mhucka

clive, 1 month ago to random

So I booked a flight for next week, the first time in quite a while

At first I was looking at United, but a lot of their planes were Max 8s or Max 9s, or just Boeing in general, and I was like ... do I realllllly want to roll those bones

Then realized Delta flew the same routes but with Airbuses

So: Delta

I wonder how many other people are making these sorts of calculations?

Not too many, I'd suspect, but not zero

mhucka, 1 month ago to science

NSF is sponsoring some special activities for the upcoming total solar eclipse on April 8: https://new.nsf.gov/news/nsf-supporting-once-generation-science-enabled

#Eclipse #Science #NSF

mhucka, 1 month ago to Shortcuts

Have any of you created Shortcuts for iOS? I'm currently trying to figure out something kind of basic, yet seemingly impossible. I want to update a version number inside the Shortcut itself (for release identification & debugging purposes) when doing new releases, but can't figure out a way other than manually changing the value. That's … not a good approach. Is there a better way?

More details in my Apple Stack Exchange posting here:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/471442/can-a-dictionary-field-value-in-a-shortcut-be-changed-by-a-script-or-other-exter

#Shortcuts #iOS #macOS

mhucka, 1 month ago to random

Pleased that our paper "Nine best practices for research software registries and repositories" is part of the PeerJ special issue on Software Citation, Indexing, and Discoverability. This was joint work with Alice Allen, Daniel Garijo, Hervé Ménager, Lorraine Hwang, Ana Trisovic, Tom Morrell, Dan Katz, and many others in the SciCodes consortium.

Paper: https://peerj.com/articles/cs-1023/
Special issue: https://peerj.com/collections/84-software
SciCodes: https://scicodes.net

#SoftwareCitation #ResearchSoftware

mhucka, 2 months ago to random

TIL that the expression "Surfing the Internet" was coined by a woman, Jean Armour Polly, in 1992.

https://www.surfertoday.com/surfing/the-woman-who-coined-the-expression-surfing-the-internet

mhucka, 2 months ago to random

The news has been pretty depressing lately. This video may help bring a smile to your face, at least temporarily.

https://mastodon.online/@globalmuseum/112010652295439898

mhucka, 2 months ago to sustainability

I appreciate that REI's product finder has a sustainability choice/selector in addition to things like size, color, best use, etc. I hope more companies do this.

#Sustainability #ClimateChange

Brendanjones, 2 months ago to UX

I've long seen people question why there's a perception that Mastodon is hard to use.

Let me use a really concrete example I just came across that breaks the maxim "don't make me think":

Bluesky just added keyword muting, and it's way easier than doing it here.

While viewing any feed/post:

Moderation > Muted words and tags > type in word (the focus is in text field, no click required) > hit enter > click back button twice to return to where I was.

That's 4 clicks.

#UX #Mastodon #Mastodev

mhucka, 3 months ago to github

Mac users who write files in Markdown format: a lot of people know this already, but FYI, there's a free and very useful Quick Look plugin for the Finder that will display previews of Markdown files. It's handy when looking at folders in the Finder – just move the cursor to the file and press the space key to pop-up a formatted preview.

https://github.com/sbarex/QLMarkdown

It defaults to emulating the GitHub theme. There are a lot of settings in the control panel.
#GitHub #Markdown

mhucka, 3 months ago to github

GitHub users: do you put screenshots in your README files (or other documentation files)? Did you discover to your dismay that the results look wrong when viewed in dark mode (or in light mode, if your default is dark mode)?

Turns out that GitHub has a feature letting you specify the use of alternative images for light and dark modes:

https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/writing-on-github/getting-started-with-writing-and-formatting-on-github/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax#specifying-the-theme-an-image-is-shown-to

#GitHub #Accessibility

mhucka, 3 months ago to conservative

Good grief, I only just noticed that the Wayback Machine browser extension adds not just a menubar item – it also adds a contextual menu. At least in Safari on macOS, if you right-click on a page, you have access to it there.

#InternetArchive #WaybackMachine #WebArchiving #Preservation

gvwilson, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to random

Q: team A creates a package called XYZ on PyPI. It only has a few users, but it is used and under active development. Team B shows up and wants to use the same name. They called their package XYZ-toolkit, but when installed it creates a module called XYZ, so people can't use it and the original in the same project without low-level manual grief. Team B is aware of the conflict, but has many more users and isn't willing to change name. Has Team B:

mhucka, 3 months ago to random

The University of Michigan has started a new web collection for state policies on book challenges in schools and libraries:

https://blogs.lib.umich.edu/bits-and-pieces/new-web-archive-state-policies-book-challenges-schools-and-libraries

#Fascism #Libraries #BookBans

mhucka, 3 months ago to random

I recommend reading this article about how Google search results are being gamed.

