@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

wordshaper

@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network

Guy who bakes, snarks, writes, and codes.

Currently at Google (my second search engine employer!), previously at Bloomberg.

One time Perl 6 pumpking, lo these many years ago, as well as core perl contributor and part-time VMS perl port maintainer. I have written the occasional article, mostly on perl. (but once upon a time long ago on the Amiga. Those were the days...)

Currently not in France. Dammit.

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purple, to random
@purple@nya.social avatar

i wish librarians would write our search engines

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@purple We actually tried that once. Sadly, like many other groups that tried doing search engines, it failed.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@purple Northern Light, way back in the day, did this. We had a whole group of library science folks who wrote the classification rules that the crawler and classifier engines used. It didn't exactly toss LoC classification numbers on every page in the index, but if you were looking specifically for, say, 19th century poets you could do that. (Or look for "bread" but in pages classified economics rather than in ones classified as baking)

The unfortunate thing was it just didn't scale -- you had to do this for a lot of languages if you wanted it to work internationally. Also a large fraction of the pages on the web (oddly not porn, porn is generally extremely easy to detect, but that's a separate story) couldn't get a good automatic classification. 16% classifiable is what I remember, but it's been 20 years so that may be wrong.

Anyway, tried it, had the scaling issues from hell, and wasn't as broadly useful as you'd like.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@kixik Makes me curious what sub-licensed stuff is in the old versions that is now no longer licensed and who would actually care.

stacylwhitman, to random

Is there a list somewhere of the people on here in the SFF or children's/YA publishing community? I have no idea how to find people on here. So far I've just gone through the lists that other people follow, but I'm not sure if that's the best way.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@stacylwhitman The https://wandering.shop instance seems to have quite a few writers and artists on it, so you can probably run through the member directory and find a lot of folks you want to follow.

atax1a, to random

learning today from ex-twitter people that we "alienated a bunch of people who just don't like internet fights" at twitter by not being nice while trying to get them to ban the terfs and nazis, and, well, i feel like that pretty much encapsulates the problem

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@atax1a I can understand not liking internet fights, and I can understand working at twitter in trust and safety, but what I can't understand is someone doing both simultaneously.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Like the coronavirus, a royal coronation can cause headaches, fever, an unpleasant malaise, and lingering neurological problems. In extreme cases (eg. WW1) coronations have been known to lead to a 1% fatality rate among affected populations, much like COVID19 among the unvaccinated.

But unlike the coronavirus, there's no vaccine against monarchism.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@cstross There's no vaccine we're willing to administer. You can develop immunity via exposure but, as we've seen with all the other diseases, acquired immunity often wanes with time.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Still spring, still pretty

rascalking, to random

the good dunks near our house is shutting down for renovations later this month, and i'm now facing the horror of going to the mediocre dunks, which will now be overwhelmed with extra customers, or switching to honey dew in the meantime.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@rascalking ...wait, what backwater part of MA do you live in that there are only two dunks within easy visiting distance? That seems kinda weird.

maxkennerly, to random
@maxkennerly@mstdn.social avatar

Cartoonish levels of corruption. One nice thing is that, while Justice Thomas continues to obliterate the Supreme Court's legitimacy, he's also dragging down an entire generation of conservative law professors who are obliged to defend all this.
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-private-school-tuition-scotus

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@maxkennerly I'm not sure how dragging down a cadre of law professors supporting Thomas' particular brand of delusional constitutional law interpretation is bad.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@peterbutler @maxkennerly Ah, fair, I misunderstood.

Maybe between Deeply Corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Deeply Corrupt Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Deeply Corrupt Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Deeply Corrupt Chief Justice John Roberts we'll... probably do nothing, but at least we can wishcast about supreme court ethics standards that are actually ethical.

Also wonder how Barret and Alito are corrupt, since it seems odd they'd not be indulging when the other four are.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

I suspect the world would be significantly more just and more advanced in good ways if we reported on the things said by people who are correct rather than by people who are confident.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@bbak While a universally applicable definition of "correct" is probably impossible, there are many, many areas where a definition of "correct" is clear.

You only need to watch any of the business news, do a brief survey of the pundits, or reading of various editorial pages to find dozens (or hundreds, if you have the stomach for it) cases of people who are confidently saying verifiably bullshit things but keep getting brought back to say more bullshit later.

People very often and reliably mistake confidence for correctness, and as a result we have a whole large class of people who's job it is to be confident, but not correct, in public. Actually doing something about that would be helpful.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Yay, spring!

bikepedantic, to random
@bikepedantic@transportation.social avatar

Imagine if, instead of BS curbside charging, the EV-car revolution in cities relied on battery-swapping operations (and city-appropo vehicles) https://insideevs.com/news/665282/fisker-ocean-battery-swap-compatible-2024/

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@bikepedantic The Gogoro scooter setup they have in Taiwan is really interesting in this regard. Having standard, swappable batteries in electric scooters/motorcycles in the US would be awesome. For bikes, too.

Cars would be amazing but we're quite a ways off from the engineering necessary to do them in a way that's feasible across car models. (Yeah, I know, the fisker in the linked article does this but coming up with battery sub-packs that are interchangeable across many different models of cars is a lot harder unfortunately)

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@bikepedantic I do think it's time to start mandating battery standards for smaller vehicles, though. Starting from the bottom end (scooters, skateboards, bikes, and motorcycles) would get us quite a ways towards people getting used to battery swapping as an option, and that'd drive car companies towards doing it for cars, too. And if not, well... at least it means fast scooter recharges. :)

johnrossmd, to random

I was today years old when I learned that there may be a relationship between pollen counts and viral respiratory infections. Pollen impairs the immune response to viruses, and viruses may also be able to hitchhike deep into the airways on pollen grains. High pollen concentrations in March 2020 may have facilitated the spread of COVID during the first pandemic wave 🤧 :virus:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2019034118

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@johnrossmd @kat This quote from the beginning of the article "Coexposure to airborne pollen enhances susceptibility to respiratory viral infections, regardless of the allergy status." is interesting, and something I didn't know.

One more reason to wear a mask outside in the spring, I guess. (And here I was mostly doing it because hayfever sucks)

chrisgeidner, to random
@chrisgeidner@journa.host avatar

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee held its ethics reform hearing.

I wrote about how Sen. Lindsey Graham falsely claimed at the hearing that all nine justices signed Roberts's letter expressing "separation of powers concerns" about the hearing.

https://www.lawdork.com/p/graham-judiciary-scotus-ethics-hearing

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@chrisgeidner Apparently "actually having ethics" is now a partisan issue. Joy.

campuscodi, to random
@campuscodi@mastodon.social avatar

Russian technology experts are apparently working on new networking protocols to replace "the use of the American TCP/IP network protocol stack"

http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/71015

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@campuscodi Oh, awesome, they'll get to rediscover every single implementation and protocol design flaw we've made since the 70s.That should be fun.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Anyone else look at those pics we see of interstate highways clogged with cars and think "y'know, give two lanes to trains and most of this clog could go away" or is it just me?

I can't imagine it'd cost all that much to turn a lane of an interstate highway into a rail line. Most of the hard work of grade prep has been done for the road, and while miles of track isn't free it's not a significant portion of the cost for most rail line installation programs.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@burnandtremble Sure, there'd be more infrastructure needed than just rails, but honestly the actual rail part is the most logistically challenging bit when going from place A to place B -- you need a contiguous, graded, not-too-curved chunk of land that you can build public infrastructure on.

That's not to take away the need for interchange with other means of transit, or stations, or parking/access to those stations, but most of that can be placed with some flexibility and at least in some areas we already have repurposable infrastructure at hand. (Gotta do something with all those gas stations that are fast being obsoleted by EVs...)

Still, I suspect that aside from the political whining (which shouldn't be underestimated) the costs of repurposing highway lanes is vastly outweighed by the benefits.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@burnandtremble Also, thinking about what the stations along the Metro North lines into NYC are like... I think the parking issue may be less of a problem than we expect. Certainly needed in some areas, but many of the stations along those lines have minimal parking and it's fine. You do need to have stations in densely populated areas for that to work, of course.

Also there are quite a few commuter parking lots already along many of the highways, those could be used if you plopped a rail station there.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@burnandtremble I was thinking more around here in Boston, where we have at least a little bit of density and existing transit. (I would honestly love a good set of trains running along I90, I84, and I91 to match the trains running along I95)

The Bay Area, or at least along the 101, could use a lot more transit but yeah the population is definitely fluffier out there and it'd need a somewhat different set of design choices to work. Which they should absolutely do, just not in the same way as we should do here in the northeast.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Watching all these companies confidently tout using AI to replace people, I'm hoping these are viciously cynical statements meant to mask layoffs the companies were going to do anyway rather than statements of actual intent.

I mean... cynical lying corporate execs I can handle and that's expected. Actually implementing all these announced AI-replacing-people plans, though... that's nuts, none of them are actually possible and would destroy the companies if they tried.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Oh, nice, looks like temps this weekend might be high enough for Paddle Boston to open up. That'll be nice, first kayak run of the season.

It's been a couple years since I've gone out, so I'm curious what changes might've happened. I know @charlesriver has been working to improve the river and while I don't normally paddle far enough to hit one of the dams, maybe I'll get ambitious and see how they look. (Maybe for the last time, since honestly the dams on the Charles really need to be removed)

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@charlesriver I didn't know about the flagging/quality testing program. That's excellent to know!

Also handy right now since if current quality holds I should go downriver instead of up.

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