Tootfinder

Burrow: Bengals' contract trouble 'disappointing' https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45805838/joe-burrow-ongoing-bengals-contract-issues-disappointing

Another “Long Links” curation of long-form works that probably nobody has time for all of, but one or two of which might enrich your life. Featuring: Population shrinkage, “evitability of enshittification”, vibe-coding tales, the usual cosmology fun, a story 70 years in the making, and Equus asinus. https://www.

Long Links

Kremlin indicates Putin-Zelensky meeting unlikely before August amid ongoing Russia-Ukraine negotiations: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/24/kremlin-indicates-putinzelensky-meeting-unlikely.html

Filing: Elon Musk's lawyers say he "does not use a computer" after OpenAI accused Musk of not complying with the discovery process in his lawsuit against OpenAI (Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-computer-sam-altman/

Elon Musk’s Lawyers Claim He ‘Does Not Use a Computer’
The claim appeared in a court filing related to Elon Musk’s ongoing lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. The Tesla and xAI owner has posted about his laptop numerous times in the past year.

In which I spend months in apparently unexplored parts of the nondeterministic-finite-automaton territory and get a good result. Once again, of interest only to people who care about ε-closures. (Those people are my people.)
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/20

QRS: Finite-state Struggles

A look at WaPo's recent staff departures: five WaPo Opinion columnists, including Philip Bump, have taken buyouts, while two have moved to the newsroom (Charlotte Klein/New York Magazine)
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/things…

Things Are Somehow Getting Worse for the Washington ‘Post’
A raft of buyouts and multiple ongoing shake-ups at the Washington ‘Post’ have left staff despondent and unsure about the future.

French Judge Investigating Robert Spatz (81) Requests Spain’s Judicial Assistance https://openbuddhism.org/justice/2025/french-judge-investigating-robert-spatz-81-requests-spains-judicial-assistance/

The 35-day old baby who starved to death in Gaza was clearly a Hamas terrorist. Anyone who says otherwise is antisemitic.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/19/weeks-old-baby-dies-of-starvation-in-gaza-hospital-amid-ongoing…

Weeks-old baby dies of starvation in Gaza hospital during ongoing blockade
Medical sources also report 116 killed across Gaza, including 38 desperate residents seeking food at GHF site.

Nine takeaways on Brazil’s crackdown on illegal mining in Munduruku lands https://news.mongabay.com/2025/06/nine-takeaways-on-brazils-crackdown-on-illegal-mining-in-munduruku-lands/

Nine takeaways on Brazil’s crackdown on illegal mining in Munduruku lands
Mongabay published a five-part series delving into Brazil’s ongoing operation to evict illegal gold miners from Munduruku Indigenous territories, deep in the Amazon Rainforest. While there has been some disruption to mining in the region, Munduruku organizations told Mongabay the operation is not yet completely successful, with small groups of illegal miners, or garimpeiros, still […]

People are already moving stuff into office while workmen are completing finish working inside
#cornell #photo #photography

I do not understand why the U.S. military accepts noncitizen volunteers. However, since the U.S. military does accept noncitizen volunteers, I really do not understand why those servicemembers aren't automatically granted citizenship with their honorable discharge.
https://www.military.net/veterans-facing-d

Ukraine announced on June 13 that its short-range Sapsan ballistic missile would go into mass production
-- a major development in Kyiv's ongoing efforts to domestically produce the weapons it needs to fight Russia's full-scale invasion.
As Ukraine faces growing challenges in securing weapons from Western partners, and Russia continues launching drone and missile strikes on civilians, the development of Ukraine’s missile production is seen as a critical step toward strength…

Tired of military aid delays, Ukraine has designed its own ballistic missile — and it’s already in mass-production
Ukraine announced on June 13 that it's short-range Sapsan ballistic missile would go into mass production, a major development in Kyiv's ongoing efforts to domestically produce the weapons it needs to fight Russia's full-scale invasion. As Ukraine faces growing challenges in securing weapons from Western partners, and Russia continues launching drone and missile strikes on civilians, the development of Ukraine’s missile production is seen as a critical step toward strengthening its defense c…

Demonstration of Efficient Predictive Surrogates for Large-scale Quantum Processors
Wei-You Liao, Yuxuan Du, Xinbiao Wang, Tian-Ci Tian, Yong Luo, Bo Du, Dacheng Tao, He-Liang Huang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17470

Demonstration of Efficient Predictive Surrogates for Large-scale Quantum Processors
The ongoing development of quantum processors is driving breakthroughs in scientific discovery. Despite this progress, the formidable cost of fabricating large-scale quantum processors means they will remain rare for the foreseeable future, limiting their widespread application. To address this bottleneck, we introduce the concept of predictive surrogates, which are classical learning models designed to emulate the mean-value behavior of a given quantum processor with provably computational eff…

