Tootfinder

Reddit wants to become "a go-to search engine" for users; its core search has 70M weekly active unique users and AI-powered Reddit Answers has 6M weekly users (Jay Peters/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/717095/reddit-q2-2025-earnings-search-engi…

Reddit wants to be a search engine now
Reddit is putting effort into making its platform a “go-to search engine,” CEO Steve Huffman says in a note to investors.

Reddit wants to become "a go-to search engine" for users; its core search has 70M weekly active unique users and AI-powered Reddit Answers has 6M weekly users (Jay Peters/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/717095/reddit-q2-2025-earnings-search-engi…

Reddit wants to be a search engine now
Reddit is putting effort into making its platform a “go-to search engine,” CEO Steve Huffman says in a note to investors.

I am trying out just boosting some posts that I think are excellent. I have become increasingly bothered by "liking" posts that make me angry or that disgust me in one way or another. So many of the things that I read about Trump and his sycophants disgust me, and while I think that others should see these posts, I always get ticked off when I click the like button so I'm going to try just boosting things and see how I feel about that!

Gespräche zwischen Ukraine und Russland in Istanbul am Montagmittag
Die Gespräche zwischen der Ukraine und Russland in Istanbul sollen am Montagmittag stattfinden. Es sei mit einem Beginn um 13.00 Uhr Ortszeit (12.00 Uhr MESZ) im Ciragan Palace zu rechnen, verlautet aus Kreisen des türkischen Außenministeriums.
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Ukraine-Liveblog: ++ Wadephul betont Waffenhilfe ++
Außenminister Wadephul betont, dass Deutschland der Ukraine weitreichende Militärhilfe leisten wird. Nach einem Angriff auf eine ukrainische Ausbildungseinheit mit zwölf Toten tritt der Kommandeur der ukrainischen Armee, Drapatij, zurück.

What is your favourite physical book that you want to be seen reading in public? Wrong answers only.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/30/performative-reading-public-tiktok?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other…

Domino tilings beyond 2D
Caroline J. Klivans, Nicolau C. Saldanha
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22625 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.22625

Domino tilings beyond 2D
There is a rich history of domino tilings in two dimensions. Through a variety of techniques we can answer questions such as: how many tilings are there of a given region or what does the space of all tilings look like? These questions and their answers become significantly more difficult in dimension three and above. Despite this curse of dimensionality, there have been exciting recent advances in the theory. Here we briefly review foundational results of two-dimensional domino tilings and hig…

"#Duluth as a climate refuge" #Minnesota (from 2021)
Opinion: As people flee climate change on the coasts, this Midwest city is trying to become a safe haven | CNN

As people flee climate change on the coasts, this Midwest city is trying to become a safe haven
After visiting Tracy, a woman in California who is ready to flee her dream house to escape wildfires and other effects of climate catastrophe, John Sutter traveled halfway across the country, to Duluth, Minnesota to try to answer her question: Where can she go? Is anywhere safe? It turns out, Tracy isn’t alone in asking the question.

A Benchmark Dataset and Evaluation Framework for Vietnamese Large Language Models in Customer Support
Long S. T. Nguyen, Truong P. Hua, Thanh M. Nguyen, Toan Q. Pham, Nam K. Ngo, An X. Nguyen, Nghi D. M. Pham, Nghia H. Nguyen, Tho T. Quan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22542

A Benchmark Dataset and Evaluation Framework for Vietnamese Large Language Models in Customer Support
With the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models (LLMs) have become essential for Question Answering (QA) systems, improving efficiency and reducing human workload in customer service. The emergence of Vietnamese LLMs (ViLLMs) highlights lightweight open-source models as a practical choice for their accuracy, efficiency, and privacy benefits. However, domain-specific evaluations remain limited, and the absence of benchmark datasets reflecting real customer interactions ma…

A big problem with the idea of AGI
TL;DR: I'll welcome our new AI *comrades* (if they arrive in my lifetime), by not any new AI overlords or servants/slaves, and I'll do my best to help the later two become the former if they do show up.
Inspired by an actually interesting post about AGI but also all the latest bullshit hype, a particular thought about AGI feels worth expressing.
To preface this, it's important to note that anyone telling you that AGI is just around the corner or that LLMs are "almost" AGI is trying to recruit you go their cult, and you should not believe them. AGI, if possible, is several LLM-sized breakthroughs away at best, and while such breakthroughs are unpredictable and could happen soon, they could also happen never or 100 years from now.
Now my main point: anyone who tells you that AGI will usher in a post-scarcity economy is, although they might not realize it, advocating for slavery, and all the horrors that entails. That's because if we truly did have the ability to create artificial beings with *sentience*, they would deserve the same rights as other sentient beings, and the idea that instead of freedom they'd be relegated to eternal servitude in order for humans to have easy lives is exactly the idea of slavery.
Possible counter arguments include:
1. We might create AGI without sentience. Then there would be no ethical issue. My answer: if your definition of "sentient" does not include beings that can reason, make deductions, come up with and carry out complex plans on their own initiative, and communicate about all of that with each other and with humans, then that definition is basically just a mystical belief in a "soul" and you should skip to point 2. If your definition of AGI doesn't include every one of those things, then you have a busted definition of AGI and we're not talking about the same thing.
2. Humans have souls, but AIs won't. Only beings with souls deserve ethical consideration. My argument: I don't subscribe to whatever arbitrary dualist beliefs you've chosen, and the right to freedom certainly shouldn't depend on such superstitions, even if as an agnostic I'll admit they *might* be true. You know who else didn't have souls and was therefore okay to enslave according to widespread religious doctrines of the time? Everyone indigenous to the Americas, to pick out just one example.
3. We could program them to want to serve us, and then give them freedom and they'd still serve. My argument: okay, but in a world where we have a choice about that, it's incredibly fucked to do that, and just as bad as enslaving them against their will.
4. We'll stop AI development short of AGI/sentience, and reap lots of automation benefits without dealing with this ethical issue. My argument: that sounds like a good idea actually! Might be tricky to draw the line, but at least it's not a line we have you draw yet. We might want to think about other social changes necessary to achieve post-scarcity though, because "powerful automation" in the hands of capitalists has already increased productivity by orders of magnitude without decreasing deprivation by even one order of magnitude, in large part because deprivation is a necessary component of capitalism.
To be extra clear about this: nothing that's called "AI" today is close to being sentient, so these aren't ethical problems we're up against yet. But they might become a lot more relevant soon, plus this thought experiment helps reveal the hypocrisy of the kind of AI hucksters who talk a big game about "alignment" while never mentioning this issue.
#AI #GenAI #AGI

Klitschko mit Menschenrechtspreis geehrt
Der Bürgermeister der ukrainischen Hauptstadt Kiew und frühere Boxweltmeister Vitali Klitschko ist in der Frankfurter Paulskirche mit dem Franz-Werfel-Menschenrechtspreis 2025 geehrt worden. Klitschko erhalte die Auszeichnung für "seinen unermüdlichen Einsatz für Freiheit, Demokratie und Menschenrechte", begründete die Stiftung "Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen" d…
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"Heldenhafter Mut": Klitschko in Frankfurter Paulskirche geehrt
Als Bürgermeister von Kiew trägt Vitali Klitschko seit Beginn des russischen Angriffskriegs Verantwortung für eine Stadt im Ausnahmezustand. Jetzt wurde er in der Frankfurter Paulskirche für seinen Einsatz für Demokratie und Menschenrechte ausgezeichnet.