Sylvain Miermont @miermont@qoto.org

NASA stated that the Ingenuity helicopter has officially taken its last flight. 72 out of 5 planned flights is pretty darn good.

There is really good stats thinking you can do on this and there are many models for mapping this type of change, but you won't get this thinking from business analytics or mainstream data science unfortunately. You need to look to the sciences that have done causal inference in complex real world situations.

People often say "ugh stop overthinking it. Just set a target and measure a change."

All models are wrong etc, but on some topics putting "simple" over everything is fundamentally broken.

This is also why it is incomprehensible that so much software research on human behavior does not follow the scientific standards of so many other fields in reporting demographics and treating things like group differences (or similarities) as a valid analysis, and indeed, even asking itself to take a representative sample across identities.

It's embarrassing that people publish papers with entirely male samples and are acclaimed as experts on the future of software engineering practices.

This thread is a great example of something applied scientists like me warn about A LOT with assumptions about average increases and decreases. Disaggregated and longitudinal analysis with domain expertise is necessary to understand changes in complex experience, most of all those that are about evaluations of complex systems like our social systems.

In fact this exact problem of response collapse was something I raised an objection about in my first tech job at Google

https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111811331356331786

hey, you know those "tell me what you were doing when you crashed" boxes you almost never fill out?

I just want you to know that the last... 3? crashes I've worked on have all had BRILLIANT clues for what was wrong in there from users. If you have ANY idea what you were doing, and can put it into words? please, please do, your assistance is HUGELY appreciated. Even just "I was adjusting the app settings” can be a clue!

(also, remember that it's a human reading it eventually, be kind!)
#work

#SeminarAlert | IGE presents a not-to-be-missed series of seminars on the science of #climate #attribution 🌍
🗓 January 26 and February 2 - 13:30-14:30
📍 IGE - Saint Martin d'Hères campus
To join online 🔗 https://univ-grenoble-alpes-fr.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMvdu2opz8jHd2lTeg8i9W1A1EuJftY4CpJ#/registration

More info: https://www.ige-grenoble.fr/Seminaire-IGE?id_reponse=108

The Mighty french #glaciology institute in Grenoble @IGE is now here. A hugely recommended follow #FF

https://fediscience.org/@IGE/111798914708847337
IGE - #Video

‼️ Uncover the challenges of understanding Greenland's massive ice sheet and its potential impact on sea-level rise 🌊

https://youtu.be/X8GRmHnZEwA?si=lr3dJDcA03DJOvK9

@H2020PROTECT

Thrilled to give the opening keynote at the High-Temperature Heat Pump Symposium in Copenhagen!

The conference has grown from just 65 people in 2017 to 400 today. It shows the momentum for industrial heat pumps is there.

"If you need a sign, it's bad design"

Here a sign explaining it's a fountain (very similar to the bins in the area) and where to press to get water...

Big news in bug math. This is the first year since 1803 when both 13-year cicadas and 17-year cicadas will emerge from the ground simultaneously in the US!

13 and 17 are both prime. It's believed cicadas evolved to have prime-number life cycles to avoid predators that emerge more frequently, like once every 4 years or 5 years or... whatever. By showing up infrequently, with a prime number life cycle, they can starve out those predators.

And since 13 and 17 are both prime and 13 × 17 = 221, both kinds of cicadas emerge simultaneously only once every 221 years. And

1803 + 221 = 2024

so now they'll both emerge simultaneously and we'll have 𝑙𝑜𝑡𝑠 of cicadas!

Also, this year the two kinds can interbreed!

The last time the Northern Illinois Brood’s 17-year cycle aligned with the Great Southern Brood’s 13-year cycle, Thomas Jefferson was president.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/science/cicadas-emergence-broods.html

KiCad needs funding for its next release cycle.
If you do PCB design, esp. if its your job, consider donating.

Even if you don't use KiCad yourself as your main tool (like myself) its still an incredibly important piece of infrastructure for the industry as a whole.

https://www.kicad.org/blog/2024/01/2023-End-of-Year-Fund-Drive/

German law is making security research a risky business.

Current news: A court found a developer guilty of “hacking.” His crime: he was tasked with looking into a software that produced way too many log messages. And he discovered that this software was making a MySQL connection to the vendor’s database server.

When he checked that MySQL connection, he realized that the database contained data belonging to not merely his client but all of the vendor’s customers. So he immediately informed the vendor – and while they fixed this vulnerability they also pressed charges.

There was apparently considerable discussion as to whether hardcoding database credentials in the application (visible as plain text, not even decompiling required) is sufficient protection to justify hacking charges. But the court ruling says: yes, there was a password, so there is a protection mechanism which was circumvented, and that’s hacking.

I very much hope that there will be a next instance ruling overturning this decision again. But it’s exactly as people feared: no matter how flawed the supposed “protection,” its mere existence turns security research into criminal hacking under the German law. This has a chilling effect on legitimate research, allowing companies to get away with inadequate security and in the end endangering users.

Source: https://www.heise.de/news/Warum-ein-Sicherheitsforscher-im-Fall-Modern-Solution-verurteilt-wurde-9601392.html

Happy 40th Birthday to probably one of the most important and influential computer games ever written, Elite.

#Elite #Elite40 #Retrocomputing #BBCMicro

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/elite_game_retro/

On being listed in the court document of artists whose work was used to train Midjourney with 4,000 of my closest friends and Willem De Kooning (1/3)

This project was for a gift exchange, so I couldn't share it until now. It's a (large!) laptop bag/backpack with 100 LEDs in the front flap arranged in a Fibonacci spiral (inspired by @jasoncoon ) and diffused through a Voronoi arrangement of 3D printed translucent black PETG tiles.

Everyone talks about how the first 'computers' were people (usually women), but how about the first packet switches? #ComputerHistory

oh dang

the headline is "randomware," the bigger exploit is _lying to the user about applied torque so that they inadequately torque bolts_.

like on that boeing just now.

are these used in aircraft assembly and maintenance? because one of the things they were able to do was change bolt tightness while making it look correct on the screen.

has this been quietly exploited already? is this already a zero-day?

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/network-connected-wrenches-used-in-factories-can-be-hacked-for-sabotage-or-ransomware/

The Problem with Trolley Car Problems

I started out saying this as a joke, but gradually, over time, I've come to realize it's actually accurate.

The true solution to almost all "trolley car" problems is to find who keeps tying people to the tracks.

In trolley car problems, the people tied to the tracks always represent some disadvantaged sector of society — poor people, homeless people, no healthcare, minorites, etc — or even just (pardon the expression) "regular" lower class people.

And the "problem" is always "do you let those people be run over in order to save a billionaire, or a corporation, or the banking industry, or some sector of the economy, etc.

And again ... why are those people tied to the tracks in the first place? What is wrong with our economy/society/legal system, that we have those people stuck in those disadvantaged positions?

So the next time you see a trolley car problem — even the comedy/shitpost/joke problems — ask yourself, "who are those people tied to the track, and how did they get there in the first place?

this is such bullshit. language has nothing to do with preferred timestamp format. please don't assume things like this.