Nick has moved to Mathstodon @internic@qoto.org

What did you always wonder about #BlackHoles? Something that you always wanted to ask an astronomer working on them?

Collecting questions for a reason, maybe even answering them in the comments (or at a later point).

#VicisAstro

Every 4 years, a team of libraries & research organizations work together to preserve material from U.S. government websites during the transition of administrations.

Get the latest on the 2024/2025 End of Term Web Archive @eotarchive https://blog.archive.org/2025/02/06/update-on-the-2024-2025-end-of-term-web-archive/

@Flipboard and Surf.Social are excited to host the first-ever Fediverse House, March 9 & 10, 2025.

Join us while the SXSW conference is going on to learn about the world of decentralized social and why it promises a better way for consumers, creators, brands, and even democracy itself.

Our programming lineup is stacked (and still evolving), but it’s looking like the place to be for anyone interested in the future of the internet.

Details and RSVP:

https://about.flipboard.com/fediverse/fediverse-house-2025/

#fediverse #fediversehouse25 #sxsw #austin #mastodon #bluesky #flipboard #threads

HEAD’S UP: If @mastodon_notifications (or anything similar) sends you a DM, do not click on it.

This is a phishing scam.

That account is not associated with Mastodon in any official capacity and is a complete grift. Though it is aesthetically similar to a Mastodon site, it does not run Mastodon, and clicking on several links brings forth a 404.

(And yes, I accessed this site using gloves )

Of course, I’ve reported this account. But where one account exists, I suspect there are others!

Just migrated from the Dead Bird app after you know who took over… and wow, this place is cosy but... empty

Hey there, I’m a web dev from England, now proudly (and somewhat lonely) hosting my own Mastodon instance. It’s like throwing a party and realizing you forgot to invite people lol

Looking to connect with cool folks—let’s make this timeline a fun place! :) Boosts welcome! #Mastodon #WebDev #FediFriends

7-Zip 0-day was exploited in Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine
Vulnerability stripped MotW tag Windows uses to flag Internet-downloaded files.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/02/7-zip-0-day-was-exploited-in-russias-ongoing-invasion-of-ukraine/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Dudes in tech will brag about eating their own dog food all day and then start theorizing about how to run the societal systems and social safety nets they've never once in their lives used or needed without skipping a beat and it's always embarrassing to watch.

This is very welcome news in the face of Trumpist depredations of US public data.
https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/01/30/preserving-public-u-s-federal-data/

"In recent months the Harvard Law School [@harvard_law] Library Innovation Lab [@harvardlil] has created a data vault to download, sign as authentic, and make available copies of public government data that is most valuable to researchers, scholars, civil society and the public at large across every field. To begin, we have collected major portions of the datasets tracked by data.gov, federal #Github repositories, and #PubMed...."

#DataGov #DefendResearch #Libraries #OpenData #Preservation #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Backdoored package in Go mirror site went unnoticed for >3 years
Supply chain attack targets developers using the Go programming language.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/02/backdoored-package-in-go-mirror-site-went-unnoticed-for-3-years/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

30,000 PCs are moving from Microsoft Office to #LibreOffice in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. At the recent Univention Summit 2025, we met the people handling the migration: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/02/05/libreoffice-at-the-univention-summit-2025/ #foss #opensource #freesoftware

If you enjoy reading vast swathes of data about consumer VPN providers, have you perused the many years of archived test results I keep at https://www.vpndatatracker.com/ ?

I don't run any affiliate sponsorships at all, which is at least a novelty.

#VPN

Just noticed that the picture I took in my bathroom now appears on the catastrophe theory page on wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_theory

These the words now forbidden in the Free Speech United States of Academic Freedom.....

Thread 1/5

"Anthropic, the company that made one of the most popular AI writing assistants in the world, requires job applicants to agree that they won’t use an AI assistant to help write their application."

https://www.404media.co/anthropic-claude-job-application-ai-assistants/

#PhysicsJournalClub
"Anderson Transition for Light in a Three-Dimensional Random Medium"
by A. Yamilov, H. Cao, and S. Skipetrov
Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 046302 (2025)

Anderson localization is a phenomenon where wave interference in a disordered scattering medium results in the wave being unable to propagate. It is a fascinating, complex, and VERY niche topic.
It is also the centre of never-ending arguments.

Anderson localization was originally proposed as a mechanism to explain why certain spin states in metals full of impurities would take longer to relax than expected (the answer was: their quantum state could not propagate due to the disorder). [https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/anderson-lecture-1.pdf]
It was soon realized that electron-electron interaction would dominate over a pure "Anderson localization" in most solid state systems, where a similar effect ("Mott insulation") would dominate.

The topic had a resurgence when it became clear that Anderson localization was a general wave phenomenon, and it wasn't restricted to electrons, but could in principle happen to any wave, e.g. sound or light. [https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.58.2486]
Due to its nature, Anderson localization is easier to achieve the lower the dimensionality of the system is. Anderson localization of (ultra)sound in 1D and 2D were quickly discovered, with light coming a few years later.

1/

New #Introduction at Fediscience:

I'm an environmental scientist with an interest in the night, and how we change it with artificial light.

I am Canadian and live in Germany. I most frequently post about science and #LightPollution.

In the photo below, the light was installed backwards, so that it shone on the flowers instead of the stairs for a decade

What’s the difference between Punxsutawney Phil and the Myers-Briggs Personality Assessment?

One is a silly superstition with no real predictive power, and the other is a groundhog.

#GroundhogDay #pseudoscience #MBTI