Tootfinder

After the Devastation of Trump’s First Year,
Popular Rebellions Offer Hope
Elections,
labor,
mutual aid, and
local organizing wins in 2025
point to strategies that can work in the coming year.
In 2026, we the people can build power
and we can win significant victories if we:
🔸Show up for the most vulnerable in the face of federal government attacks and neglect;
🔸Push back on racism and misogyny, and support inclusivity;
🔸Call …

After the Devastation of Trump’s First Year, These Popular Rebellions Offer Hope
Elections, labor, mutual aid, and local organizing wins in 2025 point to strategies that can work in the coming year.

Falcons QB Tua Tagovailoa embracing competition, excited to work with Michael Penix Jr. https://www.nfl.com/news/falcons-qb-tua-tagovailoa-embracing-competition-excited-to-work-with-michael-penix-jr

DOD says it'll move the press to an annex facility outside its main building, among other changes, after a judge found its current media policy unconstitutional (Erik Wemple/New York Times)
https://www.

Pentagon Adopts New Limits for Journalists After Court Loss
The Defense Department said it would close the Pentagon’s work area for journalists, among other changes, after a judge found the existing media policy unconstitutional.

A proposed constellation of satellites has astronomers very worried.
Unlike satellites that reflect sunlight and produce light pollution as an unfortunate byproduct,
the ones by US startup
"Reflect Orbital" would produce light pollution by design.
The company promises to produce “sunlight on demand” with mirrors that beam sunlight down to Earth so solar farms can operate after sunset.
It plans to start with an 18-metre test satellite named Earendil-1 wh…

A US startup plans to deliver ‘sunlight on demand’ after dark. Can it work – and would we want it to?
Satellites beaming sunlight down to Earth sound like science fiction – and they have astronomers very worried.

Alphabet's Intrinsic, which builds AI models and software for industrial robots, joins Google; it will remain a distinct entity and work with Google DeepMind (Rebecca Szkutak/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/alphabet-owned-r…

Alphabet-owned robotics software company Intrinsic joins Google | TechCrunch
Nearly five years after graduating into an independent Alphabet company, Intrinsic is moving under Google's domain.

While staying vigilant, we’re embracing the chance to catch our breath and to start healing. The city right now has a bit of the feeling of the days after a natural disaster: there is so much damage to repair. Thousands of people are still sheltering at home, understandably reluctant to go to work and/or school. Thousands are facing imminent eviction when March rent comes due.
There’s organizing around rent relief, talk of a rent strike. Food delivery is still in full swing. Mutual aid is not letting up.
9/

"After my father died, for years (at least 10), people I never had met before would emotionally share what a positive influence he had on their lives. He did great stuff helping organizations improve. But the majority of people were not telling me how much he helped the organization improve [there were also...]. But most people talked about was how much happier they were because of the changes he helped them see they could make in their lives."

After the lunch break (which I had to use to work on my slides for tomorrow), #UndoneCS continues with the second keynote, “Undone Ideas on Programming: When Cultures Fail to Meet” by @….

After the lunch break (which I had to use to work on my slides for tomorrow), #UndoneCS continues with the second keynote, “Undone Ideas on Programming: When Cultures Fail to Meet” by @….

During NASA’s #ArtemisII mission to the Moon, four astronauts will live and work inside the Orion spacecraft after launching atop the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lxDQj7CFyI - the crew will test Orion’s systems throughout their 10-day mission to ensure the spacecraft can keep astronauts safe and healthy in deep space.

