A long time ago, I abandoned AT&T for the crimson-tinted waters of Comcast. They offered faster service, and they didn’t directly try to hoist a fraudulent contract on me. However, AT&T came around about a year ago with an offer a nerd can’t resist. Symmetrical, uncapped, 1 Gbps residential fiber-to-the-home. No strings attached. No requirements […]
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The UK COVID variant
Happy new year! The new COVID “British” variant (UK B117 strain) isn’t, of course, British. It was merely detected there first. See this thread by Dr. Gurdasani on Twitter, and the linked report from the Imperial College London: https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1344774555718590464 The TL;DR version is that this virus is A. Apparently more transmissible in children, and B. […]
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Relative Citation Metrics
This is the first post in what I hope will be an ongoing series in scientometrics. Today’s topic is an excellent paper -and idea- by Hutchins, Yuan, Anderson, and Santangelo called the Relative Citation Ratio (RCR). The RCR is part of a new wave of citation metrics that aims (broadly speaking) to correct for the […]
I like 3D printing. It’s an interesting, if fiddly, hobby. Quite fun as long as you don’t actually need to print anything, because things go wrong All. The. Time. The filament snaps and your printhead goes on, obliviously, for hours. Data communications break down. The hot end that melts the plastic clogs, and no more feed. There’s […]
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It’s a watch.
Yes, I got an Apple Watch. Sorry, Watch. And people want to know. What is it? How is it? Is it any good? Is it worth the money? All reasonable questions. I’ll answer them as best I can. Once again, there’s already way-too-much written about the Watch all over the internet. I’m not going to rehash […]
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Lies, damn lies, and AT&T reps
This comment by a FB friend on my post about leaving AT&T made me think. That wasn’t the first time I heard lies from AT&T reps, especially retention reps. If I have to guess, the basic explanation of why this happens is pretty obvious. (Warning: complete speculation forthcoming). Retention reps are paid to retain customers. […]
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AT&T doesn’t get it
I’ve been a pretty happy AT&T customer for many years. They’ve never been the cheapest (some MVNO, as of this writing), they’ve never been famous for their network (Verizon, probably), but for me they worked reliably day after day after day. Billing was arcane, but reasonably predictable. As long as I didn’t have to meddle […]
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The iPhone Six Plus
If you want a formal, professional, detailed review of Apple’s new shiny just head to my favorite tech haunt, Ars Technica. This is a personal account. A long, long time ago my wife dragged me to the Apple Store to check out the new, just released iPhone. On the day it was released. It was […]
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The OMICS group strikes again
The OMICS group is still trolling for scientists to join their high-quality events. The latest is an invitation to Cosmetology 2014, a “Dermatology” conference where all of the speakers are cosmetics and hair salon CEOs. I’m sure I could come speak to them. After all, they probably want to hear me talk about academic metrics, […]
The predatory publishers on Beall’s List keep looking for scientists to spam. The newest tactic is a beauty – just connect to people on LinkedIn. I got the request this morning. I took a screenshot from my phone. Yes, “OMICS Publishing Group” is featured on Beall’s List. They send me a lot of spam. As […]