Tootfinder

A US federal court orders Elon Musk to testify again in an SEC investigation into his $44B Twitter takeover; the SEC sued Musk in October 2023 to testify (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-federal-court-enforces-secs-subpo…

Interesting perspective: The Israel-Iran endgame
[not sure it takes enough account of the Israeli settler/imperialist culture in all of this though]
https://www.newstatesman.com/international-cont…

The Israel-Iran endgame
Editor's note: This piece was originally published in October 2023 and has been updated in light of recent events. Over night on 13 April, Iran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel. The Isr

(PDF) "In October 2023, Vivani implemented a reduction-in-force to conserve cash that decreased Cortigent's employees from 14 to 7 while continuing the ongoing #Orion clinical study and basic operations." https:/…

Just got to the #SPAC explanation in @…'s book #TheBezzle and thought, wait a second. I've heard of SPACs!
Well, first I thought, 'Enough with the delays. No more chapters tonight.' Then I thought the SPAC thing.
This is the one I thought of, BTW. Funny how the SEC was making Digital World Acquisition Corp SPAC return investor's money in October 2023 only to ok this acquisition in February 2024.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/15/truth-social-trump-merger-sec/

The Crypto Con Years Aren’t Over Yet
https://www.didiermary.fr/likes/the-crypto-con-years-arent-over-yet/
Three books explore the failures of regulators—and sometimes journalists […]

The Crypto Con Years Aren’t Over Yet - Didier J. MARY (blog)
Likes The Crypto Con Years Aren’t Over Yet by David Gerard. Three books explore the failures of regulators—and sometimes journalists: Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, Michael Lewis,October 2023 Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall, Zeke Faux,September

47th Mechanized Brigade has a new commander: https://benborges.xyz/2024/03/10/th-mechanized-brigade.html

The Camberville E-Bike Lending Library just crossed two years of bike loan-days since October 1st, with 4200 tracked miles on the odometers of the library bikes.
The first loan from the library was a year ago this month, but I didn't get serious about tracking loans until October. Since then, more than 144 different loans have happened... and more than 45 people bought e-bikes after borrowing one!

Israel is now bombing Rafah.
With weapons that our reps decided to buy with your taxpayer money to give to American "defense" contractors who profiteer from it.
Just as an example, Raytheon's stock price increased 50% since October 2023.
It's really worth to set babies on fire for that sweet, sweet shareholder value!

Web Summit co-founder Paddy Cosgrave confirms returning as Web Summit CEO; Cosgrave resigned in October 2023 over controversial comments on the Israel-Hamas war (TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/08/padd

Paddy Cosgrave returns as Web Summit CEO, after resigning over Israel/Gaza controversy | TechCrunch
Paddy Cosgrave, the co-founder of the Web Summit tech conference, is returning to his role as CEO after resigning in October over controversial statements

Gaza: Israeli Strike Killing 106 Civilians an Apparent War Crime.
Governments Should Suspend Arms to Israel, Support ICC Probe.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/04/gaza-israeli-strike-killing-106-civilians-apparent-war-crime…

Gaza: Israeli Strike Killing 106 Civilians an Apparent War Crime
An Israeli airstrike on a six-story apartment building sheltering hundreds of people in central Gaza on October 31, 2023, is an apparent war crime, Human Rights Watch said today. The attack, which killed at least 106 civilians, including 54 children, is among the deadliest single incidents for civilians since the Israeli government’s bombardment and ground incursion into Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7.

