Tootfinder

Progress report on our family De-Googling project: #google

De-Google Project Update

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

Sources: Microsoft is in advanced talks to land a deal that could give it ongoing access to critical OpenAI tech even if OpenAI reaches its goal of building AGI (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-29/micr…

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

I am so envious of @…'s short video series. Every video a banger, videos building one each other creating such an interesting and enlightening ongoing argument about design and tech that is timely but also timeless. Follow him and his videos.

Defense Forces disband two Tactical Groups: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/30/defense-forces-disband-two-tactical.html

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

"Terry Virts’ maiden Space Shuttle mission was the final assembly flight for the International Space Station (ISS), a historic milestone in post-Cold War collaboration with Russia. Now he’s calling for NASA to scale back its cooperation with Moscow, due to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine."
Retired US Astronaut Calls For Reduced ISS Cooperation With Russia
https://www.rferl.org/a/iss-russia-nasa-ukraine/33427545.html

Bengals' Trey Hendrickson explains end of 'selfish' holdout, aims to prevent training camp distractions

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/bengals

How AI has transformed data center design, with concerns about overspending on AI infrastructure, sparked by DeepSeek, fading amid the ongoing building frenzy (Financial Times)
https://ig.ft.com/ai-data-centres/

Inside the relentless race for AI capacity
The quest for superintelligence is spurring a data centre boom — but critics question the cost, environmental impact and whether it is all needed

The wind blew pale grasses over the flowers as I was trying to photograph them but the effect was interesting & not unpleasant.
Footnotes:
1. Taken on a modern 40MP mirrorless Fujifilm camera shooting through an old weird Pentax 100mm lens (https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/20…

Records and Lenses

MIBoost: A Gradient Boosting Algorithm for Variable Selection After Multiple Imputation
Robert Kuchen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21807 https://arxiv.org/pd…

MIBoost: A Gradient Boosting Algorithm for Variable Selection After Multiple Imputation
Statistical learning methods for automated variable selection, such as LASSO, elastic nets, or gradient boosting, have become increasingly popular tools for building powerful prediction models. Yet, in practice, analyses are often complicated by missing data. The most widely used approach to address missingness is multiple imputation, which creates several completed datasets. However, there is an ongoing debate on how to perform model selection in the presence of multiple imputed datasets. Simp…

Digitalizing Uncertain Information
Chris Partridge, Andrew Mitchell, Andreas Cola
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21173 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.21173

Digitalizing Uncertain Information
The paper sketches some initial results from an ongoing project to develop an ontology-based digital form for representing uncertain information. We frame this work as a journey from lower to higher levels of digital maturity across a technology divide. The paper first sets a baseline by describing the basic challenges any project dealing with digital uncertainty faces. It then describes how the project is facing them. It shows firstly how an extensional ontology (such as the BORO Foundational …

Trustworthy AI: UK Air Traffic Control Revisited
Rob Procter, Mark Rouncefield
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21169 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.21169

Trustworthy AI: UK Air Traffic Control Revisited
Exploring the socio-technical challenges confronting the adoption of AI in organisational settings is something that has so far been largely absent from the related literature. In particular, research into requirements for trustworthy AI typically overlooks how people deal with the problems of trust in the tools that they use as part of their everyday work practices. This article presents some findings from an ongoing ethnographic study of how current tools are used in air traffic control work …

Towards Fair Rankings: Leveraging LLMs for Gender Bias Detection and Measurement
Maryam Mousavian, Zahra Abbasiantaeb, Mohammad Aliannejadi, Fabio Crestani
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22372

Towards Fair Rankings: Leveraging LLMs for Gender Bias Detection and Measurement
The presence of social biases in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Retrieval (IR) systems is an ongoing challenge, which underlines the importance of developing robust approaches to identifying and evaluating such biases. In this paper, we aim to address this issue by leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to detect and measure gender bias in passage ranking. Existing gender fairness metrics rely on lexical- and frequency-based measures, leading to various limitations, e.g., mi…

Feasibility of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray backtracking through sparse local measurements of the Galactic magnetic field
S. Romanopoulos, M. Mastorakis, V. Pavlidou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21277

Feasibility of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray backtracking through sparse local measurements of the Galactic magnetic field
Planned and ongoing campaigns for the acquisition of high-quality local measurements of the Galactic magnetic field (GMF) at interstellar cloud locations have generated intense interest in the use of such measurements to accurately backtrack Ultra High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) through the Milky Way, a crucial aspect of charged-particle astronomy. However, the inherent sparsity of these measurements raises concerns regarding the feasibility of this approach. We assessed the achievable accuracy…

