I am reading the #KIDSAct and oh my is it bad. It is so dumb I have no words. And if adopted as proposed, it will have devastating effects for the #Fediverse and #FOSS app distribution. In particular, it will undo anything good the #DigitalMarketsAct might have achieved there. And it definitely […]

Using FediWings (https://rstockm.github.io/fediwings/) by @rstockm, I've calculated the net reach across the Fediverse of German universities during the last 30 days. Here's the top 5: 1. Universität Ulm (@UniUlm): 6860 2. Technische Universität Berlin (@tuberlin): 4315 3. RWTH Aachen […]

RE: https://mathe.social/@tomkalei/117270657938931801 If you believe that AI companies suddenly behave ethically when it comes to not stealing other people's research works, you suffer from a variant of Gell-Mann amnesia. #ai #science

Thomas Kahle@tomkalei.mathe.social.ap.brid.gy · last wk.

Talking to different mathematicians working with #ChatGPT in the last months, we noticed two things that were true for all of us: 1. it’s basically impossible to run out of tokens. Every time we approached the limits we got free/automatic usage resets and could keep going. 2. We all got access […]

Talking about AI today at the DFG SPP Combinatorial Synergies annual conference and I just had to put one of my all time favourite comic strips in. This one panel contains so much. It's 'deep' as we would say in #math.

Great tool by @rstockm to estimate the reach of accounts and posts in the fediverse: https://rstockm.github.io/fediwings/ This could be especially useful for academic institutions to improve their presence here. #fediverse #mastodon #academicchatter

RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117207856734787448 I think this applies to science in general. The real value of science doesn't come from a particular result. The real value of science comes from being a giant so others can stand on your shoulders.

RE: https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/117077288819940820 I will no longer work with PNAS if the National Academy of Sciences no longer stands by its science.

petersuber@petersuber.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · last mo.

Update. After #NAS refused in March to delete the chapter on #climate science from its reference manual for judges… https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/116250669373977981 …the #Trump admin jacked up the pressure, in part through the juvenile insults on Truth Social. The NAS has now deleted the […]

The Einstein Foundation Berlin offers four-year postdoctoral fellowships for a wide range of topics, including quantum physics. If your research interests align with one or more topics listed at https://www.tu.berlin/en/cmt/research and you would be interested to apply with me acting as your […]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@marcoarment/117028369883857357 If the optimistic claims about agentic AI programming were remotely true, we would have seen a Cambric explosion of awesome software being released by now. Clearly, this hasn't happened. Instead, my impression is that the products […]

What happens when you have a quantum epidemic, meaning you can be in a superposition state of both healthy and infected at the same time? While this sounds crazy for human diseases, this can actually happen in the atomic world. Turns out that you can have […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Very interesting preprint by @pettertornberg comparing the language indicators for content sharing on different social media platforms. On Mastodon (not sure how much content from the wider Fediverse was included), reasoning and nuance were most strongly associated with boosting. On X, insult […]

congrats to @scipost for their 10 Years Jubilee! https://scipost.org/news/newsitem/132/ Overview of notable journals from @wikidata / @wdscholia: https://qlever.scholia.wiki/publisher/Q96405171 #diamondOA #openaccess #chemistry #physics

PhD admissions in the U.S. down by 15%. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/us/research-universities-fewer-phds-science.html #academicchatter

Guess who is now officially exempt from electronic tax filing requirements because there is no tax software for Linux in Germany... #Linux #Germany #taxes

People in charge of something are usually not interested in changing the rules that select who is in charge. #academicchatter #politics

If I find someone to buy a quadrillionth of my company for 1 Euro, does this make me the world's first quadrillionaire?

When people mention "Springer", they can refer to two very different publishers: Springer Nature or Axel Springer SE. Don't confuse them! One does not care about ethical standards, is involved in shady campaigns to exert influence, and employs questionable business practices. The other, of […]

RE: https://techhub.social/@denzilferreira/116667999551520043 Such an audit is totally pointless because these devices can be remotely updated with any potentially malicious code that DJI or anyone else being able to insert updates sees fit. If you don't trust a software vendor or the country […]

Denzil Ferreira@denzilferreira.techhub.social.ap.brid.gy · 4mo ago

Independent cyber audit finds zero malware or backdoors in DJI drones — U.S. firm's hardware analysis challenges FCC ban amid ongoing $1.56 billion legal battle | Tom's Hardware Of course not. This was never about that. This is about restricting the potential for that, based on the dominance of […]

Very interesting analysis by @netzbegruenung about Mastodon and Bluesky in Germany. For high-profile accounts active on both platforms, the Mastodon accounts saw on average a 193% higher increase in followers over the last six months […]

@wikipedia is running ads for their mobile app and the Install button redirects to the Google Play Store without warning. This is a pretty obvious GDPR violation. #wikipedia #GDPR #privacy

RE: https://fediscience.org/@GeorgWeissenbacher/116567609690489777 We're at € 350.49 for everyone, but that includes the semester ticket allowing you to use any public transport in Germany except long-distance trains (which regularly costs already 378 €) […]

It's great to see that the @volkswagenstiftung has joined the Fediverse! It's hard to underestimate the impact they had on my career, allowing me to start my own research group under a Freigeist Fellowship grant. After almost 10 years, my Freigeist project has come to an end just in the last […]

Matrix is a complete disaster. Got kicked out of the web client, confirmed my identity using my recovery key. It says that I can now decrypt my old messages, but when I actually try to look at them, it's "Unable to decrypt message" everywhere. As much I applaud my institution's efforts towards […]

RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@MartinEscardo/116410439895250602 I think this bridging between communities is still useful. But it's also quite incremental work that is unlikely to lead to novel research directions. Personally, I think we were already doing too much incremental work and too little […]

Having a presence in the Fediverse isn't about reach, engagement metrics, or cost per conversion. It's a civic duty of every organization believing in democratic values. #fediverse #mastodon

In science, large language models are often pretty good when interpolating between known results. That's why they can do your homework with ease. They are absolutely horrible at extrapolation towards genuinely novel ideas. I guess this makes sense as groundbreaking results are exactly those that […]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@canartuc/116251066969828031 Or, in the immortal words of the "Bild" tabloid: "German saves the internet: it was a matter of half a second" On a more serious note, the incident reminds us how important it is to have deterministic computers, making such an unexpected […]

@everton137 @stereo @zolke.bsky.social According to the listings of @sabrinkmann we have nearly 60 #Mastodon accounts of #universities in Germany 👉 https://mastodon-listen.playground.54gradsoftware.de/ In addition, there are nearly 150 #research #institutes / organisations 👉 […]

All interesting physics is decentralized and local. If there was a central algorithm deciding what physics is allowed, we wouldn't have the enormous diversity and beauty of the universe emerging out of something like two dozen fundamental physical constants […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Probably the most important insight that you can get from Sonnenwende is that Germany can achieve energy independence with 100% renewables in about 10 years from now using an initial capital investment of 8 billion EUR. And if it can be done in Germany, it can be done almost everywhere. There […]