Page 11 of 128
On 1M-context models, Claude Code waits until about 967K tokens to auto-compact, so late messages each carry nearly a million tokens of history. I set /autocompact 400k as Lydia Hallie suggested and used it for 11 days: roughly 16–22% less usage, and no noticeable increase in rework or corrections from lost details. This is one person's observation on one kind of work, not a general finding.
REA is an MIT-licensed MCP server that lets Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and other agents read native binaries through Ghidra, Hopper, or IDA, and take apart Electron, .NET, APK, and web targets directly. What separates it from single-engine bridges like GhidraMCP is that every result carries an evidence ID, a coverage status, and its limitations. One npx rea-agents setup installs it, and JavaScript analysis needs no disassembler at all.
A Mac has no NVIDIA GPU, so it can't really run vLLM — but Colab's free T4 (compute capability 7.5, exactly vLLM's minimum) can. Serve the 0.6B Qwen3 as an OpenAI-compatible API with vllm serve, fire 8 requests at once, read /metrics, and you can watch continuous batching happen.
Alpine climbing = multi-pitch + snow and ice skills + objective hazards + the descent. F to ED grades the seriousness of the whole route, not just the technical moves: in the definitions the Canadian ACMG uses, PD has rock of only 5.3–5.4 and snow up to 45°, while D has 5.6–5.7 rock, snow and ice around 55°, and often more than 500 m of height. North America's 71 alpine accidents in 2024 were the most of any type, but that is a count, not a rate. Taiwan only offers snow-climbing level terrain; for a first technical alpine route, the two common paths are hiring a guide or taking a course.
A big wall usually means NCCS Grade V or higher, a route that needs a night on the wall. El Capitan's The Nose is written VI 5.9 C2: VI means two or more days, 5.9 is the free climbing, C2 the hammerless aid. The leader climbs and fixes the rope, the second ascends it with ascenders and cleans the gear, and meanwhile the leader hauls the bag. Taiwan has nothing of this scale — Long Dong tops out at about 70 m — but it is a good place to master trad, anchors and multi-pitch.
Outdoor problems have no coloured holds, so you read the topo: find the start holds, check for sds (sit start), and see whether the finish is a final hold or a top out. If nothing says how to start, the Fontainebleau convention is a standing start from the ground. Etiquette is about keeping access: park where you're meant to, keep quiet, put pads on durable ground, brush off chalk and tick marks before you leave, stay off wet sandstone, and carry out all trash and any pads you stashed.
A coaching certificate is not a belay card. The CBT shows you can belay; a Level C coaching certificate adds at least 24 hours of course time on top, plus a written exam, a climbing test and a teaching demonstration. The CTAA's Level C requires you to be 20, hold a valid CBT and a police record certificate, and climb 5.10a/b in the test. No national rule we could find says you need a certificate to teach in a commercial gym, but Taipei's 2026 inspection form requires coaches, judges and route setters working in gyms to hold a Level C or higher certificate valid within four years.
Under the January 2026 World Climbing rules, lead semi-finals and finals are onsight, with 6 minutes of collective observation beforehand; binoculars and hand-written notes are allowed, photos are not. In boulder, a top scores 25, a zone 10, and each failed attempt costs 0.1. In a video analysis of 2019 World Cup boulder finals (old scoring), almost nobody topped after the 6th attempt. Nerves themselves aren't the problem; your pre-competition routine and your reset between attempts are what you can train.
Taiwan's National Games, National Sports Festival and National High School Games currently have no climbing. Climbers can start with gym comps, then enter the national championships run by the Chinese Taipei Alpine Association (CTAA) and hosted by gyms (open-division results count towards national-team points). Students have a separate national youth championship, where high-school and junior-high results can be used for sports-based school admission. Three Taiwanese athletes earned places at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games; the Ministry of Sports decided not to send them, citing its participation standards and a cost-benefit review, while the athletes say they only learned of it after the entry deadline. This post presents both accounts.
Competitions outside World Climbing are mostly invitational, set their own rules and are built to be watched. Rock Master has run since 1986 and held its 40th edition in 2026, with a Lead Duel and a knockout bouldering event. Psicobloc deep water solo still runs in A Coruña, Spain, in 2026. The Pro Climbing League launched in London in 2026 with a £10,000 winner's prize, more than the €6,000 a World Climbing Series event pays its winner, and expands to three events with a £50,000 prize pot each in 2027.
International climbing competitions are run by World Climbing (formerly the IFSC), which officially switched names in December 2025. The events you see most on stream are the World Climbing Series (13 stops in 2026, replacing the World Cup). Above it sit the World Championships every two years and the Olympics every four. In Taiwan, the 2026 Series is broadcast by ELTA TV, and results update live on the official results site.
