iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 03/09/2025

"[Matt Yglesias] can write whole essays claiming that fracking is good and we need fossil fuel friendly energy policies, dismissing progressives as childish, while never engaging with the scientific literature on the consequences of climate change"

currentaffairs.org

Matt Yglesias Is Confidently Wrong About Everything

The Biden administration’s favorite centrist pundit produces smug pseudo-analysis that cannot be considered serious thought. He ought to be permanently disregarded.

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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 04/08/2025

New blog post on Obstore, fast, multi-provider cloud storage access for Python: developmentseed.org/blog/2025-08...

developmentseed.org

We Needed Better Cloud Storage for Python so We Built Obstore — Development Seed

Obstore solves the friction we kept hitting in cloud-native workflows.

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Fernando Pérez @fernandoperez.org · 24/07/2025

Open source, open science for earth, climate and geospatial science? Coming to #AGU25? Build tools in #Python @jupyter.org? Submit an abstract for this session and come meet us and like minded scientists!

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Emily Atkin @emorwee.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Will Alpine co-wrote Microsoft's manifesto on how AI will be a powerful force for good for climate change In a new interview, Alpine disavows the manifesto, saying he believes Microsoft used his work to distract from the much larger climate harms the company enables through contracts with Big Oil

heated.world

He helped Microsoft build AI to help the climate. Then Microsoft sold it to Big Oil.

A former Microsoft project manager reveals how the tech giant is using AI to help Big Oil drill—and how he and his partner are now pushing for change.

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Henri F. Drake @henrifdrake.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

This is fucking insane. Closing these NOAA labs would obliterate our ability to observe, understand, and forecast the Earth System, from weather systems tomorrow to sea levels 50 years from now.

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Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

NASA is being told to cancel 19 *active* missions to save $6B, which looks to be less than the ICE *hiring/retention* budget going forward. I need people to let that sentence sink into their bones for a minute.

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Michele Tobias, PhD @micheletobias.bsky.social · 28/10/2024

I've been adding new accounts to the Open Source Geospatial starter pack. Who else wants on or off? #gischat #geosky go.bsky.app/PGYLmPG

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Adam Sobel @adamsobel.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

It's outrageous that NASA GISS, one of the best earth & space science labs in the world, is being kicked out of its Columbia home. The outstanding scientists who work there can't say that publicly, but I can. And so can you --- call your reps, esp. (but not only) if you live in NYC or NY state.

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Earthmover @earthmover.io · 14/05/2025

𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝐼𝑐𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑢𝑛𝑘 𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑖𝑑 𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠? Icechunk stores only new or changed chunks for each version —no redundant copies or rewrites. You get instant time travel, branching, and efficient updates, all with negligible storage overhead. More: bit.ly/3F1XFST

earthmover.io

Icechunk: Efficient storage of versioned array data - Earthmover

We recently got an interesting question in Icechunk’s community Slack channel (thank you Iury Simoes-Sousa for motivating this post): I’m new to Icechunk. How is the storage managed for redundant info...

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Excellent post by Brian Davis laying out why doing "Open Science" for data-driven workflows is almost impossible in practice, at least without much better data pipeline tools.

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Abrahm @abrahm.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

The proposed cuts to NOAA cold have profound consequences not just for climate change, but for our national security and the entire economy. Here's what I learned: www.propublica.org/article/trum...

propublica.org

White House Proposal Could Gut Climate Modeling the World Depends On

Potential funding cuts for NOAA and its research partners threaten irreparable harm not only to climate research but to American safety, competitiveness, and national security.

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

It's fun to work with real hardcore software engineers like @functionth.bsky.social who can teach you about database consistency and transactions and all that Scientific data infrastructure should be built on solid foundations like this instead of on piles of janky code written by postdocs...

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Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 19/04/2025

the fact that I've never once thought about making a range request, and yet make them constantly for extremely targeted data pulls, is absolutely an invisible technical miracle

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

I wrote the article I wish I could have read back when I first heard of Zarr and cloud-native science back in 2018. This explains how object storage and conventional filesystems are different, and the key properties that make @zarr.dev work so well in cloud object storage.

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

1/ Flux solves the impedance mismatch between geospatial data providers and consumers. Providers want to manage data lakes stored in cloud-optimized formats like Zarr, but consumers want their applications to keep being fed data in ways they already understand.

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Chelsea Harvey @chelseaeharvey.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Hard to overstate this plan's reach, which touches nearly every aspect of NOAA's work - dissolving its research arm, gutting climate science, diminishing sat observations, boosting fossil fuels. With amazing colleagues Daniel Cusick and @scottpwaldman.bsky.social : www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

politico.com

White House outlines plan to gut NOAA, smother climate research

The agency’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would be “eliminated as a line office,” according to a memo from the Office of Management and Budget.

