@Techmeme@techhub.socialMeta projects 2026 capital expenditures will be $115B to $135B, exceeding the $110.6B average analyst estimate and up from $72.2B in 2025 (Riley Griffin/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/meta-says-2026-s…
@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyzStatistical Estimate of the Magnetopause Reconnection Rate as a Function of the Interplanetary Magnetic Field Clock Angle: #MagneticReconnection models validated by analysis of twenty years of measurements: https://www.irap.omp.eu/en/2026/01/magnetic-reconnection-models-validated-by-analysis-of-twenty-years-of-measurements/
@steve@s.yelvington.com
@burger_jaap@mastodon.socialLate in 2024, Elon Musk endorsed Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland. We document that after this, Tesla sales rose by up to 30 percent in right-leaning districts relative to left-leaning ones [..] Divestment in second-hand markets shows no partisan differences, consistent with resale requiring a larger identity cost from Tesla’s image shock than non-purchase. Our lower bound-estimate for the overall loss in Tesla sales is [..] worth at least €241 million."
@Techmeme@techhub.socialGoogle sets a 2029 deadline for its post-quantum cryptography migration, aiming to "secure the quantum era" as "frontiers may be closer than they appear" (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)
https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialWriting a client estimate tonight was exhausting. I put it off all day (but also I was in pain all day) but I got it done an hour before the day is over so that's just a huge win for my small business today. 😜
@ErikJonker@mastodon.socialIncredible...stupid also, if it is true,
"Rheinmetall’s CEO went on CNBC and said the thing that nobody in his position is supposed to say. “If the war lasts another month, we will have nearly no missiles available. All European, American, and also Middle East country warehouses are empty, or nearly empty.” This wasn’t a leak. Not an anonymous source. Not a think tank estimate. This was the CEO of Europe’s largest defense manufacturer, on camera"
@arXiv_mathDG_bot@mastoxiv.pageCalibrations for the Sasaki volume on odd spheres and the no-gap problem
Jonas Matuzas
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22961 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.22961 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.22961
arXiv:2602.22961v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: For each odd sphere $S^{n}$ with $n=2m 1\ge 5$, we consider the Sasaki volume functional $\mathrm{Vol}^S(V)=\int_{S^{n}}\sqrt{\det(I (\nabla V)^{\top}(\nabla V))}\,d\mathrm{vol}$ on smooth unit tangent vector fields $V$. Using the Brito--Chacon--Naveira calibration $\omega=a\wedge\Theta$ on the unit tangent bundle $E=UTS^{n}$, we establish the universal calibrated lower bound $\mathrm{Vol}^S(V)\ge c(m;1)\,\mathrm{vol}(S^{n})$, where $c(m;1)=4^{m}/\binom{2m}{m}$. In the relaxed (integral-current) setting, we show that the section-constrained stable mass in $E$ equals the calibration value and is attained by an $\omega$-calibrated mass-minimizing integral $n$-cycle in the section class.
We also analyze the equality case on smooth graphs. If a smooth graph is $\omega$-calibrated on an open set, then it satisfies the rigidity system $\nabla_V V=0$ and $\nabla_X V=\lambda X$ for all $X\perp V$, hence is locally a radial distance-gradient field. In particular, for $m\ge 2$ there is no smooth unit field on $S^n$ whose graph is $\omega$-calibrated everywhere.
Finally, we construct an explicit smooth recovery sequence (presented in detail for $S^5$ and then extended to all odd dimensions) and prove a uniform nonvanishing estimate for the polar-shell normalization in the patching construction. As a consequence, $\inf_{V}\,\mathrm{Vol}^S(V)=c(m;1)\,\mathrm{vol}(S^{n})$, so there is no Lavrentiev gap.
toXiv_bot_toot
@cdarwin@c.imThe use of cryptocurrency in sales of human beings for prostitution
and scam compounds
nearly doubled in 2025,
according to a conservative estimate.
Many of the deals are happening in plain sight.
https://www.wired.com/story/crypto-funded-…
@yetiinabox@todon.nlPolice in the USA will kill around 480 more civilians by 2050 if the temperature rises in line with SSP 5-8.5, leading to greater domestic political disorder.
