Harry Wood

Software engineer somewhat specialised towards ruby on rails and towards back-end data work. Open data & open collaborations. Father of two.
https://harrywood.co.uk/

Public Key

npub1lhq3fkjc2d8wqwalpujwrc07gxdh8v5k92ss0f0f9ts2qfxwm9kqtsrnkk

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[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs0msg5mfv9xnhq8wls7f8pu8lyrxmnk2tz4gg85h5j4c9qyn8djmqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qz9thwden5te0wfjkccte9ekk7um5wgh8qatzyyvfgc

Publishing to

relay.ditto.pub

relay.mostr.pub

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1lhq3fkjc2d8wqwalpujwrc07gxdh8v5k92ss0f0f9ts2qfxwm9kqtsrnkk

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Last Notes

2026-10-03 11:09:34 GMT

Today's OpenStreetMap #31DayOSMChallenge is FIXME tags.
I've tended to ignore these. There's a lot of FIXME tags in London. It's a bit of a mess! See them with OSMInspector here:
https://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/?view=tagging&lon=-0.07747&lat=51.52122&zoom=11&overlays=fixmes_on_nodes%2Cfixmes_on_ways Today's a good day to try to fix some.
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/117/376/649/962/930/684/original/e8b582467c9b40df.png

2026-07-23 01:50:07 GMT

Codeberg is set to discourage vibe-coded projects: https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html
That @nprofile…mvm4 blog post gives a good run-down of the familiar ways AI coding is messing up open source, but also the "The development team of none" section is describing a problem more specific to code hosting:
"It seems ridiculous to see projects with a single developer and virtually no users consuming as much or even more resources than some of the largest community projects on Codeberg"

2026-06-24 09:42:49 GMT

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@nprofile…25ct @nprofile…6z8u hmm when you say 48 seconds, d'you literally mean there is a time limit? Seems surprising!
or d'you mean it pops up quite quickly in response to clicking/scrolling on things?
Admittedly I'm normally logged in to facebook, so I'm curious what you see.

2026-06-11 10:17:35 GMT

On chatgpt.com some prompts will cause it to show you a little embedded map. It's OpenStreetMap data via mapbox.
I notice they do not give any on-screen credit to OpenStreetMap or even Mapbox (Not even hidden behind an "i" icon)
It's almost as if they don't respect copyright.
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/116/730/897/090/749/710/original/f26fab6e7ae97d31.png

2026-05-11 01:19:34 GMT

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@nprofile…tkx6 I like this article. For some reason it's gone from the original location, but available on medium https://medium.com/westenberg/we-dont-need-more-cynics-we-need-more-builders-56ca41b717f5 @nprofile…42mr

2026-05-01 09:56:01 GMT

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@nprofile…84le @nprofile…50mt Yeah I think that's right. It's the generic chatting magic trick that has everyone so beguiled. So...
"you can totally train a useful base model for task specific fine tuning without stealing"
I'm not so sure. There's quite a lot of content out there labelled public domain/copyright free, but maybe not *enough* to do the beguiling magic trick.
But I agree it would be nice if more people were trying/discussing this, if only to underline the copyright theft of the main players.

2026-01-20 13:30:13 GMT

The stupid things OpenStreetMap ops team have to deal with:
"Some lovely company thought the best way to check if this app is online is to do a very expensive query against OpenStreetMap... every 3 seconds... with hundreds of instances of this app" https://youtu.be/qhie14YKa-w?si=9_jsShC_IeJQFKWP&t=565
Great SOTMEU talk by @nprofile…jqsr
#sotmeu #sotmeu25 #openstreetmap @nprofile…7q3z

2025-12-31 16:18:29 GMT

We've been getting around São Paulo (in all its concrete complexity) using offline OpenStreetMap via @nprofile…ctk3 . Never used it with android auto before. Very nice! #saopaulo
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/115/814/940/093/575/117/original/5cc7195d93e3691f.jpg

