Tootfinder

Hands-on with Apple's new Speech framework components in the macOS Tahoe beta: the APIs deliver transcription speeds significantly faster than OpenAI's Whisper (John Voorhees/MacStories)
https://www.macstories.net/stories/hands-o…

Hands-On: How Apple’s New Speech APIs Outpace Whisper for Lightning-Fast Transcription
Late last Tuesday night, after watching F1: The Movie at the Steve Jobs Theater, I was driving back from dropping Federico off at his hotel when I got a text: Can you pick me up? It was from my son Finn, who had spent the evening nearby and was stalking me in Find My. Of

Now playing Crash Bandicoot: Warped on PS1 🌀 Going for that sweet 105% completion! Come hang out as we time travel, spin, and slide our way through the chaos.
https://www.twitch.tv/retromegamuffin

Citizen science study determines that more than one light per person is still on late at night in Germany #Germany

Citizen science study determines that more than one light per person is still on late at night in Germany
Nighttime satellite images have shown that cities are getting brighter, and light pollution is now recognized as an environmental issue. But how should local governments even begin the work of resolving this if nobody really knows what the sources of all this light are? A large citizen science project led by Dr. Christopher Kyba, at the time geographer at Ruhr University Bochum and the GFZ Helmholtz Center for Geosciences, is now shedding light on the matter.

PredGen: Accelerated Inference of Large Language Models through Input-Time Speculation for Real-Time Speech Interaction
Shufan Li, Aditya Grover
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15556

PredGen: Accelerated Inference of Large Language Models through Input-Time Speculation for Real-Time Speech Interaction
Large Language Models (LLMs) are widely used in real-time voice chat applications, typically in combination with text-to-speech (TTS) systems to generate audio responses. However, their large size often leads to noticeable latency between the end of user input and the start of audio output, resulting in suboptimal user experiences. This latency is particularly evident when LLMs are deployed as single-user voice assistants on consumer-grade hardware with limited computing capacity. We discovered…

Updated my Fediverse profile page, so it references more background stories rather than just referencing the apps we currently build.
Of course, given space constraints most of those story references are very brief allusions. But they might still serve as useful launch points for conversation! If anything there piques your interest and you're curious to learn more, feel free to ask me about them.

'Forever chemicals' detected in 65% of sampled private wells in Pennsylvania https://phys.org/news/2025-06-chemicals-sampled-private-wells-pennsylvania.html
PFAS Found in 65% of Private Wells Sampled in Pennsylvania

'Forever chemicals' detected in 65% of sampled private wells in Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania, 3.5 million people are served by private well systems, according to Penn State Extension. To better understand potential contamination of the groundwater feeding these systems, a team of researchers from Penn State conducted a novel three-year citizen science study of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—often referred to as forever chemicals—in 167 private wells across Pennsylvania.

Clear-cutting forests linked to 18-fold increase in frequency and size of floods #environment

Clear-cutting forests linked to 18-fold increase in frequency and size of floods
Clear-cutting can make catastrophic floods 18 times more frequent with effects lasting more than 40 years, according to a new UBC study.

Three dead as South Korean region hit by most rain in 120 years #SouthKorea

Three dead as South Korean region hit by most rain in 120 years
At least three people were killed and more than 1,000 evacuated Thursday after South Korea was hit by torrential rains, officials said, with one region pummeled by the most rainfall per hour since full records began.

Climate change and depopulation confirmed as main concerns affecting mountain areas in Europe https://phys.org/news/2025-06-climate-depopulation-main-affecting-mountain.html

Climate change and depopulation confirmed as main concerns affecting mountain areas in Europe
In Europe, mountain areas account for about 36% of the total territory and are home to 16% of the population, but they are crucial for the continent as a whole. The availability of basic commodities, like water, depends on them; they play a key role in carbon sequestration, and are areas of biodiversity.

Global carbon emissions on track to exhaust 1.5°C budget in three years, study warns #environment

Global carbon emissions on track to exhaust 1.5°C budget in three years, study warns
The central estimate of the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C is 130 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) (from the beginning of 2025). This would be exhausted in a little more than three years at current levels of CO2 emissions, according to the latest Indicators of Global Climate Change study published in the journal Earth System Science Data, and the budget for 1.6°C or 1.7°C could be exceeded within nine years.