Tootfinder

zkToken: Empowering Holders to Limit Revocation Checks for Verifiable Credentials
Praveensankar Manimaran, Mayank Raikwar, Thiago Garrett, Arlindo F. da Concei\c{c}\~ao, Leander Jehl, Roman Vitenberg
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11934

zkToken: Empowering Holders to Limit Revocation Checks for Verifiable Credentials
Systems managing Verifiable Credentials are becoming increasingly popular. Unfortunately, their support for revoking previously issued credentials allows verifiers to effectively monitor the validity of the credentials, which is sensitive information. While the issue started to gain recognition, no adequate solution has been proposed so far. In this work, we propose a novel framework for time-limited continuous verification. The holder is able to individually configure the verification period…

UK's Channel 4 plans to mark Trump's UK visit with an hours-long program cataloging 100 falsehoods, punctuated by "brief text-based fact checks", on Sept. 17 (Lily Ford/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-ne

Channel 4 to Mark Trump’s U.K. Visit With “Longest Uninterrupted Reel of Untruths Ever Broadcast on Television”
Trump v the Truth' will run for several hours on Sept. 17 and is set to be punctuated by "brief text-based fact-checks."

“Microsoft has no magical 'get out of US surveillance law' card to play, and its sovereign private cloud is writing checks it cannot cash."
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2025/microsoft-announces-new-sov…

Microsoft has announced new 'sovereign cloud' services - but just how sovereign can they be?
Microsoft has announced new ‘sovereign cloud’ services for Europe in response to regulations and concerns about control, security and privacy.

#fluffy #birds time of year again; these (checks) Coot chicks are adorable.
#wildlife

A couple weeks ago I went through PDX airport security with my not-Real-ID-compliant driver's license, mostly out of curiosity. They asked me if I had another ID like a passport. When I said no, they sent me to some guy who did a chemical wipe test of my phone, before letting me continue.
I think the rationale is that any incremental improvement to security checks increases the difficulty for malicious actors, but it still feels like Maxwell Smart security

Series D, Episode 02 - Power
NINA: Now the people shall leave this place, Gunn Sar. We shall seek a new home, far from here, a new way of life. [Continues to weep.]
[Control room. Tarrant, Dayna and Vila enter. Vila holds a timer and checks it continually throughout the scene.]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/402/436

For me if someone schedules a meeting before 08:00 and after 15:00 it is an automatic NO.
Early morning mail checks (before 07:00) is done only when I am on call and to see if there was any emergencies in the prior evening production run that I missed. When I do that my day starts at that time! I adjust the end of day time to allow for the early start. Normal hours for me is 07:00 to 15:30.

Crisis Messaging Journeys: Epistemic Struggles over CDC Guidance During COVID-19
Tawfiq Ammari
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10906 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.…

Crisis Messaging Journeys: Epistemic Struggles over CDC Guidance During COVID-19
This study investigates how the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) communicated COVID-19 guidance on Twitter and how publics responded over two years of the pandemic. Drawing on 275,124 tweets mentioning or addressing @CDCgov, I combine BERTopic modeling, sentiment analysis (VADER), credibility checks (Iffy Index), change point detection (PELT), and survival analysis to trace three phases of discourse: (1) early hoax claims and testing debates, (2) lockdown and mask controver…

“Does she know Trump was sending out the stimulus checks…”
‘There Is So Much Blood on Trump's Hands.’: Fox's Laura Ingraham Absolutely Destroyed for Bashing Americans Enjoying Free Checks and Pot While Apparently Forgetting Who Sent the Money
https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/07/12/foxs-laura-ingraham-absolutely-destroyed-for-bashing-americans-enjoying-free-checks-and-pot-while-apparently-forgetting-who-sent-the-money/

«sometimes the powerful commit or condone or bankroll acts of unspeakable evil, and any institution that prioritizes cashing the checks over calling out the evil is no longer an arts organization. It's a reputation-laundering firm with a well-read board.»
This is the same lesson so many academic institutions refuse to learn (of course they do, the income for their overpaid "leadership" depends on it).
https://bookwyrm.social/user/gedankenstuecke/quotation/7969803#anchor-7969803

This comment from a Microsoft announcement post is a vibe

Analyzing Black-Hole Ringdowns with Orthonormal Modes
Soichiro Morisaki, Hayato Motohashi, Motoki Suzuki, Daiki Watarai
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12376 ht…

Analyzing Black-Hole Ringdowns with Orthonormal Modes
The ringdown signal following a BH merger can be modeled as a superposition of BH QNMs, offering a clean setup for testing gravitational theories. In particular, detecting multiple QNMs enables consistency checks of their frequencies and damping times, serving as a test of General Relativity -- a technique known as black hole spectroscopy. However, incorporating additional QNMs introduces challenges such as increased parameter correlations and higher computational costs in data analysis. To add…

