Tootfinder

Ever notice how some web sites put you into a sign up flow every time you try to log in?
I infer a company’s focus by how this works.
If they prioritize logging in, they’re focused on customers.
If they prioritize signing up, they’re focused on growth.
This also informs who won the internal arguments: people who care about users or people who care about sales.
I’ll take a company/service that’s focused on the existing relationship I already pay them to maintain, …

Thus far, the Supreme Court’s rulings in both the 14th Amendment and presidential immunity case have helped to reinforce Trump’s narrative that these criminal indictments aren’t really about him, they are about his legions of MAGA followers.
In equating his problems with their problems, Trump has ample fodder
— bogus as it may be
— to once again argue that his legal troubles are not of his own doing, but rather, the work of political adversaries who have been conspiring to i…

A criminologist explains why half of America does not care about Trump's crimes
Since 2023, when Donald Trump was criminally indicted in a combined four criminal cases on 91 felony counts, I have repeatedly been asked to explain how one-half of the American public seemingly does not care about the alleged crimes committed by their former president and presumptive 2024 Republica...

Ever notice how some web sites put you into a sign up flow every time you try to log in?
I infer a company’s focus by how this works.
If they prioritize logging in, they’re focused on customers.
If they prioritize signing up, they’re focused on growth.
This also informs who won the internal arguments: people who care about users or people who care about sales.
I’ll take a company/service that’s focused on the existing relationship I already pay them to maintain, …

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Mobile Robot Path Planning
Hao Liu, Yi Shen, Shuangjiang Yu, Zijun Gao, Tong Wu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.06974 https://…

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Mobile Robot Path Planning
Path planning is an important problem with the the applications in many aspects, such as video games, robotics etc. This paper proposes a novel method to address the problem of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) based path planning for a mobile robot. We design DRL-based algorithms, including reward functions, and parameter optimization, to avoid time-consuming work in a 2D environment. We also designed an Two-way search hybrid A* algorithm to improve the quality of local path planning. We trans…

No matter how much you work, or how much you love your corporate employer, they don't care about you. Sure, maybe your direct superior cares, but he can easily be told to fuck you over if it suits the corp.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-worker-…

$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.

"So I don’t know exactly where the media industry went, and I don’t know how to fix it. But if you want a glimpse of how the business works now, you can’t do much better than this Road & Track story about Formula One racing by McMansion Hell architecture critic and cycling journalist Kate Wagner, which was published on Friday and then almost instantly unpublished for reasons that will soon become obvious." https://web.archive.org/web/20240301170542/https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a46975496/behind-f1-velvet-curtain/

"When we got into the garage, #Lewis's car was naked, its insides visible for all to see. I think this was the moment where my respect for the sport as it exists really made itself clear. It is hard to describe what I felt looking at that car. The closest phrase I have at my disposal is #technologicalsublime

‘I’d love a scathing review’: novelist Percival Everett on American Fiction and rewriting Huckleberry Finn | Percival Everett | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr

Donald Trump, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, wants to kneecap the Federal Reserve.
💥This should be a five-alarm fire for anyone who claims to care about inflation.💥

The former president and his advisers keep finding new ways to outdo themselves on bad economic ideas.
Should Trump be granted a second term,
🔸he plans to slash the labor supply by ratcheting down immigration
(including legal, work-authorized immigration).
🔸He wants to devalue…

This should be a 5-alarm fire for anyone who cares about inflation
With the 2024 election approaching, the central bank’s independence is on the line.