iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by David Andersen

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 03/10/2026

A sobering, clear assessment in @pnas.org of the current US policy of international student exclusion. "The damage would not end with academic careers. A discovery becomes a vaccine, a company, and an industry only when someone commercializes it, and that work runs on the same imported talent."

pnas.org

Taxing the talent that builds American science | PNAS

Taxing the talent that builds American science

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Reposted by David Andersen

Stuart McDaniel @stuartmcdaniel.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

“For four decades, the United States has run one of the most profitable trades in the world economy… import young people that the global labor market has underpriced—graduate students whose ability outruns their résumés—give them a place to prove themselves, and keep much of the upside”

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Reposted by David Andersen

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Good end-of-FY coverage by the Times. The amount of unspent funds has wiggled but it was pretty clear for some time now that NSF was simply not going to spend a substantial portion of its congressional appropriation this year.

nytimes.com

National Science Foundation Diverted $1.4 Billion in Science Funds Mandated by Congress

The move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

ooh tomorrow's going to be fun, isn't it? 😆 Trying to thread the timing needle - hopefully shoulder is better for climbing on Sunday, and still functional for class today. I've never gotten them together before, but it was certainly convenient. (And the nurse had mad shot skills. Zero pain. Woo.)

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I realize it was irresponsible for me to post that without the obligatory huge pig picture from (Shane Dunlap | TribLive). triblive.com/business/duq...

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Speaking of unions being good www.ibew29.org/political-ac... The workers at Duquesne Light (pittsburgh's electric power utility) are striking for the first time in 80 years.

ibew29.org

Strike Map

Learn why organizing matters — better pay, benefits, and protections for IBEW Local 29 members across western Pennsylvania.

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Reposted by David Andersen

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

this would be an incredible film if you started it with all the normal serial killer hunting tropes

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Unions are good, reason #57313: When your asshole upper management decides for you whether you need a chair or not instead of listening to employees and medical experts.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

You can pay for them with Google Pay. No, wait, Google Wallet. Er, hang on, the new google Pay that is different from the old Google Pay.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I don't know what it is about this semester, but I'm leaving my grad class daily being just astoundingly impressed with the students. We may^H^H^Hwill be be facing an AI education crisis or already are, but this crop of students (early Ph.D., MS, a couple of ugrad seniors) still have the juice.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I will totally mount the jackalope on my office wall if we can make this happen.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Curse you Perry the Programming Language!

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I wonder if it precludes the computer science department from selling our own naming rights. I'd like to work for the Heinz Dofenshmirtz Department of Computer Science. Anyone have a few hundred million to use to make that happen? Asking for a friend(-ly department)

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Huh. Apparently now I am a professor in the Griffin School of Computer Science. I choose to believe it's a mythology reference. We should rename our competitive programming team or hacking team the LionEagles. www.cmu.edu/news/stories...

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

(while I complain, I am glad to have the lead water lines gone!)

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

They finished in my part of squirrel hill finally. It was about 11 months from start of trenching to complete surface replacement, though a month of that was coming back to fix a mess up.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's mine and you can't take it away from me!

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Maybe it just makes me ... old? Somehow I can live with that more easily.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I DO NOT WANT EIGHT HUNDRED DIFFERENT INCOMPATIBLE, DIFFERENTLY-UI'D APPS JUST TO COORDINATE MY KIDS' SCHOOL SCHEDULES, SHRIRAM. This cannot make me weird. It cannot! ... I am not an HCI person. There is absolutely no denying that. BUT STILL. EIGHT HUNDRED APPS IS WRONG.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Dear puppy with razor sharp teeth, I will WIN THIS BATTLE, with the POWER OF TECHNOLOGY

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

wait I'm sorry how can anyone _not_ find this weird and annoying???

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Reposted by David Andersen

Dave DiCello @davedicello.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

So many film images to go through as of late, but I love how this one came out. The way the clouds are reflecting off of PPG Place in #pittsburgh almost look connected with the clouds in front, making for such an interesting view.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And 9th grader's teachers communicate with us using text messages. But not plain text messages, any larger or image-containing texts are just links to "TalkingPoints". 8yo's cross-country practices are coordinated in WhatsApp. I kind of hate the ecosystem we've created.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The emails from the teachers are images or PDFs. I like the organization - for example, this is from this week's newsletter, but I can't even copy-paste the entries to put them in the calendar. The in-service days are in the school calendar but the pink out & own clothes days are not.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

An image in a word document in a zip file in a .. :-) It's all such a mess. 8yo's school _finally_ has an iCal/RSS feed for their calendar and it's good. But 14yo's school's RSS feed combines "no school" days with things like "Plant Operations Hiring Event".

