Tootfinder

In which I write about the pretty-awesome experience of attending the MLS quarter-final game with my son and 53,095 other good friends, and how getting interested in fútbol has had the side-effect that I’ve lost most of my interest in football (as in NFL). https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/20<…

A look at Search.com, which is building an AI chatbot to be integrated into publisher websites, giving 60% of ad revenue back to its publisher partners (Andrew Byrd/AdMonsters)
https://www.admonsters.com/search-com-has-a-novel-approac…

A Novel Approach To AI Search: Pay Publishers For Their Content
Search.com has introduced a publisher-first AI search and chat tool that promises to compensate publishers for their content.

Really looks like the United States is about to launch a regime change war against Venezuela with:
-No casus belli
-No authorization from Congress
-No allies or international support
-No plan for a post-Maduro Venezuela
-No preparation for any sort of stabilization or containment of the fallout
https:…

Nicholas Grossman (@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social)
Really looks like the United States is about to launch a regime change war against Venezuela with: -No casus belli -No authorization from Congress -No allies or international support -No plan for a post-Maduro Venezuela -No preparation for any sort of stabilization or containment of the fallout

Occasionally, I log into LinkedIn purely to check messages. Sometimes, I find a promoted message or an ad, maybe a connection request. Usually, nothing. Content often feel fake, and it's often difficult to find content that I'm interested in there. Is it even a site for businesses to connect, and people find work any more?
Back when it wasn't owned by Meta, I used to enjoy Instagram. Now it feels like a shop. I still miss scrolling through the feed, discovering content from the people that I followed. Sadly, a lot of creators that I liked are still on there, and nowhere else.
Mastodon is pretty much my only online home now, and I'm very thankful for it!

dom: Animal dominance archive (2022)
Animal dominance interaction data published over a century of research. The archive contains 434 agonistic interaction datasets, totaling over 241,000 interactions. A directed edge (i,j) corresponds to an antagonist interaction between i (winner) and j (loser). If a 'weight' edge property map exists, it counts the number of such interactions.
This network has 30 nodes and 421 edges.
Tags: Social, Animal, Weighted

Atomistic Insights into Cu/amorphous-Ta$_x$N Interfacial Adhesion via Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials: Effects of Stoichiometry and Interface Construction
Jeong Min Choi, Jaehoon Kim, Ji-Hwan Lee, Won-Joon Son, Seungwu Han
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20662

Atomistic Insights into Cu/amorphous-Ta$_x$N Interfacial Adhesion via Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials: Effects of Stoichiometry and Interface Construction
Accurate understanding and control of interfacial adhesion between Cu and Ta$_x$N diffusion barriers are essential for ensuring the mechanical reliability and integrity of Cu interconnect systems in semiconductor devices. Amorphous tantalum nitride (a-Ta$_x$N) barriers are particularly attractive due to their superior barrier performance, attributed to the absence of grain boundaries. However, a systematic atomistic investigation of how varying Ta stoichiometries influences adhesion strength at…

Another day another study showing that "AI assistants" do not work reliably for cognitive tasks.
"Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/202…

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory
An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC

“Trump has the unique problem that he started off a lot lower than other presidents,” Morris told us.
“So as he loses ground
— and he has lost ground at about the normal historical clip
— he just continues to be worse and worse than every other president before him.”
https://www.pu…

G. Elliot Morris on Trump's dire polling
"He just continues to be worse and worse than every other president before him."