One piece of advice I am seeing is not to log into Canvas until your IT staff says it’s safe. Apparently there’s a concern that the hackers are harvesting additional credentials by making it seem like it’s back online and running safely.

So, from what I’m gathering, I might be wrong about this: it appears that only some schools are affected, which suggests that we do in fact run local instances, but the ransomware pushed out broadly in a software update or something.

I don't know, some retired PSU folks I really, really trust told me that they could have built something better than LionPATH for far less than the ~$70 million PSU paid for that system, and I suspect they would say the same about Canvas.

This is also a particularly insidious bit of ransomware: timed right before graduation when universities most urgently need to have grades processed, and the hostage is protected by FERPA, which universities are overparanoid about violating.

OMG it’s ransomware! Again, I don’t think subscribing to Canvas makes us any more susceptible to this (I’m envious of universities that have switched to Gmail, instead of forcing faculty to use their own bespoke email software because I’ve misguided FERPA concerns)…

this is what all our learning management systems look like. Our universities knew they were targets of an attack, but didn't mention it to many of us. Neato.

I’m sure Canvas is better than anything individual universities could build themselves for cheaper, so I’m not opposed to outsourcing this essential function… But honestly, I thought we were all running our local instances of the software, not subject to a single point of failure, nationwide!

🔭 A cautionary tale for undergrads (and above!) using AI for #astro plots: our BSc student wanted to make a "quick" HR diagram showcasing M-dwarfs & thought some chatbot could make one and... well... ...extra credits are now offered to students who can correctly find all errors on cursedHR.png 🫠 🧪

Good to know! In all seriousness, this is very interesting and, as the thread goes on to show, a perfect example of how dynamics can be used to obtain physical properties! Something I am working on a lot :)

Not-so-breaking news: Phobos is a rock and not a space station. Neat work by Winter Parts using REBOUND to illustrate the old (disproven) hypothesis that Phobos's anomalous orbit was due to atmospheric drag because it is hollow! iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Filling in the gaps in the public school curriculum with a little home schooling

Spending May the Fourth watching the canon.

Warp, Woof, and Worf: The Foundational role of Klingons in the Ethos of Star Trek. In this this essay I will…

I was just contacted by a reporter asking for comment about the whole Pluto planet thing. Hanging on by a thread over here.

Currently in this situation, though I haven't finished yet. I did get many other things done while avoiding the task, though.

I need to put this up on my wall.

It's 2026 and we're still making callers wait on their phone while we slowly explain what voicemail is and how to use it every…single…time like it's 1985. "This is so-and-so's voicemail" is sufficient! I'm especially looking at you, customer service folks who ostensibly value customers' time.

Oh, is this why they say Jesus saves?

It's interesting that the many of the past barons of industry—Carnegie, Rockefeller—competed to be fondly remembered in death by building the biggest legacies and monuments to future American greatness with museums, research centers, and public spaces. Maybe this generation thinks they're immortal?

They are fantastic transition technology for teens. They can call home, be geolocated, pay for things without cash, listen to their music on headphones, get directions, slowly text friends, and ask Siri questions, but there’s no Web or social media and they turn into regular watches at school.

Is it just me or shouldn't "on three" totally resolve this situation? And yet it seems at least half the time I say "on three" people go on the beat *after* three. Am I misinterpreting? xkcd.com/3232/

Funny thing, if you ask AI about the cultural capital of the US, it used to answer "State College"! Sometimes it still does if you coax it a little. All because it ingested this post of mine with a hyperbolic title, which I stand by today!

In our tour of sports films, A (11) and I just watched The Cutting Edge (a.k.a "toe pick"). Pretty corny at times, it's still a perfectly made romcom with great acting and chemistry, AND a perfect Rocky-genre sports flick (his hockey injury is the even same as Rocky's injury that begins Rocky II!).

I think about this a lot with respect to exoplanets, and it all crystalized for me reading Lisa Messari's thesis and book on the topic! A fascinating insight into the epistemology of science (I mean the actual practice of how scientists decide what is true). www.dukeupress.edu/placing-oute...

I know I should never "read the comments" but there's a 3 star review of my textbook that's really funny. It praises the book for being "suitable for non science majors at a freshman level" which indicates the reviewer has never taught science to undergraduates!

