I racked up 526 edits and created 8 new articles on the English Wikipedia over the past year. 2024 was a relatively quiet year for my editing (in 2023 I had 1,137 edits). I really tried to take the Marie Kondo aproach to it: I only edited if it sparked joy.
The eight article creations, plus one split, in chronological order:
- While watching Michigan win the 2023 National Championship, I saw Bill Hancock appear on TV, so I created his article. (Easy guideline: if someone appears on a nationally televised sports broadcast, they're probably notable.)
- I ressurrected the article on Project Maven, the Pentagon's project to use AI, etc. that multiple Google employees had walked out over back in 2018. I didn't write the text myself, I took it from the existing article on the Artificial intelligence arms race.
- Created Wedding of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant, because it was basically on par with British royal weddings. (And then successfully defended it from deletion.)
- Learned about Jeep ducking, which of course led to writing a Wikipedia article and obtaining an accompanying photo.
- We went to the Montauk Point Lighthouse, which has a nice museum about itself and found there was a whole room dedicated to Giorgina Reid and no article for her.
I submitted this article to be featured on the main page's "did you know" section, to which it received rave reviews from my fellow editors.
- Unfortunately I learned about Jack Limpert when he died. He's credited with shaping the "city magazine" format (another missing article I researched but still haven't written yet), but really I was more impressed that he succesfully figured out Deep Throat's identity as Mark Felt back in 1974.
- There aren't very many dogs notable enough for articles, but Ben Herbstreit was one; I had known about him for a year now, but only realized he was notable after he died.
The tribute ESPN put together is one of the saddest videos you'll ever watch.
- I saw a tweet claiming that China's 12345 hotline was a fantastic government service. I couldn't find any non-state media sources to back it up, but it was notable, similar to the US and Canada's 3-1-1.
- Tanking is easily one of the worst parts about professional sports, so I was pretty excited when the PWHL adopted the Gold Plan.
I try to write about subjects I don't already know a bunch about. Doing so helps less of my personal bias and opinions slip in and helps reinforce Wikipedia being an amateur project. I'm far more likely to do a better job at solely summarizing what sources say if that's literally all I know about a subject.
Once I've found a subject, itt usually takes me around two to three hours to write an article from scratch. Most of the time is spent searching for and reading sources and then ~30 minutes to write it all up.
This may seem counterintuitive, but I try to ensure that all the articles I create are incomplete. I don't add infoboxes, categories, WikiProject banners, etc. I'll often leave links to sources that are useful but that I didn't include on the talk page, with editorial suggestions.
I think it's important that there are always easy ways for people to get involved with editing, and leaving "basic" elements of an article out provides an easy pathway. Along the same vein, I'll proofread the article once before saving, but if I spot a minor error afterwards (like, a grammar or spelling error, not a factual mistake), I'll just leave it.
For every new article I created this year, I wrote a short Mastodon post with a link (example), which did a decent job at getting my followers to improve them :)
I've primarily been helping out as an administrator at the Redirects for discussion process, which is perenially backlogged. I find it incredibly interesting because most of the subjects tend to be rather niche, with people trying to assess whether a redirect is useful for navigation or not, in addition to plenty of other factors.
Some fun examples: BÄ«n, Tighten, Asplode.
As part of Boba Quest 2025 🧋, I'm trying and reviewing a new boba shop each week.
I've tried Chun Yang Tea once before, but that was nearly two years ago, so this was basically a fresh start.
It's right next to the Vernon-Jackson 7 station, at 49-10 Vernon Blvd. I'll try to make this my last boba shop along the 7 in Queens for a while.
Chun Yang primarily serves fruit teas, which are not really my cup of tea (ha, ha). On the plus side that means most of their drinks are dairy-free. I opted for a black tea latte with boba, less ice and 100% sweet. The person taking my order initially prompted me to confirm 50%, I replied 100%, which I feel might explain what happened.
- Boba: 1/4 the boba was barely flavored. Texture was passable.
- Tea: 2/4 it was as if the tea was only sweetened halfway. (I double-checked and the label said 100%.)
- Bonus: 0/1 there's a small bar to stand and drink, but no seating. They also have a similar gift card discount like I'Milky has, but this isn't as good: it's $5 free if you buy a $50 giftcard while I'Milky was a free drink, so a $7-8 value.
I originally had written a complaint about how the the store was super fogged up to the point where my glasses fogged up and I couldn't even read the menu and would've given it a negative point if the score wasn't already so low. But then a few days later I had lunch elsewhere and the same thing happened, so I guess it's just a heat thing (it's very cold outside) and I won't hold it against them.
Total: 3/10. Unfortunately this is one of the only boba shops in the Hunters Point area but I don't plan to stop by again.
As part of Boba Quest 2025 🧋, I'm trying and reviewing a new boba shop each week.
This week I tried Bobba Hubba for the first time. It's across the street from the Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue station,
so it's reachable by the 7, E, F, M, and R trains, plus the Q70 SBS if you're itching for boba right after landing at LGA (or right before you leave).
For some reason Google Maps
has the address as 4032 75th St in Flushing, but according to The New York Times's neighborhood map, it's
on the border of Jackson Heights and Elmhurst.
I didn't realize until I walked in, but it also doubles as a gaming cafe! And they had a few empty claw machines too.
Anyways, let's get to the boba! Bobba Hubba had a sign advertising their top 4 drinks, so I ordered from the top of the list: a brown sugar milk tea. I wasn't asked about my sugar or ice preferences, so it
was the default.
- Boba: 2/4 the boba was flavored well but too chewy.
- Tea: 4/4 I think it's really hard to mess up brown sugar milk tea, especially because I'm not the person to complain if something is too sweet.
- Bonus: 0/1 maybe it was just late and dark outside, but the ambiance inside was not really a place I'd stick around. I didn't see anything about loyalty programs.
Total: 6/10. If I was in the area and craving boba, I wouldn't mind popping in again, but I wouldn't go out of my way to stop by.
P.S. There's now a dedicated RSS feed for all Boba Quest entries. I'll aim to regularly post them on Wednesdays.
As part of Boba Quest 2025 🧋, I'm trying and reviewing a new boba shop each week.
To kick off Boba Quest 2025 🧋, I'm reviewing I'Milky — my go-to in Long Island City (Queens). It's at
22-43 Jackson Ave., right next to Trader Joes and reachable by the 7, E, M and G trains via the Court Square station. It's incredibly small,
there's just barely enough room for 6-7 people to order and wait, but not hang around.
I ordered a jasmine green milk tea with boba, 80% sugar and 30% ice (I would normally get more ice, but it was literally below freezing outside).
- Boba: 3/4 the boba is solid, it was a good consistency and sweet. I was impressed that the boba was still at near-ideal consistency despite me waiting 20 minutes to drink it.
- Tea: 4/4 the tea is really excellent, it's basically my benchmark of what I expect jasmine milk tea to be.
- Bonus: 0/1 it's a pretty tiny place; there's no formal reward system, but if you buy a $50 giftcard, you get 1 drink free (there's also a 10% student discount Mon-Fri).
Total: 7/10.
For completeness, I'll mention that they have both dairy-free (fruit teas) and caffeine-free (milks) options. While not the best boba I've ever had in NYC, I'Milky is quite good and rather consistent. Assuming they do a similar
Easter promotion as last year, I'll review them again in April.
I'm a big fan of boba aka bubble tea aka pearl milk tea aka tapioca. Aside from it tasting good, I enjoy all the different varieties and unique combinations you can get depending on where you go.
Unsurpringly New York City has a pretty rich boba scene, especially in the areas with a higher Asian population. There are at least five boba shops within five minutes walking from my apartment; it's wonderful.
Over the past three years I've halfheartedly explored a bunch of new boba shops, writing informal reviews in a note on my phone, but never properly kept track.
So this year, I'm officially kicking off Boba Quest 2025 🧋: trying and reviewing a different boba shop each week, totaling 50 new places over the year. I've published boba reviews before,
but I'm going to do it a bit differently this time.
Boba shops will be graded on a 10-point scale:
- 4 points for the boba, both texture and flavor
- 4 points for the tea's flavor
- 1 bonus point for having something extra, like a privacy-perserving stamp card system or nice ambiance, etc.
The tenth and final point is for consistency: if a place earns a 9/10 on the first visit, I'll go back and if it's fantastic again, then I'll bump the score to a perfect 10/10. While it won't be part of the rating system, I'll
also try to call out when places provide accomodations like lactose-free milk.
I prefer milk teas, usually going for a jasmine green milk tea. I'll probably order something like that, but may choose to order the shop's specialty, if it advertises one.
One important point is that I am not explicitly trying to find the best boba in NYC (though I expect I will); I want to have accurate and usable ratings for a large number of places. Crucially this also means trying bad places, which
I will do.
If you have recommendations for places to try, let me know! I'll prioritize those, and then mom & pop shops, and then the various chains. I'll also try for some geographic diversity too, as I've yet to have boba in The Bronx or
Staten Island. The first review will drop tomorrow, stay tuned.
I'll be attending RustConf in Montreal this week so I wanted to take a moment to describe how we're using Rust in SecureDrop.
Historically SecureDrop has always been a primarily Python project accompanied by bash scripts and then HTML/CSS/JS for the web interface. Aaron Swartz's first commit to SecureDrop was in June 2011, predating Rust 0.1 by just six months.
Fast-forward a decade, the Rust toolchain was added to SecureDrop builds in June 2021 because it was needed for the Python cryptography package.
Less than a year later we were seriously discussing writing and shipping our own Rust code. This took
the form of two proposals that are now public:
- Support Rust as a first-class language
- Replace pretty_bad_protocol with Sequoia for PGP operations
The first proposal discusses the advantages and disadvantages of Rust versus Python, and then outlines three different scenarios for when it's appropriate to use Rust and how to evaluate it. The second proposal is a concrete plan that attempts to put the first proposal into action.
Both proposals were accepted by the team and SecureDrop-with-a-Rust-bridge-to-Sequoia shipped in November 2023, which I've previously written about.
Earlier this year we shipped our second Rust project, a rewrite of SecureDrop Workstation's proxy component. (We'll write a separate blog post about this...eventually.)
I would personally describe the attitude of people who work on SecureDrop as significantly caring about security and correctness, and recognizing that Rust is good at that. While there's a reasonable amount of caution about adopting new and potentially unproven technologies because of the churn required if it doesn't work out, I think everyone would agree that Rust has passed that threshold.
The undecided question is what the system architecture, including implementation language, will be for the next-generation SecureDrop server. I think Rust would be a good choice, but it still needs to be discussed and agreed upon.
At RustConf you should be able to find me wearing a SecureDrop/Freedom of the Press Foundation shirt or something Wikipedia related. I'm happy to talk about SecureDrop and share our experience; I'm especially interested in learning about training teams on Rust and well, anything else I can pick up.
