Tootfinder

With Josh Barro trending, here's my takedown of his views on transit in Dissent ten years ago. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/the-sovereign-consumer-pushed-off-the-train/

The Sovereign Consumer, Pushed Off the Train - Dissent Magazine
Establishment economists insist that they don't second-guess consumer preferences. You are, they say, your own best judge of what's good for you. But not if you like to travel by train.

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.08780 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLO_…

Discounted-Sum Automata with Multiple Discount Factors
Discounting the influence of future events is a key paradigm in economics and it is widely used in computer-science models, such as games, Markov decision processes (MDPs), reinforcement learning, and automata. While a single game or MDP may allow for several different discount factors, nondeterministic discounted-sum automata (NDAs) were only studied with respect to a single discount factor. It is known that every class of NDAs with an integer as the discount factor has good computational prop…

Florida’s Everglades National Park is often referred to as the most endangered national park in the United States.
In 1968, developers tried to construct the largest airport in the world in the middle of the park,
which was already suffering from a multitude of environmental crises:
disrupted water flow, a drastic decline in the bird population, human development, invasion of exotic species, and the endangerment of the Florida panther.
After an upswell of public outcry…

DeSantis Races to Open Immigrant Detention Camp in Swamp Amid Hurricane Season
Even before “Alligator Alcatraz,” Ron DeSantis had defined his political legacy by gleeful cruelty against immigrants.

Roughly 140 EPA staffers who signed 'dissent' letter are put on leave (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/07/03/epa-dissent-letter-employees-leave/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250703/p98#a250703p98

We need something like iWeb for many things… Bento was another nice piece of software of the same vein… And of course HyperCard. That’s the Apple I miss the most.
https://stefanbohacek.online/@discontinued/114615179591160763

When will people realize that writing "-10% discount" is actually equivalent to stating a 10% surcharge and not a discount at all? sigh.

A Parameter-free Decentralized Algorithm for Composite Convex Optimization
Xiaokai Chen, Ilya Kuruzov, Gesualdo Scutari, Alexander Gasnikov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01466 http…

A Parameter-free Decentralized Algorithm for Composite Convex Optimization
The paper studies decentralized optimization over networks, where agents minimize a composite objective consisting of the sum of smooth convex functions--the agents' losses--and an additional nonsmooth convex extended value function. We propose a decentralized algorithm wherein agents ${\it adaptively}$ adjust their stepsize using local backtracking procedures that require ${\it no}$ ${\it global}$ (network) information or extensive inter-agent communications. Our adaptive decentralized method …

Poster: FedBlockParadox -- A Framework for Simulating and Securing Decentralized Federated Learning
Gabriele Digregorio, Francesco Bleggi, Federico Caroli, Michele Carminati, Stefano Zanero, Stefano Longari
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02679

Poster: FedBlockParadox -- A Framework for Simulating and Securing Decentralized Federated Learning
A significant body of research in decentralized federated learning focuses on combining the privacy-preserving properties of federated learning with the resilience and transparency offered by blockchain-based systems. While these approaches are promising, they often lack flexible tools to evaluate system robustness under adversarial conditions. To fill this gap, we present FedBlockParadox, a modular framework for modeling and evaluating decentralized federated learning systems built on blockcha…

Dissenter Headlines For August 4 https://thedissenter.org/dissenter-headlines-for-august-4/

Mirror descent for constrained stochastic control problems
Deven Sethi, David \v{S}i\v{s}ka
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02564 https://…

Mirror descent for constrained stochastic control problems
Mirror descent is a well established tool for solving convex optimization problems with convex constraints. This article introduces continuous-time mirror descent dynamics for approximating optimal Markov controls for stochastic control problems with the action space being bounded and convex. We show that if the Hamiltonian is uniformly convex in its action variable then mirror descent converges linearly while if it is uniformly strongly convex relative to an appropriate Bregman divergence, the…