YY Ahn
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yyahn.bsky.social
YY Ahn
@yyahn.bsky.social
Prof @ School of Data Science, University of Virginia. Formerly at IU. Networks, data science, and machine learning. https://yyahn.com

🚲🚲🚲
Reposted by YY Ahn
Revision now posted on the ArXiv! We collated and cleaned EVEN MORE DATA. 39M accounts, 365K starter packs, and 2.4B following relationships. All accounts, follows, and starter packs now have timestamps! Check it out at arxiv.org/abs/2505.11608.
February 15, 2026 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
Dozens of researchers will move to France from US following high-profile bid to lure talent. Large proportion worked at Columbia University, which had its grants cut and frozen by the administration of US President Donald Trump. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Dozens of researchers will move to France from US following high-profile bid to lure talent
Large proportion worked at Columbia University, which had its grants cut and frozen by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
www.nature.com
February 10, 2026 at 5:27 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
Friendly reminder: the 2026 Applied Machine Learning Conference is still accepting abstracts for talks and workshops. Visit the call for proposals page for details! I hope to see you here in Charlottesville this April!
Call for Proposals | Applied Machine Learning Conference
A two-day conference bringing together data scientists, AI engineers, and ML practitioners in Charlottesville, VA. April 17-18, 2026.
appliedml.us
February 11, 2026 at 9:45 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
OpenAI fired a female employee for sexual discrimination because she raised questions about the company's pivot toward automated erotica engagement slop
Exclusive | OpenAI Executive Who Opposed ‘Adult Mode’ Fired for Sexual Discrimination
Ryan Beiermeister, who served as the vice president leading OpenAI’s product policy team, had raised concerns about the upcoming launch of erotic content.
www.wsj.com
February 11, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
C'ville folks! Local luminary and lender of e-bikes Josh Carp created this very cool site, which combines videos of public meetings with searchable, linkable transcripts. meetings.cvilledata.org/meetings
Localities
meetings.cvilledata.org
February 11, 2026 at 2:47 AM
Reposted by YY Ahn
Excited for the Networks of Science of Science satellite at NetSCI 2026 this year in Boston!

netscisci.github.io

Be sure to submit by March 4th!
Networks in Science of Science
A NetSci 2026 Satellite Workshop
netscisci.github.io
February 10, 2026 at 2:22 PM
events.humanitix.com/livable-cvil...

Wow you can't miss this conversation @thewaroncars.bsky.social + @jamellebouie.net for Charlottesville! 😆

Thanks you @livablecville.bsky.social! This is awesome!
Livable Cville Presents Life After Cars with special guest Jamelle Bouie
Doug Gordon and Sarah Goodyear will talk about their excellent new book “Life After Cars.
events.humanitix.com
February 9, 2026 at 2:02 AM
Reposted by YY Ahn
NEW: A baby held in immigration detention became so sick, she had to be rushed to a hospital in severe respiratory distress.

“She was at the brink of dying,” a lawyer told me.

But the girl didn’t go home after her 10-day hospital stay; instead, ICE put her and her mother back in lock up at Dilley.
Toddler hospitalized with respiratory failure was returned to ICE detention without prescribed medication, lawsuit says
The 18-month-old was sent back to a South Texas facility after days in intensive care with severe respiratory distress, according to a federal lawsuit.
www.nbcnews.com
February 7, 2026 at 8:25 PM
Mitchell Hashimoto (creator of Ghostty, etc.) wrote an insightful piece on his evolving use of AI tools: "My AI Adoption Journey"

mitchellh.com/writing/my-a...
My AI Adoption Journey
mitchellh.com
February 7, 2026 at 3:48 AM
Reposted by YY Ahn
No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology
She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.
www.nature.com
February 6, 2026 at 9:09 AM
Reposted by YY Ahn
please remember that an “asset” that produces no value can rise in price **only if** someone else is willing to pay more for it.
November 16, 2025 at 11:48 PM
Holy f
🤯“I tasked 16 agents with writing a Rust-based C compiler, from scratch, capable of compiling the Linux kernel. Over nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and $20,000 in API costs, the agent team produced a 100,000-line compiler that can build Linux 6.9 on x86, ARM, and RISC-V.”
opus 4.6 oneshot a C compiler of the course of *2 weeks*
February 5, 2026 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
Please take a few minutes by the end of the day Thursday to email VDOT and City Council in support of the West Main/Ridge intersection plan! Details in this 🧵
🚨 Advocacy opp! VDOT has created a plan to redesign the W. Main / Ridge intersection to improve traffic flow + provide protected bike lanes and many pedestrian upgrades. It’s not perfect but it’s WAY better than what is there now, and it’s designed to get state funding to get it built.
February 5, 2026 at 2:52 AM
Reposted by YY Ahn
Call for applications for the 2nd edition of our Summer School in Computational Social Science.

*** DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION: February 28th, 2026 (firm deadline) ***

css2.lakecomoschool.org
February 5, 2026 at 11:50 AM
Reposted by YY Ahn
Amazing how snow is cleared from parking lots and roads within hours, but bike lanes remain inaccessible and bike racks uncleared for weeks
February 3, 2026 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
If you want to learn more about this topic, check out the very helpful write up by @yyahn.bsky.social

yyahn.com/wiki/article...
Why big-city bike lane lessons (spoiler: they tend to boost local businesses) may still apply to small towns
There are numerous studies showing the positive (or neutral) economic benefits of creating safe bike/pedestrian infrastructure. However, in the context of...
yyahn.com
February 4, 2026 at 1:40 AM
Reposted by YY Ahn
We wish Friends of Downtown understood what all the research shows: making business districts more accessible to customers who bike, walk, and roll is better for business than prioritizing cars.

www.29news.com/2026/02/03/f...
Friends of Charlottesville Downtown pushes against proposal to make W Water St. one-way
A traffic proposal from the Virginia Department of Transportation would bring changes to the Ridge Street and West Main intersection in Charlottesville, and make W. Water Street a one-way road.
www.29news.com
February 4, 2026 at 1:37 AM
Reposted by YY Ahn
Exposure to voter suppression ads on Facebook—which targeted non-White residents of battleground states—was associated with a 1.9% decrease in voter turnout in the 2016 election, representing approximately 4.7 million fewer votes nationwide. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/HJGf50Y7FPG
February 2, 2026 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
The vision of human-level machine intelligence laid out by Alan Turing in the 1950s is now a reality. Eyes unclouded by dread or hype will help us to prepare for what comes next

go.nature.com/4kxrivL
Does AI already have human-level intelligence? The evidence is clear
The vision of human-level machine intelligence laid out by Alan Turing in the 1950s is now a reality. Eyes unclouded by dread or hype will help us to prepare for what comes next.
go.nature.com
February 2, 2026 at 6:30 PM
IMO just separating outlook into two apps—outlook "email" and outlook "calendar"—would instantly improve it 1000%
February 2, 2026 at 6:34 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
Sexual harassment is a horrible impediment to academic research, shutting out talented researchers and slowing scientific progress.

What can we do? I believe we're not helpless; we can improve our communities through practical actions.

Take a look: github.com/maria-antoni...
GitHub - maria-antoniak/fight-harassment-in-research
Contribute to maria-antoniak/fight-harassment-in-research development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
August 22, 2024 at 5:51 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
On August 12, 2017, Heather Heyer was killed by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville.

On August 17, 2017, Noam Chomsky told the Washington Examiner that antifa was “a gift to the far right”.

In between those dates he met with Jeffrey Epstein in Tuscon.
January 31, 2026 at 11:06 AM
Reposted by YY Ahn
Our Satellite Call for #CCS2026 is still open, but the clock is ticking. ⌛️

Want to spotlight a hot topic in #ComplexSystems? Submit your proposal by Feb 10 and help shape our community. Any methods, tutorials, debates, and demos are welcome!

Apply here: bit.ly/3LUgTNc
January 30, 2026 at 2:38 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
The college at which I'm employed, which has signed a contract with the AI firm that stole books from 131 colleagues & me, paid a student to write an op-ed for the student paper promoting AI, guided the writing of it, and did not disclose this to the paper. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...
College approached and paid student to write op-ed in The Dartmouth
The Dartmouth ran the article on Nov. 17 without knowledge that the College had been involved. 
www.thedartmouth.com
January 29, 2026 at 10:40 PM
Reposted by YY Ahn
Microsoft Research NYC is hiring a researcher in the space of AI and society!
January 29, 2026 at 11:27 PM