Tootfinder

StepFun, a Chinese AI startup that develops LLMs and has partnered with automaker Geely and smartphone brands like Oppo and Honor, raised a ~$717M Series B (Eudora Wang/DealStreetAsia)
https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/stepfun-series-b-round-470495/

Tencent-backed China LLM unicorn StepFun bags $720m in Series B+ round
StepFund expects to deploy its LLMs into over one million vehicles this year.

Multi-round Desktop Linux distribution showdown.
The winner of this round will face Arch on round two.
The distros were chosen based on their popularity from the results of a previous poll and it's replies.
Please consider boosting to obtain a larger sample.
Round one: fight!
#poll #linux

Cowboys named best landing spot for former Steelers first-round bust in free agency https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/dallas-cowboys/news/cowboys-best-landing-spot-former-steelers-first-round-free-…

Multi-round Desktop Linux distribution showdown.
The winner of this round will face nixOS on round two.
The distros were chosen based on their popularity from the results of a previous poll and it's replies.
Please consider boosting to obtain a larger sample.
Round one: fight!
#poll #linux

Round one of snow shoveling done.

Yesterday we devoured some sweets brought over from India 🇮🇳 by the fabulous grumpy @… 🤤

Indiana pipeline fuels Raiders rebuild in latest 3-round mock draft https://raiderramble.com/2026/01/24/indiana-pipeline-fuels-raiders-rebuild-in-latest-3-round-mock-draft/

Carson Schwesinger injury: Browns' leading tackler suffers high ankle sprain, to be reevaluated after bye week

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/carson-

Dieses Hühnersuppenrezept wäre mir denn doch etwas zu aufwändig, aber womöglich möchte sich ja jemand von Euch die Zeit nehmen. Mir reichen eineinhalb Stunden leichtes Blubbern. #nommention

Chicken Soup From Scratch Recipe (Gift Recipe)
Chicken soup is one of the most painless and pleasing recipes a home cook can master. This soup has all the classic flavors (celery, carrot, parsley) but has been updated for today's cooks, who can't easily buy the stewing hen and packet of soup vegetables that old-fashioned recipes used to call for. A whole bird provides the right combination of fat, salt and flavor. Don't be tempted to use all white meat, as the flavor won't be as round. Because making soup involves the bones and deep tissues…

I just bought this rug, but it turns out to be very bitey. What should I do?

The Philippines just secured its first fixed-bottom offshore wind auctions—a major leap for clean energy in Asia.
The GEA-5 program targets 3.3 gigawatts of capacity, focusing on proven technology that can move to construction faster. This strategic approach positions the country as one of Asia's fastest-advancing offshore wind markets.

First Fixed-Bottom Offshore Wind Project Auctions In The Philippines Secured - CleanTechnica
Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe. At the 2025 APAC Wind Energy Summit of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) last September, the Philippines made its strongest commitment yet to building a commercial offshore wind industry (OSW). This month, a breakthrough Green Energy Auction Program Round ... [continued]

Cowboys Get Bad News on 6-foot-8, 327-Pound Former First Round Pick https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/bad-news-offensive-tackle-tyler-guyton/?adt_ei=[email]

One of our favorite year-end features is the #UniversityOfGeorgia photographers' round-up of their favorite photos of the past year. Even when our museum isn't in it, it's fun to see their great work and to read their thoughts on the combination of art and luck that makes for a great photo.