Discovery of a Rare Eclipsing Be/X-ray Binary System, Swift J010902.6-723710 = SXP 182
Thomas M. Gaudin, Jamie A. Kennea, Malcolm J. Coe, Itumeleng M. Monageng, Andrzej Udalski, Lee J. Townsend, David A. H. Buckley, Phil A. Evans
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05648

Discovery of a Rare Eclipsing Be/X-ray Binary System, Swift J010902.6-723710 = SXP 182
We report on the discovery of Swift J010902.6-723710, a rare eclipsing Be/X-ray Binary system by the Swift SMC Survey (S-CUBED). Swift J010902.6-723710 was discovered via weekly S-CUBED monitoring observations when it was observed to enter a state of X-ray outburst on 10 October 2023. X-ray emission was found to be modulated by a 182s period. Optical spectroscopy is used to confirm the presence of a highly-inclined circumstellar disk surrounding a B0-0.5Ve optical companion. Historical UV and I…

Observations of the Polarized Solar Corona during the Annular Eclipse of October 14, 2023
Daniel B. Seaton, Amir Caspi, Nathalia Alzate, Sarah J. Davis, Alec R. DeForest, Craig E. Deforest, Nicholas F. Erickson, Sarah A. Kovac, Ritesh Patel, Steven N. Osterman, Anna Tosolini, Samuel J. Van Kooten, Matthew J. West
https://arxiv.o…

Observations of the Polarized Solar Corona during the Annular Eclipse of October 14, 2023
We present results of a dual eclipse expedition to observe the solar corona from two sites during the annular solar eclipse of 2023 October 14, using a novel coronagraph designed to be accessible for amateurs and students to build and deploy. The coronagraph "CATEcor" builds on the standardized eclipse observing equipment developed for the Citizen CATE 2024 experiment. The observing sites were selected for likelihood of clear observations, for historic relevance (near the Climax site in the Col…

I just published "I wrote a thing with Vue and Firebase" over on @…. https://jws.news/2024/wrote-a-thing-with-vue-and-firebase/…

I wrote a thing with Vue and Firebase
This past autumn, I started playing around with the Composition API, and at the October 2023 Hack and Tell, I put that knowledge into writing a “Job Tracker”.  The job tracker used Vuex…

On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart says Apple asked him not to have FTC's Lina Khan for his Apple podcast; Apple abruptly ended Stewart's TV show in October 2023 (Sara Fischer/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/jon-stewart-apple-ftc-chair-interview…

Jon Stewart claims Apple wouldn't let him interview FTC chair on his show
"Why are they so afraid to even have these conversations out in the public sphere?" he said to FTC's Lina Khan on "The Daily Show."

🛰️ The Amazon’s 2023 Drought: Sentinel-1 Reveals Extreme Rio Negro River Contraction
#amazon

The Amazon’s 2023 Drought: Sentinel-1 Reveals Extreme Rio Negro River Contraction
The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, faces a severe historic drought. The Rio Negro River, one of the major Amazon River tributaries, reached its lowest level in a century in October 2023. Here, we used a U-net deep learning model to map water surfaces in the Rio Negro River basin every 12 days in 2022 and 2023 using 10 m spatial resolution Sentinel-1 satellite radar images. The accuracy of the water surface model was high, with an F1-score of 0.93. A 12-day mosaic time series of the w…

ISW: Russian forces have seized 505 square kilometers since October offensive: https://benborges.xyz/2024/03/29/isw-russian-forces.html

always a link to Russia lurking in the background #TraitorTrump #MoscowMarjorie #UsPoli

Emails reveal how Bolt tried to shape Estonia’s opposition to gig work directive
https://poliverso.org/display/0477a01e-8ec44703-ec8e9c4961a1eef7
Emails reveal how Bolt tried to shape Estonia’s opposition to gig work directiveIn October 2023, mobili…

Well, there’s a bit of good news. Our union just got us a 7.75% hourly raise increase, retroactive back to October 1st, 2023.
Unfortunately, I’m only part time so I won’t get a whole lot but some folks at work will get a check for *several* thousand dollars.
Even *better* news - I just got called in to work for tomorrow at the reasonable hour of 1:45pm. And because Monday is a Statutory company holiday, I get DOUBLE time *and* the new wage! 😃
BEERS ON ME! :)

Boeing confirms that LockBit attempted to extort a $200M ransom in October 2023; the company reportedly didn't pay any ransom after ~43GB of its data was posted (AJ Vicens/CyberScoop)
https://cyberscoop.com/boeing-confirms-attempted-2…

Boeing confirms attempted $200 million ransomware extortion attempt
That attempt was one of multiple “extremely large” ransom demands made by LockBit over the years, authorities said.

