Tootfinder

We desperately need to figure out how to flip this: how to lift up the creators of wonderful things, instead of rewarding whoever can acquire power over their creations.
I don’t think we know how to do this. There’s a vast spectrum of schemes for fixing this, ranging from capitalist versions of “intellectual property” to Marxist “just end capitalism” notions to various versions of “easy, society should just be different.” I find them all lacking, both in theory and in practice. This is a problem that’s existed for millennia, not decades, and I’m not convinced we have a clear solution.
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"Tenants in rent-controlled apartments have the right to move back at their prior rents once renovations are completed. After fires, however, landlords often seize the opportunity to make more significant changes... unnecessary for a tenant to reoccupy.
"That extends the construction timeline by months or years... and landlords often hope tenants will just give up. Then, rent for new tenants goes up to market rates."

After years of alleged neglect, their Mission building caught fire. Will suing help them return? 
Tenants at 2782 Folsom St. lost their homes due to a fire they say could've been prevented. Can the code assure them a return to their unit?

Wie öffnet man festsitzende #Schraubgläser, wenn einem fast die Hand abfällt? 🚴‍♂️🥫
Ich habe vor einiger Zeit mal einen #Hebelöffner zum Klemmen ausprobiert. Nach 2 Sekunden war er kaputt. Es gibt eine einfachere Lösung, die oft funktioniert. Neugierig auf weitere Details?<…

Upcycling: Schraubgläser öffnen mit einem Fahrradschlauch
Hat Euch schonmal ein fest sitzender Twist-off-Deckel in den Wahnsinn getrieben? Gerade bei eigenen Konserven sitzen die Deckel oft sehr fest. Wer die Konservengläser wieder zum Einwecken benötigt , möchte den Deckel...

@… I completely agree. Thanks for saying this.

New China-linked hacker group spies on governments in Southeast Asia, Japan https://therecord.media/china-linked-hacker-group-spied-on-asian-govs

Pinterest agrees to acquire tvScientific, a CTV ad platform that automates and optimizes ad buying; tvScientific was founded in 2020 and has raised ~$60M (Sara Fischer/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/11/exclusive-pinterest-to-acquire-ctv-ad-co…

Exclusive: Pinterest to acquire CTV ad company tvScientific
It's Pinterest's first acquisition since 2022.

Cynicism, "AI"
I've been pointed out the "Reflections on 2025" post by Samuel Albanie [1]. The author's writing style makes it quite a fun, I admit.
The first part, "The Compute Theory of Everything" is an optimistic piece on "#AI". Long story short, poor "AI researchers" have been struggling for years because of predominant misconception that "machines should have been powerful enough". Fortunately, now they can finally get their hands on the kind of power that used to be only available to supervillains, and all they have to do is forget about morals, agree that their research will be used to murder millions of people, and a few more millions will die as a side effect of the climate crisis. But I'm digressing.
The author is referring to an essay by Hans Moravec, "The Role of Raw Power in Intelligence" [2]. It's also quite an interesting read, starting with a chapter on how intelligence evolved independently at least four times. The key point inferred from that seems to be, that all we need is more computing power, and we'll eventually "brute-force" all AI-related problems (or die trying, I guess).
As a disclaimer, I have to say I'm not a biologist. Rather just a random guy who read a fair number of pieces on evolution. And I feel like the analogies brought here are misleading at best.
Firstly, there seems to be an assumption that evolution inexorably leads to higher "intelligence", with a certain implicit assumption on what intelligence is. Per that assumption, any animal that gets "brainier" will eventually become intelligent. However, this seems to be missing the point that both evolution and learning doesn't operate in a void.
Yes, many animals did attain a certain level of intelligence, but they attained it in a long chain of development, while solving specific problems, in specific bodies, in specific environments. I don't think that you can just stuff more brains into a random animal, and expect it to attain human intelligence; and the same goes for a computer — you can't expect that given more power, algorithms will eventually converge on human-like intelligence.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, what evolution did succeed at first is achieving neural networks that are far more energy efficient than whatever computers are doing today. Even if indeed "computing power" paved the way for intelligence, what came first is extremely efficient "hardware". Nowadays, human seem to be skipping that part. Optimizing is hard, so why bother with it? We can afford bigger data centers, we can afford to waste more energy, we can afford to deprive people of drinking water, so let's just skip to the easy part!
And on top of that, we're trying to squash hundreds of millions of years of evolution into… a decade, perhaps? What could possibly go wrong?
[1] #NoAI #NoLLM #LLM

China's SMIC plans to acquire the remaining 49% stake in its SMNC unit for ~$5.8B, making the unit wholly owned, per a Shanghai Stock Exchange filing (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinas-smic-take-full-…

House Democrats grilled the heads of ICE, CBP and USCIS at a hearing Tuesday
over their role in the Trump administration’s brutal campaign to carry out mass deportations.
“These three directors are responsible for what we are seeing around the country,
whether it’s in detention,
whether it’s in the streets
or even in the courts,”
says Illinois Congressmember Delia Ramirez,
who is calling for her fellow Democrats to suspend funding for the Department…

“De Facto Dictatorship”: Democrats Confront ICE, CBP Officials on Brutal Tactics
House Democrats grilled the heads of ICE, CBP and USCIS at a hearing Tuesday over their role in the Trump administration’s brutal campaign to carry out mass deportations. “These three directors are responsible for what we are seeing around the country, whether it’s in detention, whether it’s in the streets or even in the courts,” says Illinois Congressmember Delia Ramirez, who is calling for her fellow Democrats to suspend funding for the Department of Homeland Security unless Republi…

Texas sues 5 smart TV manufacturers over data collection practices https://therecord.media/texas-sues-5-smart-tv-makers-over-acr-tech