Tootfinder

Investigating the Robustness of Retrieval-Augmented Generation at the Query Level
Sezen Per\c{c}in, Xin Su, Qutub Sha Syed, Phillip Howard, Aleksei Kuvshinov, Leo Schwinn, Kay-Ulrich Scholl
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06956

Investigating the Robustness of Retrieval-Augmented Generation at the Query Level
Large language models (LLMs) are very costly and inefficient to update with new information. To address this limitation, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) has been proposed as a solution that dynamically incorporates external knowledge during inference, improving factual consistency and reducing hallucinations. Despite its promise, RAG systems face practical challenges-most notably, a strong dependence on the quality of the input query for accurate retrieval. In this paper, we investigate th…

I think the new light bars on the front of Tesla and other new cars are silly (and perhaps even dangerous - I find that they diminish my ability to estimate distance to the vehicle at night.)
In any case, I wonder whether there is, or soon will be, modification kits to replicate Gort's visor's light bar, as seen in the clip below...

Fair Data Exchange with Constant-Time Proofs
Majid Khabbazian
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14944 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.14944

Fair Data Exchange with Constant-Time Proofs
The Fair Data Exchange (FDE) protocol introduced at CCS 2024 offers atomic pay-per-file transfers with constant-size proofs, but its prover and verifier runtimes still scale linearly with the file length n. We collapse these costs to essentially constant by viewing the file as a rate-1 Reed-Solomon (RS) codeword, extending it to a lower-rate RS code with constant redundancy, encrypting this extended vector, and then proving correctness for only a small random subset of the resulting ciphertexts…

Laser-Synthesized Amorphous PdSe$_{\mathrm{2-x}}$ Nanoparticles: A Defect-Rich Platform for High-Efficiency SERS, Photocatalysis, and Photothermal Conversion
Andrei Ushkov, Nadezhda Belozerova, Dmitriy Dyubo, Ilya Martynov, Alexander Syuy, Daniil Tselikov, Georgy Ermolaev, Sergey V. Bazhenov, Roman I. Romanov, Ivan Kruglov, Anton A. Popov, Alexander Chernov, Alexey D. Bolshakov, Sergey Novikov, Andrey A. Vyshnevyy, Aleksey Arsenin, Andrei V. Kabashin, Gleb I. Tselikov, Valentyn Volkov

Laser-Synthesized Amorphous PdSe$_{\mathrm{2-x}}$ Nanoparticles: A Defect-Rich Platform for High-Efficiency SERS, Photocatalysis, and Photothermal Conversion
The control of material properties at the atomic scale remains a central challenge in materials science. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) offer remarkable electronic and optical properties, but their functionality is largely dictated by their stable crystalline phases. Here we demonstrate a single-step, ligand-free strategy using femtosecond laser ablation in liquid to transform crystalline, stoichiometric palladium diselenide (PdSe$_{\mathrm{2}}$) into highly stable, amorphous, and non…