Tootfinder

Western Stepnohirsk under Ukrainian control as Russia-linked channels cite tough conditions: https://benborges.xyz/2026/03/05/western-stepnohirsk-under-ukrainian-control.html

After promising to be "more accountable" than Walter Cronkite, Tony Dokoupil didn't challenge Pete Hegseth in an interview or cite sources in another segment (Daniel D'Addario/Variety)
https://variety.com/2026/tv/columns/tony-dokoupil-cbs-even…

Tony Dokoupil CBS Evening News Debut: A Tough Night for New Anchor
Tony Dokoupil tripped up over transitions and bulldozed a health expert over vaccines

dblp_cite: DBLP citations (2014)
Citations among papers contained in the DBLP computer science bibliography. If a paper i cites a paper j also in this data set, then a directed edge connects i to j. (Papers not in the data set are excluded.) Self-loops may be present. This snapshot from May 2014.
This network has 12590 nodes and 49759 edges.
Tags: Informational, Citation, Unweighted

ZOR filters: fast and smaller than fuse filters
Antoine Limasset
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03525 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.03525 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.03525
arXiv:2602.03525v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Probabilistic membership filters support fast approximate membership queries with a controlled false-positive probability $\varepsilon$ and are widely used across storage, analytics, networking, and bioinformatics \cite{chang2008bigtable,dayan2018optimalbloom,broder2004network,harris2020improved,marchet2023scalable,chikhi2025logan,hernandez2025reindeer2}. In the static setting, state-of-the-art designs such as XOR and fuse filters achieve low overhead and very fast queries, but their peeling-based construction succeeds only with high probability, which complicates deterministic builds \cite{graf2020xor,graf2022binary,ulrich2023taxor}.
We introduce \emph{ZOR filters}, a deterministic continuation of XOR/fuse filters that guarantees construction termination while preserving the same XOR-based query mechanism. ZOR replaces restart-on-failure with deterministic peeling that abandons a small fraction of keys, and restores false-positive-only semantics by storing the remainder in a compact auxiliary structure. In our experiments, the abandoned fraction drops below $1\%$ for moderate arity (e.g., $N\ge 5$), so the auxiliary handles a negligible fraction of keys. As a result, ZOR filters can achieve overhead within $1\%$ of the information-theoretic lower bound $\log_2(1/\varepsilon)$ while retaining fuse-like query performance; the additional cost is concentrated on negative queries due to the auxiliary check. Our current prototype builds several-fold slower than highly optimized fuse builders because it maintains explicit incidence information during deterministic peeling; closing this optimisation gap is an engineering target.
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It is time for one of my favorite annual rituals -- laughing at how marketers cite the Super Bowl when they haven't paid for the license to mention the Super Bowl, the National Football League, or any NFL teams or mascots.
(Second only to laughing at how costume manufacturers describe their Halloween costumes to avoid infringing on trademarked character names or copyrighted titles.)

Six Senators Accuse Deputy Attorney General of "Glaring" Crypto Conflict, Cite ProPublica Investigation (Corey G. Johnson/ProPublica)
https://www.propublica.org/article/todd-blanche-crypto-conflict-senator-letter
http://www.memeorandum.com/260129/p121#a260129p121

I need everybody to understand that international law isn't real, doesn't exist, and isn't a thing you can read or cite, BECAUSE (most importantly!) it does not effectively constrain sovereign actors. You can piss and moan on Mastodon all you want, but unless YOU PERSONALLY have a military ready to enforce YOUR definition of morality, countries will continue to just do whatever they want as they have for millennia, and you are (as always) just along for the ride, very much in the…

Six senators accused Deputy Attorney General #Todd #Blanche this week of having a "glaring" conflict of interest
when he shut down investigations into crypto companies, dealers and exchanges
and eliminated an enforcement team dedicated to looking for crypto-related fraud and money-laundering schemes.

Six Senators Accuse Deputy Attorney General of “Glaring” Crypto Conflict, Cite ProPublica Investigation
The senators presented a letter demanding that top DOJ official Todd Blanche clarify the legality of his actions, pointing to ProPublica reporting that found he owned at least $159,000 in related assets when he shut down crypto investigations.

Source: India issued a blocking order on February 24 to restrict access to developer database service Supabase; the government did not publicly cite a reason (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/27/india…

India disrupts access to popular developer platform Supabase with blocking order | TechCrunch
India, one of Supabase’s biggest markets, is seeing patchy access after a government block order.

Statistical Query Lower Bounds for Smoothed Agnostic Learning
Ilias Diakonikolas, Daniel M. Kane
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21191 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.21191 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.21191
arXiv:2602.21191v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study the complexity of smoothed agnostic learning, recently introduced by~\cite{CKKMS24}, in which the learner competes with the best classifier in a target class under slight Gaussian perturbations of the inputs. Specifically, we focus on the prototypical task of agnostically learning halfspaces under subgaussian distributions in the smoothed model. The best known upper bound for this problem relies on $L_1$-polynomial regression and has complexity $d^{\tilde{O}(1/\sigma^2) \log(1/\epsilon)}$, where $\sigma$ is the smoothing parameter and $\epsilon$ is the excess error. Our main result is a Statistical Query (SQ) lower bound providing formal evidence that this upper bound is close to best possible. In more detail, we show that (even for Gaussian marginals) any SQ algorithm for smoothed agnostic learning of halfspaces requires complexity $d^{\Omega(1/\sigma^{2} \log(1/\epsilon))}$. This is the first non-trivial lower bound on the complexity of this task and nearly matches the known upper bound. Roughly speaking, we show that applying $L_1$-polynomial regression to a smoothed version of the function is essentially best possible. Our techniques involve finding a moment-matching hard distribution by way of linear programming duality. This dual program corresponds exactly to finding a low-degree approximating polynomial to the smoothed version of the target function (which turns out to be the same condition required for the $L_1$-polynomial regression to work). Our explicit SQ lower bound then comes from proving lower bounds on this approximation degree for the class of halfspaces.
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Frequency-Dependent Magnetic modulation of deposition morphology
S. K. Saroj, P. K. Panigrahi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21789 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.21789 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.21789
arXiv:2602.21789v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This paper presents a novel approach for magnetic modulation of deposition morphology in an evaporating ferrofluid droplet. The magnetic field strength and ferrofluid concentration are kept unchanged, while the actuation frequencies are varied from 0.016 Hz to 5 Hz. In the absence of a magnetic field, a coffee-ring formation is observed and consistent with previous studies\cite{deegan1997capillary,deegan2000contact,saroj2019drying}. The application of a time-dependent magnetic field significantly modifies the deposition morphology. The periodic magnetic field induces the formation of multiple concentric rings during evaporation. The number of rings initially increases with increasing actuation frequency of the electromagnet. However, beyond a critical actuation frequency ($f_c = 0.2\,\text{Hz}$), the number of rings decreases. At higher actuation frequencies, magnetic particles preferentially deposit in the central region of the droplet, resulting in suppression of the coffee-ring effect. Additionally, the thickness of the inner rings and the ring spacing decrease with increasing actuation frequency up to critical actuation frequency. The transition from multi-ring formation to coffee-ring suppression is governed by the competition among magnetic forcing, capillary flow, and particle diffusion. The underlying physical mechanisms responsible for droplet dynamics and deposition morphology under periodic magnetic fields are evaluated using scaling arguments. The results demonstrate that diffusive particle transport plays a dominant role in determining the deposition pattern. A non-dimensional magnetic switching number, based on the magnetic perturbation timescale, is introduced as a control parameter to characterize the frequency-dependent deposition behavior.
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dblp_cite: DBLP citations (2014)
Citations among papers contained in the DBLP computer science bibliography. If a paper i cites a paper j also in this data set, then a directed edge connects i to j. (Papers not in the data set are excluded.) Self-loops may be present. This snapshot from May 2014.
This network has 12590 nodes and 49759 edges.
Tags: Informational, Citation, Unweighted

What @… says is what a lot of us have been lamenting since the ICE invasion started. Shouldn’t local police protect citizens from ICE?? Why this hasn’t happened is a really good question. Factors to consider:
- “Obstructing a federal agent” is illegal, and local police / politicians feel constrained by that (even if the agents themselves don’t seem constrained by the actual law at all, only by what they think they can get away with)
- Police can in theory cite federal agents for e.g. traffic violations or illegal plate swapping after the fact, as long as they’re not “obstructing” the agents — but how do you cite a masked person with fake plates who refuses to give ID?
- Some police are visibly supportive of ICE, chumming it up with them and giving literal fist bumps; a nontrivial subset are outright closet Nazis. A lot of people don’t really see any need to go past “ACAB” as a full explanation for all of this — and certainly The ACAB Hypothesis is…um, not really being proved false right now in Minneapolis.
- I think some police quietly resent ICE for stepping on their turf, but that does not seem to have boiled up into actual confrontation in MSP. One police leader here painted it in early Dec as “some people want to instigate a confrontation between Minneapolis Police, and that’s not going to happen.” Police culture says that police should be a neutral party in a dispute between ICE and residents, and actually protecting residents would be taking sides. (Duh, yes, taking sides that way is your literal job, you dumbasses…but I digress.)
- Some police (especially leadership) really want to get on the community’s good side after the murder of George Floyd, and see this as an opportunity, but unfortunately this has materialized entirely as non-interventionist support: “We responded to a 911 call and help a distressed resident after her husband was abducted!” “We transported children left parentless on the streets by ICE safely back to their home!” “Our officers volunteered at the food shelf!” OK, nice, good for you buddy.
So yeah, I’m wondering this too, and am bitter about it. https://tilde.zone/@n1xnx/115928447564126393