Bell with another round of layoffs. The r/bell thread seems to think 10% across the country. It’s can't actually remember a time when Bell announced they were 'hiring'.
How is this company one of the 'big’ telecoms and yet continues to offload people?
#Bell
https://flipboard.com/@dailyhive/daily-hive-vancouver-ar91atkoz/-/a-IvwInjurQyG1YqTyz8NjVg:a:3765800918-/0

me: "🎶 up up and away in my beautiful my beautiful balloon 🎶"
me: *flies the laundry basket between my wife and her two laptops*
my wife: "OKAY! OKAY! I'LL GO TO BED!"
#CatsOfMastodon #AnnoyingHusbandsOfMastodon

Matchmaking in games just isn't the same. Playing with strangers for one round and never seeing them again feels empty. Dedicated servers were a real place. It was like going to the pub where you saw the same regulars, jerks, and admins every day. You built a community. Without that, gaming feels pretty lonely. #gaming

Antonio Pierce says Shedeur Sanders was one of Raiders 'top choices' before his firing https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6831151/2025/11/23/shedeur-sanders-raiders-browns-antonio-pierce/

Deblock, an app that lets users manage fiat and digital assets in one place by linking a bank account with a self-owned crypto wallet, raised a €30M Series A (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2025/11/19/deblock-secures-eur30m-series…

Deblock secures €30M Series A to expand on-chain banking in Europe
French crypto-banking startup Deblock has secured €30 million in Series A funding led by Speedinvest, alongside CommerzVentures and Latitude. Existing investors 20VC, Headline, Chalfen Ventures, and Kraken Ventures also participated in the round. Deblock offers a fully on-chain banking solution in Europe that combines features of a traditional bank account with on-chain self-custody. By linking a euro current account with a personal, self-owned crypto wallet, the platform allows users t…

One of life’s great struggles—how to both stay in your cozy heated bed and still see what’s going on in the room #catsofmastodon #caturday

Trenches take center stage in 3-round Raiders mock draft https://raiderramble.com/2026/01/20/trenches-take-center-stage-in-3-round-raiders-mock-draft/

I am not resting easy yet.
A bunch of people who are basically straight-up Nazis just got humiliated. They’re hurting, they’re angry, and they’re in my city.
And they’re pants-on-head dumbshits. (One of their posters bemoaned the “erogion [sic] of our rights.”) That’s not a comfort: sometimes that’s the most dangerous kind of right-winger. Their utter amateurishness means they have no sense of constraints and no sense of consequences. I don’t know what they’ll try to do next.
We remain wary and •highly• watchful. But I’m going to take the win on this round.
/end

NFC championship staff predictions: Seahawks vs. Rams final score picks, odds for NFL playoff game

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfc-championship-cbs-sp…

I went to the Australian Open tennis today to see Coco Gauff and Alex De Minaur ease their way into round 2. Gauff had problems with her serve and faced some spirited opposition from the unseeded Rakhimova.
Only blemish on the day was that I decided to remove my bicycle repair kit from the bike (bike parking was fairly crappy, stuck under a bridge) and that proved too much for the Security Theatre at bag check. I’m now down one very blunt multitool, which I asked the security people to…

Friday Links 26-01
First round of links for 2026. Everything is bad, so have some links to cheer you up.

I really liked the article about visibility, the one about Friday deploys, and sitting alone in a café … which I can relate to.
I am a big fan of Bill Nighy's podcast, that certainly will improve your mood.

For some reason, the random section is full of cassette tape related links.

Friday Links 26-01
First round of links for 2026. Everything is bad, so have some links to cheer you up.   I really liked the article about visibility, the one...

Moody Urbanity - TWO 2️⃣
情绪化城市 - 贰 2️⃣
📷 Nikon FE
🎞️ Fujifilm NEOPAN SS, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Antonio Pierce says Shedeur Sanders was one of Raiders 'top choices' before his firing https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6831151/2025/11/23/shedeur-sanders-raiders-browns-antonio-pierce/

The SAQ (Quebec's liquor monopoly) is doing a Spotify style year-end round-up this year. Some of it is a "fun" quiz. Zzzzz.
One of my questions was “did you buy more products from Canada or Sweden this year?”
Hanlon's Razor must have a corollary… right? I can't tell if this is AI slop or [a different kind of] incompetence.
(The SAQ carries 14 products from Sweden; 13 of which are different flavours of Absolut vodka. I did not purchase any of their prod…

