A Chinese *food delivery* company produced an apparently high performance open weight LLM. Can someone remind me what OpenAI’s moat is again? There is apparently no exotic special sauce required to do this.

“If knowledge is power, then openness is resistance”. Just found out @carolegoble.bsky.social dropped this at Dagstuhl. Thank you Carole, this means a lot!

And it’s goodbye from me. Final GigaBlog from outgoing EiC @scedmunds.bsky.social on the major changes at GigaScience Press gigasciencejournal.com/blog/and-its...

From me, @mhmdhsini.bsky.social, and @scedmunds.bsky.social Code Plagiarism and AI Create New Challenges for Publishing Integrity

#code_plagiarism is REAL & #AI is negatively affecting the #integrity of code/software. Dan Katz, @scedmunds.bsky.social & I discuss involved issues & their impacts on #research_integrity & #publication_ethics in a @scholarlykitchen.bsky.social post: scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/08/28/g...

Thanks Herve Menager for showing me around the Pasteur Institute. It felt appropriate visiting the Yersin Building, as Alexandre Yersin (of Yersinia pestis fame) made his big breakthrough in Hong Kong. And I’ve long admired his statue in the HKMMS

A few shots of the #BOSC2025 panelists discussing their thoughts on data sustainability. Panelists were @scedmunds.bsky.social, @cmungall.bsky.social, @varsha-khodiyar.bsky.social, Tony Burdett, and Nicky Mulder; the moderator was @monimunozto.bsky.social

During the #BOSC2025 panel on Data Sustainability, @scedmunds.bsky.social shared his perspective from the world of open scientific publishing while moderator @monimunozto.bsky.social listened attentively.

Don't miss the Data Sustainability panel at #BOSC2025: www.open-bio.org/events/bosc-... with ‪@cmungall.bsky.social‬, ‪@varsha-khodiyar.bsky.social‬, Nicky Mulder, Tony Burdett, @scedmunds.bsky.social, and moderator @monimunozto.bsky.social What would you ask these data sustainability experts?

And now for something completely different, Robin Ince and Pierre Novellie at @bradfordlitfest.bsky.social discuss neurodivergence and comedy in a session on “Thinking differently and laughing loudly” #BradfordLitFest

My first time at @bradfordlitfest.bsky.social, in the lovely city hall for the Muslim Women in Media session. Hearing interesting stories and perspectives from the media coalface #BradfordLitFest by

My cousin's daughter Persia has her debut single out today and it's brilliant! open.spotify.com/album/18DHXP...

I’m glad bibliographic software messing up data citations is finally being quantified as I flagged this as problem 12 years ago at the @datacite.org meeting youtu.be/nzHM1BLYj0g?...

Watching the #WOOC2025 updates from Bologna again makes me wonder who the #openscience illuminati are that ensure all their important meetings are only held in cities beginning with B

Made some interesting food discoveries while spending 6 days in Sicily. Parallel evolution of food, pt. 1. Sicilian Panelle versus Shan Tofu (chickpea flour fritters)… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese...

Please sign for #VEDay80 . On top of a memorial, forgotten Singaporean WWII Ace Tan Kay Hai needs a blockbuster movie. shorturl.at/3DVVT

George doesn’t have an ORCID, but looking forward to see the CRediT contributorship details when it’s published. Conceptualisation? Funding acquisition? Would love if he surprises everyone by doing the Data Curation.

My moment of zen…

Our Shenzhen office demonstrating what every office needs: an office Axolotl

The publishing track talk I presented last year in Montreal #ISMB2024 on the challenges with peer-reviewers, framed using the medium of John Candy films, now seems to be online. Who wants an orange whip? www.youtube.com/watch?v=meck...

CitSciAsia Talk Presents... Innovative #CitizenScience Tools & Apps: Kapta & Aurora. Join our webinar on 25th Feb (5.30pm HK UTC+8) covering platforms for mapping and energy consumption with Fabien Moustard and Martin Brocklehurst Zoom york-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/9656285937... ID: 96562859376 PW: 141303

My favourite thing at this years Kaset Agricultural Fair is the fact they’ve put the US and Russian Embassy booths next to each other #givepeasachance

The year after the year after “the year of open science”

It took me almost exactly a year, but I've finally uploaded my pics of the Pelikan cow festival in Thanlyin, Myanmar. Happy Pongal (Tamil harvest festival) everyone flic.kr/s/aHBqjBXRpV

Laos seems to be very into black ginger (Kaempferia parviflora)

There’s a reason Vang Vieng draws so many tourists, as if you avoid the town its really stunning

You can tell there are a lot of Chinese travelers on Laos–China Railways when the duty free has sold out of Maotai

Brilliant to welcome in the New Year in Luang Prabang. Happy New Year everyone

Back from the traditional Christmas Mowlam (NE Thai Folk-Funk) jam. Merry Christmas everybody!

First time trying Khawchae (Rice in ice water with fishy/sweet accompaniments) from Phetchaburi

The 50,000 rupiah note view at the Ulun Danu Beratan Temple

Harbin Elsa tourism. My favourite touch is the dead pigeons

Some of the merch they sell in the Russian shops of Harbin is pretty wild

Lopburi is famous for the monkeys, but iNaturalisting around the town I was more interested in the Myriapods. The rain bringing these massive siamese pointy-tailed millipedes (Thyropygus allevatus) out

Nothing makes you feel old as seeing icons of your formative years on sale in an antique market…

The world is full of crashing boars

Made it to the cow segment of Pongal (the Tamil harvest festival) at the Pelikan Hindu temple in Thanlyin

Worst journal for exception errors in Jupyter notebooks is Nature according to new work from Daniel Mietchen studying computational reproducibility of biomedical publications. Based on this if you want a reliable SpringerNature journal you need to go to BMC Bioinformatics doi.org/10.1093/giga...

Mega-“taxi” stand in Downtown Kampala

Frog chorus

Pool party in Uganda

I consciously try to reduce my taxa biases, and this year I included 45.33% plants out of 1,259 observations and 618 species. See my 2023 iNaturalist stats inaturalist.org/stats/2023/s...

Our trip to Sri Lanka ended up a spontaneous architectural tour of Geoffrey Bawa’s buildings. Asia’s godfather of Tropical Modernism, and also described as Sri Lanka’s Frank Lloyd Wright, really looking forward to seeing this new film about him thegeniusoftheplace.com

Gotta love Sri Lanka

Most Austrian holy water packaging ever.

En route to IDW in Salzburg, and rather than sit in transit in Frankfurt airport for 5hrs I decided to get breakfast in the lovely Mainz Altstadt

Mind that child. It’s not selling ice cream, but BGI has set up these CT/PET scanner vans

The Kong (Confucius) clan are the Original OGs. Pouring one out for the homies at the Confucius cemetery in Qufu

The calm and serene Baotu Spring in Jinan, “City of Springs”, where you can relax to the gentle sounds of splashing water

Visiting Weihaiwei today, the Hong Kong everyone forgot about. A British concession in Shandong leased the same time as the New Territories (1898-1930, though the last marines left in 1940) because the Brits had Bohai Sea treaty port FOMO with the Germans and Russians