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Simon Li

@penguinoops.bsky.social

83 followers 154 following 31 posts

Lab rat. Programmer. Cyclist. Climber. Interested in #OpenData and #OpenScience.

Posts Replies Media

Simon Li @penguinoops.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

#RSEcon27 will be in Edinburgh! 6-9 September 2027 #RSEcon26

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Simon Li @penguinoops.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

A statement on the dilemma caused by the UCU Sheffield boycott shortly before #RSEcon26 started and the £50,000+ loss that would occur if it was cancelled (it takes well over a year to organise the conference and contracts are signed months in advance) society-rse.org/trustee-stat...

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Simon Li @penguinoops.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

This year's #RSEcon26 sponsors: www.amd.com, aws.amazon.com, @biofair.bsky.social, www.bristol.ac.uk/research/cen..., www.hpc.cam.ac.uk/d-w-n, @theturing.bsky.social, dareuk.org.uk ...

Sponsorlogos: AMD, AWS, BioFAIR, AIRR, The Alan Turing Institute, DARE UK, CAKE, Institute of Research Software, Met Office, OQC, The Rosalind Franklin Institute, Schmidt Science

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Simon Li @penguinoops.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

3 #AWS Availability Zones in the Middle East (including 2 in the same region!) have been hit by #Iran health.aws.amazon.com/health/status

AWS Service Health screenshot: Operational issue – Multiple services (UAE)
Increased Error Rates
Mar 02 9:59 AM PST We continue to work towards recovery of the two impaired Availability Zones (mec1-az2 and mec1-az3) in the ME-CENTRAL-1 Region. The impact is causing elevated errors rates for both the Management Console and CLI. Our current expectation is that recovery will take at least a day to complete. We continue to recommend customers enact their disaster recovery plans and recover from remote backups into alternate AWS Regions. We will continue to provide periodic updates on recovery efforts. Our next update will be by 2:00 PM PST or sooner if new information becomes available.

Mar 02 6:22 AM PST We continue to work towards recovery of the two impaired Availability Zones (mec1-az2 and mec1-az3) in the ME-CENTRAL-1 Region. We are expecting recovery to take at least a day, as it requires repair of facilities, cooling and power systems, coordination with local authorities, and careful assessment to ensure the safety of our operators.....

Mar 02 2:53 AM PST We wanted to provide more information on Amazon S3 given that there are two impaired Availability Zones (mec1-az2 and mec1-az3) in the ME-CENTRAL-1 Region. Amazon S3 is a regional service and designed to withstand the total loss of a single Availability Zone while maintaining S3's durability and availability. When the mec1-az2 AZ was powered off at approximately 4:00 AM PST on Sunday, March 1, S3 continued to operate normally. As the second AZ became impaired, S3 error rates increased. With two Availability Zones significantly impacted, customers are seeing high failure rates for data ingest and egress. We strongly advise customers to update their applications to ingest S3 data to an alternate AWS Region. As soon as practically possible, we will begin the restoration of our two Availability Zones which will include a careful assessment of data health and any repair of storage if necessary.

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AWS Service Health screenshot: Operational issue – Multiple services (Bahrain)
Increased Connectivity Issues and API Error Rates
Mar 02 6:23 AM PST We continue to work toward restoring power in the impacted Availability Zone (mes1-az2) in the ME-SOUTH-1 Region. Meanwhile, EC2 instance and networking APIs have been restored for the other Availability Zones. Additionally, we have made improvements to the availability of RDS multi-AZ databases while operating with the impaired Availability Zone. These improvements will help customers create database exports to preserve data, and we recommend customers with databases in the affected Availability Zone consider creating exports as a precautionary measure. EC2 Instances, EBS Volumes, and other resources impacted in the affected Availability Zone will require a longer recovery timeline, as power has not yet been restored. We are expecting recovery to take at least a day, as it requires repair of facilities, cooling and power systems, coordination with local authorities, and careful assessment to ensure the safety of our operators. If immediate recovery is required, we recommend customers restore from EBS Snapshots and/or launch replacement resources in one of the unaffected Availability Zones or an alternate AWS Region. We will provide an update by 11:00 AM PST on March 2, or sooner if we have additional information to share.
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Simon Li @penguinoops.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

Saw a lot of runners in Edinburgh so Googled to find out what the race was... #aifail

Screenshot of Google search AI Overview: "There is no major race in Edinburgh today, Sunday, September 21, 2025. However, two races are scheduled for later this month in the city: the Men's 10K Edinburgh and the Women's 10K Edinburgh, both taking place on Saturday, September 21, 2025."

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Simon Li @penguinoops.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Next year's Research Software Engineering conference: Sheffield! 9-11 September 2026. Collocated with the International Research Software Conference 7-8 with the Research Software Alliance. #RSEcon26 #RSEcon #ReSA

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Simon Li @penguinoops.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

@simonhettrick.bsky.social on the problems with the Research Excellence Framework in the UK. Software (and many other outputs) should be considered - but very few universities include them. 97.6% of submitted outputs were publications. #RSEcon25

Simon Hettrick in front of a bar chart showing numbers of each REF output type. 97.6% are publications.

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Simon Li @penguinoops.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

FRIDGE, SATRE and AIRR at #RSEcon25 #TrustedResearchEnvironments

FRIDGE, A ready-to-use SATRE compliant TRE that can be deployed to AIRR

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Simon Li @penguinoops.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

#RSEcon25 kicks off with a keynote by @amandabrock.bsky.social from @openuk.bsky.social academic.oup.com/book/44727 #opensource #openaccess

Amanda Brock in front of an OpenUK presentation slide, showing an open-access e-book Open Source Law, Policy and Practice

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Simon Li @penguinoops.bsky.social · 27/10/2024

It's the time of year where it gets dark early in the evenings, and in response we put the clocks back an hour so it gets dark even earlier 🤷‍♂️

Screenshot of the hourly weather forecast showing 01:00 twice because the clocks go back.

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