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Solal Pirelli

@solalpirelli.bsky.social
867 followers 192 following 716 posts

Scala compiler engineer @ EPFL. Scientific integrity, and random rants. Previously: PhD in automated software verification.

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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
EPFL specifically. French students were >50% of the incoming Bachelor cohort and the university simply doesn't have the space. Not clear if this will stay long term, classrooms are being built now.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
EPFL is down big in CS but up in math, fwiw. Though there's some interference from a cap on foreign students for logistical reasons that also happened recently.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
:( news.mit.edu/2026/margare...
news.mit.edu
Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90
Margaret H. Hamilton, a profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program, died at age 90.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Now peer reviewed! doi.org/10.1080/0898...
doi.org
Opening Pandora’s box: Paper mills in conference proceedings
Paper mills are a growing threat to the integrity of science, yet their penetration in conference proceedings remains underexplored despite conferences being more important than journals in some sc...
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Darth Putin @darthputinkgb.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Which means when we attack Europe, we will bomb kindergartens and hospitals instead.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Schmid aussi est excellent www.letemps.ch/suisse/l-anc...
letemps.ch
L’ancien conseiller fédéral Samuel Schmid: «Je rejette catégoriquement l’initiative sur la neutralité de l’UDC» - Le Temps
Celui qui fut autrefois «le demi-conseiller fédéral de l’UDC» qualifie la lutte politique autour du financement de l’armée de «véritable tragédie». Afin que l’armée soit en mesure d’assurer la défense...
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Can we really take US PISA scores seriously given that its school participation rate is such an extreme outlier? Table 5 in nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa...
nces.ed.gov
PISA 2025 U.S. Results - Methodology and Technical Notes
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
It's hard to not see it as a consequence of the pre-university US school system being pretty terrible on average which forces unis to compensate.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The people behind the initiative for total Swiss neutrality, which is predicted to lose by a lot, are mad they're being called pro-Russian. So they did the "our 'We are not Russian agents' t-shirt..." meme, but with junk mail sent to every household. 🤣
Junk mail presenting an interview with some former ambassador, headlined with a quote that "presenting the proponents of a strong neutrality as Putin's agents is unacceptable" (in French)
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Me when rubber duck debugging works
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Darth Putin @darthputinkgb.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Sponsored in part by Donald Trump.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Every author? I know some PL conferences have tried doing this for senior authors defined as having a bunch of papers already.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
It incentivizes doing a good job once you've signed up to review, but what's the incentive to sign up?
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Ça veut dire quoi en pratique cet award français ?
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Finally a productive use for AI chatbots
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Today in "things that only happen in English"...
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Can you get more "USA in 2026" than "antivax parents accept one vaccine so they can circumcise their sons"?
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Anton Gerashchenko @antongerashchenko.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
The horrific aftermath of last night’s massive Russian attack on Kyiv and Kyiv region with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones. In Kyiv, eight people were killed and seven more injured, including three children. Six of those killed were employees of Ukrainian Railways. 📹Boryspil/Radio Liberty
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Can't have diacritics unless it Starts with a BOM, Vexing!
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Mira of Kyiv 🇺🇦 @reshetz.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Dozens of civilians killed, non-stop perpetual attacks, over 15 air raids per day, I’ve literally lost count, it’s taking a toll on everybody here, I just really want to believe someone out there in the west still cares
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Leonid Schneider @forbetterscience.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Saha now suddenly has nothing to do with that Cofnas signature campaign, to which he personally added Charles "Bell Curve" Murray!
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
TIL that Europe has its own Bir Tawil, the neither Croatian nor Serbian area of Gornja Siga en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia...
en.wikipedia.org
Croatia–Serbia border dispute - Wikipedia
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Which is why... www.cbc.ca/news/enterta...
cbc.ca
Canada will enter the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest | CBC News
CBC/Radio-Canada and the European Broadcasting Union have announced Canada will participate in the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest in Bulgaria.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Reminder 2: Requiring someone paid by funds allocated to a project to work on that project is not a violation of academic freedom. He was a postdoc not a tenured prof. Reminder 3: His writings don't contain real arguments. "Debate his ideas" isn't serious because there's no definition of winning.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
It may be in his head. Like he can't imagine a woman being the former without being the latter, so he excludes large parts of the population without realizing it. Same with having a long list of adjectives instead of admitting he wants a woman he finds pretty but doesn't have objective criteria.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Hilarious that Cofnas couldn't even publicly pretend to be working on the project he was hired for instead of his racist nonsense. (And a reminder that the department was strongly against his appointment and considered him unqualified for that project.)
