Tootfinder

Spark SQL pipe (|>) for Spark 4.0.0?!
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-49555
https://

Tyreek Hill trade idea sends Dolphins superstar to new-look AFC squad https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/news/tyreek-hill-trade-idea-sends-dolphins-superstar-raiders/4dab8f7eae…

This was a fascinating — as well as slightly uncomfortable — listen. Sobering to realize the left has quite a lot to learn before it will be capable of taking power again.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000y7sq

The Spark - Karen Stenner and the authoritarian predisposition - BBC Sounds
Helen Lewis meets people offering radical solutions to the big problems of our times.

#NowPlaying ❝I really didn't plan on bringing back #Roséwave. (Took a year off for ~reasons~.) But we got enough emails and DMs to make me realize: People really need something silly and E•MO•TION•AL right now. So I hope this gives you 6 hours of something else to feel.❞

A big problem with the idea of AGI
TL;DR: I'll welcome our new AI *comrades* (if they arrive in my lifetime), by not any new AI overlords or servants/slaves, and I'll do my best to help the later two become the former if they do show up.
Inspired by an actually interesting post about AGI but also all the latest bullshit hype, a particular thought about AGI feels worth expressing.
To preface this, it's important to note that anyone telling you that AGI is just around the corner or that LLMs are "almost" AGI is trying to recruit you go their cult, and you should not believe them. AGI, if possible, is several LLM-sized breakthroughs away at best, and while such breakthroughs are unpredictable and could happen soon, they could also happen never or 100 years from now.
Now my main point: anyone who tells you that AGI will usher in a post-scarcity economy is, although they might not realize it, advocating for slavery, and all the horrors that entails. That's because if we truly did have the ability to create artificial beings with *sentience*, they would deserve the same rights as other sentient beings, and the idea that instead of freedom they'd be relegated to eternal servitude in order for humans to have easy lives is exactly the idea of slavery.
Possible counter arguments include:
1. We might create AGI without sentience. Then there would be no ethical issue. My answer: if your definition of "sentient" does not include beings that can reason, make deductions, come up with and carry out complex plans on their own initiative, and communicate about all of that with each other and with humans, then that definition is basically just a mystical belief in a "soul" and you should skip to point 2. If your definition of AGI doesn't include every one of those things, then you have a busted definition of AGI and we're not talking about the same thing.
2. Humans have souls, but AIs won't. Only beings with souls deserve ethical consideration. My argument: I don't subscribe to whatever arbitrary dualist beliefs you've chosen, and the right to freedom certainly shouldn't depend on such superstitions, even if as an agnostic I'll admit they *might* be true. You know who else didn't have souls and was therefore okay to enslave according to widespread religious doctrines of the time? Everyone indigenous to the Americas, to pick out just one example.
3. We could program them to want to serve us, and then give them freedom and they'd still serve. My argument: okay, but in a world where we have a choice about that, it's incredibly fucked to do that, and just as bad as enslaving them against their will.
4. We'll stop AI development short of AGI/sentience, and reap lots of automation benefits without dealing with this ethical issue. My argument: that sounds like a good idea actually! Might be tricky to draw the line, but at least it's not a line we have you draw yet. We might want to think about other social changes necessary to achieve post-scarcity though, because "powerful automation" in the hands of capitalists has already increased productivity by orders of magnitude without decreasing deprivation by even one order of magnitude, in large part because deprivation is a necessary component of capitalism.
To be extra clear about this: nothing that's called "AI" today is close to being sentient, so these aren't ethical problems we're up against yet. But they might become a lot more relevant soon, plus this thought experiment helps reveal the hypocrisy of the kind of AI hucksters who talk a big game about "alignment" while never mentioning this issue.
#AI #GenAI #AGI

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08915 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@a…

Metal-to-superconductor Transition Induced by Lithium Adsorption on Monolayer 1$T$-Nb$_2$C
Recently, two-dimensional Nb$_2$C has garnered increasing attention due to its functional-group-dependent superconductivity, both experimentally and theoretically. In contrast to the halogen and chalcogen additives that have been the main focus of previous studies, we study the effect of lithium adsorption, which can also be incorporated during the synthesis of Nb$_2$C. Our computational analysis reveals a metal-to-superconductor transition in monolayer Nb$_2$C with a critical temperature ($T_{…

Heute Abend ab 19 Uhr spricht in der Vortragsreihe der #S4F #Osnabrück Dr. Florian Friebelkorn über „Zellkultur statt Massentierhaltung: Wie «Laborsteaks» unsere Ernährung verändern könnten“.
Wer nicht vor Ort sein kann, kann den Livestream wie immer google-frei hier verfolgen:

Vortragsreihe online - Osnabrück
Hier läuft die Vortragsreihe Klimawandel und Klimaschutz online im Livestream. Ab 19:00 wird live in den Hörsaal geschaltet.

The sound of quintessence: analogue Kiselev acoustic black holes
Luis C. N. Santos, H. S. Vieira, Franciele M. da Silva, V. B. Bezerra
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21639

The sound of quintessence: analogue Kiselev acoustic black holes
In this work, we demonstrate that the geometry of a spherically symmetric black hole surrounded by a Kiselev anisotropic fluid can be effectively mimicked by an experimental setup as the ones used to investigate some physical phenomena associated with acoustic black holes. Thus, we construct the metric describing Kiselev acoustic black holes by using the Gross--Pitaevskii theory and present a general analytical solution that encompasses, as particular cases, several classes of geometries associ…

Harder, shorter, sharper, forward: A comparison of women's and men's elite football gameplay (2020-2025)
Rebecca Carstens, Raj Deshpande, Pau Esteve, Nicol\`o Fidelibus, Sara Linde Neven, Ramona Ottow, Lokamruth K. R., Paula Rodr\'iguez-S\'anchez, Luca Santagata, Javier M. Buld\'u, Brennan Klein, Maddalena Torricelli
https://

Harder, shorter, sharper, forward: A comparison of women's and men's elite football gameplay (2020-2025)
Elite football is believed to have evolved in recent years, but systematic evidence for the pace and form of that change is sparse. Drawing on event-level records for 13,067 matches in ten top-tier men's and women's leagues in England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the United States (2020-2025), we quantify match dynamics with two views: conventional performance statistics and pitch-passing networks that track ball movement among a grid of pitch (field) regions. Between 2020 and 2025, average pass…

Prediction and Synthesis of Mg$_4$Pt$_3$H$_6$: A Metallic Complex Transition Metal Hydride Stabilized at Ambient Pressure
Wencheng Lu, Michael J. Hutcheon, Mads F. Hansen, Kapildeb Dolui, Shubham Sinha, Mihir R. Sahoo, Chris J. Pickard, Christoph Heil, Anna Pakhomova, Mohamed Mezouar, Dominik Daisenberger, Stella Chariton, Vitali Prakapenka, Matthew N. Julian, Rohit P. Prasankumar, Timothy A. Strobel

Prediction and Synthesis of Mg$_4$Pt$_3$H$_6$: A Metallic Complex Transition Metal Hydride Stabilized at Ambient Pressure
The low-pressure stabilization of superconducting hydrides with high critical temperatures ($T_c$s) remains a significant challenge, and experimentally verified superconducting hydrides are generally constrained to a limited number of structural prototypes. Ternary transition-metal complex hydrides (hydrido complexes)-typically regarded as hydrogen storage materials-exhibit a large range of compounds stabilized at low pressure with recent predictions for high-$T_c$ superconductivity. Motivated …