That is some of the funniest stuff I’ve read in a long time David Sent from iPhone Hotblack Desiato

So, I ran the following experiment: I downloaded the last month of email from the archive, and split them into one email per file using a quick and dirty state machine script in python looking an empty line followed by two lines starting with "From" in order to know where to split. I then uploaded the files into https://openwebui.com/ built-in RAG system. The vectorization model is nvidia/NV-Embed-v2, and the LLM is https://huggingface.co/bartowski/gemma-2-27b-it-GGUF/blob/main/gemma-2-27b-… I then put the following very vague query, but which I knew was relevent to last month's discussion: What has changed in the C language in the last few decades ? I copied the response at the end of the email. It seems quite good to me, but it may get worse when the whole archive is uploaded. I think this proof of concept shows that there could be value in doing the whole list, with a cleaner email extraction a few tweaks to the system prompt. I can't do it now because I have a few deadlines coming soon (not the least of which is the International Workshop on Plan 9 https://iwp9.org/ SEND YOUR PAPERS, PEOPLE !), but I would like to tackle that in the near future. Hosting this require significant but not overly expansive hardware (from 1 to few k€), if a university lab or a generous patron wants to see it done and make it available to the public, please contact me :) Otherwise llamafile (https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile justine single-handedly restored my faith in Mozilla) could be used to distribute a file that would contain the model+the emails+the vector database in a single huge file that can run anywhere. Exciting times ! Here is the LLM answer: Based on the provided context, it appears that the C language has undergone significant changes over the last few decades. Here are some key changes mentioned: Standardization and Formalization : The C language has become more formalized and standardized, with the introduction of new standards (e.g., C89, C99, C23). This has led to a more rigid and legalistic approach to the language, which some users find less useful. Changes to realloc function : The behavior of the realloc function has changed over time. In the first ANSI C standard, realloc(0, ptr) was well-defined when ptr was not nil. However, this behavior was changed in C99, and now, in C23, realloc(0, ptr) is undefined behavior (UB) regardless of the value of ptr. Strict Aliasing : The introduction of strict aliasing rules has led to compilers assuming that pointers to incompatible types always point to different non-overlapping locations. This has caused issues for some programmers. Additional Features and Functions : The C language has gained new features and functions over the years, such as stdint.h (introduced in C89), which provides integer types with specific widths. Evolution of Language Principles : The language has evolved with no appreciation or understanding of the aesthetic and practical principles of the original language effort, leading to a more verbose and less concise language. These changes reflect the C language's growth and adaptation to new requirements and use cases over the decades. However, some users, like the ones in the provided context, feel that these changes have made the language less useful and more complicated. Warren Toomey via COFF <coff(a)tuhs.org> writes: