Tootfinder

⚡️Europe will use Russian assets to support Ukraine! – Zelenskyy: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/24/europe-will-use-russian-assets.html

"Global use of coal hit record high in 2024"
#FossilFuels #Climate #ClimateChange

Broncos use fourth-down bluff, clutch TD to down Chiefs in yet another one-possession win https://www.nfl.com/news/broncos-use-fourth-down-bluff-clutch-td-to-down-chiefs-in-yet-another-one-possession-win

A survey of US adults on social media: 84% use YouTube, 71% use Facebook, 50% use Instagram, 37% use TikTok, 32% use WhatsApp, 26% use Reddit, and 21% use X (Pew Research Center)
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/11/20/americans-social-media-use-2025/…

Americans’ Social Media Use 2025
YouTube remains the most popular, but adults are increasingly using Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp and Reddit. Use of some platforms varies by age, gender, and race and ethnicity.

Elgin joins communities looking to ban use of their property for ICE activities
https://www.dailyherald.com/20251024/news/elgin-joins-communities-looking-to-ban-use-of-their-property-for-ice-activities/

Idk who needs to hear this, but don't use Google's Chrome browser.
Some easy to use, fast and compatible alternatives are Firefox (cross-platform) or Safari on macOS/iOS.
Also more esoteric browsers based on Firefox like LibreWolf or the Tor Browser; I can't vouch for these as I don't use them personally.
(Whatever you do, don't use Brave, it's made by a bigot homophobe with money from Peter Thiel.)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/10/21/phased-out-google-confirms-bad-news-for-all-3-billion-chrome-users/

Blogged about my new take on Hierarchical data in CLI, scripts and code. And a look into the future direction I want for solving a particular configuration management use case.
https://choria.io/blog/post/2025/11/25/hierarchical_data/

🌴 Making LAZY plants stand up: Research reveals new pathway plants use to detect gravity
#plants <…

Making LAZY plants stand up: Research reveals new pathway plants use to detect gravity
A study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has revealed a previously unknown pathway plants use to detect gravity and orient the direction they grow in. Publishing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study may one day open the door for improvements in crop cultivation.

More Americans are expected to use weight-loss pill due to ease of use, cheaper price
A Cornell study shows spending drops at grocery stores and restaurants, post-GLP-1 adoption
Companies adapt with high-protein, GLP-1 friendly labels and smaller portions

How Russia could use any "free zone" against Ukraine #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/24/how-russia-could-use-any.html

Belgian AI scientists resist the use of AI in academia https://apache.be/2025/10/24/belgian-a

Belgian AI scientists resist the use of AI in academia
Several AI scientists have published an open letter calling for a ban on AI use by students.

ok, I lasted like a week before manually add ll="ls -lah --color" to my .zprofile.
Yes, I know, dotfiles.
Anyone have a dotfiles approach that I'll actually use? MacOS primary, don't really care about syncing it elsewhere, I use homebrew.
I'd be open to some new shell thingie.
#dotfiles

Oreo-maker Mondelez plans to use a generative AI tool in which it has invested $40M to cut marketing campaign costs by 30%-50% (Jessica DiNapoli/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/oreo-maker-…

Use DraftKings promo code to get $200 bonus bets by targeting Chiefs-Broncos, Lakers-Rockets on Christmas

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/use-dra

"Don't use curl -o /dev/null (or -o nul on Windows) because it's not portable, use curl -IXGET instead"
Can you imagine…
So out of morbid curiosity, what platforms is curl available on that don't have a /dev/null (or nul)?

Gave up on Apple Containers for the time being. Just too unpredictable and unmanageable networking.
Was mainly using it to run a local Pihole container to filter out ads. Was recommended to use Podman as a drop-in replacement because I can't use Docker Desktop. But Podman uses a VM to host the containers and that VM does already bind on Port 53 for its container DNS resolution. So ended up using a small VM with UTM virtualisation app that runs the Pihole container in an Alpine Li…

When I design physical objects, I think in boxes and simple, usually circular-section curves. This has been true when I freehand build physical objects, as well as when I model things on the computer. Fillets are about as crazy as I get.
I'm in awe of artists whose design imaginations extend to "organic" shapes.
Reminds me of music a bit. I was a reasonably good high school musician. Played multiple instruments; did fine in music competition on several of them. That's just en…

On the SIKP 2000 A1 Portable Induction Hob: Review (2010) - See how easy this one-pan portable induction hob is to use! How does it compare with a built-in induction hob? #cleanAir #induction #cutCarbon

On the SIKP 2000 A1 Portable Induction Hob: Review (2010)
See how easy this one-pan portable induction hob is to use! How does it compare with a built-in induction hob? #cleanAir #induction #cutCarbon

"This Michigan Avenue Trail project will upgrade the existing sidewalk facility on the north side of Michigan Avenue NE from Harewood Road NE to Monroe Street NE (.2 miles), expanding the 5-foot sidewalk to a 10-foot-wide shared-use path and connecting to the trail on the West side of Harewood Road NE."
#bike

baseball: Baseball steroid use (2008)
Two networks representing steroid use among baseball players. First, a bipartite network of players and their steroid providers (of illegal performance-enhancing substances). Second, a one-mode projection of players, which are linked if they have a common supplier.
This network has 72 nodes and 1089 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted, Projection

I’m about to finally get my act together and move my little-used Google Workspace account elsewhere. Is there anyone who would recommend something other than Protonmail for mail? I have file storage covered and don’t need calendars. I want to use a custom domain and a way to use IMAP clients is just about a must. #askfedi

⚡ Escape hatch exists: #[AllowDynamicProperties] attribute opts into old behavior. Use ONLY for legacy vendor code or gradual migration with a removal plan. Never use for new code.
📊 Timeline: PHP 8.1 = allowed | PHP 8.2 = deprecated warning | PHP 9.0 = fatal error. Start fixing now!
🎯 Migration strategy: Run PHPStan/Psalm analysis, fix domain models first (critical), then controllers/services, then DTOs. Add static analysis to CI pipeline to prevent regression.

1. Plan going to Opole, via Kościan.
2. When you enter the train to Kościan, you discover that the change to Opole is delayed 15 minutes already. Consider changing in Leszno instead; if the delay increases, you'd have more options there.
3. Discover that there aren't any more options in Leszno today. Your change is delayed 30 minutes already. Return the reservations, and take one the other way, to Poznań instead.
4. Train station in Kościan. The displays aren't showing any delays, trains are announced normally. Tell people about the delays, so they won't stand in the -10°C waiting for the train to arrive.
5. Take the train to Poznań, and try to figure out what to do next.
6. Discover that the only reasonable choice going forward is Inowrocław: no delays and good return connection. It's the same train, so take another reservation. Your current seat is already taken there, so move elsewhere.
7. Your train should be followed by another one in the same direction, that departs from Poznań 6 minutes later. However, your train ends up waiting for another delayed train, so the other train goes first. The delay further increases as your train needs to slow down after the other train.
8. Reach Inowrocław 10 minutes later. That's not a problem, since you didn't have enough to see for all the time there anyway.
9. Discover that the town is more interesting than you thought, and you'd use more time.
10. When you almost get to the station, discover that your train is 10 minutes late. Not that you have any use for that time at this point.
11. When you're at the station, the train keeps increasing delay while waiting at the previous station, in Bydgoszcz. The station displays are completely useless, as they show only a random subset of regional trains, for no apparent reason. The announcements include all trains, but are rarely given.
12. The delay keeps increasing. Start thinking about getting a reservation for the next train to Poznań, in case it arrived first. You can't return the reservation after the planned departure time, and you can't have two reservations simultaneously, so reserve the seat from Mogilno, the next station.
13. The next train arrives first. While on board, you discover that you're not going to have any train home for 1.5 hr. Take another seat reservation to Leszno, where you can change into a suburban train and get home 15 minutes earlier than from Poznań. This time, your seat is still free.
14. The train departs 15 minutes delayed from Poznań. After all, you're changing trains in Kościan.
So I was going to go south, to Opole, via Kościan. Instead, I've ended up slingshotting north to Inowrocław, and getting back home via the same train as if I were in Opole.
#rail