One should not sympathize with or idolize anyone, but this person radicalized my views deeply; I cannot speak for others.
Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/rocker-rudolf/misc/anarchism-anarcho-syn…

Good Morning #Canada
Did you know that a Dodecahedron is a 12-letter name for any 12-sided shape. And did you also know that on this day in 1962, the Canadian Government decreed that our dodecahedron nickel was decadent and that round was right. Pre-1962 nickels are now pretty worth a nickel, but a coin in "mint condition" has been known to fetch a few pennies more.
Have you noticed there are more coin buying events in your neighbourhoods over the past few years? Some of that activity is driven by buyers taking advantage of people wanting to sell old jewelry, collectibles, or jars of coins that are sitting in the back of drawers or closets. But the rise of digital transactions, particularly increased during COVID when no one wanted to touch your infected money, has increased the collectible value of coins and, in some cases, the actual metal value exceeds the face value.
#CanadaIsAwesome #Numismatist
http://canadiancoinnews.com/otd-12-sided-five-cent-coin-becomes-round/

So the correct answer is 5 rounding directions, though the last one was added in #C23:
FP_INT_UPWARD / ceil()
FP_INT_DOWNWARD / floor()
FP_INT_TOWARDZERO / trunc()
FP_INT_TONEARESTFROMZERO / round()
FP_INT_TONEAREST / roundeven() (C23)

Sometimes hacking a computer means a whole different thing...
In this use, I'm actually hacking (with a hacksaw) the case apart to add an I/O shield (custom made) so I can fit an older motherboard that was not designed for this case.
And thank you to Gateway for making me do this by not using a removable shield and instead stamping every hole they needed and covering them with a sticker if they weren't on this model. 🤦‍♂️

I usually find year-end top stories round-ups to be insipid and mediocre at best, but this one by @… is first-rate.
https://www.

The biggest cybersecurity and cyberattack stories of 2025
2025 was a big year for cybersecurity, with cyberattacks, data breaches, threat groups reaching new notoriety levels, and, of course, zero-day flaws exploited in breaches. Some stories, though, were more impactful or popular with our readers than others. This article explores 15 of the biggest cybersecurity stories of 2025.

It is always fun when somebody, when estimating something, does not round the estimation :-) From the other side, it is not that cool it means like hour and half of waiting :-(

While I'm wittering on about #books, these are two of my to-read piles. One is in a bookcase as I knew I'd be a while getting round to them. I bought those for 50p a pop at a Christmas bazaar. They often have some mid-century gems but not this time. The other is by the bed, the Active Pile. The top three are proofs sent to a bookshop in town which offers them to

Another #GlasgowByNight pic (the Bell tower of the university of Glasgow)
Taken yesterday by R. Grieves
#Glasgow #UniversityOfGlasgow

Pebble unveils Pebble Round 2 smart watch with a rounded screen and basic health and activity tracking but no heart rate monitor, shipping in May for $199 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/02/pebble-reboots-its-thinnest-…

Pebble reboots its thinnest smartwatch with the Pebble Round 2 | TechCrunch
Pebble launches a $199 smartwatch with rounded screen that can last up to 2 weeks on one charge.

Water pounded Santa Barbara’s coastline on November 6 for the first king tides of the year — flooding beaches and parking lots and jumping the walls of usually dry lookouts at places like Butterfly Beach and Campus Point. 
This weekend marks round two of these extraordinarily high tides,
which occur when the sun, moon, and Earth align, pulling the surf to extreme highs and lows.
They are typically at least one foot above the average high tide, according to the California Co…

Chargers 1-Round Mock Draft: Selecting the pass rusher of the future https://raiderramble.com/2025/12/16/chargers-1-round-mock-draft-selecting-the-pass-rusher-of-the-future/

NFL wild-card round by the numbers: What to know about thrilling weekend of playoff games https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6965133/2026/01/13/nfl-wild-card-round-numbers-interesting-facts/