Joanna reminds me of another good take on the subject that came up recently:

My "treat LLMs like an overconfident and overeager sycophantic intern" mental model continues to seem about right to me. Learning that Anthropic is proud that Claude is now writing the code for Claude seems to me like being proud that your interns are now each directing a team of interns.

I like this article, though I disagree with some of it. The stuff about LLMs I think is thoughtful and appropriately nuanced. I'm not as cynical about the profession and our training of students, though—I think the author ends up in the right place but has misidentified some of the problems.

This kind of laser transmission system uses low amounts of power and can carry lots of data. It’s exactly why we look for laser transmission from SETI target candidates!

I don't know how anyone else feels about this, but to me, sharing a screenshot of chatbot output to make a point of some kind is an excellent way to undermine any credibility that might otherwise be granted to you in the context of whatever you're trying to say.

This is a good point. In most cases "it is emphatically the duty of [SCOTUS] to say what the law is." (Maybury vs. Madison). Not here: we know what the law is. This is Trump demanding the court say that there are five lights, when we all see four. It's a test of SCOTUS, not the law.

Your chance to rename Comet 3I/ATLAS! From 1000s of entries in a public competition, three names made it to the final stage - now YOU can vote for the winning name! Simply reply with 1, 2, 3 or "Can't decide, they're all great!" in the comments - before 12.00 CEST today when we reveal the winner!

It should be uncontroversial that sports teams subsidized with public dollars should have all of their games broadcast for free to in-market fans. No blackouts. No monthly pay subscription needed (basic cable fees are tolerable).

Omg, 💯—the details of missions I know anything about are remarkably faithful!!!

Love this game! The designers carefully researched and clearly love astrobiology and SETI!

Not sure how universal these are among SETI experts, but: The Wow! Signal is not that interesting, the Drake Equation is not foundational to how we practice SETI, the Fermi Paradox is not a puzzle that demands an answer, and we're doing our best to look for life and technology as-we-don't-know-it.

My new arXiv endorsement policy: If I don't know you and have never heard of you, your paper needs to: 1) be accepted at a peer-reviewed journal and 2) be entirely written by the authors and not in any part by an AI Thoughts? 🔭🧪

Appreciating this transparency by my local newspaper.

In addition to the last two papers I’ve been asked to referee being pretty obviously written by AI, I am now at least weekly asked to endorse someone on the arXiv so they can post their theories there. Many consider it a point in their favor that an AI thinks that there are worth publishing!

Enjoyed Project Hail Mary! I imagine the movie makes a *lot* more sense to people who have read the book. But Rocky is enough fun that everyone will enjoy it. I had a rough start to the book until I realized it is not as well researched or plausible as The Martian.

"Hi, home, I'm Dad" will never, never get old. Just used it again. Total banger, that one.

I feel like GOAT is a special category, above "world record holder." Isn't that how it's used?

Hivemind, I need your help: I think the "Greatest Of All Time" (GOAT) means *all* time, including the future. A GOAT will *never* be surpassed. That's why they're the GOAT! That's what "all time" *means*, right? My 11 year old isn't so sure. He thinks maybe "all time" just means "so far." ?????

I wrote about her (and mentioned you) on today's newsletter! Her book is on the I yernet Archie : archive.org/details/ceci...

In case you're looking for it, I think this is it at a reasonable price: www.amazon.com/dp/052148390... But check your library!

I just realized that “condensed matter physics“ is to physics as “internal medicine“ is to medicine. A huge miscellaneous catch-all category with a sufficiently vague name to capture like a quarter of the field. 🧪

Has anyone noticed mailto: no longer working on Chrome? Now when I try to use that handler in the address bar Chrome tries to take me to the domain of the email as if it were an http request instead of using the mailto handler I've specified. Is there a solution to getting mailto: to work again?

This is a good point I had not realized: It takes a 2/3 majority of both houses of Congress to permanently remove a president for disability against their will. It's actually *easier* to remove a president via impeachment (1/2 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate) than via the 25th Amendment.

Extremely important. Having applied and been on admissions committees, it’s so clear to me that many VERY qualified people aren’t admitted for reasons that have nothing to do with their qualifications. # of spaces, advisor fit, committee makeup, and sheer dumb luck all play a role.

Another analogy: package installation and compilation with pip is like this for me. I don’t understand how these things work, so I am at the mercy of pip and stack exchange to install software. When something fails I resort to the equivalent of vibe coding or asking for help.