Eugene Alvin Villar
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seav4f.bsky.social
Eugene Alvin Villar
@seav4f.bsky.social
digital crafter (coder, cartographer, graphic designer, tech writer) ▪︎ open data/knowledge advocate ( #OpenStreetMap, #Wikimedia, #Wikidata) ▪︎ Oxfordian commaist ▪︎ 🇵🇭 ▪︎ he/him 🏳️‍🌈

primary microblog: https://en.osm.town/@seav (Mastodon)
Pinned
Last October I finished implementing the classic 15 puzzle game but using the standard @openstreetmap.bsky.social tiles as the sliding pieces! 🗺️🧩

Currently you can play any of 20 map locations. Enjoy! 🎉

seav.github.io/osm-15-puzzle/
In #Wikimedia land, I created my first #Lua module in #WikimediaCommons: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Module:...

This module does all the heavy lifting for enhancing file pages of photos of historical markers of the #Philippines 🇵🇭 with #Wikidata items.
Module:NHCP marker depicts inscription - Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.org
December 7, 2025 at 3:04 AM
I just learned that Frank Gehry passed away. 😔

I looked at the list of buildings he designed and the only one I have ever seen (and have a photo of) is the DZ Bank Building in Berlin 🇩🇪 beside the U.S. Embassy. But I didn’t know he was the architect when I took this photo.
December 6, 2025 at 5:57 AM
🇪🇸 🇮🇪 🇸🇮 🇳🇱 👍
December 5, 2025 at 11:14 PM
“The most consistent predictors of AI use across studies were aversive personality traits (e.g., Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy), albeit the traits were differentially associated with AI use across studies.”

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40977447/
Evaluating Artificial Intelligence Use and Its Psychological Correlates via Months of Web-Browsing Data - PubMed
Despite widespread discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on society, little work has objectively measured how often people use this technology in the wild. The present article collected up to 90 days of web-browsing data from students (Study 1: <i>N =</i> 499) and those in th …
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
December 5, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Since it is the season, please enjoy this wonderful bit of pedanticism. 🎵

youtu.be/sxfxy-3dGz0
Where Is The Comma In "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" Supposed To Go?
YouTube video by RamsesThePigeon
youtu.be
December 5, 2025 at 9:22 AM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
I'm no purist when it comes to participating in things we all know are bad. I try to reduce my harm but I'm an honest hypocrite.
I won't judge you for still using Spotify, just try this rad alternative. I'm listening to music from Dar es Salaam. Where will you listen to? radio.garden/listen/furah...
Explore live radio by rotating the globe
Explore live radio by rotating the globe.
radio.garden
December 4, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
Developer attempts to replicate "Liquid Glass" in CSS, and once finished realizes what she'd actually created is an exploit for a fundamental, previously unknown, and rather serious browser vulnerability

lyra.horse/blog/2025/12...

"CSS hack accidentally becomes regular hack"
SVG Filters - Clickjacking 2.0
A novel and powerful twist on an old classic.
lyra.horse
December 5, 2025 at 2:03 AM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
The fact that a second strike like that in an armed conflict is definitely a war crime should not completely negate the fact that *there is no war* and ALL the strikes are cold-blooded murder. The whole chain of command are murderers.
December 5, 2025 at 1:20 AM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
When news breaks or curiosity strikes, people around the world turn to a free volunteer-run encyclopedia to make sense of what’s happening. In a chaotic online landscape, Wikipedia remains a trusted first stop destination for millions worldwide.
December 2, 2025 at 12:14 PM
#TuneTuesday (Dec 2)

One of my favorite EDM producers is #Chicane and one song of his that gives me nostalgia is “Love on the Run” from 2003.

youtu.be/jcDfnPx1Q1k
Love on the Run (feat. Peter Cunnah) (Single Edit)
YouTube video by Chicane - Topic
youtu.be
December 2, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Congratulations to Robert Sim! 🎉 Robert, who became the 2025 Wikimedian of the Year earlier this year, is now a finalist for the Singaporean of the Year 2025! 🇸🇬

www.straitstimes.com/singapore/si...

#Wikipedia #Wikimedia #Singapore
Singaporean of the Year finalist: Meet the internet’s janitor whose fingerprints are all over Wikipedia
Volunteers like Mr Robert Sim keep the online encyclopedia Wikipedia alive and accurate. Read more at straitstimes.com. Read more at straitstimes.com.
www.straitstimes.com
December 1, 2025 at 9:54 AM
November 30, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Before the pandemic, I used to stay at a #Starbucks café a lot and I used to collect their Christmas stickers to get a free planner. For instance, I spent a total of ₱18,870 in 2018, which is about $370, not adjusted for inflation. 1/2
November 30, 2025 at 7:16 AM
This piece by Terence Eden is more than three years old but it contains plenty of good points about digital continuity and contingency.

shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/06...

#security #infosec #InformationSecurity #passwords
I've locked myself out of my digital life
Imagine… Last night, lightning struck our house and burned it down. I escaped wearing only my nightclothes. In an instant, everything was vaporised. Laptop? Cinders. Phone? Ashes. Home server? A smo...
shkspr.mobi
November 27, 2025 at 9:04 PM
One of the biggest political scandals in the #Philippines 🇵🇭 in 2024 was the accusation that Alice Guo, the elected town mayor of Bamban was not actually a Filipino citizen and instead was a Chinese spy that engaged in human trafficking.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OER...
How a Scam and Chinese Spy Scandal Rocked the Philippines
YouTube video by Bloomberg Originals
www.youtube.com
November 26, 2025 at 6:56 AM
#TuneTuesday (Nov 26)

@lizzobeeating.bsky.social’s “2 Be Loved (Am I Ready)” is such a bop and I can’t help liking its infectious energy! It certainly gives me 80s vibes because of the use of synths and especially with the key change for the final chorus. 🎧

youtu.be/krdQLzzAeZU
Lizzo - 2 Be Loved (Am I Ready) [Official Video]
YouTube video by Lizzo Music
youtu.be
November 25, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Oh nice! This new QUERY method is probably the biggest change to the core message format of #HTTP since HTTP/1.1 was released in 1997!

www.ietf.org/archive/id/d...

This method would've been really useful for designing better REST APIs that otherwise relied on POST requests too much.
The HTTP QUERY Method
This specification defines the QUERY method for HTTP. A QUERY requests that the request target process the enclosed content in a safe and idempotent manner and then respond with the ...
www.ietf.org
November 25, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
Two miles of ice core on the shelf at our national ice core facility in Lakewood, Colorado. The WAIS Divide core from West Antarctica is a 3400m long (deepest US core, 2nd deepest ice core ever) 68,000 year old record of high resolution climate.
November 24, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
“This is the final post-truthification of a platform that long ago pivoted toward a maxim used by the journalist Peter Pomerantsev to refer to post-Soviet Russia: Nothing is true and everything is possible.” — www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
Elon Musk’s Worthless, Poisoned Hall of Mirrors
How X blew up its own platform with a new location feature
www.theatlantic.com
November 25, 2025 at 2:46 AM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
One of the many joys of using AI for programming is the creation of huge PRs on complex topics that the authors barely understand, but still suggest "because they work". Here's a great example from #OCaml github.com/ocaml/ocaml/...

Kudos to OCaml's maintainers for handling this so gracefully.
DWARF support for macOS and Linux by joelreymont · Pull Request #14369 · ocaml/ocaml
DWARF v5 Debugging Support for OCaml Native Compiler This PR adds DWARF v5 debug information to the OCaml native compiler, allowing proper source-level debugging in GDB and LLDB. What&#39;s Impleme...
github.com
November 24, 2025 at 9:48 AM
November 23, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
"Too little was done too late”: New commentary with PIK director Johan Rockström warns of rising planetary risks after a missed decade of action. Climate & biosphere pressures keep increasing, but stabilising the Earth system is still within reach.
www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/late...
November 22, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
This young man has it exactly right.
November 21, 2025 at 11:30 PM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
What if color harmonies were a continuum? Not fixed rules, and you could glide through them just by interpolating?
November 22, 2025 at 12:15 AM
Reposted by Eugene Alvin Villar
Humans will NEVER colonize another planet. Never.

If we can’t even agree to do the minimum to keep Earth habitable, there’s no way in hell we’ll cooperate to make another planet habitable.
November 22, 2025 at 11:29 AM