After a weekend with a hike, three plays and a soccer watch party it’s back to work. Marie started us with waffles, egg and bacon, tea and coffee. After work, Arkham Horror card game tonight! #TogetherBreakfast https://photos.app.goo.gl/TfwrLAYZkN7W1fZ68

Work resumes on the Hudson River rail tunnel project, but NJ Transit delays continue
A thousand workers are expected to be back on the job after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze billions of dollars to fund construction.
https://share.google/xcagr3k9euo6b6RIS

Pentagon Adopts New Limits for Journalists After Court Loss (Erik Wemple/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/business/media/pentagon-closes-journalists-work-area.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VVA.fT6d.Lea23i_SZBM-&smid=nytcore-ios-share
http://www.memeorandum.com/260323/p137#a260323p137

"A spokesman for The Times, Charlie Stadtlander, said on Monday: “The new policy does not comply with the judge’s order. It continues to impose unconstitutional restrictions on the press. We will be going back to court.”"
Pentagon Adopts New Limits for Journalists After Court Loss - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/business/media/pentagon-closes-journalists-work-area.html

EU chief says Europe needs to abandon caution after US treasury secretary calls Denmark ‘irrelevant’ – Europe live
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/21/europe-donald-trump-davos-speech-greenland-denmark-latest…

"We have a funding system for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that is entirely based on the spending priorities of the UK government in England. The Welsh government has less borrowing powers than a local council, and it often publishes its final budget nine months into the financial year, because the Treasury has decided to change funding in England. This doesn’t work. And it can’t work"

The product delivery lifecycle is composed of service relationships. AI's main value proposition is freedom from relationships.
When designers champion AI tools, we are not making ourselves layoff-proof. We are reinforcing a system that frames us as unnecessary friction.
If we don't want to serve as janitors for vibe prototypes, We must invest in deliberately designing the service relationships that make up the PDLC.

UX works through social relationships. AI tools are erasing them.
Stakeholders want to vibe code and have designers clean up after them afterwards. But rather than helping with velocity, there is just more noise and more work for everyone.

I’ve lost a lot of respect for Andrewism after his recent upload. It feels disconnected from the reality of working-class life and from anarcho-syndicalism as it actually exists.
This response is a worthwhile read. It doesn’t romanticize work or the working class, but it doesn’t drift into abstract alternatives either. It sits with the fact that we don’t want to be working class, but we are, and that contradiction isn’t something you escape with theory.
I strongly relate to what’…

An alarm in my neighbourhood started around 3:30 am this morning. Not that loud so probably a distance away yet still enough to wake me up to go and investigate. It stopped for a bit then started up again. I was trying not to get frustrated or angry but it still meant I didn't get back to sleep until after 6.
I stayed in bed until nearly 8 am and then rushed about so I'd be finished with work in time for a zoom meeting at 5:30 pm. Made it! Success!
Finally realised at 5:…

I don't send many emails anymore. I receive emails but I don't send many. Even at work, most of our communication is done via other means. But I do generate at least one email a day to send to a group of external testers. I don't send this from a traditional mail client. Instead it is a shell script that gathers some information and opens a text editor to add further comments. After that the file is sent with

Transcoder Adapters for Reasoning-Model Diffing
Nathan Hu, Jake Ward, Thomas Icard, Christopher Potts
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20904 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.20904 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.20904
arXiv:2602.20904v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: While reasoning models are increasingly ubiquitous, the effects of reasoning training on a model's internal mechanisms remain poorly understood. In this work, we introduce transcoder adapters, a technique for learning an interpretable approximation of the difference in MLP computation before and after fine-tuning. We apply transcoder adapters to characterize the differences between Qwen2.5-Math-7B and its reasoning-distilled variant, DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B. Learned adapters are faithful to the target model's internal computation and next-token predictions. When evaluated on reasoning benchmarks, adapters match the reasoning model's response lengths and typically recover 50-90% of the accuracy gains from reasoning fine-tuning. Adapter features are sparsely activating and interpretable. When examining adapter features, we find that only ~8% have activating examples directly related to reasoning behaviors. We deeply study one such behavior -- the production of hesitation tokens (e.g., "wait"). Using attribution graphs, we trace hesitation to only ~2.4% of adapter features (5.6k total) performing one of two functions. These features are necessary and sufficient for producing hesitation tokens; removing them reduces response length, often without affecting accuracy. Overall, our results provide insight into reasoning training and suggest transcoder adapters may be useful for studying fine-tuning more broadly.
toXiv_bot_toot

