Register by 11:59pm on 19 April to vote in the following elections on 6 May:

• local government elections and referendums in England

• Police and Crime Commissioner elections in England and Wales

• Scottish Parliament elections

• Senedd (Welsh Parliament) elections

• Mayor of London and London Assembly elections

Register Online. It usually takes about 5 minutes. Start Now.

Labels: Edinburgh, Green, Independence, Politics, Scotland, UK, Yes!

# posted by Philip Wadler @ 4:33 PM 0 comments

We propose that SIGPLAN form a Committee on Conference Data. The committee would be made up of: one organizing-committee representative from each of the flagship SIGPLAN conferences, one early career representative, and, crucially, a professional data collection specialist hired by SIGPLAN. The group would identify and collect key data that is pertinent to conference organization, especially with respect to physical versus virtual conference formats. The committee would make data-driven recommendations to SIGPLAN organizers based on the collected data and guided by core tenets such as community building, inclusivity, research dissemination, and climate responsibility. We realize that this is not a small request, but we are confident that it is both necessary and achievable. If the committee were to form by May 1, 2021, it would be able to start collecting data at PLDI 2021 and continue through the next two years, providing enormous clarity for SIGPLAN organizers at a time when so much is unclear.

Labels: Academia, ACM, Climate Change, Covid-19, SIGPLAN

# posted by Philip Wadler @ 5:16 PM 0 comments

[An open request from three of my students. Please try it out! I'm impressed with what they have achieved.]

We'd like to invite you to take a look at Mandelbrot Maps - an interactive fractal explorer!

https://jmaio.github.io/mandelbrot-maps/

This has been my honours project for the past two years, and this year it's also been updated with contributions from Fraser Scott and Georgina Medd. (cheers!)

There's a [Help] menu with information about the various available options: hopefully you'll learn something new!

If you could take a few minutes to look around, we'd really appreciate it! 

Feel free to leave feedback either through the button on the website ([Settings] > [Info] > [Feedback]) or directly:
https://forms.office.com/r/uRQwkQvVpL

(This study was certified according to the Informatics Research Ethics Process, RT number 2019/22202)

Thank you!

Joao

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

Labels: Graphics, Mathematics, Recursion, Web

# posted by Philip Wadler @ 4:22 PM 0 comments

Marco Patrignani explains why and how to use colour in your technical papers. The guidelines for making highlighting useful even for colour-blind folk are particularly helpful.

Labels: Academia, Graphics, Programming Languages, Writing

# posted by Philip Wadler @ 7:37 PM 1 comments

Wealth Shown to Scale and Incarceration in Real Numbers, two intriguing infographics from Matt Korostoff.

Labels: BLM, Politics, US

# posted by Philip Wadler @ 3:49 PM 0 comments

Maria Stoian muses on how our reaction to Covid-19 predicts our reaction to the Climate Crisis. Simultaneously downbeat and upbeat. Courtesy of the Nib.

Labels: Climate Change, Covid-19, Politics

# posted by Philip Wadler @ 2:10 PM 0 comments

Entrepreneur and software developer Bert Hubert explains the structure of the vaccine, with plentiful analogies to computing. There are some amazing hacks in there! Thanks to Lennart Augustsson for the pointer.

Welcome! In this post, we’ll be taking a character-by-character look at the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine.

Now, these words may be somewhat jarring - the vaccine is a liquid that gets injected in your arm. How can we talk about source code?

This is a good question, so let’s start off with a small part of the very source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, also known as BNT162b2, also known as Tozinameran also known as Comirnaty.

Labels: Computing, Covid-19, Science, Technology

# posted by Philip Wadler @ 10:39 AM 0 comments

https://apply.workable.com/io-global/j/965433F163/ 

IOG, formerly known as IOHK, is hiring two new members for the Plutus team, currently led by Manuel Chakravarty and Michael Peyton-Jones. One of the posts is for a new leader, but don't worry, Manuel and Michael are both staying; the other post is someone to work on developer relations and communications. People working with the Plutus team include myself, Simon Thompson, and John Hughes. Plutus is a library for Haskell that provides smart contracts for Cardano. Ada, the coin of Cardano, is (as of last week) the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, at USD$32 billion.

Labels: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Functional Programming, Haskell, IOHK

# posted by Philip Wadler @ 3:07 PM 0 comments

By my colleagues at the University of Glasgow, Muffy Calder and Quintin Cutts. Stunning application of animation and poetry. Text with links here.

Labels: Academia, Computing, Covid-19

# posted by Philip Wadler @ 3:06 PM 0 comments

More here, here, and here. Spotted via Boing-Boing.

Labels: Architecture, Lego

# posted by Philip Wadler @ 2:44 PM 0 comments