Tootfinder

I really don't want to diss all these lovely people who've practised so hard, but I can't help feeling that the theme of tonight's #BBC4 #prom is "music a detective show might use to indicate that an important witness is having a psychotic episode".

Automatizing the search for mass resonances using BumpNet
Jean-Fran\c{c}ois Arguin, Georges Azuelos, \'Emile Baril, Ilan Bessudo, Fannie Bilodeau, Maryna Borysova, Shikma Bressler, Samuel Calvet, Julien Donini, Etienne Dreyer, Michael Kwok Lam Chu, Eva Mayer, Ethan Meszaros, Nilotpal Kakati, Bruna Pascual Dias, Jos\'ephine Potdevin, Amit Shkuri, Muhammad Usman

Automatizing the search for mass resonances using BumpNet
Physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) has yet to be observed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), motivating the development of model-agnostic, machine learning-based strategies to probe more regions of the phase space. As many final states have not yet been examined for mass resonances, an accelerated approach to bump-hunting is desirable. BumpNet is a neural network trained to map smoothly falling invariant-mass histogram data to statistical significance values. It provides a unique, automat…

Daisy.

a good blog but the most relevant line is "GPT-5 may be a moderate quantitative improvement (and it may be cheaper) but it still fails in all the same qualitative ways as its predecessors" , very true but indeed now using it a few days and i notice those moderate improvements.. And i was already aware of all it's failings.
For me in day-to-day use it is better and that is wat counts for me at least. Oh and always (yes always) check outcomes before you use them.

GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that’s not the worst of it.
A new release botched … and a breaking research new paper that spells trouble

A Decoy-like Protocol for Quantum Key Distribution: Enhancing the Performance with Imperfect Single Photon Sources
Chanaprom Cholsuk, Furkan A\u{g}larc{\i}, Daniel K. L. Oi, Serkan Ate\c{s}, Tobias Vogl
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09454

A Decoy-like Protocol for Quantum Key Distribution: Enhancing the Performance with Imperfect Single Photon Sources
Quantum key distribution (QKD) relies on single photon sources (SPSs), e.g. from solid-state systems, as flying qubits, where security strongly requires sub-Poissonian photon statistics with low second-order correlation values (\$g^{(2)}(0)\$). However, achieving such low \$g^{(2)}(0)\$ remains experimentally challenging. We therefore propose a decoy-like QKD protocol that relaxes this constraint while maintaining security. This enables the use of many SPSs with \$g^{(2)}(0) > \$0.1, routinely …

The DOGE team at SSA might have violated FISMA and other laws by not following security protocols as spelled out in NIST's SP 800-53, which are mandatory for all government agencies.
It's no surprise then that a whistleblower is warning that we have lost the ability to see who is accessing 300 million Americans' most sensitive information after DOGE moved SSA data to their own Amazon cloud instance.
Thanks to John Skinner, former project lead for 18F, for his expert i…

Whistleblower: DOGE put Social Security database covering 300 million Americans on insecure cloud
The complaint accuses DOGE of bypassing security protocols to move Americans’ sensitive personal data outside federal oversight and onto an insecure AWS cloud instance, potentially violating established security practices and several laws.

Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading

FYI, here’s the exact language of 50 U.S.C. § 1702(b) which spells out how media mail is exempt:
https://kind.social/@wbwolf/115103183358864928

Cowboys’ CeeDee Lamb Gets Important New Injury Update https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/ceedee-lamb-new-injury-update/?adt_ei=[email]

Day 6 - Shakespeare had taste.
I have a feeling that my butt is stronger and more forgiving than I thought. I really expected to be crawling like those naked snails, but I guess I learned something new about my body.
HelsingŸr is home to Kronborg Slot, the castle that Shakespeare used in Hamlet. Not only that, it was also very important for payments to enter the Baltic Sea. Today, you can walk around the castle, drink coffee, or even visit some local art studios, such as those fe…