Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

A lot has been said about Steamboat Willie entering the public domain in 2024. But also, 2024 is the year "The House at Pooh Corner" by A.A. Milne enters public domain, which is the book introducing the character Tigger.

but at least we've created a lot of great value for the shareholders in the process, eh

"Climate change has caused Greenland's ice sheet to lose 20 percent more ice than previously thought, according to research published Wednesday that used satellite imagery to track the retreat of glaciers over the past four decades."

🔗 https://www.sciencealert.com/greenlands-ice-sheet-is-losing-ice-much-much-faster-than-we-thought

Wheeee! One of my PhD siblings and one of my favorite collaborators were awarded the HEAD (high energy astrophysics division) innovation prize for the "development of novel models to describe emission in the strong gravity regime from accreting compact objects" or in simpler words developing methods to learn from the shape of X-ray emission from the vicinity of Black holes how #BlackHoles spin and what else happens nearby 😊

▶️ https://head.aas.org/prizes/innovation

#astrodon #XraysAreTheBestRays #astronomy

Microsoft filing with the SEC to say Russia SVR hacked the email accounts of its own cyber staff in November, they discovered this week: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312524011295/d708866dex991.htm

Astronomers discovered a rocky exoplanet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun. Could there be life there? The European Southern Observatory's 39-meter Extremely Large Telescope is under construction and expected to be completed in the next few years. Could this mighty observatory see evidence of biosignatures in the reflected light from the planet?

http://arxiv.org/abs/2401.09589

Lunar soft landing confirmed, maybe even with the “pinpoint” accuracy (will take a while to confirm, as expected) but something awry (solar panels not charging) and thus, everyone is peeved because they’re a bunch of perfectionists 😅

I have some SLIM swag! And I think the team are fabulous.

And. I need to sleep before the first train.

BBC news:
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/science-environment-68019846

In case anyone was still in doubt, Google is not at all interested in "organizing the world's information" (despite that language still being in their mission statement). Mixing non-information, LLM-extruded sludge in with authentic information is actually the opposite.

https://www.404media.co/google-news-is-boosting-garbage-ai-generated-articles/

@paul_ipv6 @woody @adamshostack For those who did not know, or know of, David Mills, he devised a time-keeping protocol that was ultimately based on very high-precision clocks, but had a nice, distributed way for other machines to learn from them. His scheme was based on solid mathematics (the RFC describing it was the first non-ASCII RFC, since it was too painful to write those equations that way…). But you had to use the Internet before NTP to understand how important it was.

English Version
**Where are the universities in the Fediverse?**

Why don't universities have their own Mastodon instances yet?

Why don't students get a Mastodon handle when they enrol?

Why don't universities host lecture videos on PeerTube in the Fediverse?

There is a lot to be said for universities getting more involved in the Fediverse.

A call that can only be supported! #boost

#fediverse #university
https://netzpolitik.org/2023/a-call-to-action-universities-of-the-world-into-the-fediverse/

« Research suggests that, the greater the distance in a race - running, cycling or especially swimming - the smaller the gap between men and women.

Until there comes a point where women take the lead.

In professional marathons, women are, on average, 11.1% slower than men.

Yet at 50 miles, there is only a 3.7% difference; at 100 miles, just 0.3% separates men and women.

It seems 195 miles is the magic number where women become faster than men »

https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/67945344

Tomorrow. My good people. We land.

ON THE MOON 🌝

This is not a drill ⚒️

JAXA's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission is going to attempt the first "pin point" landing, with an accuracy of less than 100m.

(This is compared with conventional landing techniques, were anywhere within about 10km is considered pretty snazzy.)

If successful, SLIM will also be Japan's first successful moon landing.

New research from Australia's Women in STEM ambassador team on impact of anonymisation on applications for access to research facilities in Australia finds enhanced success rates for ECRs, fostering diversity in the research pool.

The study also suggests a positive impact of anonymisation on the broader retention and advancement of researchers facing barriers in STEM research.

https://osf.io/preprints/osf/jyq2f

#WomenInSTEM #Diversity #Astrodon

Just saw a bad "anti-woke" take recommending that people watch the expanse, and let me just say, if you think the expanse ain't "woke" then all that tells me is that you deeply and fundamentally didn't understand the expanse.

"Doors and corners, kid."

Conde Nast hits Pitchfork with layoffs just weeks after telling staff their jobs were safe.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pitchfork-hit-with-layoffs-as-its-folded-into-gq-magazine

Yes, we can still have extreme cold despite #GlobalWarming.

The latest science shows that while cold waves might be decreasing in number, disruptions in the #polarvortex caused by climate change could be making extreme cold periods even colder

https://theconversation.com/extreme-cold-still-happens-in-a-warming-world-in-fact-climate-instability-may-be-disrupting-the-polar-vortex-221276 (via @TheConversationUS) #environment #climatescience

Camembert is an endangered species! It relies on a mold that had lost the ability to reproduce sexually... and now, thanks to inbreeding, this mold has also lost the ability to reproduce using spores. Roquefort is also in trouble, but for Camembert it's worse:

"The world over, this other symbol of French gastronomy is inoculated exclusively with one single strain of Penicillium camemberti, a white mutant that was selected for Brie cheeses in 1898 and Camemberts in 1902.

The problem is that ever since then the strain has been replicated by vegetative propagation only. Until the 1950s, Camemberts still had grey, green or in some cases orange-tinged moulds on their surface. But the industry was not fond of these colours, considering them unappealing, and staked everything on the albino strain of P. camemberti, which is completely white and moreover has a silky texture. This is how Camembert acquired its now-characteristic pure white rind.

Year after year, generation after generation, the albino strain of P. camemberti, which was already incapable of sexual reproduction, lost its ability to produce asexual spores. As a result it is now very difficult for the entire industry to obtain enough P. camemberti spores to inoculate their production of the famous Norman cheese.

Worse still, while the Roquefort PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) standard retains a degree of microbial biodiversity, the PDO specifications for Camembert require farmers and other producers to use P. camemberti exclusively."

What to do about it? Read on....

(1/2)

Publisher Conde Nast is cutting costs at the expense of high-quality journalism and fairness to its dedicated employees. Just a small sample:

OpenAI must defend ChatGPT fabrications after failing to defeat libel suit

ChatGPT users may soon learn whether false outputs will be allowed to ruin lives.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/openai-must-defend-chatgpt-fabrications-after-failing-to-defeat-libel-suit/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Sitting in a Spanish restaurant and five British middle aged guys on the neighboring table seem to have adopted the German (Austrian?) grandma on her first trip alone after the death of her husband into their group ... 🥺

This world still had its amazing moments 💚

🌅 Good morning.

New #research from Consumer Reports offers a rare look into the scope of Meta's online surveillance.

It goes way beyond what most may expect—Meta can know many of the websites you visit and even what you’re doing IRL.

@jonkeegan with the details: https://themarkup.org/privacy/2024/01/17/each-facebook-user-is-monitored-by-thousands-of-companies-study-indicates