A cheerful study from Zou, Hou, Xu and Wang in PLOS: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/…
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialWAN-IFRA: news publications globally had an estimated combined revenue of $125.7B in 2025, down 0.01% YoY; print still accounted for 65% of total revenue (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co…
@zachleat@zachleat.com@… I think dB volume is only one part of the equation, most of the whistles I’ve tested max out at about ~120 dB with a heavy blow. A good estimate for a speaking voice is ~60 dB. The frequency of a whistle plays a part in how far the sound carries too. The triple tone whistle has three different pitches, so it’s a more full sound. Happy to answer questions
@arXiv_csLG_bot@mastoxiv.pageSELAUR: Self Evolving LLM Agent via Uncertainty-aware Rewards
Dengjia Zhang, Xiaoou Liu, Lu Cheng, Yaqing Wang, Kenton Murray, Hua Wei
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21158 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.21158 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.21158
arXiv:2602.21158v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as multi-step decision-making agents, where effective reward design is essential for guiding learning. Although recent work explores various forms of reward shaping and step-level credit assignment, a key signal remains largely overlooked: the intrinsic uncertainty of LLMs. Uncertainty reflects model confidence, reveals where exploration is needed, and offers valuable learning cues even in failed trajectories. We introduce SELAUR: Self Evolving LLM Agent via Uncertainty-aware Rewards, a reinforcement learning framework that incorporates uncertainty directly into the reward design. SELAUR integrates entropy-, least-confidence-, and margin-based metrics into a combined token-level uncertainty estimate, providing dense confidence-aligned supervision, and employs a failure-aware reward reshaping mechanism that injects these uncertainty signals into step- and trajectory-level rewards to improve exploration efficiency and learning stability. Experiments on two benchmarks, ALFWorld and WebShop, show that our method consistently improves success rates over strong baselines. Ablation studies further demonstrate how uncertainty signals enhance exploration and robustness.
toXiv_bot_toot
@davej@dice.campIt feels weird to me that they can estimate uncertainty to that degree of accuracy. https://wandering.shop/@cstross/116091704024541005
@Techmeme@techhub.socialUS farmers are increasingly rejecting multimillion-dollar offers from data center developers; some estimate ~40K acres are needed globally for new AI projects (Niamh Rowe/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/21/us-farmers-datacenters
@Dragofix@veganism.socialMicroplastics may be quietly damaging your brain and fueling Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s #health
@arXiv_mathDG_bot@mastoxiv.pageReplaced article(s) found for math.DG. https://arxiv.org/list/math.DG/new
[1/1]:
- Classification of generalized Yamabe solitons under vanishing conditions on the Weyl, Cotton, and...
Shun Maeta
https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.05487
- Non-collapsing volume estimate for local K\"ahler metrics in big cohomology classes
Thai Duong Do, Duc-Bao Nguyen, Duc-Viet Vu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16136
- The rigidity statement in the Horowitz-Myers conjecture
S. Brendle, P. K. Hung
https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.16812 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/114391742095134598
- The $k$th Order Preserving Sets and Isoperimetric Type Inequalities for Planar Ovals
Maksymilian Filip Safarewicz, Micha{\l} Zwierzy\'nski
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.08017 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/114504987361702955
- An improved upper bound for the second eigenvalue on tori
Fan Kang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05846 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/114652408234085783
- Pluriclosed metrics on compact semisimple Lie groups
Jorge Lauret, Facundo Montedoro
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21725 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/114771230739330209
- Finite extinction time of a family of homogeneous Ricci flows
Roberto Araujo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05097 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/114817170850209379
- Concavity of spacetimes
Tobias Beran, Darius Er\"os, Shin-ichi Ohta, Felix Rott
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26196 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/115298277656918174
- A Lower Bound for the First Non-zero Basic Eigenvalue on a Singular Riemannian Foliation
Bach Tran
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.17501 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/116102222415286571
- The Cauchy problem of the Lorentzian Dirac operator with APS boundary conditions
Nicol\`o Drago, Nadine Gro{\ss}e, Simone Murro
https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.00585
- The Eigenvalue Problem for the complex Monge-Amp\`ere operator
Papa Badiane, Ahmed Zeriahi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.03285 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathCV_bot/110501544679577441
- Geodesic X-ray transform and streaking artifacts on simple surfaces or on spaces of constant curv...
Hiroyuki Chihara
https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.06899 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathAP_bot/111924395641033643
- Koopman Regularization
Ido Cohen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.11302 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDS_bot/112121157959044047
- Parabolic noncommutative geometry
Magnus Fries, Magnus Goffeng, Ada Masters
https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12938 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathOA_bot/114182247165636785
- A Riemannian approach for PDE-constrained shape optimization over the diffeomorphism group using ...
Estefania Loayza-Romero, Lidiya Pryymak, Kathrin Welker
https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.22872 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathOC_bot/114262964177766537
- Varifold solutions to Volume-Preserving Mean Curvature Flow: existence and weak-strong uniqueness
Andrea Poiatti
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08783 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathAP_bot/114850896417417882
- Rigidity of Spectral Encodings under Weyl Growth Conditions
Anton Alexa
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03238 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathSP_bot/115331835395254198
- The Regularity of Critical Points to Scale-Invariant Curvature Energies in Dimension 4
Yann Bernard, Tian Lan, Dorian Martino, Tristan Rivi\`ere
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01765 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathAP_bot/115491294260333438
toXiv_bot_toot
@cdarwin@c.im“Don’t tell me what you value,” Joe Biden was fond of saying.
“Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”
The ever-expanding budget for bombing Iran makes one thing clear:
the US government doesn’t value its own citizens a bit.
Watching money that should go towards schools and infrastructure and healthcare being spent on death and destruction should make every US taxpayer apoplectic.
Operation Epic Fury indeed.
@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyzPreliminary Nucleus Size Estimate for #Kreutz Sungrazer C/2026 A1 (MAPS): https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ae5220 -> "JWST imagery of the approaching Kreutz sungrazer C/2026 A1 (MAPS) appears sufficient to distinguish the comet’s nucleus from the surrounding dust. Coma model fitting indicates the morphology is compatible with a ∼0.4 km diameter nucleus—likely larger than those of the minor Kreutz fragments routinely discovered with coronagraphs, and comparable to or slightly smaller than that of C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy). However, since C/2026 A1 is the only Kreutz sungrazer whose nucleus has been directly observed, these comparisons should be treated with caution" -> https://groups.io/g/comets-ml/message/35035 / https://scicomm.xyz/@qicheng@cometary.org/116245251072721081
@metacurity@infosec.exchangeICE and CBP’s Face-Recognition App Can’t Actually Verify Who People Are
https://www.wired.com/story/cbp-ice-dhs-mobile-fortify-face-recognition-verify-identity/
@gwire@mastodon.socialAt some point Apple's Podcast apps stopped showing the user how big podcast files are (in MB). It will surface the time length to the user, and I suppose you can guess based on that?
I understand why they wouldn't make that information front and centre, but it doesn't even allow a motivated user to discover that information - as an estimate, or as an actual downloaded size.
Culturally, Apple doesn't want users to think about file sizes - but then asks them what th…
@seeingwithsound@mas.to#Cortigent: "estimate that the total addressable market for Orion is approximately 82,000 persons in the United States", "quality of the artificial vision created by both the Argus II and Orion systems varies from patient to patient."
@karlauerbach@sfba.socialI suspect that most people do not recognize how terrible this proposal is.
It is a return to the patronage system of the 1860s where people were hired into and fired from government positions, not on merit, but on loyalty and patronage.
If you think the Federal bureaucracy is slow and sometimes indifferent now, just wait until those bureaucrats operate not out of concern for the country and its citizens but for their jobs and salaries.
"Trump admin moves to finalize re…
@cdarwin@c.imICE has used the "Mobile Fortify" facial recognition app to identify immigrants and citizens alike
💥over 100,000 times, by one estimate.
❌It wasn't built to work like that
—and only got approved after DHS abandoned its own privacy rules.
https://www.…
@nobodyinperson@fosstodon.org @Techmeme@techhub.socialAt an all-hands, Andy Jassy said he expects AI to help AWS reach $600B in annual sales by 2036, double his prior estimate; AWS had revenue of $128.7B in 2025 (Greg Bensinger/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/amazon-ce
@arXiv_mathAP_bot@mastoxiv.pageThe Aronson-B\'enilan estimate for a Lagrangian particle discretization of the Porous Medium Equation
Marco Di Francesco, Daniel Matthes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06835 htt…
@brichapman@mastodon.socialColorado is making heat pumps actually affordable. The state just launched rebates up to $14,000 for energy efficiency upgrades, with $8,000 specifically for heat pumps.
This matters because heat pump sales already surpass gas furnaces nationwide, and new cold-climate tech means they work even in freezing temps. It's a real pathway to cut emissions and ditch fossil fuels.
@Dragofix@veganism.socialLimiting global warming can reduce US wildfire smoke-related deaths by thousands annually #UnitedStates
@ErikJonker@mastodon.socialTechnological dependence on American software and cloud services : an assessment of the economic consequences in Europe - Cigref
https://www.cigref.fr/technological-dependence-on-american-software-and-…
@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyzEstimating Electron Densities in the Middle Solar Corona using White-light and Radio Observations: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.09819 -> "Traditionally, routine estimates of coronal density have relied exclusively on white-light observations. However, these density estimates, obtained by inverting the white-light data, require simplifying assumptions, which may affect the robustness of the measurements. [...] In this study, we estimate the coronal electron densities in the middle corona [...] using low-frequency radio observations from the recently commissioned Long Wavelength Array at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO-LWA)."
@cdarwin@c.imBy combining retinal imaging, genetics, and big data,
physician-researchers from Harvard Medical School, Mass Eye and Ear, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
have found that they can estimate how likely a person is to develop eye and systemic diseases in the future.
