Tootfinder

AIM Intelligent Machines, which retrofits heavy construction equipment to operate autonomously, raised $50M from Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, and others (Rachyl Jones/Semafor)
https://www.semafor.com/article/06/10/2025/co…

Construction tech startup AIM raises $50M to fuel expansion
The firm that retrofits heavy equipment into autonomous machines, backed by Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst, can help fill the construction industry’s huge labor gap and growing infrastructure demand.

It was unavoidable that this week I'd end up writing about Apple's latest blunder. But in the context of Figma's Sites bullshit and Shopify recasting designers as "artists" it's even worse than one OS making a stupid decision.
The mission of #UXdesign is being changed: orienting away from making useful products that work for everyone, and towards branding.
…

Apple's Liquid Glass is a grim portent for UX
Industry leaders like Apple and Shopify are redefining design excellence from making products usable to solely luxury branding.

I noticed that OpenStreetMaps somehow lost Lake Michigan, so I went investigating. Apparently back in April somebody accidentally changed it from a "lake" to a "school" and it's taking months to be fixed across all regions/renderers.
https:/…

I had a bad day and made a mistake, but I chose to do the right thing and move forward.
Proud bisexual, gender-fluid, autistic anarchist committed to building a world based on mutual aid, solidarity, and freedom for all.
If you believe in challenging power and creating change from the ground up, let’s connect and let’s grow this movement together.
Now, here I am, feeling stronger and ready for better days ahead.

Equitable Mechanism Design for Facility Location
Toby Walsh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10460 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.10460

Equitable Mechanism Design for Facility Location
We consider strategy proof mechanisms for facility location which maximize equitability between agents. As is common in the literature, we measure equitability with the Gini index. We first prove a simple but fundamental impossibility result that no strategy proof mechanism can bound the approximation ratio of the optimal Gini index of utilities for one or more facilities. We propose instead computing approximation ratios of the complemented Gini index of utilities, and consider how well both d…

Numerical approximation of a PDE-constrained Optimization problem that appears in Data-Driven Computational Mechanics
Pedro B. Bazon, Cristian G. Gebhardt, Gustavo C. Buscaglia, Roberto F. Ausas
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10894

Numerical approximation of a PDE-constrained Optimization problem that appears in Data-Driven Computational Mechanics
We investigate an optimization problem that arises when working within the paradigm of Data-Driven Computational Mechanics. In the context of the diffusion-reaction problem, such an optimization problem seeks for the continuous primal fields (gradient and flux) that are closest to some predefined discrete fields taken from a material data set. The optimization is performed over primal fields that satisfy the physical conservation law and the geometrical compatibility. We consider a reaction ter…

New preprint!
User-space library rootkits revisited: Are user-space detection mechanisms futile?
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07827

S-shaped Utility Maximization with VaR Constraint and Partial Information
Dongmei Zhu, Ashley Davey, Harry Zheng
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10103 https://

S-shaped Utility Maximization with VaR Constraint and Partial Information
We study S-shaped utility maximisation with VaR constraint and unobservable drift coefficient. Using the Bayesian filter, the concavification principle, and the change of measure, we give a semi-closed integral representation for the dual value function and find a critical wealth level that determines if the constrained problem admits a unique optimal solution and Lagrange multiplier or is infeasible. We also propose three algorithms (Lagrange, simulation, deep neural network) to solve the prob…

But here’s the good news that way too many people are missing:
𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠.
You are not alone in feeling uncertain about your economic future. Millions of people find themselves in a similar position. Traditional careers leave you exposed.
Here is the key: The world has changed. It has moved online – and unless you are moving with it you will be left behind.

But here’s the good news that way too many people are missing:
𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠.
You are not alone in feeling uncertain about your economic future. Millions of people find themselves in a similar position. Traditional careers leave you exposed.
Here is the key: The world has changed. It has moved online – and unless you are moving with it you will be left behind.