Matthew @mattasdata@qoto.org

🚨 Help spread the word: 🗳️ Nominations to become a Trustee of Society of Research Software Engineering still open until 4 Aug. 💚 Help lead the community, bring your passion and your ideas 🚀 Here’s what it’s all about: https://society-rse.org/2023-being-a-trustee/ #RSEng

I hate it

😂 from https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10542519

Do you prefer to perform overt, immediate evil, or slow, indirect evil? 🤔

Covid update!
If you want an update on latest Covid data in England (increasing, from a low base), then check out this summary of my Twitter thread on a NON TWITTER platform!

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1687051253522583552.html

Move over, blue whales? A colossal ancient whale could be the heaviest animal ever known.

Science News reports: "Perucetus colossus may have tipped the scales at up to 340 metric tons."

https://flip.it/f4blWB

#Whales #Animals #Ocean #Paleontology #Science

Regular reminder: if your site or app doesn’t work in Firefox, it’s broken.

I lived through the “this site requires and/or is best in IE” era, and I’d rather burn it all down than return to that.

Pro-tip: Firefox does most things better anyway. Give it a spin and enjoy a less-tracked web.

Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon #OTD in 1939.

In 1954 Einstein said to his old friend, Linus Pauling, "I made one great mistake in my life—when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification—the danger that the Germans would make them ..." via @wikipedia

#science #physics

Something neat happens when you sort stars by color and brightness.

In this visualization of the stars in the globular cluster Omega Centauri, we can clearly see several groups of stars emerge from this sort: normal, main sequence stars; red giants; blue, horizontal branch stars; and white dwarfs. These are all stages in the lifecycle of Sun-like stars.

Download: https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/videos/35-Video
#astronomy #space #stars #hubble

I saw this advert from 1956 on Instagram and can’t work out how a fridge from nearly 70 years ago basically has better features than the fridge I own now.

I'm chronicling the development of "Software Design by Example" (a) because I want people to be interested enough to give feedback but also (b) because I want people who have something of their own to say to understand that there's no magic in creating something like this. A lesson is a user interface for knowledge; good lessons are the product of systematic design, just like good interfaces; I hope that seeing how the cake is baked will encourage others to bake cakes of their own. #sdxpy

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.