19.3 GHz Acoustic Filter with High Close-in Rejection in Tri-layer Thin-Film Lithium Niobate
Omar Barrera, Sinwoo Cho, Jack Kramer, Vakhtang Chulukhadze, Tzu-Hsuan Hsu, Ruochen Lu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22411

19.3 GHz Acoustic Filter with High Close-in Rejection in Tri-layer Thin-Film Lithium Niobate
Acoustic filters are preferred front-end solutions at sub-6 GHz due to their superior frequency selectivity compared to electromagnetic (EM) counterparts. With the ongoing development of 5G and the evolution toward 6G, there is a growing need to extend acoustic filter technologies into frequency range 3 (FR3), which spans 7 to 24 GHz to accommodate emerging high-frequency bands. However, scaling acoustic filters beyond 10 GHz presents significant challenges, as conventional platforms suffer fro…

baia, baia... Lo siento, pero los 100€ del reembolso no dan para uno nuevo.
Si estšn mal, las cambias gratis, o nos mandas un terminal nuevo.
https://9to5google.com/2025/07/28/google-pixel-6a-battery-replace-fire/

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.

Fear of immigration raids force the cancellation of several July festivities in Los Angeles
Several communities in Los Angeles County have called off or postponed their previously scheduled Independence Day and July events, citing resident safety amid ongoing immigration enforcement raids.
The El Sereno Bicentennial Committee was one of the first organizations to announce the cancellation of its 66th Independence Day Parade in a June 20 statement on Facebook.
“We stand wi…

Fear of immigration raids force the cancellation of several July festivities in Los Angeles
Here are some of the July festivities that have been canceled in Los Angeles out of fear over immigration raids.

Towards Real-Time Interpolation for Enhanced AUV Deep Sea Mapping
Devanshu Saxena
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.22675 https://arxiv.org/…

Towards Real-Time Interpolation for Enhanced AUV Deep Sea Mapping
Approximately seventy-one percent of the Earth is covered in water. Of that area, ninety-five percent of the ocean has never been explored or mapped. There are several engineering challenges that have prevented the exploration of the deep ocean through human or autonomous means. These challenges include but are not limited to high pressure, cold temperatures, little natural light, corrosion of materials, and communication. Ongoing research has been focused on trying to find optimal and low-cost…

Subtitled Media Adaptations for People with Aphasia: Ongoing Accessibility Barriers and Emerging Design Practices
Zihao You, Michael Crabb
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21201

Subtitled Media Adaptations for People with Aphasia: Ongoing Accessibility Barriers and Emerging Design Practices
The consumption of subtitles via TVs, laptops and smartphones has the potential to marginalize people based on their complex accessibility needs. The current one-size-fits-all approach to this accessibility aid is no longer fit for purpose and work is required to look at how it can be adapted to be personalised for individual users based on individual context, content, and consumption habits. People with Aphasia, for example, encounter significant challenges in understanding subtitle texts. W…

DaRon Bland, Cowboys contract talks 'ongoing'

Is Crunching Public Data the Right Approach to Detect BGP Hijacks?
Alessandro Giaconia, Muoi Tran, Laurent Vanbever, Stefano Vissicchio
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.20434 https://…

Is Crunching Public Data the Right Approach to Detect BGP Hijacks?
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) remains a fragile pillar of Internet routing. BGP hijacks still occurr daily. While full deployment of Route Origin Validation (ROV) is ongoing, attackers have already adapted, launching post-ROV attacks such as forged-origin hijacks. To detect these, recent approaches like DFOH [Holterbach et al., USENIX NSDI '24] and BEAM [Chen et al., USENIX Security '24] apply machine learning (ML) to analyze data from globally distributed BGP monitors, assuming anomalies w…

State of Docs
#FederatedMemory

Great chart of #SEAsia's largest urban parks. Should be an national embarrassment how far down you have to scroll to find the any #city #park from one country in particular, the name of which wouldn't surprise any…

Largest urban parks in Southeast Asia
A list of the largest urban parks in Southeast Asia. Urban parks in Southeast Asia map [Map of urban parks in Southeast Asia.] Notes about the urban park list This is an ongoing list that I am coll…

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

I guess I should add that Firebase’s security model is still broken in the sense of being dangerously easy to mess up (despite its maintainers’ heroic efforts), that this is a problem that’s fundamentally baked into it the product’s whole value proposition of eliminating huge swaths of server-side development and is thus not readily solvable, and that these ongoing Firebase breaches are a classic case study in how far and how stubbornly the effects of abstraction choices can reach.

🚫 If you support J.K. Rowling and her transphobic views, you’re not welcome on my page.
🌈 I stand unapologetically with queer and trans people.
#LGBTQIA #TransRights #QueerCommunity

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

🛣️ Albuquerque’s Route 66 Motels Are Turning Into Affordable Housing
#housing

Albuquerque's Route 66 Motels Are Turning Into Affordable Housing
Amid the ongoing housing crisis, once-dilapidated buildings are finding new life as homes for immigrants and other working-class New Mexicans.

