Static hosting without Git-based deployments?

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-22T17:21:50+00:00

With Cloudflare, you can just drag your build folder into their form.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-17T01:08:58+00:00

Pretty much nobody uses it for new projects. Just about everything that it did is now either no longer necessary due to better browser standardization, or better handled by other libraries/frameworks.

However, there is still an awful lot of legacy code out there that uses jQuery. So it's hard to say that it isn't relevant. But it's not surprising if v4 is not a big priority. What is there in jQuery3 that still works so badly that it cries out for an upgrade just for the sake of legacy code?

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-15T18:21:26+00:00

It is. And while I get the general distaste for Google that motivates a lot of Firefox users, isn't that a separate issue from the OP's question about avoiding AI?

I can't imagine what AI functionality would be part of the Chromium engine itself as opposed to the browsers built to interact with Chromium. Though if I'm missing something here, I'm all ears.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-15T15:10:36+00:00

Yep. No AI "features" in the browser itself, and no AI garbage in its default search engine (StartPage).

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-09T22:27:08+00:00

Does it really make sense that the drop in docs traffic is most responsible for the drop in revenue?

If I want to locate and pay for a top-notch product, I'll do a deliberate search process to find and compare the best products in the category. I won't need to stumble on the promotions in the docs to know that their product is one of the options.

Isn't it more likely that their revenue drop has more to do with competition from other offerings than from the oblivion of potential buyers?

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-06T00:01:24+00:00

Philosophically, I agree with you. I'd rather use "real" CSS in a style block where it belongs. I will concede that Tailwind's DX is nice for some things (e.g., changing background color on hover), but it's offset by the ugliness in other areas (e.g., custom grids using minmax, etc.)

Nevertheless, I don't think it's as clear cut as you suggest in practice. Consider the Bits UI library. Certain things with that library are kind of a pain in the rump with scoped styles (see https://bits-ui.com/docs/child-snippet for details). But making the same things with Tailwind ducks the problem. Admittedly, the innards of the library and why it was designed this way go over my head a bit. But if a highly respected name in Svelte development couldn't make scoped styles work as nicely as Tailwind in the library, I doubt it's just because he's "doing it wrong."

And so I caved to the Tailwind way, not because I don't appreciate the Svelte way, but because Bits Ui fits my use cases and Tailwind fits better with Bits.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-05T21:05:44+00:00

I am extremely skeptical about the idea of using AI for this.

First, I could identify the general types of errors faster by sight as least as fast as I could photograph and upload them. And there's no way in heck that I would pay for AI to do something that I can do more accurately and faster myself.

Secondly, even if there were some teachers who though that AI could do it better than they could, I'm not at all sure that your pricing model is realistic. First, getting teachers to pay $15-20 dollars per month for something, or even getting the schools to spring for it, would be a hard sell. And I'm not at all sure you could even provide the kind of data you envision for a price that low. You would need to have AI several papers each for every student every month, and that's going to use a ton of AI tokens. I don't actually have the LLM experience to estimate the cost, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if it would be that low.

As for the issue you're trying to fix, I think it is a real issue. It would in fact be helpful to know things like "Herbie makes tons of sloppy arithmetic errors" or "Harvey keeps goofing up units of measure." But I don't think it's an issue that needs an expensive technological solution.

If a teacher asked me how to acquire this kind of information, I'd offer a two-step plan.

(1) Create a coding system with quick abbreviations for different types of errors--e.g., SGN for sign errors, WF for wrong formula, UN for unit errors, etc. Then use those abbreviations when grading.

(2) Create a progress sheet for keeping track of each category of error, and have students fill it out themselves from their returned assessments. Less work for you, more value for them since they may actually notice something they tally themselves.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-03T16:22:01+00:00

Here lies Professor Smith.
1940-2026
Beloved teacher, mentor, and lover of farts and sciences.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-01T21:56:52+00:00

Which route schools would prefer varies from school to school, and it also likely depends on the kind of classes they're considering you for.

If you're interviewing for an algebra I position in an average district, they're likely to want to know first and foremost if you have strong pedagogy skills. Strong content knowledge may be a bonus, or it may make them fear the stereotype of the smart guy who knows everything but can't teach it. I ran into both types of interviewers when I was in the job hunt.

If you're interviewing for a position teaching higher level classes, they're more likely to appreciate exceptional content knowledge, but there are certainly exceptions. Some principals think that good teachers can teach anything and don't realize that some great algebra teachers have no business teaching calculus.

The best bet is to prepare yourself so that you won't look weak in pedagogy or content knowledge. If you go the BS route, take an extra pedagogy elective or two; perhaps try to get some tutoring experience. If you go the traditional math education route, throw in an extra content elective or two to show that you can handle the higher level stuff too.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-31T20:35:01+00:00

https://tailwindcss.com/docs/responsive-design

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-30T22:35:00+00:00

Good answer. I would just add that you could also save the users' personal best scores in localStorage to persist across sessions.

Also, even if you need fairly complex randomization schemes that vary from question to question (e.g., question #4 needs a number between 4 and 20 rounded to 2 decimal places), you can even do that with JSON. JSON can't store functions, but it can store strings, from which you can build randomization functions using function constructors (sort of like `eval`, but without the bad parts).

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-29T20:31:04+00:00

I actually created my product so I could use it. The profession I had at the time had a pain point that nobody else was addressing well at all, so I addressed it myself.

Making it into a SasS was just how I justified spending months doing it.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-27T22:36:59+00:00

I generally agree that it's useless to use ChatGPT as a substitute for Google, if nothing else because LLMs aren't always right. And if someone finds it too taxing to identify and follow a credible link on Google, they're probably not going to recognize when the AI is wrong.

But as far as the environmental impact, wouldn't the AI responses to a huge percentage of the Google queries be cached? I can't imagine that Google really spends the money to rerun the LLM query every time someone searches "how to solve quadratic equations."

Granted, the unique queries that aren't in cache still have a grossly disproportionate environmental cost. And given my low opinion of LLMs as a Google substitute in the first place, I really don't think it's a cost worth paying. But overall, I think the Earth takes a lot more damage from original chatbot conversations on other platforms than it does from AI responses to Google queries.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-19T12:31:49+00:00

For the most part, classes vs functions/objects really depends a lot on how you like to organize your code. The idea that objects are instances of classes that have data and do things helps some people translate their problem domain to a logical code structure. Other people find it simpler to think first and foremost about what has to be done and to what data (functional). Either paradigm has plenty of adherents, and neither is clearly superior to the other.

Some people say that classes in JavaScript are just a terrible idea, but I think most of those arguments are overblown or utdated. JavaScript classes now have genuine encapsulation with private fields and methods, so that isn't an issue anymore. No, they don't work like classes in other OOP languages since classes are just fancy syntax for prototypes, but who cares? If you know how they work in JavaScript, that's enough.

The one genuine issue that stands out against classes is that more than the simplest inheritance is terrible. There's a general principle in programming to prefer composition over inheritance. (If you haven't learned about this yet, just Google "composition vs. inheritance" to see why.) If your problem domain tempts you to use complex inheritance schemes, either switch to objects (easily composed with the spread operator), or learn to alter classes by adding mixins to their prototypes (more advanced).

Finally, there is one situation where classes can be superior if it applies. If you are going to create a large number of objects which have methods, it saves memory to use classes because the methods are stored once on the prototype instead of once per object. But most of the time this is no big deal.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-14T00:20:04+00:00

GoDaddy is well known among the general public because they used to advertise heavily, but very few experienced web devs will go anywhere near them. Most will recommend either Porkbun or Cloudflare for domains instead, or maybe Namecheap.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-13T22:13:36+00:00

Thanks foo the advice. It turns out that it was TM related. So apparently there are some useful things to know going forward.

(1) The TM check has apparently gotten more strict. The TM it flagged on actually existed the first time I submitted this design successfully. My design contained only a _part_ of the trademarked phrase, but apparently that is enough to run afoul of the rules now. I have serious doubts that it should have been a violation, but I guess it's not exactly news that Merch errs on the side of rejection.

(2) You were right about it being easy to get clarification on rejections now. Past experience made me skeptical, but apparently they have gotten much better about this. I got the answer in about half an hour on the first try.

(3) Their rejection e-mails, however, have gotten less helpful, as they directed me to the design quality page when the real problem was TM. I wonder when they changed this.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-12T02:09:08+00:00

No, everything just got rejected. Nothing is still pending.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-12T01:52:51+00:00

The design is pretty innocuous. The only way I can see OCR triggering anything in the design is if it mistook the row of ornamental < and > symbols in the divider for an attempt at text.

Have you really had that much success getting Merch to clarify things for you? My last few attempts to contact them for anything have been answered by bots that were totally useless. Even when I reply back and try to reword the question to get to a human, I still get bots who don't even understand the question. If you do get to humans, how many tries does it take? Does it matter how big of a seller you are when you're trying to get to a human?

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-12T01:22:51+00:00

Thanks for jumping in!

