mhucka

@mhucka@fediscience.org

Member of the Professional Staff at the California Institute of Technology. PhD in CS. He/him. 🇨🇿 🇨🇦 🇺🇸

Started out in #AI and #CognitiveScience, postdoc'ed in #ComputationalNeuroscience, spent a couple of decades creating #OpenSource #software & community #standards for #SystemsBiology (codeveloped & led #SBML – https://SBML.org – plus numerous other efforts including https://co.mbine.org). Currently working on software tools for libraries and archives at #Caltech.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

mhucka, to Wyze

Do you have a project on GitHub? Does it use GitHub Pages for documentation or other purposes? Would you like to archive a copy of those GitHub pages in the Internet Archive automatically whenever you release a new version?

I wrote Waystation, a simple and free GitHub Action, exactly for this purpose:

https://caltechlibrary.github.io/waystation/

Feedback welcome. Give it a star on GitHub if you like it!

mhucka, to opensource

I am forever grateful to the people who contribute images to Wikimedia Commons and make them available under CC0 licenses. It's a tremendous resource for open-source projects, where typically you don't have the funding to pay for the rights to use a stock image from one of the commercial services.

Today I wanted an image of a baler (a farm machine that makes bales of hay) for use in a new software project, and found a nice one by Glendon Kuhns.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baling_Small_Square_Bales_with_Accumulator.jpg#Licensing

mhucka, 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)

mhucka, to climate

I think the vast majority of humans simply have no idea that this is happening, or what it implies.

The temperatures of the oceans have been continually increasing, and last year reached a new high.

The thing about oceans is, you can't reverse a trend like this quickly. The masses involved are too large. Even if we flat-lined carbon emissions today, this trend would continue for decades to come.

• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-024-3378-5
• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/11/ocean-warming-temperatures-2023-extreme-weather-data

mhucka, to random

Pro tip for blog authors: cite your sources.

When I read a blog article and see "studies have shown" without any citations whatsoever, I stop reading, no matter how sensible the article might seem. I'm also never going to cite that blog post myself, nor share it with anyone else.

mhucka, 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, 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

mhucka, 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, to ai

The National Science Foundation has issued a notice about the use of generative AI in the NSF merit review process: https://new.nsf.gov/news/notice-to-the-research-community-on-ai

mhucka, to random

This NYT story from last month is incredible, and worth reading. It's about how criminal gangs in Asia kidnap people and force them to operate online scams. (Gift link.)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/myanmar-cyber-scam.html?unlocked_article_code=1.NE0.Y9NT.YS03T089lEVi&smid=url-share

gvwilson, (edited ) to random
@gvwilson@mastodon.social avatar

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,

@soliman @gvwilson Later down on the page, there is part too.

This seems as close to a community rule as anything does in this context.

mhucka, to climate

Meanwhile, the oil and gas industries are covertly funding campaigns aimed at convincing consumers not to take steps to reduce emissions.

• https://www.desmog.com/2023/12/21/revealed-ads-urging-canadians-to-oppose-climate-laws-paid-for-by-canadian-gas-association/
• https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/21/new-home-builder-contractor-fossil-fuel-utilities-natural-gas
• https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/10/oil-ads-lights-on-energy
• https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/03/2023-hottest-year-on-record-fossil-fuel-climate-crisis

mhucka, 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

mhucka, to machinelearning

People who work in AI and libraries/archives/museums, we need your help! 👋🏻

A few of us maintain an "awesome-ai4lam" 🕶️ list at https://github.com/AI4LAM/awesome-ai4lam and we need your help finding more things to add. Please tell us what we missed!

You can just reply to this toot, or open an issue/ticket in the GitHub repo, or email me, or whatever is easiest for you.

Please boost this to reach more people! 📣
#MachineLearning #Libraries #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ChatGPT #GPT #LLMs #OCR #HTR

mhucka, 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.

mhucka, to photography

Photographers using macOS: I learned of a free screensaver replacement for displaying photos. It offers much more control over how images are displayed than macOS's build-in screensaver.

https://user.informatik.uni-bremen.de/zach/software/ArtSaver/index.html

mhucka, 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."

mhucka, 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

mhucka, 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.

mhucka, 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, 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

mhucka, 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

mhucka, 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.

mhucka, 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, 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

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • khanakhh
  • mdbf
  • ethstaker
  • magazineikmin
  • GTA5RPClips
  • rosin
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • InstantRegret
  • slotface
  • osvaldo12
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • JUstTest
  • Durango
  • everett
  • cisconetworking
  • normalnudes
  • tester
  • ngwrru68w68
  • cubers
  • modclub
  • tacticalgear
  • provamag3
  • Leos
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •