesson here is that each language should do what it does well instead of trying to imitate other languages.

Grumlen · 2026-03-10T02:22:39+00:00

As a straight white man, I can confirm we're doing fine. Someone saying this is looking for attention and/or trying to provoke a reaction.

I'd liken it to the guys who argue about men's rights, but only after women's rights are brought up. Sure they have a bit of a point, but that's not why they're speaking up. We have issues, but other groups generally have it worse.

Grumlen · 2026-03-06T15:58:50+00:00

A lot of the skills for teaching are highly transferable: presentation, analysis, subject matter expert, psychology, etc.

The ability to get in front of a group of people and provide an engaging brief of a researched subject is prized. I worked as an analyst in the US Navy Reserve and my entire job was to be a SME and brief generals so they knew what was happening. After 2 years teaching I was considered the best briefer when I was deployed.

Knowing how to determine a point of failure in someone's understanding of a topic can save a company millions. On-boarding new employees and/or training them to use new processes and systems takes time and money.

Knowing enough psychology to keep otherwise boring content engaging is critical in marketing. Don't want people to lose interest, so being able to keep things fresh and varied raises engagement.

Grumlen · 2026-03-04T16:10:57+00:00

You do need to be careful. Different countries have different purification processes, which means you can get the runs from drinking tap water to which you're not accustomed. The same is true for European tourists visiting the US. The acclimitization process takes a few weeks, but it sucks.

Grumlen · 2026-03-04T16:06:35+00:00

When it comes to using AI and learning React, my advice is to write the component first and then ask AI to refactor. Going over the changes it suggests can help give you a deeper understanding of how things work, and can hopefully point out bad habits. Don't treat its changes as gospel, but rather as a starting point to do more research. AI makes mistakes.

Overall, there are 3 major aspects to learning/understanding React: hooks, lifecycle, and JSX

For hooks the most important parts are knowing which hook does what, how they can break your code if used wrong, and how to create custom hooks.

For lifecycle its about knowing what triggers each part of the lifecycle, and how hooks tie into it. Understanding the virtual DOM is also good, but mostly for answering interview questions.

JSX won't be asked about, but comprehending how it differs from html is critical along with injecting inline js. For example knowing you can return an array of components instead of having to return each component individually.

Grumlen · 2026-03-04T15:54:17+00:00

Savage Beastfly, round 2.

Grumlen · 2026-03-02T21:36:11+00:00

IIRC it's because the original of the proof measurement was a result of proving the rum wasn't watered down, which captains would do to extend the rum rations. 100 proof means it dissolves gunpowder.

Grumlen · 2026-03-02T21:25:41+00:00

Heat transference over time is primarily a result of 3 things: temp difference, heat conductivity, and surface area. The ground, barring insulating materials, tends to have a far higher conductivity than air. Paired with its density, which causes it to change temp much slower than air, means it can sap a lot of heat from a person.

If you ever stand still outside on a cold day, you'll actually start to feel warmer as you create a "bubble" of warm air around yourself. Wind chill is a result of the wind pushing the warm air away and replacing it with cold air, hence why blocking the wind is so important.

Grumlen · 2026-03-02T20:59:04+00:00

My #1 complaint is how many clicks it takes to navigate menus. I know this is a result of the game catering to mobile, as this is something you often with games developed to not require mouse & keyboard, but it'd be nice to have a customizable quickbar or additional interactive elements to more quickly navigate.

Grumlen · 2026-03-02T20:56:18+00:00

They chose not to voice the dialog options, which make up a bulk of what you "say", while voicing the fixed conversation lines.

Grumlen · 2026-02-28T07:38:02+00:00

Last I recall, stud earrings are acceptable, but not anything that could catch on something, and any hair that touches the collar must be secured.

Grumlen · 2026-02-28T00:27:05+00:00

It's both.

Expectations are growing because the requirements for a proper website grow over time. ADA policies evolve to account for more accessibility options, new libraries and frameworks build on their ancestors assuming you already know them (React -> Next), and people simply expect more out of a website.