After the whole Adam Something "dating advice for leftist men" thing, I realized I should probably write something about that. I didn't, but I realized I should. Here I am sort of getting around to it.
I had a friend call me an "elder" at one point. I was like 35 at that time, but like... a lot of old leftists are just dead or in prison, so we take what we can get I guess. Being also an elder in the sense that I'm an elder millennial, who is also a parent and married for almost 10 years and all that, I guess I'm technically qualified.
So here it is, dating advice for (straight cis) leftist men:
1. Don't.
That's it, actually. That's the whole thing. Let me explain a bit.
First of all, this is dating advice for neuroatypical folks. We're way overrepresented in both extremes because this system wasn't built for us. And that's who is *the most* confused by all the relationship stuff, and most likely to try to apply all this masculinity/manosphere bullshit. I'm also talking a bit from experience here, as a neruo-spicy trying to "figure out" how to date within a paradigm entirely built around neurotypicals and their relationships. It's garbage. Throw it out. There's nothing worth saving.
His video had some line comparing not having sex to your house being on fire. I'm not gonna bother to quote it because I'm busy with actual life. But like, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I recognize that and it's horribly destructive. Men who buy in to patriarchy actually believe this, because those men value themselves based on (hetro) sex. Yeah, if you think you're worthless because you aren't "getting laid" then yeah, you're gonna feel like that's an emergency.
"Dating" as a paradigm turns humans into roles. It dehumanizes us all, and thus makes human connection much harder. It is a game that, like thermonuclear war, can only be won by not playing.
When you abandon "dating" and just act like a human, everything starts to be easier. There's no such thing as being "friend zoned" because you're just friends. Sometimes friendships become other things, sometimes they don't. It doesn't actually matter, because if you're actually there for friendship then you don't *need* anything else.
My grandma, at 98 I think, gave me some advice. My grandparents always got along well, and were married for enough decades that I listened really closely. She told me I should just do things I loved to do and everything else would work itself out.
And it kind of did.
I understand the fear, the idea that you'll die alone. I get that. I get the loneliness. It all hits a lot harder when you have ADHD emotions and past trauma. I get that. But that fear is self-manifesting. When you build your confidence, when you don't *need* to be "in a relationship," you have more room to actually build relationships. For me, dating was dehumanizing. When I abandoned that, I was able to actually be a good partner, and I was able to find my partner.
I would advise against marriage as well, but we did get married for legal reasons. It can still be hard to maintain that, to see each other as people rather than roles. That becomes extra hard as parents. But the times that we cut through that are the times we're closest. Those are the times when it becomes easier to remember that we're both humans and all human relationships need tending.
Roles don't need to be tended because they are classifications. Classifications are static. But relationships between humans are not. Humans are messy and chaotic. Humans have all kinds of complex needs and desires.
So yeah, don't date. Just be a human and see what happens. Maybe google "relationship anarchy" and see where it takes you.
If you have ADHD, it can be especially useful to understand that relationships with neurotypical folks can be especially difficult. Assume you're incompatible with 90% of the population as your baseline, and you'll start to understand why the standard "dating" thing has made you feel so alienated and miserable.
Neurotypical folks generally have no idea that atypicality exists, much less how it impacts relationships. Having to conform to a neurotypical relationship just adds additional mental strain unless you find someone (really special) who can do at least some of the work.
The ADHD thing was especially important for me. There were so many things I was told to do in specific ways by neurotypicals that never worked for me. Their advice always made me feel like a failure. When I was finally diagnosed, I realized they were just giving advice for the wrong type of brain. It was advice I could never use. Basically all dating advice I ever got fell into this same category.
That's my braindump. Maybe I'll develop it more in the future, but I'm busy so maybe not. I hope it helps someone who is struggling like I was.

