Matthew @mattasdata@qoto.org

The BBC's experiment with Mastodon is pathbreaking in English-language news -- a major organization setting up its own instance. They've really thought this through. Key language:

"We're using social.bbc as the domain, so you can be sure these accounts are genuinely from the BBC. And by linking to and from the BBC’s website, we have verified our identity on Mastodon."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2023-07-mastodon-distributed-decentralised-fediverse-activitypub

Welcome to:
@BBCRD
@BBC5Live @BBCRadio4
@BBCTaster
@Connected_Studio
@BBC_News_Labs

Haven't seen much discussion on the recent room-temperature superconductivity claims here on Mastodon (am I following the wrong people?), but before the hype hits you, here is the current state of affairs:
* Two experimental attempts to replicate the result have found nothing (https://t.co/D1gmAEOvzx, https://t.co/u5qIEv7aB7)
* One numerical result shows that the suggested material should have flat eletron bands, which are consistent with (but do not prove) superconductivity (https://t.co/2m0ojMOTLr).

Until we have independent experimental replication, any hype is premature.

(h/t @dangaristo)

#Physics

Twitter is now officially X on the App Store, with the tagline “Blaze your glory!” (cringe)

The version number has also been updated to 10.0. #itsnotxitsten

Also in this update: Tweet has been renamed to “Post.”

It’s truly the end of an era, folks. Putting aside the “poking fun at Elon Musk,” the word “Tweet” became so popular because it just made sense. That’s gone now — no more tweets. They’re posts. And that’s very, very sad. It’s a sad day for the internet. ;-;

"The Tragedy of the Commons" was written by a eugenicist and was effectively debunked as ahistorical fantasy decades ago. More propaganda in the service of privatizing public space and resources. Pass it on. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-tragedy-of-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/

A lot of scientist buddies still in the bad place and I end up commenting there. So to regain karma here's a toot about #LK99

- I don't know much about superconductivity, waiting for that community to comment on the relevant measurements
- I know a little about solid-state synthesis/characterisation, and agree with expert colleagues that the reported samples are probably a mixture.
- I *can* comment on the situation for us supercomputer wranglers... 1/2

This may be my all time favorite meme. Bury me in it.

The evidence that cars don’t work as primary mass transport in cities is everywhere: traffic jams, air pollution, accident rates, the shocking fraction of city space taken up by parking spaces, safety barriers/bollards etc. This 100 year experiment should be declared over, and we should put proper effort into the systems that HAVE been shown to work and scale: walking, cycling, e-cargo bikes, cheap/accessible/reliable public transport. This “argument” about LTNs is just lazy delay. #LTN #cities

Stop using Chrome as your daily driver.

Google proposed adding DRM to Chrome, which will be used to stop ad blockers, privacy tools, password plugins, accessibility/reader modes.

The only way to stop Google’s Chrome from wrecking the internet like Internet Explorer did for many year to switch to a NOT chromium-based browser as soon as possible for your day to day. You’ve got Safari, and Firefox as your choices.

I know you’ll have to use Chrome sometimes because it’s already happening.

The voice-recognition phone tree is basically capitalism's ultimate technology for brushing people off, you know? That's most of what capitalism does. Build walls between business and actual humans. Low grade tech, put a human out there who has no authority to actually help. Slightly higher, put in place a phone-tree puzzle that drops off 90% of respondents before they hit the human. Finally, capitalism's apotheosis, the "AI" "chatbot". Can *never* help you and you will *always* blame yourself.

The Fall of Stack Overflow: SO has lost around 50% of its traffic. This decline is similarly reflected in site usage, with approximately a 50% decrease in the number of Q&A, as well as the number of votes. The AI bots hit SO hard for sure, at least that is what I think. I still SO as top answer in Google but Bing is upto no good. LOL. https://observablehq.com/@ayhanfuat/the-fall-of-stack-overflow

Musk failed to get the necessary permits to change Twitter’s building signage to X, and the police shut it down just in time for “er” to remain. #twitter #tech #elonmusk #x #twittermigration #twitterlogo #elon #musk

classic 🍪 #unix #linux #sysadmin #macos #freebsd #sudo

Important sets:
ℂ the complex numbers
ℕ the natural numbers
ℚ the rational numbers
ℝ the real numbers
𝕏 the set of fascists wannabes
ℤ the integers