Lucas Werkmeister#wmhack travel thread starts! (ec selfie)
…with this half-life 2 map ass looking construction site (Jannowitzbrücke I think?)
what even is the lexical category of “ass” here
it should be analyzed as a suffix, of course, but I’ve omitted the hyphen, except if there was a hyphen how much else would you have to hyphenate?
half-life-2-map-ass construction site?
“half-life 2 map”-ass construction site?
(I think this falls under what enwiktionary calls a particle? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ass#Particle)
train spotted
(that's two different ICE trains, both departing for Munich from the same platform within like ten minutes of one another ^^ the second one was mine)
also I have at least three project ideas (and a nagging feeling I might have forgotten about a fourth one lol). we’ll see what actually happens
sweater spotted: “writing code so my cat can have a better life”
train arrived too suddenly so I didn't get a photo, sorry
(and I think it arrived in the wrong order so everyone had to scramble to get to the right carriage)
it's a Swiss one, with a looong snout if I saw that correctly
the SBB WiFi doesn't work, the captive portal just gives connection refused. so once more, with feeling:
FUCK
CAPTIVE
PORTALS
the Swiss train is accumulating more and more delay, to the point where my connection in Zurich, which was originally quite generous, is now in jeopardy :/
yup, missed the connection. found another decent one (actually straight from Zurich to Milan, rather than with a change in Lugano), we’ll see if my ticket is valid here (it’s flexible but I’m still not sure given that my last leg was supposed to be only a regional train)
any other #wmhack people on EC 21? 
nope, apparently I'll have to change trains in Chiasso. this one goes to Milan but I'm not allowed on it 🤷
got some decent (though pricey) Spaghetti Carbonara from the train restaurant at least
about to arrive in Milano Centrale and then head to the hotel via local transit
wow, I'm glad I had some idea how to get to the M (Metro?) lines at Milano Centrale because there weren't a whole lot of signs at first
also #WikiLove to Wikivoyage 
for quickly schooling me on how to pay for local transit (tapping works) \o/
Italian siren sound heard
I walked a bit today but I don't think it was *that* much!! *cue canned laughter*
ok, this hotel’s “scrambled eggs” might be the worst I’ve ever had (excluding my own)
almost left the hotel without my cat ears!! 
the hackathon opening is being streamed, if you want to watch from home: https://youtube.com/live/7ZoQdPNt1nc
Wikimedia Hackathon 2026 Opening Ceremony
approx. two minutes between me sitting down at a table and me getting out the power strip I brought “just in case” (we didn’t have one on the table o_O)
well the good news is that the fix for my broken #wmhack project was really simple, I was just missing one hyphen
update: the bad news is my “optimization” is a 2× slowdown 
good morning #wmhack! no selfie yet as I rushed straight into an API Portal session
Halley Coplin pointed out that the search results for “Wikipedia API” aren’t great, so I had a look and now I’m intrigued by this “preview” for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API – I highly doubt that text shows up on the article…
(this is with all DuckDuckGo “AI” features disabled btw)
(not a quote from the presentation, just inspired by it ^^)
dear #wmhack! in about 1½ hours (at 15:15 CEST), I’m doing a presentation about Cool New Things In JS + CSS (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T423292) in space 5!
