Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
Theoretical physicist by training (PhD in quantum open systems/quantum information), University lecturer for a bit, and currently paying the bills as an engineer working in optical communication (implementation) and quantum communication (concepts), though still pursuing a little science on the side. I'm interested in physics and math, of course, but I enjoy learning about really any area of science, philosophy, and many other academic areas as well. My biggest other interest is hiking and generally being out in nature.
Joined Nov 2022
@justyourluck I'm curious, I've struggled to find good, up-to-date statistics giving best estimates for the likelihood of different long-term effects of Covid (of most interest to me are organ damage and cognitive effects). Most of what I have found is just aggregate rates for "long Covid" with heterogeneous definitions of what that means and lumping together really serious impacts with much less severe ones. Do you have suggestions of where to find good numbers?
Nick
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Steamboat Willie in 4k, digitized from 16mm film: https://archive.org/details/steamboat-willie-16mm-film-scan-4k-lossless
Nick
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@OpenAlex (#OpenAlex) has a new and friendly user interface.
https://openalex.org/
PS: The new interface is wonderfully simple and should bring this powerful tool to more users. Next time you have a research question, try it before #GoogleScholar or your other stand-bys. Or try both and compare. OpenAlex searches titles, abstracts, and full-text, and has unrivaled scope, indexing over 250m works from 250k sources.
Nick
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@franco_vazza Worse yet, presumably they're really asking about percentile within some larger parent distribution (e.g. students with this degree/specialty), so even with 20 students you probably can't say this particular student is in the top 5% of the parent distribution with much confidence (unless you assume the parent distribution has a known functional form determined by a small number of parameters).
On the other hand, in a Bayesian mindset you could assume that recommenders already have (from being a student and other interactions with students) a prior distribution, and advising students just allows them to refine their posterior distribution. Of course, even under this assumption, then they should logically ask you some questions to determine how well informed your posterior distribution is.
Regardless of all that, I think @vicgrinberg hit the key objection, that the potential of a student isn't a one-dimensional distribution, so such a ranking doesn't even make sense. Also, i don't actually buy that people have an accurate prior for the distribution of student capabilities, and I think that all such fuzzy judgements are highly subject to unconscious bias.
Not that I have a magic prescription for how to evaluate people, but I do think that stating things in such mathematical terms probably just serves to mislead by creating the illusion of objectivity and precision.
Nick
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Company runners: what are you doing differently, financially, now we have had the experience of a massive market shock, in the form of a pandemic?
Prompted by this:
"...to get through COVID individual contributors took a 10% pay cut, and the CEO took a 50% pay cut, with a sliding scale on the way up the org chart."
...from this interesting article:
https://adrianco.medium.com/signs-that-its-time-to-leave-a-company-5f8759ad018e
...from this interesting weeknote!
Nick
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It's funny how giving each window a dedicated title bar is considered an intolerable waste of space on a 3840 × 2160 high pixel density display, when everyone lived with that just fine when the cutting edge display was 512 × 342 with a whopping 80 pixels per inch
Nick
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One way the myth of tech as a meritocracy is being demolished is that tech employees can see how you could be good at your job but your CEO & CFO are bad at theirs but you’re the one that gets laid off.
The executives get to say “Oops, we over hired” and are rewarded with 📈
Nick
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“Your periodic reminder that less ice at the Arctic is consistent with a weaker jet stream that allows cold air to drift down into the Great Plains.
The frigid temps you're experiencing happen BECAUSE of a warming planet, not in spite of it.” Via Dr Steve Campbell from the other place
https://twitter.com/historian_steve/status/1745920780624711886?s=46&t=4TnCHrl_NkgPDLmdROH8hA
Nick
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Nick
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The OpenSSH project has announced plans to remove support for DSA keys.
OpenSSH has disabled DSA keys by default since 2015 but has retained optional support.
A full DSA removal is planned for January 2025.
https://lists.mindrot.org/pipermail/openssh-unix-announce/2024-January/000156.html
Nick
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@pluralistic Being one of Chamberlain's many enshittification victims, I bought a "ratgdo" (Rage Against The Garage Door Opener), a small $30 circuit that hooks to a Chamberlain-brand garage door opener and lets me control it locally with #HomeAssistant. I then disconnected my opener from the official MyQ site and deleted their app.
It's a small victory, but I savored it.
@dangoodin Looks like there's a missing word in the last phrase here: "...the AirDrop users in China found that the 'everyone' configuration, the setting that makes files available to all other users nearby, automatically reset to the more contacts-only setting. "
Presumably it's supposed to say "reset to the more [adjective] contacts only setting."
Nick
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Chinese authorities are clamping down on free speech by exploiting an AirDrop weakness Apple has known about for 5 years (at least).
Nick
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Eldorado Canyon near Boulder Colorado.
Nick
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Huh, now that's a first one here... Mastodon tells me there are two replies to my last "about today" post, but I can't see them. Neither logged in nor logged out, neither in online interface nor using elk.
Someone posting using "followers only" with me not following them (but would it include also me if I were tagged)? Something else? 🤔
This post hereb https://mastodon.social/@vicgrinberg/111749199223079393
Nick
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My thinking on democracy what must happen to save democracy has evolved.
Fact: The United States has been a backsliding demoracy for some time.
Fact: We are in an information disruption.
Because democracy requires facts and an educated population, the question is whether enough people will develop the media literacy needed in this new age of information quickly enough.
Nick
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"Most garage-door opener brands are actually Chamberlain, including "LiftMaster, Chamberlain, Merlin, and Grifco"" I haven't lived in a place with a garage door for about 25 years, but even without the new rate of enshittification-by-app, this is obviously a huge lapse in enforcement. @pluralistic is always clear as day on these things.
Nick
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Nick
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With its extra funding, the IRS has...
-Collected $160 million from rich tax cheats (so far)
-Audited Microsoft and charged it $29 billion in back taxes
-Made it easier to file taxes through free-filing programs in 13 states
Remember this as the GOP tries to gut the agency.
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
Theoretical physicist by training (PhD in quantum open systems/quantum information), University lecturer for a bit, and currently paying the bills as an engineer working in optical communication (implementation) and quantum communication (concepts), though still pursuing a little science on the side. I'm interested in physics and math, of course, but I enjoy learning about really any area of science, philosophy, and many other academic areas as well. My biggest other interest is hiking and generally being out in nature.
Joined Nov 2022