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

But to the point of the thread: It's a huge mistake to think we can approach most of these problems with a complete and accurate list of the constraints and desiderata. Just trying to write them down is frustrating because it's so messy and .. human. 🤓

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Weirdly, I've semi-automated family movie suggestions: I have a spreadsheet where I record some of what we've watched and I dump it into gemini sometimes when my usual google searches for "best family movies of <pick year>" fail me. Which, again -- brainstorming more than actually planning. 7/

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

But I wasn't sure on Sunday when I was prepping the shopping stuff how many I'd have leftover, because god only knows how many people will show up to the block party, and will there be any healthy food there for the kids to eat or do I need to make second dinner after? Brb tearing hair out. 6/

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

actual meal planning involves a lot of mostly informal constraints. T/Th? 14yo has climbing after school, so I have to have something I can get done before 5pm. Oh, but this week I'm not cooking Sunday because we had a block party and I made (very tasty, if I may say so myself) gougeres for it. 5/

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

the 10-15 minutes I saved manually creating a lot of calendar entries was less than the time it took to solve the problem of bad data on the internet. It's been useful for "I have such and such and such and such in the fridge, suggest some dishes". As @tressiemcphd.bsky.social notes, though, 4/

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I had gemini add all the special days from the pittsburgh public schools calendar into our family calendar. That was generally a win, except that it also unearthed some errors in the PPS online calendar and I then spent 30 minutes tracking down which of those days was wrong. Not AI's fault but 3/

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I've been trying to find ways to use various AI tools to make my life as lead house parent easier, and the wins are there but they're ... kind of small? Like "take this fucking _image_ listing the spirit week clothing items for 7yo and put entries in the family calendar". A win, but only 5min? 2/

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Nice thread to read. My colleagues in HCI (human computer interaction) like to point out that not only is none of us (CS people) normal, most people we know aren't either, by proximity to a Ph.D. computer scientist. It's risky to look at ourselves and say "oh, this is surely useful!" 1/

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

made gougeres to bring to the block party. It turns out there is such a thing as eating too much puff pastry. don't think I'll be making those again for a while. 🤣

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

A scratch in a replaceable plastic part and seems ok otherwise. Think I got really lucky. His car has a worse dent than my bike.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Shout-out to that cycling team coach in grad school who had us do practice bumping into each other and shoving each other around. 🤣 Never thought those reflexes would come in handy on the cargo bike.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Luckily, neither of us was going fast and I kind of skidded along the side of his car and don't think I'm injured, but yowza.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

well, that was a little harrowing. First bike-car accident I've ever been in in ~45 years of riding a bike all the time. Driver was signaling left and then decided, as I was going past them, to turn right instead.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is, unfortunately, in direct conflict with being the primary contact parent for my kids. Hopefully, doing it on a Friday and over the weekend will work sufficiently well to restore my sanity and get me off some lists.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The phone scammers have defeated me. Five or more calls per hour for multiple hours per day making it through Google fi's spam prevention and many bypassing android phone screen. Time for the nuclear option. Hope nobody needs to call me for a while! 😭

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Exploring TPUs in space for space-based applications isn't dumb, because applications like imaging / space-based radar / etc. can generate huge amounts of data that are expensive to get back to earth. But moving your AI datacenter to space? dumb.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

*sigh* "The chips can operate for about 15 minutes in space before needing to be shut down so they can cool off" yes, no kidding. Because trying to put a datacenter in space is stupid if it's not where you're producing the data. 1/

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Though we keep noticing how much more dense the information stored in the brain is - biology is hideously messy and typically refuses to slot into our human-desired simple abstractions. So at maybe a petabyte of dram-equivalent (at least), we're still pretty far ahead of a single GPU.

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Reposted by David Andersen

David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Random blog post inspired by someone else's random blog post. Mostly I just love succinct data structures and continue to want the world to know about them. :-) wiredream.com/vowels/

wiredream.com

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I always enjoyed Vint's talks about the interplanetary internet, it would be fun to do it in a way that didn't leave all of the astronomers in dire strait or controlled by a nazi

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I started an ISP once and have hopefully learned my lesson! Though I'll admit the temptation arises once every decade or so. The burnout is real.

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

And then there's the fact that I reported this on Thursday night and it's still broken, with no updates or ETR for something that is trivially mask-able with a different route that avoids the flaky path. Excuse me while I ponder starting an ISP again just to not have to deal with this.* * (No...)

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David Andersen @daveandersen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

But trying to get this information to you is killing me. Your front line tech had no way to get information other than having me point my phone camera at my laptop and trying to transcribe a single traceroute. Why oh why would you tie the hands of your eyes and ears this way?

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