Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

Nuclear physicist Leona Woods Marshall Libby was born #OTD in 1919.

She helped direct the development of the Hanford site reactors during the Manhattan Project, was the only woman on Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile team, and was present when Chicago Pile-1 went critical.

New: A massive cyberattack targeting the U.K. voter register is one of the U.K.’s largest ever hacks, with more than 40 million voters affected.

TechCrunch has marked up 🖍️ the Electoral Commission's cyberattack notice to dissect what was said about the hack, and what was left out.

More: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/09/parsing-uk-electoral-commission-cyberattack/

Wells Fargo among banks fined $549M after hiding employee texts from regulators

Banks have been fined more than $2.5 billion for violating record-keeping laws.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/wells-fargo-among-banks-fined-549m-after-hiding-employee-texts-from-regulators/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Crocodiles make the best baby monitors.

https://www.science.org/content/article/crocodiles-alarmingly-attuned-cries-of-human-infants

YouTube will no longer show recommendations if you disable watch history.

This both makes the connection clearer that the recommendations are based on what you’ve previously watched and not some “nefarious algorithm” and continues big tech’s march to please the EU’s anti-algorithm demands.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/08/youtube-update-homepage-watch-history/

@eff announced the Tor University Challenge, a project asking universities to start running Tor relays on campus. Find all the resources you need to convince your university and faculty to contribute to safeguarding people's digital rights: https://toruniversity.eff.org/

Author discovers AI-generated counterfeit books written in her name on Amazon

Amazon resisted a removal request, citing lack of "trademark registration numbers."

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/author-discovers-ai-generated-counterfeit-books-written-in-her-name-on-amazon/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Quite enjoying this summer of discontent with large commercial academic publishers https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/another-wiley-journal-board-resigns-after-month-long-strike

#DiamondOA not #RipOffOA

I'm hearing that the claim that #LK99 is a superconductor is encountering some resistance.

Little demo from work on why magnetic levitation is *not* slam-dunk proof of a superconductor. This is pyrolitic graphite. It levitates over a reasonably strong magnetic field (cheap neodymiums), this kit cost about £30 and isn't a superconductor.
The Korean team *may* have found a room temp superconductor, and I really hope they have, but don't jump to conclusions just because something levitates in a magnetic field.

Had a talk with my daughter (24) this morning because she was frustrated with an argument she was having with her friends online over a tv show.

I reminded her of the importance of not allowing our egos to enter into debates. That being right or wrong doesn't determine if we have value, and to remember that opinions on preferences are subjective by nature and that "right or wrong" only serves to derail any discussion on art.

She agreed and it was a good discussion. I hope she learns from it.

@TaliaRinger It’s really unfair of the admins of any instance to not give people the chance to port their identity for anything but the absolute most egregious violations.

@michelin unfortunately I didn't get to use the proper migration process, since the ban precludes it

Stupid question related to the whole LK-99 business: why is it so hard to predict properties of materials where you know the internal structure? Is it one of those quantum computational explosion things? Like, if we had large quantum computers could you just quickly say "nope, won't superconduct"?

How We Used Machine Learning to Investigate Where #Ebola May Strike
==

ProPublica spent months teaching a computer to analyze past Ebola #outbreaks linked to #deforestation.

What we found reveals a weakness in the way that governments and #PublicHealth experts are preparing for future #pandemics.

#MachineLearning #Disease #Outbreak #Pandemic #Nigeria #Africa #Spillover #News #Research

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-propublica-used-machine-learning-investigate-where-ebola?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

Forgot to share this here, but 6 August is the anniversary of the discover of #Pulsars by Dame Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

She was looking through the roll of data from the telescope she helped build and noticed a little bit of ‘scruff’.

Her discovery changed our understanding of the Universe but sadly her male supervisor took credit and got the Nobel prize for it!

Read more: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/55-years-pulsar-science

#Astrodon #RadioAstronomy #SpaceAustralia

This is appalling. I trust, although without much hope, that Amazon will fix this.

July temperature records crushed worldwide in air and sea, via ECMWF today. #climatechange #elnino

Hey. I was banned from types.pl for having interviewed at the NSA 13 years ago, when I was 20 years old. I'm grateful for a new home on mathstodon.

I am very unhappy with anyone who is going after the types.pl moderators personally for this and not just respectfully discussing the situation, and I'm personally extremely sorry if my Tweet inspired any of those actions. If I see this at all I will be escalating to SIGPLAN CARES.

In a recent post I mentioned working with the department of defense as faculty. I mean that in two capacities: (1) receiving DARPA grants for verification work, and (2) organizing a workshop through the department of defense on the security risks of generative AI for code. I am always public about this with students, and I always ask students before funding them on DARPA grants, making it clear I will source funding elsewhere if the student strongly opposes defense funding. This is the kind of thing I wanted to discuss after seeing Oppenheimer; I'm a bit bummed that instead I got banned for a post about something that happened 13 years ago, when I was not in the PL community at all, and basically lived under a rock with respect to everything except math, Dance Dance Revolution, and competitive running.

Anyways, hi, please help me rebuild my friend network here.

Periodic PSA!

I use lots of graph paper, so I made a LaTeX template to print my own. It was so handy that @duetosymmetry and I turned it into a LaTeX package.

There are various grid styles (graph, quadrille, hex, iso, dot grid, etc), and both custom and pre-defined color schemes.

Use it to easily print your own paper, or to make pdf page templates for your favorite tablet note-taking app. I use them with GoodNotes & Notability.

Github: https://github.com/mcnees/LaTeX-Graph-Paper
CTAN: https://ctan.org/pkg/gridpapers?lang=en