index.md (2459B)
1 --- 2 title: "Weeknote for 2025-W08" 3 description: "Astroterm, environmental impact of NumPy, fed news" 4 date: 2025-02-17T20:57:55-08:00 5 draft: false 6 categories: 7 - Weeknotes 8 --- 9 10 ## Astroterm: a terminal-based star map 11 12 I walk my dog after dark most evenings, and I enjoy the excuse to look at the 13 sky and try to identify the planets and constellations I can. Sometimes I check 14 my work when I get back inside by spinning up 15 [Stellarium](http://stellarium.org/), a wonderful---but fairly 16 heavyweight---open source planetarium. I learned about `astroterm` shortly 17 after its recent 1.0.7 release, and I'm finding it to be a perfect lightweight 18 alternative for this job. I haven't explored every option, but so far the 19 prebuilt binary works flawlessly on my machines. 20 21 [astroterm](https://github.com/da-luce/astroterm) 22 23 ## The environmental benefits of efficiency 24 25 I haven't finished listening to this entire interview with Ralf Gommers of 26 NumPy on the project's development, but this part jumped out at me and felt 27 worth sharing: 28 29 > I realized that by shaving off even one megabyte from a NumPy binary, we 30 > could save the equivalent of 200 intercontinental flights per year in terms 31 > of data transfer. 32 33 Wow! Thanks Ralf (and NumPy's other contributors) for caring. 34 35 [Lessons Learned from NumPy’s 36 Journey](https://quansight.com/post/lessons-learned-from-numpys-journey/) 37 38 ## What's new in the federal government 39 40 I personally don't know many people affected by the recent firing of (nearly?) 41 all probationary employees under the Department of Health and Human 42 Services---a silver lining to the recent hiring freeze, I suppose. Based on 43 what I've seen online, it looks like the _email_ that was sent _over the 44 weekend_ firing my federal colleagues spuriously claimed that every recipient's 45 "knowledge and skills do not fit [their Agencies'] current needs". 46 47 I doubt any such people would read my website, or trust my judgment on these 48 matters, but I believe that there exist some folks who credulously accept that 49 Trump and Musk are firing all these people to make the federal workforce more 50 "efficient". However, it is my **personal opinion** that these moves are 51 costing agencies the very people with the knowledge and skills that our 52 government needs the most. This will cost all of us. 53 54 [HHS is losing thousands of workers under Trump administration probationary job 55 cuts](https://apnews.com/article/trump-job-cuts-health-cdc-0d002fd6f528a7b91ced79628bf68196)