SMARTAPS: Tool-augmented LLMs for Operations Management
Timothy Tin Long Yu, Mahdi Mostajabdaveh, Jabo Serge Byusa, Rindra Ramamonjison, Giuseppe Carenini, Kun Mao, Zirui Zhou, Yong Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17927

SMARTAPS: Tool-augmented LLMs for Operations Management
Large language models (LLMs) present intriguing opportunities to enhance user interaction with traditional algorithms and tools in real-world applications. An advanced planning system (APS) is a sophisticated software that leverages optimization to help operations planners create, interpret, and modify an operational plan. While highly beneficial, many customers are priced out of using an APS due to the ongoing costs of consultants responsible for customization and maintenance. To address the n…

EU president throws her full weight behind the Netanyahu & Trump attacks on Iran, while negotiations were ongoing.
Reminders:
1) Iran restarted uranium enrichment after Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
2) US intelligence recently stated that Iran did not pursue nuclear weapon development.

Ukraine war latest: Russian troops enter Pokrovsk, Ukrainian 'search and destroy' operation ongoing: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/22/ukraine-war-latest-russian-troops.html

Cowboys’ Micah Parsons Could Face Consequences Amid Contract Situation https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/micah-parsons-consequences-amid-contract-situation/?adt_ei=[email]

Wisconsin Public Radio is being destroyed by the current administration…
➡️ https://www.wpr.org/news/wisconsin-public-radio-layoffs-cut-programs-federal-funding

Citing budget concerns, WPR lays off staff, cuts programs
Amid ongoing budget shortages and facing potential federal funding cuts, Wisconsin Public Radio has notified at least 15 staff members that they will be laid off.

Dear American friends,
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/07/09/Saskatchewan by @… contains a lesson on

Compliant Residual DAgger: Improving Real-World Contact-Rich Manipulation with Human Corrections
Xiaomeng Xu, Yifan Hou, Zeyi Liu, Shuran Song
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16685

Compliant Residual DAgger: Improving Real-World Contact-Rich Manipulation with Human Corrections
We address key challenges in Dataset Aggregation (DAgger) for real-world contact-rich manipulation: how to collect informative human correction data and how to effectively update policies with this new data. We introduce Compliant Residual DAgger (CR-DAgger), which contains two novel components: 1) a Compliant Intervention Interface that leverages compliance control, allowing humans to provide gentle, accurate delta action corrections without interrupting the ongoing robot policy execution; and…

Exploring Developer Experience Factors in Software Ecosystems
Rodrigo Oliveira Zacarias, L\'eo Carvalho Ramos Antunes, M\'arcio de Oliveira Barros, Rodrigo Pereira dos Santos, Patricia Lago
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19757

Exploring Developer Experience Factors in Software Ecosystems
Context: Developer experience (DX) plays a key role in developers' performance and their continued involvement in a software ecosystem (SECO) platform. While researchers and practitioners have recognized several factors affecting DX in SECO platforms, a clear roadmap of the most influential factors is still missing. This is particularly important given the direct impact on developers' interest in SECO and their ongoing engagement with the common technological platform. Goal: This work aims to i…

Azerbaijan gives eight journalists prison sentences ranging from 7.5 to 15 years, as part of a series of media trials set to obliterate independent reporting (Committee to Protect Journalists)
https://cpj.org/2025/06/8-journalists-g…

8 journalists given lengthy jail terms as Azerbaijan crushes free press - Committee to Protect Journalists
New York, June 23, 2025— Eight Azerbaijani journalists have received prison sentences ranging from 7 ½ to 15 years, as part of an ongoing series of media trials likely to obliterate independent reporting in the Caucasus nation. In a closed-door trial on Monday, columnist and peace activist Bahruz Samadov was sentenced by a court in...

Simulating realistic Lyman-$\alpha$ emitting galaxies including the effect of radiative transfer
Hasti Khoraminezhad, Shun Saito, Max Gronke, Chris Byrohl
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16707

Simulating realistic Lyman-$α$ emitting galaxies including the effect of radiative transfer
We present an empirical yet physically motivated simulation of realistic Lyman-$α$ emitters (LAEs) at $z\sim2-3$, crucial for ongoing and forthcoming cosmological LAE surveys. We combine an empirical $\mathtt{UniverseMachine}$ galaxy-halo model with a simple spherical expanding shell model for the Lyman-$α$ radiative transfer, calibrating only three free parameters to simultaneously reproduce the observed Lyman-$α$ luminosity function and the angular clustering. Our LAE model is further supp…

“The band said: ‘You know what’s “not appropriate” Keir?!’ They then used an expletive to accuse the prime minister of arming a genocide.
Israel has strongly denied allegations of genocide relating to the ongoing war in Gaza.”
– BBC
israel has strongly denied that it’s raining, have they, BBC? So tell me, what do you see when you look out the fucking window?
#bbc

Small Multifamily Investment Trends Report Q2 2025
Arbor Realty Trust - May 22, 2025
“Amid ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, the small multifamily sector remains well-positioned to weather volatility and build on market momentum as the economy navigates stormy conditions.”

Small Multifamily Investment Trends Report Q2 2025 - Arbor Realty
Asset Valuations Edge Higher as Credit Conditions Tighten

Incredible if you think about it...
"The bug, when exploited, allows hackers to steal private digital keys from SharePoint servers without needing any credentials to log in. Once in, the hackers can remotely plant malware, and gain access to the files and data stored within"
Big #Microsoft

New zero-day bug in Microsoft SharePoint under widespread attack | TechCrunch
Security researchers say Microsoft customers should take immediate action to defend against the ongoing cyberattacks, and must assume they have already been compromised.

FFS
Ray Stevens, a Gold Coast Liberal National party MP has called for the return of vagrancy laws to allow police to prosecute homeless people amid an ongoing crackdown on tent cities in Queensland.
"The police reluctantly tell me they have no legislative power to move these people on, which I find incredibly disappointing..."

Dutch caretaker-minister of defense joins in with German chancellor Merz, saying "Israel is doing our dirty work". That'd be by attacking Iran while negotiations were ongoing, and after US intelligence concluded that Iran was not actively pursuing nuclear weapons development.
ht…

Kabinet met spoed bijeen vanwege situatie in Iran
In die raad bespreken ministers internationale ontwikkelingen die de Nederlandse veiligheid raken. Nu zal het gaan over hoe om te gaan met de Amerikaanse bombardementen op Iran.

Been making noise in Reason, and animating in Blender and After Effects.
Just an artifact of my ongoing growth and progress - about a minute long.
I didn't intend it to sound like the B-52's, but ended up sounding something like they would sound if Gene Belcher (Son of Bob) joined the band.
#noAI #reason

Lower Bounds against the Ideal Proof System in Finite Fields
Tal Elbaz, Nashlen Govindasamy, Jiaqi Lu, Iddo Tzameret
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17210 https…

Lower Bounds against the Ideal Proof System in Finite Fields
Lower bounds against strong algebraic proof systems and specifically fragments of the Ideal Proof System (IPS), have been obtained in an ongoing line of work. All of these bounds, however, are proved only over large (or characteristic $0$) fields, yet finite fields are the more natural setting for propositional proof complexity, especially for progress toward lower bounds for Frege systems such as $AC^0[p]$-Frege. This work establishes lower bounds against fragments of IPS over fixed finite fie…

Roadmap and ongoing work in the milestone here: https://github.com/11ty/eleventy/milestone/46

Betelgeuse, the Prototypical Red Supergiant
Andrea K. Dupree, Miguel Montarg\`es
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15966 https://arxiv.org/p…

Betelgeuse, the Prototypical Red Supergiant
The behavior of the bright red supergiant, Betelgeuse, is described with results principally from the past 6 years. The review includes imaging, photometry, and spectroscopy to record the Great Dimming of 2019--2020. This event was followed by a slow ongoing recovery from the massive surface mass ejection after which the stellar characteristics changed. Theoretical simulations address the cause of this episodic mass ejection and the optical Dimming. Recent publications evaluating the perplexing…

Corporate Media Continues to Ignore The Real Story of Israel's Attacks on Iran
Israel's preemptive attack on Iran is not a surprise—it is the first step to ongoing atrocity that risks nuclear war if we do not stop it immediately https://open.substack.com/pub/qasimras

Israel's Attack on Iran Risks Nuclear War
Israel's preemptive attack on Iran is not a surprise—it is the first step to ongoing atrocity that risks nuclear war if we do not stop it immediately

Things are happening in the C2PA world; here are a couple of useful steps forward, plus cheers and boos for Adobe. Plus a live working C2PA demo you can try out: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/06/17/More-C2PA

June 2025 C2PA News

A Generative Model for Disentangling Galaxy Photometric Parameters
Keen Leung, Colen Yan, Jun Yin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15898 https://

A Generative Model for Disentangling Galaxy Photometric Parameters
Ongoing and future photometric surveys will produce unprecedented volumes of galaxy images, necessitating robust, efficient methods for deriving galaxy morphological parameters at scale. Traditional approaches, such as parametric light-profile fitting, offer valuable insights but become computationally prohibitive when applied to billions of sources. In this work, we propose a Conditional AutoEncoder (CAE) framework to simultaneously model and characterize galaxy morphology. Our CAE is trained …

A Common Origin of Normal Type Ia Supernovae Suggested by the Photometric Diversity
Weiyu Wu, Ji-an Jiang, Dezheng Meng, Zelin Xu, Keiichi Maeda, Mamoru Doi, Ken'ichi Nomoto, Naoki Yasuda, Masaomi Tanaka, Toshikazu Shigeyama, Nozomu Tominaga, \v{Z}eljko Ivezi\'c, Peter Yoachim, Saurabh W. Jha, Tinggui Wang, Nao Suzuki, Hisanori Furusawa, Andrew J. Connolly, Satoshi Miyazaki

A Common Origin of Normal Type Ia Supernovae Suggested by the Photometric Diversity
In recent years, with an increasing number of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) discovered soon after their explosions, a non-negligible fraction of SNe Ia with early-excess emissions (EExSNe Ia) have been confirmed. In this letter, we present a total of \textbf{67} early-phase normal SNe Ia from published papers and ongoing transient survey projects to systematically investigate their photometric behaviors from very early time. We found that EExSNe Ia in our sample have longer rise and brighter peak…

I remember vividly when the Fediverse immediately used the fake news about an alleged #Israel​i airstrike on al-Ahli Arab Hospital on 17 October 2023 as evidence for an ongoing genocide.
Wondering what the conclusion from the #Iran​ian airstrike on

Iranian missile strikes hit Israeli hospital
Israel is targeted by new Iranian missile strikes with several hits, among them, the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba. Israel earlier reportedly attacked a key heavy-water research reactor in Khondab. DW has more.

Our results confirm persistent gender disparities:
women are more frequently acknowledged than credited as co-authors, especially in roles involving investigation and analysis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15237

Dissecting the gender divide: Authorship and acknowledgment in scientific publications
The issue of gender bias in scientific publications has been the subject of ongoing debate. One aspect of this debate concerns whether women receive equal credit for their contributions compared to men. Conventional wisdom suggests that women are more likely to be acknowledged than listed as co-authors, a role that carries greater prestige. Here, we analyze data from hundreds of thousands of scientists across nine disciplines and a broad range of publications. Our results confirm persistent gen…

Graphics4Science: Computer Graphics for Scientific Impacts
Peter Yichen Chen, Minghao Guo, Hanspeter Pfister, Ming Lin, William Freeman, Qixing Huang, Han-Wei Shen, Wojciech Matusik
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15786

Graphics4Science: Computer Graphics for Scientific Impacts
Computer graphics, often associated with films, games, and visual effects, has long been a powerful tool for addressing scientific challenges--from its origins in 3D visualization for medical imaging to its role in modern computational modeling and simulation. This course explores the deep and evolving relationship between computer graphics and science, highlighting past achievements, ongoing contributions, and open questions that remain. We show how core methods, such as geometric reasoning an…

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2025/06/18/828269.htm
Erie Insurance appears to be denying a Scattered Spider attack.

Erie Insurance: 'No Evidence' of Ransomware in Network Outage
Erie Insurance said it has "seen no evidence of ransomware and there is no indication of ongoing threat actor activity" in a June 17 update on its 10-day

I don't think AI slop is a new problem, I think it just accelerated a trend that was already ongoing.
It wasn't generated so easily, but the internet was already full of slop, just human generated.

A Brand Divided: Trademark and the Legacy of Frida Kahlo
https://illusionofmore.com/a-brand-divided-trademark-and-the-legacy-of-frida-kahlo/?utm_source=flip…

A Brand Divided: Trademark and the Legacy of Frida Kahlo - The Illusion of More
The ongoing litigation over the right to control the Frida Kahlo trademarks implies two very different paths for the artist's legacy.

Earthquake Swarm Activity in the Tokara Islands (2025): Statistical Analysis Indicates Low Probability of Major Seismic Event
Tomokazu Konishi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15872

Earthquake Swarm Activity in the Tokara Islands (2025): Statistical Analysis Indicates Low Probability of Major Seismic Event
The Tokara Islands, a volcanic archipelago south of Japan's main islands, has experienced ongoing earthquake swarm activity in 2025, raising concerns about triggering the anticipated Nankai Trough earthquake. The Japan Meteorological Agency has dismissed this link, but the seismic activity's mechanisms remain unclear. This study uses Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) to examine the 2025 swarm's statistical properties and compare them with historical patterns. The 2025 swarm's frequency and magnit…

Looking at the Markdown note-taking/Zettelkasten/"second brain" software space and being really put off by the almost religious fervor around it all.
I have a variety of "things I need infrequently want to note down in a place I can reliably retrieve them later" and "ongoing personal projects that get picked up and put down as bandwidth allows, for which I'd like to serialize my work".
I don't want to save every stray thought. Most of my tho…

'In the local data that the audit examined from three [THREE] police forces, they identified clear evidence of “over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men”.
'However, the review also criticised the ongoing failure to collect ethnicity at a national level, with it not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, making it impossible “to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data”.'
Not so conclusive then.

What is the Casey report on UK grooming gangs – and why did Labour U-turn?
The report addressed the UK’s institutional failure to protect children and teenage girls from sexual exploitation.

A massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia sent ash and smoke miles into the sky,
grounding flights, blanketing villages, and prompting evacuations as authorities remain on high alert.
Though no casualties have been reported, the volcano’s ongoing activity has disrupted travel and rattled residents in a region familiar with eruptions.

Volcano erupts in Indonesia, grounding flights and forcing evacuations
A massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia sent ash and smoke miles into the sky, grounding flights, blanketing villages, and prompting evacuations as authorities remain on high alert. Though no casualties have been reported, the volcano’s ongoing activity has disrupted travel and rattled residents in a region familiar with eruptions.

Visited my 95-year-old Mom in Saskatchewan and came away with Prairie pictures and thoughts on memory and topography and Google color science and healthcare economics. https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/07/09/Saskatchewan

Memory in Saskatchewan

Learning to Communicate in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Cyber Defence
Faizan Contractor, Li Li, Ranwa Al Mallah
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14658

Learning to Communicate in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Cyber Defence
Popular methods in cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with partially observable environments typically allow agents to act independently during execution, which may limit the coordinated effect of the trained policies. However, by sharing information such as known or suspected ongoing threats, effective communication can lead to improved decision-making in the cyber battle space. We propose a game design where defender agents learn to communicate and defend against imminent cyber th…

Lingering Concerns Ahead of Las Vegas Raiders Training Camp https://raiderramble.com/2025/07/19/lingering-concerns-ahead-of-las-vegas-raiders-training-camp/

#Republican controlled #Senate approves $9 billion in cuts to #PBS and other non profit public broadcasting operations, as well as previously budgeted support for US

Senate approves Trump’s bill to cut spending, sending it to the House
The legislation hands the Trump administration a victory in its ongoing power struggle with Congress over federal spending.

JWST Reveals Spectral Tracers of Recent Surface Modification on #Europa: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/adcab9 -> SwRI scientists contribute to uncovering ongoing surface modification on Jupiter’s moon Europa: https://www.swri.org/newsroom/press-releases/swri-scientists-contribute-uncovering-ongoing-surface-modification-jupiter-s-moon-europa

'Setting Fire to the Last Forest': Project West Ford and the Mobilization of the Astronomical Community 1958-1965
John C. Barentine
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14714

'Setting Fire to the Last Forest': Project West Ford and the Mobilization of the Astronomical Community 1958-1965
The dawning of the Space Age marked the start of an ongoing relationship between the professional astronomical community and both state and non-state actors that launch and operate spacecraft in near-Earth orbital space. While the Cold War heated up in the late 1950s, military uses of outer space quickly came into conflict with the priorities of astronomers then building ever-bigger ground-based telescopes and envisioning the first generation of space telescopes. As the threat of global thermon…

Yeah ok but met gala was great and the soup at #ferrari kitchen is to die for
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article

Ferrari's braking issues 'a lottery' as Lewis Hamilton reflects on FP2 struggles in Imola | Formula 1®
Lewis Hamilton believes that ongoing braking issues with Ferrari's SF-25 are "a lottery" as the seven-time World Champion and team mate Charles Leclerc struggled for pace on Friday ahead of the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.

Love to see all the #NoKings posts!! Do we have any sources on total turnout?
Edit: this #TheGuardian article says "several millions" and also that they're still ongoing in some places:

I was curious to see what streaming news media would do today, after three straight weeks of nonstop, utterly pointless coverage of the Pope. Would they finally get back to talking about the ongoing destruction of the American democratic state and the urgent matters piling up?
Naaaaah. Every single network (including, sadly, BBC and Sky News) chose to air the thoroughly disgusting spectacle of TFG and MBS making deals in KSA.
And then: Show trials! Kardashian! Mendezez! Diddy!

Microsoft and AMD announce a "strategic, multi-year partnership" to design custom silicon for a number of devices, including next-generation Xbox consoles (Jez Corden/Windows Central)
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox

Microsoft and AMD have officially entered a new multi-year partnership for first-party Xbox hardware
Xbox President Sarah Bond shared an update on Xbox consoles today, confirming their ongoing partnership with AMD for first-party hardware, while committing to supporting your existing console library on next-gen systems.