LOL I stepped away from Mastodon for a couple hours and everybody is VERY MAD that I made jokes about CLIs. I use them every day, guys, it's gonna be okay. I promise I did not hurt Zork's feelings. It is, however, a factual statement that CLIs are not discoverable user interfaces and they are a poor choice for mainstream audiences; this debate was settled long ago.

I don’t want to embarrass him - but as an example of Christmas cheer and the awesome powers/generosity of Mastodon’s people - @… told me he’d been exploring other gear / areas of music as of late, and so his ‘3rd Wave’ wasn’t getting much use (despite being a deeply amazing synth.) So, would I like to make use it for a period?
The machine is already eve…

Unfortunately, the idea for a #Rust #Clippy rule to forbid all expect and #unwrap use is still open.

Lint idea: forbid all expect and unwrap use · Issue #6636 · rust-lang/rust-clippy
What it does It would be nice to have a restriction lint (i.e., totally opt-in) that allows clippy users to completely ban all expect and unwrap use from a codebase. Functions or other items that a...

“As we consider these three risks, we don’t have to speculate about how AI data centers might affect Massachusetts. Consider Ireland, a country with a similar population size, where AI has driven a data center boom. Warehouses full of servers are on pace to use one-third of Ireland’s electricity, drawing from fossil-fuel power plants and wind farms alike. That keeps old, dirty plants on the grid, sucks up renewable energy that otherwise would help replace fossil fuels, and drives up costs fo…

Use #Python for #Scripting!
https://hypirion.com/musings/use-python-for-scripting

Was wondering how to use Subresource Integrity with dynamic import() — thought maybe there was a path forward using import attributes (no) but I did stumble across this excellent post about using it with Import Maps (from @…):

😮‍💨 Delta-8 THC use highest where marijuana is illegal, study finds
#drugs

Delta-8 THC use highest where marijuana is illegal, study finds
Researchers from University of California San Diego have found that Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-8 THC), a psychoactive compound often sold as a legal alternative to marijuana, is most commonly used in states where marijuana use remains illegal and delta-8 THC sales are unregulated. The findings, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, highlight how gaps in cannabis policy may be inadvertently steering people toward less-regulated substances and have allowed manufacture…

Pedagogically Motivated and Composable Open-Source RISC-V Processors for Computer Science Education
Ian McDougall, Harish Batchu, Michael Davies, Karthikeyan Sankaralingam
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20514

Pedagogically Motivated and Composable Open-Source RISC-V Processors for Computer Science Education
While most instruction set architectures (ISAs) are only available to use through the purchase of a restrictive commercial license, the RISC-V ISA presents a free and open-source alternative. Due to this availability, many free and open-source implementations have been developed and can be accessed on platforms such as GitHub. If an open source, easy-to-use, and robust RISC-V implementation could be obtained, it could be easily adapted for pedagogical and amateur use. In this work we accomplish…

Microsoft unveils Fara-7B, its first agentic SLM designed for computer use, available as an experimental release on Hugging Face and Microsoft Foundry (Ben Dickson/VentureBeat)
https://venturebeat.com/ai/microsofts-fara-7b-is-a-computer-u…

Yeah, _that's_ going to happen...
#UkraineWar
"When the war is over, Ukraine would repay the EU using theoretical compensation received from Russia for the invasion. "
EU has a plan to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine – how will it work? | European Union | The Guardian

EU has a plan to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine – how will it work?
What are the legal implications, and why does Belgium fear being left alone with the bill?