Beyond Revenue and Welfare: Counterfactual Analysis of Spectrum Auctions with Application to Canada's 3800MHz Allocation
Sara Jalili Shani, Kris Joseph, Michael B. McNally, James R. Wright
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08106 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.08106 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.08106
arXiv:2512.08106v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Spectrum auctions are the primary mechanism through which governments allocate scarce radio frequencies, with outcomes that shape competition, coverage, and innovation in telecommunications markets. While traditional models of spectrum auctions often rely on strong equilibrium assumptions, we take a more parsimonious approach by modeling bidders as myopic and straightforward: in each round, firms simply demand the bundle that maximizes their utility given current prices. Despite its simplicity, this model proves effective in predicting the outcomes of Canada's 2023 auction of 3800 MHz spectrum licenses. Using detailed round-by-round bidding data, we estimate bidders' valuations through a linear programming framework and validate that our model reproduces key features of the observed allocation and price evolution. We then use these estimated valuations to simulate a counterfactual auction under an alternative mechanism that incentivizes deployment in rural and remote regions, aligning with one of the key objectives set out in the Canadian Telecommunications Act. The results show that the proposed mechanism substantially improves population coverage in underserved areas. These findings demonstrate that a behavioral model with minimal assumptions is sufficient to generate reliable counterfactual predictions, making it a practical tool for policymakers to evaluate how alternative auction designs may influence future outcomes. In particular, our study demonstrates a method for counterfactual mechanism design, providing a framework to evaluate how alternative auction rules could advance policy goals such as equitable deployment across Canada.
toXiv_bot_toot

An LLM generates a statistically typical response.
If you ask an LLM whether the world is round, it generates what would be a typical response to the question of whether the world is round. (It will probably be correct, because the typical answer to that question is the correct one.)
If you ask an LLM to provide examples of its own bias, it will generate what would be a typical response to a request to provide examples of bias.
In neither case is the LLM sharing any knowledge or insight other than what is typical.
2/

I might just have ordered a #pebble round 2. I hope it will feel as awesome as the last one did back in 2015.

#Gentoo #jobserver revealed another problem with steve in particular, and (I believe) the jobserver protocol in general: blocking clients are prioritized over polling clients.
The problem is simple: when handling blocking reads, steve can issue a job token immediately. When handling a poll, it merely indicates that a token is available, and the client must issue another read request to get it. So if tokens are scarce and there are both blocking and polling clients running, the former are likely to be taking all the incoming tokens.
My idea of working around this is to implement temporary reservations. If a client polls for a token, we reserve one for it. The reserved token can afterwards be only read by the same client. This way, both blocking and polling clients get a token — the former get it immediately, the latter get it reserved for them. And if there are no tokens available, both get into a single FIFO queue, for a poor man's round-robin (steve also throttles all reads to one token at a time).
However, polls technically don't guarantee that the client will eventually read the token, so we need to handle reservation expirations as well.

A few pictures from yesterday night at the #39C3
(License: CC BY-SA 4.0)

Agent's Take: Texans should be all in with new Will Anderson Jr. contract, but tread lightly with C.J. Stroud

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/agents-take-texans-will-…

HBO is the perfect match for It: Welcome to Derry. The good news is I am not dead inside - two or three jump scares got me good 😀 I love the sixties setting.
#ItWelcometoDerry #TV

Minor kerfuffle with #evlife charging at my parents means it's going to be a two stop strategy getting home today. At least my policy of always having my #steamdeck when travelling pays off. To get to 80% charge is about one round of Vampire Survivors 😉

Cowboys 2026 NFL draft watch, Caleb Downs scouting report https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/onsi/news/cowboys-2026-nfl-draft-watch-caleb-downs-scouting-report

'Best defense' steals show in Texans' wild-card win https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47596595/defense-carries-texans-steelers-divisional-round-vs-patriots

