Tootfinder

Memory-QA: Answering Recall Questions Based on Multimodal Memories
Hongda Jiang, Xinyuan Zhang, Siddhant Garg, Rishab Arora, Shiun-Zu Kuo, Jiayang Xu, Christopher Brossman, Yue Liu, Aaron Colak, Ahmed Aly, Anuj Kumar, Xin Luna Dong
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18436

Memory-QA: Answering Recall Questions Based on Multimodal Memories
We introduce Memory-QA, a novel real-world task that involves answering recall questions about visual content from previously stored multimodal memories. This task poses unique challenges, including the creation of task-oriented memories, the effective utilization of temporal and location information within memories, and the ability to draw upon multiple memories to answer a recall question. To address these challenges, we propose a comprehensive pipeline, Pensieve, integrating memory-specific …

Apple is nearing a deal with Google that would see the iPhone maker pay the tech giant roughly
$1 billion a year for a custom version of Google’s Gemini AI model
to power its overhaul of Siri.
The move is a big one for Apple,
which has traditionally relied on its own technology
but plans to use Google’s model as a temporary solution until its own AI becomes powerful enough,
including to power a slate of upcoming features for the voice assistant.
The…

Apple nears deal to pay Google $1B annually to power new Siri, report says | TechCrunch
Apple is turning to Google's technology to help revamp Siri and power a slate of upcoming features for the voice assistant.

In Colorado, students taunted their Black classmates by playing whipping sounds on their cellphones and saying they should be shot “to make us a better race.”
The only two Black students in a small district in Ohio were called the N-word by white peers starting on their first day.
They got accustomed to hearing slurs like “porch monkey” and being told to go pick cotton.
And at a school in Illinois, white students included Confederate flags in their PowerPoint presentations …

Monkey Sounds, “White Power” and the N-Word: Racial Harassment Against Black Students Ignored Under Trump
Since Trump returned to office, the Education Department’s civil rights office has not resolved a single racial harassment investigation. It sends a message that “people impacted by racial discrimination ... don’t matter,” one attorney said.

Russell Wilson landing spots: Where the benched Giants QB could end up before the trade deadline

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/russell-wilson-trade-deadline-landing…

More than 20,000 still without power after massive San Francisco blackout
Roughly 110,000 PG&E customers have service again following a major power outage Saturday in San Francisco
that left homes in the dark,
stalled traffic
and shut down restaurants, shops and holiday lighting displays.
PG&E said on social media that the remaining 21,000 without power on Sunday morning are concentrated in
Golden Gate Park,
the Presidio,
the Richmond…

More than 20,000 still without power after massive San Francisco blackout
After Saturday's power shutdown, PG&E said 21,000 are still without power in areas including Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, the Richmond District and small areas downtown.

Prince Andrew hasn’t been known to the public as Duke of York ever since he became know to the public as Andrew the Paedophile. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/oct/17/prince-andrew-to-give-up-royal-titles

When "self-driving" cars were first getting some hype back in ~2015 or so, I told people who asked me that I didn't think they'd be safe, and that I wished the same money were being invested in driver-assistance systems instead.
At the time, advocates were claiming that self-driving cars would be safer than human drivers.
We now have both self-driving cars and some nifty new driver assistance things, and it turns out that the self-driving cars are in fact being developed by corporations whose attention to the bottom line results in danger to others on the road pretty regularly. I don't actually have stats here for whether they're "safer than human drivers" or not, but the opportunity for one bad software update to make *all* self-driving cars dangerous at once kinda makes me doubt that.
Here's an example of Waymo cars getting "more aggressive" as they try to balance between being too timid and obstructing traffic (including emergency vehicles) and being too dangerous:
https://archive.ph/JJuGv
Here's another example of passing stopped schoolbusses leading to a software recall:
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/waymo-issue-voluntary-software-recall-after-close-calls/story?id=128207776
In the first article, Waymo claims 91% fewer serious accidents per mile. Obviously an independent audit would be actually trustworthy, but even if we take that claim at face value, it's meaningless if an update tomorrow causes 100,000 accidents.
Note that they could be using better engineering practices, and the fact that they aren't shows that they don't care enough about the risks. They could be deploying new software versions incrementally and slowly, letting new versions rack up lots of miles only on a few vehicles before pushing them to a fleet. The should also have the equivalent of a simulation unit test for "schoolbus is stopped, what do?" and if a software version fails that test, it doesn't make it to the fleet. Clearly they don't have that.
I feel pretty vindicated in my earlier prediction that this tech is a bad idea in the hands of the current advocates.

Ej, det er on and off med denne her forkŸlelse! I går var jeg fuld af energi og fik bl.a. ryddet op i hele garderobeskabet, inkl. vasket gamle huer, vanter og halstŸrklæder der trængte, repareret et par sutsko, og sorteret ud i al resten. I dag ligger jeg på sofaen med let feber og Ÿnsker at jeg kunne komme i haven, eller få lavet nogle af de 10 andre ting jeg har planlagt.
Nå, man må jo lytte til kroppen. Og jeg har heldigvis endnu et bind af min bogserie jeg kan slappe af med.

Is it Zack Polanski’s birthday or something??
#ukpolitics
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/

Day 18: Mark Oshiro
Having just learned that Oshiro is nonbinary, they're an instant include on this list. In veering extremely heavily towards YA, and losing a spot that would have gone to an absolutely legendary mangaka, anime writer, or feminist philosopher, but "Anger is A Gift" and "Each of us a Desert" are just that good, and I'm trying to steer a bit towards towards lesser-known authors I respect.
I already mentioned "Anger is a Gift" above, but to recap, it's a painful, vivid, and beautifully honest story of queer love, loss, and protest against an oppressive system. CW for racist police murder, intergenerational trauma, and police brutality against highschool students. It's a book a lot of Americans could benefit from reading right now, and while it's fiction, it's not fantasy or sci-fi. Besides the themes and politics, the writing is just really solid, with delicate characterization and tight-plotted developments that are beautifully paced.
To me "Each of us a Desert" is maybe even more beautiful, and Oshiro leaps into a magnificent fantasy world that's richly original in its desolation, dark history, lonely characters, and mythical magic. Particularly the clearly-not-just-superscription but ambiguously-important/powerful magical elements of Oshiro's worldbuilding are a rare contrast to the usual magic-is-real-here's-how-it-works fare, and pulling that off a all as they do is a testament to their craft. The prose is wonderful, probably especially so if you speak Spanish, but I enjoyed it immensely despite only knowing a few words here and there. The rich interiority of the characters, their conflicts both with each other and within themselves, and the juxtaposition of all that against origins in cult-like ignorance allows for the delivery of a lot of wisdom and complex truths.
Between these two books, so different and yet each so powerful, Oshiro has demonstrated incredible craft and also a wide range of styles, so I'm definitely excited to read more of their work and to recommend them to others.
I'm also glad to have finally put a nonbinary author on this list; the others I had in mind won't make it at this point because there's too much genre overlap, although I'll include them in my didn't-make-it list at the end. I've now got just 2 slots left and have counted up 14 more authors that absolutely need to be mentioned, so we'll see what happens.
#20AuthorsNoMen