Tootfinder

Illustrating Finite Automata with Grail and TikZ
Alastair May, Taylor J. Smith
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.03039 https://arxiv.org/pd…

Illustrating Finite Automata with Grail+ and TikZ
In this article, we discuss a new software tool that interacts with Grail+, a library of automata-theoretic command-line utilities. Our software, the Grail+ Visualizer, takes the textual representation of a finite automaton produced by Grail+ and generates TikZ code to illustrate the finite automaton, with automatic layout of states and transitions. In addition to giving an overview of the basics of automata theory and Grail+, we discuss how the Grail+ Visualizer works in detail and suggest ave…

You can't just Guerilla Glue some LED lights and a switch to an old phone battery and call it flashlight!
NecroTorch: NANI?!
Source: spinagon on r/DIWhy or ⁠Tor

This single frame from today's #QuestionableContent struck me as comic perfection.
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5297

"Cline’s bullying was so heinous that Utah state Rep. Kera Birkeland (R), who sponsored a bill to ban trans girls from playing on girl’s school sports teams, even called Cline out, saying the girl’s parents should sue her. But this was a fine bit of hypocrisy, considering that Birkeland herself had spent four years and over 100 legislative meetings to create a law preoccupied with student-athletes’ genitals."

Republicans to parents: Let us peep at your kid's vagina before we let them play sports - LGBTQ Nation
Conservatives are bullying kids who don't look boyish or girlish enough for their tastes... even if it kills them.

Opposing genocide isn’t antisemitic.
Saying that opposing genocide is antisemitic is antisemitic.
You know what’s inhumane? Genocide. You know who’s committing genocide? Israel.
You have zero moral standing to assess me. Those who commit and are complicit in genocide never do.
So yes, most definitely, goodbye.
#israel

$125K stolen in 10 minutes
From Kim Komando's newsletter —
"Feb. 16 was a typical Friday night. Barry and I decided to stay home, grill chicken and make a salad for dinner. At about 6:45 p.m., we heard some loud rumbling overhead.
We walked onto the back patio, and two police helicopters were shining lights all over our property. A recording echoed, “Police. You are under arrest. Stay right there and I won’t shoot you.”
As I looked across the fence, a swarm of armed Phoenix SWAT team members with a few dogs were circling our property. One of the guys said, “Yeah, there’s a jammer right here.” He picked it up. I leaned over the patio and asked, “What’s going on?”
The police told me to go inside
When I asked again, a SWAT member said, “Ma’am, it’s a South American gang targeting homes to steal from. The jammer says you might have been next. Do we have permission to enter your property?” I said, “Yes!” and then he asked something like, “If we find anyone, will you pursue charges so we can arrest them?” I replied, “Of course!”
I opened the driveway gates to our property and the guest house while Barry tossed the police keys to open the security gates. People asked me if I was scared. How could I be? There was a team of really professional police officers protecting me from who knows what.
Turns out, when the gang saw we were home, they likely diverted their attention to the house next door. A house four doors down from us wasn’t so lucky.
The homeowner left at 5 p.m. to have dinner and got a notification his security cameras were offline at 5:05 p.m. He thought the internet went down. Nope, the gang broke in and took $25,000 in cash and valuables worth $100,000. They were in and out in under 10 minutes.
How are they getting away with this?
The gang places cellular and Wi‑Fi jammers around the homes they’re targeting. This way, security cameras and phones are useless. A Phoenix police officer told me the gang probably noticed nothing was down in our house.
We have our cameras and internet hardwired. Even when they tried to jam our signals, the red lights on the security cameras still showed they were recording everything.
But how frightening is that? Your phone doesn’t work. Your cameras aren’t recording anything. On the upside, the gang doesn’t carry guns. This way, if they get caught, they’ll spend about six months in jail before being extradited to Chile.
Nothing is random
The gang scopes out homes beforehand. They drive the neighborhood and look up houses on real estate sites to get an idea of where the primary bedroom is located. They look for dogs, too.
It’s not just in Phoenix, by the way. This is happening all over the country. A friend was robbed by this gang, and he lives in a guarded, gated community in California. Kudos to the Phoenix Police Department — they arrested three members of the gang who were in my neighborhood that night.
So, what can you do?
☑️​ Wireless cameras go kaput with no signal. Try a wired camera for a backup.
☑️​ A cam with SD card storage will still record if there’s no Wi‑Fi.
☑️​ Put up motion-activated lights; they make it harder for anyone to sneak around.
☑️​ A femtocell (think of it as a mini cell tower) could be enough to keep your connection if thieves use jammers — T‑Mobile or Verizon.
☑️​ Have an Amazon Echo? Away mode lets you control your lights so it looks like someone’s home.
☑️​ Make it look like someone’s watching TV at your house when you’re not there with a Television Simulator.
☑️​ A University of North Carolina survey of over 400 incarcerated burglars found security system signs deter thieves.
☑️​ Check Zillow, Realtor⁠.⁠com and Redfin for photos of your house. The more crooks know about the layout, the better for them. Ask to have them removed.
☑️​ Blur your house from Google Maps and Apple Maps while you’re at it.

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.07852 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCR_…

The Complexity of Algebraic Algorithms for LWE
Arora & Ge introduced a noise-free polynomial system to compute the secret of a Learning With Errors (LWE) instance via linearization. Albrecht et al. later utilized the Arora-Ge polynomial model to study the complexity of Gröbner basis computations on LWE polynomial systems under the assumption of semi-regularity. In this paper we revisit the Arora-Ge polynomial and prove that it satisfies a genericity condition recently introduced by Caminata & Gorla, called being in generic coordinates. For…

Learning dynamic representations of the functional connectome in neurobiological networks
Luciano Dyballa, Samuel Lang, Alexandra Haslund-Gourley, Eviatar Yemini, Steven W. Zucker
https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.14102

Learning dynamic representations of the functional connectome in neurobiological networks
The static synaptic connectivity of neuronal circuits stands in direct contrast to the dynamics of their function. As in changing community interactions, different neurons can participate actively in various combinations to effect behaviors at different times. We introduce an unsupervised approach to learn the dynamic affinities between neurons in live, behaving animals, and to reveal which communities form among neurons at different times. The inference occurs in two major steps. First, pairwi…