Nicola Romanò @nicolaromano@qoto.org

Margaret Hamilton is one of my personal heroes. One of the early programmers, coiner of the term “software engineering”, and lead for the Apollo guidance program software project that got humanity to the moon. Many of the core programming principles we use come from her teams. Never let anyone tell you programming isn’t for women! (And yes, sadly I still hear people say that from time to time)

Updating my sat numbers before my lecture. There are now 7,095 Starlink satellites in orbit, out of 11,094 total operational satellites.

Every one of those Starlink satellites will be turned into metal vapour in Earth's atmosphere, because there are no environmental regulations in space. Ugh ugh ugh.

Great way to start off my morning. Time for some yoga and doing something pleasant before yelling about satellite pollution all over the U of Manitoba physics department.

The U.K. government has quietly scrubbed encryption advice from its government web pages.

This comes just weeks after the U.K. government demanded backdoor access to encrypted data stored on Apple’s cloud storage service.

from @carlypage: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/06/uk-quietly-scrubs-encryption-advice-from-government-websites/

Hey Michiganders,

This Friday in Lansing many scientists and concerned citizens will gather to stand up for science at noon

You should go if you can! Show that Michiganders support our federally funded research and discovery enterprises, and value our constitutional rights to free speech and peaceful assembly.

https://standupforscience2025.org/local-event-information/

1/7 Have you ever wondered if scholarly peer review could be done collaboratively, openly, and in dialogue with community? PREreview’s Live Reviews are the space for you!

#livereview #openpeerreview #collaboration

I held desperate hopes that Zelenskyy would refuse to give Putin what he wanted.

I couldn't imagine that he would, but I also knew the pressures he was going to face today.

And he stood up to them. He gave them nothing. In the face of their puerile, incandescent, narcissistic rage, he gave them nothing.

My respect for that man grew to extravagant proportions today.

#SlavaUkraini, President #Zelenskyy.

#Germany, we count on you tomorrow (Election day). Be strong and reject the fascists! 🇩🇪🗳️

What are publishers doing in the name of #OpenScience?

Our Head of Publishing Development, Alessio, is co-hosting an online event on March 13 for #OxFOS25. Register free to learn about how we emphasise transparent and accountable research assessments.
https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/9f66acc1-8dc4-46a1-83cc-924c9da2b2a5@cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91

As of today, the public swiss technical university @epfl in Lausanne has its own Mastodon server – accessible to all members of the institution, including students (!), and directly linked to their institutional login system.

https://actu.epfl.ch/news/the-epfl-community-gets-a-mastodon-server/

A very warm welcome, EPFL, in the Fediverse, thank you for your efforts, and congratulations!

#openscicomm #scicomm #fediverse #edufedi

I complain a lot about Inkscape vs. Adobe Illustrator when it comes to print design. Do you want to do something about it? Do you want us to have nice free software tools for print?

Well Martin Owens @doctormo@floss.social is making things better, he's the one working on CMYK and revamped PDF export for Inkscape. It seems like a massive endeavour, and it looks very promising!

https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1061/cmyk-support-in-inkscape-could-be-a-game-changer-for-professional-print-designers

This would open up Inkscape to a whole new sector. Inkscape is pretty good for digital work, but it lacks crucial features for print. CMYK would be a massive step in the right direction.

You can support his work on Liberapay and Patreon. Personally, I would do so, if I had an income
- https://liberapay.com/doctormo/
- https://www.patreon.com/doctormo

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?

Jevin West and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take.

https://thebullshitmachines.com

This is not a computer science course.

It’s a humanities course about how to learn and work and thrive in an AI world.

Neither instructor nor students need a technical background. Our instructor guide provides a choice of activities for each lesson that will easily fill an hour-long class.

The entire course is available freely online. Our 18 online lessons each take 5-10 minutes; each illuminates one core principle. They are suitable for self-study, but have been tailored for teaching in a flipped classroom.

The course is a sequel of sorts to our course (and book) Calling Bullshit. We hope that like its predecessor, it will be widely adopted worldwide.

Large language models are both powerful tools, and mindless—even dangerous—bullshit machines. We want students to explore how to resolve this dialectic.

So today I met with an executive from the International Association of Forensic Nurses—an organization I’m collaborating with. I was told that they were receiving overwhelming communications from their 6,000+ membership of nurses unable to access information on #sexualhealth and #traumainformed care. My Mastadon buddy @lavaeolus was able to upload access to important #CDC documents through #safeguardingresearch

This place really is making change. #mastadon #HoosierMast

Scientific societies: please do not advertise X/Twitter to "live tweet" your conferences this year. Prepare now accounts and instructions to use Mastodon and Bluesky.

i'm working on a giant terminal cheat sheet with

- how to quit
- redirect syntax
- keyboard shortcuts you can use (including in `less`)
- how to set environment variables
- some basic useful commands (history, !!, kill/pkill/killall/top, reset, alias, etc)

and it's really leaving me feeling like "how is anyone supposed to LEARN all of this stuff??” like all of this is theoretically documented and obviously I learned it somehow but it's split across so many different man pages