Conversations Gone Awry, But Then? Evaluating Conversational Forecasting Models
Son Quoc Tran, Tushaar Gangavarapu, Nicholas Chernogor, Jonathan P. Chang, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19470

Conversations Gone Awry, But Then? Evaluating Conversational Forecasting Models
We often rely on our intuition to anticipate the direction of a conversation. Endowing automated systems with similar foresight can enable them to assist human-human interactions. Recent work on developing models with this predictive capacity has focused on the Conversations Gone Awry (CGA) task: forecasting whether an ongoing conversation will derail. In this work, we revisit this task and introduce the first uniform evaluation framework, creating a benchmark that enables direct and reliable c…

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

Unveiling the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy Core with Gaia DR3
Ellie K. H. Toguchi-Tani, Daniel R. Hey, Thomas de Boer, Peter M. Frinchaboy, Daniel Huber
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.20212

Unveiling the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy Core with Gaia DR3
The Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy provides us with the unique opportunity to study an ongoing Galactic cannibalistic event between our Milky Way Galaxy and a satellite dwarf galaxy. We present the first major membership star catalog of the Sagittarius dwarf core ($\approx$400,000 sources) and Messier 54 ($\approx$2000 sources) with positions, proper motions, and parallaxes from $Gaia$ DR3, supplemented with metallicities from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment. We …

Senate Republicans are under mounting pressure from
doctors and medical associations
to reject massive cuts to health care and food assistance
as they rush to complete a draft of the budget reconciliation bill
designed to implement Trump’s agenda.
Despite an ongoing debate over deep cuts to Medicaid
— cuts experts say would devastate already underfunded health systems especially in rural areas
— Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) pus…

Doctors Warn Medicaid Cuts in Senate Budget Bill Will Kill Their Patients
Protests against Medicaid cuts continued on June 25, which led to the arrests of 60 activists at the Senate.

From Translink
The Pattullo Bridge will be closed to northbound vehicle traffic for four nights due to ongoing construction work for the Pattullo Bridge Replacement Project. The closures will take place overnight on these dates:
Thursday, June 26 (9pm to 5am)
Friday, June 27 (9pm to 5am)
Wednesday, July 2 (9pm to 5am)
Thursday, July 3 (9pm to 5am)
Southbound travel into Surrey will not be affected. The bridge will also remain open northbound for pedestrians, cy…

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

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/

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

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.

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.

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.

Refined Constraints on the Hubble Constant from Localized FRBs with Assessment of Systematic Effects
Chenyuan Xu, Yi Feng, Jiaying Xu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18946 https://…

Refined Constraints on the Hubble Constant from Localized FRBs with Assessment of Systematic Effects
The dispersion measure-redshift relation of fast radio bursts (FRBs) provides a valuable cosmological probe for constraining the Hubble constant, offering an independent measurement that could help resolve the ongoing Hubble tension. In this paper, we begin with a sample of 117 localized FRBs and use 95 of them to constrain $H_0$ to $71.28^{+1.90}_{-2.08}$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ within the standard Lambda Cold Dark Matter ($Λ$CDM) model. The resulting statistical uncertainty is below 2.8\%, im…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.15239 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_qbi…

Distinctive pupil and microsaccade-rate signatures in self-recognition
Pupil dynamics and fixational eye movements are primarily involuntary processes that actively support visual perception during fixations. Both measures are known to be sensitive to ongoing cognitive and affective processing. In a visual fixation experiment (N=116) we demonstrate that self-recognition, familiar faces, and unfamiliar faces elicit specific responses in pupil dynamics and microsaccade rate. First, the pupil response comprises an immediate pupil constriction followed by a dilation i…

CEO says they can only win on the experience. And yet every action they roll out makes it less and less possible for a professional to go in there and interact with someone knowledgeable.
https://www.guitarworld.com/music-industry/guitar-center-three-year-d…

Guitar Center secures three-year debt extension to ensure it can deliver on its business plan
The announcement comes amid increasing challenges for brick-and-mortar guitar stores and ongoing changes at Guitar Center to battle competition from digital retailers

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 […]

Robust and Flexible Microtransit Design: Chance-Constrained Dial-a-Ride Problem with Soft Time Windows
Hongli Li (Purdue University IN, USA), Zengxiang Lei (Purdue University IN, USA), Xinwu Qian (Rice University USA), Satish V. Ukkusuri (Purdue University IN, USA)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20788

Robust and Flexible Microtransit Design: Chance-Constrained Dial-a-Ride Problem with Soft Time Windows
Microtransit offers a promising blend of rideshare flexibility and public transit efficiency. In practice, it faces unanticipated but spatially aligned requests, passengers seeking to join ongoing schedules, leading to underutilized capacity and degraded service if not properly managed. At the same time, it must accommodate diverse passenger needs, from routine errands to time-sensitive trips such as medical appointments. To meet these expectations, incorporating time flexibility is essential. …

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

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.

