Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
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borlafgis.bsky.social
Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
@borlafgis.bsky.social
79 followers 440 following 25 posts
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Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
henk.waag.social.ap.brid.gy
"Qualcomm-owned #arduino quietly pushed a sweeping rewrite of its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and the changes mark a clear break from the open-hardware ethos that built the platform."

(source: Adafruit […]

[Original post on waag.social]
Qualcomm-owned Arduino quietly pushed a sweeping rewrite of its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and the changes mark a clear break from the open-hardware ethos that built the platform. The new documents introduce an irrevocable, perpetual license over anything users upload, broad surveillance-style monitoring of AI features, a clause preventing users from identifying potential patent infringement, years-long retention of usernames even after account deletion, and the integration of all user data (including minors) into Qualcomm’s global data ecosystem. Military weird things and more. Several sections effectively reshape Arduino from an open community platform into a tightly controlled corporate service with deep data extraction built in. The most striking addition: users are now explicitly forbidden from reverse-engineering or even attempting to understand how the platform works unless Arduino gives permission. That’s a profound shift for a brand long embraced by educators, makers, researchers, and open-source advocates.
November 20, 2025 at 7:37 AM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
booksofm.com
If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."

There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.
November 20, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
eric.ness.net
Wildfire modeling just got faster. PROPAGATOR uses stochastic cellular automata + rate-of-spread physics to simulate fire behavior in minutes — helping emergency teams make real-time decisions. #GIS #EmergencyManagement #RemoteSensing www.mdpi.com/2571-6255/3/...
November 20, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
eric.ness.net
This looks interesting — Lonboard 0.13 just dropped and now supports H3, S2, Geohash, and even A5 layers. Lots of new ways to explore geospatial grids in Python.
#GIS #GeoPython #Lonboard - github.com/developments...
GitHub - developmentseed/lonboard: A Python library for fast, interactive geospatial vector data visualization in Jupyter.
A Python library for fast, interactive geospatial vector data visualization in Jupyter. - developmentseed/lonboard
github.com
November 19, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
ecoinf-aeet.bsky.social
Seguimos con el #30DayMapChallenge, y hoy tocan... proyecciones! 🌏🌍🌎

En GitHub @iramosgutierrez.bsky.social ha dejado una función con varias decenas de proyecciones!!

Como muestra, PeirceQuincuncial (un favorito personal), Bonne, August y PolyhedralButterfly 😍😍

💻⤵️
github.com/ecoinfAEET/2...
PeirceQuincuncial August
November 19, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
jacobtomlinson.dev
For Python package management I use a mixture of pixi, uv and conda depending on the task I'm doing.

I wrote up a long form post about the history of these tools, why each one exists, and why I settled on these choices in my workflow.

jacobtomlinson.dev/posts/2025/p...
Python package managers: uv vs pixi?
When I talk to people about Python package management in 2025 I see the following tools in active use; uv, pixi, pip, conda, mamba, micromamba and poetry. There may be others, but I don’t hear much ab...
jacobtomlinson.dev
November 18, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
python4data.science
We have updated the section on pytest with many exciting use cases
* on command line options
* on generating markers
* and on parameterising exceptions
python-basics-tutorial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/te...
#Python #Testing #pytest
pytest
pytest is an alternative to Python’s Unittest module that simplifies testing even further. pytest automatically recognises tests based on filenames and functions that start with test_, while unitte...
python-basics-tutorial.readthedocs.io
November 17, 2025 at 6:18 AM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
wildwoods.bsky.social
We can map the world's existing forests with incredible accuracy now, but clearly we cannot (or will not) stop them from disappearing at rapid rates almost everywhere. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌎
Natural forests of the world – a 2020 baseline for deforestation and degradation monitoring - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - Natural forests of the world – a 2020 baseline for deforestation and degradation monitoring
www.nature.com
November 15, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
paolocrosetto.bsky.social
What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.

It's *scientific publishing*.

We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...

Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
November 12, 2025 at 10:31 AM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
gadom.ski
Slides for my @foss4gna.bsky.social NA talk, "Cloud-Native Geospatial Metadata with stac-geoparquet" are at www.gadom.ski/presentation...

I subtitled the talk "Practical STAC", because #stac-geoparquet was motivated by real-world problems found while managing large @stacspec.bsky.social systems
stac-geoparquet
www.gadom.ski
November 5, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
jsrieder.bsky.social
Happy to see my second PhD paper published in Forest Ecology and Management 🎉
#lidar #Europeanbeech #forestry #treemortality
check it out: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Tree size, neighbourhood composition and structure affect individual tree vitality of European beech following extreme drought
The severe drought of 2018/19 caused widespread early discoloration, defoliation and tree mortality in European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), although l…
www.sciencedirect.com
November 6, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
openforest4d.org
We created an #OpenSource automated workflow for multi-temporal #lidar processing to map forest change at scale. Generate canopy height, cover & change products critical for monitoring #wildfire impacts and ecosystem dynamics. Code and example from #Kaibab forest #AZ at github.com/OpenForest4D...
November 5, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
rupertseidl.bsky.social
Global, multi-scale standing deadwood segmentation in centimeter-scale aerial images. Important work by J. Möhring, @cmosig.bsky.social, T. Kattenborn et al. in detecting dead trees across biomes from high resolution aerial images. doi.org/10.1016/j.op...
November 3, 2025 at 6:33 AM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
mdsumner.bsky.social
marimo looks good, some kind of a targets in a python notebook

