Tootfinder

Interesting and fulsome interview on exactly how NORAD reacted to the plane hijacking in Victoria/Vancouver on Tuesday. They speak to the commander of NORAD, currently a Canadian.
I appreciated the last section most though:
“It's the only bi-national command in the world; it's been a strong bi-national command since 1958, and nothing has changed.
We don't ever talk politics at work. It's not something that we do, nor does it affect what we do.
I would say that we are as tight, and probably tighter than we've ever been. As the world around us gets to be more dangerous, I would say that NORAD is even closer than it's ever been.
But one last thing — we have the watch. That's the slogan here for NORAD.
To give you a great example, all of the assessors, we all live on-base in homes that actually have a safe, we call it the SCIF. It's basically a classified room that has all of our systems. The days that you're on duty, you're either at work or in your house. Because the timelines are so small for answering the phone, you don't walk the dog; you don't do all these other things, and someone covers for you when you're going between work and home.
That's how important this mission is to us down here. It's really important for everybody in Canada to know that at NORAD, we have the watch”
#canpoli #norad #cf18
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/us-fighter-jets-bc-alleged-plane-hijacking-1.7588750

A 0-day flaw in Microsoft SharePoint is being exploited in RCE attacks on servers globally; no patch exists and tens of thousands of servers are at risk (Washington Post)

Global hack on Microsoft product hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say
Unknown attackers exploited a “significant vulnerability” in Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration software, hitting targets around the world. 

#politik in modernen demokratischen staaten läuft nicht über lügen.
die armut wird nicht verheimlicht. es wird sogar forschung gefördert um sie zu untersuchen
nicht ob darüber geredet wird ist das perfide, sondern wie kritisiert wird. jeder noch so schlaue bürger macht aus einem, "den armen gehts scheiße", ein "wir haben ein problem mit

Long-Lived Particles from Meson and Muon Decays at Rest at Spallation Sources
Matheus Hostert, Salvador Urrea
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14085 https://arxi…

Long-Lived Particles from Meson and Muon Decays at Rest at Spallation Sources
We provide a systematic survey of spallation sources around the world and their potential to search for new light particles. We study the sensitivity of existing neutrino detectors to the decay in flight of light particles produced in the decay at rest of pions, muons, and kaons. At J-PARC, we show that the magnetized gaseous argon detectors of ND280 could place leading limits on light particles decaying to $e^+e^-$ and that the liquid-scintillator detectors of the J-PARC Sterile Neutrino Searc…

“FOR REVIEW: Address formats around the world”
https://www.w3.org/blog/International/2025/08/06/for-review-address-formats-around-the-world/
The doc to review:

“With one voice: FREE DC! We stand united to say that this immoral occupation is a violation of the fundamental principles of justice and compassion.” Reverend Keith Byrd, Union of Concerned Clergy of DC #WeAreAllDC
“I’ve been witness to federal agents pull people out of Ubers, Lyfts, and so heavily armed they could tear through houses.
They are treating us like animals.”
Makai, Youth…

@casaforall.bsky.social
“I’ve been witness to federal agents pull people out of Ubers, Lyfts, and so heavily armed they could tear through houses. They are treating us like animals.” Makai, Youth Advocate #WeAreAllDC [contains quote post or other embedded content]

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

Gary White, the #Buffalo custom hatter who made hats for Indiana Jones, The Untouchables, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and other films (and two for me), has died:
https://www.

Hats Off to Gary White, who Outfitted the stars with Custom Hats for Upwards of 50 Years - Buffalo Rising
Buffalo’s legendary custom hatter, Gary White, has passed away. White, who made hats for upwards of 50 years, was widely known for creating spec hats for the film industry, including notable films such as Dick Tracy, The Untouchables, Tombstone, and Indiana Jones. In a world where the art of making custom hats is becoming more and more obscure, Buffalo was certainly lucky to have Gary and his business – The Custom Hatter – around for so long. For decades, Gary

Subtooting since people in the original thread wanted it to be over, but selfishly tagging @… and @… whose opinions I value...
I think that saying "we are not a supply chain" is exactly what open-source maintainers should be doing right now in response to "open source supply chain security" threads.
I can't claim to be an expert and don't maintain any important FOSS stuff, but I do release almost all of my code under open licenses, and I do use many open source libraries, and I have felt the pain of needing to replace an unmaintained library.
There's a certain small-to-mid-scale class of program, including many open-source libraries, which can be built/maintained by a single person, and which to my mind best operate on a "snake growth" model: incremental changes/fixes, punctuated by periodic "skin-shedding" phases where make rewrites or version updates happen. These projects aren't immortal either: as the whole tech landscape around them changes, they become unnecessary and/or people lose interest, so they go unmaintained and eventually break. Each time one of their dependencies breaks (or has a skin-shedding moment) there's a higher probability that they break or shed too, as maintenance needs shoot up at these junctures. Unless you're a company trying to make money from a single long-lived app, it's actually okay that software churns like this, and if you're a company trying to make money, your priorities absolutely should not factor into any decisions people making FOSS software make: we're trying (and to a huge extent succeeding) to make a better world (and/or just have fun with our own hobbies share that fun with others) that leaves behind the corrosive & planet-destroying plague which is capitalism, and you're trying to personally enrich yourself by embracing that plague. The fact that capitalism is *evil* is not an incidental thing in this discussion.
To make an imperfect analogy, imagine that the peasants of some domain have set up a really-free-market, where they provide each other with free stuff to help each other survive, sometimes doing some barter perhaps but mostly just everyone bringing their surplus. Now imagine the lord of the domain, who is the source of these peasants' immiseration, goes to this market secretly & takes some berries, which he uses as one ingredient in delicious tarts that he then sells for profit. But then the berry-bringer stops showing up to the free market, or starts bringing a different kind of fruit, or even ends up bringing rotten berries by accident. And the lord complains "I have a supply chain problem!" Like, fuck off dude! Your problem is that you *didn't* want to build a supply chain and instead thought you would build your profit-focused business in other people's free stuff. If you were paying the berry-picker, you'd have a supply chain problem, but you weren't, so you really have an "I want more free stuff" problem when you can't be arsed to give away your own stuff for free.
There can be all sorts of problems in the really-free-market, like maybe not enough people bring socks, so the peasants who can't afford socks are going barefoot, and having foot problems, and the peasants put their heads together and see if they can convince someone to start bringing socks, and maybe they can't and things are a bit sad, but the really-free-market was never supposed to solve everyone's problems 100% when they're all still being squeezed dry by their taxes: until they are able to get free of the lord & start building a lovely anarchist society, the really-free-market is a best-effort kind of deal that aims to make things better, and sometimes will fall short. When it becomes the main way goods in society are distributed, and when the people who contribute aren't constantly drained by the feudal yoke, at that point the availability of particular goods is a real problem that needs to be solved, but at that point, it's also much easier to solve. And at *no* point does someone coming into the market to take stuff only to turn around and sell it deserve anything from the market or those contributing to it. They are not a supply chain. They're trying to help each other out, but even then they're doing so freely and without obligation. They might discuss amongst themselves how to better coordinate their mutual aid, but they're not going to end up forcing anyone to bring anything or even expecting that a certain person contribute a certain amount, since the whole point is that the thing is voluntary & free, and they've all got changing life circumstances that affect their contributions. Celebrate whatever shows up at the market, express your desire for things that would be useful, but don't impose a burden on anyone else to bring a specific thing, because otherwise it's fair for them to oppose such a burden on you, and now you two are doing your own barter thing that's outside the parameters of the really-free-market.