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

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

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…

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..."

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

VLBI studies of FLASH H I 21-cm absorbers - I
J. N. H. S. Aditya, Elaine M. Sadler, Raffaella Morganti, L. Y. Petrov, An Tao, Emily F. Kerrison, Elizabeth K. Mahony, Hyein Yoon, Renzhi Su, Matthew Whiting, Vanessa A. Moss, Simon Weng
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19957

VLBI studies of FLASH H I 21-cm absorbers - I
We have conducted VLBA 1.4 GHz (L-band) continuum observations towards twelve sources with HI 21-cm absorption detections at redshift $0.4

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…

“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

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…

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

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

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

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

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…

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.

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.

'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.

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...

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…

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.

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.

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

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

MeloKids: Multisensory VR System to Enhance Speech and Motor Coordination in Children with Hearing Loss
Yichen Yu, Qiaoran Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18619 https://

MeloKids: Multisensory VR System to Enhance Speech and Motor Coordination in Children with Hearing Loss
Children with hearing impairments face ongoing challenges in language and motor development. This study explores how multi-sensory feedback technology based on virtual reality (VR), integrating auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli, can enhance rehabilitation outcomes. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology, we assessed cortical activation patterns in children during pitch-matching tasks across different interaction modes. Our findings aim to provide evidence for designi…

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]

Scout: Leveraging Large Language Models for Rapid Digital Evidence Discovery
Shariq Murtuza
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18478 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.184…

Scout: Leveraging Large Language Models for Rapid Digital Evidence Discovery
Recent technological advancements and the prevalence of technology in day to day activities have caused a major increase in the likelihood of the involvement of digital evidence in more and more legal investigations. Consumer-grade hardware is growing more powerful, with expanding memory and storage sizes and enhanced processor capabilities. Forensics investigators often have to sift through gigabytes of data during an ongoing investigation making the process tedious. Memory forensics, disk ana…

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.

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

Direct reconstruction of the Reionization history from 21cm 2D Power Spectra
Yannic Pietschke, Caroline Heneka, Tom Schlenker, Ayodele Ore, Benedikt Schosser
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19925

Direct reconstruction of the Reionization history from 21cm 2D Power Spectra
The 21cm line from the spin-flip transition of neutral hydrogen (HI) provides a unique window into the Epoch of Reionization (EoR), the final phase transition of our Universe. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) enables precise measurements of 21cm fluctuations that trace ionization, temperature, and density fluctuations of the intergalactic medium (IGM). Nevertheless, a direct reconstruction of the timeline of the EoR in terms of the progress of ionization remains an ongoing challenge due to the …

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

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

A statistical study of sea ice thickness and coverage in the Canadian Arctic
Arya Kimiaghalam
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17199 https://

A statistical study of sea ice thickness and coverage in the Canadian Arctic
The Arctic sea ice cover has significantly declined over the recent decades. The debate on whether this decline is caused by anthropogenic activity or internal cycles is still ongoing. However, despite this uncertainty, some physical factors reinforce this declining trend, one of which is sea ice thickness. The thinning of Arctic sea ice facilitates the melting of sea ice by reducing the heat capacity of the ice volume. The progression of this thinning can potentially accelerate sea ice loss. I…

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).

An H$\alpha$ Cloud in the HI Tail: Recent Star Formation in the Outskirts of NGC 4258 Revealed by Nanshan 1-m Telescope
Cheng Cheng, Jia-Sheng Huang, Peng Wei, Ali Esamdin, Guojie Feng, Zhi-Xiang Zhang, Haojing Yan, Wei Du, Pei Zuo, Zi-Jian Li, Gustavo Orellana, Letian Wang, Yong Wang, Abdusamatjan Iskandar, Shahidin Yaqup
https://

An H$α$ Cloud in the HI Tail: Recent Star Formation in the Outskirts of NGC 4258 Revealed by Nanshan 1-m Telescope
We present first-light deep H$α$ imaging taken with the Nanshan 1-meter wide-field telescope on the local galaxy NGC 4258, alongside archival data from Hubble Space telescope (HST), Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, and The Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey. The H$α$ image shows ongoing star formation not only inside the galaxy but also in an HI cloud in the eastern HI tail, which is roughly 16 kpc away from the main galaxy. The HST images reveal several ultra-blue compact objects ($\rm F5…

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

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

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…

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 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

“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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

“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

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

“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