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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 1st, 2024

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  • I disagree, a fridge to me is a cool place to put a big screen for useful information. You know, all the stuff that was promised and under delivered on when they first pitched smart fridges, like shopping lists, calendars, the weather.

    The reason why in 2025 I would never consider buying a fridge with an internet connection, is because it’s clear I’m never getting those features from fridge manufacturers. They would only put a network connection on a fridge for half baked “features”, which get more ads with every firmware update, and eventually remotely brick the device. In short, to enshittify your smart fridge.

    My point is that it’s not that there is no reason to not put a network connection on a fridge. It’s that capitalists can’t be trusted not to enshittify whatever useful smart feature they implement.


  • Why is it so hard to accept that not everybody can stay awake while reading a scientific article?

    I’m a PhD researcher and even I struggle staying awake sometimes.

    No seriously, I fully agree, scientific articles are written for a specific, niche audience, i.e. not the general public. But science should be communicated to the public, in as accessible a format as possible. If you fail to do that, you get people saying “science is boring”, or worse, mistrust of science like it exists today.

    And another thing: this shouldn’t be either-or between watching a video and reading an article. Watch the video, get a general understanding of the topic, see if it interests you. If you want to know more, dive into the article to deepen that understanding. I guarantee you’ll get a better understanding that way, because watching the video has already given you a general structure of the topic. Reading then serves to add details in that structure.


  • Seems like it’s mostly error handling, which makes total sense to me. In a function with a lot of error conditions, where it also takes more than return <nonzero value> to report that error, the code would get very cluttered if you handle the errors inline. Using goto in that case makes the normal case shorter and more readable, and if proper labels are used, it also becomes clear what happens in each error case.

    Sure, you can do that with functions too, but it’s much nicer staying in the same scope where the error occurred when reporting on it. Putting things in a function means thinking about what to pass, and presents extra resistance when you want to report extra info, because you have to change the function signature, etc.








  • Good teachers can make such a big difference, and it’s almost always in these kinds of unquantifiable, “I just encouraged the student in the way they needed” kinds of ways. This, as much as anything else, is why defunding the education system is so criminal. Stressed-out, underpaid and overworked teachers just won’t have the mental space to do these kinds of things.







  • If I’d Only Known I Wouldn’t Have Wasted So Much Of My Potential Club.

    I’m in this club but very much trying to leave, because I’m starting to realize “wasted potential” in itself is a toxic idea that’s been ingrained by years of teachers telling me this (with my parents doing their best to counter). That’s not to say I’m not still trying to do my best, I am, but only because I want to and because it makes me happy.


  • I agree with the overall sentiment, but I’d like to add two points:

    1. Everyone starts off as a code editor, and through a combination of (self-)education and experience can become a software engineer.

    2. To the point of code editors having to worry about LLM’s taking their job, I agree, but I don’t think it will be as over the top as people literally being replaced by “AI agents”. Rather I think it will be a combination of code editors becoming more productive through use of LLMs, decreasing the demand for code editors, and lay people (i.e. almost no code skills) being able to do more through LLMs applied in the right places, like some website builders are doing now.