vogelke

If you can suppress your gag reflex, M4 can do some of what you want. sinclude(...) will include a file and be silent in case of failure. I did something like this for user-login history because I couldn't use PHP or Perl:

    me% cat index.m4
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
      <head>
        <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
        <title>Better user history</title>
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="local.css">
      </head>

      <body>
          <h3>Users</h3>
          <ul>
            <li><em>By username</em></li>
            <ul>
    sinclude(`byuser.m4')dnl
            </ul>
            <li><em>By last login date</em></li>
            <ul>
    sinclude(`bydate.m4')dnl
            </ul>
          </ul>
    sinclude(`footer.m4')dnl
      </body>
    </html>

    me% cat byuser.m4
    <li><a href="byuser/A-L">A-L</a></li>
    <li><a href="byuser/M-Z">M-Z</a></li>

    me% cat bydate.m4
    <li><a href="bydate/2025">2025</a></li>
    <li><a href="bydate/2026">2026</a></li>

    me% cat footer.m4
    <p><em>Last update: syscmd(`date | tr -d "\n"')</em>

    me% m4 index.m4 > index.htm

    me% cat index.htm
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
      <head>
        <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
        <title>Better user history</title>
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="local.css">
      </head>

      <body>
          <h3>Users</h3>
          <ul>
            <li><em>By username</em></li>
            <ul>
    <li><a href="byuser/A-L">A-L</a></li>
    <li><a href="byuser/M-Z">M-Z</a></li>
            </ul>
            <li><em>By last login date</em></li>
            <ul>
    <li><a href="bydate/2025">2025</a></li>
    <li><a href="bydate/2026">2026</a></li>
            </ul>
          </ul>
    <p><em>Last update: Mon Oct 12 03:08:32 EDT 2026</em>
      </body>
    </html>

1. Price tracking over time.

2. MPG tracking by brand -- I get about 1.5 MPG better with BP.

Lovely.

+1. One of my favorite quotes:

No one hates so bitterly as the lazy and poor contemplating the energetic and prosperous. --Dale Worley

> in, say, two years, we will be all writing and talking like this

Shoot me now.

If they can't justify why this is a bug, and why it's worth your time to fix this as opposed to something else, you should be able to revoke their permission to touch your backlog.

This is perfect.

Since AI makes it easier for incompetent people to look smart, AI can help us expose those people for what they are.

By checking the diffs carefully, you're showing how to use an LLM to add value instead of creating a 17000-line PR that nobody with any sense will read.

LLMs are really good at making it harder to ignore ignorant people, and you've demonstrated that you're NOT part of the problem.

This is right on the money. It's not that we have way more bad engineers than before; it's that the damage they do is out of all proportion to their numbers.

> I can't give them any sort of answer that makes sense ...

Pride of workmanship. For those who understand, no answer is needed. For those who don't, no answer will work.

> ...management is making strategic decisions after snorting a long line of social-media-psychosis and TED talks.

+1. Straight into my quotes file.

I love this. Straight into my quotes file.

Matt Stoller has written some excellent articles about Ticketmaster's monopoly crap.

Probably. As an American, I have to agree with you -- it's been the case for many years (WAY before Trump) that within 50 miles of our border, your rights go to wherever last year's snow went.

It's too bad so few people can say "My country, if right to be supported, if wrong to be corrected."

I have a Dell 2208 monitor with 4 USB-2 ports. If I bought three of these switches, would I be able to share keyboard/mouse/monitor between two machines? My monitor does not have HDMI, just VGA.