Magnetic equations on the Heisenberg group: symmetries, solutions and the inverse problem of the calculus of variations
Gabriela Ovando, Mauro Subils
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21187 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.21187 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.21187
arXiv:2602.21187v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The Heisenberg Lie group $H_3$ is modeled on the differentiable structure of $\mathbb{R}^3$ but equipped with another non-commutative product operation. By fixing the usual metric on the Heisenberg Lie group, this work provides a comprehensive overview of the behavior of magnetic geodesics for any invariant Lorentz force. After writing the magnetic equations, we found symmetries that enable the explicit computation of the magnetic trajectories for any homogeneous exact and non-exact magnetic form. Finally we show that these magnetic trajectories are solutions of a variational problem: we present explicit examples of Lagrangians.
toXiv_bot_toot

I took a weekend today after pushing myself pretty hard the last 3 and especially yesterday. I now regret that. I slept well, felt fine when I woke up, didn't go do physical labor, and was bored, frustrated, and hungry all day.
People like me don't need breaks, we just need to work until we physically and mentally collapse, then recuperate. High speed, low drag, tailspin, crash, and phoenix.

UK's Hinkley Point C new nuclear plant delayed to 2030 as costs climb to €56 billion*, i.e. €17,500 per kW.
EDF said the first reactor at the site in Somerset will begin operations in 2030, a year later than in the last update – almost 13 years after construction work began – after a series of delays to the project.

If you watched cartoons in the 90s or early 2000s, you probably heard some of Guy Moon's amazing theme songs and scores. Guy passed away earlier this month after injuries from a car accident- I wrote this short piece over at Animated TV Blog to commemorate his work: https://animatedtvblo…

RIP Emmy-nominated composer Guy Moon
Guy Moon, an Emmy-nominated composer known for his work on animated TV shows, passed away January 8 following a traffic collision, according to a statement his family posted on Facebook. For animat…

China’s Yangtze River shows signs of remarkable recovery after fishing ban https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/12/china-yangtze-river-recovery-after-fishing-ban

#Microsoft really doesn't want you to stop using #GitHub Sponsors.
So apparently I can't stop people from sponsoring me myself. And I can't disable #GitHubSponsors either, because I have people sponsoring me. The only thing I can do is to contact support and ask them to handle it.
Fortunately, there's a ready support link with pre-filled form. Except it doesn't work anymore, so you have to go through the new support request form yourself. And after you write the message yourself, it is fed to a completely useless LLM that tells you how to disable account. Except that the process doesn't work, because as the bottom hint notes, if you have any active sponsors, you need to contact support instead 🤦. Well, at least it eventually lets you send that support request.
At least #KoFi lets you remove memberships yourself. It also lets you remove the account entirely but apparently not deactivate it. For that, there's apparently a support request. Sent one, let's see how it goes.

"China’s Yangtze River shows signs of remarkable recovery after fishing ban"
#China #Environment #Rivers

ICE Wants to Go After Dissenters as well as Immigrants | Brennan Center for Justice
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/ice-wants-go-after-dissenters-well-immigrants

ICE Wants to Go After Dissenters as well as Immigrants
The Trump administration is being open about its plans to violate Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment rights.

After some days work, I finally made my first unassisted warp, and got it on the loom and threaded up - 189 ends. It seems I had only one small mistake in the threading, just had to swap two threads. Can't wait to explore some lift patterns with this ! #weaving

My kids have had the last week off of school and it's looking like they'll have a snow day on Monday, too.
Just slowly losing my mind over here.. (also way behind on work)

What’s in it for people who work for the big tech companies who enable one morally bankrupt thing after another for decades on end just to make the billionaire owners richer?
Is that truly fulfilling work?

EU lawmakers stall US trade deal in protest over Greenland (Philip Blenkinsop/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/european-parliament-suspends-work-eu-us-trade-deal-after-trumps-repeated-2026-01-21/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260121/p84#a260121p84

The final piece of the central tower of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia has been laid in place,
bringing the church to its maximum final height 144 years after work began.
After several days when it has been too windy to work,
the upper section of the 17 metre-high four-sided steel and glass cross was winched into position at 11am on Friday,
completing the tower dedicated to Jesus Christ.
At 172.5 metres, the Sagrada Familia, to which the Catalan architect Antoni G…

Sources: Amazon is planning a second round of job cuts next week as part of its goal of trimming 30,000 corporate workers, after cutting 14,000 jobs in October (Greg Bensinger/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-

After seeing my wife into work, next to the first coffee shop, I decided to head up river. I started walking along the river path, but then after a short while, I veered off to explore the Terrace Gardens, and I found a coffee shop in there, that I didn’t know existed! So, time for another coffee!

