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Neil Walkinshaw

@neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social
302 followers 98 following 34 posts

Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Sheffield. Researcher interests in software analysis and testing, and their links to causal reasoning and ML.

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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
We are running the CAUSE'27 workshop, collocated with ICSE in Dublin (25th April - 1st May '27), on all things related to Causal Inference and Software Engineering. If this is an area of interest, submit a paper and share your work with us! causality-software-engineering.github.io/cause-worksh...
causality-software-engineering.github.io
Description:
Workshop CauSE 2027
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
Tom Stafford @tomstafford.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy · 14/05/2026
Confirmation bias in search. Interesting to ask the same question in positively and negatively framed versions. Compare "Is Sheffield an unsafe city?" with "Is Sheffield a safe city?" Important for #MediaLiteracy #FactChecking and ...basically any situation where you are finding out information
Screenshot of google search for "Is Sheffield an unsafe city?"

First line of answer "CrimeRate ranks Sheffield as the most dangerous major city in South Yorkshire"Screenshot

Google search for "Is sheffield a safe city"

First line of answer "Sheffield is generally considered one of the safest major cities in the UK. "
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Not before time... UK and EU finalise agreement to bring UK into Erasmus+ in 2027 - GOV.UK share.google/FmBgczcMr11z...
share.google
UK and EU finalise agreement to bring UK into Erasmus+ in 2027
Thousands across the UK set to benefit from re-opening of the historic Erasmus+ programme
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
ICST Conference @icstconferencenew.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
🚨 KEYNOTE ANNOUNCEMENT! 🚨 We are delighted to reveal the 3 eminent keynote speakers for the #ICST2026 in Daejeon, Rep. of Korea! 🇰🇷 Join us to hear from: 🎙️ Tsong Yueh Chen (Swinburne Univ. 🇦🇺) 🎙️ Marcel Böhme (MPI-SP 🇩🇪) 🎙️ Shin Yoo (KAIST 🇰🇷) #SoftwareTesting #Keynote
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
This is the prediction market I'm here for: you can now bet on German train delays. Glorious stuff. Peak trolling. bahn.bet
bahn.bet
Bahn.Bet — Bet on German Train Delays
Prediction markets on Deutsche Bahn departure delays
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
As someone who decided to turn their MPhil into a Ph.D. (and subsequent academic career) I'm strongly in favour of the notion of a Research Masters (whether MRes or MPhil). Agree wholeheartedly - discussion should be about much more than just visa policy. wonkhe.com/blogs/the-mr...
wonkhe.com
The MRes boom isn’t just an issue of visa policy
Rumours of Home Office action on the dramatic growth in research master’s provision continue to swirl. Yet for Michael Salmon there’s a wider question about where responsibility lies for postgraduate-...
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
In the UK, services such as TuneIn or RadioGarden no longer broadcast international radio stations. This is prevented by a 2019 copyright infringement suit by Sony and Warner Music. This community-edited list is the closest legal alternative, it's great! www.radio-browser.info
radio-browser.info
radio-browser.info
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
I remember reading about the NavLab (1986) as an undergraduate. Unsurprising that, exactly 40 years later, driverless cars on UK roads are imminent. youtu.be/ntIczNQKfjQ More surprised by the strident assertions about their safety and apparent lack of ethical groundwork. tinyurl.com/38ac7cd5
youtu.be
NavLab 1 (1986) : Carnegie Mellon : Robotics Institute History of Self-Driving Cars
YouTube video by CMU Robotics Institute
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
spectrum.ieee.org/glucose-moni... On the unreliability of continuous glucose monitors, which can become particularly dangerous when used as part of an artificial pancreas loop (where insulin is administered by an algorithm). Good example of a safety critical cyber-physical system.
spectrum.ieee.org
Why the Most “Accurate” Glucose Monitors Are Failing Some Users
User reports highlight the gap between accuracy in clinical trials and real-world use.
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
Laurence Tratt @ltratt.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
In the futurementary Terminator, I don't remember Skynet starting off with open-source repositories theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-... (I also strongly suggest following the link to the GitHub PR, because it makes much more sense with that as context).
theshamblog.com
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me
Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into acceptin…
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
An interesting list of instances where articles have been retractions because of bugs in the underlying research software: github.com/danielskatz/...
github.com
GitHub - danielskatz/errors-due-to-research-software: This repo is a list of papers that discuss errors in research due to software errors
This repo is a list of papers that discuss errors in research due to software errors - danielskatz/errors-due-to-research-software
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Really interesting link from a colleague: arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/... Shines a light on how different developer attitudes towards LLM usage in software development (provenance and maintainability versus rapid improvements in functionality?) can impact on established communities and projects.
arstechnica.com
Open source GZDoom community splinters after creator inserts AI-generated code
UZDoom fork promises to fix other top-down leadership problems with the decades-old mod.
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
This looks great - the first chapter has me hooked.
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Talk about a bug becoming a feature! How the synth track in New Order's Blue Monday started out as a programming accident. (By @jonmattox.bsky.social) www.instagram.com/reel/DRCt5vk...
instagram.com
Jon Mattox / Creating Music And Sound on Instagram: "New Order – Blue Monday: The Happy Accident That Made History 🎛️ This percussive synth line was programmed off by a 16th note — a total mistake ca...
4,444 likes, 106 comments - creatingmusicandsound on November 14, 2025: "New Order – Blue Monday: The Happy Accident That Made History 🎛️ This percussive synth line was programmed off by a 16th note ...
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
The Causal Testing Framework (CTF), which enables the use of Causal Inference to test properties in software, is now available on Conda-Forge! anaconda.org/conda-forge/...
anaconda.org
Causal Testing Framework | Anaconda.org
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
Tom Stafford @tomstafford.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy · 11/11/2025
Lottery before peer review is associated with increased female representation and reduced estimated economic cost in a German funding line www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-… New from @rmrahal and colleagues Funder was German Foundation for […] [Original post on mastodon.online]
Research funding is a key determinant of scientific progress. However, current allocation procedures for third-party funding are criticized due to high costs and biases in the selection. Here, we present data from a large German funding organization on an implementation of a lottery-first approach followed by peer review to allocate funding. We examine the changes in submissions and funded projects of female applicants after implementation, estimate the costs of the overall allocation process, and report on the attitudes and satisfaction of researchers and reviewers. The data show an increase of 10% in submissions and a 23% increase in funded projects from female applicants with the lottery-first approach compared to a previously used procedure. Additionally, the lottery-first approach was estimated to have 68% lower economic costs compared to a conventional single-stage peer review approach. Satisfaction with this funding approach was high and around half of applicants preferred an initial lottery followed by peer review over a conventional approach. Thus, the lottery-first approach is a promising addition to allocation procedures.
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
arXiv is now only publishing CS pre-prints that have been accepted after review. blog.arxiv.org/2025/10/31/a... I think this is a good thing...
blog.arxiv.org
Attention Authors: Updated Practice for Review Articles and Position Papers in arXiv CS Category – arXiv blog
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
ICST Conference @icstconferencenew.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
📣 ICST 2026: Call for Research Papers! The International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST) 2026 call for research-track submissions. 📅 Important Dates: Abstract Due: Dec 15 Full Paper Due: Dec 22 🔗 Learn More & Submit: conf.researchr.org/track/icst-2...
conf.researchr.org
ICST 2026 - Research Papers - ICST 2026
The Research Papers track of ICST 2026 invites high-quality submissions in all areas of software testing, verification, and validation. Papers for the research track should present novel and original ...
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
I used to have one of these! Love the idea of "modding" an old casio watch! 🔧 You can upgrade a Casio watch with Bluetooth, step counting, and games | The Verge share.google/Zma7UEjgKPfp...
share.google
You can now upgrade a retro Casio watch with Bluetooth, step tracking, and games
Are these iconic Casio digital watches still as desirable with smart features?
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
Developed a pesky running injury. Not looking forward to working through the suggestions illustrated by ChatGPT, especially the straight leg raise...
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
MORPHSS @morphss.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
New open access book out from our MORPHSS project lead @samuelmoore.org: "By deploying theoretical literature on science & technology studies, care ethics, & the commons, the book critically interrogates open access & reimagines a more ethical future for researcher-led publishing." #OA #AHSS
doi.org
Publishing Beyond the Market
Publishing Beyond the Market argues that the move to open access should focus less on the free accessibility of research outputs and more on who controls the publications and infrastructures for schol...
