Tootfinder

Interviews with Sundar Pichai and other Google executives on being blindsided by ChatGPT's launch, Gemini, Pichai's vision of useful AI everywhere, and more (Harry McCracken/Fast Company)
https://www.fastcompany.com/91502632/google-most-innovative-companies…

Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s plan to make Gemini the only AI that matters
Under Pichai, the company that invented modern AI is finally winning the race to deploy it, making "AI everywhere" a business reality.

It does have real-world effects though, such as your company paying money to deskill its own employees.
They could do this much cheaper, for example by lacing the coffee with lead.

#Trump has turned ICE into a sprawling paramilitary that roves the country at will, (...), and has been told that it enjoys “absolute immunity.” He more than doubled the agency’s size in 2025, and its budget is now larger than those of all other federal law-enforcement agencies combined, and larger than the entire military budgets of all but 15 countries.

Yes, It’s Fascism
Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.

A guide to Andy Burnham
1) Broadly principled and well meaning.
2) Seduced by growthist thinking despite encouraging some green initiatives. Result, those initiatives are highly compromised and too small scale to count. Examples, i) Building on green space, ii) failure to enact effective measures to restrict private motoring - all carrots no sticks.
3) A tendency to associate with 'celebrities'.
/Contd
Andy Burnham seeks permission to stand in by-election

Burnham seeks permission to stand in by-election
Burnham seeks permission to stand in by-election

Series C, Episode 10 - Ultraworld
TARRANT: [Adjusts pillow] How's that, darling? More comfortable?
DAYNA: Oh yes. Much better. Thank you, darling.
[INTERIOR. Ultraworld confinement cell. Dayna removes a small object from her mouth.]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/310/540 B7B3

Ukraine Update: Russia focuses on eliminating the witnesses to its warcrimes.
International conventions of warfare have been abandoned, now the Press, ambulances, observers, are all priority targets for Russians.
Safer to remove the PRESS markings from your car and dress as soldiers. That ensures you are a lower priority target than any civilian.
News from the Kill Zone of Ukraine, where US corporate media never venture. Share the friend link to bypass the paywall:

Russians Are Hunting Witnesses to Their Crimes
Live from Ukraine 🇺🇦

And wasn't Charlie pushing for release of the Epstein files?
Erika Kirk's Corcoran Group link in focus amid company's Epstein links; ‘handled his assets…’ | Hindustan Times
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/erika-kirks-corcoran-group-link-in-focus-amid-companys-epstein-links-handled-his-assets-101771466880445.html

Donald Trump's company has announced plans for a skyscraper in Australia,
which according to his son Eric, will be the country's tallest building.
The tower will be built on Queensland's Gold Coast and be 335 metres (1,100ft) high, taller than the Shard in London.
Construction of the 91-storey
Trump International Hotel & Tower, Gold Coast is set to begin in August,
according to the hotel's developer, Altus Property Group.
The building w…

Trump Organization unveils plans for 'Australia's tallest skyscraper'
The tower will be built on Queensland's Gold Coast and be 335 metres high, taller than the Shard in London.

Sparse Bayesian Deep Functional Learning with Structured Region Selection
Xiaoxian Zhu, Yingmeng Li, Shuangge Ma, Mengyun Wu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20651 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.20651 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.20651
arXiv:2602.20651v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In modern applications such as ECG monitoring, neuroimaging, wearable sensing, and industrial equipment diagnostics, complex and continuously structured data are ubiquitous, presenting both challenges and opportunities for functional data analysis. However, existing methods face a critical trade-off: conventional functional models are limited by linearity, whereas deep learning approaches lack interpretable region selection for sparse effects. To bridge these gaps, we propose a sparse Bayesian functional deep neural network (sBayFDNN). It learns adaptive functional embeddings through a deep Bayesian architecture to capture complex nonlinear relationships, while a structured prior enables interpretable, region-wise selection of influential domains with quantified uncertainty. Theoretically, we establish rigorous approximation error bounds, posterior consistency, and region selection consistency. These results provide the first theoretical guarantees for a Bayesian deep functional model, ensuring its reliability and statistical rigor. Empirically, comprehensive simulations and real-world studies confirm the effectiveness and superiority of sBayFDNN. Crucially, sBayFDNN excels in recognizing intricate dependencies for accurate predictions and more precisely identifies functionally meaningful regions, capabilities fundamentally beyond existing approaches.
toXiv_bot_toot

Q&A with Jensen Huang, who says "we've achieved AGI", on running Nvidia, AI scaling laws, OpenClaw, future of coding, data centers in space, China, and more (Lex Fridman)
https://lexfridman.com/jensen-huang-transcript