The teen who's keeping you safe from TV spoilers, one tweet at a time.

May 8, 2013 5:19 PM

Meet the 17-year-old kid who won a Boston hackathon by creating a killer hack for Twitter, blocking out TV show spoilers. Also, she's a girl, and the only solo entrant.
posted by shiu mai baby (19 comments total)

Seems like keyword-based blocking is going to be way more effective for something like Game of Thrones than, say, Mad Men. Blocking tweets containing "tyrion", "tywin", "sansa" "daenerys" "targaryen", "dragon" "thrones" will have way fewer false positives than "peggy", "megan", "sally", "roger", "don", "agency" and "client".

Mostly I suspect you have to trust that people will use appropriate hashtags ... in which case, won't most Twitter clients take care of this already?
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:49 PM on May 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also, the pro spoilers put the spoiler in their usernames.
posted by Justinian at 5:57 PM on May 8, 2013 [3 favorites]

I love the sound of silence.
posted by tooloudinhere at 5:59 PM on May 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I fully intend to teach my little girl to program if she's at all inclined, but I think the author's a little stuck on the gender issue. The last couple of programming events I've been to (in Boston, no less) were 4 to 1 or so-- not at all where it should be, but participating women weren't exactly unicorns.
posted by Mayor Curley at 6:02 PM on May 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

Anyway did you catch the the bomb that Tiewin dropped on Sersei and Tiryon? Sansuh's gonna freak!
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:03 PM on May 8, 2013 [4 favorites]

Yep. Spoilers gonna spoil.
posted by Justinian at 6:05 PM on May 8, 2013

I'm sorry, I didn't see this post since I have my rig set up to autoblock anything with "boston," "-athon," and "killer" in it.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:06 PM on May 8, 2013 [12 favorites]

Should I be amazed that a woman can create prizewinning software?
posted by Brocktoon at 6:17 PM on May 8, 2013 [5 favorites]

Good for her, but I was a little weirded out by the "LOOK! SHE'S A GIRL!" tone in the article.
posted by desjardins at 6:19 PM on May 8, 2013 [10 favorites]

This recent NPR piece on a college who tackled gender imbalance in computer science head on was somewhat relevant.
posted by Miko at 6:53 PM on May 8, 2013

Some days, it's a good day on this planet. This is one of those days.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:55 PM on May 8, 2013

Mod note: Folks maybe not so great for the "let's spoil stuff" comments, okay?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:08 PM on May 8, 2013

Aw man, I was finally going to have the time to watch the Boston Hackathon tonight.
posted by ODiV at 7:34 PM on May 8, 2013 [5 favorites]

The first computer programmers were all women.

Personally I'd prefer something that would automatically censor GoT screencaps because I don't want my mental image of the characters (from reading the books) to be forever lost.
posted by destrius at 7:42 PM on May 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

Heck, the first computers were women.
posted by mazola at 8:24 PM on May 8, 2013 [4 favorites]

Good for her, but I was a little weirded out by the "LOOK! SHE'S A GIRL!" tone in the article.

Me too. What the hell?
posted by homunculus at 11:16 PM on May 8, 2013

So can we actually use the hack? Has it gone into production?

Also, boo re the sexism of the article & headline
posted by DanCall at 1:36 AM on May 9, 2013

boo re
jeers per
razzes w/r/t
cf. a butt
posted by fleacircus at 2:44 AM on May 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

the important observation here isn't that this is not mind-blowing dev work, or that the author is tone deaf. it's that a teenaged girl succeeds at this in spite of the fucked up ecosystem. it's about her personal spirit. so, #fuckyeahgirldevs
posted by j_curiouser at 8:10 AM on May 9, 2013 [4 favorites]