When a user doesn't understand your product, they can't use it. But when the team doesn't understand their own product, then NO ONE can.
We neglected the conceptual layer of software development, and products have devolved from a coherent experience into Proper Noun soup. To unwind this self-inflicted problem, we must stop "optimizing" for just one part of the job.
Here's how.
(this is a much deeper problem than "just UX vs UI")

When teams don't understand their own product
A usable product starts with the conceptual model, but designers have "optimized" that work out of the profession. It's time to bring it back.

I do sometimes use the trick of pretending to be looking at my phone while crossing the street to make drivers more likely to stop
One time though I had one play chicken accelerating at me. I shouted stop and they heckled me through their window saying they did it to teach me a lesson. Lesson learned: cars suck

It’s unbelievable how quickly the USA is going down the drain, private friends paying the military, absurd and opening the door for corruption …https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/24/politics/anonymous-donor-military-pay-shutdown

Pentagon to use $130 million donation from anonymous Trump ‘friend’ to pay military members
The Trump administration plans to funnel a $130 million donation from an anonymous ally of President Donald Trump toward paying military service members during the government shutdown, the Defense Department confirmed on Friday.

Don’t let the headline fool you, it’s just boring testing results:
“The Value of Selecting Selects by Value”
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/11/the-value-of-selecting-selects-by-value.html

The Value of Selecting Selects by Value
This is meant to use voice control to test select menus (and other fields, but the title would be less weird) by their value because their accessible names are hidden. I’m sharing results of that testing. This was partially driven by: WCAG issue #3808 SC 3.3.2: Labels or Instructions and…

Here’s a good analysis by Gartner and The Next Platform that tries to make sense of spending on AI predictions over the next few years. “if you add devices to datacenter stuff, then AI drove 19.6 percent of IT revenues in 2024 and will drive 27.2 percent of IT revenues in 2025 and 34.1 percent in 2026.” h…

Dicing, Slicing, And Augmenting Gartner’s AI Spending Forecast
When we try to predict the weather, we use ensembles of the initial conditions on the ground, in the oceans, and throughout the air to create a kind of

Might as well use the extra hour tonight to play some more Shantae - The Half Genie Hero.
#Nintendo #Shantae

I've been thinking a bit about historians' use of theory. I've decided it's often similar to a comment a cafeteria worker made to me decades ago. They were serving chili dogs and I asked if I could just have a bowl of chili instead. "Oh no, dear," she said, "this is chili dog chili, it's not for eating." I've long suspected that a good chunk of my field thinks of theory along these lines. We put it on the menu and let our students consume it, even …

Bailey pairs and quantum $q$-series identites. I. The classical identities
Jehanne Dousse, Jeremy Lovejoy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21230 https://arxiv.or…

Bailey pairs and quantum $q$-series identites. I. The classical identities
We use Bailey pairs to prove $q$-series identities at roots of unity due to Cohen and Bryson-Ono-Pitman-Rhoades. The proofs use Bailey pairs with quadratic forms developed in the study of mock theta functions. In addition to the standard Bailey lemma, we require some changes-of-base established by Bressoud-Ismail-Stanton. We then embed the identities in infinite families using the Bailey chain.

There's a study indicating that a cheap nasal spray that is already on the market (for allergies) can reduce Covid 19 infection risk by ~2/3rd, and also reduce other respiratorial infections. I'm somewhat torn between "too good to be true" and "any reason I shouldn't immediately buy and use this?"
Anyone read any insightful (and particularly: skeptical, caveats) takes on it?

Azelastine Nasal Spray for Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 Infections
This randomized clinical trial evaluates the efficacy of azelastine as a preexposure prophylaxis against SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory pathogens.

