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 […]

Some insights I gained from writing and testing Sonnenwende. 1. Solar panels have become so cheap that electricity becomes worthless when the sun is shining. Hence, any government initiative giving guaranteed prices to solar power is mostly a waste of money better spent elsewhere. 2. This has […]

I wrote a small game simulating the transition to a solar-powered economy. You can build solar panels, batteries, hydrogen storage and sell your generated electricity at market prices. Electricity demand, pricing, and weather conditions are based on realistic […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Oh, that's a new one: Just received two different requests to review the same article (sent to two different e-mail addresses). I guess the journal using "AI to find and invite reviewers" might have something to do with this. #academicchatter #ai

Inspired by the recent AGI promotional piece in Nature, here's a suggestion for a test that LLMs will have huge difficulties with: Ask questions outside of its training data and ask for the confidence of the answer being correct. While LLMs might be correct […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Fediverse starter pack for physics with a focus on DE/AT/CH: https://fedidevs.com/s/ODg2/ (h/t @sonjaschuh01) #physics #science #academicchatter #Germany #austria #switzerland #fediverse

RE: https://mastodon.social/@europeanphysicalsociety/115966229883497497 The European Physical Society is now posting their materials also on here. Let’s give them a warm welcome and a reason to be even more active. ❤️ #physics

Together with Mario Birkholz of @neuSoM fame, I have written an article about Mastodon and the Fediverse in the journal of the German Physical Society: https://pro-physik.de/zeitschriften/download/23119 It's free to read but in German. Let's hope that @DPGPhysik's move to the Fediverse will […]

Topologically ordered states of matter are characterized by fascinating non-local quantum correlations in the many-body wave function. However, deciding whether a quantum state is topologically ordered or not is extremely difficult. A large part of the problem is that so far, signatures like the […]

So far, my Monday morning has consisted of writing to the editors of a journal that they published a paper containing a drove of AI slop references, helping my much-appreciated instance admin to reject a signup request from a vibe scientist, and dealing with a breach of confidentiality at a […]

@hweimer one way for folks to see their own most boosted posts is to check out my Google Scholar clone for Mastodon: https://mastodon.academy/ You can even commit some academic crimes, as a treat

Most boosted Fediverse posts of 2025: 1. @maxleibman: https://beige.party/@maxleibman/114441790730464541 (3815 boosts) 2. @stux: https://mstdn.social/@stux/113974665364673502 (3720 boosts) 3. @pixelfed: https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/113849098386232034 (3153 boosts) 4. @signalapp […]

Just been told that the German government plans to introduce legislation to change the Second Law of Thermodynamics, citing the need to dismantle regulatory barriers to the creation of highly efficient combustion engines. #physics #Germany #humor

RE: https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/115879641286036433 Well, as long as people are complaining about this on X or Substack, things will stay the same. Linus Torvalds didn't change the world by asking Microsoft for its source code.

My favorite Python program: a = 8 b = 0 while b != -1: if a % 2 == 0: b += 2 else: b -= 1 a += a//2 print("Hello, world!") Can you figure out what it is doing? It's less than 10 lines, so it surely can't be hard! Context: https://bbchallenge.org/antihydra #programming #computerscience

Large language models are pretty good for tasks that are hard to solve but easy to verify. A bit like NP-complete problems if you wish, although I wouldn't recommend to solve *actual* NP-complete problems using LLMs. Generating inputs for proof assistants, finding security bugs, and even […]

RE: https://masto.canadiancivil.com/@paige/115718239051943653 Echoing this critical advice, especially to #science organizations. If you are a science organization on Bluesky and you want to expand your audience to the open, federated social web, just follow this bridge account. Then I --- an […]

RE: https://machteburch.social/@tomkalei/115680143226592868 If you send AI slop to a journal, you should have to pay an article processing charge even though your manuscript gets rejected. #academicchatter

The highlights. ML can only be used where "its OK to be wrong", which usually means "its OK to be a little more wrong to be a LOT cheaper", which is the edge. Oh, and LLMs are very niche as they can't be used with "untrusted input + do bad thing". There is no market for the GW datacenters.

In space, no one can hear you violate copyright. https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalable-ai-infrastructure-system-design/ #ai #copyright #space

Finally, knowing a thing or two about #quantum #physics allows me to earn some bragging rights on the internet... #pastpuzzle en-168 🟩🟩🟩🟩 (0) ▪️▪️▪️▪️ ▪️▪️▪️▪️ ▪️▪️▪️▪️ 1/4 🥇 https://www.pastpuzzle.de

Given the drama surrounding the arXiv for its dependence on Google and its recent ban on review articles in computer science, I have a question: Do we still need the arXiv? Wouldn't a federated network of institutional repositories be a much better option? #arxiv #academicchatter #physics […]

The privacy implications of the new Verification of Payee scheme (mandatory since October for SEPA transfers) are ... interesting. I've been able to obtain the name of the second holder of a bank account without even knowing that there was a second person. #privacy #banking #sepa #eu #gdpr

Killer quote: “I’m going back to the Fediverse. Back to Mastodon. To the nerds, the hobbyists, the idealists. The people who don’t talk about reach, but about relevance. To those who understand that decentralization isn’t nostalgic, it’s the future. That digital sovereignty isn’t a gimmick […]

Large language models are quite useful to perform searches through the literature, so you have a good point to start. So, this is what I just got asking ChatGPT for references for the numerical calculation of the replica correlation lengths in topologically ordered systems: 1. Pizorn & […]

If you rely on a for-profit supplier, you should be required to carry the transaction costs to switch away from them as a form of debt in your books. Because the financing cost of this debt is what your supplier is eventually going to charge you. Allowing to hide this debt is creating some of […]

"We've created a perfect storm: tools that amplify incompetence, used by developers who can't evaluate the output, reviewed by managers who trust the machine more than their people." https://techtrenches.substack.com/p/the-great-software-quality-collapse #vibecoding #ai #softwarequality

The option price betting that Nvidia's shares will crash below $40 (it's above $180 right now) by December 2027 went up by almost 50% last month, despite the underlying stock gaining over that time period. Looks like some people have started to run for the exit. #ai #nvidia #business #economy

TIL: apparently one of the main technical hurdles for universities to run their own #mastodon instances is to make the instance work with the institution's SSO (most often Shibboleth). It seems there would be a huge opportunity to facilitate the entrance of such major multiplicators into the […]

@dangillmor As Cory Doctorow repeatedly points out, apps are just websites wrapped in DRM. What about if we just start building websites again? It could be the future.

Large language models are essentially solutions to nonlinear optimization problems to predict the next token in the output text. Mathematically, these problems are quite similar to problems we routinely face in physics, like finding the ground state of a quantum system. In these physics […]

It is good IT Security practice to separate data from code. For example, an SQL Injection attack is to get the target to treat data (entered into a form) as code, that is break that barrier. Now take an "AI agent" doing a task for you like: "Download that podcast that Frank emailed me about" […]

Corporate fraudsters love AI because LLMs will fake it if necessary. For a while, company figures will look fine, and when the house of cards collapses, nobody will have to go to jail. Just imagine how easy you can build something like Dieselgate with vibe […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Sorry @brembs, but Open Research Europe is a recipe for disaster. It's centered around the idea of big publishing, i,e., there is one huge contract awarded to a big player who runs the entire platform. Currently, it's Taylor & Francis, but if that changes to one of the other big ones, it will […]

Q: What is the largest number that has been factorized using Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer? A: No number has ever been factorized using Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer. Even for factorizing 15, the smallest possible number, the modular exponentiation part of Shor's algorithm […]

The Ising model in a transverse field is one of the most fundamental models in quantum many-body physics. Despite being around for more than 60 years, we still make new discoveries in it. In our latest work, we show the existence of a dynamical phase […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

We've recently moved to @OpenSlides for our internal decision-making processes and it is awesome! #academicchatter

@brembs "ORE is implemented until 2026 through an EC public procurement contract with the publisher and publishing service provider F1000 Research Ltd., part of the Taylor & Francis publishing companies." Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Anyons are quasiparticles that differ from the familiar fermions and boson. Scientists led by Hanns-Christoph Nägerl have observed anyons in a one-dimensional quantum system for the first time. The results, published in Nature, may contribute to a better […] [Original post on social.uibk.ac.at]

What's going on when some universities jump more than 950% in one year on metrics used in #university #rankings? Are they gaming the metrics? https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.09.653229v1 "Key findings include publication growth of up to 965%, concentrated in STEM fields; surges […]

Great news! While Trump is busy dismantling the Library of Congress, the German National Library of Science and Technology (@tibhannover) is preparing for more to come: they've downloaded the entire 10 TB of the arXiv preprint server and safeguarded more than 2.6 million scientific articles […]

It appears that the rate of breaking backwards compatibility is inversely proportional to the rate of technological progress. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-1-built-for-control-but-not-for-people/ #computing #opensource #linux

This year, we are celebrating 100 years of quantum mechanics. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Data Encryption Standard (DES), the first modern symmetric encryption algorithm in widespread use […]

I think a lot about what Carl Sagan said in one of his final interviews.

"Three of the four most exploited vulns were zero days, all were in cybersecurity products (Palo-Alto, Ivanti Connect Secure, Ivanti Policy Secure and Fortinet)." https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/114391474274944937

Abrikosov vortices (fluxons) are quantum of magnetic flux (Φ~hc/e) which appear in type-II superconductors (SC) induced by persistent current loops. Fluxons allow magnetic fields to penetrate a type-II SC causing magnetic pinning. 🧪⚛️ #Science #Physics #QuantumMechanics See: doi.org/10.1038/srep...

And it is done 🎉 (although still not that pretty 🙈): Here is the always up-to-date sheet with more than 1000 official accounts by media organizations that you can follow from #mastodon & everywhere else in the #fediverse. ➡️ https://fingolas.eu/fediverse/overview.html There is a powerful […]