Jonathan Z Simon
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jzsimon.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Jonathan Z Simon
@jzsimon.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Auditory neuroscientist, dad, husband, nerd. Incorrigible punster (please don't incorrige me). he/him. Formerly @JonathanZSimon #tfr

[bridged from https://fediscience.org/@jzsimon on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
I got a pair of these tea cups as a holiday present from my daughter. I can verify that they look just as wonderful in person as they do in this photo. https://troet.cafe/@Grantscheam/115501279682677287
Grantscherm (@[email protected])
Angehängt: 1 Bild Endlich eine Tasse, die den Zustand meiner frühmorgendlichen Motivation perfekt widerspiegelt.
troet.cafe
January 6, 2026 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
I made a venn diagram to help you understand Moiré patterns.
January 2, 2026 at 3:58 PM
Nice piece in the Washington Post (gift link) on souls we lost this year https://wapo.st/3LgfGjc
December 28, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
I never knew it was called the “Moylan arrow.” But now that I know, I will call it that. It’s such a super simple, yet super valuable innovation.

https://www.jalopnik.com/2061179/inventor-little-arrow-what-side-fuel-filler-is-on-dies/
The Inventor Of The Little Arrow That Tells You What Side The Fuel Filler Is On Has Died
The idea came to Moylan on a rainy day in April 1986 when he hopped in one of Ford's employee fleet cars to drive to a meeting at another building.
www.jalopnik.com
December 27, 2025 at 5:12 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
When an entire class of technology states on the packaging that it was made in China but intended "for overseas use only," this should really give you pause before plugging it into your network.

You will find this verbiage on a lot of Android TV streaming […]

[Original post on infosec.exchange]
December 23, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
I love that you can pick any SF symbol for the nav bar in @MonaApp
does it make much sense? nope
does it spark joy? hell yeah
December 23, 2025 at 12:14 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
When the study confirms intuition:

"We find that the number of papers cited at least as well as those appearing in high-impact factor journals vastly exceeds the number of papers published in such venues."

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3003532

Decades […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 17, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
Small hint for those who want to upgrade to Mona 7 ultra and use the one-time purchase upgrade offer from Mona Classic Pro Max, if you see the one-time purchase option grayed out, run Mona Classic, then return to the Mona Ultra screen. The option then appeared available to me, and I could make […]
Original post on caneandable.social
caneandable.social
December 16, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
Happy 76th Birthday, Tom Waits!
December 7, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
“Nobody believes that a fourth-percentile and a fifth-percentile grant are clearly of different quality,” Dr. Sarah Kobrin said. “It’s just not that precise a measurement.” […]
Original post on mstdn.science
mstdn.science
December 2, 2025 at 12:54 PM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”

— Charles M. Schulz

#q4td #quote #quotes https://q4td.blogspot.com/2025/11/dont-worry-about-world-coming-to-end.html
“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.” — Charles M. Schulz
q4td.blogspot.com
November 26, 2025 at 5:01 AM
“NIH announces 16% more proposals will be considered for funding!” or, a different take on a recent #nih decision.
https://drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/11/24/nih-announces-16-more-proposals-will-be-considered-for-funding/
drugmonkey.wordpress.com
November 25, 2025 at 10:22 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
You may have seen it over on @Mastodon, but in case not: The new plushies are now live on the shop, alongside restocked and new mugs. Shipping to EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway, and the US. We decided to allow orders from the US, but shipping is what it is (from […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
November 24, 2025 at 3:17 PM
‘A global group of researchers was unable to read the vote tally, after an official lost one of three secret code keys needed to unlock a hyper-secure election system.” Sounds right […]
Original post on fediscience.org
fediscience.org
November 22, 2025 at 11:32 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
November 20, 2025 at 5:27 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
We’re still an absolute skeleton crew of 14 people, competing with teams sometimes 100x as large as ours. To get to our humble team size was only possible through the less than 1% community members who donate to Mastodon, a handful larger donations, & EU grants, all of which we are forever […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
November 18, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
Today I am stepping down from my role as the CEO of #mastodon. Though this has been in the works for a while, I can't say I've fully processed how I feel about it. There is a bittersweet part to it, and I think I will miss it, but it also felt necessary. It feels like a goodbye, but it isn't—I […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
November 18, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
mastodon should fix the bug where typos are invisible in the editing box but obvious on the timeline
November 12, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
I can't believe I didn't know this fact before today - it seems so fundamental.

