2021-09-10 Nerd Roundup
It was great to see Jon Kern back on the roundup this week! James said he couldn't make it, then managed to drop by halfway through anyway. We finally had what I think was the perfect NR story: scientists teaching ducks to curse. We also talked about Cybercom's dramatic warning last week about OGNL injection attacks, censorship creep, and whether kids should do their homework or not. It was the usual rollicking raft of fun, headed down the rapids of current events and tech. Fun times.
Wish we could have talked more about the Cosmic Background Radiation, standard candles, and the Cosmology Principle more, but it was far, far too deep to cover in a lunchroom. I included the links though in case anybody's interested.
| STORY | BUT WHY? |
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Can you build a satellite made out of… wood?
The Finnish Woodsat Program |
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| git with cats | What's not to like about this? Needs bacon? |
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On Larger H0 Values in the CMB Dipole Direction
Related: The Cosmological Premise May Be False |
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| New Evidence against the Standard Model of Cosmology | This is the first week, for whatever reason, that I'm begining (?) to think that we are actually on the trail of a new cosmology model. It's a bunch of little obscure data anomolies, around the edges of the standard model, that indicate that it's much more than just a bunch of press releases and bad reporting. Something else here. This year(s) we are crossing some kind of threshold |
| I am begging software people to talk to a single traditional engineer | Just no. There are the "let's fix programming with better names, practices, docs, and practices, etc" and there are the "let's fix programming with better programming structures" Both are wrong in interestingly intertwined ways. But thank goodness somebody is still carrying the torch for the GoF's work. Now, if we could only talk to the computer and have it write a program.... |
| US Cybercom says mass exploitation of Atlassian Confluence vulnerability 'ongoing and expected to accelerate' | "This will not wait over the weekend". Wow. We really got slammed with this, as Confluence is used in all sorts of places |
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OGNL Expression Language statement with user-controlled input
Nothing here |
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| IEEE Spectrum: Top Programming Languages 2021 | Pytrhon? Srsly? |
| Exclusive-Amazon to proactively remove more content that violates rules from cloud service -sources | I'm not so sure this has any kind of natural stopping point. Somebody coined the term "censorship creep". It's a real thing. (Yes, I know the difference between real censorship and this) |
| New Skunk Works Plant to Build Advanced Fighters, Other Projects | I'm trying to cut through the BS on this one. Maybe this is really cool? Aren't we already doing all of this in other areas of manufacturing? This is one of those "wanna believe" stories, where the dream of what might be happening is what sells the story much more than any of the actual details |
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Space station astronaut captures breathtaking view of the edge of the earth
Here's more from his flickr account |
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| A good measure of the standards in different academic subjects | Nothing to see here, folks. Move along! |
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Edinburgh’s computer scientists have banned “Alice and Bob” from being used as too “western”
The history of Alice and Bob, first born in 1978 |
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| These Australian Ducks Can Learn to Swear Like People, And Biologists Are Excited | You bring a duck in my house, it'd better have clean mouth, er bill. What's wrong with this creature? Why is it's language so fowl? You quack at your momma with that bill? |
| SharpLab IO | BONUS: Wanted to play with cool NET cross-language realtime coding page. Ran out of time |
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