Tootfinder

This year my plan is not just to write more but also to write a bit out of my usual wheelhouse. Do something that's not just sociotechnological critique.
Not sure how to get the ball rolling there but I really love what Mike Monteiro is doing with his Newsletter ( https://buttondown.com/monteiro ). Bu…

Mike Monteiro’s Good News
“I fell asleep while reading it.” —Jim Christensen Hi. My name is Mike and this is my newsletter. Every week I answer one of your questions. The question can be about anything you want, but I'll only answer it if I think I can give a good answer. To ask a question, just fill out this simple form. Why the hell should I subscribe to this? Well, you shouldn’t. You should go outside and plant a garden. You should start a band! You should go explore every part of the world you’ve ever want…

Using #PHP arrays as pseudo-objects is almost never the right answer. They're less self-documenting, slower, worse on memory, and more bug prone.
https://peakd.com/php/@crell/php-use-a

Just got these messages from @seengoals@mastodon.social, one of the members of Gaza Verified, basically accusing me of running a fundraiser for Gaza and keeping the proceeds (I have no fundraiser on any fundraising site anywhere) and extorting me to share his fundraiser or he’ll apparently go public with it.
So here’s what’s going to happening instead: Nabil has been removed Gaza Verified (

Featuring headliners such as
Robert De Niro,
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey
and journalist Don Lemon,
the “State of the Swamp” address
is set to continue through Trump’s address with live rebuttals.
Attendees were encouraged to dress in green frog attire
as a symbol of defiance,
honoring the frog costumes worn by many anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters during its occupation of the city.
It is also intended to reference the “…

State of the Union live updates: Epstein survivors to attend Trump’s address
The speech comes as the president faces an angry and divided Congress, plummeting approval ratings, and a major Supreme Court loss on his tariff policy.

2025 has only intensified the struggles of past years. The challenge for us is not "how do we pull through?" but "how do we make a 'new normal' work for us?"
The answer, of course, is not to simply try harder. To prevent 2026 from going like 2025, we need to deliberately re-evaluate our own goals, and our relationships with our jobs.
Learn more in the final issue of the Product Picnic for the year — and if you like it, please subscribe!

Bouncing back from burnout
The causes of burnout are systemic. You can't get out of it just by trying harder.

Oh! Look, we are getting Christmas visitors!
I asked if they aren't a bit late. But the Grey answered that a wizard is never late. He is also not too early. Wizards arrive just in time.
Well, let's see.
#Lego

Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell tweeted: "Message to Keir: Do not underestimate the depth of anger people will feel about this disgusting decision. If you think it strengthens you I tell you it will simply hasten your demise. You could have shown magnanimous leadership but instead it’s cowardice."
By-election machinations weaken Keir Starmer and could ultimately push Andy Burnham closer to No 10 - Manchester Evening News

By-election machinations weaken Keir Starmer and could ultimately push Andy Burnham closer to No 10
Some backbenchers have reacted in fury after Labour blocked the mayor's bid to return to Parliament

Google rolls out Gemini 3.1 Pro, which it says is "a step forward in core reasoning", for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers; the .1 increment is a first for Google (Abner Li/9to5Google)
https://9to5google.com/2026/02/19/google-announces-gem…

Google announces Gemini 3.1 Pro for ‘complex problem-solving’
In November, Google introduced Gemini 3 Pro in preview. Google today announced Gemini 3.1 Pro "for tasks where a simple answer isn’t enough."

Why Pass@k Optimization Can Degrade Pass@1: Prompt Interference in LLM Post-training
Anas Barakat, Souradip Chakraborty, Khushbu Pahwa, Amrit Singh Bedi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21189 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.21189 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.21189
arXiv:2602.21189v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Pass@k is a widely used performance metric for verifiable large language model tasks, including mathematical reasoning, code generation, and short-answer reasoning. It defines success if any of $k$ independently sampled solutions passes a verifier. This multi-sample inference metric has motivated inference-aware fine-tuning methods that directly optimize pass@$k$. However, prior work reports a recurring trade-off: pass@k improves while pass@1 degrades under such methods. This trade-off is practically important because pass@1 often remains a hard operational constraint due to latency and cost budgets, imperfect verifier coverage, and the need for a reliable single-shot fallback. We study the origin of this trade-off and provide a theoretical characterization of when pass@k policy optimization can reduce pass@1 through gradient conflict induced by prompt interference. We show that pass@$k$ policy gradients can conflict with pass@1 gradients because pass@$k$ optimization implicitly reweights prompts toward low-success prompts; when these prompts are what we term negatively interfering, their upweighting can rotate the pass@k update direction away from the pass@1 direction. We illustrate our theoretical findings with large language model experiments on verifiable mathematical reasoning tasks.
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Chris Madel, a defense lawyer who had been running for governor of Minnesota as a Republican,
said he had decided to end his campaign
because he had become outraged by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
The operation “has departed so far from the stated goals that it is simply a disaster,” Mr. Madel said

Greg Bovino Set to Leave Minneapolis as Trump Shakes Up Immigration Operation: Live Updates
Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official who became a target of fierce criticism, is set to depart as President Trump moves to deflect anger over a second fatal shooting. Mr. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, will now direct ICE operations in the state.