Tootfinder

BRICKSTORM Backdoor
"The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) analyzed eight BRICKSTORM samples obtained from victim organizations. BRICKSTORM is a custom Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) Go-based backdoor. "
MISP standard and STIX files available at the following location:
🔗 https://cti-tra…

Following public outcry,
the U.S. Department of Education has restored funding for students who have both hearing and vision loss,
about a month after cutting it.
But rather than sending the money directly to the four programs that are part of a national network helping students who are deaf and blind, a condition known as deafblindness,
the department has instead rerouted the grants to a different organization
The Trump administration targeted the programs in …

Students With Hearing and Vision Loss Get Funding Back Despite Trump’s Anti-DEI Campaign
Following public outcry, the Department of Education has reversed its decision to cut funding for students who have both hearing and vision loss, opting instead to reroute grants to an organization that will provide funding to these students.

feeling right levitated by chuck smith's fugs film! at doc #nyc, with glorious archival footage & fresh interviews, including ed sanders, the elusive & charming ken weaver, crumb & kominsky together & more. streaming thru 11/30 then up in the air. https://w…

»Oft faulenzt er tagelang, hat er aber viel Arbeit, dann arbeitet er Tag und Nacht mit unermüdlicher Ausdauer fort; eine bestimmte Zeit zum Schlafen und Wachen gibt es bei ihm nicht; sehr oft bleibt er ganze Nächte auf, dann legt er sich wieder mittags ganz angekleidet aufs Kanapee und schläft bis abends, unbekümmert um die ganze Welt, die bei ihm frei aus- und eingeht.« (Preußischer Spitzelbericht über Marx, 1852/53)

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

Filing: Synopsys plans to lay off ~10% of its staff, or ~2,000 employees, after completing its $35B acquisition of engineering design firm Ansys earlier in 2025 (Jaspreet Singh/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/synopsys-cut…

Matchmaker: An Open-source Library for Real-time Piano Score Following and Systematic Evaluation
Jiyun Park, Carlos Cancino-Chac\'on, Suhit Chiruthapudi, Juhan Nam
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10087 …

Matchmaker: An Open-source Library for Real-time Piano Score Following and Systematic Evaluation
Real-time music alignment, also known as score following, is a fundamental MIR task with a long history and is essential for many interactive applications. Despite its importance, there has not been a unified open framework for comparing models, largely due to the inherent complexity of real-time processing and the language- or system-dependent implementations. In addition, low compatibility with the existing MIR environment has made it difficult to develop benchmarks using large datasets avail…

Observation Matrix Design for Densifying MIMO Channel Estimation via 2D Ice Filling
Zijian Zhang, Mingyao Cui
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08887 https://arxi…

Observation Matrix Design for Densifying MIMO Channel Estimation via 2D Ice Filling
In recent years, densifying multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has attracted much attention from the communication community. Thanks to the subwavelength antenna spacing, the strong correlations among densifying antennas provide sufficient prior knowledge about channel state information (CSI). This inspires the careful design of observation matrices (e.g., transmit precoders and receive combiners), that exploits the CSI prior knowledge, to boost channel estimation performance. Aligned with t…

Aurora as seen from Florida

If anyone needs me, I'll be in my box. :neocat_box: