Alan Barrett

I do not speak on behalf of anybody (unless I explicitly say so). Follow/retweet/like is not endorsement. Also @[email protected]

[Astradhari | अस्त्रधारी @TeeJaySeatlholo]

Introducing PoliceData ZA 🇿🇦

Free, open crime statistics dashboard for South Africa — built because SAPS publishes data as PDFs that nobody can actually use.

CrimeStatsSA charges for this.

Ours is free.

https://t.co/MSDwcvaIFA

[Edderic Ugaddan 💜 @eddericu]

Happy to publicly announce that MasqFit is now available in the iOS App Store! https://t.co/Hb5aNp5oB0

[CR1337 @CR1337]

"I calculated that civilization needs just 50 machines to build everything from scratch.

And what people can't believe, is that I posted the full plans, designs, instructions and how anyone can build these machines for themselves."

[SharonBC,Canada @SharonBurnabyBC]

Headteacher of Hayling College [UK] introduced HEPA filtration units into classrooms 2 years ago. Goal was to reduce illness, keep children & teachers in school & support learning. According to school’s attendance data, the impact has been striking https://t.co/EEStkEivnw

[Alan Barrett @apb_barrett]

@poiThePoi @Duderichy Not built in, but there's @litestreamio which lets you continuously stream updates to multiple replicas without pausing the main database. Behind the scenes it's reading WAL files. https://t.co/GUQNQ5a09L

[Alan Barrett @apb_barrett]

@esrtweet Before CVS there was RCS, and before that was SCCS. I agree that they were not suited to the needs of distributed developers.

[National Institute of Standards and Technology @NIST]

Don't worry: time isn't broken. NIST's backup systems kept providing accurate time even during the power outage in Boulder. Our clocks drifted about 4 microseconds or millionths of a second, which we will correct when power is fully restored.

[0.005 Seconds (3/694) @seconds_0]

There's an entire parallel scientific corpus most western researches never see.

Today i'm launching https://t.co/DSD2mZtuap, a fully automated translation pipeline of all Chinese preprints, including the figures, to make that available.

[Dissident Teacher @educatedandfree]

It is done. Here are clickable links of over 400 books in the western canon, separated by age group. It's meant for all of you who want the best for your child's education and for your own as well.

The good news? Emily Dickinson was right when she said of books: "How frugal is the chariot that bears the human soul."

Link to the library below: ⬇️

[Alan Barrett @apb_barrett]

@JustinWolfers Were the shooters in compliance with existing Australian gun laws? (Were the weapons licensed to the shooters?) If not, then how would changing the rules affect the behaviour of people who are known to break the rules?

[Alan Barrett @apb_barrett]

1000ppm CO2 is bad. The paper linked from the quoted tweet tested commercial pilots' performance at 700ppm CO2, 1500ppm, and 2500ppm. I wish that they had tested more than those three levels.

[Joseph Allen @j_g_allen]

We did a study of active commercial pilots in a flight simulator and we forced scenarios like this (single engine flameout on takeoff). We changed the air quality in the cockpit without them knowing.
—> They were more likely to FAIL tests when CO2 was high

https://t.co/j0fFEtZBKp

[Alan Barrett @apb_barrett]

This is the kind of measurement that should be published for all air filtering fans that are intended to be used close to the face.

[Gerard Hughes ( @ghhughes.bsky.social ) @ghhughes]

My bench test results for the AirFanta Wear wearable air purifier are complete.

I tested and mapped the 0.3 micron filtration at 90 different distances, in 1 cm increments with an AeroTrak optical particle counter. I tested both fan speeds. Fan speed 1 worked best and is shown here.

The Wear is very effective if you are very close to it and on center, which is possible to do because it is positionable. But it is very directional, so much so that you may need to decide whether to point it at your nose or mouth, because that small distance between the two matters.

The Wear is a potentially useful tool that can give significant protection if it is well positioned and you are careful to keep your head in the right position when breathing. This can be a challenge because the Wear is body worn, not head-worn, and does not move with your head to maintain the distance and orientation required for best protection.

It has a 5cm diameter clean air zone at the face that gives respirator-grade protection but past that, 1cm can make the difference between 35x cleaner air and 4x cleaner air as turbulence mixes the filtered air at the edges of the purifier's air stream with unfiltered ambient air.

How much filtration you need is a bit subjective depending on your application. If you want to reduce allergy symptoms, any amount may be useful, with more being even better. And using the Wear in situations where you previously weren't going to take any precautions is all upside.

But you need to be careful about risk compensation, which is when you take on more risk than is warranted by the protection you are getting. Such as deciding to not use the N95 you were going to wear to visit a relative sick with flu other airborne disease and use the Wear instead. The Wear isn't meant to be a 1:1 substitute for respirator grade masks.

Another thing to consider is that N95s help you keep your own germs to yourself The Wear and other personal air purifiers do not. So if your goal is to also protect others from getting sick, then it's better to use an N95 or other high quality source control respirator.

I'll post the "as worn" PortaCount N95 mode testing and more details soon, with tests of the Wear in different orientations and distances, including with head and body motion.

You can check out the heatmap spreadsheet here:

https://t.co/saVX6dW9KI

(h/t to @RolandSB13 for suggesting N95 mode PortaCount testing for the as worn tests that I'll be posting.)

[Alan Barrett @apb_barrett]

@RhysSullivan Aider (https://t.co/BVRAo25nfY) seems fairly successful at prompting the underlying models to output diffs. It sometimes has to iterate when the format is wrong.

[Open Secrets ZA @OpenSecretsZA]

We have been gagged! We cannot say by who or why. Attempts to silence public-interest journalism threaten everyone’s matters of public interestt. We’ll challenge this order with our attorneys at PowerLaw Africa. More information to follow.
https://t.co/ScQDsMPkEu

[Alan Barrett @apb_barrett]

This is a terrible idea. It's OK to give a warning, or have a hard-to-find setting that needs to be changed, but bad to prohibit users from installing apps at their own risk.

[EFF @EFF]

No one, no matter their age, should have to hand over their passport or driver’s license just to access legal information and speak freely. https://t.co/DeJmS51dRB

[EFF @EFF]

Zero‑Knowledge Proofs let users prove they are over 18 without exact birth dates, but they don’t stop verifiers from collecting information like your IP address. These alone aren’t enough to protect privacy and shouldn’t be pushed forward without proper protections in place. https://t.co/8yoNgRvD1U

[Alan Barrett @apb_barrett]

Addendum: It's important that privacy goes both ways. No site should know your ID, and nobody with your ID should know which sites you use, nor be able to figure it out. Zero knowledge, as I said in another post.

[Alan Barrett @apb_barrett]

Governments will not give up on their nasty proof of age ideas. We need a technological solution that preserves privacy while proving credentials such as age. Let them know that your age is more than N years, but don't let them know your name or other identifying information.

[exlawyer @exlawyernft]

Here's what's probably going to happen:

1. Multiple countries other than the UK will demand age verification to access "adult content"

2. VPN usage will spike

3. Those countries will then outlaw VPNs claiming they are doing so "to protect the children and fight terrorism"

4. They will then create voluntary uniform and centralized online IDs to make age verification easier

5. Then the IDs will become required and the government will run AI on all of your internet activity which they can link to you personally

6. Eventually this data will be made available to private companies who will use it to judge your credit worthiness, the prices you pay, etc.

7. Then, the government will begin using the data to "proactively fight crime"

Decentralization of money and infrastructure matters if you value privacy and freedom.

[Alan Barrett @apb_barrett]

Of course the people who want online censorship and ID verification have their own "global network" for coordination, and of course their three-year plan includes "Building regulatory coherence across jurisdictions".

[O w l l i e 🦉 @EternOwllie]

The global online safety regulators network's (GOSRN) 3-Year Strategic Plan for 2025-2027: https://t.co/U6qQvGbD6S