Martin Tomko
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dinomirmt.bsky.social
Martin Tomko
@dinomirmt.bsky.social

Understanding and supporting people in their spatial interactions through computational #spatial #data #science #giscience #melbourne 🛶🚵‍♂️🥾🏊‍♂️🐕
@unimelb, own views. support 🇺🇦 www.tomko.org

Computer science 54%
Engineering 26%
Pinned
Need to identify semantic regions on 2.5D terrain? Read our "LMSeg: an end-to-end geometric message-passing network on barycentric dual graphs for large-scale landscape mesh segmentation" #mesh #segmentation #terrain #3D #culturalheritage #giscience doi.org/10.1080/1548...
LMSeg: an end-to-end geometric message-passing network on barycentric dualgraphs for large-scale landscape mesh segmentation
Semantic segmentation of large-scale 3D landscape meshes is critical for geospatial analysis in complex environments, yet existing approaches face persistent challenges of scalability, end-to-end t...
doi.org
The world needs more science journalists, especially those with mad skills and ethics training. All that is provided for free by @theopennotebook.bsky.social, but we need your help. Join me in donating to support these amazing resources: www.theopennotebook.com/15thannivers...
The Open Notebook's 15th Anniversary - The Open Notebook
For 15 years, The Open Notebook has been the trusted home for journalists worldwide who cover science. What started as an experiment to demystify the craft of science writing has grown into a vital, g...
www.theopennotebook.com

President Trump’s spiteful defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize Board may backfire, as the latter is now demanding Trump’s psychological records, prescription medication records, and tax returns in the discovery process. trib.al/LUCScTR

Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding
With so little money to go round, the costs of competing for grants can exceed what the grants are worth. When that happens, nobody wins.
www.nature.com

Reposted by Martin Tomko

Watch, listen, or read wherever you get your podcasts!

Apple:
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Spotify:
open.spotify.com/episode/2FzG...
The first cancer vaccine
open.spotify.com
Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

Reposted by Martin Tomko

There are more than four million guns in Australia, and Australia Institute research shows that a gun is stolen every four hours.

📺 Research Director Rod Campbell on CNN
@rodcampbell.bsky.social #auspol
"Babies in the randomized, controlled trial will or will not receive the vaccine at birth...

"It is a breach of scientific ethics to withhold an intervention that has been proven safe and effective."

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
US plan for $1.6m hepatitis B vaccine study in Africa called ‘highly unethical’
Experts decry ‘neocolonialist’ Guinea-Bissau study after Trump administration changed advice for US babies
www.theguardian.com
This is WILD.

Power goes out in San Francisco and the robot cars, needing the lights to "self" drive, all stop at once, blocking streets and emergency vehicles - which are needed more than ever in a black out!

We knew AI causes power outages. Turns out it also makes them worse by being stupid.
Waymo has halted service in San Francisco after numerous videos & images showed its autonomous cars snarling traffic during the blackout.

With traffic lights down, Waymos across the city stopped dead in their tracks at intersections.

missionlocal.org/2025/12/sf-w...
Waymo halts service during massive S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
Waymo stopped its service across San Francisco on Saturday after numerous autonomous vehicles caused traffic jams in the city.
missionlocal.org

Good idea!

Also, survivor bias? Those later in the career are only those that were actually successful with the strategy...

Reposted by Martin Tomko

We’re seeking a commitment from Opposition Leader Sussan Ley that her party will not push to introduce any religious criteria or test for immigrants, following comments from an MP wanting ‘faith’ made an ‘Australian value’ that immigrants needed to support. More: rationalist.com.au/rsa-question...
RSA questions Opposition Leader over Liberal MP’s call for immigrants to support ‘faith’ as an ‘Australian value’ | Rationalist Society of Australia
The Rationalist Society of Australia is seeking a commitment from the federal Opposition Leader, Sussan Ley, that her party will not push to introduce any religious criteria or test for immigrants ent...
rationalist.com.au
As we crawl to the end of another unhinged year in Australian research, on behalf of the nation I would just like to say to @arc-tracker.bsky.social

❤️❤️❤️THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE❤️❤️❤️

Have a well-earned break, whoever and wherever you are.

But please don't leave
Today I received FOUR death notifications for people in ICE custody. That's 30 deaths since Trump took office. It's appalling & unacceptable.
 
ICE is required—by law—to ensure detainees are safe & their basic needs are met. It's clear this isn't the case. We NEED answers.

Reposted by Martin Tomko

The White House claims the vote to rename the Kennedy Center was “unanimous.” That is false. I was muted on the call and denied the opportunity to speak or register my opposition. That is not consensus. That is censorship.
Preprint for "Foundations of Causation", from my 2024 talk at the Minnesota CPS. I've been saying this offhand for years, so it was good to finally get specific and into the weeds about what it means to branch out a new science of causation.

#philsky #philsci
philpapers.org/rec/ANDFOC-2
Holly K. Andersen, Foundations of Causation - PhilPapers
Drawing on historical episodes where new fields of science branch out of philosophy, I offer six distinctive developments involved in such episodes as a template that can be applied to the ...
philpapers.org
Introducing {geosam}: an R toolkit for Meta's Segment Anything Model 3

- Detect objects in satellite imagery with text prompts
- Interactive Shiny tools with draw & click-to-identify
- Works with Mapbox, Esri, MapTiler
- Use regular images too!

walker-data.com/geosam/

Reposted by Martin Tomko

coca-cola single-handedly created the single-use plastics crisis but they're not done, so they're creating the single-use digital slop crisis

Reposted by Martin Tomko

All references and calcs here

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
CokeSlop Calcs
docs.google.com
Coke admitted they had to generate 70,000 video clips for their latest Christmas slopvertising

BY MY CALCS:

- 4x the CO2 impact of a normal ad project
- 1 day of 2-5 medium hospitals
- 1 month of 250 households
- 44 years of continuous Netflix viewing

futurism.com/artificial-i...

This is disgusting!
The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.
7 Dems joined House Republicans in voting for a bill that would enable ICE agents to strip search 12-year-olds.

Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Don Davis (NC-01)
Laura Gillen (NY-04)
Jared Golden (ME-02)
Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34)
Adam Gray (CA-13)
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03)

Reposted by Martin Tomko

And the BoM have issued a Heatwave warning for Victoria.

Summer has arrived.

#MelbWeather
The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.
There goes peer review. It was always their plan to politicize the process. www.science.org/content/arti...
NSF pares down grant-review process, reducing influence of outside scientists
Memo cites overburdened staff, but some say move also aims to elevate White House priorities
www.science.org

Reposted by Martin Tomko

This is hilarious!! Trump is suing the Pulitzer Prize Board for defamation. For giving NYT and WP awards for coverage of the 2016 campaign and Russia. Trump, of course, claiming fake news

Now it’s in the discovery phase 🤣 He’ll drop it very soon.

I like that I do not need to refer to syntax manuals much...

Reposted by Martin Tomko

At least 12 people are dead after two gunmen opened fire at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in an attack authorities said targeted the Jewish community during a major holiday celebration. politi.co/4oV403l
12 dead in Bondi Beach after gunmen fire on Jewish Hanukkah celebration
The attack targeted the Jewish community, Premier of New South Wales Chris Minns said.
www.politico.eu