Nicola Romanò @nicolaromano@qoto.org

What a massive, cool project. Such huge many lab collaborations are becoming more and more common and I am HERE for it.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-024-03865-1

@jeffowski #AI is an academic field of endeavour first. Just because there is some grifting and questionable actors now does not mean you can write it and all people involved in it off like that.

That is like saying Physics is a scam because people were pedding perpetuum mobila, writing of medicine because people are peddling miracle cures or writing off Computer Science because of the dot-com boom.

@renordquist @academicchatter

I find it concerning and unsurprising that The Nobel Prize team called out their own sexism, likely without realising it:

"This morning [the Nobel laureate] celebrated the news of his prize with his colleague and wife Rosalind Lee, who was also the first author on the 1993 'Cell' paper cited by the Nobel Committee."

https://twitter.com/NobelPrize/status/1843252351152390392

Ah, the yearly week of the Nobel Prize for Men has started.

These guys did great work, surely. Also lots of non-men have done great work. I've followed this in the past and been so bitterly dissappointed by the lack of anything but old white guys. We'll see if this year is better, but so far 0 for 2 awardees.

https://www.nobelprize.org/all-nobel-prizes-2024/

#Nobel #WomenInSTEM #WomenInScience #sigh @academicchatter

Today in university: the University cannot accept a letter from the University, saying that a student's fees will be paid by the University to the University, as evidence that the University will pay the University the money that the University owes itself.

The student is, understandably, confused.

Types of Microbial Bioinformatics Papers. based on https://xkcd.com/2456/

There is no such thing as a backdoor for good guys. Once you place a backdoor, you compromise the safety and privacy of all your users. A third party or bad guys will get access to it and abuse it further. The concept of a "backdoor for good guys" is fundamentally flawed and dangerous. It sets a dangerous precedent. Security and privacy should be absolute. There's no safe way to create a backdoor that can't be exploited by malicious actors. #privacy #security #infosec

@albertcardona

I wish I knew the magic thing to say.

I think students are very susceptible to the strong cultural bias that views Cell/Nature/Science (with PNAS off to the side) as the epitome of scientific publishing. I still regularly hear trainees say something to the extent of "I could really get that job if I had a Nature Neuroscience publication", even after I show them how individual paper metrics seem decorrelated from journal impact factor.

The only trainees that don't seem to care as much about journal prestige are those that want to go into industry instead of academia.

Heads up to Kia owners/potential buyers: Today, a group of independent security researchers revealed that they'd found a flaw in a web portal operated by the carmaker Kia that let the researchers reassign control of the internet-connected features of most modern Kia vehicles—dozens of models representing millions of cars on the road—from the smartphone of a car’s owner to the hackers’ own phone or computer. By exploiting that vulnerability and building their own custom app to send commands to target cars, they were able to scan virtually any internet-connected Kia vehicle’s license plate and within seconds gain the ability to track that car’s location, unlock the car, honk its horn, or start its ignition at will.

https://www.wired.com/story/kia-web-vulnerability-vehicle-hack-track/

A potentially controversial take on bioscience faculty job applications. If you have a partner who also needs a position, the right time to share that info is AFTER you have a WRITTEN job offer.

Once you have the letter, if the department doesn't find a position for you SO, you get to decide if you can live apart or if your partner can take a non-tenure position or pivot careers. Don't let the department make those decisions for you!!

#AcademicChatter

Calling all science/tech folks: Do you have thoughts about xkcd? Parker Bach & I are trying to understand the role that xkcd plays in the scientific/technical community. Will you share your thoughts? https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=v4j5cvGGr0GRqy180BHbR64w9CfkmX9HrkRf2PpIZWBUQ1oxRERXVFFIRERIQUhJSDhDNVoxUU1CNS4u&route=shorturl And since we are doing a snowball sample, please spread the word!

The human brain suppresses its response to our own voice, which may be key to correcting speech errors. https://elifesciences.org/digests/94198/zoning-out-our-own-voice?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

Such an interesting, thoughtful response to LLMs eating the world from authoring app iA...

Instead of jumping on the bandwagon to integrate LLMs to create your content, it tracks the provenance of your text instead, letting you keep track of what's yours and what isn't.

An elegant, contrarian strategy. HT @marcoshuerta

https://ia.net/topics/writing-with-ai

Ig Nobel prize awarded to a researcher whose work shows data on longevity is 'rotten from the inside out.'

The so-called Mediterranean diet may be pension fraud.

https://theconversation.com/the-data-on-extreme-human-ageing-is-rotten-from-the-inside-out-ig-nobel-winner-saul-justin-newman-239023

Fun fact for #RStats: as of last month, it's been 10 years since @hadleywickham's "Tidy Data" paper was published in #JStatSoft

https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/view/v059i10

“Being a woman in tech is insane. We do not work in the same moral system model as most of the people that we interact with daily and we can’t talk about it, because when we do, we are the ones portrayed as crazy or hysterical.”

This is such an excellent piece.

https://www.sigops.org/2024/the-moral-implications-of-being-a-moderately-successful-computer-scientist-and-a-woman/

An #Oklahoma teacher, Summer Boismier, had her teaching certificate revoked because she did a classroom display of #BannedBooks and gave her students a link to the #BrooklynPublicLibrary service providing free online access to banned books.
https://www.upworthy.com/oklahoma-revoked-this-teachers-license-for-standing-up-against-book-bans-shes-not-backing-down

From Boismier: "I've never had a teaching certificate revoked before last week, let alone revoked for informing [high school students] that libraries exist online too."

#BookBans #Censorship #Libraries

From @mmasnick: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/09/05/second-circuit-says-libraries-disincentivize-authors-to-write-books-by-lending-them-for-free/

"Even though this outcome was always a strong possibility, the final ruling is just incredibly damaging, especially in that it suggests that all libraries are bad for authors and cause them to no longer want to write. I only wish I were joking. Towards the end of the ruling (as we’ll get to below) it says that while having freely lent out books may help the public in the “short-term” the “long-term” consequences would be that “there would be little motivation to produce new works.”"

"there would be little motivation to produce new works" without profit motive?

the ENTIRE FANWORK INTERNET WOULD DISAGREE WITH YOU, which is probably, a sizeable if not majority of fiction writing in the past two decades, it contains some of humanity's longest works!