Has time run out on once-prized Raiders’ first round pick? https://raiderramble.com/2026/01/08/has-time-run-out-on-once-prized-raiders-first-round-pick/

NFL playoff picks: Score predictions and matchup analysis for every Wild Card Round game https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-playoff-picks-wild-card-round-2025-nfl-season

Sources: Aaru, which uses AI to simulate user behavior, has raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures at multiple valuation tiers, including a $1B tier (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/05/ai-syntheti…

Sources: AI synthetic research startup Aaru raised a Series A at a $1B 'headline' valuation | TechCrunch
The one-year-old startup, which does market research on simulated populations, had a multi-tier valuation round, sources tell TechCrunch.

Today's #Connections #webgame has a nice rainbow round (a gotcha/bonus category, unrelated to the true categories, which features one item from each group; this is my own term).
It's quite clever (and obscure—ConnectionsBot says it fooled 1% of all players and it's not in the top 30 erro…

Cowboys 2026 NFL draft watch, Jermod McCoy scouting report https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/onsi/draft/cowboys-2026-nfl-draft-watch-jermod-mccoy-scouting-report

Printed a case for my Flipper Zero WiFi Board
#FlipperZero #3Dprint #3Dprinting #3Ddruck

What Carroll Must Do to Prepare Raiders for Round 2 vs. Broncos https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-pete-carroll-prepare-round-2-broncos

Carnell Tate declares for NFL Draft: Ohio State WR projects as potential first-round pick

https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/carnell-tate-dec…

One Winning Draft Scenario Revealed For Raiders https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-one-winning-draft-scenario-revealed

Cowboys Willing to Trade Ex-First Round Pick Before Deadline: Insider https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/mazi-smith-available-trade/?adt_ei=[email]

Which NFC team has edge for No. 1 seed? Rams lead way but six teams have real shot to rise up

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfc-team-no-1-seed-rams-six-teams-nfl-playoffs/…

I got a #TRMNL e-ink display wotsit thingy (apologies for getting all technical there) not long ago, and now I'm getting round to setting it up.
One of the nice things is that as well as all the dashboards provided by the company, there are a load provided by the community that you can just load up, customise & use.
But I was shocked -- SHOCKED I tell you -- to discover that so far nobody has created a "When Is Bins?" dashboard.
I think I have found my latest project!
#TRMNL

Raiders Sign Former First-Round Pick One Day After Being Released https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/jamin-davis-roster-signing-news/?adt_ei=[email]

We're already looking ahead to the NFL divisional round, plus Texas' big win https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6962549/2026/01/12/nfl-wild-card-49ers-patriots-bills-the-pulse/

NFL wild-card round staff picks: 2 coin-flips, 5 close spreads, 2 historic rivalries https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6951123/2026/01/08/nfl-wild-card-staff-picks-playoffs-betting/

Bills-Jets takeaways: Buffalo gets one last win in Highmark Stadium https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6940369/2026/01/04/jets-bills-score-result-takeaways-nfl-week-18/

Cowboys Trade Idea Swaps Osa Odighizuwa for Defensive Superstar https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/osa-odighizuwa-trade-swap-maxx-crosby/

Ravens acquire Titans LB Dre’Mont Jones for fifth-round pick: Source https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6775103/2025/11/03/ravens-titans-trade-dremont-jones/

Raiders’ Pete Carroll Gives QB Update Ahead of Eagles Game https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/pete-carroll-starting-quarterback-update-eagles/?adt_ei=[email]

Raiders’ Kenny Pickett Gets Blunt Words Amid Geno Smith Injury https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/kenny-pickett-geno-smith-injury/?adt_ei=[email]

NFL wild-card odds, spreads: Rams huge favorites; Packers-Bears and Bills-Jaguars nearly even https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6942325/2026/01/05/nfl-wild-card-week-odds-rams-packers-bears/