MM-Food-100K: A 100,000-Sample Multimodal Food Intelligence Dataset with Verifiable Provenance
Yi Dong, Yusuke Muraoka, Scott Shi, Yi Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.10429 http…

MM-Food-100K: A 100,000-Sample Multimodal Food Intelligence Dataset with Verifiable Provenance
We present MM-Food-100K, a public 100,000-sample multimodal food intelligence dataset with verifiable provenance. It is a curated approximately 10% open subset of an original 1.2 million, quality-accepted corpus of food images annotated for a wide range of information (such as dish name, region of creation). The corpus was collected over six weeks from over 87,000 contributors using the Codatta contribution model, which combines community sourcing with configurable AI-assisted quality checks; e…

I tried #Foundation when it first aired, but it lost me somewhere around Ep 4 or so. It's radically different from the source material so I had difficulty relaxing about that. But thought I'd give it another go in time for S03 and 4, glad I did. Its good, and certainly checks the eye candy box, but I would only say "based loosely on story and characters by Isaac Asimov".
Still…

New Gist: Age Verification is an Epic fail
On Bluesky's introduction of age verification, selling us to the Fortnite guys, and how the arrogance of Ireland's regulator has seen it deliver the very outcomes it once called "bonkers".
https://www.thegist.ie/the-gist-age-verifi…

The Gist: Age Verification is an Epic fail
From the 21st July 2025, Ireland’s regulator will be enforcing age checks at the door for social media sites in the EU. This is the Gist.

My great failure in life is that I never put myself in a position to monetise being this embarrassingly incompetent.
#auspol #australia #government

Commenotes: Synthesizing Organic Comments to Support Community-Based Fact-Checking
Shuning Zhang, Linzhi Wang, Dai Shi, Yuwei Chuai, Jingruo Chen, Yunyi Chen, Yifan Wang, Yating Wang, Xin Yi, Hewu Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11052

Commenotes: Synthesizing Organic Comments to Support Community-Based Fact-Checking
Community-based fact-checking is promising to reduce the spread of misleading posts at scale. However, its effectiveness can be undermined by the delays in fact-check delivery. Notably, user-initiated organic comments often contain debunking information and have the potential to help mitigate this limitation. Here, we investigate the feasibility of synthesizing comments to generate timely high-quality fact-checks. To this end, we analyze over 2.2 million replies on X and introduce Commenotes, a…

I've always thought "I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." is a great quote. It's often attributed to Mark Twain, but according to Snopes he never uttered it. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mark-twain-obituary-ple…

“On a fundamental level, these are signs that we are losing the story of who we are as a country. This is a crisis of narrative. Are we no longer a country of immigrants? Are we no longer a country that values the dignity of the human person, individual liberties and with a healthy regard for checks and balances?”

At the end of June, Australia quietly introduced rules forcing search engine companies such as Google and Microsoft to check the ages of logged-in users (Ange Lavoipierre/ABC)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-search-engines/1…

Australia is quietly introducing 'unprecedented' age checks for search engines like Google
Just as Australians are adjusting to the idea of having their ages checked for social media, age assurance rules are being applied to search engines and many other corners of the internet.

After way too long (starting to notice a pattern!), I’m writing the next installment of my newsletter!
If you want more insight into what I’ve been up the in the past *checks calendar* FOUR MONTHS 😱 – or want to see some cute dog photos, make sure to subscribe:
https://buttondown.com/hynek

Hynek Did Something
Greetings friend! This is a list for those who’d like to be notified whenever Hynek Schlawack does or publishes something noteworthy, somewhere. Examples are new blog posts, YouTube videos, and talks, or significant updates to existing work. It does not include announcements about new software releases. As a thank you for your trust, the emails aren’t just links to content. They contain a kind of “director's commentary”, explaining what I did and why – written as if I’d be explainin…

from my link log —
Bringing runtime index checks to compile time in Rust.
https://ktkaufman03.github.io/blog/2023/04/20/rust-compile-time-checks/
saved 2023-04-27

“Supreme Court Shocks
—Trump’s Power Just Exploded” reads the typically hyperbolic headline from religious-right podcaster Steve Turley.
“The Supreme Court's recent rulings are a game-changer for Trump's immigration policies,
empowering ICE with aggressive tactics,”
reads Turley’s Wednesday morning email newsletter.
“With Kavanaugh's backing, ethnicity now plays a role in enforcement—cue the controversy!”
Turley is referencing a ruling by the Sup…

Religious-Right Pundit Steve Turley Celebrates MAGA SCOTUS OK For ICE Racial Profiling
MAGA podcaster Steve Turley cheers SCOTUS rulings that dismantle judicial checks and balances on Trump's power.

Request a Note: How the Request Function Shapes X's Community Notes System
Yuwei Chuai, Shuning Zhang, Ziming Wang, Xin Yi, Mohsen Mosleh, Gabriele Lenzini
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09956

Request a Note: How the Request Function Shapes X's Community Notes System
X's Community Notes is a crowdsourced fact-checking system. To improve its scalability, X recently introduced "Request Community Note" feature, enabling users to solicit fact-checks from contributors on specific posts. Yet, its implications for the system -- what gets checked, by whom, and with what quality -- remain unclear. Using 98,685 requested posts and their associated notes, we evaluate how requests shape the Community Notes system. We find that contributors prioritize posts with higher …

Let's conclude the "checks&balances" of US democracy are truly gone, nobody can or will stop Trump in militarizing Washington DC. The rest of the world is watching the fascist dictator Trump in action.
Apparently city government is no longer relevant or in charge...Democrats in Congress don't lift a finger, they should walk out and obstruct everything in government they can....
#trump

@… can you comment on the technical background?
https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission/114852402217569321

European Commission (@EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu)
Attached: 1 image A safer internet starts with smarter age checks. Today, we're rolling out our first prototype of an age verification app to protect minors: 📱 Online platforms will be able to use it to protect our children from harmful and illegal content. 🚸Young people will be able to verify their age without revealing any other info, such as their identity. 🌍 The pilot phase kicks off with 🇩🇰🇫🇷🇬🇷🇮🇹🇪🇸 Making sure our children and young people…

I think we should use CSS logical properties wherever we can. Chris Coyier has outlined some cases where we cannot:
https://frontendmasters.com/blog/should-we-never-use-non-logical-properties/
I made a traditional to logical mapping in [checks wat…

Should we NEVER use non-logical properties? – Frontend Masters Blog
Best bet: just always use them. More nuanced take: there is a few situations where using the physical property is still releavant.

"UK and US line up string of deals to build modular nuclear reactors in Britain"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #US #USA…

Moscow police intensify truck inspections in bid to thwart drone smuggling: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/11/moscow-police-intensify-truck-inspections.html

EU preps biometric checks for foreign visitors https://therecord.media/eu-preps-biometric-checks-travel

Large-Scale Processing and Validation of Grid Data for Assessing the Fair Spatial Distribution of PV Hosting Capacity
Ali Mohamed Ali, Yaser Raeisi, Plouton Grammatikos, Davide Pavanello, Pierre Roduit, Fabrizio Sossan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08684

Large-Scale Processing and Validation of Grid Data for Assessing the Fair Spatial Distribution of PV Hosting Capacity
The integration of PV systems and increased electrification levels present significant challenges to the traditional design and operation of distribution grids. This paper presents a methodology for extracting, validating, and adapting grid data from a distribution system operator's (DSO) database to facilitate large-scale grid studies, including load flow and optimal power flow analyses. The validation process combines rule-based sanity checks and offline automated power flow analyses to ensur…

https://doesmyipaddresshave69init.com

An interview with X VP of Product Keith Coleman about plans to let developers program AI agents to propose Community Notes notes, the old system, and more (Will Oremus/Washington Post)

Analysis | X will let AI bots fact-check posts. It isn’t as crazy as it sounds.
The head of Community Notes explains the logic behind the move.

Tool-Assisted Conformance Checking to Reference Process Models
Bernhard Rumpe, Max Stachon, Sebastian St\"uber, Valdes Voufo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00738 https://

Tool-Assisted Conformance Checking to Reference Process Models
Reference models convey best practices and standards. The reference frameworks necessitate conformance checks to ensure adherence to established guidelines and principles, which is crucial for maintaining quality and consistency in various processes. This paper explores automated conformance checks for concrete process models against reference models using causal dependency analysis of tasks and events. Existing notions of conformance checking for process models focus on verifying process execu…

Another dice rolling post: checks are implemented! Probably not the most exciting thing for folks outside of #Pathfinder or #DnD but it's starting to look feature complete. I removed the floor for checks, added in advantage/disadvantage, and added a status that tells whether the first dic…

Cross-Resonant Gates in Hybrid Fluxonium-Transmon Systems
Nikola D. Dimitrov, Chen Wang, Vladimir E. Manucharyan, Maxim G. Vavilov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07935 https://

Cross-Resonant Gates in Hybrid Fluxonium-Transmon Systems
We propose a scalable fluxonium-transmon-fluxonium (FTF) system that utilizes a central transmon to mediate high-fidelity gates and parity checks between two fluxonium qubits without the need for strong non-local interactions. This approach suppresses unwanted long-range interactions, which is critical for developing larger quantum processors. First, we analyze the performance of cross-resonance (CR) CNOT gates between a fluxonium and a transmon. We show that even in the presence of a spectator…

They are opening a new Irish pub, sorry "Irish" pub near work, and they've given it an extremely traditional Celtic name of ... *checks notes* ... the Salmon of Knowledge.
Blimey, apparently the Salmon of Knowledge is a thing in Celtic mythology. Every day's a school day! Thank you to @…

TIL that the social.bbc (@…) instance is hosted in Ireland according to @…
…

The Met Police, ever vigilant, keeping us safe from *checks notes* senior citizens with signs https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/10/police-arrest-hundreds-london-protest-over-palestine-action-ban

So tired of this bullshit...
Ya’know what ALL OF THOSE THINGS require? More D's in Congress. Whinging about people working towards that immediate goal is obnoxious and harmful.
https://pdx.social/@portlandy/114971733036422173

TransLink’s Fare Enforcement Program gets results
Increased checks have led to more riders paying the correct fares
https://link.etranslink.ca/v/443/61496305bc86358c96da1cac2a3919a124b98893a48c639a23f1f694ea285081

An interview with X VP of Product Keith Coleman about plans to let developers program AI agents to propose Community Notes, the old system, and more (Will Oremus/Washington Post)

Analysis | X will let AI bots fact-check posts. It isn’t as crazy as it sounds.
The head of Community Notes explains the logic behind the move.

Shoulder-Checks and Smoking Weed: The Petty Crimes Being Prosecuted Under Trump’s DC Crackdown – Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/the-petty-crimes-being-prosecuted-under-donald-trump-dc-crackdown-takeover-metropolitan-police-department/

Progress today. I got ansible working with the vmware inventory, and managed to solve the old (v8) machines complaints about python. New update script completed that takes snapshots, checks RHEL or Debian base and does update/reboot. All in all, successful day. And during all that, I got XCP-ng working. No VMs on it yet, but the system is ready for messing with finally. #ansible

Argyres-Douglas Theories, Macdonald Indices and Arc Space of Zhu Algebra
George Andrews, Anindya Banerjee, Chinmaya Bhargava, Ranveer Kumar Singh, Runkai Tao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06294

Argyres-Douglas Theories, Macdonald Indices and Arc Space of Zhu Algebra
In this paper, we relate the MacDonald index of a 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ SCFT with the Hilbert series of the arc space of the Zhu algebra of the corresponding Schur VOA. Using this, we conjecture a simple formula for the MacDonald index of $(A_1,D_{2n+1})$ Argyres-Douglas theory. We perform checks of the formula against the known Schur limits and RG flows. To match the Schur limit, we prove new $q$-series identities.

‘Britain’s most tattooed man’ claims he is unable to watch p*rn as ‘new age check system mistakes his ink for a mask’
https://needtoknow.co.uk/2025/07/30/britains-most-tattooed-man-claims-he-i…

‘Britain’s most tattooed man’ claims he is unable to watch p*rn as 'new age check system mistakes his ink for a mask' | Need To Know
Britain’s most tattooed man says new UK age checks block him from p*rn sites as facial recognition mistakes his tattoos for a mask, calling the tech discriminatory.

Fiscal Spillovers through Informal Financial Channels
Austin Kennedy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06662 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.06662

Fiscal Spillovers through Informal Financial Channels
This paper examines fiscal policy spillovers through informal international financial channels, using the US stimulus checks as a positive, sudden, and direct fiscal shock. I utilize granular, transaction-level cryptocurrency data combined with an algorithm to probabilistically identify cross-border "crypto vehicle" transactions to construct bilateral cryptocurrency flows between countries. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I compare cryptocurrency outflows between the US and other hi…

And so it begins.
https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/we-are-announcing-sparkasse-as-our-first-national-credential-partner-for-eu-age-assurance/

We are announcing Sparkasse as our first national credential partner for EU age assurance.
The lack of a reliable standard for safe, effective age checks across sites and apps online has long frustrated parents and companies. Google’s Credential Manager API — backed by Google Wallet and zero-knowledge proof cryptography — has proven that it’s possible. What’s needed now is collaboration and initiative to bring about the future of digital identity.That begins now. At the Global Digital Collaboration Conference today in Geneva, Germany’s Sparkasse, a trusted network of 343 …

Time may be our best weapon against the dictatorship of the 79yo despot.
...especially given how ineffective our supposed checks & balances have been.
Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xjc7mkotpenvhh6ffewkdpyn/post/3lxpfvijcjk2v…

Overreactions from Cowboys loss at Eagles: Does CeeDee Lamb have the yips?

