The license for Mathematica has been expanded temporarily to an unlimited campus license for the whole of 2023: all employees and students may use Mathematica unlimitedly in 2023 on the RU network. For home use, one must therefore use a VPN. The software can be found on the C&CZ Install disc. During the installation you must specify: License server: mathematica.science.ru.nl License: L4601-6478 The introductory course “Mathematica Basic Principles: An Introduction” can be taken for free at CANdiensten in Amsterdam. ...

RU ILS Connectivity is replacing network access switches in FNWI. This causes short disturbances of network connectivity for wired and wireless systems on several evenings between 19:00 and 23:00 hours for affected wings/locations, i.e. connected to a specific SER (Satellite Equipment Room). For wired network outlets, one can check whether they will be affected by looking at the outlet number (starting with the SER number for affected systems) or visiting FNWI ethergids. ...

Science Jitsi Security As of January 18th, 2023, starting a jitsi meeting room requires you to authenticate with your science login and password. Guests do not require any authentication once the session is running. Jitsi is a collection of free and open-source multiplatform voice (VoIP), video conferencing and instant messaging applications for the web platform, Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android, of which Jitsi Meet videoconferencing is the most well-known.

A new version of Mathematica (13.2.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica. The installation files for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the Install-disk, also for older versions of Mathematica. Installation and license info can be requested from C&CZ. According to the Mathematica Quick Revision History: “Version 13.2 introduces new functionality in astronomy and compilation, as well as substantially enhancing functions for machine learning, trees, mathematical computations, video and more. This release also includes over a thousand bug fixes, documentation enhancements and significant performance improvements.”

The C&CZ administered “4 concurrent user” license for Maple has been continued until December 31, 2023. The latest version of Maple, Maple2022.2, for Windows/macOS/Linux can be found on the Install network share and has been installed on C&CZ managed Linux computers. License codes can be requested from C&CZ helpdesk or postmaster.

For the majority of the services C&CZ uses free software and open source software. Therefore, some time ago C&CZ decided that each year the employees vote which projects receive a donation from C&CZ. This year Project Jupyter was chosen as new recipient. Project Jupyter is a non-profit, open-source project, born out of the IPython Project in 2014 as it evolved to support interactive data science and scientific computing across all programming languages. C&CZ makes use of it in the JupyterHub for FNWI courses. As a second recipient Mozilla Foundation was chosen, just like in 2021. Many people will know the Mozilla Firefox webbrowser and the mailclient Mozilla Thunderbird and maybe use it hours a day. But the Mozilla Foundation does a lot more to try to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to us all.

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We have given the C&CZ website a completely new look. The update makes the website usable on smartphones. We will also make it possible to inform staff and students through this website even when all RU services are down. The content of the old site has been transferred. The old website is still available at https://old.cncz.science.ru.nl for the time being. For questions or comments, please contact Postmaster.