Hendrik Weimer

Using FediWings (https://rstockm.github.io/fediwings/) by @rstockm@chaos.social, I've calculated the net reach across the Fediverse of German universities during the last 30 days. Here are the top 5:

1. Universität Ulm (@UniUlm@mastodon.social): 6860

2. Technische Universität Berlin (@tuberlin@wisskomm.social): 4315

3. RWTH Aachen: (@rwthaachenuniversity@wisskomm.social): 3660

4. Universität Bremen (@unibremen@wisskomm.social): 3352

5. Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (unimainz@wisskomm.social): 3307

Next up are @tu_freiberg@wisskomm.social, @tudresden@wisskomm.social, @Uni_Stuttgart@xn--baw-joa.social, @tu_muenchen@wisskomm.social, and @hszg@wisskomm.social.

Thanks to @54gradsoftware@norden.social for providing the list of universities.

#fediverse #academicchatter #wisskomm #sciencecommunication #fediwings #germany

Having a presence in the Fediverse isn't about reach, engagement metrics, or cost per conversion.

It's a civic duty of every organization believing in democratic values.

#fediverse #mastodon

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 the counterintuitive effect that a solar park owner will hope for cloudy weather, as clouds act as an involuntary cartel bringing prices up.

3. The hard part is having enough battery power during nights, especially in winter when the short days make it very challenging to charge your batteries.

4. Towards the end of the game, making money conflicts with reducing the share of fossil power, as the latter sets the electricity price. A successful transition to renewable energy production will likely require the implementation of different pricing mechanisms. If you have any (preferably peer-reviewed) ideas how this could work, I'd be happy to add them as an alternative scenario.

5. Hydrogen storage appears to lose out against battery storage when all costs are considered. Storing energy is cheaper for hydrogen, but hydrogen power is much more expensive per kW. This means hydrogen does not look like a cost-effective route towards renewable energy production (sorry, @bmftr_bund@social.bund.de).

If you want to try it out yourself, you can play the game here: https://sonnenwende.codeberg.page/

More details and development information: https://codeberg.org/sonnenwende/sonnenwende

#sonnenwende #gaming #solarpunk #solar #renewables

Matrix is a complete disaster. Got kicked out of the web client, confirmed my identity using my recovery key. It says that I can now decrypt my old messages, but when I actually try to look at them, it's "Unable to decrypt message" everywhere.

As much I applaud my institution's efforts towards digital sovereignty by running their own Matrix server, this isn't it.

#matrix #messenger #digitalsovereignty #opensource

RE: @MartinEscardo@mathstodon.xyz

I think this bridging between communities is still useful. But it's also quite incremental work that is unlikely to lead to novel research directions.

Personally, I think we were already doing too much incremental work and too little groundbreaking work. My concern is that LLMs will tilt this imbalance even further because they are good at incremental work but horrible at groundbreaking work.

#ai #llms #science #math #physics