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/overreactions-from-cowboys-loss-at-eagles-does-…

BBC report on enforcement of the new age verification requirements.
You can learn more about this effort by googling "BBC Rule 34"
#ShamelesslyStolenFromMyRSSFeed
#OhMyGodPleaseDontGoogleThat

guy in my DMs trying to convince me that 2FA is secretly a ploy to steal personal information because *checks notes* microsoft bad

So I've found my answer after maybe ~30 minutes of effort. First stop was the first search result on Startpage (https://millennialhawk.com/does-poop-have-calories/), which has some evidence of maybe-AI authorship but which is better than a lot of slop. It actually has real links & cites research, so I'll start by looking at the sources.
It claims near the top that poop contains 4.91 kcal per gram (note: 1 kcal = 1 Calorie = 1000 calories, which fact I could find/do trust despite the slop in that search). Now obviously, without a range or mention of an average, this isn't the whole picture, but maybe it's an average to start from? However, the citation link is to a study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32235930/) which only included 27 people with impaired glucose tolerance and obesity. Might have the cited stat, but it's definitely not a broadly representative one if this is the source. The public abstract does not include the stat cited, and I don't want to pay for the article. I happen to be affiliated with a university library, so I could see if I have access that way, but it's a pain to do and not worth it for this study that I know is too specific. Also most people wouldn't have access that way.
Side note: this doing-the-research protect has the nice benefit of letting you see lots of cool stuff you wouldn't have otherwise. The abstract of this study is pretty cool and I learned a bit about gut microbiome changes from just reading the abstract.
My next move was to look among citations in this article to see if I could find something about calorie content of poop specifically. Luckily the article page had indicators for which citations were free to access. I ended up reading/skimming 2 more articles (a few more interesting facts about gut microbiomes were learned) before finding this article whose introduction has what I'm looking for: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3127503/
Here's the relevant paragraph:
"""
The alteration of the energy-balance equation, which is defined by the equilibrium of energy intake and energy expenditure (1–5), leads to weight gain. One less-extensively-studied component of the energy-balance equation is energy loss in stools and urine. Previous studies of healthy adults showed that ≈5% of ingested calories were lost in stools and urine (6). Individuals who consume high-fiber diets exhibit a higher fecal energy loss than individuals who consume low-fiber diets with an equivalent energy content (7, 8). Webb and Annis (9) studied stool energy loss in 4 lean and 4 obese individuals and showed a tendency to lower the fecal energy excretion in obese compared with lean study participants.
"""
And there's a good-enough answer if we do some math, along with links to more in-depth reading if we want them. A Mayo clinic calorie calculator suggests about 2250 Calories per day for me to maintain my weight, I think there's probably a lot of variation in that number, but 5% of that would be very roughly 100 Calories lost in poop per day, so maybe an extremely rough estimate for a range of humans might be 50-200 Calories per day. Interestingly, one of the AI slop pages I found asserted (without citation) 100-200 Calories per day, which kinda checks out. I had no way to trust that number though, and as we saw with the provenance of the 4.91 kcal/gram, it might not be good provenance.
To double-check, I visited this link from the paragraph above: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022316622169853?via=ihub
It's only a 6-person study, but just the abstract has numbers: ~250 kcal/day pooped on a low-fiber diet vs. ~400 kcal/day pooped on a high-fiber diet. That's with intakes of ~2100 and ~2350 kcal respectively, which is close to the number from which I estimated 100 kcal above, so maybe the first estimate from just the 5% number was a bit low.
Glad those numbers were in the abstract, since the full text is paywalled... It's possible this study was also done on some atypical patient group...
Just to come full circle, let's look at that 4.91 kcal/gram number again. A search suggests 14-16 ounces of poop per day is typical, with at least two sources around 14 ounces, or ~400 grams. (AI slop was strong here too, with one including a completely made up table of "studies" that was summarized as 100-200 grams/day). If we believe 400 grams/day of poop, then 4.91 kcal/gram would be almost 2000 kcal/day, which is very clearly ludicrous! So that number was likely some unrelated statistic regurgitated by the AI. I found that number in at least 3 of the slop pages I waded through in my initial search.

Random #Gentoo ebuild hint: while you technically don't have to put Hypothesis in EPYTEST_PLUGINS (i.e. most of the packages will work without loading the plugin), moving it there ensures that the Gentoo profile is selected. This disables the health checks that can randomly break tests when they don't meet Hypothesis quality standards.
#pytest

„Beginnt so eine Diktatur?“ – Wenn Soldaten Alltagsbild in Washington sind, Ehrfurcht vor demokratischen Institutionen durch vorauseilenden Gehorsam ersetzt wird, der Präsident Dekrete wie Bonbons verteilt und die Checks & Balances kapitulieren, ist das kein cooles Law-and-Order, sondern brandgefährlich. Wer jetzt noch abwiegelt, könnte bald nur noch schweigen dürfen. Majid Sattar, #FAZ (€)

"Scott Bessent just confessed that Trump has been lying in his claims about tariffs."
Scott Bessent Fact Checks Donald Trump's Lies about Tariffs - emptywheel
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/04/scott-bessent-fact-checks-donald-trumps-lies-about-tariffs/

Anubis verifies that any visitor to a site is a human using a browser as opposed to a bot.
🍿One of the ways it does this is by making the browser do a type of cryptographic math with JavaScript or other subtle checks that browsers do by default but bots have to be explicitly programmed to do.
This check is invisible to the user, and most browsers since 2022 are able to complete this test.
In theory, bot scrapers could pretend to be users with browsers as well, but the ad…

The Open-Source Software Saving the Internet From AI Bot Scrapers
Anubis, which block AI scrapers from scraping websites to death, has been downloaded almost 200,000 times.

Ok. Those of you south of the border break out your spreadsheets and figure what this would cost you.
1. Pain, blood in urine, can't urinate much.
2. In emergency. Seen by two doctors, multiple nurses.
3. CAT scan.
4. Review by urologist.
5. Hooked up to IV.
6. Overnight stay with multiple visits from nurses doing checks.
7. Morning visit with urologist on what is happening.
8. Visit from pharmacist to go over what meds I need.
9. Transport…

@… @… @… the library already checks for expected fail on those formats 😅

Sources: OpenAI tightened security, adding biometric checks in offices and isolating sensitive systems, to protect model weights and other IP from espionage (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/f896c4d9-bab7-40a2-9e67-4058093ce250

A simpler probe of the quantum Mpemba effect in closed systems
Filiberto Ares, Colin Rylands, Pasquale Calabrese
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05946 https://

A simpler probe of the quantum Mpemba effect in closed systems
We study the local relaxation of closed quantum systems through the relative entropy between the reduced density matrix and its long time limit. We show, using analytic arguments combined with numerical checks, that this relative entropy can be very well approximated by an entropy difference, affording a significant computational advantage. We go on to relate this to the entanglement asymmetry of the subsystem with respect to time translation invariance. In doing this, we obtain a simple probe …

I don't think that "give beginners LLMs to get them started so they can actually learn to do it later" checks out.
(Original title: But will they?)
https://tante.cc/2025/07/21/but-will-they/

But will they?
Armin Ronacher, who is quite a well-known open source developer (especially in the Python community) and who would probably consider himself a very rational, pragmatic person when it comes to “AI” usage posted an interesting post on Mastodon today: Post by @mitsuhiko View on Mastodon So his thought is that giving especially younger, less experienced […]

Podpowiedź do ebuildów #Gentoo: technicznie rzecz biorąc, nie trzeba ładować hypothesis w EPYTEST_PLUGINS (w sensie, że większość paczek będzie po prostu działać bez ładowania wtyczki) — ale warto to zrobić, bo dzięki temu jest ładowany profil Gentoo. Wówczas wyłączane są "health checks", które mogą doprowadzić do przypadkowo padających testów, które nie spełniają wymagań jakości.

One for the 'personal names are more complicated than programmers realise' file https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-26/foreign-names-create-confusion-administration-identity-proof/105682156

Frustrated with failing ID checks, migrants change their names to fit Australian databases
Some migrants are changing names that do not fit standard Anglo-Saxon conventions, in order to avoid identity verification woes.

Rainbow Artifacts from Electromagnetic Signal Injection Attacks on Image Sensors
Youqian Zhang, Xinyu Ji, Zhihao Wang, Qinhong Jiang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.07773

Rainbow Artifacts from Electromagnetic Signal Injection Attacks on Image Sensors
Image sensors are integral to a wide range of safety- and security-critical systems, including surveillance infrastructure, autonomous vehicles, and industrial automation. These systems rely on the integrity of visual data to make decisions. In this work, we investigate a novel class of electromagnetic signal injection attacks that target the analog domain of image sensors, allowing adversaries to manipulate raw visual inputs without triggering conventional digital integrity checks. We uncover …

Make sure your code follows a consitent style using the {lintr} package. #rstats

A Linter for R Code
Checks adherence to a given style, syntax errors and possible semantic issues. Supports on the fly checking of R code edited with RStudio IDE, Emacs, Vim, Sublime Text, Atom and Visual Studio Code.

