Tootfinder

The feeling when you find the root cause for a problem that has been bothering you for months. And it turns out to be fixable by adding a single letter. (To turn an "unsigned long" literal into an "unsigned long long" one.) (Actually I made it use the UINT64_C() macro from <cstdint>.)
Writing portable code is hard. And thanks, Windows, for keeping "long" as 32 bits even in 64-bit code.
Now, if only Clang or gcc on Linux would warn about such po…

VerIF: Verification Engineering for Reinforcement Learning in Instruction Following
Hao Peng, Yunjia Qi, Xiaozhi Wang, Bin Xu, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09942 …

VerIF: Verification Engineering for Reinforcement Learning in Instruction Following
Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) has become a key technique for enhancing large language models (LLMs), with verification engineering playing a central role. However, best practices for RL in instruction following remain underexplored. In this work, we explore the verification challenge in RL for instruction following and propose VerIF, a verification method that combines rule-based code verification with LLM-based verification from a large reasoning model (e.g., QwQ-32B). …

Madre Fire Update from Los Padres National Forest
Size: 80,786 Acres / Containment: 67%
Total Personnel: 1,330
Work continues along the west, northwest, northeast, and southwest of the fire perimeter to strengthen both - direct and indirect - containment lines as well as mop-up and patrol to ensure lines are secure. Dozer and handcrews are engaged on rugged terrain along the southeast flank, with ongoing efforts focused on structure protection and securing Highway 166. Aeri…

Watch Duty - Wildfire Maps & Alerts
Real-time information about wildfire and firefighting efforts nearby

What, my family actually expects me to act "normal"? What kind of backwards sorcery is that? I’m an anarchist at heart and a syndicalist by choice, no apologies, no compromises.
https://nsf-iaa.org

"The credit score drop is [as bad as] filing for bankruptcy, and some borrowers are finding out when they try to get car loans or rent apartments."
Student loan missed payments causes credit score drop for millions - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/05/25/credit-score-student-loan-elinquency-debt/

G-Sim: Generative Simulations with Large Language Models and Gradient-Free Calibration
Samuel Holt, Max Ruiz Luyten, Antonin Berthon, Mihaela van der Schaar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09272

G-Sim: Generative Simulations with Large Language Models and Gradient-Free Calibration
Constructing robust simulators is essential for asking "what if?" questions and guiding policy in critical domains like healthcare and logistics. However, existing methods often struggle, either failing to generalize beyond historical data or, when using Large Language Models (LLMs), suffering from inaccuracies and poor empirical alignment. We introduce G-Sim, a hybrid framework that automates simulator construction by synergizing LLM-driven structural design with rigorous empirical calibration…

There has been so much Saharan dust in the air that it’s odd for people to be talking about seeding.
Experts Reject Cloud Seeding Link to Central Texas Floods https://ground.news/article/controversy-erupts-over-weather-modification-following-texas-flooding_bc9a76

Tip for #FlyingLess as a family: prepare for long train rides with board card games. The #privacy friendly app games by @… are absolutely brilliant, easy to use, stable not stealing your data (or trying to sell your kids stuff).
(Edited to give right masto account: top work, thanks Secuso🙏 for the hours of fun your sudoku app has provided already).
https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/105.php

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05008 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCV_…

Structure-Aware Radar-Camera Depth Estimation
Monocular depth estimation aims to determine the depth of each pixel from an RGB image captured by a monocular camera. The development of deep learning has significantly advanced this field by facilitating the learning of depth features from some well-annotated datasets \cite{Geiger_Lenz_Stiller_Urtasun_2013,silberman2012indoor}. Eigen \textit{et al.} \cite{eigen2014depth} first introduce a multi-scale fusion network for depth regression. Following this, subsequent improvements have come from r…

PersonaLens: A Benchmark for Personalization Evaluation in Conversational AI Assistants
Zheng Zhao, Clara Vania, Subhradeep Kayal, Naila Khan, Shay B. Cohen, Emine Yilmaz
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09902

PersonaLens: A Benchmark for Personalization Evaluation in Conversational AI Assistants
Large language models (LLMs) have advanced conversational AI assistants. However, systematically evaluating how well these assistants apply personalization--adapting to individual user preferences while completing tasks--remains challenging. Existing personalization benchmarks focus on chit-chat, non-conversational tasks, or narrow domains, failing to capture the complexities of personalized task-oriented assistance. To address this, we introduce PersonaLens, a comprehensive benchmark for evalu…