Latest in Comments on Science and Academia

  • Rage against required templates for paper submissions

    Rage against required templates for paper submissions

    Anyone who wants to submit a paper to a computer science conference usually faces two options: Use a TeX template or use a Word template. I haven’t written TeX in thirty years as a first author (I do edit and contribute as a coauthor because it can’t be avoided) and I use Linux and hence…

  • What to make of the high-tech layoffs

    What to make of the high-tech layoffs

    To my disconcerted students: Sadly, the massive layoffs in Silicon Valley and around the world that we are currently observing are a low-frequency yet business-as-usual event. Let me tease apart the different components and draw some conclusions for your career. First of all, you may have observed how they are all happening at once. This…

  • Demonstration that Chat GPT is human

    Demonstration that Chat GPT is human

    Or stupid. Probably both. Enough anthropomorphizing already.

  • Activities vs. phases

    Activities vs. phases

    Clarity in writing is essential for successful scientific communication. A pet peeve of mine is the confusion between activity and phase, when discussing about any process, but specifically research processes based on design science. An activity is something that you do. You applied a method. You searched the web. You went for a walk. A…

  • To review or not to review

    To review or not to review

    I previously reported about a bogus review for a journal submission of ours. The submission had been rejected partly or fully based on a review that obviously had nothing to do with our paper but must have been reused from before. I had complained to the editor, but I had not got any answers for…

  • Creating a ROS 2 distribution (upcoming talk)

    Creating a ROS 2 distribution (upcoming talk)

    I’ll be giving a (somewhat unusual) talk about a new project I’m interested in. The talk will be held at UCSC (California Bay Area) second week of January and UQAM (Montreal) third week of January. HMU for details if you are are interested. Abstract: The Robot Operating System (now ROS 2) is an open source…