Dave T-W @davoloid@qoto.org

Earlier this week at @cwts we launched the #OpenEdition of our #LeidenRanking https://open.leidenranking.com/.

The Open Edition is the first fully transparent university ranking. All data is openly available. The source code of the software used to process the data and to calculate the indicators is openly available as well.

https://www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/introducing-the-leiden-ranking-open-edition

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2024/01/algorithms-and-data-behind-leiden-ranking-in-public-domain

Umberto Eco has a cogent essay about how to spot the signs of what he calls "Ur-Fascism", or the essential components of fascism.

I turned it into an infographic, because, well, you know why...

Original article here in PDF: https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

#fascism #authoritarianism #elections #infographic #democracy

Absolutely. Do not use, do not support BetterHelp.

They took patients’ intake questionnaires and sold them to Facebook.

BetterHelp itself is not a ‘covered provider’ under HIPAA. But they heavily implied any data you gave them was HIPAA covered, and would not be shared.

They have been slapped with a $8 million fine by the FTC.

(I think they should be a HIPAA-covered provider, and they should be prosecuted.)

BetterHelp *cannot be trusted*. Stay away!

https://weirder.earth/@dessertgeek/111854230732895093

My book is available now on Amazon and elsewhere for pre-ordering.

Date it will come out is May 2024.

Um... reposts really appreciated.
Sorry to do 'advertising' though (ahh I don't enjoy this part lol)

Over and out. Thank you 😊

In the UK, it's possible to apply for up to 7 years of full time funding to do fundamental research without any academic affiliation, via the future leader fellowships scheme. Most with recent experience of UK academia will see the advantages of doing research hosted by a small non-profit rather than a massive, deeply hierarchical institution.

I'm lucky to have one of these fellowships with @thentrythis , and will be talking about it as part of this 'webinar' https://iuk.ktn-uk.org/events/future-leaders-fellowships-round-9-business-competition-support-webinar/

TBH it'd be really hard to navigate the application process without academic experience, but it's possible, and I have the feeling that success rates are higher than academic applicants.

Also @amberfirefly wrote about the experience from an organisational perspective here: https://thentrythis.org/notes/2022/08/25/research-funding-for-small-organisations-our-future-leaders-fellowship-experiences/
#ukriflf

Please choose from the two contemporary design styles for your wifi hardware: “rounded soft box with white light” and “satanic death cult blood sacrifice altar”

In case you're not aware, one of the primary issues with what3words is addresses containing words that are indistinguishable from others when spoken: https://w3w.me.ss

Whoa.

https://explorersweb.com/lichen-survives-space

Type C / Type B / Type A

Me: I need new shoelaces.

Wife: There’s a shoe store on 68th where a cranky-ass old man has hundreds of different shoelaces…

Me: Do I want to go to a shop run by a cranky-ass old man?

Wife: He might be a cranky-ass old man because online retailers have destroyed the local business he’s been running for 40 years…

Me: I’ll go there this week.

On a regular basis, someone (usually a straight, cis, white man) says that we can solve the problem of people being nasty online by using real names. It doesn't work, and it hurts people who can't risk using their real name..

"Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is reinforced if selective incentives are present and if aggressors are intrinsically motivated."

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155923

If our civilization collapses, extraterrestrial archeologists can look at this and be impressed. Three satellites following the Earth in an equilateral triangle, each 25 million kilometers from the other two. Each contains two gold cubes in free-fall. The satellites accelerate just enough so they don't get blown off course by the solar wind. The gold cubes feel nothing but gravity.

Lasers bounce between each cube and its partner in another satellite, measuring the distance between them to an accuracy of 20 picometers: less than the diameter of a helium atom! This lets the satellites detect gravitational waves - ripples in the curvature of spacetime - with very long wavelengths, and correspondingly low frequencies.

It should see so many binary white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes in the Milky Way that these will be nothing but foreground noise. More excitingly, it should be able to see mergers of supermassive black holes as far as... the dawn of time, or whenever such black holes were first formed. (The farther you look, the older things you see.)

It may even be able to see the "gravitational background radiation", the thrumming vibrations in the fabric of spacetime left over from the Big Bang. This radiation was created before the hot gas in the Universe cooled down enough to become transparent to light. So it's older than the microwave background radiation, which is the oldest thing we see now.

It's called LISA - the Laser Interferometric Satellite Antenna. And we're in luck: ESA has just decided to launch it in 2034.

When I was a smartass computer nerd in the 80s and 90s, an eternal theme was people asking me for tech support help and me having to slowly, patiently explain to them that computers aren't scary, they're actually predictable, they won't explode or erase your data (unless you really make an effort), and they operate by simple (if somewhat arcane) rules. Edit > Cut, then click, then Edit > Paste. Save As. Use tabs, not spaces. Stuff like that. Maybe not easy, but simple, or at least consistent and learnable.

But that's not true anymore.

User interfaces lag. Text lies. Buttons don't click. Buttons don't even look like buttons! Panels pop up and obscure your workspace and you can't move or remove them -- a tiny floating x and a few horizontal lines is all you get. Mobile and web apps lose your draft text, refresh at whim, silently swallow errors, mysteriously move shit around when you're not looking, hide menus, bury options, don't respect or don't remember your chosen settings. Doing the same thing gives different results. The carefully researched PARC principles of human-computer interaction -- feedback, discoverabilty, affordances, consistency, personalization -- all that fundamental Don Norman shit -- have been completely discarded.

My tech support calls now are about me sadly explaining there's nothing I can do. Computers suck now. They run on superstition, not science. It's a real tragedy for humanity and I have no idea how to fix it.

#HCI #UX #UI #okdoomer