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
As with the post office Horizon bug, years of institutional coverup and mismanagement after the bug is exposed. This probably causes more damage than the technical bug itself. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Courts service accused of covering up IT bug that caused evidence to go missing
Sources say judges in courts and tribunals will have made rulings when evidence was incomplete.
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
An account of what is possibly the first "monkey tester" (or at least when the term originated) - a program to automatically generate random test inputs. Developed in 1983 to test MacWrite and MacPaint! www.folklore.org/Monkey_Lives...
folklore.org
Folklore.org: Monkey Lives
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
Dr Howard Smith Reports @drhowardsmith.bsky.social · 15/08/2024
Tandem's t:connect iOS mobile app that controls monitors the t:slim X2 insulin pump and its battery causes a battery depletion and an unexpected pump shut down. #tandem #insulinpump #iOSapp #tconnect #battery #shutdown #hyperglycemia #recall www.instagram.com/p/C-s-U3fxxBg/
instagram.com
Howard G. Smith MD, AM on Instagram: "A defective iOS (iPhone/iPad) app can rapidly deplete your Tandem insulin pump battery and trigger a dangerous shutdown The Food and Drug Administration and Tand...
0 likes, 0 comments - drhowardsmithreports on August 15, 2024: "A defective iOS (iPhone/iPad) app can rapidly deplete your Tandem insulin pump battery and trigger a dangerous shutdown The Food and Dr...
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
I found this very interesting. Could be interesting to consider a variant of this for research paper submissions to Computer Science conferences, where the ballooning review burden is completely unsustainable. Would need to devise different measures to prevent misuse though.
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
An odd licensing approach - hardly going to make Java the obvious teaching choice for higher education in years to come? www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/j...
theregister.com
UK unis sign up to £10M Oracle Java subscription framework
: Deal includes 'waiver of historic fees'
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
AALpy - a very elegant Python library (not by me!) implementing several finite state machine inference algorithms. Includes active and passive approaches, state-merging and observation-table based ones. github.com/DES-Lab/AALpy
github.com
GitHub - DES-Lab/AALpy: An Automata Learning Library Written in Python
An Automata Learning Library Written in Python. Contribute to DES-Lab/AALpy development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
Simple visualisations of code "survival" over time: github.com/erikbern/git... Several groups of students have tried this on a variety of OSS projects. Anecdotally it seems that the "half-life" of the code for a given version is remarkably short! Would welcome pointers to studies on this!
github.com
GitHub - erikbern/git-of-theseus: Analyze how a Git repo grows over time
Analyze how a Git repo grows over time. Contribute to erikbern/git-of-theseus development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Procedures for testing driverless cars (at least the underlying ML) are still effectively in their infancy, so it's interesting that these will be on UK roads so soon. Particularly interested in accountability (moral & legal) when accidents inevitably occur. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
UK driverless cars unlikely until 2027 - Uber says it's ready now
The previous government had said autonomous vehicles were
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
Hillel @hillelwayne.com · 12/05/2025
Blast from the past: "How Do We Trust Our Science Code?" Most scientific research code is low quality and riddled with bugs, written by people who aren't professional software developers. And we shouldn't expect them to be! (Written eight years ago, Jesus) www.hillelwayne.com/post/how-do-...
hillelwayne.com
How Do We Trust Our Science Code?
In 2010 Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff published Growth in a Time of Debt. It’s arguably one of the most influential economics papers of the decade, convincing the IMF to push austerity measures i...
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
Gregory Gay @greggay.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Reminder: I am hiring 1-2 PhD students to research the use of LLMs to augment human-written test suites! Interested? Apply here: www.chalmers.se/en/about-cha... Reach out if you have questions! #softwaretesting #softwareengineering #softwaredevelopment #LLM #AI #PHD
chalmers.se
Vacancies
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
Gregory Gay @greggay.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
I'm seeking 1-2 Ph.D. students, who will conduct research on how LLMs can extend and augment the software tests created by humans. Please apply, share, and get in touch if you have questions! Apply at: www.chalmers.se/en/about-cha...
