whydudothatdrcrane

Recently some group published an interactive, javascript based, website, to graphically explore data broker companies. This is just one group doing similar research work in different fields. I applaud the cause, but I take issue with the format.

An organization, that is, or group that frequently needs to provide structured data. In turn, developers might want said data, in order to deliver apps.

Interactive websites seem flaky to me, since no one guarantees they will still be there two years from now. I think it is only natural that groups doing important work would do a great service to communities if they served a RESTful or GraphQL API, depending on the complexity of the data.

But even in this case, when the group stops serving the API let alone be coerced to stop, or access to the API is blocked, this great service will be discontinued. Obviously the raw data must be shared for this to work.

Lately I was thinking about these edge cases. Journalists or activists doing this type of work may lack the sophistication to structure the data in useful ways. They probably do the journalist work and then have some developer they either hire, or is part of the group, make the important backend decisions, including structuring the raw data.

Regarding the retention of the data in case the group disbands or goes away, there are some existing solutions like torrenting or IPFSing the datasets. Both methods can help the data be online forever, but what about content integrity and versions? They would still need a static webpage or something to provide the hashes, and IPFS is by its design not very well suited for versioning.

There are no clean cut guidelines on how to go about this, or at least, what is a handful of good ways to go about this, so that a current or future group can rely on to deliver this type of work.

Another idea that popped into my head is that the ecosystems of repositories and package managers are very mature in all major distributions. Structured data could be uploaded to distro repositories (including FDroid and the like), just like any other software with underlying data structures. Hashing and versioning would be then natively taken care of by existing package managers. But the question still remains, what data structure is the best for this kind of relational data, and what kind of API should best be exposed to the user.

So, if you feel like it, I would like to hear your thoughts on:

1. Skills and preparations required by investigative teams to publish structured data to the world.
2. Assessment of the torrenting and IPFS solutions to ensure recovery of the data in perpetuity.
3. Assessment of the RESTful or GraphQL format to disseminate investigative data.
4. Assessment of using established package managers and repositories to disseminate investigative data.
5. Ideas on what should be eventually exposed to the user, who can be assumed to be a developer as well.
6. Further comments.

I would be glad to get some feedback on these thoughts.

Archived

I hope someone will find those helpful

Is this for real? I can't draw no other conclusion than US defaultism in trans activism gives a free pass to TERF politics in Europe. This kind of news from Germany cannot mean anything good.

According to Wikipedia:

In 2019, the German Language Association VDS (Verein Deutsche Sprache; not to be confused with the Association for the German Language Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache, GfdS) launched a petition against the use of the gender star, saying it was a "destructive intrusion" into the German language and created "ridiculous linguistic structures". It was signed by over 100 writers and scholars.[11] Luise F. Pusch, a German feminist linguist, criticises the gender star as it still makes women the 'second choice' by the use of the feminine suffix.[12] In 2020, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache declared Gendersternchen to be one of the 10 German Words of the Year.[13]

In 2023, the state of Saxony banned the use of gender stars and gender gaps in schools and education, which marks students' use of the gender stars as incorrect.[14][15] In March 2024, Bavaria banned gender-neutral language in schools, universities and several other public authorities.[16][17] In April 2024, Hesse banned the use of gender neutral language, including gender stars, in administrative language.[18]

Here are the original Wikipedia references

11. "Der Aufruf und seine Erstunterzeichner". Verein Deutsche Sprache (in German). 6 March 2019. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
12. Schlüter, Nadja (22 April 2019). ""Das Gendersternchen ist nicht die richtige Lösung"". Jetzt.de (in German). Retrieved 5 April 2020. "GfdS Wort des Jahres" (in German). Retrieved 13 December 2020.
13. Jones, Sam; Willsher, Kim; Oltermann, Philip; Giuffrida, Angela (2023-11-04). "What's in a word? How less-gendered language is faring across Europe". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
14. "Schools in Saxony are forbidden to use gender language". cne.news. Retrieved 2024-04-05.

I got into this rabbit hole from this news article

News article in German

Archived

Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, the Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources of Iceland, has announced a new regulation that requires toilets to be labelled based on facilities rather than gender. This change follows a query from Andrés Ingi Jónsson, a Pirate Party MP who has been advocating for the issue since 2020.

The regulation mandates that gender-neutral toilets must be provided wherever separate women’s and men’s toilets are available.

“For those of us who haven’t experienced it personally, this might seem minor, but it’s crucial for people to know whether they can access a toilet at work or school. It really matters,” says Andrés Ingi Jónsson, highlighting the importance of this change.

Archived

Due to the nature of my work, I have been in different places over the world, building websites for different causes, usually community projects with a tech angle. Most of the funding proposals I have laid my eyes on are rife with buzzwords.

Even when (either me or other devs) clean up proposals to get rid of all superfluous hype, I have noticed that middle management tends to puts those back in, or worse, they chastise us for taking them out in the first place. The argument they make is that the committees that will evaluate the proposal will need to see the buzzwords. Few things are as disheartening as seeing people having prepared a robust life cycle for a tech or outreach project, and middle management chiming in, to literally say "Great now we need to beef this up with as many buzzwords as possible".

I don't know if this is supposed to mean "we will fool them with the buzzwords" or "they are fools that only understand buzzwords". If anything, I believe that the buzzword salad would make us come down as less-than-credible windbags. I just think is wrong, and if this is happening at scale, then I think lots of funding goes to crap projects, that end up being an abandoned website somewhere on the internet, just to commemorate that this project was once funded.

What is your experience? What projects would you rather see be funded, be it community empowerment open-source tech or other domain?

Sometimes we come across a random comment and we find it is the most important, urgent, and/or funny thing in the world. Then we forget about it and we move on to the next post. Here is your chance to salvage those.