I’m mostly out of the loop on IAAP stuffs (since overlays are members and fuck that), but Rian seems to have a valid concern here for ongoing credits:
https://mstdn.io/@rianrietveld/114658249992267461

CFP> Book Reviews for the Journal of Buddhist Ethics
https://ift.tt/7Niyd5J
CFP: Visibilising Marginalised Early Career Researchers in Peace, Conflict and Security Studies: A…
via Input 4 RELCFP

The User Perspective on Island-Ready 6G Communication: A Survey of Future Smartphone Usage in Crisis-Struck Areas with Local Cellular Connectivity
Leon Janzen, Florentin Putz, Marc-Andr\'e Kaufhold, Kolja Straub, Matthias Hollick
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13466

The User Perspective on Island-Ready 6G Communication: A Survey of Future Smartphone Usage in Crisis-Struck Areas with Local Cellular Connectivity
Using smartphone apps during crises is well-established, proving critical for efficient crisis response. However, such apps become futile without an Internet connection, which is a common issue during crises. The ongoing 6G standardization explores the capability to provide local cellular connectivity for areas cut off from the Internet in crises. This paper introduces to the HCI community the concept of cellular island connectivity in isolated areas, promising a seamless transition from normal…

Towards Relational Contextual Equality Saturation
Tyler Hou, Shadaj Laddad, Joseph M. Hellerstein
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11897 https://

Towards Relational Contextual Equality Saturation
Equality saturation is a powerful technique for program optimization. Contextual equality saturation extends this to support rewrite rules that are conditioned on where a term appears in an expression. Existing work has brought contextual reasoning to egg; in this paper, we share our ongoing work to extend this to relational equality saturation in egglog. We summarize the existing approaches to contextual equality saturation, outline its main applications, and identify key challenges in combini…

Hard to find a single summarizing quote from the post, but it keeps coming back to two closely related ideas:
(1) the tendency of humans to blame themselves for poor tool performance (“oh I should have prompted in •that• way instead, my bad”), and
(2) what we educators call the “hidden curriculum:” people are unaware of learning they have done / habitual effort they are expending, and thus they see their own learning / ongoing effort as zero-cost, obvious, nonexistent, innate personal virtue, etc.
The existence of (2) sets people up for (1); recognizing (2) helps cure (1).
4/

#Blakes7 Series B, Episode 03 - Weapon
JENNA: We're below horizon now.
GAN: Then she's lost!
AVON: Only us. She got what she really wanted.
VILA: I thought that was us.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/203/510…

Singapore accuses Chinese state-backed hackers of attacking critical infrastructure networks https://therecord.media/singapore-accuses-chinese-backed-hackers-critical-infrastructure-attacks

Just finished another round of my ongoing "fix the general lack of good signal integrity and high speed digital info on wikipedia" effort.
Today's focus was making some examples for the article on emphasis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphasis_(telecommu…

Emphasis (telecommunications) - Wikipedia

T.J. Watt contract: How past tensions with Steelers could linger during ongoing negotiations

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/t-j-wat

How the NFLPA leadership mess impacts Cowboys' Smith, Odighizuwa as camp kicks off https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/07/20/cowboys-reps-may-help-choose-new-nflp…

I saw Brian WIlson’s “SMiLE” tour in August 2005 and wrote it up: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/08/31/SMiLE
You can watch that show here:

SMiLE

The ALMA Survey of 70 $\mu$m Dark High-mass Clumps in Early Stages (ASHES). XII. Unanchored Forked Stream in the Propogating Path of a Protostellar Outflow
Shuting Lin, Siyi Feng, Patricio Sanhueza, Ke Wang, Zhi-Yu Zhang, Yichen Zhang, Fengwei Xu, Junzhi Wang, Kaho Morii, Hauyu Baobab Liu, Sheng-Yuan Liu, Lile Wang, Hui Li, Daniel Tafoya, Willem Baan, Shanghuo Li, Giovanni Sabatini

The ALMA Survey of 70 $μ$m Dark High-mass Clumps in Early Stages (ASHES). XII. Unanchored Forked Stream in the Propogating Path of a Protostellar Outflow
Outflows are key indicators of ongoing star formation. We report the discovery of an unanchored forked stream within the propagating path of an extremely young protostellar outflow in the 70 $μ$m-dark clump G34.74-0.12, based on ALMA 1.3 mm observations with an angular resolution of 1''.6 (~ 5000 au). This outflow originate from a 9.7 $M_{\odot}$ core, exhibits a fork-shaped stream structure in its red-shifted lobe, which is traced by CO (2-1), SiO (5-4), and H$_2$CO (3$_{0,3}$-2$_{0,2}$). It …

Finally: the United States sanctions Israeli officials for their ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
And by that I mean the United States sanctions the United Nations Human Rights Council special rapporteur Francesca Albanese for criticising and calling for an end to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
“Are we the baddies?”
What a silly question. When did you stop?

