Ben Jack 🏳️‍🌈👨‍💻

I finally updated my website after three years! Maybe I'll post more often, or maybe I won't. But it was fun switching everything over from Jekyll to Hugo. benjack.io

Wow.

The lawsuit that could rewrite the rules of AI copyright theverge.com/2022/11/8/2344…

Some personal news. I’m excited to announce that I’m joining J&J Consumer Health (soon to be @kenvue) to build the future of digital health products! Can’t wait to dig in 💪🏼

I can’t wait!

@liz_anne It’s not just intellectually lazy, it’s also a myth. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29993325/

the “you must kill lanternflies on sight” advisement in philadelphia is hilarious. i don’t think I’ve ever entered a city that gave me a side quest

I always knew transit was more efficient than driving, but the data on how people enter lower Manhattan is just stunning h/t @A320Lga

Dear programming tool developers: JSON is a program-to-program data transfer mechanism. If you make users of your tool configure it using JSON files, it means you're placing your convenience over theirs.

@Myrmecos These are everywhere in Philadelphia. Thankfully they move quite slowly and they’re easy to squish!

Also we’re gay, so we really have no obligation to follow whatever sexist traditions the straights have cooked up

It’s been interesting planning a wedding with my fiancé because you realize that 90% of wedding traditions are gross. We’ll just have a big party for our friends and family, thanks.

@PhillyLGBTgov cc @PHLPublicHealth

@PhillyLGBTgov Why do I have to go to NYC or DC to get a vaccine? What is Philadelphia’s plan for providing access to monkeypox vaccines? This information is not useful.

In June, you lived your Pride. Now, let’s take care of each other. If you: ➡️May have been exposed to monkeypox ➡️Aren’t feeling well ➡️Have a rash Please see your doctor to make sure it’s not monkeypox. Learn more: ow.ly/86Qt50JG8ix

I have this working theory that there are some fundamental tools that you'll need in any technical job, across time and job descriptions and stacks, and that those three tools are version control (more specifically git), SQL, and bash.

In the future, when everyone's brain is uploaded into the Large Cloud, we will all be data artifacts floating in the ether. Pick how you will spend your eternity.

New in Python 3.10: Every package must have a utils․py file containing all important logic and any bugs. Bugs outside of utils․py are considered unpythonic.

@stephspiel @austingmeyer I like Altair, but it’s not great for static reports. Most of the Python data viz ecosystem is geared towards interactive plots. And then there’s matplotlib and its derivatives. I don’t love any of them 😆

There is almost nothing I hate more about computational work than trying to make nice plots in python.

Writing informative, user-friendly error messages is a sorely undervalued skill in software engineering.