If you have a real symmetric matrix A, and pick some unit vector x, then x.Ax (the Rayleigh quotient) is bounded by the smallest and largest eigenvalues. So what happens if I pick […]

[Original post on mathstodon.xyz]
November 8, 2025 at 5:17 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
It's my fediversary! Three years ago today I said goodbye to several hundred thousand followers at the nazi bar and joined this community. No regrets! Thanks for making me want to stick around :)
November 4, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
I am awarded a gold medal by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for my work on #curl

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/10/21/a-royal-gold-medal/
A royal gold medal
_The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences_ (IVA, the same org that selects winners for three of the Nobel prize categories) awards me a gold medal 2025 for my work on curl. This academy, established 1919 by the Swedish king Gustav V, has been awarding _great achievers_ for over one hundred years and the simple idea behind the awards is, as quoted from their website: > Gold medals are awarded every year to people who, through outstanding deeds, have contributed to creating a better society. I am of course humbled and greatly honored to have been selected as a receiver of said award this year. To be recognized as someone who **have contributed to creating a better society** , selected by top people in competition with persons of remarkable track records and achievements. Not too shabby for a wannabe-engineer like myself who did not even attend university. There have been several software and tech related awardees for this prize before, but from what I can tell I am the first Open Source person to receive this recognition by the academy. ## Justification The Academy’s justification is given in Swedish (see below) but it should be translated roughly like this: _System developer Daniel Stenberg is awarded the IVA Gold Medal for his contributions to software development, where he has been central to internet infrastructure and free software. Through his work with curl, the tool that is now used by billions of devices worldwide, he has enabled reliable and secure data transfer over the internet. Not just between programs in traditional computers, but everything from smartphones and cars, to satellites and spacecraft._ The original Swedish “motivering”: _Systemutvecklare Daniel Stenberg tilldelas IVAs Guldmedalj för sina insatser inom mjukvaruutveckling där han haft en central betydelse för internetinfrastruktur och fri programvara. Genom sitt arbete med curl, verktyget som i dag används av miljarder enheter världen över, har han möjliggjort tillförlitlig och säker dataöverföring över internet. Inte bara mellan program i traditionella datorer utan allt från smartphones och bilar, till satelliter och rymdfarkoster._ ## The ceremony The associated award ceremony when the physical medal is handed over happens this Friday at the Stockholm City Hall‘s Blue Hall, the same venue used for the annual Nobel Prize banquet. I have invited my wife and my two adult kids to participate in those festivities. ## A _second_ medal indeed Did I not already receive a gold medal? Why yes, I did eight years ago. Believe me, it does not _get old_. This is something I can get used to. But yes: it is beyond crazy to get one medal in your life. Getting _two_ is simply incomprehensible. This is also my _third_ award received within this calendar year so I completely understand if you already feel bored by my blog posts constantly banging my own drum. See European Open Source Achievement Award and Developer of the year for the two previous ones. ## The medal I wanted to include a fine high resolution image of the medal in this post, but I failed to fine one. I suppose I will just have to make a few shots by myself after Friday and do a follow-up post!
daniel.haxx.se
October 21, 2025 at 6:32 AM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
@briankrebs Cool! It is in fact quite amazing now what you can do with a phone camera. I had time to play with this when I was living in Chile working on commissioning a new telescope last year.

I also have a 15pro. If you can use a travel tripod you can get […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
October 20, 2025 at 11:56 PM
Reposted by Jonathan Z Simon
Hacker gets annoyed at Amazon’s Kindle apps, reverse-engineers the Kindle web reader’s protocol (which basically sends each page as a set of glyphs in a deliberately broken variant of SVG). Such obscurity, much security.

https://blog.pixelmelt.dev/kindle-web-drm/
How I Bypassed Amazon's Kindle Web DRM Because Their App Sucked
As it turns out they don't actually want you to do this (and have some interesting ways to stop you)
blog.pixelmelt.dev
October 17, 2025 at 9:01 AM