Re: hash.ai (Simulations meet the Semantic Web?)

> We think we have an interesting way to fix this. If it works, we’ll
change the web as quickly and completely as Stack Overflow changed
programming. But it’s kind of ambitious and maybe a little too GRAND.

Is it going to be a stack overflow clone but instead of asking programming
questions you ask someone to cleanup your site? 🙃

On Friday, June 4, 2021, Aidan Hogan <aidhog@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> A colleague (Jorge Pérez) pointed out this recent blog post by Joel
> Spolsky, a co-founder of Stack Overflow. The post announces the acquisition
> of Stack Overflow by Prosus (for US$1.8 billion):
>
> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announcement/
>
> In this post he talks about an initiative he is working on that might be
> of interest to this list:
>
> """
> Together with David Wilkinson, I’m helping to build HASH (https://hash.ai/).
> HASH makes it easy to build powerful simulations and make better decisions.
> As we worked on that, we discovered that too much of the data that you
> might need to run simulations needs to be fixed up before you can use it.
> That’s because data is often published on the web, using page description
> languages that are more concerned with formatting and consumption by
> humans. They lack the structure to make the data they contain readily
> accessed programatically, so step one is miserable screen scraping and data
> cleanup. That’s where a lot of people give up.
>
> We think we have an interesting way to fix this. If it works, we’ll change
> the web as quickly and completely as Stack Overflow changed programming.
> But it’s kind of ambitious and maybe a little too GRAND.
> """
>
> I'm sure you'll agree that parts of that sound very familiar. :)
>
> Best,
> Aidan
>
>