Don’t you dare cite reports from the EPA, says the EPA
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/1/15/2363474/-Don-t-you-dare-cite-reports-from-the-EPA-says-the-EPA?detail=emailrecap

What instant communication, thread-based platform do you use at least once a month?
Just trying to get an idea of the popularity of different options - multiple choices possible, please boost around!
If you think we should add some choices, please cite them in comment and I'll do a 2nd poll. They would have to be similarly thread / themes / channel - based, with a phone app but also available in the browser (e.g. maybe Matrix? But website-only platforms like Discourse would not work…

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge
"AI slop on ScienceDirect (Elsevier), a “premier platform for scientific, health and technical literature”
https://irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/ai-slop-and-the-destruction-of-knowledge/

Dans sa dernière vidéo, Micode évoque les impacts de l'IA sur l'apprentissage : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xq6bVbS-Pw
Il cite notamment des études qui montrent qu'utiliser l'IA quand on apprend une compétence est significativement détrimental Š l'apprentissage (ou Š …

When you cite a thinker to legitimize fascism and then discover his intellectual crush ended up being Lenin instead.
#Fascism #Syndicalism #Meme

Barret Zoph says Thinking Machines Lab fired him only after learning he was leaving, and at no time did the company cite his performance or unethical conduct (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-messy-h…

Weird on so many levels.
Trump sends weird angry letter to Norway’s Prime Minister https://ground.news/article/trump-cites-nobel-snub-to-justify-greenland-demand-in-letter_fe8f31

US lifts sanctions on Belarusian potash, state media cite Trump envoy as saying (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-lifts-sanctions-belarusian-potash-state-media-cite-trump-envoy-saying-2025-12-13/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251213/p18#a251213p18

dblp_cite: DBLP citations (2014)
Citations among papers contained in the DBLP computer science bibliography. If a paper i cites a paper j also in this data set, then a directed edge connects i to j. (Papers not in the data set are excluded.) Self-loops may be present. This snapshot from May 2014.
This network has 12590 nodes and 49759 edges.
Tags: Informational, Citation, Unweighted

AI generated pages explaining things, that cite other AI generated pages that just hallucinated details. Web's unusable.

Illegal. Completely illegal. But everyone agrees: nobody’s allowed to stop ICE from breaking state and local laws, only issue citations afterwards.
To mismarked vehicles. With masked drivers who refuse to identify themselves. How do you cite •that•?!

OK, but the results are still just paper links, not what the LLM thinks about them. So the only thing that changed is that it is much much slower now?
Maybe the LLM just formulates a query to the old scholar? Too many layers of "oh how can we build an LLM into this"...
OK, nobody in #math uses Google Scholar like this anyway. We only use it look at publication records of people and do reverse citation search (which papers cite this one I have).

Imposition individuelle: Benjamin. Roduit cite les revenus uniques des agriculteurs qui paieraient plus, ce qui relève deux questions:
- la pertinence: combien des agriculteurs paient des impôts fédéraux substantiels?
- une injustice et précarité actuelle: pourquoi la paysanne n’a-t-elle pas de revenu? Ne travaille-t-elle pas? #chvote

Good Morning #Canada
The oldest winter festival opened its ice gates to the public yesterday and runs to February 15th. The Quebec Winter Carnival was first held in 1894 but became an annual event starting in 1955. It's not the largest in the world but it's in the top 2, and record crowds are expected since most Canadians aren't interested in being interrogated at our southern border.
#Bonhomme is the generic term for a figure ( bonhomme de sucre , "sugar baby"; bonhomme de neige , "snowman"). The beloved character who represents the Quebec Winter Carnival lives a pampered life. He has the keys to the city, from the mayor in 1955, and has a new ice castle built for him every year. He also retires someplace cozy after the event and returns refreshed and ready for next year, unlike European festival snowmen who are burned at the close of activities to bring forth spring. Bonhomme has a better manager obviously.
#CanadaIsAwesome #WinterWonderland
https://www.quebec-cite.com/en/what-to-do-quebec-city/events/quebec-winter-carnival

Here's a bunch of references of a paper that was submitted to a journal I'm an editor of...
They also cite "Introduction to tropical geometry" written by D. C. Gilbert and B. Sturmfels. I know that book! It's written by Diane MacLagan and Bernd Sturmfels both of whom I know.
So the paper is AI slop. It was clear that it was crap before looking at the references, but well, here I am dealing with this sort of thing. Now formally reject it, etc.
All time that I can't spend on useful things.