github.com/marimo-team/...
November 1, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
ibartomeus.bsky.social
When publishing a paper about an R package, how do you ensure the source code is permanently stored? CRAN or GitHub does not grant long-term persistence. Is issuing a DOI via linking GitHub with Zenodo a good idea for R packages? Or are there better ways? Maybe @ropensci.org knows.
October 28, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
luisveci.bsky.social
SNAP 13 is out
Improve SAR geolocation accuracy.
Support for the BIOMASS commissioning phase products and ECOSTRESS Collection 2, improved ICEYE reader, S3 reader and OLCI O2A harmonization. Plus: Naive-Bayes, new Spectral Indices and LERC support.
t.co/mOOnQ6obws
October 31, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
conda.org
Conda ≠ PyPI

Conda isn’t just another Python package manager-it’s a multi-language, user-space distribution system.

In this 3-part series, we explore the fundamental differences between conda and PyPI.

Part 1 is live now 👇
conda.org/blog/conda-i...
#conda #packaging #python
Conda ≠ PyPI: Why Conda Is More Than a Package Manager | conda.org
Part 1 of the 'Conda Is Not PyPI' series—why conda is a multi-language user-space distribution, not just a Python package manager.
conda.org
October 29, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
posit.co
Python users: Get started with Positron, the next-gen data science IDE, using our new video by @sara-altman.bsky.social.

See how to: ✅ Set up virtual environments ✅ Run code in Quarto ✅ Use the Variables Pane ✅ Integrate Git & Posit Connect

Start your #Python workflow: posit.co/blog/first-p...
Your first Python project in Positron - Posit
This walkthrough guides users through setting up a Python project in the Positron data science IDE, detailing the creation of a virtual environment, use of Quarto for analysis, and final deployment to...
posit.co
October 29, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
cedricscherer.com
🦧📉 Why are there colorful apes in my #dataviz workshops?

📸 The photo taken years ago by my friend Richard Strozynski has become a tradition in my client projects and courses.

I like to recolor it with different palettes to show how palette design affects perception.

Thread 👇
A photograph of two apes (mother holds her child) and three recolored versions of the same phtograph using three palettes of different quality.
October 28, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
xaviermorin.bsky.social
📣So happy to share the PhorEau model, combining models of forest dynamics, plant water relations, and process-based SDM = linking ecophysiology, ecology & biogeography 🌳📈💻
gmd.copernicus.org/articles/18/...
➡️ from Tanguy Postic's PhD, with many perspectives to simulate forests under CC
PHOREAU v1.0: a new process-based model to predict forest functioning, from tree ecophysiology to forest dynamics and biogeography
Abstract. Climate change impacts forest functioning and dynamics, but large uncertainties remain regarding the interactions between species composition, demographic processes and environmental drivers...
gmd.copernicus.org
October 23, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
climers.bsky.social
🏆 Congrats to @ruxizotta.bsky.social for the Best Paper Award 2024 from the Faculty of Mathematics and Geoinformation!

🛰️Her VODCA v2 paper advances global vegetation monitoring using multi-sensor microwave data. 🌿
🔗 doi.org/10.5194/essd...

👏 A well-deserved recognition of this impactful work
October 27, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
albertruhi.bsky.social
Our paper on drought & riparian phenology is out in @globalchangebio.bsky.social, skillfully led by PhD candidate Rose Mohammadi! Upshot: #Drought pushes down water tables & shortens tree growing seasons by intermittent streams - and that response is visible from space #timeseries
rosemohammadi.bsky.social Rose Mohammadi @rosemohammadi.bsky.social · 24d
How vulnerable are riparian trees to drought? Using groundwater and satellite data from a California waterhsed, our new paper found that trees by drying rivers lost up to 5 weeks of growing season, suggesting they’re nearing critical groundwater limits.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Groundwater and Remotely Sensed Phenology Reveal Vulnerability of Riparian Trees to Drought
We asked how vulnerable riparian trees are to droughts, examining their water use and growing season timing and duration via groundwater data and satellite imagery. Drought shortened the growing seas...
doi.org
October 27, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
openforest4d.org
Ever wondered what #lidar point clouds reveal about forests? OpenForest4D’s new guide breaks down how elevation, return number, intensity, and classification describe forest structure.
openforest4d.org/lidar-point-...
#pointcloud #laserscanning #forestry #geospatial
A lidar point cloud along central California’s Big Sur coast displaying elevation, classification, return number, and intensity. The airborne lidar point cloud was collected in 2022 has a point density of 85 points/m2.
October 27, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Reposted by Ignacio Borlaf-Mena
emily.space
uv makes installing and using Python *so* easy! It works on pretty much any computer and it's lightning fast. 🔭☄️ #astrocode

If you're still using conda, pyenv, or... basically any other tool, then I can *highly* recommend switching:
uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade - Blog - Dr. Emily L. Hunt
Released in 2024, uv is hands-down the best tool for managing Python installations and dependencies. Here's why.
emily.space
October 24, 2025 at 1:03 PM