Dave T-W @davoloid@qoto.org

As with conversations in #SpaceArchitecture, the engineering challenge is sometimes the least difficult part of this.

Phil McAlister says we need to get out of the mindset that NASA are building a space station, that "we're building a business that has to work financially, legally, as well as technically in order to make this work."

No True Scotsman, bank crisis edition (by @johnquiggin):

@w7voa What a petty fool.

For anyone in the #UK - especially if you, or anyone in your family, are #autistic, have #PTSD or young children:
📢 A siren warning sound will blast from your phone unexpectedly on the evening of 23rd April to test the government’s new ‘emergency’ alert system. It applies to Wales too, even though it's not mentioned here. Please warn others about this.
@actuallyautistic https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64999417.amp

Catching up with #PlanetarySociety podcast #SpacePolicy edition. This month (March 2023) an interview of #Ethics of Space Settlement with Dr Erika Nesvold.
https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/the-tricky-ethics-of-space-settlement

My bracket has 76 trombones led by John Philip Sousa facing off against thousands of emperor penguins led by Morgan Freeman.
https://xkcd.com/2751/

1/ A Russian Boeing 767 aircraft that suffered an engine surge when trying to take off from Phuket airport in February had reportedly gone 3 years without the engine being inspected, due to Western sanctions. This has serious implications for air safety. ⬇️

In exciting news I appear to be part of one of the first data breaches of the fediverse era!

I got this email 20 minutes ago letting me know my data migration from mastodon.social was dumped in a breach.

I'm going to be honest, I've got some opinions on the fact that a public bucket is used to store archives, with just obfuscation to stop people from downloading them.

#mastodon #infosec #fediverse

My kid just sent me this, and well, fair.

Hello @Ticketmaster what possible justification can you EVER have to rinse people on fees like this? You are parasites feeding off the labour of geniuses. (And some not geniuses who are in terrible bands I don't like). Vampires.
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RT @Tim_Burgess
So @thecure and @RobertSmith wanted to keep ticket prices at a reasonable level for fans on their upcoming North American tour dates. Of course @Ticketmaster absolutely rinsed them with ridi…
https://twitter.com/Tim_Burgess/status/1636357859192569856

If you're in or near South Kensington today we'll be running #UCLSciTeachOut in the Minerals Gallery at the Natural History Museum. Rocks, minerals, Bravais lattices, morphology, electronic structure, Miller indices, grain structure, dislocations, twinning, Czokralski synthesis, origin of life, meteorites, ores, smelting, diamonds, rubies and birefringence. Come along! It will be fun. And you can download our treasure hunt quiz here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fxhbj2dhz2ogpfs/UCL%20Chemistry%20TeachOut%202023.pdf?dl=0

Dear @independent : Stop publishing articles by Stanley Johnson. I'm sick of being told what to think by privileged, rich, old men. Aren't you?

A reminder to non-Americans: assigning Pi Day to 22nd July is not only more accurate than 3.14 (22/7 is 3.14285), it's also more likely to annoy Americans.

So I've given my "Stairway to Heaven" talk in which I tried to trace the tortured path of fractional distillation across the 19th century complete with historical reconstructions. The hero of the story is John Cowley, the @uclchemistry glassblower who built me this quite extraordinary dodo of a "dephlegmator", a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Designed by Marius Otto, it was among the last products of a misunderstanding about how distillation worked to be set right (in part) by Vigreux.

Are you interested in doing a PhD at the intersection of computational social science, AI & ML, and network science then look at this 👇

I'm looking for a PhD student for a project (w. @robysinatra) on understanding the predictive limits of ML systems

https://nerds.itu.dk/2023/03/08/two-new-phd-calls-application-deadline-april-1st/

THIS, THIS, THIS.
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RT @Channel4News
"How would we respond to... Russia or China... that a presenter was taken off air... because they tweeted something the government of the day didn't like?"

Shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell tells @krishgm the Lineker row has "damaged the [BBC's] international reputation".
https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1635368551337848847

I believe that #retrocomputing is about more than nostalgia (which is fine on its own, too!).

I believe that it's also about a reaction to the truly sorry state of modern computing. Old computers didn't spy on you, they didn't beg you for micropayments, they just did what they were told. They were tools for work, for learning, for entertainment, not tools for the capitalists to control us even more than they already do.

I also believe that retrocomputing has a future; we are, as a community, more than smart enough to design and build our own new retro-inspired designs, and build for ourselves a computing world worth living in.