Tootfinder

Sources: Paramount will pay $300M a year for five years to bring global streaming rights for South Park to Paramount , including US rights for the first time (Meg James/Los Angeles Times)

'South Park' creators reach $1.5-billion streaming deal with Paramount
Paramount has reached an agreement that will bring 'South Park' to streaming service Paramount+ for the first time in the U.S.

Regression-Based Approach to Anxiety Estimation of Spider Phobics During Behavioural Avoidance Tasks
Florian Grensing, Vanessa Schm\"ucker, Anne Sophie Hildebrand, Tim Klucken, Maria Maleshkova
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13795

Regression-Based Approach to Anxiety Estimation of Spider Phobics During Behavioural Avoidance Tasks
Phobias significantly impact the quality of life of affected persons. Two methods of assessing anxiety responses are questionnaires and behavioural avoidance tests (BAT). While these can be used in a clinical environment they only record momentary insights into anxiety measures. In this study, we estimate the intensity of anxiety during these BATs, using physiological data collected from unobtrusive, wrist-worn sensors. Twenty-five participants performed four different BATs in a single session,…

What began as a silent infiltration into one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency mining pools has now been confirmed as
the biggest crypto theft in history.
The LuBian mining pool, once a dominant force in the Bitcoin network, quietly lost over 127,000 Bitcoins in 2020.
The breach was only uncovered in 2025 by Arkham Intelligence, revealing a staggering $14.5 billion worth of stolen assets that had remained untouched and undetected for half a decade

The biggest heist of all time involved over $14 billion of crypto being stolen - and it went undetected for five years
Five years of silence before exposure

To whom did my vote go?
Andrew Conway, Michelle Blom, Alexander Ek, Peter Stuckey, Vanessa Teague, Damjan Vukcevic
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13370 https://

To whom did my vote go?
Single Transferable Vote (STV) counting, used in several jurisdictions in Australia, is a system for choosing multiple election winners given voters' preferences among candidates. The system is complex and it is not always obvious how an individual's vote contributes to candidates' tallies across rounds of tabulation. This short paper presents a demonstration system that allows voters to enter an example vote in a past Australian STV election, and see: (i)~how that vote would have been transfer…

Sources: OpenAI signed a contract with Oracle to purchase $300B in computing power, requiring 4.5 gigawatts of capacity, over roughly five years (Berber Jin/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/openai-…

Language bubbles in online social networks
Alessandro Bellina, Donald Ruggiero Lo Sardo, Emanuele Brugnoli, Fabio Saracco, Pietro Gravino, Vittorio Loreto, Gabriele Di Bona
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13068

Language bubbles in online social networks
Social media platforms have become essential spaces for public discourse. While political polarisation and limited communication across different groups are widely acknowledged, the connection between social network fragmentation and the language features and quality used by various communities has received insufficient attention. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the social structure and linguistic richness of the Italian debate on Twitter/X. We analyse tweets and retweets from Ita…

Machine-learning competition to grade EEG background patterns in newborns with hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy
Fabio Magarelli, Geraldine B. Boylan, Saeed Montazeri, Feargal O'Sullivan, Dominic Lightbody, Minoo Ashoori, Tamara Skoric Ceranic, John M. O'Toole
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09695

Machine-learning competition to grade EEG background patterns in newborns with hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy
Machine learning (ML) has the potential to support and improve expert performance in monitoring the brain function of at-risk newborns. Developing accurate and reliable ML models depends on access to high-quality, annotated data, a resource in short supply. ML competitions address this need by providing researchers access to expertly annotated datasets, fostering shared learning through direct model comparisons, and leveraging the benefits of crowdsourcing diverse expertise. We compiled a retro…

Forty-five billion will build a lot of stuff.
As a point of comparison: In 2023, the United States budgeted $12.8 billion to build new affordable housing.
We’re about to spend nearly four times on detention centers as we spend on housing.
https://newrepublic.com/article/197619…

Are We About to Have Labor Camps in the United States of America?
If you think that’s far-fetched, then you really haven’t been paying attention to what the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have been up to lately.

RIAA: US recorded music revenue hit $5.6B across all formats in H1 2025, up 1% YoY; streaming generated $4.68B, and paid subscriptions grew 5.7% YoY to $3.2B (Marc Schneider/Billboard)
https://www.billboard.com/pro/riaa-2025-mid-year-report-recorded…

U.S. Recorded Music Revenue Hits $5.6B in First Half of 2025 as Paid Subscriptions Top 100 Million: RIAA
RIAA says U.S. recorded music revenue rose slightly to $5.6 billion in the first half of 2025, with figures now presented on a wholesale basis.

One Navy secretary and his allies in Congress fought to build more littoral combat ships even as they broke down at sea and their weapons systems failed. The Navy wound up with more ships than it wanted, at an estimated lifetime cost that could reach $100 billion or more.
The Navy’s haste to deliver ships took precedence over combat ability. Without functioning weapons systems the vessels are like a “box floating in the ocean,” one former officer said.
Sailors and officers complain…

The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship”
Littoral combat ships were supposed to launch the Navy into the future. Instead they broke down across the globe and many of their weapons never worked. Now the Navy is getting rid of them. One is less than five years old.