US sanctions UN expert Francesca Albanese, critic of Israel's Gaza offensive
Secretary of State Marco Rubio linked the move to her support for the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Ukraine submits multi-billion euro weapons wish list to Germany amid ongoing Russian aggression: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/07/ukraine-submits-multibillion-euro-weapons.html

In which I spelunk through the low-level mechanics of traversing Nondeterministic Finite Automata. ε-closures FTW! https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/07/07/Epsilon-Wrangling
I’m sure that the world’s population contains dozens of people w…

QRS: Epsilon Wrangling

A Three-Phase Evaluation Approach for new Information and Data Models in the Smart Grid Domain
Christine van Stiphoudt, Sergio Potenciano Menci, Gilbert Fridgen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12649

A Three-Phase Evaluation Approach for new Information and Data Models in the Smart Grid Domain
The ongoing digitalisation of the smart grid is resulting in an increase in automated information exchanges across distributed energy systems. This process has led to the development of new information and data models when the existing ones fall short. To prevent potential disruptions caused by flaws in the newly designed information and data models, it is essential to evaluate them during the design process before they are implemented in operation. Currently, general explicit evaluation appr…

This is the non-emotional (!) version of what the Planetary Society thinks about the #NASA FY 2026 Budget Request ... from an ongoing online press conference.

TUM Teleoperation: Open Source Software for Remote Driving and Assistance of Automated Vehicles
Tobias Kerbl, David Brecht, Nils Gehrke, Nijinshan Karunainayagam, Niklas Krauss, Florian Pfab, Richard Taupitz, Ines Trautmannsheimer, Xiyan Su, Maria-Magdalena Wolf, Frank Diermeyer
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13933

TUM Teleoperation: Open Source Software for Remote Driving and Assistance of Automated Vehicles
Teleoperation is a key enabler for future mobility, supporting Automated Vehicles in rare and complex scenarios beyond the capabilities of their automation. Despite ongoing research, no open source software currently combines Remote Driving, e.g., via steering wheel and pedals, Remote Assistance through high-level interaction with automated driving software modules, and integration with a real-world vehicle for practical testing. To address this gap, we present a modular, open source teleoperat…

Versatile Wavelength-Division Multiplexed Quantum Key Distribution Network Operating Simultaneously in the O and C Bands
Davide Scalcon, Matteo Padovan, Paolo Villoresi, Giuseppe Vallone, Marco Avesani
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11175

Versatile Wavelength-Division Multiplexed Quantum Key Distribution Network Operating Simultaneously in the O and C Bands
Ongoing technological progress is accelerating the commercial and global-scale deployment of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). Its ability to enable unconditionally secure communication is expected to be a key feature of future telecommunication networks, and practical demonstrations of QKD network implementations in real-world environments are crucial for ensuring reliable adoption. In this work, we demonstrate a four-node photonic QKD network that employs versatile and cost-effective wavelength…

Good advice by @… on using phrases like "increase by X #percent" and so forth in a way that people can follow:
Comparing #Numbers Badly

The European Commission drops plans to impose a digital tax on tech giants in its upcoming 2028-2034 budget proposal, amid ongoing EU-US trade negotiations (Gregorio Sorgi/Politico)
https://www.politico.eu/article/victory-eu-donald-trump-meta-tax-digital/…

Victory for Trump as EU backs down on digital taxes in next budget
Shelving the plan could help EU persuade the U.S. to give it a more favorable trade deal and comes just two months after the Commission suggested it.

“Two European journalists were hacked using government spyware made by Israeli surveillance tech provider Paragon.”
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/12/researchers-confirm-two-journalists-were-hacked-with-paragon-spyware/

Researchers confirm two journalists were hacked with Paragon spyware | TechCrunch
The confirmation of two hacked victims further deepens an ongoing spyware scandal that, for now, appears largely focused on the Italian government.

Trump's ultimatum on Ukraine war: Kremlin weighs response as tensions rise: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/15/trumps-ultimatum-on-ukraine-war.html

Large Language Models for Unit Testing: A Systematic Literature Review
Quanjun Zhang, Chunrong Fang, Siqi Gu, Ye Shang, Zhenyu Chen, Liang Xiao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15227

Large Language Models for Unit Testing: A Systematic Literature Review
Unit testing is a fundamental practice in modern software engineering, with the aim of ensuring the correctness, maintainability, and reliability of individual software components. Very recently, with the advances in Large Language Models (LLMs), a rapidly growing body of research has leveraged LLMs to automate various unit testing tasks, demonstrating remarkable performance and significantly reducing manual effort. However, due to ongoing explorations in the LLM-based unit testing field, it is…

At least a half-dozen existing student-loan repayment programs will be extinguished,
including the most affordable option,
the Biden-era plan known as SAVE.
The nearly eight million people in that plan will soon need to figure out their next-best option.
The system is being restructured at a crucial moment in the ongoing student loan saga.
Only 44 percent of the nearly 35 million borrowers who should be making payments actually are, according to calculations b…

Student Loan Repayments Are About to Look Very Different
By next summer, new borrowers will have just two repayment options, streamlining the previous menu to pay off higher-education debt. Here’s what to know.

1/2 “My input stream is full of it: Fear and loathing and cheerleading and prognosticating on what generative AI means and whether it’s Good or Bad and what we should be doing. All the channels: Blogs and peer-reviewed papers and social-media posts and business-news stories. So there’s lots of AI angst out there, but this is mine. I think the following is a bit unique because it focuses on cost, working backward from there.”

AI Angst

The PI of #PUNCH and a composite image from the images by the five satellites, during the ongoing #AAS246 press conference: the stitching already works quite well and will improve further, but already now halo CMEs can be followed to a larger angular size than ever before and until hours before Earth impact.

Robert Reich here, with breaking news:
The House of Representatives has voted to take back a whopping $1.1 billion in federal funding for public broadcasting.
These are huge, crippling cuts,
and if passed by the Senate, they'll be a fatal blow to public radio and television stations around the country.
It's all part of Donald Trump's ongoing war on the free press.
He knows that independent journalism is one of the biggest obstacles to his authorita…

Help Robert Reich get the truth out.
Anything you can give will help us spread the truth, keep you informed, and stop our slide towards fascism.

It’s language pedantry! No, it’s math pedantry! Anyhow, “Comparing Numbers Badly” gripes about the mis-use of “order(s) of magnitude” and percentages in comparing numbers: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/05/30/Number-Comparison-Representa…

Comparing Numbers Badly

US Envoy Kellogg to spend a week in Ukraine as President Zelensky looks to bolster defense cooperation: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/14/us-envoy-kellogg-to-spend.html

Also, may I just say, fuck Sergey Brin.
(How’s that for offensive, Sergey? You fucking genocide apologist piece of shit.) https://kolektiva.social/@oatmeal/114827622817744764

Source: an ongoing outage at IT giant Ingram Micro is caused by a ransomware attack from SafePay, which has become one of the more active operations in 2025 (Lawrence Abrams/BleepingComputer)
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/secu

“This considers how two modern cameras handle a difficult color challenge, illustrated by photos of a perfect rose and a piano.” https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/05/31/Colors

Perfectly Different Colors

With the 5th #AAS246 presser come the paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07262 (ALMA-JELLY I: High Resolution CO(2-1) Observations of Ongoing Ram Pressure Stripping in NGC 4858 Reveal Asymmetrical Gas Tail Formation and Fallback), the press release https://news.arizona.edu/news/belly-beast-massive-clumps-reveal-star-factories-bygone-era-cosmos (In the belly of the beast: massive clumps reveal star factories from a bygone era of the cosmos) and the papers https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ada8a6 (UNCOVERing the Faint End of the z ∼ 7 [O iii] Luminosity Function with JWST's F410M Medium Bandpass Filter) with the press release https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-uncovers-galaxy-population-driving-cosmic-renovation/ and https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06198 (The "Dark-Matter Dominated" Galaxy Segue 1 Modeled with a Black Hole and no Dark Halo) with the press release https://www.utsa.edu/today/2025/06/story/researchers-offer-alternative-to-dark-matter-model.html

Russia's summer offensive has fallen 'far short of expectations,' Zelensky says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/13/russias-summer-offensive-has-fallen.html

In which I argue that arguments about whether #genAI is useful or not are the wrong arguments. The important issues are what it’s for and what it costs.
Having very unkind feelings about the people pushing it.
https://www.

The Real GenAI Issue

Sources: the UK has delayed proposals to regulate AI, with plans to introduce an AI bill in 2026 to address concerns about issues like safety and copyright (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/202

Kim Jong Un pledges full support to Russia amidst Ukraine war: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/13/kim-jong-un-pledges-full.html

Hey, looking for Bitcoin advice. I cashed out (almost all of) mine in 2017: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2017/12/19/How-To-Sell-Bitcoin-in-Canada
Just now, a nag email from my wallet provider reminded me to peek in there for t…

How To Sell Bitcoins

Madre Fire Update from Los Padres National Forest
Size: 80,786 Acres / Containment: 67%
Total Personnel: 1,330
Work continues along the west, northwest, northeast, and southwest of the fire perimeter to strengthen both - direct and indirect - containment lines as well as mop-up and patrol to ensure lines are secure. Dozer and handcrews are engaged on rugged terrain along the southeast flank, with ongoing efforts focused on structure protection and securing Highway 166. Aeri…

Watch Duty - Wildfire Maps & Alerts
Real-time information about wildfire and firefighting efforts nearby

Here are a couple of springtime pictures with small associated stories. It’s a thrill to find something positive to write about: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/05/27/Happy-Colors

CL XLVI: Happy Colors

In which I recommend that if you’re building or upgrading a moderately serious music-listening system, you use Qobuz and include a cheap Mac Mini: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/06/22/Qobuz-and-Others

Qobuz and Mac

“At the moment, we have no idea what the impact of genAI on software development is going to be. The impact of anything on coding is hard to measure systematically, so we rely on anecdata and the community’s eventual consensus. So, here’s my anecdata. Tl;dr: The AI was not useless.” https://www.tbray…

My First GenAI Code