Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

#OTD ten years ago – the launch of our amazing Gaia mission from Baikonur 🚀

It has been mapping the positions, distances, & motions of two billion Milky Way stars & extragalactic objects since, revolutionising astrophysics ✨

I watched the launch with ESA's Director for Human Spaceflight & Operations, Thomas Reiter, & Head of Mission Operations, Paolo Ferri, at the VIP & media event at our European Operations Centre, ESOC, in Darmstadt: my job was to explain the mission science.

#SpaceScience

[#LEAKS] HOW TO AUTHENTICATE LARGE DATASETS
Hacked and leaked datasets are more common than ever. Here are some ways to verify they’re real. (by @micahflee, The Intercept)
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/16/hacked-datasets-verification/

#OSINT

Reminder that the US Census Bureau is talking about changing how it counts disability, a move which would create an at least 40% reduction in the number of people counted as disabled, and thus radically alter who can get benefits. You have until tomorrow (December 19, 2023) to weigh in on it:

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/18/1218954729/census-bureau-survey-disabled-people-with-disabilities

here are a bunch of the publications you can now follow on Mastodon thanks to #Flipboard starting their federation work

@theverge
@polygon
@FastCompany
@Kotaku
@Semafor
@Medium
@Refinery29
@Digiday
@NewsLitProject
@pitchfork
@LGBTQNation
@IndieWire
@FrommersMag
@Smithsonianmag

more pubs participating here: https://medium.com/@mmccue/flipboard-begins-to-federate-4a80d6bdc209

“Just take one step back and look at the hype through this lens. All the big, exciting uses for #AI are either low-dollar (helping kids cheat on their homework, generating stock art for bottom-feeding publications) or high-stakes and fault-intolerant (self-driving cars, radiology, hiring, etc.).

Every bubble pops eventually. When this one goes, what will be left behind?” —Cory Doctorow

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Strong recommendation:

Pair the Live Icelandic volcano eruption (first link)

https://www.youtube.com/live/VIs83vmfZCk?si=39cSpSyQ7xTZrHIo

1/

AI pretending to be Oprah and giving us all basically free cars? 😆

We passed a bittersweet milestone this past month, as NASA’s NEOWISE infrared observatory passed a decade in space, but will also soon come to an end. The successor to the ‘cold’ WISE mission, the ‘warm’ NEOWISE survey mapped the entire sky 20 times in a decade, discovering 215 asteroids and 25 comets. After its reentry in 2025, NASA plans a followup mission named NEO Surveyor, set to launch in 2028. Here’s our latest post for Sky & Telescope: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/as-an-asteroid-hunting-mission-approaches-its-end-whats-next/

Happy 30th birthday to Doom!

So lets celebrate all the random crap we've managed to get it running on.

Top picks include:
1. A pregnancy test
2. A calculator powered by old potatoes
3. An ATM (cashpoint)

Truly testaments to human ingenuity!

Here's to another 30 years of porting doom to everything under the sun🥂

Volkswagen to bring back physical controls to their cars
This is great news. As someone who has done a ton of #UX work on digital devices, I'm not totally anti-screen. However, there are a few critical controls, e.g. headlights or defroster, that should completely unambiguous, fast, and certainly NOT hidden like Tesla did last year with it's v11 update.

https://insideevs.com/news/701296/vw-physical-controls-to-return/

Interesting reply by The Ethicist to a question about Santa. The crux comes in part 2 here:

Other parents tell me they see engaging in the fantasy of Santa Claus as an important, fun part of childhood, and a rite of passage to one day discover the truth. So why can’t I help feeling that I’d be undermining the honest and trusting relationship I seek to build with my children? — Laura Iannello, Verona, N.Y.

The Ethicist: Wait — there’s no Santa Claus? The trouble is that what it means to believe in something or someone, not least Santa Claus, can be far from straightforward. Let’s start with the fact that we use language for all sorts of purposes: to inform, to entertain, to honor, to shame, to argue, to win, to woo, to wow, to take wing. Yes, a strong commitment to truthfulness is important. It enables us to act on knowledge provided by others. I salute you for honoring this ideal in your home. But socializing your children entails recognizing the limits of radical honesty.

For one thing, there are plenty of true but unkind observations we should not volunteer, and it doesn’t help to append “I’m just being honest.” It’s OK to tell your grandparents that you like their Christmas present when you don’t. For another, expressive language often involves statements that aren’t literally true: Are you really so hungry you could eat a horse? Equally important, though, is how we use words in the realm of play.

(1/2)

I think that fully integrating #ActivityPub into Flipboard's backend is going to be one of the best things we've done since we started the company.

There are three phases:

Phase 1 (Today): Federate 25 accounts to test and learn

Phase 2 (January): Enable anyone in the Fediverse to engage with any public curator on Flipboard

Phase 3 (April): Enable anyone on Flipboard to follow and engage with any public account in the #Fediverse

Check out my Medium post for more

https://medium.com/@mmccue/flipboard-begins-to-federate-4a80d6bdc209

@RickiTarr Thinking about theft in music is tough, in part due to US copyright law: we have to distinguish between songwriting rights and mechanical rights.

An example I use a lot when teaching is the Amen break, which samples a record by The Winstons called "Funky Drummer." It's the foundation of drum and bass, an entire genre of EDM. The drum part was performed by Gregory C. Coleman, who never received royalties and died homeless and broke.

I like DnB, but I have trouble with its origins.

It is estimated that currently 1 in 13 people are infected in Ontario which means there is a 55% chance at least one person in your group of 10 is infected. This jumps to a 70% chance in groups of 15, 86.5% chance with 25 people and 98% chance at that office Christmas party of 50 people.

Estimate from ( https://covid19resources.ca/covid-hazard-index/ ) and calculator available at ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qokCvvi6oRYRCKtrZuyeUmb5mt4LC9o8nKHLKoAUVAY/edit?usp=sharing ). 🧵 1/

Am I dreaming or did Discover Freaking Magazine pick up our puzzle paper

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/mathematical-solution-found-for-jigsaw-problem-weve-all-faced

@ianbetteridge

So, it seems that for some reason, probably having to do with laws or regulation in the UK and EU, Threads terms spell out that they will not use the this data for "business" purposes (ads) in certain jurisdictions, but no such limitation of use is provided in others, namely the US.

The take away from this seems to be that UK and EU third party users have some protections in this matter, and it would tend to reinforce that US users should have concerns.

Dear colleagues, many of us want to get our manuscripts finished and off our desk before the holiday season. Submission rates massively increase these days. But please also allow the editors and reviewers to have a break. So please do not expect that your manuscript will be screened, forwarded, handled or reviewed during the holidays. Most of us do this on a voluntary basis. Thank you for your understanding!

#AcademicChatter #ScientificPublications #ScientificPublishing

“Elon Musk’s X has instructed staff not to suspend users that post explicitly racist, sexist and homophobic content, or who send sexual material to another person, as part of a new policy that has radically stripped back the company’s moderation of abusive material. Confidential documents obtained by the Business Post reveal in detail how X …has significantly watered down its trust and safety rules over recent months….”

https://www.businesspost.ie/news/exclusive-the-x-files-how-elon-musks-new-rules-allow-hate-to-flourish/

The Cantor set was first defined by Henry John Stephen Smith. I didn't know that.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucm.5324906759;view=1up;seq=148

My feeds are filled with people who have COVID right now.

Please test before you get together with friends and family (especially vulnerable people like those with diabetes or those over 65) and stay home if you have symptoms.

In the U.S., you can still get four free tests at https://special.usps.com/testkits

And if you've stopped wearing a mask while you're out running errands, it's a good time to start again.