Tootfinder

Logistics fleets are highly sensitive to energy costs, so charging rates must be as low as possible to enable the transition to battery-electric vehicles.
A French cooperative of logistics operators is targeting a shared charging infrastructure with a market-leading rate of just €0.20/kWh.

Alphya structure son réseau de recharge et vise 0,20 €/kWh
Créée au printemps 2025 dans le giron de H2P, la holding Alphya fédère actuellement 95 transporteurs actionnaires et déploie un maillage national de bornes électriques pour poids lourd mutualisées. L’objectif affiché par sa direction opérationnelle : maîtriser le coût de l’électron pour rendre l’électrique compétitif face au diesel.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Joey Bada$$:
🎵 Land of the Free
#JoeyBada$$
https://caobadeelers.bandcamp.com/album/joey-bada-land-of-the-free-caoba-deelers-rmx
https://open.spotify.com/track/7BjygzvUpf8P7X6uWzIhsF

Alphabet's Intrinsic, which builds AI models and software for industrial robots, joins Google; it will remain a distinct entity and work with Google DeepMind (Rebecca Szkutak/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/alphabet-owned-r…

Alphabet-owned robotics software company Intrinsic joins Google | TechCrunch
Nearly five years after graduating into an independent Alphabet company, Intrinsic is moving under Google's domain.

Trump taps 'alpha male' influencer as new envoy for American t​ourism and values - Alternet.org
https://www.alternet.org/trump-influencer/

#GrindayFriday for this week is Los Angeles powerviolence outfit APARTMENT 213 and their new EP from September, 'Glamour': https://apartment213.bandcamp.com/album/glamour
I love so…

"Two marsupials thought extinct for 6,000 years found alive in Indonesian Papua"
#Indonesia #Animals

Two marsupials thought extinct for 6,000 years found alive in Indonesian Papua
Two species of marsupials thought to have been extinct for the past 6,000 years have been found very much alive on the island of New Guinea.

High-Dimensional Robust Mean Estimation with Untrusted Batches
Maryam Aliakbarpour, Vladimir Braverman, Yuhan Liu, Junze Yin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20698 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.20698 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.20698
arXiv:2602.20698v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study high-dimensional mean estimation in a collaborative setting where data is contributed by $N$ users in batches of size $n$. In this environment, a learner seeks to recover the mean $\mu$ of a true distribution $P$ from a collection of sources that are both statistically heterogeneous and potentially malicious. We formalize this challenge through a double corruption landscape: an $\varepsilon$-fraction of users are entirely adversarial, while the remaining ``good'' users provide data from distributions that are related to $P$, but deviate by a proximity parameter $\alpha$.
Unlike existing work on the untrusted batch model, which typically measures this deviation via total variation distance in discrete settings, we address the continuous, high-dimensional regime under two natural variants for deviation: (1) good batches are drawn from distributions with a mean-shift of $\sqrt{\alpha}$, or (2) an $\alpha$-fraction of samples within each good batch are adversarially corrupted. In particular, the second model presents significant new challenges: in high dimensions, unlike discrete settings, even a small fraction of sample-level corruption can shift empirical means and covariances arbitrarily.
We provide two Sum-of-Squares (SoS) based algorithms to navigate this tiered corruption. Our algorithms achieve the minimax-optimal error rate $O(\sqrt{\varepsilon/n} \sqrt{d/nN} \sqrt{\alpha})$, demonstrating that while heterogeneity $\alpha$ represents an inherent statistical difficulty, the influence of adversarial users is suppressed by a factor of $1/\sqrt{n}$ due to the internal averaging afforded by the batch structure.
toXiv_bot_toot

If you are not an expert on how our DNA works and how it forms who we are: read this masterpiece of Philip Ball:
https://www.marginaliareviewofbooks.com/post/alpha-genome

AlphaGenome: On the Promise and Limits of AI in Science
PHILIP BALL | According to the old story, we once thought that all this other DNA was just “junk,” a term coined in this context in the 1970s. It was accumulated over the course of evolution, for example by viruses inserting their genetic material into ours, and it did nothing useful but just cluttered up our genome the way all our old detritus of a lifetime clutters up our attic.

In a strongly worded decision this week, a federal judge ordered that the Voice of America
— its mission to provide news for countries around the world largely shut down for the past year by the Trump administration
— come roaring back to life.
Whether or not that actually happens is anybody’s guess.
The government filed notice Thursday to appeal U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth’s order two days earlier to put hundreds of VOA employees who have been on paid l…

Can Voice of America be put back together again?
A judge this week ruled that Voice of America's employees — and the news organization itself — get back to work. Whether that actually happens is anybody's guess. The government-run agency that broadcasts news around the world has been limping along with a skeleton staff for the past year, largely shut down by the Trump administration. But twice in the past two weeks, U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth has ruled in favor of lawsuits designed to keep it alive, saying that its overse…

Great new catchy, brief, punchy EP by Brooklyn garage punks DR. DENCE. Almost has an Aussie pub rock feel, but like, yknow, in New York. It rips. Four great, fast, fuzzy songs.
https://doctoredtapes.bandcamp.com/album/sick-dumb-spam