Notices by Janne Moren (jannem@fosstodon.org)

My employer #OIST ( @oistedu.bsky.social ) is opening a special grad student application round for students currently studying at US universities.

The application period begins now and is only two weeks, but if accepted you may be able to start already in September.

Please reshare to get the word out.

https://www.oist.jp/admissions/special-application-deadline-students-accepted-or-studying-united-states

#USA #University #gradschool #Japan

@me
The advice I hear is that the included Windows Defender is as good as any of the others, so no need to add something else. Especially as AV packages by their nature tend to become security issues of their own.

A random thought for no reason at all: When japanese car companies want to sell cars in the US they don't just build them there. They have design teams creating variants and whole new models to fit the market.

US cars don't sell in Japan because US carmakers aren't putting in the work. Never mind being the wrong style or type of car; never mind being too large for local roads and parking spaces. Most models on offer don't even come with right-hand steering.

#car #japan #USA

In a new poll from Asahi Shimbun about the US-Japan alliance, 68% said Japan should be independent; and 77% don't trust that US would aid Japan if needed.

Those are pretty sobering numbers from a country that has been highly supportive of this alliance for half a century.

https://digital.asahi.com/articles/DA3S16202756.html?ptoken=01JSTQAY7AJRFD0NMNY7QP6YWR

#USA #Japan

FYI, if you happen to be a scientist in a large English-speaking country with uncertain future research financing; my employer, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) is looking for grad students, postdocs and PIs.

It's a research institute, so no undergraduates, and the working language is English - no japanese required. And its located on a (semi) tropical island in the Pacific.

https://www.oist.jp/careers?f%5B0%5D=oist_job_type%3A819

#NSF #OIST #Japan

@tomw @loke
In normal use I would say you'd use "dag" ("jag är på resa i fem dagar" - I'm traveling for five days), and only use dygn when either there's a risk of confusion or you want to emphasize the 24-hour span for some reason.

So with "han har varit försvunnen i tre dygn" (he's been missing for three days) it emphasizes the time span and the seriousness of the situation.

@loke @cobolworx
If you see it as a precursor or alternative to excel it's really not a bad language.

@loke @cobolworx
That is a good feature (didn't Rexx have something similar?)

It also encourages you to write things in a very linear, clear and unambiguous way, without clever hacks. Which is exactly what you want when you're large amounts of other people's money.

@joojmachine @can
We have and use both at work (it's complicated) and while Slack perhaps used to be good and Teams bad, they've effectively converged to much the same mediocre spot these days.

@can
Teams is no worse than Slack. In some ways arguably better.

Yes, I don't want to use either, but given a choice I'd pick Teams.

@inthehands @adamshostack
Music and mathematics - and coding, and puzzles - do seem to use much the same kind of abilities.

But different people seem to deploy very different strategies. I think spatially; whether music or code I see it laid out in my mind's eye.

But my wife doesn't think spatially *at all.* And she is a graphic designer - a profession you'd think spatial reasoning is pretty important.

A couple of #Osaka pictures from #Umeda . The "clock square" in JR Umeda station at dusk; and Umeda Sky building from the new park area.

#photography #japan

@ariadne @dotstdy @matt
I would arguably include glibc in the category.

So, the #Nobel dinner served #barley porridge as one of the dishes.

The #Sweden Democrats, the "We're not a Nazi party just because we happen to have lots of Nazis" right-wing party immediately denounced it as a "woke" sop to vegetarians and other undesirables, and an affront to traditional Swedish values.

Apparently the "traditional Swedish values" party had no idea barley porridge is an iconic Swedish dish, and a staple food for over a millennium.

@cstross @futurebird @dx
Also, just to note that while 100M is about the population size of a major industrialized economy (USA/north America; EU/Europe; Japan; China), none of our *actual* economies would be able to go it alone.

We're all far too intertwined and interdependent for a single region to be self-sufficient to the point where anybody could maintain anything like our civilization.

@dx @futurebird
Charles Stross has written a fair bit about that on his blog over the years. For modern civilisation he puts the number in the range of a hundred million people:

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insufficient-data.html

@jrconlin @futurebird
Meanwhile Japan is trying to move away from stamps because of all the issues it creates.

Getting pretty clear that if you want to start a blog or anything like that, #Wordpress is *not* the place to be. And it's not just the recent drama.

I tested it last spring. The whole experience feels grubby and nickel-and-dimey. It's made for people trying to make money, by people trying to get a cut. That's fine, but it's not for me.

So what better alternatives are there? Host a static blog on GitHub pages?

The #Nankai #Rapi:d #train from #Osaka to Kansai Airport is possibly my favourite train in Japan.

Not just because of its design; but also because this is the train we'd always take when going to the airport and abroad. Boarding this train is, to me, always the start of an adventure.

@mrundkvist
The punishment is lack of external funding. But if the department doesn't rely at all on funding agencies for their operating income then that's not effective of course.

In the sciences external funding is important enough that a history of consistently getting external funds counts higher than even your publications.