Nicola Romanò @nicolaromano@qoto.org

I'm now also looking for a postdoc with strong Bayesian background and interest in developing Bayesian cross-validation theory, methods and software. Apply by email with no specific deadline (see contact information at https://users.aalto.fi/~ave/).

Others, please share

#bayesian

#rstats folks should think about supporting our friends at the #Python Software Foundation, who turned down a $1.5M NSF grant rather than cave to the administration's inquisition against diversity, equity, and inclusion. ❤️

https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-funding-statement.html

US student handcuffed after AI system apparently mistook bag of chips for gun

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/24/baltimore-student-ai-gun-detection-system-doritos

“But Max, but Max, they did an experiment with an LLM and it refused to shut itself down, even to save the user, and—“

SHUT UP. That’s not what fucking happened.

They took a machine that generates plausible text sequences based on all the other text they could get their hands on, they fed it a bullshit story, and it gave a bullshit story in return. THAT’S ALL.

ChatGPT doesn’t want to hurt you. ChatGPT doesn’t want to help you. ChatGPT ISN’T AWARE THAT YOU EXIST.

@zackwhittaker In terms of profit:shitness ratio, Oracle has them beat by miles

The Guardian is reporting that since Israel and Hamas signed the ceasefire and full hostage exchange agreement, Israel has violated the ceasefire 47 times, killed 38 Palestinians, and wounded another 143 more.

Meanwhile Hamas has released all remaining hostages.

It Was Never About The Hostages.

In other news, we sometimes forget that Elon Musk did not buy Twitter on his own, but with money from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia was already Twitter’s biggest shareholder before Musk bought it and reportedly planted engineer-spies inside the company to unmask dissidents.

After the acquisition, they gained more influence over the algorithm using it “to silence government critics and human rights activists, or to further state-sponsored disinformation campaigns.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/09/twitter-saudi-arabia-deep-ties-elon-musk-prince-mohammed

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disasters, and destroy the night sky, is going to launch.

A bunch of astronomers and I have sent out a fact sheet about them to a bunch of journalists, but very few are going to write about this. So, let me try posting it all here.

Here's what I know about Reflect Orbital and all the downsides:

The Scientific Method Illustrated

Oh, no! My R package {safespace} is in a broken state - won't someone (new to PRs) help me fix it???

I'm renewing my offer to guide newbies through the R package building / fixing / reviewing process during Hacktoberfest - see this post

https://jcarroll.com.au/2024/10/01/a-safe-space-for-learning-how-to-make-pull-requests/

Open a pull request on https://github.com/jonocarroll/safespace to get a mentored review of your submitted changes with zero risk of breaking anything valuable if you mess it up completely.

Please boost for visibility!

#rstats #hacktoberfest

Age verification laws haven't been around very long and they're already showing how dangerous they are https://alternativeto.net/news/2025/10/discord-s-recent-support-data-breach-exposes-user-info-id-photos-and-credit-card-details/

#AgeVerification #legal #privacy #Discord

People perceive thickness of letters very individually, and that’s why we are conducting Font Weight Survey to understand the regional preferences of font weight. Could we ask you for 10 min of your time? The findings will be published publicly once we have some results.
http://tptq.com/weight

🌟 Save the Date! BioC2026 is Coming! 🌟

Mark your calendars! 🗓️ The Bioconductor Conference, BioC2026, will be at Fred Hutch Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, from August 10-12, 2026.

Join top experts in bioinformatics, data science, and computational biology to share insights and explore Bioconductor's latest advancements.

Stay tuned for registration, speakers, and program details. Visit: https://bioc2026.bioconductor.org/. 🎉

#SaveTheDate #BioC2026 #Bioconductor

"This study implements a multi-year analysis (2019–2023) comparing the performance of Open Access and legacy publishers. Using a set of financial ratios—grouped by profitability, liquidity, efficiency, and solvency, as well as data on firm size (revenues, assets, and employee counts), we assess their financial performance. The results indicate that legacy publishers have enormous scale, stable profitability, and high leverage, but low liquidity and return on equity."

https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/13/4/46

Software Carpentry Python Workshop – Join Us This November!

We’re excited to invite you to our free workshop, open to all!

📅 : 4-6 Nov
⏰ : 9 am-2 pm Eastern Time (UTC -5)
🛜 : Online

This workshop is designed to be interactive and hands-on, providing basic lab skills for those in research computing roles.

Free for anyone to attend—please feel free to share with your friends, colleagues, or communities who might be interested.