Tootfinder

#ScribesAndMakers for July 3: When (and if) you procrastinate, what do you do? If you don't, what do you do to avoid it?
I'll swap right out of programming to read a book, play a video game, or watch some anime. Often got things open in other windows so it's as simple as alt-tab.
I've noticed recently I tend to do this more often when I have a hard problem to solve that I'm not 100% sure about. I definitely have cycles of better & worse motivation and I've gotten to a place where I'm pretty relaxed about it instead of feeling guilty. I work how I work, and that includes cycles of rest, and that's enough (at least, for me it has been so far, and I'm in a comfortable career, married with 2 kids).
Some projects ultimately lose steam and get abandoned, and I've learned to accept that too. I learn a lot and grow from each project, so nothing is a true waste of time, and there remains plenty of future ahead of me to achieve cool things.
The procrastination does sometimes impact my wife & kids, and that's something I do sometimes feel bad about, but I think I keep that in check well enough, and for things my wife worries about, I usually don't procrastinate those too much (used to be worse about this).
Right now I'm procrastinating a big work project by working on a hobby project instead. The work project probably won't get done by the start of the semester as a result. But as I remind myself, my work doesn't actually pay me to work during the summer, and things will be okay without the work project being finished until later.
When I want to force myself into a more productive cycle, talking to people about project details sometimes helps, as does finding some new tech I can learn about by shoehorning it into a project. Have been thinking about talking to a rubber duck, but haven't motivated myself to try that yet, and I'm not really in doldrums right now.

The Far-Infrared Enhanced Survey Spectrometer (FIRESS) for PRIMA: Approach and Estimated Performance
C. M. (Matt), Bradford, Alan J. Kogut, Dale Fixsen, Klaus Pontoppidan, C. Darren Dowell, Jason Glenn, Thomas Pagano, Joseph Green, Marc Foote, James McGuire, Michael Rodger, Robert Calvet, Hien Nguyen, Steve Hailey-Dunsheath, Logan Foote, Elijah Kane, Reinier M. J. Janssen, Margaret Meixner, Alexandra Pope, Alberto Bolatto, JD Smith

The Far-Infrared Enhanced Survey Spectrometer (FIRESS) for PRIMA: Approach and Estimated Performance
We present the architectural concept for the Far-Infrared Enhanced Survey Spectrometer (FIRESS) for the Probe Mission for far-IR Astrophysics (PRIMA). FIRESS spans the 24--235 micron range with four R ~ 100 slit-fed grating modules, each coupling to a 24 (spatial) by 84 (spectral) pixel array of kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs). All four arrays are read out simultaneously, and a point source of interest can be coupled to two of the four bands at a time. A Fourier transform module can be enga…

The Online Safety Act, which went into effect in the U.K. on July 25, requires any website that might have adult content to conduct age-verification checks.
According to the U.K.’s Office of Communications, or Ofcom,
users must provide proof of age
in the form of photo IDs, credit cards, photos for facial recognition software, and other so-called age gates,
or else be denied access.
Though often heralded by parents as a way to keep kids from accessing sexually…

‘Anonymity Online Is Going to Die’: What Age-Verification Laws Could Look Like in the U.S.
As controversy around the U.K.’s Online Safety Act continues, experts warn about similar legislation thriving in the U.S.

On the final day of #BeaverWeek, we focus on Beaver Rescue efforts. Many organizations across Canada care for injured Beavers, abandoned kits, or bonded pairs that have to be relocated. Here is a list of recognized Beaver rescue organizations (worldwide) in case you're feeling generous and looking for a charitable organization to support.
#CanadaIsAwesome
https://martinezbeavers.org/beaver-friendly-organizations/

In the garden of the apartment block next door there are organised kids activities this afternoon. Someone, obviously a relative beginner, has just played "The Gold Ring" slowly, as a party piece. Odd choice for a beginner as there are about 5 parts, so a lot to learn.
Odder still that is happening deep in the heart of France, in an area where English is hardly ever heard, and I'm the only Irish person for miles around.

When Kids Mode Isn't For Kids: Investigating TikTok's "Under 13 Experience"
Olivia Figueira, Pranathi Chamarthi, Tu Le, Athina Markopoulou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00299

When Kids Mode Isn't For Kids: Investigating TikTok's "Under 13 Experience"
TikTok, the social media platform that is popular among children and adolescents, offers a more restrictive "Under 13 Experience" exclusively for young users in the US, also known as TikTok's "Kids Mode". While prior research has studied various aspects of TikTok's regular mode, including privacy and personalization, TikTok's Kids Mode remains understudied, and there is a lack of transparency regarding its content curation and its safety and privacy protections for children. In this paper, (i) …

FAIR-MATCH: A Multi-Objective Framework for Bias Mitigation in Reciprocal Dating Recommendations
Madhav Kotecha
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01063 https://…

FAIR-MATCH: A Multi-Objective Framework for Bias Mitigation in Reciprocal Dating Recommendations
Online dating platforms have fundamentally transformed the formation of romantic relationships, with millions of users worldwide relying on algorithmic matching systems to find compatible partners. However, current recommendation systems in dating applications suffer from significant algorithmic deficiencies, including but not limited to popularity bias, filter bubble effects, and inadequate reciprocity modeling that limit effectiveness and introduce harmful biases. This research integrates fou…

High dimensional convergence rates for sparse precision estimators for matrix-variate data
Hongqiang Sun, Kshitij Khare
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01741 ht…

High dimensional convergence rates for sparse precision estimators for matrix-variate data
In several applications, the underlying structure of the data allows for the samples to be organized into a matrix variate form. In such settings, the underlying row and column covariance matrices are fundamental quantities of interest. We focus our attention on two popular estimators that have been proposed in the literature: a penalized sparse estimator called SMGM and a heuristic sample covariance estimator. We establish convergence rates for these estimators in relevant high-dimensional set…

Selection of Optimal Number and Location of PMUs for CNN Based Fault Location and Identification
Khalid Daud Khattak, Muhammad A. Choudhry
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02192 https…

Selection of Optimal Number and Location of PMUs for CNN Based Fault Location and Identification
In this paper, we present a data-driven Forward Selection with Neighborhood Refinement (FSNR) algorithm to determine the number and placement of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) for maximizing deep-learning-based fault diagnosis performance. Candidate PMU locations are ranked via a cross-validated Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier, and each selection is refined through local neighborhood exploration to produce a near-optimal sensor set. The resulting PMU subset is then supplied to a 1D Con…

Replaced article(s) found for cs.CV. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.CV/new
[1/9]:
- Net2Brain: A Toolbox to compare artificial vision models with human brain responses
Domenic Bersch, Kshitij Dwivedi, Martina Vilas, Radoslaw M. Cichy, Gemma Roig