Tootfinder

Brands complain Amazon's "Buy for Me" AI-powered shopping tool features their products on Amazon without permission and shows descriptions with errors (Allison Smith/Modern Retail)
https://www.modernretail.co/technology/bra

Brands are upset that ‘Buy For Me’ is featuring their products on Amazon without permission
Online merchants say Amazon’s “Buy for Me” AI tool listed their products without permission, forcing them to opt out after the fact.

FPF releases Issue Brief on Brazil’s Digital ECA: new paradigm of safety & privacy for minors online
https://fpf.org/blog/fpf-releases-issue-brief-on-brazils-digital-eca-new-paradigm-of-safety-privacy-for-minors-online…

"The study Vibe Coding Kills Open Source, takes an economic view of the problem and asks the question: is vibe coding economically sustainable? Can OSS survive when so many of its users are takers and not givers? According to the study, no."
(Original title: Vibe Coding Is Killing Open Source Software, Researchers Argue)

Vibe Coding Is Killing Open Source Software, Researchers Argue
‘If the maintainers of small projects give up, who will produce the next Linux?’

Seasonal Ice Cover Could Allow Liquid Lakes to Persist in a Cold #Mars Paleoclimate: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025AV001891 -> Thin ice may have protected lake water on frozen Mars: https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/thin-ice-may-have-protected-lake-water-frozen-mars

Ethical Considerations Around Machine Learning-Engaged Online Participatory Research - poster from Zooniverse community at #FF2025 https://zenodo.org/records/17779992

Partijleiders moeten dit weekend 'nadenken', nadat ook vijfpartijenkabinet is afgeschoten
#NLpol #formatie

Because I constantly hear myths about the good old compact cassette here's a longer post dispelling them:
1. They can sound as good as CDs
2. They don't wear out
3. You can't use a pencil to wind them
4. You can go to specific tracks automatically
5. You don't need to carry around extra batteries
I will elaborate below:
1. Sound Quality
Many higher-end decks can record cassettes on metal tape with various Dolby noise reduction settings; especially the combination of metal tape and Dolby S will make tapes that are pretty much indistinguishable from listening to a CD.
Even normal or chrome tape with Dolby B (around since the 1970s) will give great results; likely indistinguishable from a CD when played in a car or while out and about with a personal player.
Some extremely high-end tape decks produce better than CD results in some regards (for example some Nakamichi models go to 26KHz with frequency response, while CD are inherently limited to top out at 22KHz).
It's true that the dynamic range of CDs is much better than either vinyl records or tapes. However, unless you're super into classical music there's likely not much music for which this truly matters, as 99% is mastered to use much less dynamic range than provided by any audio media format. (If you're super into classical music you probably want SACD or other high-res lossless sources anyway, not CDs.)
2. Yes, it will wear out mechanically but you will wear out mechanically before it does. Please watch VWestlife's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dgJ4hRHBiw
3. European and American pencils are too thin to engage the cassette reel cogs. (You'd need to get a Japanese pencil. People mostly used BIC pens for this purpose which have the right thickness.)
4. Most (nice) decks and personal players from the early-to-mid nineties onwards have track skip features (e.g. Sony has AMS, Automatic Music Sensor), which allow precise winding to a specific track.
Some decks even did this in the early 80s!
5. My late-90s Walkman has seventy-eight (78) hours of playback on one (1) single AA battery.
Anyway, the main reason why I like them is they're fun to use and recording them is very deliberate instead of algorithms selecting music for me. :)

The New York Times announces it has hired eight journalists with backgrounds in video production and has another 14 video-related roles open (Sarah Scire/Nieman Lab)
https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/01/the-new-york-times-is-staffing-up-in-video/

How ICE agents are using facial recognition technology to bring surveillance to the streets (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/ice-agent-facial-recognition-video-protest-movile-fortify-photo-rcna257331
http://www.memeorandum.com/260206/p91#a260206p91

xAI raised a $20B Series E, exceeding the $15B targeted round size, with participation from Valor, Nvidia, and others, and says Grok 5 is currently in training (xAI)
https://x.ai/news/series-e
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