Good Morning #Canada
Are you still looking for that perfect Christmas gift? Years ago I found myself shopping for my wife's Christmas present on December 23rd. Never again. For those of you still shopping it's inevitable that you're going to be standing in front of the Gift Card rack and mentally convincing yourself that the recipient will love a full gas tank or a Timmies coffee and donut. Canadians will buy close to $12 billion in Gift Cards in 2025, with a lot of that in the next 5 days. Recent changes to legislation have made it illegal to charge processing or activation fees on cards purchased with cash and there is no expiry date. That last point is important because companies are betting that a certain percentage of cards are never redeemed and it's estimated that approximately 40% of all cards are never used. I personally like getting a gift card as it allows me to choose something I want, and I always thank the gifter once I've used it.
#CanadaIsAwesome #GiftCards
YES, I love giving and receiving Gift Cards
NO, I'm not happy when I have to buy or get a Gift Card

Health Stuff

Recovered somewhat from whatever that weird fit was at the end of last year.

NHS still has me on some sort of list I think, appointment might turn up next year. Last contact with them they were suggesting maybe November.
But the private treatment gave me the
MRI which
showed nothing weird and post-fit symptoms have been reducing.
Experimented with eating meat to see if that helped.
Tried eating meat for a month to see if it reduced the post-fit symptoms. Maybe it did? Tried vegetarian again and maybe it got worse?
Hard to tell with intermittent symptoms and a terrible memory.
Decided it's more likely to do good than harm (to me, entirely harm to the animals obviously), and eat meat till the end of the year.
While I'm better, I don't really feel fully recovered enough to want to change things so more meat next year I think.
One of those symptoms is that booze tolerance dropped to like zero. Very rarely had more than four pints in a day this year and very rarely more than one night a
week.
Much high number than the target there really.
Tripped over a guy-rope and fell onto the wrist.
Did two days of the festival and the drive home thinking it almost certainly wasn't broken and only confirmed it was when I got home and the hospital put it in a cast.

Crosslisted article(s) found for cs.LG. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.LG/new
[1/3]:
- Optimizing Text Search: A Novel Pattern Matching Algorithm Based on Ukkonen's Approach
Xinyu Guan, Shaohua Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16927 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/115762062326187898
- SpIDER: Spatially Informed Dense Embedding Retrieval for Software Issue Localization
Shravan Chaudhari, Rahul Thomas Jacob, Mononito Goswami, Jiajun Cao, Shihab Rashid, Christian Bock
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16956 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csSE_bot/115762248476963893
- MemoryGraft: Persistent Compromise of LLM Agents via Poisoned Experience Retrieval
Saksham Sahai Srivastava, Haoyu He
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16962 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCR_bot/115762140339109012
- Colormap-Enhanced Vision Transformers for MRI-Based Multiclass (4-Class) Alzheimer's Disease Clas...
Faisal Ahmed
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16964 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_eessIV_bot/115762196702065869
- Probing Scientific General Intelligence of LLMs with Scientist-Aligned Workflows
Wanghan Xu, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16969 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csAI_bot/115762050529328276
- PAACE: A Plan-Aware Automated Agent Context Engineering Framework
Kamer Ali Yuksel
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16970 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csAI_bot/115762054461584205
- A Women's Health Benchmark for Large Language Models
Elisabeth Gruber, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17028 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCL_bot/115762049873946945
- Perturb Your Data: Paraphrase-Guided Training Data Watermarking
Pranav Shetty, Mirazul Haque, Petr Babkin, Zhiqiang Ma, Xiaomo Liu, Manuela Veloso
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17075 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCL_bot/115762077400293945
- Disentangled representations via score-based variational autoencoders
Benjamin S. H. Lyo, Eero P. Simoncelli, Cristina Savin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17127 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_statML_bot/115762251753966702
- Biosecurity-Aware AI: Agentic Risk Auditing of Soft Prompt Attacks on ESM-Based Variant Predictors
Huixin Zhan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17146 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCR_bot/115762318582013305
- Application of machine learning to predict food processing level using Open Food Facts
Arora, Chauhan, Rana, Aditya, Bhagat, Kumar, Kumar, Semar, Singh, Bagler
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17169 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_qbioBM_bot/115762302873829397
- Systemic Risk Radar: A Multi-Layer Graph Framework for Early Market Crash Warning
Sandeep Neela
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17185 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_qfinRM_bot/115762275982224870
- Do Foundational Audio Encoders Understand Music Structure?
Keisuke Toyama, Zhi Zhong, Akira Takahashi, Shusuke Takahashi, Yuki Mitsufuji
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17209 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csSD_bot/115762341541572505
- CheXPO-v2: Preference Optimization for Chest X-ray VLMs with Knowledge Graph Consistency
Xiao Liang, Yuxuan An, Di Wang, Jiawei Hu, Zhicheng Jiao, Bin Jing, Quan Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17213 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCV_bot/115762574180736975
- Machine Learning Assisted Parameter Tuning on Wavelet Transform Amorphous Radial Distribution Fun...
Deriyan Senjaya, Stephen Ekaputra Limantoro
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17245 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_condmatmtrlsci_bot/115762447037143855
- AlignDP: Hybrid Differential Privacy with Rarity-Aware Protection for LLMs
Madhava Gaikwad
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17251 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCR_bot/115762396593872943
- Practical Framework for Privacy-Preserving and Byzantine-robust Federated Learning
Baolei Zhang, Minghong Fang, Zhuqing Liu, Biao Yi, Peizhao Zhou, Yuan Wang, Tong Li, Zheli Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17254 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCR_bot/115762402470985707
- Verifiability-First Agents: Provable Observability and Lightweight Audit Agents for Controlling A...
Abhivansh Gupta
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17259 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csMA_bot/115762225538364939
- Warmer for Less: A Cost-Efficient Strategy for Cold-Start Recommendations at Pinterest
Saeed Ebrahimi, Weijie Jiang, Jaewon Yang, Olafur Gudmundsson, Yucheng Tu, Huizhong Duan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17277 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csIR_bot/115762214396869930
- LibriVAD: A Scalable Open Dataset with Deep Learning Benchmarks for Voice Activity Detection
Ioannis Stylianou, Achintya kr. Sarkar, Nauman Dawalatabad, James Glass, Zheng-Hua Tan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17281 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csSD_bot/115762361858560703
- Penalized Fair Regression for Multiple Groups in Chronic Kidney Disease
Carter H. Nakamoto, Lucia Lushi Chen, Agata Foryciarz, Sherri Rose
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17340 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_statME_bot/115762446402738033
toXiv_bot_toot

F*%! #interrail and railway operators that require passport information
https://www.interrail.eu/en/ni/data-security-incident

Einstein and Debye temperatures, electron-phonon coupling constant and a probable mechanism for ambient-pressure room-temperature superconductivity in intercalated graphite
E. F. Talantsev
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07460 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.07460 https://arxiv.org/html/2511.07460
arXiv:2511.07460v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Recently, Ksenofontov et al (arXiv:2510.03256) observed ambient pressure room-temperature superconductivity in graphite intercalated with lithium-based alloys with transition temperature (according to magnetization measurements) $T_c=330$ $K$. Here, I analyzed the reported temperature dependent resistivity data $\rho(T)$ in these graphite-intercalated samples and found that $\rho(T)$ is well described by the model of two series resistors, where each resistor is described as either an Einstein conductor or a Bloch-Gr\"uneisen conductor. Deduced Einstein and Debye temperatures are $\Theta_{E,1} \approx 250$ $K$ and $\Theta_{E,2} \approx 1,600$ $K$, and $\Theta_{D,1} \approx 300$ $K$ and $\Theta_{D,2} \approx 2,200$ $K$, respectively. Following the McMillan formalism, from the deduced $\Theta_{E,2}$ and $\Theta_{D,2}$, the electron-phonon coupling constant $\lambda_{e-ph} = 2.2 - 2.6$ was obtained. This value of $\lambda_{e-ph}$ is approximately equal to the value of $\lambda_{e-ph}$ in highly compressed superconducting hydrides. Based on this, I can propose that the observed room-temperature superconductivity in intercalated graphite is localized in nanoscale Sr-Ca-Li metallic flakes/particles, which adopt the phonon spectrum from the surrounding bulk graphite matrix, and as a result, conventional electron-phonon superconductivity arises in these nano-flakes/particles at room temperature. Experimental data reported by Ksenofontov et al (arXiv:2510.03256) on trapped magnetic flux decay in intercalated graphite samples supports the proposition.
toXiv_bot_toot