Yes, I'm sure if you're tired of being ridiculed as a public figure things will go much better for you in the *checks notes* United Kingdom...
https://mstdn.social/@Free_Press/115099995291652362

Aure Free Press :verified: (@Free_Press@mstdn.social)
Attached: 1 image Musk Move To UK Ridiculed in the US, Elon Musk sets his sight on the UK Musk says he "would like to help fund legal actions against corrupt officials who aided and abetted the rape of Britain, per the official government inquiry." #AureFreePress #News #press #headline #UK #Musk #Twitter #x #Fediverse #socialmedia #Politics

Funny thing about this is it'll almost certainly have knock on effects for software in general, imagine mandated compatibility checks for Wine.

Signalling Health for Improved Kubernetes Microservice Availability
Jacob Roberts, Blair Archibald, Phil Trinder
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02158 https://

Signalling Health for Improved Kubernetes Microservice Availability
Microservices are often deployed and managed by a container orchestrator that can detect and fix failures to maintain the service availability critical in many applications. In Poll-based Container Monitoring (PCM), the orchestrator periodically checks container health. While a common approach, PCM requires careful tuning, may degrade service availability, and can be slow to detect container health changes. An alternative is Signal-based Container Monitoring (SCM), where the container signals t…

Bluesky tells Mississippi to go suck eggs.
https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-22-2025-mississippi-hb1126

Valve adds credit card-based age checks for UK users to access "mature content" games on Steam; Discord and others are using selfies for verification (Tom Warren/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/767980/steam-uk-age-…

Steam users in the UK will need a credit card to access ‘mature content’ games
Valve has started rolling out age verification checks for Steam users in the UK. Brits will need a credit card on their Steam account to access mature games.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that California’s policy of background checks for bullet-buyers violates the 2nd Amendment,
-- effectively killing a 2016 ballot measure meant to strengthen the state’s notoriously stringent gun laws.
The ruling is the latest blow to statewide efforts to regulate guns.

9th Circuit upholds block on checks for California ammunition buyers
A federal appeals court upheld a ruling that struck down a background check requirement implemented by California on buyers of ammunition for firearms.

Yeah. I always find electron/chromium sus. https://infosec.exchange/@trailofbits/115147020192205039

Trail of Bits (@trailofbits@infosec.exchange)
Attached: 1 image We built local backdoors for Signal, 1Password & Slack through V8 heap snapshot tampering (CVE-2025-55305). Method: Replace v8_context_snapshot.bin files with versions that override JavaScript builtins. When apps call Array.isArray(), malicious code executes. Works because integrity checks ignore these "non-executable" files that actually contain executable JavaScript. Impact: Nearly every Chromium-based app is vulnerable. https://blog.trailofbits.com/2025/09/03/subverting-…

Pornhub to introduce 'government approved' age checks in UKhttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5v2lz5vl6o

Porn-site age checks will be harder to fight after ruling on Texas law, experts say https://therecord.media/supreme-court-ruling-texas-porn-age-check-law-privacy-data-security

How fucked up UK society is? The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (which is volunteer run and afaict doesn't receive any form of support, financial or other, from the Royal family beyond the stupid name-prefix), is being bashed for *checks notes* saving lives on sea because the literal Nazis don't appreciate who's being saved:
«RNLI crew makes no apologies for saving migrants' lives in English Channel»
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8dejyg4l37o

Research by Anthropic how GenAI models blackmail in laboratory situations. Underlines the importance of checks and human oversight.
#AI

Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs could be insider threats
New research on simulated blackmail, industrial espionage, and other misaligned behaviors in LLMs

#Blakes7 Series A, Episode 05 - The Web
BLAKE: It was an accident. [Takes hold of her arm] Look, we're very close to a planet but we don't know what it is. I can't find any transmission sources. Will you please run the checks for me. [She moves to communication position. Blake follows.]
ZEN: Sensor indicate increasing density of silica based organic material adhering t…

Blakes7Bot | Search
Companion site to the Blakes7Bot Twitter, Mastodon, and Bluesky accounts. Automated lines of Blakes 7 dialog. Includes a script search facility.

