planes @planeswalkered@qoto.org

Breaking - Twitter database leaks for free with 235,000,000 records.

As I anticipated yesterday, the database was circulating heavily and is now leaked.

The database contains 235,000,000 unique records of Twitter users and their email addresses and will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing, and doxxing.

This is one of the most significant leaks I've seen.

Fission is in the news, but few recognize that a woman physicist was behind the discovery.

Lise Meitner’s brilliance led to the discovery of nuclear fission. But her long time collaborator Otto Hahn, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry w/o her in 1944, even though she had given the first theoretical explanation.

Albert Einstein called Meitner “our Marie Curie." She also adamantly refused to work on the atomic bomb during WWII. https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201502/physicshistory.cfm #women #history #science #energy

Merry Christmas everyone 😂

#academia #PhD #phdlife #science #xp @OpenAcademics @AcademicChatter

Mastodon, an alternative microblogging platform, has seen several spikes in user sign-ups since Elon Musk purchased Twitter in late October. https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/twitter-owner-elon-musk-driving-user-growth-mastodon-rcna62832

Looks like the WSJ is going all in on moving to Mastodon, with this little tutorial available without a paywall.
https://www.wsj.com/story/how-to-use-mastodon-the-social-media-platform-blocked-by-elon-musks-twitter-7751455f

Thanks for joining us on Mastodon now!

Other platforms Instagram, Facebook, Telegram
https://grndcntrl.net/links/

Dennis Ritchie's lost 1968 PhD thesis is notable not just for its contribution to mathematics, but for its mysteriously and impossibly perfect typesetting. And the fact that it was never actually submitted, possibly due to a snit over library fees.

Fortunately, Bell Labs hired grad school dropouts.

See https://dmrthesis.net/ and https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies-lost-dissertation/ .

HT @joakinen

Forbes really knocks it out of the park with their business prowess

#OnThisDay, 28 Nov 1967, PhD student Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers the existence of pulsars.

Not included in the 1974 Nobel prize for the discovery, Bell received a £3m prize for her work in 2018. She's using it to set up a foundation to improve diversity in STEM.

#WomenInSTEM #Histodons #ScienceHistory

Now Musk is saying if Apple and Google block Twitter on their app stores, presumably for failure to moderate hate speech and for safety, he will just create a new phone.

So it’s going well, right?

It was a non-traditional Thanksgiving, far from America, with mostly not-American friends and family. And it was a joy, eating together, being with each other and being grateful. Even if I did have to explain to my mother several times that Thanksgiving had nothing to do with the War of Independence so even English people were allowed to eat a lot and be grateful for each other and their lives.

After @ChadLoder tweeted about a massive data breach on #Twitter this evening #ElonMusk suspended him on that platform. I took these screenshots just now from the web as I am currently suspended from Twitter for an alleged violation but I'm trying to get the word out. This is a NEW breach. Elon looks like he may be in big dodo! #FTC #DataBreach #ChadLoder #TwitterDataBreach

Journal suggesters

Each of the large publishers has their own journal suggester.

Paste your abstract in the white rectangular box.

Then click on "Reveal Suggested Journals" at the bottom of your screen.

It will give you a list of suggested journals with the most relevant ones on top.
Thanks to @MustaqBilalPhD on the bird app for the original idea.

Here are a few suggester URLs:
https://journalsuggester.springer.com/#
https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/publishing-your-research/choosing-a-journal/journal-suggester/
https://journalfinder.wiley.com/search?type=match
https://www.journalguide.com/ [Possibly independent]

It’s good to see engagement and use growing here. It would be healthy to have a social platform free of the billionaire oligopoly and the corporate ad folks, don’t you think?

Professors of Mastodon-

Do you post slides on LMS?

Reasons for: they serve to guide students during review.

Reasons against: they disincentivise notetaking. Students assume slides can substitute for notes even though they don't.

(I would obviously still share slides with students who need them for disability-related reasons and they might share with others. But that should still present enough of a practical obstacle for the above pros & cons to hold for most students.)

Thoughts and perspectives are much appreciated! @philosophy @academicchatter

Changed my server today and have to re-organize myself :)

When I first joined Mastodon, I found this overview of lists and groups of/for #academics on #Mastodon extremely helpful.

https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon#curated-account-lists

@academicchatter
@academicsunite

雪の京都。Snowy Kyoto. #photography #Fotomontag

For a few years I've been maintaining and slowly improving a Google Sheet template to help #academics (particularly salaried academics) track how much they are working, and how this work is distributed. I've just updated the template for 2023.

The reason for this is academic #workloads are often left very abstract and vague, usually measured in 'percentages' with only the loosest connection to time and the actual number of hours you are paid to work. I find that tracking my hours helps to reassure me I am doing enough work in some aspects of my job (in #research, for instance), and also help prevent me from overworking.

For example, this year, I know I have worked 61 hours more than I have been paid for thus far. This means in December, once marking and everything is wrapped up, I'm just going to tap out and do pretty much no work for a couple of weeks (just keep an eye out for urgent emails), but also not take leave. Because those are hours I'm owed. So by the end of the year, I should be back close to zero hours overworked.

Some academics hate counting hours as bean counting or volunteering into surveillance. I get that. But considering how the ever-intensifying exploitation of academic staff relies on #university management obscuring and intensifying our work, I find tracking how much I've actually worked incredibly empowering.

With the new year, maybe consider tracking your own #academic work!

The template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W-w_pbJgsemr5vznErqqNG5UJsfxeiPUNgG8f6pXyfg/edit#gid=1226213337 #commodon

A battery filled with algae is somehow managing to power this computer for months: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2319584-computer-powered-by-colony-of-blue-green-algae-has-run-for-six-months/

No-one's quite sure what's going on. Possibly the algae is serving as the medium catalyzing the interaction between the anode and cathode in the battery.

Except research shows the anode isn't degrading, which suggests ...

... the *algae* is producing the electrons.

Some thoughts on this in my blog post here, item 6: https://clivethompson.medium.com/lavaforming-ai-writes-heavy-metal-and-drones-that-deliver-hamburger-helper-59b9bcfda9a8