Tootfinder

If assumptions hold, SpaceX-xAI could own a full stack of capabilities, from launch to orbital bandwidth to frontier AI models, and offer AI on demand anywhere (Eric Berger/Ars Technica)
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/spacex-acq…

SpaceX acquires xAI, plans to launch a massive satellite constellation to power it
This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI's mission."

I have no idea what #musk has been huffing but clearly no one is willing to tell him no. #spacex have developed a really cool re-usable launch system but it seems like hubris to claim managing data centres in space gives you some sort of competitive advantage. Aside from making hardware swaps impossible…

SpaceX acquires xAI, plans to launch a massive satellite constellation to power it
This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI's mission."

Former NASA chief turned ULA lobbyist seeks law to limit SpaceX funding - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/former-nasa-chief-turned-ula-lobbyist-seeks-law-to-limit-spacex-funding/

Series D, Episode 03 - Traitor
AVON: So Tarrant, this is your big moment.
TARRANT: If the teleport works.
VILA: It's working perfectly now, I checked it myself.
DAYNA: [Laughs] Yes, but would you use it yourself Vila? That's the real test.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/403/176…

The equal-time rule only applies to candidates for office. The full “Fairness Doctrine” was ended 40 years ago and the lesser “Zapple Doctrine” which extended the equal-time rule to spokespeople and supporters was ended in 2014.
I think we don’t really need to take this seriously. @…

Ars Technica (@arstechnica@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Trump FCC tries to get more Republicans on late-night and daytime talk shows FCC disputes long-standing view that the shows are exempt from equal-time rule. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/trump-fcc-tries-to-get-more-republicans-on-late-night-and-daytime-talk-shows/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

My inability to get a handle on the size of the crowd from inside the crowd is a metaphor for today writ large. In addition to the big downtown protest, there were multiple protests at the airport, clergy arrested for blocking the airport access road, at least two impromptu neighborhood protests I’m aware of near my house. There were food drives. There were street parties. Many businesses that were “closed” kept their doors open and offered free coffee, pancakes, warming spaces. Nobody really knows everything that happened.
#GeneralStrike #MInneapolis

„As the state imposed a sweeping information blackout and advanced claims blaming foreign agents for the violence, this brutality has nonetheless been met with a striking absence of sustained outrage in spaces that otherwise position themselves as opponents of state violence. Among Western progressives, the response has largely been silence.“

Regarding the Erasure of Iranian Uprising - TripleAmpersand Journal (&&&)
The most recent state crackdown on Iranian protesters stands among the most violent suppressions of public dissent in Iran’s modern history. Protesters have been killed, blinded, and mass-arrested. As the state imposed a sweeping information blackout and advanced claims blaming foreign agents for the violence, this brutality has nonetheless been met with a striking absence… Read More »

NASA’s #Arcstone instrument, designed to improve the accuracy of lunar calibration, successfully completed its technology demonstration, and now begins extended operations: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/smallsatellites/2026/01/28/nasas-arcstone-instrument-successfully-completes-primary-mission/ - Arcstone launched on June 23 on a SpaceX Transporter-14 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, on a six-month mission to measure light reflected by the Moon, which is a stable and potentially highly-accurate calibration source, for satellite sensors

Hierarchic-EEG2Text: Assessing EEG-To-Text Decoding across Hierarchical Abstraction Levels
Anupam Sharma, Harish Katti, Prajwal Singh, Shanmuganathan Raman, Krishna Miyapuram
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20932 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.20932 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.20932
arXiv:2602.20932v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: An electroencephalogram (EEG) records the spatially averaged electrical activity of neurons in the brain, measured from the human scalp. Prior studies have explored EEG-based classification of objects or concepts, often for passive viewing of briefly presented image or video stimuli, with limited classes. Because EEG exhibits a low signal-to-noise ratio, recognizing fine-grained representations across a large number of classes remains challenging; however, abstract-level object representations may exist. In this work, we investigate whether EEG captures object representations across multiple hierarchical levels, and propose episodic analysis, in which a Machine Learning (ML) model is evaluated across various, yet related, classification tasks (episodes). Unlike prior episodic EEG studies that rely on fixed or randomly sampled classes of equal cardinality, we adopt hierarchy-aware episode sampling using WordNet to generate episodes with variable classes of diverse hierarchy. We also present the largest episodic framework in the EEG domain for detecting observed text from EEG signals in the PEERS dataset, comprising $931538$ EEG samples under $1610$ object labels, acquired from $264$ human participants (subjects) performing controlled cognitive tasks, enabling the study of neural dynamics underlying perception, decision-making, and performance monitoring.
We examine how the semantic abstraction level affects classification performance across multiple learning techniques and architectures, providing a comprehensive analysis. The models tend to improve performance when the classification categories are drawn from higher levels of the hierarchy, suggesting sensitivity to abstraction. Our work highlights abstraction depth as an underexplored dimension of EEG decoding and motivates future research in this direction.
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Series D, Episode 05 - Animals
SLAVE: Oh, er...
TARRANT: Come on, come on!
SLAVE: Try zero seven two.
TARRANT: Zero seven two it is. [Explosions on the flight deck, Tarrant is dazed]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/405/26 B7B2