Tootfinder

These pieces are much harsher than Fred’s, much more in the LLM-bashing camp, but feel relevant here:
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/05/generative-ai-runs-on-gambling-addiction-just-one-more-prompt-bro/
Fred’s point is that a bad interaction model creates hidden work, then humans do that work and “the machine claims the praise.” These other two pieces make the point that this phenomenon of giving the machine credit for unrecognized human work is age-old, taps into some deep trapdoors in human cognition.
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Die ePetition 180303 an den Bundestag aus dem Bereich Mietrecht mit dem Titel
Änderung des § 559b BGB (Geltendmachung der Erhöhung, Wirkung der Erhöhungserklärung)
kann bis zum Dienstag 15. Juli 2025 01:00 UTC mitgezeichnet werden und lautet
Mit der Petition wird eine Änderung des § 559b des Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuches dahingehend gefordert, dass Vermieter zur nachvollziehbaren und differenzierten Darlegung des Anteils der Instandhaltungskosten bei der Durchführung von energe…

Related to understanding firearms, "rifles" and hand guns tend to be rifled. Rifling is grooving that runs in a helical pattern down the barrel. When purchasing a firearm, it's important to check the rifling.
First check that the firearm is unloaded. Empty or remove the magazine, cycle the weapon. Next, check again that it's unloaded by looking both down the barrel and into the magazine. Now, shine a light down the barrel and look down it. In the absence of a light, you may be able to reflect light off your thumbnail.
Rifling should look as though it's drawn on with a sharp pencil, and the barrel should look otherwise completely smooth and clean. If the rifling looks like bumpy mountains, then the owner probably used corrosive ammo and didn't clean it enough. It will probably still shoot, but not at all accurately.
Both the rifling and the pin can be used in forensic analysis to match a bullet to a gun. I don't honestly know how accurate this is because a lot of forensic "science" is just made up stuff that relies on the CSI effect and doesn't actually work as advertised.
However, not all firearms are not all rifled. Shotguns are "smoothbore" firearms, meaning they lack rifling. It is not possible to perform forensic analysis of a smoothbore firearm. It *is* possible to check for powder on the hands of someone who has used a firearm within the last few days, but it's not possible to distinguish between firing inside and outside a range.
I've been gathering all kinds of tidbits like this, partially just out of curiosity and partially because I've been wanting to write a story about a revolutionary group fighting a modern authoritarian society. I'm always happy to learn other bits, if anyone has anything else I could throw in my narrative (whenever I finally get back to writing it).

MOSU: Autonomous Long-range Robot Navigation with Multi-modal Scene Understanding
Jing Liang, Kasun Weerakoon, Daeun Song, Senthurbavan Kirubaharan, Xuesu Xiao, Dinesh Manocha
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04686

MOSU: Autonomous Long-range Robot Navigation with Multi-modal Scene Understanding
We present MOSU, a novel autonomous long-range navigation system that enhances global navigation for mobile robots through multimodal perception and on-road scene understanding. MOSU addresses the outdoor robot navigation challenge by integrating geometric, semantic, and contextual information to ensure comprehensive scene understanding. The system combines GPS and QGIS map-based routing for high-level global path planning and multi-modal trajectory generation for local navigation refinement. F…

ICE arrested a California union leader. Does Trump understand what that means?
The arrest of David Huerta, president of SEIU-USWW and SEIU California,
by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday
is going to have a major impact on the coming months as deportations continue.
Unions in California are different from those in other places.
More than any state in our troubled country, their ranks are filled with people of color and immigrants.
Whi…

ICE arrested a California union leader. Does Trump understand what that means?
Unions in California are different from many in the U.S. because they are predominately people of color and immigrants. The arrest of a union president in L.A. will likely activate these unions to become powerful forces of nonviolent protest.

Transient Dynamics in Lattices of Differentiating Ring Oscillators
Peter DelMastro, Arjun Karuvally, Hananel Hazan, Hava Siegelmann, Edward Rietman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07253

Transient Dynamics in Lattices of Differentiating Ring Oscillators
Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are machine learning models widely used for learning temporal relationships. Current state-of-the-art RNNs use integrating or spiking neurons -- two classes of computing units whose outputs depend directly on their internal states -- and accordingly there is a wealth of literature characterizing the behavior of large networks built from these neurons. On the other hand, past research on differentiating neurons, whose outputs are computed from the derivatives of …

The presentations at the 2nd #AAS246 presser were about the papers https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adc911 (Discovery of the Seven-ring Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Cyanocoronene (C24H11CN) in GOTHAM Observations of TMC-1, also https://public.nrao.edu/news/cosmic-chemistry-breakthrough-largest-aromatic-molecule-found-in-deep-space/), https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05575 (A map of the outer gas disk of the Galaxy with direct distances from young stars, also https://www.uah.edu/news/items/uah-researcher-unveils-new-map-of-milky-way-galaxy-in-atomic-hydrogen-revealing-its-clumped-flocculent-nature-for-first-time) and https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/adbbd9 (Surveying the Giant H ii Regions of the Milky Way with SOFIA. VII. Galactic Center Regions Sgr B1, Sgr B2, and Sgr C, also https://www.seti.org/press-release/unusual-stellar-nurseries-near-our-galaxys-center-puzzle-scientists) plus two results with apparently neither papers nor press releases going with them.

Looks like it's time to migrate ancient data. Thanks, @… !
Luckily, I've got an ancient iMac running Linux. Can use Firewire and the format, and Modern Linux Mint runs great on it.
#HeadsUp

9to5Mac (@9to5Mac@mastodon.online)
Attached: 1 image macOS Tahoe: Reports of FireWire’s death are not greatly exaggerated https://9to5mac.com/2025/07/07/macos-tahoe-reports-of-firewires-death-are-not-greatly-exaggerated/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Deutschland kotzt mich aktuell wirklich an.
https://netzpolitik.org/2025/hessen-polizei-ueberprueft-1-600-psychisch-erkrankte-menschen/

Hessen: Polizei überprüft 1.600 psychisch erkrankte Menschen
Die hessische Polizei geht systematisch alle Personen in ihren Datenbanken durch, bei denen sie einen Hinweis auf eine „Psychische und Verhaltensstörung“ gespeichert hat. Damit will sie Risiken für Gewalttaten erkennen und etwa Gefährderansprachen oder Überwachung planen. Um Betroffene zu unterstützen, bräuchte es andere Maßnahmen.

Ich muss sagen, Mapy (https://mapy.com) find ich wirklich eine nette auf OpenStreetMap aufsetzende ~App. Routen planen und finden scheint leicht zu gehen.
Bei Locations (Suche) wird es dann aber schon leider wieder wenig. Wäre cool, wenn einfach alles aus