Tootfinder

Stressed out and excited about flying to Singapore and then Vietnam for summer vacation bright and early tomorrow morning.

Timer wrap around strikes again:
''The root cause was traced to a software timing bug. The software function that switches the signal amplifier on and off relies on an internal timer. This timer is constantly counting up and restarts from zero once every 16 months. If the function happens to be using the timer at the exact moment it restarts, the amplifier remains switched off, and Juice’s signal is too weak to detect from Earth.'

Juice team resolves anomaly on approach to Venus
The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) is on track for its gravity-assist flyby at Venus on 31 August, following the successful resolution of a spacecraft communication anomaly that temporarily severed contact with Earth.The issue, which emerged during a routine ground station pass on 16 July, temporarily disrupted Juice’s ability to transmit information about its health and status (telemetry).Thanks to swift and coordinated action by the teams at ESA’s European Sp…

Found an app called “Octave Coffee”. It’s an opinionated timer for pourover coffee. Tells you how much to pour, then how much to wait, and so on. And it has a cute pixel art kitty.
The problem is… it negs you while doing it, and your reward at the end for following the instructions is the message, “You actually listened. Shocking.”
I did it twice. It doesn’t vary.
So… I’m deleting it, even though I found it useful, because I don’t want to be insulted first thing in the morn…

Inside you are many wolves: Using cognitive models to interpret value trade-offs in LLMs
Sonia K. Murthy, Rosie Zhao, Jennifer Hu, Sham Kakade, Markus Wulfmeier, Peng Qian, Tomer Ullman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20666

Inside you are many wolves: Using cognitive models to interpret value trade-offs in LLMs
Navigating everyday social situations often requires juggling conflicting goals, such as conveying a harsh truth, maintaining trust, all while still being mindful of another person's feelings. These value trade-offs are an integral part of human decision-making and language use, however, current tools for interpreting such dynamic and multi-faceted notions of values in LLMs are limited. In cognitive science, so-called "cognitive models" provide formal accounts of these trade-offs in humans, by …

Last Thursday, the movers ultimately arrived and did an awesome job, emptying the house and garage in 3 hours. The house sale closed with no issues on Friday at 5pm. Today, Monday the 23rd, our house purchase should close mid to late afternoon. Tomorrow, the moving truck arrives to dump our possessions into various rooms. We're almost there...
#NewBeginnings #FeelinGood
https://youtu.be/Edwsf-8F3sI?si=FDM6ees_yO_DqqCE

Stress-induced Martensitic transformation in epitaxial Ni-Mn-Ga thin films and its correlation to optical and magneto-optical properties
M. Make\v{s}, J. Z\'azvorka, M. Hubert, P. Ve\v{r}t\'at, M. Rame\v{s}, J. Zemen, O. Heczko, M. Veis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04907

Stress-induced Martensitic transformation in epitaxial Ni-Mn-Ga thin films and its correlation to optical and magneto-optical properties
The optical and magneto-optical properties of thin epitaxial Ni-Mn-Ga films, with thicknesses ranging from 8 to 160 nm, were investigated across the spectral range of 0.7-6.4 eV. The films were deposited by DC magnetron sputtering on MgO substrate with stress-mediating Cr buffer layer. Structural and magnetic characterization revealed an stress-induced martensitic transformation for the films thicker than 80 nm, while thinner films remained in austenite structure deformed by substrate constrain…

A Survey on Vision-Language-Action Models: An Action Tokenization Perspective
Yifan Zhong, Fengshuo Bai, Shaofei Cai, Xuchuan Huang, Zhang Chen, Xiaowei Zhang, Yuanfei Wang, Shaoyang Guo, Tianrui Guan, Ka Nam Lui, Zhiquan Qi, Yitao Liang, Yuanpei Chen, Yaodong Yang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01925

A Survey on Vision-Language-Action Models: An Action Tokenization Perspective
The remarkable advancements of vision and language foundation models in multimodal understanding, reasoning, and generation has sparked growing efforts to extend such intelligence to the physical world, fueling the flourishing of vision-language-action (VLA) models. Despite seemingly diverse approaches, we observe that current VLA models can be unified under a single framework: vision and language inputs are processed by a series of VLA modules, producing a chain of \textit{action tokens} that …

Identity Increases Stability in Neural Cellular Automata
James Stovold
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06389 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.06389

Identity Increases Stability in Neural Cellular Automata
Neural Cellular Automata (NCAs) offer a way to study the growth of two-dimensional artificial organisms from a single seed cell. From the outset, NCA-grown organisms have had issues with stability, their natural boundary often breaking down and exhibiting tumour-like growth or failing to maintain the expected shape. In this paper, we present a method for improving the stability of NCA-grown organisms by introducing an 'identity' layer with simple constraints during training. Results show that…

Intrinsic defects explain n-type conductivity in CrSBr
Timur Biktagirov, Wolf Gero Schmidt, Karl Jakob Schiller, Michele Capra, Jonah Elias Nitschke, Lasse Sternemann, Anna Isaeva, Mirko Cinchetti
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06553

Intrinsic defects explain n-type conductivity in CrSBr
Understanding and controlling native defects is essential for unlocking the full potential of two-dimensional magnetic semiconductors. Here, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and first-principles calculations are used to explore the electronic properties of bulk CrSBr. ARPES measurements reveal clear signatures of conduction band filling in as-grown crystals, indicative of unintentional doping. An analysis of intrinsic defects based on density functional theory (DFT) identifies …

Thickness-Dependent Spin Pumping in YIG/W$_{90}$Ti$_{10}$ Bilayers
Marielle Hachem, Zeinab Harajli, Samih Isber, Mohammad Haidar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06831

Thickness-Dependent Spin Pumping in YIG/W$_{90}$Ti$_{10}$ Bilayers
We investigate the spin pumping efficiency in YIG/YIG/W$_{90}$Ti$_{10}$ bilayers by measuring the thickness dependence of both the YIG and WTi layers using broadband ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) spectroscopy. The deposition of a 5-nm WTi layer leads to enhanced Gilbert damping in thinner YIG films, indicating efficient spin current injection. From the spin pumping contribution to the damping of the YIG/WTi bilayer, we determine an effective spin mixing conductance of $ 3.3 \times 10^{18}~\math…