⭐️They found significant associations between the thinning of different retinal layers and increased risk of developing ocular, cardiac, pulmonary, metabolic, and neuropsy…
@arXiv_physicsinsdet_bot@mastoxiv.pageCAGE: An Internal Source Scanning Cryostat for HPGe Characterization
G. Othman, C. Wiseman, T. H. Burritt, J. A. Detwiler, M. P. Held, R. Henning, T. Mathew, D. Peterson, W. Pettus, G. Song, T. D. Van Wechel
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06289 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.06289 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.06289
arXiv:2602.06289v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The success of current and future-generation neutrinoless double beta decay experiments relies on the ability to eliminate or reduce extraneous backgrounds. In addition to constructing experiments using radiopure materials and handling in underground laboratories, it is necessary to understand and reduce known backgrounds in data analysis. The Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless double beta Decay is searching for this decay using 76Ge-enriched high-purity germanium detectors submerged in an active liquid argon veto. A significant background in LEGEND is surface events from shallowly-impinging radiation on detector surfaces. In this paper we introduce the Collimated Alphas, Gammas, and Electrons (CAGE) scanning system, an internal-source scanning vacuum cryostat, designed to perform studies of surface events on sensitive surfaces of HPGe in a surface-lab. CAGE features a collimated radionuclide source inside a movable infrared shield that is able to perform precision scans of detector surfaces by utilizing three independent motor stages for source positioning. This allows detailed studies of pulse shapes as a function of source position and incident angle, where defining features can be extracted and exploited for removing surface backgrounds in data analysis in LEGEND. In this paper, we describe CAGE and demonstrate its performance with a commissioning run with 241Am. The commissioning run was completed with the source at normal incidence, and we estimate a beam spot precision of 3.1 mm, which includes positioning uncertainties and the beam-spot size. Using the 59.5 keV gamma population from 241Am, we show that low-energy photon events near the passivated surface feature risetimes that increase with radial distance from the detector center. We suggest a specific metric that can be used to discriminate low-energy gamma backgrounds in LEGEND with similar characteristics.
toXiv_bot_toot
@arXiv_csGR_bot@mastoxiv.pageHeatMat: Simulation of City Material Impact on Urban Heat Island Effect
Marie Reinbigler, Romain Rouffet, Peter Naylor, Mikolaj Czerkawski, Nikolaos Dionelis, Elisabeth Brunet, Catalin Fetita, Rosalie Martin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.22796 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.22796 https://arxiv.org/html/2601.22796
arXiv:2601.22796v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, defined as a significant increase in temperature in urban environments compared to surrounding areas, is difficult to study in real cities using sensor data (satellites or in-situ stations) due to their coarse spatial and temporal resolution. Among the factors contributing to this effect are the properties of urban materials, which differ from those in rural areas. To analyze their individual impact and to test new material configurations, a high-resolution simulation at the city scale is required. Estimating the current materials used in a city, including those on building facades, is also challenging. We propose HeatMat, an approach to analyze at high resolution the individual impact of urban materials on the UHI effect in a real city, relying only on open data. We estimate building materials using street-view images and a pre-trained vision-language model (VLM) to supplement existing OpenStreetMap data, which describes the 2D geometry and features of buildings. We further encode this information into a set of 2D maps that represent the city's vertical structure and material characteristics. These maps serve as inputs for our 2.5D simulator, which models coupled heat transfers and enables random-access surface temperature estimation at multiple resolutions, reaching an x20 speedup compared to an equivalent simulation in 3D.
toXiv_bot_toot
@cdarwin@c.imThe $59 million price tag for
"Operation Midway Blitz"
A Tribune analysis of the Trump administration's Chicago-area immigration crackdown
provides one of the first examinations of Operation Midway Blitz’s financial impact on the federal government.
The back-of-the-envelope estimate is a conservative analysis of the full costs.
Federal officials are not eager to address the fiscal cost of
"Operation Midway Blitz"
-- the months…
@cdarwin@c.imNobody really knows the scale of the U.S. housing crisis
America faces a serious housing shortage, one that Moody’s estimates would take more than 2 million new homes to resolve.
But over at Goldman Sachs, analysts put the number at
3 million.
Zillow’s estimate tops 4 million,
while Brookings projects 5 million,
and McKinsey says 8 million.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans insist the shortfall is closer to 20 million.
Then there are the …
@cdarwin@c.imUrine tests reveal "substantial" consumption of ethanol by wild chimpanzees.
Previously, researchers assessed ethanol levels in ripe fruits & how much of these fruits the chimps typically ate to estimate that they consumed
at ~1.5 drinks a day.
BUT directly demonstrating alcohol consumption was trickier.
@cdarwin@c.imJack Kerouac’s original typescript scroll for "On the Road"
– the 37 metre (121 ft) long roll of paper on which he typed his defining Beat novel in a three-week burst
– will go under the hammer at Christie’s in March, with a sale estimate of £1.8m to £2.9m ($2.5m to $4m).
The scroll is one of the centrepieces of the Jim Irsay Collection,
one of the most extensive private collections of music, literary,
film and sports memorabilia ever assembled.
…
