Recent content on A fractal spectrum of tales
Not long ago I had heard from some friends about a slow inflection on the junion positions openings, in the sense that after a time of decline, they finally seemed to start going up again. I have been wondering if this was just an anecdote or if things were finally changing from the better.. Today, I heard from the Morning Weekend italian podcast, that unfortunately this does not seem to be the…
In some cases, the very same companies selling detection tools are also making apps that allow students to cheat, including by writing papers for them or rephrasing text written by others. The apps promise to help them avoid accusations of misconduct by scanning their work before they submit it, allowing them to rewrite passages identified as A.I. Even honest students are often willing to fork…
Geometry is among the anciest branches of mathematics. Ethymologically, it comes from the greek Ge (γῆ), Earth, and Metria (μετρία), measurement. It was literally born to measure lengths, something we are all familiar from early in school, and can hide surprises in the most unexpected places. In this post we will explore how a random thought, born while bringing our kids to school, can transform…
In the previous post on mechanizing mathematics and on its relation with beauty and generative AI , I have extensively discussed my views on how societal and technological changes are shaping mathematics and what I hope we will do to respond and evolve with it. I think the response has arrived.
I attended an interesting meeting recently, where we debated the role of University and how our education should change in a world that is more and more taken over by generative AI. Since I need to write down a few words on this to share with various colleagues, I may as well do it in a blog post. This post integrates my thoughts with ideas that I picked up from the conversation. Where possible, I…
What a council meeting today! Today we had the commissie meetings. These are technical meetings with the University Board and the people in charge of the various projects and memorandums that are presented. They allow us to get into technical details and ask for clarifications that otherwise would be hard to get. There are some very important points on the table this month. Two above all the…
Firefox 149 has quietly started shipping the Rust-based ad-blocking engine from Brave within the browser. For now it’s part of an internal experiment and is not exposed as a browser feature. So, before you do anything, keep in mind that you are already better off if you are using uBlock Origin for instance and keeping Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection on. If you are still curious…
Recently, a friend asked me a variation of the question in the title. I was caught off guard. There is a general impression that participating in university politics makes you more bitter and cynical. I don’t think it is true, yet. But I have to agree that it had an effect. It is hard to understand precisely how it changed me; you would need to ask someone who knows me and knew me before.…
The one thing I truly value of dialogue-based podcasts is that no matter the topics, the conversation often wanders into unexpected and insightful places. This is how this post came to be, specifically when listening to the Signals and Threads episode Why Testing is Hard and How to Fix it with Will Wilson . In these times of international turmoil, financial crunch and decreasing numbers of…
Over the past few years, I have tried to collect useful material to point our students to in my AI policy pages. The idea is to provide nuanced resources that explore uses and misuses and ethical concerns, and promote critical thinking and reflection. This morning, when I came to add a new resource, I was absolutely convinced that I had a blog post about this already. Turns out I did not. So…