A photograph of a short-eared owl mid-flight was the last Instagram post biology professor Carl Bergstrom shared before announcing his departure from the platform Jan. 10.
Or know how. Just because they are scientists doesn’t mean that they are necessarily particularly computer literate. I once had to explain to a university professor that wireless electricity doesn’t exist, and the Wi-Fi is only for internet. So yeah.
Well there’s two possible implementations of wireless power transfer.
There’s the way we use to charge our phones, Which is just an electromagnetic effect with no real way to extend its range. That technology has progressed as far as it’s ever going to get.
The other way is through power beaming using infrared lasers and special crystals. That technology does have potential but is nowhere close to being consumer ready yet. One day a router may include both features but not today and certainly not in 2016 when this happened.
People have been able to extend the electromagnetic effect to a few feet, but yeah, there’s a reason why most just use the close range version we have today.
Microwave transmission has also been explored in addition to lasers, as you say, but either way both methods involve power loss in energy conversion, and they both are very directional, making it impractical for consumer use.
But anyway, just wanted to say that the tech technically exists since it’s funny when normal people bring it up without knowing the limitations of current technology and physics.
Using social media is far removed from operating your own publicly available social media server.
This coming from someone who is trying to get more mastodon usage in higher ed. Profs aren’t the ones who operate these things. Merely getting the approval to get the project started is an immense task.
University IT departments don’t want to be running some random Mastodon on the server anyway. It’s got nothing to do with the universities day-to-day operations it’s just an extra thing that would be required on top of what they already do.
Also the only university professors who would actually be able to run the server themselves will be those in the computer science domain. A biologist isn’t going to know how to do it any more than any random member of the public.
Any public facing IT system stood up in the higher ed system I am familiar with, requires IT support to be engaged. A part of that process is sending the request through a software review board, department’s IT, centralized IT, and then assigned to a project manager.
Otherwise, it would be considered a rogue service, and turned off at the edge, and core routers.
Right, but why would a scientist set up a mastodon server within their work place? If I were to do it (and I did set up a diaspora instance back in the day), it would be off my own bat, not on work machines.
If I wanted my workplace to do it, that would be a different story, and I’d argue for it to be done by the IT team…
while I agree, the reality of the situation is that when you get down to comparing feature to feature, open source solutions tend to be technically inferior to proprietary ones.
I use linux because I hate microsoft, not because it’s more feature complete than windows (it isn’t).
I use lemmy because I hate u/spez, not because it’s more feature complete than reddit (it isn’t).
I use blender because it’s free and it’s actually kinda great, if all free and open source software was like blender, then it would be a no-brainer to use FOSS all of the time, and it would be easy to convince the normies to do the same.
also also
I’m using linux mint, i have minor complaints about it, but nothing worse than what microsoft is currently doing with windows. It’s just different, and that bothers me. middle click paste is the bane of my existence, but other people swear by it. Just before I switched over, I learned about windows 10’s built in emoji keyboard, and I really liked that. A year later (literally last week) I discovered a program that does most of what the windows emoji thingy did, and I can manually edit a keybind for the function to accomplish amost the same thing. FOSS, yay, it’s free if you don’t value your time in currency amounts. FOSS could be so good if only it were good.
while I agree, the reality of the situation is that when you get down to comparing feature to feature, open source solutions tend to be technically inferior to proprietary ones.
Yes. But there is nothing bluesky does that mastodon doesn’t. It’s a platform to write short text posts and have it viewed by other people. It’s not rocket science.
I feel like scientists should move towards open source solutions … I feel like most scientists are smart enough to launch a mastodon server, but well.
Most scientists aren’t allowed to do stuff like that, or purely just don’t have the time.
Or know how. Just because they are scientists doesn’t mean that they are necessarily particularly computer literate. I once had to explain to a university professor that wireless electricity doesn’t exist, and the Wi-Fi is only for internet. So yeah.
I mean, wireless electricity tech does exist, it just sucks and is horribly inefficient at any reasonable distance.
Well there’s two possible implementations of wireless power transfer.
