English Edition: there is a (relatively) new kid on the block - of open source package managers. It's called Pixi: and in this episode I talk to Raniere de Silva (GESIS) and Wolf Vollprecht (Prefix - the company behind Pixi), what the tool brings to the table.

Links:

• https://prefix.dev/ the open source company making pixi available
• https://pixi.prefix.dev/latest/ the package manager
• https://github.com/prefix-dev/pixi
• https://mamba.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ mamba package manager

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: In a follow up about "unusual" computers I want to focus on field programmable gate arrays - FPGAs. With my guest and former colleague at UCL, Michael McLeod, we talk about what they are, where they are used and what's so special about working with them.

Links:

• https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/field-programmable-gate-arrays
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array
• https://fpga.epcc.ed.ac.uk
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_description_language
• https://nandland.com/the-go-board/ the Go Board affordable FPGA for testing and learning
  • https://nandland.com/ Nandland have more resources on FPGA
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xilinx
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20070412183416/http://filebox.vt.edu/users/tmagin/history.htm
• https://www.amd.com/en/products/adaptive-socs-and-fpgas/fpga.html
• https://space.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/2024-10/FPL_13_B112a.pdf Paper discussing a use case of hardware preservation with FPGAs
• https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/FPGA-relatedWork/RISC.pdf Niklaus Wirth, the creator of the Pascal language, did some work with FPGA as well
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_decision_process Markov decision process
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Deutsche Ausgabe: ICON, das große Software Paket für Klimamodellierung, Wettervorhersagen und andere Anwendungsbereiche, ist auf gutem Wege Open Source Software zu werden. Aber daß das nicht immer ganz so leicht ist, werden uns in dieser Folge Hendryk Bockelmann und Jan (Jeff) Frederik Engels vom Deutschen Klimarechenzentrum und Linda Schlemmer vom Deutschen Wetterdienst erzählen.

Hier ein paar Links:

• https://www.dkrz.de/en/communication/news-archive/icon-open-source
• https://www.icon-model.org/icon_model/getting_started
• https://gitlab.dkrz.de/icon/icon-model
• https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL31FjyhyyqwkvOaj_e-EbJa4F0Z0n8yGU online courses
• https://mpimet.mpg.de/en/communication/news/icon-team-receives-international-recognition-for-groundbreaking-achievements-in-high-performance-computing
• https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/news/archive/announcements/2025/icon-team-wins-gordon-bell-prize-for-climate-modeling

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: preserving digital data has become essential for archives and libraries, as we have seen an explosion of content. I met with various experts in the field who talk to me about the different aspects and facets of saving our data for future generations to come: Thomas Ries (University of Austin, Texas, US), Nanna Bonde Thylstrup and Katie Mackinnon (University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Andy Jackson (Digital Preservation Coalition, UK) and Laurisa Sastoque Pabon (University of Southampton, UK).

Some links to tools and sites mentioned in the episode:

• https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pronom/format/proformatsearch.aspx?status=new Pronom database by the National Archive in the UK
• https://www.dpconline.org/ Digital Preservation Coalition
  • https://bit-list.dpconline.org/ list of 'endangered digital material'
• https://thorsten-ries.net/ Thorsten Ries home page
• https://www.southampton.ac.uk/research/institutes-centres/digital-preservation-southampton Digital preservation at the Uni. Southampton
• https://arcticworldarchive.org/ Svalbard Arctic World Archive
• https://piql.com/ piql data preservation
  • https://github.com/piql GitHub Piql - the archiving file format
• https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/434376-preserving-today-s-digital-data-for-tomorrow
• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10042-w storing data in glass/silica
• https://unlocked.microsoft.com/sealed-in-glass/ Project Silica
• https://english.umd.edu/directory/matthew-kirschenbaum Kirschenbaum papers on recovering digital texts etc.
• https://www.kali.org/tools/foremost/ the open source "forensic" data tool
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls going back in time: a link with a description of the Dead Sea scrolls

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: Say hi to the new fellows of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) - Anne Lee Steele, Cass Gould van Praag, Samantha Ahern and Sara Villa. In this episode they tell us all about the plans for their fellowship. And it covers a wide range, as you will hear.

Links:

• https://www.software.ac.uk/fellowship-programme/anne-lee-steele Anne-Lee
• https://www.software.ac.uk/fellowship-programme/cassandra-gould-van-praag Cass
• https://www.software.ac.uk/fellowship-programme/samantha-ahern Samantha
• https://www.software.ac.uk/fellowship-programme/sara-villa

I'd like to thank the SSI for supporting this show.

Don't forget there is the Collaborations Workshop, organised by the SSI, coming up at the end of April: 28-30 April 2026 in Belfast.

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Deutsche Ausgabe: In dieser Folge machen wir uns auf die Suche nach dunkler Materie - mit dem ALPS II Experiment am Deutschen Elektron Synchroton in Hamburg. Mit meinen Gästen Axel Lindner und Sven Karstensen tauchen wir in die Welt der Axionen, mysteriöse Teilchen, und wie man sie aufspüren kann. Daneben gibt es, wie immer in der Teilchenphysik, spannende Fragen zu Software und Datenaufarbeitung. Viel Spaß beim Zuhören.

Links:

• https://alps.desy.de/ Die Home Page des ALPS Projekts
• https://www.desy.de/research/facilities__projects/alps_ii/index_eng.html
  • https://alps.desy.de/our_group/ Die ALPS II Kollaboration
• https://darkmatter-alps.desy.de/dark-matter.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: how are real numbers e.g. 0.1 represented on computers? What can go wrong with using their representation in calculations? And does it matter? These and other questions are the subject of this ByteSized episode with my guests Prof. Ulrich Ruede (University of Erlangen-Nuernberg), Andreas Herten and Edoardo di Napoli (both Research Centre Juelich).

Links:

• https://www.h-schmidt.net/FloatConverter/IEEE754.html an online tool to convert numbers into their bit/hex equivalent - also showing the rounding errors
• https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/103162.103163 Goldberg Paper: What every computer scientist should know about floating points
• https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.02492 revisiting Goldberg, Vincent Lafage
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754 the Wiki entry on the IEEE 754 standard for floating points (the standard itself is not accessible for free)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_in_the_last_place definition von "ulp"
• https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/floating-point-8-an-introduction-to-efficient-lower-precision-ai-training/ NVidia’s take on lower precision numbers
• https://indico.esa.int/event/445/contributions/8473/attachments/5559/9378/gernigon_cedric_EDHPC2023.pdf list of lower precision formats
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_remainder_theorem Chinese remainder theorem

I would like to thank the STEP-UP project in the UK for supporting this series of ByteSized episodes.

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: for this episode we're going "up North", to visit the Research Software Engineering team of the University of Newcastle. The team has been hosting the UK RSE Conference in 2022 and 2024 and here is a chance to meet at least some of the people behind it all.

Links:

• https://rse.ncldata.dev/ Team homepage
  • https://rse.ncldata.dev/team
• https://www.litandphil.org.uk/ oh and the great "Lit and Phil" library in Newcastle for good measure

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/