Tootfinder

For many of the days of my career, the most important task I’ve had was to say “no”.
It’s really more like “No, not that way, but let’s find a solution.”
Saying “yes, here’s some code to do the thing you asked, even though you should DEFINITELY not be doing that thing because it’s dangerous for you and your users” is how someone (or some machine) who is not [yet] good at this job acts.

This is from a blog entry posted in 2014. Plus ça change…. People make a lot of noise about the 2nd Amendment, and still some noise about the 1st, but it’s the 4th we should be making noise about, lately, and the other 7 are worth taking a look at today, too, while you’re enjoying your beers and brats on the bbq.

Prompt Attacks Against LLM-Powered Assistants in Production Are Practical and Dangerous
#security #llm
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12175

Sharp unconditional well-posedness of the 2-$d$ periodic cubic hyperbolic nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation
Engin Ba\c{s}ako\u{g}lu, Tadahiro Oh, Yuzhao Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01650

Sharp unconditional well-posedness of the 2-$d$ periodic cubic hyperbolic nonlinear Schrödinger equation
We study semilinear local well-posedness of the two-dimensional periodic cubic hyperbolic nonlinear Schrödinger equation (HNLS) in Fourier-Lebesgue spaces. By employing the Fourier restriction norm method, we first establish sharp semilinear local well-posedness of HNLS in Fourier-Lebesgue spaces (modulo the endpoint case), including almost scaling-critical Fourier-Lebesgue spaces. Then, by adapting the normal form approach, developed by the second author with Guo and Kwon (2013) and by the se…

Integrating Opinion Dynamics into Safety Control for Decentralized Airplane Encounter Resolution
Shuhao Qi, Zhiqi Tang, Zhiyong Sun, Sofie Haesaert
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00156

Integrating Opinion Dynamics into Safety Control for Decentralized Airplane Encounter Resolution
As the airspace becomes increasingly congested, decentralized conflict resolution methods for airplane encounters have become essential. While decentralized safety controllers can prevent dangerous midair collisions, they do not always ensure prompt conflict resolution. As a result, airplane progress may be blocked for extended periods in certain situations. To address this blocking phenomenon, this paper proposes integrating bio-inspired nonlinear opinion dynamics into the airplane safety cont…

I used to tell my kids my own version of Cinderella, where the Prince was romatically ensnared by Cinderella's radical social justice focused politics.
After their wedding her commitment to constituonal reform leads to the introduction of genuine democratic participation in politics in the kingdom with fulll workers rights, universal healthcare and free education for all children.

For some reason., they always preferred the traditional story?

https://writing.exchange/@golgaloth/114934064392785110

Cross-process interference in single-cycle electron emission from metal needle tips
Anne Herzig, Peter Hommelhoff, Eleftherios Goulielmakis, Thomas Fennel, Lennart Seiffert
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01524

Cross-process interference in single-cycle electron emission from metal needle tips
Though interference from different emission channels enabled a deeper understanding of strong-field photoemission in atoms and molecules, it remained out of reach for solids. Here, we explore metal needle tips under single-cycle pulses via classical trajectories extended by quantum diffusion and interference and numerical solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. We find interference of direct and backscattered electrons with fringe pattern encoding sub-cycle information on birth ti…

Speculative politics
As an anarchist (okay, maybe not in practice), I'm tired of hearing why we have to suffer X and Y indignity to "preserve the rule of law" or "maintain Democratic norms." So here's an example of what representative democracy (a form of government that I believe is inherently flawed) could look like if its proponents had even an ounce of imagination, and/or weren't actively trying to rig it to favor a rich donor class:
1. Unicameral legislature, where representatives pass laws directly. Each state elects 3 statewide representatives: the three most-popular candidates in a statewide race where each person votes for one candidate (ranked preference voting would be even better but might not be necessary, and is not a solution by itself). Instead of each representative getting one vote in the chamber, they get N votes, where N is the number of people who voted for them. This means that in a close race, instead of the winner getting all the power, the power is split. Having 3 representatives trades off between leisure size and ensuring that two parties can't dominate together.
2. Any individual citizen can contact their local election office to switch or withdraw their vote at any time (maybe with a 3-day delay or something). Voting power of representatives can thus shift even without an election. They are limited to choosing one of the three elected representatives, or "none of the above." If the "none of the above" fraction exceeds 20% of eligible voters, a new election is triggered for that state. If turnout is less than 80%, a second election happens immediately, with results being final even at lower turnout until 6 months later (some better mechanism for turnout management might be needed).
3. All elections allow mail-in ballots, and in-person voting happens Sunday-Tuesday with the Monday being a mandatory holiday. (Yes, election integrity is not better in this system and that's a big weakness.)
4. Separate nationwide elections elect three positions for head-of-state: one with diplomatic/administrative powers, another with military powers, and a third with veto power. For each position, the top three candidates serve together, with only the first-place winner having actual power until vote switches or withdrawals change who that is. Once one of these heads loses their first-place status, they cannot get it again until another election, even if voters switch preferences back (to avoid dithering). An election for one of these positions is triggered when 20% have withdrawn their votes, or if all three people initially elected have been disqualified by losing their lead in the vote count.
5. Laws that involve spending money are packaged with specific taxes to pay for them, and may only be paid for by those specific revenues. Each tax may be opted into or out of by each taxpayer; where possible opting out of the tax also opts you out of the service. (I'm well aware of a lot of the drawbacks of this, but also feel like they'd not necessarily be worse than the drawbacks of our current system.) A small mandatory tax would cover election expenses.
6. I'm running out of attention, but similar multi-winner elections could elect panels of judges from which a subset is chosen randomly to preside in each case.
Now I'll point out once again that this system, in not directly confronting capitalism, racism, patriarchy, etc., is probably doomed to the same failures as our current system. But if you profess to want a "representative democracy" as opposed to something more libratory, I hope you'll at least advocate for something like this that actually includes meaningful representation as opposed to the current US system that's engineered to quash it.
Key questions: "Why should we have winner-take-all elections when winners-take-proportionately-to-votes is right there?" and "Why should elected officials get to ignore their constituents' approval except during elections, when vote-withdrawal or -switching is possible?"
2/2
#Democracy

Florida wildlife officials gave preliminary approval for the first black bear hunt since one 10 years ago that was halted early after more than 300 bears were killed in only two days.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted 4-1 at a meeting in Ocala in favor of a bear hunt in December and annually into the future,
allowing the use of up to six dogs to corner the bears.
Methods could include bowhunting, similar to rules for hunting deer, and bear hunting…

Florida gives preliminary approval to controversial black bear hunt amid strong opposition
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has given preliminary approval for a black bear hunt for December and into the future, which could eventually allow the use of up to six dogs to corner the bears and use of bowhunting. The commission voted 4-1 Wednesday on the proposal, which would be the first bear hunt since 2015 when more than 300 bears were killed in only two days. Hunt supporters say managing bear populations is key to preventing dangerous encounters with humans. Oppone…

Just finished "Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know" by Samira Ahmed. It's a good book, although it took until past the middle for me to really get sucked in. Fascinating mix of romance history mystery, and with an ending that nicely fits the theme. Honestly, as much as I'm enjoying uncomplicated romance novels with the expectable ending at this point in my life, I'm even more excited by things like this that bend or break genre conventions, and this one does it in beautiful service to a theme.
#AmReading