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

You could also do this for arbitrarily large scientific array datasets using Xarray + Icechunk + R2/Tigris juhache.substack.com/p/0-data-dis...

juhache.substack.com

0$ Data Distribution

Ju Data Engineering Weekly - Ep 78

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Earthmover @earthmover.io · 09/04/2025

📣 Blog post alert! 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈𝐜𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐤 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: 𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝟑'𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐱 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲. This technical post by @functionth.bsky.social dives deep into the internals of how S3 shards data, showing that distributed Icechunk can easily perform 230,000 object reads/sec and beyond. earthmover.io/blog/explori...

earthmover.io

Exploring Icechunk scalability: untangling S3's prefix story | Earthmover

We show Icechunk can scale to extremely high concurrency levels, and explain how it achieves this in modern object stores.

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Several times some database comp sci nerd has suggested to me that you could just do everything in array land using tabular database tools. Whilst they are technically correct that you _could_, this article convincingly shows why you _should not_ - that would be horribly inefficient.

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Ryan Abernathey @rabernat.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

I am so excited to share this new project with NASA and @developmentseed.org . By applying Icechunk and the "virtualization" approach, we can make Petabytes of archival data accessible to high performance analytics. Unlocking NASA's cloud archives will have immense downstream benefits for the world.

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Very proud to be working on enabling this - the potential improvements for NASA (and eventually all fields of science) are enormous, benefiting users and internal staff.

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Earthmover @earthmover.io · 24/03/2025

Register to attend our team's workshop at @cloudnativegeo.org! The workshop will teach attendees how to use the @zarr.dev data format model for cloud-native geospatial datacube analysis. 🗓️ Apr 30-May 2 📍Snowbird, Utah 🔗 Register here: 2025-ut.cloudnativegeo.org

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

With Flux all the data engineers serving climate and weather data for maps, timeseries, and scientific analysis will no longer need to run their own servers

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Wah @robotpirateninja.com · 19/03/2025

You nailed it a while back.

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

As a non-US-citizen living in NYC on an O-1 visa, previously at Columbia University, who has been outspoken on Climate Change, I must say this kind of authoritarian repression has me worried. It makes me much more likely to take my skills and USCIS-approved "Exceptional Ability" to another country.

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

if you find yourself reluctant to support the guy at Columbia because you find some of the politics he espoused distasteful or even abhorrent, you should know that this is exactly the reaction that they hoped for in choosing him as a target for unlawful detention based on political speech.

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Leah Greenberg ❌👑 @leahgreenberg.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

lotta people trying very very hard to win the 2024 election instead of adapting to the rapidly shifting environment

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Andrew Lilley Brinker @alilleybrinker.com · 01/03/2025

Banger.

Withoutboats on Hacker News saying: "Everyone who reads Hacker News should understand that the content your consuming is usually from one of these kinds of people: a) dilettantes, who don't have a deep understanding of the technology; b) cranks, who have some axe to grind regarding the technology; c) evangelists, who are here to promote some other technology. The people who actually drive the technologies that shape our industry don't usually have the time and energy to post on these kinds of things, unless they get so angry about how their work is being discussed, as I am here."

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

All websites that depend on NOAA data should display something like this. earth.nullschool.net

Weather and climate data shown on this website and countless others are at risk.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the U.S. agency responsible for global weather forecasting, hurricane prediction, ocean observation, and many other services vital to public safety. Its satellites, supercomputers, and research teams provide essential data that help us understand our planet and protect lives.

On February 27, the new U.S. administration initiated mass firings at NOAA. These actions are unethical and deeply disruptive to the talented scientists and engineers who dedicate themselves to the public good. The firings, along with expected budget cuts, have serious implications for the availability and quality of weather forecasts produced by the United States. They must be reversed immediately.

Much of the data on this website is downloaded directly from NOAA's servers. In this environment of uncertainty, access could be disrupted at any time. While I'll strive to keep all features on this website functional and switch to alternative data sources if necessary, some datasets have no substitute if they go offline.

If this concerns you, speak up. Share on social media. And if you're in the U.S., contact your representatives.

- Cameron

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

We now have a public slack channel for VirtualiZarr development and questions, feel free to join! earthmover-community.slack.com/archives/C08...

earthmover-community.slack.com

Slack

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

I joined Earthmover! Excited to focus on building tools for sharing scientific data full-time. This is a natural continuation of my work on open-source projects over the last ~6 years, which itself was motivated by seeing the same frustrations in every field of science I've ever worked in.

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Relatively simple but very important quality-of-life improvement when accessing big climate datasets such as ERA5 and CMIP.

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Ryan Abernathey @rabernat.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Next week I'll be giving a webinar on one of my favorite parts of Icechunk--the ability to apply git-style version control to Zarr arrays and Groups. This capability makes data workflows so more safe, robust, and reproducible. Come check it out! (Registration link below.)