"Private equity firms are utilizing public trust in long-standing publications to sell every product under the sun"

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

(h/t @mdekstrand )

mhucka, 3 months ago to conservative

Occasional reminder that the Internet Archive provides a number of tools and browser plugins to let you send pages to the Wayback Machine (as well as check if a given page has been saved):

https://help.archive.org/help/save-pages-in-the-wayback-machine/

#InternetArchive #Archiving #WebArchiving #Preservation

mhucka, 3 months ago to ai

Google has released an open-source file type identifier that uses a custom ML-based approach (not LLM). Apparently it is in use at Google for analyzing file types in Google drives & Gmail.

https://opensource.googleblog.com/2024/02/magika-ai-powered-fast-and-efficient-file-type-identification.html

People in archives might be especially interested in this.
#AI #Archives

mhucka, 3 months ago to academia

eLife has a collection on the topic of "Neurodiversity in academia":

https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/47660a12/call-for-pitches-neurodiversity-in-academia

"We welcome pitches for all neurodivergent researchers with an interesting story to tell and the willingness to tell it, regardless of diagnosis status or form of neurodivergence. This includes, but is not limited to: researchers who are autistic, dyscalculic, dyspraxic, dyslexic, ADHDers or have ADHD, Tourette Syndrome or other neurodifferences."

#Neurodiversity #Academia #ADHD

MichaelEMann, 3 months ago to random

"Famed climate scientist wins million-dollar verdict against right-wing bloggers" by Dino Grandoni for @washingtonpost
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/08/michael-mann-bloggers-defamation-trial/

mhucka, 3 months ago to github

I've released version 2.0 of READMINE, my self-documenting README file demonstrating a suggested template for README files:

https://github.com/mhucka/readmine#readme

It's a distillation of my experiences writing documentation for many software projects over many years. Try it for your next software project – you may like it!

#SoftwareDevelopment #GitHub #README #Documentation

mhucka, 3 months ago to markdown

Markdown is popular with a lot of applications. As a format for writing documents, I've always hated one thing: adding figures & images means either managing a separate file (fragile & requires time and effort to manage) or using an inline base64-encoded blob (not supported by most editors).

TextBundle seems like a great solution to this problem: package your .md file and dependencies in a ZIP archive. I wish more applications would support it.

http://textbundle.org
#Markdown

mhucka, 3 months ago to random

I think my jaw dropped so low it hit the keyboard.

You've probably heard the expression "If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It", right? It's repeated pretty often in the context in areas like management, statistics, software development.

It turns out that, not only is this usually attributed to the wrong person, but the quote itself is incorrect: the original quote is longer and says … basically the opposite.

https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/mhsu/blog/files/deming_measurement.html

(h/t https://fediscience.org/@dandean@indieweb.social/111784409201439874)
#SoftwareEngineering

mhucka, 3 months ago to github

People who use git: do you follow a commit message convention like Conventional Commits (https://www.conventionalcommits.org/) or some other? Has it worked out for you? I've tried it for a while, and have mixed feelings at best. Today, looking through a couple dozen examples of some random well-known projects to see if I could learn to do it better, not one of them follows this kind of convention. I'm curious if anyone does?

#SoftwareEngineering #Git #GitHub

mhucka, 4 months ago to accessibility

The Google developer documentation style guide has some useful guidelines for improving the accessibility of your documentation. I especially appreciate how concise it is. A lot of guides I find have so much information that it's hard for me to apply them.

https://developers.google.com/style/accessibility

#Accessibility #SoftwareEngineering #A11y

mhucka, 4 months ago to random

"In the latest twist of the publishing arms race, firms churning out fake papers have taken to bribing journal editors"

https://www.science.org/content/article/paper-mills-bribing-editors-scholarly-journals-science-investigation-finds

mhucka, 4 months ago to climate

Zack Labe (@ZLabe) makes some marvelous visualizations of climate change data – it's worth following him if you're at all interested in climate change.

https://fediscience.org/@ZLabe/109292375340847297
#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis