@vrandecic@mas.to
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

vrandecic

@vrandecic@mas.to

Husband. Dad. Cat housemate. PhD. Works on Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions at Wikimedia Foundation. Wikidata founder. Previously: ontologist at Google, Wikimedia Trustee, and RPG author. Berkeley, CA, roots in Brač, Croatia, grew up in Germany. he/him. Views my own.

Posting cat pics and occasionally other stuff.

#tootfinder

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vrandecic, to Cat
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

This bag is giving its third day of joy

#cat #cats #CatsOfMastodon #caturday

vrandecic, to Disney
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We're watching Spy x Family on Disney Plus with Little One, and they're showing ads for alcohol all the time. The beer mixed with fruit juices stuff, and other beer drinks. That doesn't feel right.

#Disney #spy_x_family #modelo #corona

vrandecic, to random
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Wikipedia is about verifiable facts from reliable sources. For Wikipedia, arguing with "The Truth" is not effective. Wikipedians don't write "because it's true" but "because that's what's in this source".

It is painful to see Katherine Maher viciously and widely attacked on Twitter, also for a quote restating how Wikipedia works.

I have worked with @krmaher
We were lucky to have her at Wikipedia, and NPR is lucky to have her.

jonny, to random
@jonny@neuromatch.social avatar

So yes its ridiculous that the IRS makes us tell it how much money we have when it already knows, but how come the default for every employer ive ever had is to OVERPAY your taxes throughout the year and get that money back later. What kind of interest free loan is that

vrandecic,
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

@jonny every US employer I had allowed me to adjust how much taxes are being withheld, to a certain amount

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

Are you a front end or full stack engineer and want to work with me on Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions? Then we are a looking for you!

Feel free to share.

https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/5850672

jonny, to random
@jonny@neuromatch.social avatar

My latest bad idea thats actually good: what if instead of a schema generating a python module, what if the schema was a python module by hooking into the import machinery

vrandecic,
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

@jonny https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-135/paper4.pdf ?

(I didn't read this paper in more than ten years, so I might totally misremember it)

vrandecic,
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@jonny that's much better than a paper that always was merely vaporware!

vrandecic, to scifi
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

Rainbows end.

The book, written in 2006, was set in 2025 in San Diego. Its author, Vernor Vinge, died yesterday, March 20, 2024, in nearby La Jolla, at the age of 79.

Rainbows end explores themes such as shared realities, digital surveillance, and the digitisation of the world, years before Marc Andreessen proclaimed that "software is eating the word", describing it much more colorfully and rich than Andreessen ever did.

1/3

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

Great story about how YouTube helped with moving away from IE6.

"Our most renegade web developer, an otherwise soft-spoken Croatian guy, insisted on checking in the code under his name, as a badge of personal honor, and the rest of us leveraged our OldTuber status to approve the code review."

I swear that wasn't me. Although I would have loved to do it.

https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

My knowledge about Gödel was very incomplete. This fascinating article helped a lot!

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00644-1

vrandecic, to random
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Software issues around leap day 2024: https://codeofmatt.com/list-of-2024-leap-day-bugs/

vrandecic, to random
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Interesting link:

https://apple.com/hypercard

vrandecic, to random
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We were wondering what the line "One a penny, two a penny" means, as it sounds paradoxical, and so we asked Google, and it generated the following code (!) as the answer:

def one_a_penny_two_a_penny_meaning():
"""
This function explains the meaning of the phrase "one a penny, two a penny".

Returns:
A string explaining the meaning of the phrase "one a penny, two a penny".
"""
1/4

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

You have a chatbot on your site, you are responsible for what it says. Sounds good to me.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-honor-refund-policy-invented-by-airlines-chatbot/

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

Translate text to Morse code

https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10944

(Trying to get the search engines to index the function pages, which initially were accidentally set not to. Feel free to boost and help with that.)

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

Great interview with Erik Brynjolfsson on the potential impact of AI on the economy.

"In particular, if the technologies are mainly used to [...] replace humans with machines, it is likely to lead to lower wages and more concentration of wealth and power as capital substitutes for labour. But, if we use the technology mainly to augment our skills, to do new things, then it is more likely to lead to widely shared prosperity and higher wages."

https://www.ft.com/content/b71759fe-397b-4688-bc81-b082edb25f31

vrandecic,
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And also: "Current tax policy and investment credits encourage capital over labour. Marginal tax rates on capital are about half of what they are on labour [...]. That biases entrepreneurs towards trying to find capital-heavy solutions instead of ones that involve labour. I do not see a public policy reason for having that kind of a bias. That is just one example of where the policy needs to take into account what it is doing and how it is shaping the trajectory of technological advances."

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

AI² releases OLMo, a truly open source LLM. 7 billion parameters, 2 trillion tokens of training text. All training data, all weighs, all code, and even checkpoints.

Thank you, AI²!

https://www.fastcompany.com/91021305/ai2-new-open-source-llm

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

If you're a bit older, you might remember 3.5” disks, and that they had a capacity of 1.44 MB (two sides, HD, PC).

But what did that MB stand for? How many bytes was that? Do you think it was

a) 1.44 x 1000 x 1000 = 1,440,000
b) 1.44 x 1024 x 1024 = 1,509,949

Answer in reply.

vrandecic, to twitter
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

Interesting choice: someone seemingly flooded Twitter with fake nudes of Taylor Swift. Instead of removing them, Twitter currently blocks any searches for "Taylor Swift" - but as soon as you type "Tay" it suggests "Taylor Swift Fotos", which does not get blocked.

Screenshot showing how Twitter blocks the search for Taylor Swift
Screenshot showing Taylor Swift Fotos isn't blocked

hacks4pancakes, to random

Gonna share some truths that are taboo to talk about, and everyone is gonna angrily at me about (I’m going to drink this mead then have a nap, don’t bother):glasses frames are a monopoly, but you can buy pretty nice glasses from China if you have a prescription for like $20, I have like 11 - look at Vooglam ~ nobody actually gives a shit if you go to the glamorous restaurant alone, as long as you tip well and are polite - in fact you’ll get better drinks at the bar~ the secret to doing a lot of stuff as an adult, like hobbies or going places, is just asking. Nobody gives a shit if you tip well and you’re polite. You can go almost wherever. You can finger paint. Whatevs.~ life is too short for shit beer & liquor~ life is too short for shit men, love~ there will be other loves even though it seems giant ~ trans rights are human rights and I’ll officiate your wedding ~ local elections matter ~ you should be seeing a therapist~ if you haven’t worn it in two years, donate it, darling~ people at bars want to tell you about their jobs and hobbies, and they’re all interesting~ video games and D&D are real life skills~ find the fitness that you can do long term~ no fad diets~ you don’t have to know how to code or watch Star Wars to be a great IT person~ if you ever have or think you have a serious health problem in America, understand our healthcare is shit and you need to research it yourself and then get like 3 opinions minimum. Nobody will look out for you like you do.~ you should probably wear the mask~ if you have ovaries that work you can just take birth control forever and never have a period, there are some health caveats but it’s mostly sorta kinda just a stigma not to. The military does this.~ if you have ovaries that work find an gynecologist who is generally not an asshole, life is too short for checking with your nonexistent husband ~ if your doctor harps on your bmi and nothing else, then get a new doctor, before you die. Literally.~ it’s a good night if you get home safe, brush your teeth, and take an aleve~ life is too short to penny pinch instead of living, because soon we’ll be gone~ you look perfect in that outfit to everyone except you ~ life is too short for shit jobs ~ ask how other people are doing, and listen~ genuinely care about what happens to other people because it will happen to you

vrandecic,
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

@hacks4pancakes I think my cat doesn't

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

For Wikipedia's 23rd birthday this week, a word from our Director of Machine Learning

https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2024/01/16/wikipedia-is-here-to-stay/

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

Explore the ocean of words. Browse through the lexicographic data in Wikidata along four dimensions:

  • alphabetical, like a dictionary
  • translations and synonyms
  • where does this word come from, where did it go
  • narrower and wider words, describing a hierarchy of meanings

Wikidata contains over 1.2 million lexicographic entries, but you will see many gaps. Join us in charting out more of the sea of words.

Happy 23rd birthday to Wikipedia and the movement it started!

https://vrandezo.github.io/TheSurroundingOcean/

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

RIP Niklaus Wirth;

BEGIN

I don't think there's a person who created more programming languages that I used than Wirth: Pascal, Modula, and Oberon; maybe Guy Steele, depending on what you count;

Wirth is also famous for Wirth's law: software becomes slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster;

He received the 1984 Turing Award, and had an asteroid named after him in 1999; Wirth died at the age of 89;

END.

vrandecic, to random
@vrandecic@mas.to avatar

So many good news this year, it's overwhelming. Fights against diseases, avoiding a recession in the US, reaching peak oil sooner, huge gains in solar, massive reduction in crime, fewer tax havens, and so much more.

https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews2023/

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