Radical Interoperability Is a Political Agenda | Hacker News Reader

Radical Interoperability Is a Political Agenda

dorian.substack.com

33 pointscambel11 comments

The author uses the example of a calendar buried on an institution's website and asks some questions about why the master calendar isn't published directly. This collides with an unfortunate reality about the milieu that most Web-related work happens in: the Web is largely regarded as a sui generis medium that isn't actually supposed to be useful to anyone—at least not for its original intended purpose. Its usefulness is incidental to the imperative to produce something—anything—and the foremost concern is that that thing merely exists.

The prevailing view, even ("especially"?) among people who make their living doing Web work, is that a website is not actually supposed[1] to serve as a document store for the organization it ostensibly is set up to serve. Instead, it's boondoggle; the primary purpose is to signal maturity. "Do we have an app?" "Yes, we have an app." "Do we have a website?" "Yes, we have a website." These are the questions that people are interested in, like checkmarks on a line item list. The utility of these things is not a concern. It doesn't actually matter that there's a calendar or whether anyone ever looks at it, or whether that SMB's listed opening hours are accurate and stay up-to-date over time, or whether the lunch menu is available, let alone at a stable URL. Because where is the heavy lifting really supposed[1] to happen? Answer: somewhere else. On the Facebook page, or via Twitter, or through Substack, or in Office 365 or Google Workspace[2]. Sure, you hire someone to make a website, maybe you have an IT department that can "maintain" it so you can periodically file tickets to get something changed when you want to feel like you put in some work today. Of course. Of course! That's what you do. But to expect it to actually be useful? What are you, nuts?

1. Related reading: Ra <https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/ra/>

2. Or, as in the case with many of the people who are in the industry: on GitHub. ("Why would we document the processes related to foo.example.com in the document depository we have running on foo.example.com? That's what the README in the associated ghost repo on GitHub is for.")

I mean, the really glaringly puzzling thing is the lossy process of hand-transcribing the information from the authoritative (and necessarily structured) source to a muddy, ambiguous target. Obviously somebody cares enough to put the schedule on the website but the neurons that understand that this could be a simple automated transformation operation instead of an additional task for somebody on the comms team are nonexistent.

But then that somewhat affirms your point about the yes-ministerization that occurs the second information systems (which are technologically invariant) touch computers.

> Omicron-lockdown-induced knee injury

Uh, that’s a pretty weird thing to say matter of fact without any further discussion. How does one get injured physically by reinstituting some public guidelines about masks and public consumption of services which had been briefly relaxed? Like I’m not even saying there’s not a story there, I’m genuinely curious what it is.

https://dorian.substack.com/p/radical-interoperability-is-a-...

Thank you for responding and adding more context. I’m still confused and a fair bit more suspect of the causal association.

I think it’s reasonable to say policy changes around Omicron limited your exercise options. It seems clear from your comment that you’re persistent in exercising consistently. (Props for that! I know it can be challenging.)

My confusion, possibly influenced by locale and my own exercise impulses: I don’t understand how running would be safer than cycling in icy conditions. I’m in a hilly section of a hilly city, and I’ve fallen at least half a dozen times through this winter just walking my dog, so admittedly that’s part of my risk assessment. But I’m similarly cautious about level surfaces when they’re icy, and I’ve injured myself on them too. I’ve biked on level surfaces in winter storms on narrowish road bike tires, and for me the risk feels about the same. None of this means your risk assessment should be different!

But where the causal relationship doesn’t add up to me:

> so I had no choice but to go running

Yeah you did. Obviously you would prefer a different form of exercise, and it’s a shame that wasn’t available. But closing pools didn’t dictate you run. It didn’t even directly lead to that choice, as you say you would have biked if it weren’t so icy.

While both of those are lower knee impact activities, this:

> but I thought it got better

Is a common factor in re-injury. And it can happen swimming and cycling too. The likely reality is that your healing was going well enough that you pushed too hard, too soon. It happens! And probably your choice of a higher impact exercise exacerbated that.

But attributing that to covid restrictions feels… like it disconnects your own risk assessment and your own reaction to signs your body wasn’t ready for the exercise you chose.

I want to be clear, I’m not judging that! But I’m coming from a place of experience where I’ve compounded harm to myself because I wanted circumstances to be better faster than they were improving.

So, I was looking for a drop-in replacement for swimming (~3-~4km per day, so ~60-90 minutes plus commute) that could be done:

• outside

• by myself

• in the winter (~-10°C)

• without needing access to any (locked down) facility

• or significant investment in equipment

• or additional time

• that isn't mind-numbingly boring

• and that would yield a similar metabolic effect.

"No choice" is shorthand for "I don't feel like plumbing the depths of all possible forms of exercise to come up with a suitable match under these constraints so I'll just pick running."

Genuinely interested in any alternatives that satisfy those criteria because I bet they'd be creative.

As for the ice, I bought a decent pair of trail shoes that seemed to work fine.

I don’t mean to be rude but… you re-injured yourself. I’ve had some hilarious embarrassing falls in the last few months, but haven’t suffered serious injury. I wouldn’t say that’s worked out fine.

The alternative is slow down and rest. If you were recovering from an injury and started to exercise in an unfamiliar way, then felt something was off… every competent trainer and doctor would tell you to take more time to rest, or at least reconsider the exercise routine you chose.

Yup, and the weird thing is it was just bursitis; the imaging otherwise came back clean. I've hurt myself way worse than that with fewer consequences. Must be getting old.

Trying to give some constructive criticism: the author of the substack has a few points, some good and some naive, about data standards and good/nefarious incentives of sharing data.

The article is a bit rambling and could get to the point much quicker:

* RDF can be used as a standard of data exchange

* Silicon Valley co. don’t have incentives to share data while other entities do

No real conclusion or anything out of it… it’s be nice to see something thought out there. At the same time, it’s naive to think any one standard of data format is going to get adopted, as pointed out many times by https://xkcd.com/927/

One aspect that didn’t get covered is that not all data should be open/shared, privacy is a thing.

If you’re new to data and data issues, it’s a nice explanation (esp the video). If you’re an old hat/grey beard, skip.

I didn't get the message that any particular standard should be adopted, but rather that the data should be shared in a structured format at all.

ding ding ding

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