Tootfinder

The Orlando Sentinel got a cease-and-desist from Florida's DCF that claims its reporter coerced families for a story on a foundation tied to Gov. DeSantis' wife (Mike Schneider/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/orlando-sen

Florida agency tells newspaper to halt reporting angle on foundation associated with governor's wife
Florida’s child welfare agency has sent a letter to a newspaper telling it to “cease and desist” its reporting on foster families for a story about a nonprofit associated with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife. The foundation is the subject of an investigation. The Orlando Sentinel received the letter on Friday from the Department of Children and Families. The letter claims the newspaper’s Tallahassee reporter intimidated foster families who had received money from the Hope Florida Foundation w…

Jack Dorsey has launched a messaging app which doesn’t need internet, central servers, phone numbers or email.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2025/jack-dorsey-launches-decentralised-messaging-app

Jack Dorsey launches decentralised Bluetooth messaging app
Jack Dorsey has launched a messaging app which doesn’t need internet, central servers, phone numbers or email.

Combinatorics of descent algebras and graph coverings
Philippe Biane
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05528 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.0552…

Combinatorics of descent algebras and graph coverings
We give a direct combinatorial proof that the product of two descent classes in a symmetric group is a sum of descent classes. The proof is based on the fact that the group product gives a covering map when descent classes are endowed with the graph structure coming from the weak order. The main geometric argument is valid for any Coxeter group, even infinite ones for which the descent algebra does not exist.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson defends blistering dissents: 'We have very different opinions' (Devin Dwyer/ABC News)
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-defends-blistering-dissents-opinions/story?id=123538694
http://www.memeorandum.com/250708/p34#a250708p34

As Amazon Prime Day begins, some merchants say they can't afford to offer discounts due to Trump's tariffs; Adobe expects $23.8B in sales across the four days (Spencer Soper/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Dissenter Headlines For June 9, 2025 https://thedissenter.org/dissenter-headlines-for-june-9-2025/

AI doesn't make you more efficient:
Thoughts after a year of working with LLMs and building Agent
Since everyone is in the business of giving their opinion on the whole AI craze at the moment I thought I’d throw mine out in the ether. […]
👉 https://byt3bl33d3r.substack.com/p/…

AI doesn't make you more efficient
Thoughts after a year of working with LLMs and building Agents

Decentralized Optimization with Amplified Privacy via Efficient Communication
Wei Huo, Changxin Liu, Kemi Ding, Karl Henrik Johansson, Ling Shi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07102

Decentralized Optimization with Amplified Privacy via Efficient Communication
Decentralized optimization is crucial for multi-agent systems, with significant concerns about communication efficiency and privacy. This paper explores the role of efficient communication in decentralized stochastic gradient descent algorithms for enhancing privacy preservation. We develop a novel algorithm that incorporates two key features: random agent activation and sparsified communication. Utilizing differential privacy, we demonstrate that these features reduce noise without sacrificing…

Simple Convergence Proof of Adam From a Sign-like Descent Perspective
Hanyang Peng, Shuang Qin, Yue Yu, Fangqing Jiang, Hui Wang, Zhouchen Lin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05966

Simple Convergence Proof of Adam From a Sign-like Descent Perspective
Adam is widely recognized as one of the most effective optimizers for training deep neural networks (DNNs). Despite its remarkable empirical success, its theoretical convergence analysis remains unsatisfactory. Existing works predominantly interpret Adam as a preconditioned stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM), formulated as $\bm{x}_{t+1} = \bm{x}_t - \frac{γ_t}{{\sqrt{\bm{v}_t}+ε}} \circ \bm{m}_t$. This perspective necessitates strong assumptions and intricate techniques, resulti…

On Monday, scores of scientists at the National Institutes of Health sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the "Bethesda Declaration"
challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”
It says: “We dissent.”
In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things publicly,
92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and scientific r…

NIH scientists go public with criticism over Trump cuts
President Donald Trump’s National Institutes of Health director says some employees’ critical letter to him has “fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken.” Monday’s letter from NIH researchers and staffers says the Republican Trump administration’s policies waste public resources and harm people’s health. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya in his confirmation hearings pledged openness to views that might conflict with his, saying dissent is the “essenc…