Monthly Archives: February 2022

Crypto: Climate change means new tech has less time today to prove itself

Posted on February 13, 2022 by

I spent this weekend reading about permissioned and permissionless blockchain systems. If you want to get in on it, I can’t recommend this post by David Rosenthal enough. Much of the complexity of executing transactions of the major extant cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Tech | Tagged Big Tech, Bitcoin, blockchain, carbon dioxide concentration, carbon emissions, cryptocurrencies, David Rosenthal, decentralisation, Ethereum, Molly White, non-fungible tokens, proof of work, web2, web3 | Comments Off

The persistence of NFTs

Posted on February 10, 2022 by

NFTs freak me out. One of the ways in which my grandmother lost touch with her daughter – my mother – was my mother’s generation’s access to and use of computers, smartphones and the internet. And one of the ways … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Culture | Tagged cryptocurrency, metaverse, NFT, non-fungible tokens, Silicon Valley | Comments Off

Review of a review: ‘Rocket Boys’ (2022)

Posted on February 9, 2022 by

Tanul Thakur has reviewed a series on SonyLIV called Rocket Boys for The Wire. I haven’t watched the show and don’t plan to, for want of time as well as because, reading Thakur’s review, I think I know enough about how the series depicts the … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Culture, Science | Tagged Department of Atomic Energy, Homi Jehangir Bhabha, ISRO, Rocket Boys, scientific superpower, Vikram Sarabhai | Comments Off

The new JNU VC’s statement has bad grammar. So?

Posted on February 8, 2022 by

I strongly disagree with some criticism that has emerged on Twitter against the new JNU vice-chancellor Santishree Pandit. The object of criticism is a statement that Pandit has apparently drafted and in which she states, broadly, what she considers to … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Culture | Tagged English language, Jawaharlal Nehru University, JNU VC, Mary Beard, Mary Norris, Santishree Pandit, Varun Gandhi | Comments Off

News coverage in India of open access papers

Posted on February 5, 2022 by

In a study published in November 2021, Teresa Schultz, of the University of Nevada, Reno, reported that gold, green and hybrid open-access (OA) modes of publishing of scientific papers were correlated with more mentions in the news. Gold OA refers … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm | Tagged gold OA, green OA, hybrid OA, Open Access, Sci-Hub, science journalism, subscription journals | Comments Off

The BJP’s fake news (fake?) meeting

Posted on February 2, 2022 by

Reuters published a very interesting report on February 2, entitled ‘Exclusive-In heated meeting, India seeks tougher action from U.S. tech giants on fake news’. Excerpt: Indian officials have held heated discussions with Google, Twitter and Facebook for not proactively removing what they described … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis | Tagged Bharatiya Janata Party, Big Tech, Facebook, fake news, Google, social media, takedown requests, Twitter | Comments Off

Are preprints reliable?

Posted on February 2, 2022 by

To quote from a paper published yesterday in PLOS Biology: Does the information shared in preprints typically withstand the scrutiny of peer review, or are conclusions likely to change in the version of record? We assessed preprints from bioRxiv and medRxiv that had … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Science | Tagged Open Access, peer review, PLOS Biology, preprint papers | Comments Off