sondern wie es sich mit der Wahrheit verhällt – so Thomas von Aquin
Quia studium philosophiae non est ad hoc quod sciaturquid homines senserint sed qualiter se habeat veritas rerum.
De caelo et mundo, lib. I, lect. 22, nr. 228
How to build a sustainable science system
Here is an interesting proposal of a bug bounty program
Data voids and search engines
An interesting Nature editorial reporting a recent study
A study in Nature last month highlights a previously underappreciated aspect of this phenomenon: the existence of data voids, information spaces that lack evidence, into which people searching to check the accuracy of controversial topics can easily fall…
Clearly, copying terms from inaccurate news stories into a search engine reinforces misinformation, making it a poor method for verifying accuracy…
Google does not manually remove content, or de-rank a search result; nor does it moderate or edit content, in the way that social-media sites and publishers do.
So what could be done?
There’s also a body of literature on improving media literacy — including suggestions on more, or better education on discriminating between different sources in search results.
Sure increasing media literacy at the consumer site would be helpful. But letting Google earn all that money without any further curation efforts? The original study found
Here, across five experiments, we present consistent evidence that online search to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing them.
So why not putting out red flags? Or de-rank search results?
Das Ende der Bachelorarbeit
ist wohl schon eingeleitet zumindest bei der Betriebswirtschaft in Prag, Zitat
Texte, die mit Künstlicher Intelligenz verfasst wurden sind kaum von menschlichen zu unterscheiden. Eine Prüfung sei für Unis deshalb nur sehr schwer möglich, sagt Dekan Hnilica. “Wir haben andere Teile unseres Studiums, in denen die Studierenden ihre Lernergebnisse oder erwarteten Lernergebnisse nachweisen können. Daher ist die Bachelorarbeit überflüssig.”
Sales brochures
Another super App for Uber, Pizza Hut and Spotify User?
Scientific integrity is not a weapon
Bill Ackman is threadening Harvard faculty on X
I expect that in the not too distant future AI will target every paper and not only a suspicious table or an image found by chance. Nevertheless using this now as a weapon is immoral and at high risk of false accusations. And , it may even be prosecuted as criminal defamation.
Feb 11, 2025
Unfortunately scientific integrity is being used again as personal weapon. Stefan Weber is making a business from right wing clients to verify doctoral theses. Without doubt, he has excellent technical skills (or at least a Turnitin account) but also completely lost all sense of proportion and direction. See
- F.A.Z. 9.2.2025
- SPIEGEL 10.2.2025 (follow up of SPIEGEL 23.2.2024)
- TAZ 10.2.2025
- WELT video 10.2.2025
- t-online today.
Back to SPIEGEL yesterday, translated
In some cases, his accusations turned out to be unfounded or less serious than he portrayed them. That’s why he is viewed more critically in Austria. … Until the Föderl-Schmid case, none of this had harmed him much. But for those he accused, it was a different story. Even if the allegations came to nothing, their reputation was tarnished
PubPeer – an introduction for Science Journalists
5 tips for using PubPeer to investigate scientific research errors and misconduct
- Install the PubPeer browser extension
- Don’t publish a news story simply to point out people have made negative comments
- Verify all claims made on PubPeer
- Use caution when describing the likelihood that researcher misconduct happened
- No matter how small a role a researcher plays in your story, check PubPeer before including them
As an introductory text I can recommend a 5 year old blog entry introducing PubPeer
Battle lines are being drawn on the internet, between the scientific establishment and volunteer vigilantes trying to impose their own vision of the scientific process through “post-publication peer review”.
On one side is the cream of the scientific aristocracy: a professor with a meteoric career trajectory at Imperial College London, one of the best universities in the world, and the top academic publisher, Nature Publishing Group. On the other side: a few anonymous malcontents carping on an obscure web site called PubPeer (welcome to our site!).