Oppie Op-ed: Reflections on Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer
Michel Janssen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05212 https://arxiv.org/pdf…

Oppie Op-ed: Reflections on Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer
Right before Nolan's movie was released, I gave a talk on Oppenheimer, trying to anticipate what elements of Bird and Sherwin's biography on which the movie is based would make it into the movie. In this article, written for the October 2023 edition of the newsletter of the Forum on Science and Society of the APS, I elaborate on some of the elements I missed. I used this article as the basis for a post-movie version of my talk. I corrected some errors and made some additions to this article bef…

In October 2023, we recieved an email from the courts service that said there may be delays in issuing an order that had been agreed on consent and confirmed by the Judge. This was due to the introduction of a new Unified management system in the Courts Service.
We’re still waiting for that final Order.

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.06980 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mat…

Partial duality for ribbon graphs
This is an expository paper extending the tutorial talk at the MATRIX Workshop on Uniqueness and Discernment in Graph Polynomials in October 2023. The explanation is mainly based on the paper "Partial Duality of Hypermaps" by S.Chmutov and F.Vignes-Tourneret with maximal possible simplifications.

https://nowotarski.info/http2-continuation-flood-technical-details/ - HTTP/2 CONTINUATION flood denial of service vulnerability.

On Euler-Dierkes-Huisken variational problem
Hongbin Cui, Xiaowei Xu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.05132 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.0513…

On Euler-Dierkes-Huisken variational problem
In this paper, we study the stability and minimizing properties of higher codimensional surfaces in Euclidean space associated with the $f$-weighted area-functional $$\mathcal{E}_f(M)=\int_M f(x)\; d \mathcal{H}_k$$ with the density function $f(x)=g(|x|)$ and $g(t)$ is non-negative, which develop the recent works by U. Dierkes and G. Huisken (Math. Ann., 20 October 2023) on hypersurfaces with the density function $|x|^α$. Under suitable assumptions on $g(t)$, we prove that …

🛰️ The Amazon’s 2023 Drought: Sentinel-1 Reveals Extreme Rio Negro River Contraction
#amazon

The Amazon’s 2023 Drought: Sentinel-1 Reveals Extreme Rio Negro River Contraction
The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, faces a severe historic drought. The Rio Negro River, one of the major Amazon River tributaries, reached its lowest level in a century in October 2023. Here, we used a U-net deep learning model to map water surfaces in the Rio Negro River basin every 12 days in 2022 and 2023 using 10 m spatial resolution Sentinel-1 satellite radar images. The accuracy of the water surface model was high, with an F1-score of 0.93. A 12-day mosaic time series of the w…

Cowboys CB sends NFL warning with return of former interceptions leader https://www.yardbarker.com/nfl/articles/cowboys_cb_sends_nfl_warning_with_return_of_former_interceptions_leader/s1_13132_40314532

Cowboys CB sends NFL warning with return of former interceptions leader
Cowboys two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Trevon Diggs' 2023 season ended before it started after he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during a practice in September. It was a big blow to Dallas' defense as he was ruled out for the season, having surgery to repair it in October. However, his absence helped another young cornerback have a breakout season. DaRon Bland, a fifth-round pick in 2022, led the league with nine interceptions and set an NFL record with five interception ret…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.06046 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csRO_…

Anatomy of a Robotaxi Crash: Lessons from the Cruise Pedestrian Dragging Mishap
An October 2023 crash between a GM Cruise robotaxi and a pedestrian in San Francisco resulted not only in a severe injury, but also dramatic upheaval at that company that will likely have lasting effects throughout the industry. Is-sues stem not just from the loss events themselves, but also from how Cruise mishandled dealing with their robotaxi dragging a pedestrian under the vehicle after the initial post-crash stop. External investigation reports provide raw material describing the incident …

The TARP program, created by Congress in 2008 to address the financial crisis, finally ended in September of 2023. Today, CBO released its final report on the program.
"By CBO’s estimate, $444 billion of the $700 billion initially authorized was disbursed through the TARP... [after repayments, etc.] the government’s total subsidy cost was $31 billion."

Final Report on the Troubled Asset Relief Program
NotesNotes All years referred to are federal fiscal years, which run from October 1 to September 30 and are designated by the calendar year in which they end. Numbers in the text and table may not add up to totals because of rounding.

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02097 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_…

Observations of the Polarized Solar Corona during the Annular Eclipse of October 14, 2023
We present results of a dual eclipse expedition to observe the solar corona from two sites during the annular solar eclipse of 2023 October 14, using a novel coronagraph designed to be accessible for amateurs and students to build and deploy. The coronagraph "CATEcor" builds on the standardized eclipse observing equipment developed for the Citizen CATE 2024 experiment. The observing sites were selected for likelihood of clear observations, for historic relevance (near the Climax site in the Col…

"#Mastodon is an excellent, momentous platform. It's a new kind of online communication channel, with an alternative structure, a clear democratic vision, and just enough impact. My colleagues at DW Innovation and I finally gave it a chance in October 2023 – and that turned out to be one of our best communication decisions in the last decade."

Public Broadcasters of Europe, Let's All Join Mastodon!
In this guest post, Alexander Plaum, Innovation Manager at Deutsche Welle (DW), writes about his team's exceptionally positive experience with microblogging in the Fediverse. He also explains why all public broadcasting professionals should try out Mastodon.

Kotaku EIC Jen Glennon, who joined in October 2023, resigns, citing in a letter the management team's recent decision to deprioritize news in favor of guides (Aftermath)
https://aftermath.site/kotaku-eic-resigns-over-new-editorial-edict

Kotaku EIC Resigns Over New Editorial Edict - Aftermath
Jen Glennon, who took over as editor in chief of Kotaku in October, resigned Thursday. In a resignation letter seen by Aftermath, Glennon says that she made this choice due to the management team’s recent decision to deprioritize news in favor of guides. Glennon is the second editor in chief of Kotaku since Stephen Totilo’s […]

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.14949 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csSE_…

LLM Interactive Optimization of Open Source Python Libraries -- Case Studies and Generalization
With the advent of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3, a natural question is the extent to which these models can be utilized for source code optimization. This paper presents methodologically stringent case studies applied to well-known open source python libraries pillow and numpy. We find that contemporary LLM ChatGPT-4 (state September and October 2023) is surprisingly adept at optimizing energy and compute efficiency. However, this is only the case in interactive use, with a human exp…

"Indonesian palm oil, Brazilian beef top contributors to U.S. deforestation exposure"
#US #USA #America #Brazil

Indonesian palm oil, Brazilian beef top contributors to U.S. deforestation exposure
If you’re in the United States, your meal might come with a side of deforestation.  The US imported palm oil, cattle products, soybeans, cocoa, rubber, coffee and corn linked to an estimated 122,800 hectares (303,445 acres) of tropical deforestation between October 2021 and November 2023 — an area the size of the city of Los […]

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.08202 has been replaced.
link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=a

IsamasRed: A Public Dataset Tracking Reddit Discussions on Israel-Hamas Conflict
The conflict between Israel and Palestinians significantly escalated after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, capturing global attention. To understand the public discourse on this conflict, we present a meticulously compiled dataset-IsamasRed-comprising nearly 400,000 conversations and over 8 million comments from Reddit, spanning from August 2023 to November 2023. We introduce an innovative keyword extraction framework leveraging a large language model to effectively identify pertinent keyword…

Unity names ex-Zynga COO Matthew Bromberg as its new CEO, president, and board member; ex-CEO John Riccitiello resigned in October 2023 after a pricing fiasco (Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat)
https://venturebeat.com/games/unity-appoints-ex-zynga-exe…

