Tootfinder

"If you’re serious about Linux, you’re unlikely to fall for the Omarchy sales pitch. However, if you’re an inexperienced user who’s heard about Omarchy from a tech-influencer raving about it, I strongly recommend starting your Linux journey elsewhere, with a distribution that actually prioritizes your security and system integrity, and is built and maintained by people who live and breathe systems, and especially Linux."

"Die südafrikanische Regierung hat erkannt, welche Möglichkeiten dieses wissenschaftliche Megaprojekt bietet. Deshalb tut sie ihr Möglichstes, die Funkstille in der Karoo zu schützen. Schon 2007 erklärte sie das Gebiet um die Radioteleskope zur Astronomy Advantage Area. Diese ist in verschiedene Zonen unterteilt. Je näher man dem Kernbereich des SKA kommt, desto strenger werden die Auflagen."

😳 New research identifies link between endorsing easily disproven claims and prioritizing symbolic strength
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-link-endorsing-easily-disproven-prioritizing.html

New research identifies link between endorsing easily disproven claims and prioritizing symbolic strength
Why do some people endorse claims that can easily be disproved? It's one thing to believe false information, but another to actively stick with something that's obviously wrong.

Sandbar introduces Stream Ring, an AI-powered smart ring for transcribing audio notes into text via an app, preorder now from $249 and shipping in summer 2026 (Julian Chokkattu/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/sandbar-stream-smart-ring/

Whisper Into This AI-Powered Smart Ring to Organize Your Thoughts
A new company called Sandbar has unveiled a smart wearable called Stream Ring, which uses a microphone to record your softly spoken thoughts. And it’s powered by—you guessed it—an AI chatbot.

"Governments must prioritize nature protection, former US senator Russ Feingold says"
#Nature #Environment

Governments must prioritize nature protection, former US senator Russ Feingold says
Bill Gates recently claimed that protecting nature or improving human health is an either-or choice, but former national leaders like Russ Feingold, a retired U.S. senator, and Mary Robinson, former Irish president, disagree. As chair of the Global Steering Committee of the Campaign for Nature, a nonprofit organization uniting prominent politicians in support of nature […]

Here’s the lightning sketch of Paul’s Treatise Against Efficiency that I’ve never written:
1. Efficiency is asymptotically inefficient: as costs approach zero, the cost of further reducing them approaches infinity.
2. Efficiency prioritizes the measurable over the difficult-to-measure.
3. Efficiency prioritizes what those in power see (or imagine) over on-the-ground reality.
4. Following from 2 and 3, efficiency reduces the amount and quality of information flowing into a human system.
5. Efficiency foments institutional inflexibility.
6. By removing slack, efficiency causes small failures to cascade more readily and increases the risk of catastrophic failure.
7. Following rom 4, 5, and 6, efficiency trades small costs for massive risks: from failures, from missed opportunities, and from inability to adjust.
8. Efficiency, when pushed, strangles the emergent phenomena that in the long term create all new things of value.
9. Thus, although it can be a by-product of evolution, efficiency as a goal in itself strangles evolution.
10. Efficiency as a goal strangles joy.

Just finished "The Word for World is Forest" by Ursula K. Le Guin. Can't believe I didn't read this one earlier, and this strengthens my resolve to finish off the rest of her stuff I have yet to read sooner. I think it benefits somewhat from having read it after "Four Ways to Forgiveness" which gives more of the Hainish context. Certainly none of the blurbs I had read about it did it any measure of justice, which is one reason I hadn't prioritized it. More than being about colonization, it's about a solution to the paradox of tolerance, and both the price and imperfections of that solution. As usual with Le Guin's science fiction, it's a rich companion to anarchist thought.
I think the typical objection to seeing it as an answer to the warlord question would be that it serendipitously positions the indigenous population with more power and a less ruthless opponent than in the imagined scenario, and it uses the League of Worlds as a sort of deus ex machina to foreclose further retribution. Ultimately that's why I think it's more about the paradox of tolerance than anything else, but I also think in regards to the warlord problem that we are too quick to underestimate just how numerous and enthusiastic the opponents of a warlord might be, and to overestimate the strength of technological weapons wielded by frail (and psychologically unarmored) humans.
In any case, Le Guin gives this book's alien humans yet another fascinatingly credible capability, and getting to see the introduction of ansible technology with all its implications is pretty cool too. Maybe not

“What they call defence spending… this government in London has chosen to prioritise weapons of war whilst people are struggling to pay their food bills & heat their homes.”
"There are any number of criticisms of Sinn Fein on the Irish left which is as it should be: over here we must recognise that a unionist first minister at Stormont would never have criticised British warmongering."
Lessons in anti-imperialism from across the Irish Sea

Reproducibility: The New Frontier in AI Governance
Israel Mason-Williams, Gabryel Mason-Williams
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11595 https://arxiv.org/pdf/251…

Reproducibility: The New Frontier in AI Governance
AI policymakers are responsible for delivering effective governance mechanisms that can provide safe, aligned and trustworthy AI development. However, the information environment offered to policymakers is characterised by an unnecessarily low Signal-To-Noise Ratio, favouring regulatory capture and creating deep uncertainty and divides on which risks should be prioritised from a governance perspective. We posit that the current publication speeds in AI combined with the lack of strong scientifi…

A look at 1X's $20K Neo humanoid housekeeper robot, controlled remotely by a human with a VR headset, available now for preorder, with delivery expected in 2026 (Joanna Stern/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.