The consciousness checklist
Gravestein discusses the 70 page arXiv paper “Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness and 14 indicator properties from 6 areas
TBC
The missing sleepwatcher manpage
sleepwatcher(8) System Manager's Manual sleepwatcher(8)
NAME
sleepwatcher – daemon to monitor sleep, wakeup and idleness of a Mac
SYNOPSIS
sleepwatcher [-n] [-v] [-V] [-d] [-g] [-f configfile] [-p pidfile]
[-a[allowsleepcommand]] [-c cantsleepcommand]
[-s sleepcommand] [-w wakeupcommand] [-D displaydimcommand]
[-E displayundimcommand] [-S displaysleepcommand]
[-W displaywakeupcommand] [-t timeout -i idlecommand
[-R idleresumecommand]] [-b break -r resumecommand]
[-P plugcommand] [-U unplugcommand]
DESCRIPTION
sleepwatcher is a program that monitors sleep, wakeup and idleness of a Mac. It can be used to execute a Unix command when the Mac or the display of the Mac goes to sleep mode or wakes up, after a given time without user interaction or when the user resumes activity after a break or when the power supply of a Mac notebook is attached or detached. It also can send the Mac to sleep mode or retrieve the time since last user activity.
Continue reading The missing sleepwatcher manpage
FAQ: From HDMI to NDI
1. What is all about?
Starting with Corona I have been streaming lectures and church concerts. A Macbook and a n old Chromebook, some old iPhones and Nikon DSLR cameras were connected by HDMI cables to a Blackmagic ATEM mini pro. This worked well although there are many shortcomings of HDMI as it is basically a protocol to connect just screens to a computer and not devices in a large nave.
- cables are expensive and there are several connector types (A=Standard, B=Dual, C=Mini, D=Micro, E=Automotive) where the right length and type is always missing
- it never worked for me more than 15-20m distance even with amplifier inserted
- the signal was never 100% stable, it was lost it in the middle of the performance
- HDMI is only unidirectional, there is no tally light signal to the camera
- there is no PTZ control for camera movement
2. What are the options?
WIFI transmission would be nice but is probably not the first choice for video transmission in a crowded space with even considerable latency in the range of 200ms. SDI is an IP industry standard for video but this would require dedicated and expensive cabling for each video sources including expensive transceivers. The NDI protocol (network device interface) can use existing ethernet networks and WIFI to transmit video and audio signals. NDI enabled devices started slowly due to copyright and license issues but is expected to be a future market leader due to its high performance and low latency.
3. Is there any low-cost but high quality NDI solution?
NDI producing videocameras with PTZ (pan(tilt/zoom) movements are expensive in the range of 1,000-20,000€. But there are NDI encoder for existing hardware like DSLRs or mobile phones. These encoders are sometimes difficult to find, I am listing below what I have been used so far. Whenever a signal is live, it can be easily displayed and organized by Open Broadcaster Software running on MacOS, Linux or Windows. There are even apps for iOS and Android that can send and receive NDI data replacing now whole broadcasting vehicles ;-)
4. What do I need to buy?
Assuming that you already have some camera equipment that can produce clean HDMI out (Android needs an USB to HDMI and iPhones a Lightning to HDMI cable), you will need
- a few cheap CAT6 cables at different lengths (superfluous if you just want a WIFI solution)
- an industrial router with SIM card slots (satellite transmission is still out of reach for semi-professional transmission ;-(
- one or more HDMI to NDI transceiver
- an additional PTZ camera is not required at the beginning
5. Which devices did you test and which do you currently use?
- router: I tested AVM FritzBox , TP Link and various Netgear devices all without RJ45 network ports. I am using now a Teltonika RUT950 with three RJ45 ports as it has great connectivity and a super detailed configuration menu.
- NDI transceiver:I tried a DIY solution with FFMPEG/Ubuntu, then a Kiloview P2 and a LINk Pi ENC2. I am now using Zowietek 4K HDMI which is giving a stable signal, being fully configurable, silent and can be powered by USB port or PoE.
- PTZ: so far I used a Logitech Pro2, but there is now also a OBSBOT Tail Air in the ball park.
The Teltonika router and the two Zowietek converter cost you less than 500€, the Obsbot also comes at less than 500€ while this setup allows for semi-professional grade live streams.
6. Tell me a bit more about your DSLR cameras and the iPhones please.
There is nothing particular, some old Nikon D4s, a Z6 and a Z8, all with good glass and an outdated iPhone 12 mini without SIM card.
7. Have you ever tried live streaming directly from a camera like the Insta 360 X3?
No.
8. What computer hardware and software do you use for streaming and does this integrate PTZ control?
I use now a 2017 Macbook (which showed some advantage over a Linux notebook). NDI Video has to be delayed due to the latency of other NDI remote sources. I usually sync direct sound and NDI video with the sound being delayed with +450ms in OBS.
Right now I am testing also an iPad app called TopDirector. The app looks promising but haven’t tested it so much in the wild.
PTZ control can be managed by an OBS plugin, while TopDirector has PTZ controls already built in.
9. How much setup time do you need?
Setting up 2 DSLR cameras and 1 PTZ on tripods with cables takes 30-60-90 minutes . OBS configuration and Youtube setup takes another 15 minutes if everything goes well.
Macbook touchbar flickering
The touchbar is a nice feature of the Macbook when used as multimedia machine because it could be individually programmed. Unfortunately it has been abandoned may for reasons unknown to us. At least it starts now flickering at random intervals in my 2019 Macbook Pro. And nothing helps in the long-term
- resetting SMC
- restting NVRAM, PRAM
- terminal kill touchbar
- terminal kill control strip
- pmset hibernate mode
- upgrade to Sonoma
while only kill touchbar disables it immediately . Could it be a combined hardware / software issue?
- a slowly expanding battery moving the keyboard lid?
- some defect of the light sensor?
- a defect when starting the OLED display?
While I can’t fully exclude a minimal battery expansion after 200 cycles, the battery is still marked as OK in the system report. The flickering can be stopped by a bright light at the camera hole on top of the display so the second option is also unlikely.
With the Medium hack it is gone during daytime but still occurs sometimes during sleep which is annoying. It seems that even the dedicated Hide My Bar app is only an user-level application that doesn’t have the permissions needed to disable the Touch Bar in lock screen.
Completely disabling the touchbar will not possible as there is no other ESC key. The touchbar there may need replacement as recommended by Apple or just tape on top of it.
Bücherwurm
GEO hatte im April eine nette Reportage “Achtung, Papierfischchen! Sie kommen mit der Post”
Fotoalben, Akten, Tapeten, Bücher, Zeitungen – nichts und niemand ist vor den kleinen Papierfressern sicher. Alles wird angeknabbert. Papierfischchen, wissenschaftlich Ctenolepisma longicaudata, sind der Albtraum jedes Archivars und Buchhändlers.
Ich werde Kartons und Zeitungen also schneller entsorgen, gekaufte antiquarische Bücher genauer untersuchen und die Ausbreitungswege einschränken.
Bei Befall hilft dann wohl nur noch ein Biozid (wie Envira, eine Mischung von Permethrin und Prallethrin).
Merging PubPeer and Retraction Watch
This content has restricted access, please email me for the password.
Fake paper ahead
There is nothing to comment on the Wittau paper except that AI & paper mills are the second largest thread to science already.
Honesty of publications is fundamental in science. Unfortunately, science has an increasing fake paper problem with multiple cases having surfaced in recent years, even in renowned journals. …
We investigated 2056 withdrawn or rejected submissions to Naunyn–Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology (NSAP), 952 of which were subsequently published in other journals. In six cases, the stated authors of the final publications differed by more than two thirds from those named in the submission to NSAP. In four cases, they differed completely. Our results reveal that paper mills take advantage of the fact that journals are unaware of submissions to other journals.