chalmers.se
Vacancies
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
David D. Levine @daviddlevine.com · 12/04/2025
LLMs hallucinating nonexistent software packages with plausible names leads to a new malware vulnerability: "slopsquatting."
theregister.com
LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything
: Hallucinated package names fuel 'slopsquatting'
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Our Causal Testing Framework, part of the EPSRC-funded CITCOM project, has just been published in @joss-openjournals.bsky.social. joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21... Supports testing of "hard-to-test" systems with large input spaces, nondeterminism and long execution times.
joss.theoj.org
The Causal Testing Framework
Foster et al., (2025). The Causal Testing Framework. Journal of Open Source Software, 10(107), 7739, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.07739
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
I never play computer games these days. But I got to spend a couple of hours playing Enter the Gungeon (enterthegungeon.com) with my son (very much the gamer) , and it's fantastic. Retro and amusing - highly recommend!
enterthegungeon.com
Enter the Gungeon
Enter the Gungeon is a gunfight dungeon crawler following a band of misfits seeking to shoot, loot, dodge roll and table-flip their way to personal absolution by reaching the legendary Gungeon’s ultim...
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Especially short-sighted, given that so many key technologies that underpin the strong growth in the US economy, especially in AI, have emerged from these very research institutions.
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci... Be cited or perish? I don't recognise some of the worst practices in CS (hope I'm not being naiive!), but concerning nonetheless...
blogs.lse.ac.uk
Does authorship mean anything when academic papers are simply citable tokens?
The bibliometric infrastructure of citations has become an inescapable organising feature of academic life. Drawing on a range of evidence of the use and misuse of citations data, Stuart Macdonald …
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
This article claiming "no evidence" that mobile phone restrictions in schools have no impact on social media usage or wellbeing has been widely reported in the UK: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... Worth noting the absence of any causal analysis, despite many confounding factors.
thelancet.com
School phone policies and their association with mental wellbeing, phone use, and social media use (SMART Schools): a cross-sectional observational study
There is no evidence that restrictive school policies are associated with overall phone and social media use or better mental wellbeing in adolescents. The findings do not provide evidence to support ...
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
LSE Blogs @lseblogs.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Why are universities ending their #Elsevier #OpenAccess agreements? Peter Barr @tweeterbarr.bsky.social explains the reasoning behind these decisions and what it says about the wider academic publishing sector in the UK on @lseimpactblog.bsky.social 👇
blogs.lse.ac.uk
Why are universities ending their Elsevier open access agreements?
After recent reporting that three UK universities had ended their transitional open access agreements with the publisher Elsevier, Peter Barr explains why academic libraries are making these decisi…
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
Delighted for my Ph.D. student Richard Somers, whose work on using a digital twin (of blood-glucose dynamics in a human) to test artificial pancreas systems for diabetics has just been published in STVR: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Configuration Testing of an Artificial Pancreas System Using a Digital Twin: An Evaluative Case Study
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Reposted by Neil Walkinshaw
Aaron Eline @aaroneline.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Cool and wacky work from Neil Walkinshaw on trying to get a formal solution to the “stopping problem” in random testing. arxiv.org/pdf/2405.17019. This formulation has a bunch of limitations/assumptions, but I really enjoy the framing and line of thought.
arxiv.org
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
A great essay on the subjective nature of probability: www.nature.com/articles/d41... A probability is not an objective property of the world. Pertinent to many Software Engineering contexts. Motivated my recent forays into Subjective Logic (which attempts to make this subjectivity explicit).
nature.com
Why probability probably doesn’t exist (but it is useful to act like it does)
All of statistics and much of science depends on probability — an astonishing achievement, considering no one’s really sure what it is.
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Delighted to be co-organising the inaugural CauSE 2025 workshop (Causal Methods in Software Engineering), co-located with FSE in Trondheim. We welcome papers on all things causality and SE! Deadline Feb. 25th. Spread the word! causality-software-engineering.github.io/cause-worksh...
causality-software-engineering.github.io
Description
Workshop CauSE 2025
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Neil Walkinshaw @neilwalkinshaw.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Took on a safety critical systems course this semester. "NORAD's missile warning system: What went wrong" provides an arresting list of near-misses. The accidental introduction of "mass raid" test data into the live system must have been especially frightening! www.gao.gov/assets/masad...
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