Tootfinder

Filing: Oracle's global workforce fell by 21,000 employees in the past 12 months to 141,000 as of May 31; the company says AI adoption has led to reductions (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-2…

Politico shuts down two AI-driven products following a November 2025 arbitration ruling that found they violated the union's collective bargaining agreement (Kathleen Floyd/Washington-Baltimore News Guild)
https://wbng.org/2026/05/22/politico-ai-arbitration-victory/…

VICTORY: POLITICO agrees to shut down both AI tools at center of landmark arbitration - Washington-Baltimore News Guild
The POLITICO and E&E News Guild (PEN Guild) members have earned a resounding final victory in one of the most significant labor-AI disputes in American journalism: following months of negotiations between PEN Guild leadership, WBNG, and POLITICO management, the company has agreed to shut down both artificial intelligence products at the heart of last November’s landmark arbitration ruling.

The natural gas price for the EU is up sharply now the Trump-Netanyahu war escalates again. Close to €60/MWh now; that's 100% compared to the price before the war vs 'only' 50% for oil (Brent).
Not a good combination with sluggishly filling up our gas storages. I guess we'll notice in winter.
#Iran

From Licensing to Open Access: Designing a Sustainable Transition in Operational Weather Data
Emma Pidduck, Umberto Modigliani, Victoria L. Bennett, Fabio Venuti, Florian Pappenberger, Florence Rabier
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21673 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.21673 https://arxiv.org/html/2605.21673
arXiv:2605.21673v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This translational article documents the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) transition from a restricted data licensing model to open access under CC BY 4.0, completed in October 2025. The policy context included EU open data requirements and alignment with international data exchange frameworks. The transition was implemented through a tiered service model that kept core forecast data open while offering operationally supported delivery as a cost-recovered service. Between 2020 and 2025, ECMWF executed an iterative planning cycle: setting an annual target for revenue reduction, specifying additions to the open tier under that target, provisioning infrastructure, and assessing outcomes to update assumptions. Drawing on internal administrative records (2014 - 2025), we describe design choices, operational constraints, and early outcomes. In the six months following the end of the transition, more than 93% of previously paying organisations retained a Service Agreement, while open endpoint download volumes increased substantially. We discuss trade-offs in defining the open tier (resolution, parameters, schedule), the reduction of compliance overheads formerly associated with redistribution restrictions, and the scalability implications of global distribution. We note an emerging sustainability question as AI-based forecast products become freely available. The early evidence is consistent with the view that a tiered service model can be designed to reconcile open-access obligations with operational sustainability, subject to monitoring over longer contract renewal cycles (typically annual).
toXiv_bot_toot

Filing: Zoom's stake in Anthropic is worth ~$1.27B based on a February round which valued Anthropic at $380B; Zoom invested an additional $46M in recent months (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

That feeling when "ancient Native American burial mounds" are mentioned on page 2 and you think "oh God here we go with some intense racism/cultural appropriation again" but then you remember that you checked this book out because it was Native-authored and so it's actually a good thing.

Filing: Mary Junck, ex-chairman of Lee Enterprises' board of directors, is retiring on July 31, a few months after David Hoffmann invested $50M in Lee (Quad Cities Business Journal)
https://quadcitiesbusiness.com/junck-announces-retirement-from-lee-e…

"Durchsage ihres Lokomotivführers: Wegen einer Stellwerkstörung kann diese S11 ab Winterthur nicht weiterfahren. Sie müssen mit einem anderen Zug nach Zürich weiterfahren."
Montag.
#SBB #övlife #Winterthur

“We are a nation of laws.
You can't just make up things whole piece,”
said Senator Bill Cassidy,
following his primary loss.
“People are concerned about making ends meet, not about putting a slush fund together without a legal precedent.”
It’s not clear yet what approach Cassidy will take in his final months in office,
but he’s got plenty of opportunities to make his voice heard,
including on the effort to limit U.S. hostilities against Iran wi…

Bill Cassidy Is Done Holding Back What He Thinks
The Louisiana Republican is already speaking out against the president's “weaponization” fund and money for a White House ballroom.

Lifehack: When the clean shirt that you will need in a few minutes for an unscheduled meeting is wrinkled, you can use the office air humidifier and a power adapter instead of a flatiron.
#trustmeimanengineer #thereifixedit