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Reminder that his department stated they were not happy with one of their professors hiring him as a postdoc because they felt he was not qualified for that project and generally problematic bsky.app/profile/ptrb...
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Yeah but that's only for friendly cats, no? I figured since the cat being discussed is a bully it seems unlikely 😅
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
If it's like the one my parents used to have, a sufficiently strong cat can force its way through. Which was more of a feature than a bug in the case of their half-Norwegian forest cat who had a habit of losing the collar with the door-opening chip.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Probably depends on the airline and their IT competence. Went to Canada via Germany this spring, after doing the passport check in Germany we had to queue again so airline agents could look at every passport and write down which nationality was in each seat. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
December of last year, it wasn't. Flying in a couple weeks, already checked in online, no such check. I assume the govt has some kind of system airlines can query without having to ask you.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
( @mkunesova.bsky.social has an account now ^^ )
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Samuel Moore @samuelmoore.org · 17/08/2026
Helpful reminder from Elsevier that they have the "legal power" to do what they want with your journals. You have the collective power to take your editorial work elsewhere.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
It's somehow not the only instance of "news including a suicide related to Cambridge's refusal to investigate itself" *this week*! www.theguardian.com/education/20...
theguardian.com
University of Cambridge whistleblower who reported alleged bullying wins employment tribunal
Prof Wyn Evans, who raised concerns over treatment of female staff at Institute of Astronomy, was subject to ‘baseless’ investigation, judge rules
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Do we even have evidence he was autistic?
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Also insecurity about their own "work". You can look up the article-shaped writings of Cofnas or his current advisor de Vries, they're pompous and hollow.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
The kind of strong societal impact one can expect from someone who argues for... *checks notes* the right to be naked, the abolition of job interviews, and states rotating their official religion throughout the year scholar.google.com/citations?us...
scholar.google.com
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
That's got to be it, the postdoc under the people list isn't at the uni anymore. Doesn't look like de Vries keeps his websites up to date; the link to his lab's page is dead, his own personal website doesn't mention this project...
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
I wonder why that might be 😬 Meanwhile his advisor proudly has the "Prof. Dr." title research.flw.ugent.be/en/bouke.dev...
research.flw.ugent.be
Prof. Dr. Bouke de Vries | Faculty of Arts and Philosophy - Research Portal
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
I originally thought the same but it turns out Cofnas was hired as a postdoc, not faculty, so this part does make sense.
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Russia's ask was that countries bordering it should not be able to defend themselves. You think had they agreed to that, Russia wouldn't have invaded?!?
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Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
New blogpost deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/08/acce... inspired by recent depressing experience as a peer reviewer. AI-generated #fraud is getting very hard to detect. #peerreview
deevybee.blogspot.com
Acceleration of the arms race between fraudsters and honest researchers
I was recently asked to review a paper that piqued my curiosity. From the abstract it sounded as if it was a secondary analysis of a datas...
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
As a hack you can check whether "computer.org" + DOI resolves (after redirects) to a 20x or 40x.
doi.ieeecomputersociety.org
CSDL | IEEE Computer Society
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Meanwhile IEEE made USD 100 million last year, adding to their USD 1 billion wealth: projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/o... It reminds me of how some research labs would collapse if it wasn't for PhD students doing far more than what their job description says... :/
projects.propublica.org
Institute Of Electrical And Electronics Engineers Inc - Nonprofit Explorer - ProPublica
Since 2013, the IRS has released data culled from millions of nonprofit tax filings. Use this database to find organizations and see details like their executive compensation, revenue and expenses, as...
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
The PPS tracks a 46% retraction rate for tortured phrases, the most obvious sign of problems, at IEEE: dbrech.irit.fr/pls/apex/f?p...: So better than ACM but still <50%. For papers with "angle plummet" (gradient descent), "disarray grid" (confusion matrix), "genuine up-sides" (true positives)...
dbrech.irit.fr
Retraction Rates of Tortured Articles
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
(Also, I understand there's history behind this and I don't mean this against you or anyone else specifically, but IEEE being internally split in societies that don't always communicate with each other and with the mothership doesn't help. Or rather it helps bad actors.)
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
...current processes in CS publishers are geared towards treating each paper as an individual case. Even if you reject 9/10 bad confs at the organization stage, then you've accepted one that will publish 100s of terrible papers, so batch retraction is the only solution. (2/2)
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Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
IMHO, as an author of this preprint, vetting organizers matters less than swiftly issuing mass retractions for the inevitable bad conferences. If there's strong indication that serious peer review didn't happen, the entire proceedings need to be retracted. COPE supports this but... (1/2)
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Jeffrey Brainard @jeffreybrainard.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Hundreds of ads by #papermills, offering authorship on scientific articles for a fee, wound up published in conference proceedings. Are these venues a back-door route that’s too easy? #scicomm #retractions #peerreview @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Hundreds of paper-mill papers peddled in ads were later published
More than one-fifth of some IEEE conferences’ papers appear linked to authorship for sale
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