Tootfinder

media conglomerates are leading the way against open internet law by fining cloudflare:
Italy's "shadowy cabal of European media elites" ... "scheme to censor the Internet. The scheme, which even the EU has called concerning, required us within a mere 30 minutes of notification to fully censor from the Internet any sites a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests. No judicial oversight. No due process. No appeal. No transparency. "

I have an expired credit card with a metal core that I want to destroy. I originally thought the core was an aluminum alloy, but it resisted scissors. With some bending and prying, I'm 99% sure the core is steel.
After a few minutes of work, I managed to peel some of the plastic off the mag-stripe side but cut a finger in the process.
The card had a pleasant heft and feeling of durability, but given the difficulty to destroy it, I really dislike it now.

🍆 A Hermetic, Transparent Soft Growing Vine Robot System for Pipe Inspection
#robots #machine

A Hermetic, Transparent Soft Growing Vine Robot System for Pipe Inspection
Rehabilitation of aging pipes requires accurate condition assessment and mapping far into the pipe interiors. Soft growing vine robot systems are particularly promising for navigating confined, sinuous paths such as in pipes, but are currently limited by complex subsystems and a lack of validation in real-world industrial settings. In this paper, we introduce the concept and implementation of a hermetic and transparent vine robot system for visual condition assessment and mapping within non-bra…

Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients as "Failed" Gravitational Wave Sources: Helium Core$-$Black Hole Mergers Following Delayed Dynamical Instability
Jakub Klencki, Brian D. Metzger
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09745

Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients as "Failed" Gravitational Wave Sources: Helium Core$-$Black Hole Mergers Following Delayed Dynamical Instability
Binaries in which a massive donor star undergoes an extended ($\gtrsim$ kyr) phase of stable mass transfer onto a black hole (BH) accretor offer a promising channel for creating LIGO gravitational wave sources. However, in many systems the mass transfer terminates prematurely in a dynamical instability at orbital periods of a few days, culminating in the BH plunging into the donor and potentially disrupting and accreting its helium core at highly super-Eddington rates. Combining a suite of bina…

"Netflix asks partners to consider the following guiding principles before leveraging GenAI in any creative workflow..."
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/10/netflix/

Comparative Evaluation of Neural Network Architectures for Generalizable Human Spatial Preference Prediction in Unseen Built Environments
Maral Doctorarastoo, Katherine A. Flanigan, Mario Berg\'es, Christopher McComb
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10954

Comparative Evaluation of Neural Network Architectures for Generalizable Human Spatial Preference Prediction in Unseen Built Environments
The capacity to predict human spatial preferences within built environments is instrumental for developing Cyber-Physical-Social Infrastructure Systems (CPSIS). A significant challenge in this domain is the generalizability of preference models, particularly their efficacy in predicting preferences within environmental configurations not encountered during training. While deep learning models have shown promise in learning complex spatial and contextual dependencies, it remains unclear which ne…

In-plane polar domains enhanced energy storage
Yu Lei, Xiaoming Shi, Sihan Yan, Qinghua Zhang, Jiecheng Liu, Sixu Wang, Yu Chen, Jiaou Wang, He Qi, Qian Li, Ting Lin, Jingfen Li, Qing Zhu, Haoyu Wang, Jing Chen, Lincong Shu, Linkun Wang, Han Wu, Xianran Xing
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11126

In-plane polar domains enhanced energy storage
Relaxor ferroelectric thin films are recognized for their ultrahigh power density, rendering them highly promising for energy storage applications in electrical and electronic systems. However, achieving high energy storage performance with chemically homogeneous, environmentally friendly and compositionally stable materials remains challenging. In this work, we present a design of dielectrics with high energy storage performance via an in-plane polar domains incorporating polar nanoregions mec…

How the insurance crisis overtook California
Insurance Commissioner Lara’s 2023 regulatory overhaul promised to ease California’s insurance crisis
but instead delivered major concessions to the industry.
Under Lara’s watch, the state’s insurer of last resort exploded
from 123,657 policies in 2019 to over 645,000,
leaving January wildfire victims underinsured.
Six of nine insurers filing under new rules
add zero new policies in high-risk zones
-…

How the insurance crisis overtook California
Insurance Commissioner Lara's 2023 regulatory overhaul promised to ease California's insurance crisis but instead delivered major concessions to the industry.

Nonlinear Strain-Mediated Magnetoelectric Coupling in Sub-Microscale Ni/BPZT Thin-Film Devices
Fanfan Meng, Emma Van Meirvenne, Federica Luciano, Xiangyu Wu, Yves Deblock, Kaustuv Banerjee, Peter Rickhaus, Florin Ciubotaru, Christoph Adelmann
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09795

Nonlinear Strain-Mediated Magnetoelectric Coupling in Sub-Microscale Ni/BPZT Thin-Film Devices
Strain-mediated magnetoelectric (ME) heterostructures enable electric-field control of magnetism and are promising for ultra-low-power spintronic logic. Yet achieving spatially selective, low-voltage control in thin films and quantifying ME coupling across the full ferroelastic loop remains challenging. Here, we investigate sub-micrometer Ni/BPZT thin-film devices with laterally patterned gates that localize in-plane strain beneath the Ni stripe and modulate its magnetization. We use anisotropi…

Do prawns feel pain? Why scientists are urging a rethink of Australia’s favoured festive food https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/22/crustaceans-feelings-sentient-christmas-new-year-prawns-australia