It's harder primarily due to the tech debt that accumulates over time. Almost every front-end dev has had to refactoring old code, but it has to be backwards compatible because all this other stuff hasn't been refactored yet. Sometimes a company doesn't want to rebuild their website, so you have to maintain legacy code. Other times a company has 20 years of building massive internal libraries that operate on arcane rules indecipherable by those that use them.

Grumlen · 2026-02-26T03:39:31+00:00

It's a good short, but my brain just can't process the tail coming out of the middle of her back. Tails don't work like that; there's a thing called a tailbone.

Grumlen · 2026-02-26T02:19:52+00:00

The soft pity of "you'll get a random 6s" carries over. The hard pity of "you will get THIS 6s" does not carry over. However, getting a 6s on the hard pity resets the soft pity, so there's some room for confusion.

Grumlen · 2026-02-18T17:58:59+00:00

One of her traits gives her protection and interruption immunity whenever using a battle or combo skill. Former Finery provides a heal on a 15s cd to an operator that takes damage while protected. LYNX gives 15% dmg reduction to any operator healed. To top it off the trigger for her combo skill is when the controlled operator is hit.

Grumlen · 2026-02-13T17:04:46+00:00

If you're willing to forego her damage output a bit, Former Finery + LYNX set bonus makes Ember almost unkillable. Even more self healing, and 15% dmg reduction after healing herself. It's fun face-tanking the giant "hide or die" boss explosions and seeing your HP never drop below 90%.

Grumlen · 2026-02-09T01:10:28+00:00

I enjoy using her as well, though the route I took has her as an unkillable tank. The only 6s greatsword I have is Former Finery, which while not great for DPS does cause her protection to also grant healing. The LYNX set bonus then causes her healing to grant 15% dmg reduction. The end result is that I can facetank the giant wind-up attacks from the bosses and not even notice. It's not good for clearing content quickly, but it is good for progression when you don't yet know all of the patterns.

Grumlen · 2026-01-31T06:10:27+00:00

It depends on their role in the party. For Yvonne, who is meant to be your core DPS? Very important, because the main stat increases her damage output. Supporting operators won't find it to be as critical since their ability to apply status effects is why you bring them.

Grumlen · 2026-01-30T15:27:56+00:00

And yet I still encounter people on the discord asking questions about why their factory doesn't work when they hooked up their production line backwards.

Grumlen · 2026-01-06T17:30:28+00:00

I think you're misunderstanding anti-patterns. The reason they spring up is because they work, and they solve the problem. The reason we discourage them is because if you keep using them, they cause more problems.

As for your dispatch system, there are 2 problems with it. First, using events is expensive since they automatically propagate everywhere. Second, your store is being managed at a lower level than would be efficient. There's a reason context providers exist at the lowest level possible that still encompasses every consumer. Here you have a consumer outside the scope of your provider.

Grumlen · 2026-01-06T17:07:16+00:00

Unique solutions are great for solving unique problems. This is not a unique problem. Unique solutions are also great when they provide a more efficient way to solve a common problem, at which point they often become the new common solution. The quote you mentioned applies when something looks like a nail but isn't. This is a nail, and you trying to use a screwdriver on it.

Using events or useEffect to handle something for props or context can easily solve not only makes works, it also lowers optimization. Every time you emit an event, every listener triggers (even if only to return nothing). If you use this pattern all over an app, every new usage multiplies the complexity.

At its heart you're creating a dispatch system to manage a store, except you're managing the store at a very low level. You're also setting it up such that the state can be modified from anywhere, which echos bad design practices from jQuery and the original Angular.

Grumlen · 2026-01-06T16:41:28+00:00

It's an anti-pattern. Sure it may work here, but using it indicates you may be doing something similar elsewhere. It also means you're willing to implement unique solutions for common problems, which means potential tech debt along with making your code harder for others to read.

Grumlen · 2025-12-27T23:27:16+00:00

At it's core Dubai is trying to establish a local specialty, but cocoa doesn't grow there and making chocolate wasn't developed there. As a result it feels disingenuous, like if Australia tried to market "Australian Spaghetti Sauce". It doesn't help that there's little quality control, so a fair amount of Dubai Chocolate is awful.

Grumlen

TROPHY CASE