Tootfinder

Vermont plastic bag use dropped 91% following ban, researchers find #Vermont

Vermont plastic bag use dropped 91% following ban, researchers find
In the midst of 2020 COVID measures, another change took place in Vermont: A law went into effect banning businesses from offering plastic bags to customers, with paper bags only available for a fee.

ChatGPT Agent uses a virtual browser to do tasks such as filling online forms and calling public APIs, and generates downloadable PowerPoint and Excel files (Reece Rogers/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-chatgpt-agent-launch/

OpenAI’s New ChatGPT Agent Tries to Do It All
It’s a PowerPoint generator! It’s a date-night planner! It’s … another agent from OpenAI.

Hello!
I have a happy favour to ask.
Last year, I had a US intern working with us and she now is looking for help that you- good reader of this account- could give.
(She needs academic survey participants)
Check out her flyer below, click the link, and please RT
http…

Research Study on Data Privacy and Collective Redress
A researcher at University College Dublin wants to conduct anonymous interviews to learn about why you would or would not participate in a legal action to rectify a data protection violation. This information can be used to help nonprofit organizations better represent you when organizations violate your data protection rights. Provide your email to receive more information. All personally identifiable information will be deleted following completion of the study.

Navigating the growing field of research on AI for software testing -- the taxonomy for AI-augmented software testing and an ontology-driven literature survey
Ina K. Schieferdecker
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14640

Navigating the growing field of research on AI for software testing -- the taxonomy for AI-augmented software testing and an ontology-driven literature survey
In industry, software testing is the primary method to verify and validate the functionality, performance, security, usability, and so on, of software-based systems. Test automation has gained increasing attention in industry over the last decade, following decades of intense research into test automation and model-based testing. However, designing, developing, maintaining and evolving test automation is a considerable effort. Meanwhile, AI's breakthroughs in many engineering fields are opening…

Memoirs of the CP/M creator released:
“Our father, Gary Kildall, was one of the founders of the personal computer industry, but you probably don’t know his name. Those who have heard of him may recall the myth that he ‘missed’ the opportunity to become Bill Gates by going flying instead of meeting with IBM. Unfortunately, this tall tale paints Gary as a ‘could-have-been,’ ignores his deep contributions, and overshadows his role as an inventor of key technologies that define how compute…

In His Own Words: Gary Kildall
Gary Kildall was a pioneer of personal computer software. He wrote programming language tools, including assemblers (Intel 4004), interpreters (BASIC), and compilers (PL/M). He created a widely-used disk operating system (CP/M). He and his wife, Dorothy McEwen, started a successful company called Digital Research to develop and market CP/M, which for years was the dominant operating system for personal microcomputers. Thousands of programs were written to run under it, and a million or more peo…

(Exhaustive) Symbolic Regression and model selection by minimum description length
Harry Desmond
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13033 https://

(Exhaustive) Symbolic Regression and model selection by minimum description length
Symbolic regression is the machine learning method for learning functions from data. After a brief overview of the symbolic regression landscape, I will describe the two main challenges that traditional algorithms face: they have an unknown (and likely significant) probability of failing to find any given good function, and they suffer from ambiguity and poorly-justified assumptions in their function-selection procedure. To address these I propose an exhaustive search and model selection by the…

FormGym: Doing Paperwork with Agents
Matthew Toles, Rattandeep Singh, Isaac Song Zhou Yu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14079 https://arx…

FormGym: Doing Paperwork with Agents
Completing paperwork is a challenging and time-consuming problem. Form filling is especially challenging in the pure-image domain without access to OCR, typeset PDF text, or a DOM. For computer agents, it requires multiple abilities, including multi-modal understanding, information retrieval, and tool-use. We present a novel form-filling benchmark consisting of 432 fields spread across 55 documents and 3 tasks, requiring knowledge of 236 features per user. We find that baseline VLAs achieve les…

Stabilizing and Tuning Superconductivity in La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_{7-\delta}$ Films: Oxygen Recycling Protocol Reveals Hole-Doping Analogue
Lifen Xiang, Siyi Lei, Xiaolin Ren, Ziao Han, Zijian Xu, X. J. Zhou, Zhihai Zhu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11581

Stabilizing and Tuning Superconductivity in La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_{7-δ}$ Films: Oxygen Recycling Protocol Reveals Hole-Doping Analogue
The recent achievement of superconductivity in La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_{7-δ}$ with transition temperatures exceeding 40 K in thin films under compressive strain and 80 K in bulk crystals under high pressure opens new avenues for research on high-temperature superconductivity. The realization of superconductivity in thin films requires delicate control of growth conditions, which presents significant challenges in the synthesis process. Furthermore, the stability of superconducting La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_{7-δ}…

Feeling Machines: Ethics, Culture, and the Rise of Emotional AI
Vivek Chavan, Arsen Cenaj, Shuyuan Shen, Ariane Bar, Srishti Binwani, Tommaso Del Becaro, Marius Funk, Lynn Greschner, Roberto Hung, Stina Klein, Romina Kleiner, Stefanie Krause, Sylwia Olbrych, Vishvapalsinhji Parmar, Jaleh Sarafraz, Daria Soroko, Daksitha Withanage Don, Chang Zhou, Hoang Thuy Duong Vu, Parastoo Semnani, Daniel Weinhardt, Elisabeth Andre, J\"org Kr\"uger, Xavier Fresquet

Feeling Machines: Ethics, Culture, and the Rise of Emotional AI
This paper explores the growing presence of emotionally responsive artificial intelligence through a critical and interdisciplinary lens. Bringing together the voices of early-career researchers from multiple fields, it explores how AI systems that simulate or interpret human emotions are reshaping our interactions in areas such as education, healthcare, mental health, caregiving, and digital life. The analysis is structured around four central themes: the ethical implications of emotional AI, …

The Tech DEI Backlash -- The Changing Landscape of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering
Sonja M. Hyrynsalmi, Mary Sanchez-Gordon, Anna Szlavi, Letizia Jaccheri
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14232

The Tech DEI Backlash -- The Changing Landscape of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering
Not long ago, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives were a top priority for leading software companies. However, in a short period, a wave of backlash has led many firms to re-assess their DEI strategies. Responding to this DEI backlash is crucial in academic research, especially because, currently, little scholarly research has been done on it. In this paper, therefore, we have set forth the following research question (RQ): "How have leading software companies changed their DEI s…