There’s the way we use to charge our phones, Which is just an electromagnetic effect with no real way to extend its range. That technology has progressed as far as it’s ever going to get.
The other way is through power beaming using infrared lasers and special crystals. That technology does have potential but is nowhere close to being consumer ready yet. One day a router may include both features but not today and certainly not in 2016 when this happened.
People have been able to extend the electromagnetic effect to a few feet, but yeah, there’s a reason why most just use the close range version we have today.
Here’s a demo from 2009: https://youtu.be/MgBYQh4zC2Y
Microwave transmission has also been explored in addition to lasers, as you say, but either way both methods involve power loss in energy conversion, and they both are very directional, making it impractical for consumer use.
But anyway, just wanted to say that the tech technically exists since it’s funny when normal people bring it up without knowing the limitations of current technology and physics.
What… Are you taking about? I know hundreds of scientists and the vast majority of them interact with social media just as much as normal people.
I’d reckon that managing a social media server is more involved than just using social media.
Using social media is far removed from operating your own publicly available social media server.
This coming from someone who is trying to get more mastodon usage in higher ed. Profs aren’t the ones who operate these things. Merely getting the approval to get the project started is an immense task.
University IT departments don’t want to be running some random Mastodon on the server anyway. It’s got nothing to do with the universities day-to-day operations it’s just an extra thing that would be required on top of what they already do.
Also the only university professors who would actually be able to run the server themselves will be those in the computer science domain. A biologist isn’t going to know how to do it any more than any random member of the public.
My question was about the “scientists are not allowed to” part. I’ve never heard to such restrictions, and been in the field for more than a decade.
Any public facing IT system stood up in the higher ed system I am familiar with, requires IT support to be engaged. A part of that process is sending the request through a software review board, department’s IT, centralized IT, and then assigned to a project manager.
Otherwise, it would be considered a rogue service, and turned off at the edge, and core routers.
Right, but why would a scientist set up a mastodon server within their work place? If I were to do it (and I did set up a diaspora instance back in the day), it would be off my own bat, not on work machines.
If I wanted my workplace to do it, that would be a different story, and I’d argue for it to be done by the IT team…
Why would a geologist spin up a Mastodon server, period? Or any other kind of social media server?
Because scientists are normal people, and probably a higher proportion of them than normal are tech nerds.
People don’t have only one interest. The board members of fediscience.org are biosystems scientists and forensic linguists.
And when is the next circle jerk about how making an account on the Fediverse is too complicated for “normal people?”
Being a scientist doesn’t mean you have the technical knowledge to run a public facing server.
Being a scientist kinda means to me you’re able to follow a very easy to understand guide to install mastodon on …
while I agree, the reality of the situation is that when you get down to comparing feature to feature, open source solutions tend to be technically inferior to proprietary ones.
I use linux because I hate microsoft, not because it’s more feature complete than windows (it isn’t).
I use lemmy because I hate u/spez, not because it’s more feature complete than reddit (it isn’t).
I use blender because it’s free and it’s actually kinda great, if all free and open source software was like blender, then it would be a no-brainer to use FOSS all of the time, and it would be easy to convince the normies to do the same.
also also
I’m using linux mint, i have minor complaints about it, but nothing worse than what microsoft is currently doing with windows. It’s just different, and that bothers me. middle click paste is the bane of my existence, but other people swear by it. Just before I switched over, I learned about windows 10’s built in emoji keyboard, and I really liked that. A year later (literally last week) I discovered a program that does most of what the windows emoji thingy did, and I can manually edit a keybind for the function to accomplish amost the same thing. FOSS, yay, it’s free if you don’t value your time in currency amounts. FOSS could be so good if only it were good.
Yes. But there is nothing bluesky does that mastodon doesn’t. It’s a platform to write short text posts and have it viewed by other people. It’s not rocket science.
Bluesky is open source though
Some of us have. There are a few science focused servers.
Never worked in academia eh? Plenty of dumb (and, more importantly here, computer illiterate) people there too.
I’m pretty sure there are a handful of technically literate scientists who are able to install servers lmao.