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Recording of the talk + lively community discussion is up! youtu.be/GZvJ0H89G0A If you're interested in these data cataloging questions then please also sign up to receive updates here forms.gle/yJY4Xp1Gvjd6...

youtu.be

FROST: Federated Registry Of Scientific Things

YouTube video by Pangeo

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Pangeo @pangeo.io · 12/02/2025

Join us today, February 12 at 4 PM EST for @tegnicholas.bsky.social's presentation and moderated discussion on FROST: Federated Registry of Scientific Things! Everyone is welcome to show up via the zoom link - hope to see you there! discourse.pangeo.io/t/pangeo-sho...

discourse.pangeo.io

Pangeo Showcase: "FROST: Federated Registry Of Scientific Things" (Feb 12, 2025)

Title: “FROST: Federated Registry Of Scientific Things” Speaker: Tom Nicholas (ORCID: 0000-0002-2176-0530) When: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 4 PM EST Where: Launch Meeting - Zoom Abstract: C...

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

I'm giving a talk tomorrow about what's technically required to make a decentralized social network for scientific data a reality! See this discourse link for zoom details: (discourse.pangeo.io/t/pangeo-sho...)

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Adam Sobel @adamsobel.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

People may not understand just how important federal science research funding is to the prosperity of the nation. I tried to explain it, because it's under unprecedented and direct assault.

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Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · 03/02/2025

Indivisible is urging people to visit their senators' local offices between now and Thursday to demand that they use every tool—including denying a quorum and blocking unanimous consent—to fight the confirmation of Project 2025 architect Russell Vought for head of OMB docs.google.com/document/d/1...

THE ASK
This week, between Monday and the vote on Vought, we're asking people from all over the country to plan a visit to Senate State Offices to demand Democrats fight and to hold Republicans accountable for their complicity.
DEMOCRATS MUST USE EVERY PROCEDURAL TOOL TO SHUT DOWN
TRUMP'S AGENDA
Yes, we need Democrats to vote no on Vought's nomination, but no is not enough. Democrats have the power to grind Senate business to a halt and force Republicans to feel the political cost of backing Trump's extremist agenda. Here's how:
1. Deny a Quorum: If Republicans don't have 51 votes in the chamber, Democrats can walk out and shut down Senate business entirely.
2. Block Unanimous Consent: Object to every procedural shortcut, forcing Republicans to take the longest possible route for every step of the confirmation process.
3. Max Out Debate Time: Use all 30 hours of debate on Vought to expose Project 2025, Musk's Treasury takeover, and the funding freeze.
4. Delay and Disrupt: Force roll-call votes, quorum calls, and procedural delays to slow everything down.
5. Blanket Opposition: Democrats cannot continue to vote for Trump's other nominees, helping to install more MAGA loyalists into powerful positions in the federal government while this power grab continues.
No Business as Usual: This is a constitutional crisis. Democrats must abandon the old rules and fight with everything they have.
Bottom line: Senate Democrats must block, delay, and obstruct every step of this process-no cooperation, no easy votes, no fast-tracking Trump's takeover. To learn more about how Senate Democrats can shut down Trump's agenda with procedural hardball, check out our explainer here.

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Eileen Guo @eileenguo.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

So many of my best stories have come from tips. I investigate sketchy technology, very broadly defined: privacy, tech entrepreneurs, surveillance, intersections w/ govt. Read 👇🏽 + then get in touch.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

as always we need to be careful about what it is that we are using criticisms to actually do in the world and not just what political aesthetic we are trying to express

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Must-read - by far the most clear-eyed description I've seen of the severity of what is happening. "[big tech executives] have quickly lined up to negotiate and pay bribes to the president that would allow their companies to operate unimpeded" "separatist province known as California"

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

I've been thinking a lot recently about how one thing science needs generally is a **social network for sharing big data**, so I wrote this. hackmd.io/wKKm4cIDR6a9... 🧵

hackmd.io

Science needs a social network for sharing big data - HackMD

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Andy Kroll @andykroll.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

1/ I want to tell you about Russ Vought, the man Trump just named to run an obscure yet hugely influential gov't office. It's called the Office of Management and Budget. Vought could turn OMB into the tip of the spear for Trump's most far-reaching and extreme policies. Here's how... 🧵🧵🧵

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

This is why it's worthwhile to work on tech for open climate data - this stuff actually matters hugely in the real world. Brianna's call to arms is especially frustrating because we have the technology! It's totally possible for public data to made available to anyone in the world.

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TEGNicholas.bsky.social @tegnicholas.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

This was a very interesting argument, though I think leaves stuff unsaid about the criteria for a social network to be a Good Thing

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Brian Kahn @blkahn.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

For the second time in three months, one of the top climate science institutions is squarely in the path of a climate change-fueled disaster

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