My solution to the problem @… mentions:
1. Make password the •only• login field. No username/email! Just password, and you’re in!
2. Because they now identify users, passwords must to be unique across all users in a system.
3. For security reasons, require passwords to be unique across all sites on the entire Internet. A password can be used at most once in human history.
4. This renders account recovery impossible in many cases.
5. Over time, users are thus able to use fewer and fewer sites, eventually being forced offline altogether.
6. Success!
https://mastodon.social/@jwz/115776511391611416

Trump to Use $130 Million Donation to Help Pay Troops (Greg Jaffe/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/us/politics/trump-military-pay-donation.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/251025/p32#a251025p32

These are the photos for my 2026 calendar. Got the proofs today. Should have the hard copies in 2 weeks. Always agonizing to pick 13 of my photos for the next one. The last few years I’ve had to use older ones too. I don’t get out to shoot as much anymore. I’m hoping that will improve. I’ve volunteered to be a photographer for the city park dept. I’ll take pics of people engaged in the parks and activities, and whatever else I see.

My Steam end of year stats for 2025 (they're a pain in the dick to find and access, you gotta be logged in, use desktop version, and this link: https://store.steampowered.com/replay/my/2025). The genres are so weird, too. 'Gore'? 🤔 sure, okay. Played a lot of rodent games, and…

I heard somebody use the phrase "california sober" earlier today. It took me too long to realize what that meant.

Fun fact: the military, when they're paid by a third party for their service, are called "mercenaries".
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/24/politics/anonymous-donor-military-pay-shutdown

Pentagon to use $130 million donation from anonymous Trump ‘friend’ to pay military members
The Trump administration plans to funnel a $130 million donation from an anonymous ally of President Donald Trump toward paying military service members during the government shutdown, the Defense Department confirmed on Friday.

Do you (sometimes) use print() or message() for debugging your code? Next time you can use {icecream} instead: #rstats

Ice Cream for R Programmers - Turtletopia: a blog about programming in R
Icecream is a tool which may serve as a more sophisticated replacement of using print while debugging.

The Use of the Simplex Architecture to Enhance Safety in Deep-Learning-Powered Autonomous Systems
Federico Nesti, Niko Salamini, Mauro Marinoni, Giorgio Maria Cicero, Gabriele Serra, Alessandro Biondi, Giorgio Buttazzo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21014

The Use of the Simplex Architecture to Enhance Safety in Deep-Learning-Powered Autonomous Systems
Recently, the outstanding performance reached by neural networks in many tasks has led to their deployment in autonomous systems, such as robots and vehicles. However, neural networks are not yet trustworthy, being prone to different types of misbehavior, such as anomalous samples, distribution shifts, adversarial attacks, and other threats. Furthermore, frameworks for accelerating the inference of neural networks typically run on rich operating systems that are less predictable in terms of tim…

Blast from the past!
Writing firmware on my first laptop, for the PIC12F683 (the first microcontroller I ever used), on my first embedded project ever (robotic rubber band gun turret) freshman year of college, bodged together on perf board.
The UART and servo PWM were both bitbanged because the PIC12F683 didn't have any UARTs and I hadn't learned how to use the timer block yet.

A survey of US adults on social media: 84% use YouTube, 71% Facebook, 50% Instagram, 37% TikTok, 32% WhatsApp, 26% Reddit, 25% Snapchat, 21% X, and 8% Threads (Pew Research Center)
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/11/20/americans-social-media-use-202…

Americans’ Social Media Use 2025
YouTube remains the most popular, but adults are increasingly using Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp and Reddit. Use of some platforms varies by age, gender, and race and ethnicity.