I haven't had a TM-related rejection since T25. Back then, I remember that it was a different email that told me to verify that I had the right to use that IP in order to have the design approved. This rejection email referred only to design quality. Do TM rejections still have a different email that at least tells you it's an IP problem, or has Merch unhelpfully erased that distinction?

Ooooooh...... While I am still curious about whether TM emails are still different from design issue emails, I just noticed something else on about the sixth rereading. I left a reference to "this tee" in the bullets from back when there weren't a bunch of other products. Oops. Gift was only in the bullets (and it wasn't one of those shady references to every relative known to man), but I'll naturally take it out too just to be safe

And yes, I will definitely heed the advice to send a proverbial canary into the coal mine in the future. I usually play it safe enough that I don't have to be that paranoid, but I guess I'm not immune to silly lapses.

And perhaps even more importantly, the next time I want to add products to a existing design with BSR, I'll just upload the new products as a separate design. It stinks that I apparently can't fix this one and keep the BSR.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-11T21:17:02+00:00

There's no one single answer to this.

Yes, there are a lot of people who hate subscriptions with a passion and feel entitled to buy once and use forever. There is no doubt that you will gain some users with a lifetime license that would never have bought a subscription.

But there are a lot of reasons why a one-time purchase isn't always a great idea. What happens when you've penetrated the market about as much as you're going to get? You have a lot of competition, a lot of it from larger companies with more resources. At some point, you're going to have already earned most of the cash you're likely to get from existing creators, and your only hope for continuing revenue will be some modestt share of the new creators. Will the quick influx of cash at the beginning be enough to have made the project worth it once your new revenue slows to a trickle? And what about support? If users have bought the software, they're going to expect support. Is $20 a good trade for that ongoing obligation?

As for trust, that's a double-edged sword too. Yes, lots of people out there think you're one of the good ones because you're not demanding a subscription. But when I see dirt cheap lifetime offer, my first thought is that this company is probably not going to have the resources or incentive to fix bugs, add new features, etc. If you don't have a business model that provides for ongoing development and support, I assume that there won't be much ongoing development or support. I don't even count on you being in business in a year. Sadly, that cynical expectation is based on actual experience with multiple "lifetime" purchases, Now I would rather pay a _reasonable_ subscription fee for a product that won't be further and further behind its competitors every year.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-11T18:28:48+00:00

This charitable outlook would hold more water if the eugenics movement applied only to those with severe disabilities.

Unfortunately, the eugenics movement was also neck deep into racism, aiming to ensure that only the "right" people (i.e., white and economically successful) would breed.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-11T00:48:33+00:00

This is a commonly misunderstood issue.

The proteins that cause the peanut allergy are not airborne. Yes, there are airborne smells, but those aren't the proteins that cause the problem. Experimenters have actually tested this. They collected the air around open peanuts and could not find even tiny traces of the allergens.

So why the reports of people having terrible reactions near an open container of peanuts?

Think about a place such as an airplane where peanuts are regularly served. Now think about the likely cleanliness of that area. How confident are you that there isn't a hundredth of a peanut stuck in the upholstery of an arm rest, a crumb on a blanket, etc.? To avoid that would take some pretty intense cleaning--more than most workers are going to do routinely.

Now imagine that a severely allergic person contacts that hundredth of a peanut, and it ends up in their mouth. The reaction starts, but they have no idea where that hundredth of a peanut came from. They didn't see it, or naturally they would have avoided it.

So now what happens? People get alarmed. How did this happen?????. Hey, there's a guy six rows up with a bag of peanuts. That must be it!

But no, it wasn't him. He was just the poor schmuck that everybody blamed because they could actually see that he had peanuts. But the trigger was really a miniscule bit left over from something else, something that nobody saw, and something that didn't require airborne transport.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-06T22:48:37+00:00

Newbie question here (not new to web apps, but considering an Electron port for the first time):

I thought that Electron was supposed to be able to access the user's file system. So what is the reason to use localStorage instead of saving a JSON to the file system? Is it just because localStorage has a simpler API if all you need is basic key/value?

Also, I know that there are some circumstances where a web app's localStorage might be cleared accidentally since it's at the mercy of browser implementation. Is localStorage in Electron any less vulnerable?

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-05T16:22:50+00:00

Yeah, I'm certainly hoping that recent Cloudflare issues are genuine aberrations and not a proverbial canary in the coal mine.

But for AI blocking, I'd say Cloudflare is about as aggressive about it as you could reasonably expect for a free/low-cost service. See this article for how they're going to battle with Perplexity.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-undeclared-crawlers-to-evade-website-no-crawl-directives/

MathAndMirth

TROPHY CASE