A thin layer of chalk helps; too much, or old chalk built up on holds, makes you slip, so brush holds before you try and chalk little and often. One 11-person lab study (Amca 2012) found no direct effect of temperature or humidity on finger friction, but humid heat makes you sweat and makes cold rock collect condensation. Keelung's monthly mean relative humidity sits around 72–80% all year (CWA 1991–2020 normals). Good days at Longdong usually arrive with a pulse of dry, cold air and last a day or two: watch the forecast, live humidity and swell alerts, and go on the day that is dry and calm.
For single-pitch days, a crag pack needs three things: a back panel or side that opens fully, a rope tarp built in or carried separately, and 35–50 L. When two climbers share one 70 m rope, one 45 L pack for the rope and draws plus one 35 L pack for water and layers works best. To use it as a cabin bag too, pick one with stowable straps and dimensions close to 55×35×20 cm, such as the Climbing Technology Falesia. The stiff Creek 50 weighs 2 kg empty, a big bite out of a 7 kg cabin limit.
The five disciplines differ in three ways: what stops a fall (water, yourself, a partner), what you climb on (rock, ice, snow) and how long you are committed (half a day to more than a week). Boulderers are closest to deep water soloing, provided they can swim; big walls need trad and multi-pitch skills; Taiwan has almost no natural ice. Of North America's 2024 climbing accidents, 71 were alpine, 52 trad and 35 sport — totals, not rates, so they cannot rank which is most dangerous.
Each practice fall should be only a little past comfortable. Hazel Findlay says falls bigger than you're ready for make the fear more entrenched; Lattice compares the right dose to a PG-13 horror film. If you grab the rope, hold your breath or close your eyes, step back down a level. If life is very stressful or you've been injured in a fall, deal with the stress or see a mental health professional first: forcing it can make you more scared.
Buy in the order you'll use things: shoes first (you need them in the gym, and fit and hygiene depend on having your own), then a harness, belay device and locking carabiner once you top-rope regularly, and a helmet, rope and quickdraws when you head outdoors; a prusik cord once you rappel on your own outdoors, and nuts and cams once you start trad (most multi-pitch routes at Longdong are trad, so trad comes first). Climbing shoes are not PPE and have no safety standard; harnesses, helmets, ropes, carabiners and belay devices are, so look for the CE mark or UIAA Safety Label, then the year of manufacture. The UIAA's 2026 buying advice says plainly that harnesses, helmets and ropes should not be acquired second-hand.
A manufacturer's 10 years is a maximum lifetime: the most a product can last stored well and never damaged. How long you can actually use it is its service life, which depends on wear and is usually shorter. BD says a harness in normal use lasts about three years; the manufacturer table DAV reprints says a rope used weekly lasts at most a year, while Edelrid says a frequently fallen-on rope should be downgraded to top-rope use after a year. Retire immediately after acid contact, a visible core, a major fall, or when you don't know the history. For dropped carabiners, DAV says a drop doesn't create hairline cracks, while BD and Petzl say retire when in doubt; both views are presented side by side. Judge by inspection, not by age.
Flying abroad to climb adds six decisions: what to bring and how long a rope, what can go in the cabin, how to split checked and carry-on bags, what to pack it all in, which pack to carry at the crag, and whether your radios and satellite SOS device are legal there. For a sport-climbing holiday, posts 1 to 6 are enough, with post 2 only if you are buying or replacing a rope; add post 7 for multipitch, and post 8 for Japan or Korea. How to choose each piece of gear is covered in the Climbing Gear series.
In Taiwan, Article 10-1 of the Consumer Protection Act says a business cannot limit or waive in advance its liability for the safety of its services, so a waiver clause saying 'all consequences are my own responsibility' is void. Your own negligence can still reduce what you're awarded. A gym's public liability insurance only pays once the gym is found legally liable; if you want cover whenever you get hurt, buy your own policy. Taipei's mandatory-insurance annex does not list 'climbing gym' by name; whether it applies is up to the city government.
Most of what you see in a climbing gym appeared between the 1930s and the 1990s: Pierre Allain invented the soft-soled climbing shoe in 1935, John Gill brought gymnastics chalk into climbing in the 1950s, and the first modern climbing wall went up in a corridor at the University of Leeds in 1964. Rope climbing's 5.10 and bouldering's V grades grew up separately: YDS was published with a 1956 Tahquitz guidebook, V grades with a 1991 Hueco Tanks guide. Competitions began with Soviet speed events in the late 1940s, lead competitions arrived with Italy's SportRoccia in 1985, and climbing made its Olympic debut in Tokyo in 2021.