come join me to hear about loads of new JavaScript (and some CSS) features that we’re allowed to use in MediaWiki code more or less recently (since we dropped support for some older browsers) 
the presentation went well! here are the slides for Cool New Things In JS + CSS – your reference for all the features you can use nowadays: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cool_new_things_in_JS_%2B_CSS_%E2%80%93_Wikimedia_Hackathon_2026.pdf
fun (re)discovery: Framework laptops don’t work well when they’re stacked on top of one another
I was very confused until I fortuitously had to move my laptop away from someone else’s for unrelated reasons and suddenly the keyboard and touchpad worked again :D
is pretrain named after precogs
joined the historic tram tour at the last second and had some fun driving around Milan ^^ the Cathedral is still nice :) (ec selfie)
*idly wonders if, in the grand scheme of things, the existence of xkcd #927 has been a net positive or negative on the existence, usage and evolution of standards of any kind*
(admit it, you didn't have to look up which xkcd that number was even before the rest of the post implied it's standards)
(I feel like there's another xkcd that sometimes gets used to just shut down discussions but I can't remember which one right now)
I love how the API session just now perfectly set up the project I’ll showcase in a few hours
the #wmhack closing ceremony, including showcasing many projects people worked on, is live! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHMTJB8gleQ
Wikimedia Hackathon 2026 Closing Ceremony
next year's #wmhack will be in… Albania! finally! 🎉
(2020 was supposed to be there until covid happened 😔)
#wmhack return journey! I made it to Milano Centrale by bus and metro; now to Lugano by EC, then an IC to Zurich
even though this EC also continues straight to Zurich
I asked the train person if I could just stay on the EC but nooooooo
taavi 
@LucasWerkmeister did they happen to announce the dates by any chance?
Sam Wilson@taavi @LucasWerkmeister Yep, it'll be on particular dates.
@taavi don't think so
Brooke Vibber 
@LucasWerkmeister this summary table needs to include "can trans people use the bathroom"
Evan Prodromou
Bryan Davis@LucasWerkmeister Let’s say this is now canon. Pretrain happens when the precogs detect that a releasable increment will soon be possible.
David Lynch@bd808 @LucasWerkmeister pretrain and precrime aren’t required to be synonymous. However…
Moebeus@LucasWerkmeister what would be the cause of that, poor insulation, signal noise, electrical interference? Or is this a joke that I'm not getting :)
@moebeus not a joke. IIRC something magnetic tricks the upper laptop into thinking its lid is closed even when it's open
@moebeus something like, the lid sensor is magnetic, and the extra magnetism from the lower laptop changes the threshold or whatever
Lydia Pintscher@LucasWerkmeister @moebeus 😆 Reminds me about how I was stumped why my laptop would be going into sleep mode every now and then without a clear pattern. Was driving me crazy. Turned out to be my watchband that had a magnetic latch.
@nightrose @LucasWerkmeister I love the tactile steam punk hacking vibe, reminds me of "phreaking" when I was a kid, you could whistle into a telephone and trick the relay into doing stuff by simulating sounds, like grant you free intercontinental calls :)
@moebeus @LucasWerkmeister 😆 It does have that vibe, true
@LucasWerkmeister tonight i'm gonna party like it's 2017
@LucasWerkmeister seriously though i've been using a lot of these es2017-level features in our js code for ReaderExperiments and
OH
MY
GOD
is it so much better than the es5 days :D
@bvibber ikr!!
I was also surprised how many features ended up in the “can already use” section and how short “upcoming” is in comparison. we already live in the future!
Magnus Manske@LucasWerkmeister will there be a recording?
@magnusmanske no, but there will be slides (including skipped slides recapping what I'm planning to say which will be included in the 
upload)
upload)
nyanbinary@LucasWerkmeister wow, we hate folx having a home now? 
Philipp@LucasWerkmeister Oh, DuckDuckGo has been doing that for a while now, especially for Wikipedia articles. I think they’re getting it from Bing https://chaos.social/@pb/112812963612005171
Philipp (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image Yes, we should definitely let LLMs generate search result snippets. When I search Bing for Bergen’s boroughs, the top result is a link to Bergen municipality’s official website with a snippet that confidently states that Bergen has nine boroughs: Arna, Bergenhus, Fana, Fyllingsdalen, Laksevåg, Ytrebygda, Årstad, Åsane, and Alna. Sounds plausible, right? The only problem is that Alna is completely made up.
@LucasWerkmeister Or rather, I find it especially noticeable for Wikipedia articles because the tone of the snippet is so obviously off.
Sebastian LasseSearch result 1 SHOULD be https://github.com/maxlath/wikibase-sdk by @maxlath who is at #wmhack :)
maxlath@sl007 @LucasWerkmeister nop, wikibase-sdk doesn't do much wikipedia, only wikidata/wikibase