Half of ICE's recruits couldn't pass an open book test... including allowing candidates to use their notes from the course they took.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/new-ice-recruits-showed-training-full-vetting-rcna2…

Time For 9 o'clock #HashTagGames hosted by @… Let's play!
#FineArtFood

Performance Consistency of Learning Methods for Information Retrieval Tasks
Meng Yuan, Justin Zobel
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20804 https://arxiv.org/pdf/…

Performance Consistency of Learning Methods for Information Retrieval Tasks
A range of approaches have been proposed for estimating the accuracy or robustness of the measured performance of IR methods. One is to use bootstrapping of test sets, which, as we confirm, provides an estimate of variation in performance. For IR methods that rely on a seed, such as those that involve machine learning, another approach is to use a random set of seeds to examine performance variation. Using three different IR tasks we have used such randomness to examine a range of traditional s…

I can at least configure GrapheneOS in such a way that I can block app installations entirely in secondary profiles and use my main profile as an admin account for installing, updating and forwarding all these apps to other users
For me, the hardest part is dealing with social media, the fear of missing out is strong. But hey, what can you do? I'm aiming to gradually shift toward a lifestyle mostly based on using Tor.
See you all another day.

The salt we use for cooking that doesnt have anything added to it (my wife reacts to things like cleaning agents and solvents used for manufacturing iodized salt) has doubled in price in 2023.
hashtag gopflation

🚬 How frequently young adults use cannabis may predict their binge drinking
#drugs

How frequently young adults use cannabis may predict their binge drinking
Changing cannabis use frequency may predict changes in binge drinking frequency among young adults, according to a new study that illuminates shifts in substance use across early adulthood. The findings imply opportunities for targeted interventions to prevent and treat binge drinking, a behavior linked to a range of negative consequences, including alcohol use disorder (AUD) and high economic costs.

🚀 PHP 8 feature: Constructor property promotion simplifies everything. Write public function __construct(public readonly string $customerId, public readonly array $items) {} - clean, typed, immutable.
💎 #Laravel specific: Use $fillable arrays and $casts for Eloquent models. Use Attribute accessors for computed properties. Never add undefined properties directly to models.

Use DraftKings promo code to get $300 bonus bets, free NBA League Pass by backing Thunder, Vikings, Nuggets

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/use-dra

Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles announced a flash flood warning for the region beginning on Tuesday
and is urging people to use caution while traveling for the upcoming holiday.
The city is also deploying staff with the Los Angeles homeless services authority (Lahsa) to get supplies and hotel vouchers to those living outside.

Pentagon to use $130 million donation from anonymous Trump ‘friend’ to pay military members
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/24/politics/anonymous-donor-military-pay-shutdown

#API #Pagination: Techniques, Real-World Applications And Best Practices
https://engineeringatscale.su…

Pentagon to use $130 million donation from anonymous Trump 'friend' to pay military members (Adam Cancryn/CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/24/politics/anonymous-donor-military-pay-shutdown
http://www.memeorandum.com/251024/p93#a251024p93

Just tried Edgelight on my Mac... it really does make a difference. I have a small light on a Sanui tripod that I used to use for calls, but I won't need it for that any more 😎
#Edgelight #Apple #MacOS26

San Franciscans! Here's a petition you can sign asking Mayor Lurie and the board of supervisors to fund social housing. You might have seen the flyers around the city.
We voted to fund it with 2020's Prop I, but for obscure reasons of state law, the use of the revenue wasn't legally binding, only intended. And then-Mayor Breed refused to do it. But we can fund it now!

Fund San Francisco's Social Housing Program with Prop I Property Transfer Tax Revenue, as Promised!
In 2020, San Francisco voters passed Prop I which levied a transfer tax on properties worth over $10 million dollars. The Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution assuring voters it was their intention to spend the revenue from the new tax on a Social Housing Program. Social Housing is housing that is municipally-owned (or non-profit owned), permanently affordable, and available to a wider mix income than traditional public housing. Mayor Breed overruled the Board of Supervisors a…

I paid for Pocket Casts Web 11 years ago (before either Automattic or NPR owned it). I use it 5 days per week for roughly 4 hours per day. I think that I got maximum value out of the $9 that I paid.
#PocketCasts #Automattic #NPR

Use DraftKings promo code to get $200 bonus bets, free NBA League Pass for Browns-Raiders, Buccaneers-Rams

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/use-dra

Time For 9 o'clock #HashTagGames hosted by @… Let's play!
#NonsenseASongOrPoem

A look at how tech executives use "delay, deny, and deflect" when pressed on user safety and what it means for journalism, as shame loses power over public life (Casey Newton/Platformer)
https://www.platformer.news/roblox-ceo-interview-backlash-analysis/<…

Roblox is a problem — but it’s a symptom of something worse
What is the role of tech journalism in a world where CEOs no longer feel shame?

I don't know who needs to hear this but:
[Joe Pesci voice]
Don't you fucken ask a fucken AI if your thanksgiving turkey is done use a motherfucken meat thermometer you fucken fuck

Oh, my:
Charlie Kirk's widow vows to use Turning Point USA to put JD Vance in White House - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/erika-kirk-jd-vance/

Internal email: CBS' standards department told staff to use the Kennedy Center name, saying the change to Trump Kennedy Center needs Congressional approval (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2025/12/23/kennedy-center-honors-cbs-bro…

On CBS, it was still the Kennedy Center Honors 
The network kept the Kennedy Center’s original name in its broadcast, and CBS News instructed staff to do the same, an email shows.

Pentagon to use $130 million anonymous donation to help pay troops (Brianna Tucker/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/24/military-salaries-donation-trump/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251025/p26#a251025p26

The A.C.L.U. challenge accuses the current administration of housing small numbers of men at Guantšnamo, rather then in U.S. facilities,
as part of a messaging strategy
“to frighten immigrants, deter future migration, induce self-deportation and coerce people in detention to give up claims against removal and accept deportation elsewhere.”
It has called conditions inhumane, and the detainees’ access to legal counsel inadequate.
The administration contends that the de…

Trump Official Says U.S. Can House Migrants at All of Its Overseas Bases
A Justice Department lawyer made the claim in response to a challenge to the administration’s use of the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to hold detainees designated for deportation.

The robo-advisory market, which includes companies that use AI tools to help investors pick stocks, is expected to grow from $61.75B in 2024 to $470.91B by 2029 (Joice Alves/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/c

#Gmail can read your emails and attachments to #train its #AI, unless you opt out

Time For 9 o'clock #HashTagGames hosted by @… Let's play!
#DaughtersASongOrPoem

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115604873348659045
Maybe you think all of this is irrelevant now, who gives a fuck about a media format more than 50 years old?
Well, fun fact, the design of SD cards is referencing the design of floppy disks, and were specifically made thin enough to be used in floppy adapters (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath).
Yes, they made an adapter to stick your SD card in and read and write it in a standard floppy disk drive; though you would need to install special software to use it (ironically that software probably came on a CD).
Why would they do such a thing? Because there was no (widespread) USB.

How inaccurate AI translations of Wikipedia pages, which AI models use for training, may cause a doom spiral that further marginalizes vulnerable languages (Jacob Judah/MIT Technology Review)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/25/11240…

How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral
Machine translators have made it easier than ever to create error-plagued Wikipedia articles in obscure languages. What happens when AI models get trained on junk pages?

Vought promised to use the shutdown to shutter the bureaucracy. It didn't go as planned. (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/25/hhs-shutdown-layoffs-doge-vought-00620786
http://www.memeorandum.com/251025/p38#a251025p38

Bari Weiss says she wants CBS News to redraw "the lines of what falls in the 40 yard lines of acceptable debate", such as elevating voices like Alan Dershowitz (@dropsitenews)
https://x.com/dropsitenews/status/1993154653941362892

Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) on X
Bari Weiss says she wants to use her new perch at CBS News to “redraw the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in American political and cultural life. She says the aim is to sideline voices like Hasan Piker, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and elevate

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Colombia will use drones to destroy coca crops as it grapples with record cocaine production | Financial Post
https://financialpost.com/pmn/colombia-will-use-drones-to-destroy-coca-crops-as-it-grapples-with-record-cocaine-production

🌞 Dual use of land for solar energy production and cultivation found feasible in Finland
... few people realize what a win agrivoltaics are for farmers and the environment!
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-dual-solar-energy-production-cultivation.ht…

Dual use of land for solar energy production and cultivation found feasible in Finland
Open farmlands are ideal locations for installing solar panels, but the most common method, which involves covering a large area with south-facing panels, prevents the field from being used for simultaneous farming. The panels can also be installed vertically, allowing crops to be grown in the same field. However, this solution is still rare in Finland.

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Amazon unveils its Autonomous Threat Analysis system, born from a 2024 internal hackathon, to use AI agents competing in teams to identify vulnerabilities (Lily Hay Newman/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-autonomous-threat-analysis/

Amazon Is Using Specialized AI Agents for Deep Bug Hunting
Born out of an internal hackathon, Amazon’s Autonomous Threat Analysis system uses a variety of specialized AI agents to detect weaknesses and propose fixes to the company’s platforms.

Nvidia refuted accounting questions in a memo to analysts, saying "Unlike Enron, NVIDIA does not use Special Purpose Entities to hide debt and inflate revenue" (Tae Kim/Barron's Online)
https://www.barrons.com/articles/nvidia-st…

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Anthropic launches Claude Opus 4.5, which the company says is "the best model in the world for coding, agents, and computer use" (Anthropic)
https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-5

Introducing Claude Opus 4.5
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

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Sources: JPMorgan plans to allow institutional clients globally to use their holdings of bitcoin and ether as collateral for loans by end of year (Emily Nicolle/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-24/jpmor…

JPMorgan to Allow Bitcoin, Ether as Collateral in Crypto Push
JPMorgan Chase & Co. plans to allow institutional clients to use their holdings of Bitcoin and Ether as collateral for loans by the end of the year in a significant deepening of Wall Street’s crypto integration.

Glasgow-based Chemify, which combines AI with robotics and chemistry to rapidly make novel molecules for pharmaceutical companies, raised a $50M Series B (Alex Scott/Chemical & Engineering News)
https://cen.acs.org/business/informatics/AI-drug-…

AI drug synthesizer Chemify raises $50 million
Scottish firm will use the cash to advance its AI platform and robotics system to rapidly make novel molecules

Chinese humanoid robot startup Galbot raised over $300M led by China Mobile's industry investment fund at a $3B valuation, bringing its total funding to $800M (Eudora Wang/DealStreetAsia)
https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/galbot-raises-over-300m-467245

Chinese humanoid robot developer Galbot raises $300m at $3b valuation
The financing will accelerate the adoption of the robots across different use cases.

Character.AI launches Stories, which lets users create interactive fiction and is the company's "first new format created specifically" for users under 18 (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/25/char

Character AI will offer interactive 'Stories' to kids instead of open-ended chat | TechCrunch
The company announced last month that it would no longer allow minors to use its chat features.

Oreo maker Mondelez has spent $40M on an AI tool, developed with Publicis and Accenture, to cut costs for the production of marketing content by 30% to 50% (Jessica DiNapoli/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-tel

Sources: Google has begun pitching customers, including Meta and big financial institutions, on the idea of using TPUs in their own data centers (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-encroaches-nvidias-turf-new-ai-chip-push

Google Further Encroaches on Nvidia’s Turf With New AI Chip Push
Google is picking up the pace of its efforts to compete directly with Nvidia in the AI chip business. For years, the search giant has rented its own AI chips, known as tensor processing units, to cloud customers who use them in its Google Cloud data centers. Now, though, Google has begun ...

Some experts in the human-computer interaction field say making AI chatbots act humanlike creates cognitive dissonance for users over how much to trust them (Kashmir Hill/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/technol<…

Why Do A.I. Chatbots Use ‘I’?
A.I. chatbots have been designed to behave in a humanlike way. Some experts think that’s a terrible idea.