Nick has moved to Mathstodon @internic@qoto.org

I should probably say what it is I do. I'm a mathematician with a PhD from St Andrews and a background in numerical computing.

That said, I'll turn my hand to whatever needs to be done to solve a real-world problem.

For example, a previous client had a derivatives trading setup in Python that was taking *minutes* to execute trades. I reimplemented it in Golang so that the main bottleneck was the fact there's an ocean between me and New York.

I'm also enthusiastic about communicating mathematics -- I wrote and presented the Advanced Maths Support Programme's online videos for teachers wanting to support their students with the Cambridge University entrance tests (STEP), I've written several books and countless articles, and generally love explaining how things work.

If you, or anyone you know, needs a mathematical consultant, do connect! I'm colin@colinbeveridge.co.uk .

Astronomers used Hubble and Webb telescopes to observe this galaxy cluster, which acts like a magnifying glass because the cluster is so massive it warps the fabric of space-time. This allows us to see enhanced detail in much more distant galaxies behind the cluster. (1/6)

Introducing MNT Reform Next https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2024-09-09-introducing-mnt-reform-next.html

POST CW: trauma, abuse, sexual assault, near-death experiences. do not read if easily triggered!

Hi. I'm a 2nd year Math/CS P.h.D. student at a top east-coast US university. I started my PhD last fall, the first 4 months went wonderfully and I made great progress. I then have been sexually assaulted by a collegue 3 times in the past 6 months. Throughout this, my ability to focus on my work has dwindled and my advisor has begun giving me negative performance reviews. I have attempted to push past and through the trauma and resulting PTSD, paranoia, and psychosis, but have not been doing a very good job. The last time this occured a few weeks ago, I sustained a fall and the resulting TBI continues to upset my cognitive function. The trauma has required me to get on atypical antipsychotics to stay even partially grounded. I do not want to stop my PhD, and I still believe I am able to complete this without taking a break. However, I believe the time has come to potentially reveal some details to my advisor, to hopefully alleviate some pressure.

Question: how do I have this conversation? I want to maximize the probability I get to complete my PhD. I feel very scared that, if I say the wrong words in this conversation, bad things could happen. I am also very autistic and bad at social interaction.

I primarily want help navigating this situation, and less legal or similar advice. I am working with people already on those problems. It is against my wishes to repost, speculate, gossip, or screenshot. More details in next post.

CISA moves away from trying to influence content moderation decisions on election disinformation https://cyberscoop.com/cisa-moves-away-from-trying-to-influence-content-moderation-decisions-on-election-disinformation/

Team #Hashcat is pleased to present our much anticipated write-up for this year's #CrackMeIfYouCan contest at #Defcon32

Read it here:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hashcat/team-hashcat/8a72d338660cc6d8f4f8014bd8e3236f8c59cd6e/CMIYC2024/CMIYC2024TeamHashcatWriteup.pdf

#password #passwordcracking #redteam #ctf #defcon #hacking #infosec #cybersecurity

As a climate scientist who relies on environmental data, it pisses me off that these criminals tampered with rain gauges to defraud the government.

It’s a wild story worth reading.

https://coloradosun.com/2024/09/08/patrich-esch-ed-dean-jagers-ranchers-fraud-insurance/

So the cool conferences now use "discord" rather than "slack" for the asynchronous discussion This is slightly unfortunate, as JAXA block discord possibly out of suspicion we'd funnel all effort into Kerbal Space Program.

(Although I admit to being able to circumnavigate this with uncouth methods.)

I like that I'm so consistent I can cite myself five separate times to make the point that "learning is a key part of technical problem-solving so we should probably stop being asshats about people doing it"

TIL that the FBI recommends the use of ad blockers ad means of crime prevention!

https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221

Hard to imagine how people can live without one.

The more I look, the more intriguing the analogy between Planck's constant ℏ and Boltzmann's constant 𝑘 becomes. Planck's constant sets the scale of quantum fluctuations. Boltzmann's constant sets the scale of thermal fluctuations.

Planck introduced what we now call Planck’s constant in his famous 1900 paper on blackbody radiation. Remarkably, this is also the paper that first introduced Boltzmann’s constant! Boltzmann had the idea that entropy was proportional to the logarithm of the number of occupied states, but he never estimated this constant or gave it a name: Planck did both! So Boltzmann’s constant and Planck’s constant were born hand in hand at the turn of the 20th century.

Later, Einstein understood Planck's work better than Planck did. Einstein discovered that light is made of photons: he won the Nobel prize for his 1905 paper on this, and it led to a lot of work on quantum mechanics.

But Einstein wrote another paper in 1905 showing how to prove that liquid water is made of atoms! The idea was to measure the random Brownian motion of a grain of pollen in water — that is, thermal fluctuations. In 1908, Jean Perrin carried out this experiment, and he later won the Nobel “for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter”.

So both the photon theory of light and the atomic theory of matter owe a lot to Einstein's work in 1905: the first connected to Planck's constant, the second to Boltzmann's constant.

But the analogy is more than a merely historical one. I'm trying to get to the bottom of this:

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2024/09/01/the-moduli-space-of-physical-frameworks-part-1/

Now that Mozilla Firefox is adding AI directly to its browser, are there any browsers without AI or LLM? I don't want anything to do with the current LLM and AI, which I strongly believe stealing from artists, and all AI companies are freeloaders. It is a bit disappointing to see open-source software adopting something like this. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/ai-services-on-firefox/

A reminder that this is happening this evening around 18:48 UTC / 20:48 CEST: the de-orbit of Salsa, the first of the Cluster II magnetospheric mission constellation to meet its demise over the South Pacific.

Look out for updates on the usual ESA websites & channels – I’ll be at ESOC in Darmstadt toasting the 24-year long scientific success of the mission

#SpaceScience

Judge Merchan has postponed sentencing Trump for violating campaign financing laws by hiding his manipulation of media through secret payments before the 2016 election. The consensus has emerged that this may be a 'good thing' politically speaking for those who care about laws applying to everyone including the powerful.

Any sentence that he choose would dominate the news cycle and cause controversy and chaos. No one is looking forward to it. 1/

People have gotten so used to the existence of the Internet Archive’s web archive that they forget how revolutionary and subversive it is. The idea that that is somehow safe while the book lending was not is completely flawed. They were just up against a more powerful group.

#InternetArchive

Unpacking the ancient little backpack that faithfully accompanied me across tech conferences presenting psychology for the last two years (I no longer am to do public science presentation as part of my current gig).

So bittersweet.

Wow did I carry around a full arsenal of conference aids in case anyone needed ibuprofen or a button sewed back on

Took some sustainability pride in the fact that this backpack is the very first backpack I ever got in a tech job!

Calling for the help of the fediverse!
Help spread the word of our browser extension Consent-O-Matic that helps automate answering those ever-present cookie consent pop-ups.

It's developed by researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark and free to use for Chrome/Edge, Firefox and Safari including for iOS.

Also, it's open source, so if you have a bit of technical skill, you can help us improve the rule set for greater coverage.

https://consentomatic.au.dk

In a world of JK Rowlings, be a Will Ferrell

It looks very beautiful and can't wait to see it!

"Will Ferrell and his close friend, former head writer at SNL, Harper Steele embark on a cross-country road trip together after Harper comes out as a trans woman in the documentary film, WILL & HARPER. In select theaters this September and on Netflix September 27"

#TvShows #Series

Here are some pics of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft after it performed a successful landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, at 12:01 a.m. ET earlier today. Overnight, Boeing and NASA teams gathered test data and unloaded cargo from the spacecraft.

More pics at https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/albums/72177720316689585/with/53975292273
#NASA #Starliner
4/n

My #PineTime #smartwatch arrived earlier today, and although I don't expect to use it, I was pleased to see that there is an option to have this very geeky watch face.