2025-11-10 22:51:50 GMT

Excellent London #ruby user group this evening: https://ruby.social/@lrug/115526913153973583 Interesting tech topics plus a bit of politics from @nprofile…yfy6 to spice things up a bit.
(Although someone made a good point: if DHH is going to be racist, then that shouldn't be described as "politics". That's talk that shouldn't be tolerated)
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/115/527/842/844/101/630/original/7933dc28edcfd896.jpg

2025-07-02 14:15:04 GMT

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@nprofile…2qzl @nprofile…cfat I'm not so convinced it's as easy to spot AI writing as many people claim.
About the emdash, they're saying "While it’s become popularized as an AI “tell” of a blog post or article, too often it’s a case of mistaken identity. Tread carefully"
But surely that goes for ALL the tips in this article. It would be a shame if we reject a human's work because they wrote with a clear structure, finishing with a conclusion, or because they mention counterarguments.

2025-07-01 12:39:57 GMT

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@nprofile…3ruj "If payments that the television channel made to Reform MPs for TV gigs were classed as political donations rather than individual earnings, GB News would have been Reform’s second-largest external donor since the start of 2023"
These funding back-channels always throw the calculations. Banning second jobs for MPs would help.

2025-06-11 10:33:20 GMT

My brother works in "environmental consulting". A few years ago he took a job in a tech company, that does carbon accounting. So I gave the pessimistic advice:
"It'll be fun for a while. Enjoy it, but be prepared because venture capital funding means it'll most likely fail"
They're announcing the winding down today 😞
But apparently they would've made the next funding round were it not for the decline in customers since Trump. Corporate responsibility towards CO₂ emissions went out of fashion 😖

2025-05-13 11:59:13 GMT

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@nprofile…k2mh @nprofile…2g43 I was looking up what my local MP Jeremy Corbyn has been up to, and came across this: https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/corbyn-almost-declares-new-left-challenge-to-starmer/ Some ideas to "cut through the infinitely fragmented and divided morass of independents". I can't find a website for this PACE organisation though, so early days I suppose.
Of course Corbyn and his pals are probably all a bit too far left to gain wide appeal.

2025-04-04 14:32:43 GMT

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@nprofile…jmrh The area around the station is rather grotty (as it is in so many cities). I stayed there with my family for one night, but I'd probably recommend parking yourself in a cafe/eatery *in* the station, or just outside in Place Victor Horta: https://osm.org/go/0EoScwNkM?m= But it's only modern chain restaurants/cafes, so not a very exciting recommendation I'm afraid.

2025-02-24 14:45:30 GMT

I read Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.
I found it quite hard work at first, because there's no paragraphs, and no quote marks in the dialogue. A bit annoying, but I suppose there's artistic reasons for it (It adds a breathless pace to the sinister story or something). Anyway you get used to it, and then it's excellent.
Set in a fictional Ireland as it becomes a totalitarian state and then a war zone.
In that worsening situation, when is the right time for a mother to get her family out of there?

2025-02-16 11:08:51 GMT

Can anyone think of any organisations, large or small, that have a mastodon account, and have mappable premises in London? We could add their "contact:mastodon" tags to OpenStreetMap: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1YQ1 But as you can see, so far this is rather sparse.

2024-12-25 14:18:09 GMT

We're normally in West Yorkshire, but this year my parents had a plumbing flood, and so we're renting a Christmas house in Scarborough instead.
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/113/713/863/656/633/970/original/e7d77bb97b2b485e.jpg

2024-11-27 10:00:50 GMT

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@nprofile…5sr3 I went to look for the biggest one. ooh yeah. That's a beauty! https://osm.org/go/4zhZEU7H9-

2024-08-29 09:17:31 GMT

When I'm on holiday, instead of just reading a travel guide like a normal person, for some reason I read the WikiVoyage article, and then spend my holiday evenings fixing the WikiVoyage article. https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Montpellier&action=history
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/113/044/539/552/863/545/original/54946e7eb86cfd26.png

2024-04-23 13:36:33 GMT

Google's search algorithm used to be a powerful force transforming the web to be more usable, by driving people to put out content the right way. This article explains how these days search results are getting worse, because the web is getting worse, still driven by google's algorithm: https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization