Nerd Roundup Article Archive 2021-09-10

Can you build a satellite made out of… wood?

Wooden satellites for the win! Never have to worry about them catching fire, right? Somehow I can picture some future YouTube DIY video where the guy makes his own Keyhole satellite

git with cats

What's not to like about this? Needs bacon?

On Larger H0 Values in the CMB Dipole Direction

Whoa horsey, this is awesome! Is this, finally, the "new physics" that we've been hearing about for decades?

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. Another day, another tremendously-impactful screw-up in tech security

OGNL Expression Language statement with user-controlled input

Who in the Great Pumpkin's Universe came up with the idea of OGNL? It's an unholy obscenity and a crime against nature! :)

IEEE Spectrum: Top Programming Languages 2021

Pytrhon? Srsly?

Exclusive-Amazon to proactively remove more content that violates rules from cloud service -sources

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

Space station astronaut captures breathtaking view of the edge of the earth

I love these edge-on atmospheric shots

A good measure of the standards in different academic subjects

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along!

Edinburgh’s computer scientists have banned “Alice and Bob” from being used as too “western”

Out of all of the zillions of things in the universe, this is near the bottom in importance to me, so if folks want to change it, have fun. I have a more general question, though: if we keep changing the names of things and what they stand for every 50 years or so, what's that going to do to all of the folks trying to learn new stuff? The names Alice and Bob are far more useful as monikers old timers and others can relate to and help students than they are represetnative of anything else. Or is the point to be continually changing things just to accomplish this particular goal? (It's not a bug, it's a feature?)

Nerd Roundup Article Snapshots: 2021-09-10

Snaps

2021-09-10