IndPhysiker

há 4 anosdiscuss

This makes me remember working in a grocery store as a kid where people would buy steak with their WIC and food stamps that might fill one or two meals. Could it go much farther by buying different things? Of course, but that wasn't as enjoyable, so consequences fall where they must. My worry with UBI is that unless people's choices are removed through a tangled web of attached strings and reporting, the UBI is going to be spent on non-essentials shortly after funds are made available each period and then the story will turn to needing more money as the first UBI isn't enough. The cynic in me says that UBI will just give more money to people without the capacity for managing their money, which is not going to lead to any improvement in their station, only more consuming. Removing the choices just further destroys a free society, but enables waste on a massive scale. I like a good safety net with job training programs should people fall down, but I have about as much hope in being able to dunk as I do that people will suddenly start making good choices when unearned money appears in their wallets each month.

IndPhysiker

há 5 anosdiscuss

I'm going a different way here since the important metric is that out of 5800 tenured faculy, only 1500 professors signed their petition (article did not specify tenured status of those who signed). As an academic, I have to say this is largely about preparing a way for new profs to reach tenure. With most departments having a set headcount, it has always been the case with aging profs to slow down their efforts and ride the train to emeritus status. That makes for frusterating roadblocks to one's career. In the sciences, these are becoming more far between as ambitious profs don't slow down as there is still ground to achieve more personally through accolades, industry and professional society awards, etc. Most of the aged profs I've worked with in the past 5 years are still cranking out PhD students and bringing in funding.

IndPhysiker

há 5 anosdiscuss

It isn't an overstep, but is probably just a weird method for compliance. The Export Administration Regulation is a US federal law that includes penalties for supporting boycotts of US trade partners and allies. Normally this is directed towards anti-Israel boycotts in the middle east where legislation in several countries prohibit trade with organizations that also trade with Israel. If a US entity adheres to that country's boycott by refusing business with Israel, then they are in a legally actionable position. I don't personally know how Texas may be notifying people about compliance requirements, but this is actually pretty standard language in many contracts involving export compliance sections.

IndPhysiker

há 5 anosdiscuss

It varies depending on the subject area and publisher. Some are free to publish, some have a few hundred dollars a page or more for color (as though they actually print them still), where others might charge thousands to balance the operation costs of a printing company along with journal subscribers. Some journals essentially demand a first born.

IndPhysiker

há 5 anosdiscuss

Many for-profit journals are now giving authors a few freebies of final versions to share with friends as the PDFs have DRM included. Old school researchers back before social media would use new articles they can't access as a reason to introduce themselves and build the professional network, which I sincerely hope is still going on.

IndPhysiker

há 5 anosdiscuss

Physics PhD here, I would extend your comment that 90% of CS papers are garbage to include engineering and physics as well. The vast majority of those are what people refer to as "status updates" where long term projects provide minor updates that don't really contribute anything to the general knowledge but exist solely to advertise their work and provide a bullet point in their quarterly report to the funding agency. This is also added to the fact that most PhD programs require a candidate to publish at least 3 articles in peer-reviewed journals, where some programs even discriminate based on the impact factor, further entrenching the paid-for journals as open access are not ranked as highly. I personally really like the IEEE journals as they are cheap ("free" with IEEE membership to a given society) and reasonable high quality (exceptions as always of course). Years ago I looked at trying to get my department a subscription to the major Elsevier journal in our industry and was quoted almost $6,000/yr, mostly for historic papers published back in the 50's, 60's and 70's where authors were long since dead and the utility mostly on filling in gaps in modern theory. While neither bandwidth nor website design infrastructure are free, high access costs are unnecessary and just equate to greed IMHO.

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