Tootfinder

"Conspirituality is a kind of crowd-sourced knowledge, where the spread of a belief is taken to be support for its content."
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/wellness-right-wing-conspiracy-conspirituality-b27…

US political contradictions; knowledge systems
As Trump at least partially succeeds in constructing an alternate reality for his most ardent followers, it's tempting to think of his dogma as false, in contrast to some imagined "truth" which his non-followers are smart enough to believe in. But a more nuanced view of knowledge would admit that different groups of people have different shared truths, constituting different knowledge systems which each deviate from what's objectively measurable in different ways, and in fact they each accept different standards of what is objective, so there's not really a single "ground truth" we can even compare to to determine which of these knowledge systems is "more correct" (similar problems arise even if we only care about "more useful").
To make this more concrete, we can see that e.g., competing quantum physics theories, or likewise competing religious beliefs, have no reasonable basis on which to judge between them, either in terms of "truth" or "utility." So the Trump-dogma knowledge system, although bad, morally repugnant, etc., can't so easily be dismissed as "false" in my view. "Distorted" or "malignant" or "evil" or "contradictory" are better monikers, in my opinion.
But what I'm even more interested in thinking about is: in what ways does the current American liberal "common sense" knowledge system already bear the scars of past fascist lies & contradictions? I can think of a few:
"Columbus was an explorer."
This is "factually accurate" in the same way some of Trump's propaganda is, but it's also a cruel distortion of "Columbus was a child murderer," and it's a misrepresentation that serves an evil purpose, yet which is widely taught in elementary schools today.
Another: "dropping atomic bombs on civilians in Japan was necessary to end WWII."
Perhaps in the future we'll have "family separation & the 2025 ICE crackdowns were necessary to end the immigration crisis," although I dearly hope not.
"Reparations for slavery aren't reasonable," is yet another...
I'll close this rambling with a question: what other fascist lies have you noticed that are normalized in America right now from past Trump-like leaders (or even from less overtly fascist institutions)?

Gemini, especially with "research" mode has this vibe of 2000 Internet where knowledge was right there, about nearly anything, without SEO bullshit and ads.
This time it's much faster and better, for the most part.
Unpopular: I think this will cause a renaissance of world wide web. All that bullshit SEO driven websites will die, those made by passionate people and specialists will prevail (because we don't care) and we will get even more traffic than now due t…

When "knowledge cutoff" hits you right in the face 😂 🙈
#gemini #google #ai (gemini-2.5-flash)

"Rufo, Vance, and Co. are, however, right that right-wing ideological hegemony is harder to maintain when sites of education and knowledge production allow young people to learn, find each other, and challenge received wisdoms."
On the current goals of the destruction of the US education system. (Also provides background and lists some issues with the current system; but, obviously, none of that is fixed by what happens now.)

@… Hi, you work in accessibility at Apple, right?
I've found a serious issue with the iPhone's RTT call transcription.
By default, it *saves the transcript* of the call in the call log. This constitutes a recording of the call, and this transcript is saved on the iPhone without the knowledge or consent of the other parties on the call. This is ILLE…

A Note on the Walsh Spectrum of Power Residue S-Boxes
Matthias Johann Steiner
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06808 https://arxiv.org/pdf/…

A Note on the Walsh Spectrum of Power Residue S-Boxes
Let $\mathbb{F}_q$ be a prime field with $q \geq 3$, and let $d, m \geq 1$ be integers such that $\gcd \left( d, q \right) = 1$ and $m \mid (q - 1)$. In this paper we bound the absolute values of the Walsh spectrum of S-Boxes $S (x) = x^d \cdot T \left( x^\frac{q - 1}{m} \right)$, where $T$ is a function with $T (x) \neq 0$ if $x \neq 0$. Such S-Boxes have been proposed for the Zero-Knowledge-friendly hash functions Grendel and Polocolo. In particular, we prove the conjectured correlation of th…

Is PMBOK Guide the Right Fit for AI? Re-evaluating Project Management in the Face of Artificial Intelligence Projects
Alexey Burdakov, Max Jaihyun Ahn
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02214

Is PMBOK Guide the Right Fit for AI? Re-evaluating Project Management in the Face of Artificial Intelligence Projects
This paper critically evaluates the applicability of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide framework to Artificial Intelligence (AI) software projects, highlighting key limitations and proposing tailored adaptations. Unlike traditional projects, AI initiatives rely heavily on complex data, iterative experimentation, and specialized expertise while navigating significant ethical considerations. Our analysis identifies gaps in the PMBOK Guide, including its limited focus on data …

MLLM-Fabric: Multimodal Large Language Model-Driven Robotic Framework for Fabric Sorting and Selection
Liman Wang, Hanyang Zhong, Tianyuan Wang, Shan Luo, Jihong Zhu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04351

MLLM-Fabric: Multimodal Large Language Model-Driven Robotic Framework for Fabric Sorting and Selection
Choosing the right fabric is crucial to meet functional and quality requirements in robotic applications for textile manufacturing, apparel production, and smart retail. We present MLLM-Fabric, a robotic framework powered by multimodal large language models (MLLMs) for fabric sorting and selection. The system includes a robotic arm, a camera, a visuotactile sensor, and a pressure sensor. It employs supervised fine-tuning and multimodal explanation-guided knowledge distillation to accurately cla…

We don’t know about you, but we’re excited for the next instalment of Tech Pizza Monday: Sticker Club!
Bring your stickers, patches and pins for display and potential trading. If you just want to part with them and be happy in the knowledge that they will get the love they deserve, that’s OK too!
#Toronto

Consumer Beware! Exploring Data Brokers' CCPA Compliance
Elina van Kempen, Isita Bagayatkar, Pavel Frolikov, Chloe Georgiou, Gene Tsudik
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21914

Consumer Beware! Exploring Data Brokers' CCPA Compliance
Data brokers collect and sell the personal information of millions of individuals, often without their knowledge or consent. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) grants consumers the legal right to request access to, or deletion of, their data. To facilitate these requests, California maintains an official registry of data brokers. However, the extent to which these entities comply with the law is unclear. This paper presents the first large-scale, systematic study of CCPA compliance of…