Dear Senator:
I am writing to urge you to take action on gun violence.
I have not always agreed with you over the years, but I have always respected your integrity.
I do not expect my elected officials to respond to polls, per se, but when 93% of the nation supports background checks,
I do believe that you should seriously consider the moral implications of betraying the will of the people.
Perhaps a story will help to clarify my views.
Just after gradu…

Active Shooter
A Personal Plea to End Gun Violence

from my link log —
Thoughts on hashing in Rust.
https://purplesyringa.moe/blog/thoughts-on-rust-hashing/
saved 2024-12-13

Thoughts on Rust hashing
In languages like Python, Java, or C++, values are hashed by calling a “hash me” method on them, implemented by the type author. This fixed-hash size is then immediately used by the hash table or what have you. This design suffers from some obvious problems, like: How do you hash an integer? If you use a no-op hasher (booo), DoS attacks on hash tables are inevitable. If you hash it thoroughly, consumers that only cache hashes to optimize equality checks lose out of performance.

Series C, Episode 12 - Death-Watch
SERVALAN: The ancient weapons of combat. Use your choice with honour. [Deeta takes both guns and checks them over.] They've already been checked. Don't you trust us? I assure you they're exactly the same.
DEETA: No two guns are ever exactly the same.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/…

The Online Safety Act, which went into effect in the U.K. on July 25, requires any website that might have adult content to conduct age-verification checks.
According to the U.K.’s Office of Communications, or Ofcom,
users must provide proof of age
in the form of photo IDs, credit cards, photos for facial recognition software, and other so-called age gates,
or else be denied access.
Though often heralded by parents as a way to keep kids from accessing sexually…

‘Anonymity Online Is Going to Die’: What Age-Verification Laws Could Look Like in the U.S.
As controversy around the U.K.’s Online Safety Act continues, experts warn about similar legislation thriving in the U.S.

UK's Ofcom launches probes into four companies, which collectively run 34 pornography sites, to assess if they have "highly effective" age verification checks (Catarina Demony/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-invest

Donald Trump, the report’s two authors, Michael Sozan and Ben Olinsky, wrote:
is aggressively implementing a far-right, multipronged plan to create an imperial presidency.
Acting far more aggressively than he did in his first term,
Trump is casting aside the U.S. Constitution and federal laws,
shattering long-established guardrails designed to protect the system of checks and balances and using government power to stifle dissent.
Trump is asserting his primacy o…

Josh Hawley proposes $600 rebate checks — but not for ‘Biden voters’ - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/josh-hawley-2673782305/

Aylo, owner of Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube, will add "government approved age assurance methods" in the UK by July 25 to comply with the Online Safety Act (BBC)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5v2lz5vl6o

Pornhub to introduce 'government approved' UK age checks
Parent company Aylo hasn't spelt out what the age checking methods will be, but say they will be introduced within a month.

A dangerous shift is happening online.
All around the world, governments are quietly rewriting the rules of internet access.
Soon, privacy and anonymity online may become relics of the past.
The UK’s newly enacted Online Safety Act marks a fundamental shift.
You now need to verify your identity simply to watch a video, visit a website, or share your thoughts.
The Act mandates strict age verification and identity checks for websites and platforms considered to ho…

Show Your Papers: The Internet Is About to Change Forever — Ludlow Institute
A crackdown sweeping the globe is replacing the free internet with government surveillance

Well, maybe anybody who isn't writing a lot of checks or autographing their 8x10 glossies, too...
“Pierce County Auditor asks young voters to update their signatures” - Election Law Blog
https://electionlawblog.org/?p=150659

Some users are circumventing UK's age checks by using VPNs, providing fake AI-generated photo IDs, or using images of high-fidelity video game characters (Jackson Chen/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/peo

People in the UK now have to take an age verification selfie to watch porn online
The UK will start checking compliance with its Online Safety Act, which requires strict age verification before users can access pornographic sites.

Intel cancelled planned fab projects in Germany and Poland, and will consolidate its testing and assembly operations in Vietnam and Malaysia (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/24/intel-intc-earnings-report-q2-2025.html

Intel beats on revenue, issues better-than-expected forecast
"There are no more blank checks. Every investment must make economic sense," Tan wrote.

Daily stats for the Entire Fediverse https://fediverse.observer/dailystats

Map view of Mastodon
https://fediverse.observer/map

Sources: Elad Gil is raising a fund of ~$1.5B that could grow to $2B based on investor interest, making it one of the largest fundraising hauls for a solo GP (Natasha Mascarenhas/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/el…

Elad Gil Plots $1.5 Billion Fund, Stretching Definition of a Solo GP
Venture capital firms are under pressure to make rapid-fire decisions about big checks in the frenzied world of artificial intelligence investing, straining partnerships that need a unified front. It helps sometimes to have just one decision-maker.That makes a case for Elad Gil, a prolific ...