There were actually a lot of good recommendations from that Committee report, the one on PR was just the final one! Here's a few more.. including some that local #Fediverse proponents could dig into! @… was on the Committee.
—>FEDI ADVANTAGE<— “The Committee heard about a number of issues related to
the electoral information environment. Members recommend
that the provincial government collaborate with Elections
BC and the federal government to review existing legislative
and regulatory measures related to misinformation,
disinformation, and hate speech during elections, including
**mechanisms to ensure the timely removal of harmful content** (**emphasis added)”
—> FEDI ADVANTAGE<— “To better address challenges associated with social media and emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence, Members recommend establishing a working group to propose amendments to BC’s privacy and election legislation. To better protect all users, the Committee recommends requiring digital platforms to act with a duty of care and establish clear safety-related requirements such as data privacy, platform design, and content policy. The Committee also heard about concerns regarding foreign interference, and recommends that these be considered by the Electoral Integrity Working Group.”
—The Committee heard about the critical importance of
civic education to ensure the public’s understanding of
democratic institutions, processes, and participation. The
Committee recommends strengthening civic education
in the K-12 school system with input from experts and a
greater emphasis on applied learning.
— the Committee suggests enhancing data collection by requiring proactive enumeration on an annual basis and ensuring that registered parties and candidates can access poll-by-poll results. Elections BC should review and improve
voter registration practices and communication, as well as
access to and public awareness of voting opportunities. With respect to expanding voter eligibility, the Committee supports further examination of extending voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds as well as permanent residents in BC.
— Committee Members recommend modernizing the candidate nominator verification process, requiring Elections BC to collect and share voters’ contact information with registered political parties and candidates, and strengthening measures related to access to multi-unit buildings for candidates and their campaigns.
Full report to the Legislature: #BCPoli #CanPoli #CdnPoli #ElectoralReform #Democracy #ProportionalRepresentation #Polarization

Good Morning #Canada
Happy National Homemade Bread Day for all those with enough dough to celebrate. There's no data on how many of us make their own bread at home, but there are 1,321 bakery product manufacturing establishments and more than 1,406 retail bakeries in Canada. Canada annually ranks in the top 10 worldwide in wheat production, 6th or 7th, depending on the year, but we don't eat a lot of bread. #StatsCan says we consume approximately 30 kg per person yearly, which doesn't put us in the top 30 internationally - Turkey's citizens eat 6 times as much as us. We spend about 10% of our grocery bill on baked goods, and that has increased almost 30% over the past 5 years. Canada exports $5.2B in baked goods annually with $5B of that going to the U.S. market.
#CanadaIsAwesome #Sandwich
My favourite type of bread: Please boost for scientific significance.
Plain White (I leave my socks on too)
Bagels (Montreal preferred)
Sourdough (nothing to do with my personality)
French - loaf or baguette (I also support Bilingualism)
Italian - loaf, focaccia, calabrese (I'm also a pasta lover)

Good Morning #Canada
Have you put up your #ChristmasTree yet? #StatsCan (2021 census data) reports there are 1,364 Christmas tree farms. Ontario (418) had the most farms, followed by British Columbia (276) and Quebec (257). Nova Scotia’s 213 farms were more than the combined total of the Prairie and Maritime provinces (199). Canadian Christmas tree producers earned nearly $163.5M in 2021, and exported over 2.4 million fresh Christmas trees that same year. most of which (97.2%) ended up in the United States. Final destinations for most of them were Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia. Trump's tariffs hit artificial trees with a 30% price hike which means it could be an excellent year for real Canadian trees in the U.S. market. Most of the remaining exports in 2021 were to warmer climates in the Western Hemisphere, including Panama, Curaçao, Bermuda, Aruba, St. Maarten (Dutch part) and Barbados.
#CanadaIsAwesome #HoHoHo
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/xmas-tree-trends-2025-9.6993539