Tootfinder

That some people find “text box that spits out a broken version of what they want and then you yell at it until it’s sufficing” more convenient than using existing tools says a lot more about existing tools than about the text box.
E.g. programming has long been extremely overwrought and complex for no reason other than enterprise wankery and gatekeeping, see the various frameworks from Big Tech.
The same companies now rent you expensive tools that “make programming easy”, while their overly complex frameworks and environments are free of course.
Instead of fixing the problem we’re now having two problems.
(The same is true in other industries.)

Digital sovereignty can’t be bargained away. The European Commission has tools, public support and a mandate to act on Big Tech. Trading that away for short-term calm would be a costly mistake.
https://www.politico.eu/article/digital-sovereignty-us-br…

Digital sovereignty can’t be bargained away
The European Commission has tools, public support and a mandate to act on Big Tech. Trading that away for short-term calm would be a costly mistake.

Crashing out at how poorly npm (Microsoft) is handling this security incident. Eleventy is not affected any more but *lots* of other tools in the JavaScript ecosystem are!
Hours later and the compromised package versions are still public…
Maybe don’t install anything from npm today, folks.

OpenAI releases GPT-5 pro, a version with extended reasoning exclusive to ChatGPT Pro subscribers, saying it scored 88.4% without tools on the GPQA benchmark (Maximilian Schreiner/The Decoder)
https://the-decoder.com/openai-claims-

OpenAI launches GPT-5 as a unified system with adaptive reasoning for complex tasks
OpenAI has unveiled GPT-5, a new AI system that builds on the reasoning advances of the o1 and o3 models and unifies every previous model line into a single adaptive architecture.

Leveraging LLMs for Semantic Conflict Detection via Unit Test Generation
Nathalia Barbosa (Centro de Inform\'atica, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brasil), Paulo Borba (Centro de Inform\'atica, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brasil), L\'euson Da Silva (Polytechnique Montreal, Canad\'a)
https://arxiv.org…

Leveraging LLMs for Semantic Conflict Detection via Unit Test Generation
Semantic conflicts arise when a developer introduces changes to a codebase that unintentionally affect the behavior of changes integrated in parallel by other developers. Traditional merge tools are unable to detect such conflicts, so complementary tools like SMAT have been proposed. SMAT relies on generating and executing unit tests: if a test fails on the base version, passes on a developer's modified version, but fails again after merging with another developer's changes, a semantic conflict…

"It's now been a week, and I checked again: Joshua's 'HIGHLY secure' server is still running a version of Apache with multiple known critical vulnerabilities. And even with plenty of time to fix the issue, he still hasn't."
https://micahflee.com/icebl…

ICEBlock handled my vulnerability report in the worst possible way
Last week, I wrote about how Joshua Aaron's ICEBlock app, which allows people to anonymously report ICE sightings within a 5-mile radius, is – unfortunately, and despite apparent good intentions – activism theater. This was based on Joshua's talk at HOPE where he made it clear that he isn't taking the advice

Why is everything on the cloud these days?
I’m kind of getting tired of every piece of professional and business software being a SaaS or cloud-based solution these days.
I have a good computer, it can run a lot of complex programs on it locally. I wish I had the option to do so.
Not everything needs to be synced 24/7. And I’d much rather have some tools include a cloud sync functionality that backs up changes with some kind of regular frequency for version control and cross-device access, but otherwise runs on my device.
These days, when I’m trying to go work somewhere without an internet connection or am traveling and have spotty data - I can’t access 90% of my work. Files don’t back up locally even when there’s a native desktop client app. Why?
It feels wasteful, sending so much data to the internet and back with constantly required online sync and web apps.
I feel nostalgic now, remembering the days of software that would require buying a license every couple of years, that would run on your device and could be accessed even from the top of a remote mountain if you wished, and that didn’t log you out every other week.
#tech #software

Time Tells All: Deanonymization of Blockchain RPC Users with Zero Transaction Fee (Extended Version)
Shan Wang, Ming Yang, Yu Liu, Yue Zhang, Shuaiqing Zhang, Zhen Ling, Jiannong Cao, Xinwen Fu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21440

Time Tells All: Deanonymization of Blockchain RPC Users with Zero Transaction Fee (Extended Version)
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) services have become a primary gateway for users to access public blockchains. While they offer significant convenience, RPC services also introduce critical privacy challenges that remain insufficiently examined. Existing deanonymization attacks either do not apply to blockchain RPC users or incur costs like transaction fees assuming an active network eavesdropper. In this paper, we propose a novel deanonymization attack that can link an IP address of a RPC user to …

Google updates video editing tool Vids to add AI avatars, automatic transcript trimming, and image-to-video tools, and releases a basic version to all users (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/27/google-vid…

Google Vids adds AI avatars to its video editor and launches a consumer version | TechCrunch
Google is launching a free consumer version of its video editor Vids that will be available without any AI-powered features.

I found an even faster way to make it so people do not talk to me when I answer the phone. I just say:
"Thank you for calling Pete. How may Pete assist you today?"
And I usually can't even get the whole thing out before they hang up.
The old version of my script would often go 10 to 15 seconds before they hung up, now we're down to 5 to 10 seconds!