Very happy to share this exciting news that the California Digital Library (my workplace), Lyrasis, and the Big Ten Academic Alliance Libraries are joining together to advance Diamond OA in the US! https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/2024/04/better-together-btaa…

On the #Orion brain implant for vision: "In October 2023, #Vivani implemented a reduction-in-force to conserve cash that decreased #Cortigent’s employees from 14 to 7 while continuing the ongoing Orion clinical study and basi…

4 days until the MARCH…: https://benborges.xyz/2024/02/22/days-until-the.html

Enterprise browser startup Island raised $175M led by Sequoia and Coatue at a $3B valuation, up from $1.5B in October 2023, taking its total funding to $487M (Katie Roof/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Enterprise Browser Island Receives Capital at $3 Billion Value
Island, a startup that makes secure internet browsers for businesses, has raised fresh capital at $3 billion valuation.

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.01856 has been replaced.
link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=a

Watch the Moon, Learn the Moon: Lunar Geology Research at School Level with Telescope and Open Source Data
Science-AI Symbiotic Group at Seven Square Academy, Naigaon was formed in 2023 with the purpose of bringing school students to the forefronts of science research by involving them in hands on research. In October 2023 a new project was started with the goal of studying the lunar surface by real-time observations and open source data. Twelve students/members from grades 8, 9, 10 participated in this research attempt wherein each student filled an observation metric by observing the Moon on vario…

Report from the Workshop on Xenon Detector $0\nu\beta\beta$ Searches: Steps Towards the Kilotonne Scale
A. Anker, A. Avasthi, M. Brodeur, T. Brunner, N. K. Byrnes, N. R. Catarineu, A. Cottle, P. Englezos, W. Fairbank, D. Gonz\'alez D\'iaz, R. Guenette, S. J. Haselschwardt, S. Hedges, M. Heffner, J. D. Holt, A. Jamil, B. J. P. Jones, N. Kawada, S. Leardini, B. G. Lenardo, A. Marc, J. Masbou, K. Mistry, B. Mong, B. Monreal, D. C. Moore, D. R. Nygren, I. Olcina, J. L. Orrell, A. P…

Report from the Workshop on Xenon Detector $0νββ$ Searches: Steps Towards the Kilotonne Scale
These proceedings summarize the program and discussions of the ``Workshop on Xenon Detector $0νββ$ Searches: Steps Towards the Kilotonne Scale'' held on October 25-27 2023 at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. This workshop brought together experts from the communities of neutrinoless double-beta decay and dark matter detection, to discuss paths forward for the realization of monolithic experiments with xenon approaching the kilotonne scale.

Bolt told investors that it had revenue of $19.4M for the nine months ending in October 2023, essentially flat YoY; Bolt's troubles grow with a Fanatics lawsuit (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bolts-…

Bolt’s Fanatics Partnership Goes South, Adding to Growth Woes
Bolt, the checkout startup that rocketed to an $11 billion valuation during the pandemic e-commerce boom, is embroiled in another legal battle with a high-profile retail partner: sports apparel company Fanatics, which signed a deal in 2022 to offer Bolt’s speedy payment buttons across several of ...

Beijing-based Moonshot AI, which launched its AI chatbot Kimi Chat in October 2023, raised $1B led by Alibaba and HongShan, reportedly at a ~$2.5B valuation (Ben Jiang/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scm…

Chinese start-up Moonshot AI raises US$1 billion in funding round led by Alibaba
Beijing-based Moonshot AI, known in Chinese as Yuezhi Anmian, was valued at about US$2.5 billion in its latest funding round.

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.01856 has been replaced.
link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=a

Watch the Moon, Learn the Moon: Lunar Geology Research at School Level with Telescope and Open Source Data
Science-AI Symbiotic Group at Seven Square Academy, Naigaon was formed in 2023 with the purpose of bringing school students to the forefronts of science research by involving them in hands on research. In October 2023 a new project was started with the goal of studying the lunar surface by real-time observations and open source data. Twelve students/members from grades 8, 9, 10 participated in this research attempt wherein each student filled an observation metric by observing the Moon on vario…