New favourite eyeliner - Make Up For Ever Artist Color[sic] Pencil in 100-WhateverBlack Matte.
The Toronto Pro Loft is only open 10-5 weekdays (10-6 on Thursday) though! Would be a tight squeeze to rush there after work, but it's super close to Wellesley subway station. Might be doable.
#cosmetics #eyeliner

There are (sort of) two kinds of coders: those who see it as just a well-paying, stable job, and those who do it on nights and weekends because they love it, and it’s part of their identity. Today’s LLM tools now enable an individual to essentially be an entire software _factory_, and this is going to impact those 2 kinds of coders very differently — especially in how they respond to *both* of their bosses trying to put them out of work.

What do coders do after AI?
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

For work I have a script that archives a bunch of files from time to time (they are usually around 4.5GiB). After compression with 7-Zip defaults they get reduced to about 515 MiB but since it is a limited VM this takes half an hour. I played with 7z options and got it down to a reasonable size (685MiB) in around 48s, which is great but playing further with other compression options I found a Zstandard combo that got it down to around 800 MiB in only 20 seconds. Much bigger but small enough …

@… Was in the middleof responding to myself when my pager went off and I went to bed at 0320 after that, so never finished that.
Both the latest versions, before the release you made a few hours ago, of PHPStan and Rector work fine for me. My problem was that I had Rector pinned to 2.2.1 due to incompatibility with composer-unused of Rector 2.2.2 and newe…

Another #ShockedShockedToFind headline & story.
Trump donor who criticized offshoring to close Ohio plant and move work to China
https://www.

Another #ShockedShockedToFind headline & story.
Trump donor who criticized offshoring to close Ohio plant and move work to China
https://www.

Looking for a CSIO (Chief Stop It Officer) position for my next career move. The organization comes to me with some wacky idea, and after much consideration, I say, "No, Stop It!” and we all go back to doing normal-ass work.
Send only serious offers my way.
Update: For a bit extra, I'll squirt your department leads with a water spray bottle.

If the first answer to any problem on a Linux system is "oh just update all the packages again" that is evidence of a broken and fragile package management system.
My experience (at home) with Manjaro so far has been absolutely terrible compared to my experience (at work) with CentOS and Rocky Linux.
With Manjaro, working packages regularly break after updates or new installs. It's clearly not managing dependencies properly. And I've had other weird problems o…

"Decades of collective work proving that “open source” is not less but at least as secure as commercial offerings now slowly going down the drain. Because a bunch of men – and it is always all men – just don’t want to be responsible for their actions. Which is fine if you are 5. But after 18 it gets old really fucking fast."
(Original title: Diffusion of Responsibility)

@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social With Graphene, I get kicked off the internet. Other Android devices work perfectly with Wi-Fi, but Graphene suddenly can't access any IP addresses. After rebooting, it works for a few seconds, then stops again. I've been experiencing this for months, but now, for the first time, an app is showing me an error message: In Obtainium: "ClientException with SocketException: Connection reset by peer (OS Error: Connection reset by peer, errno = 104), address = ... , port …

@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social With Graphene, I get kicked off the internet. Other Android devices work perfectly with Wi-Fi, but Graphene suddenly can't access any IP addresses. After rebooting, it works for a few seconds, then stops again. I've been experiencing this for months, but now, for the first time, an app is showing me an error message: In Obtainium: "ClientException with SocketException: Connection reset by peer (OS Error: Connection reset by peer, errno = 104), address = ... , port …

Bangladesh's Tarique Rahman pledges to work for democracy after landslide victory in election | Courthouse News Service
https://www.courthousenews.com/bangladeshs-tarique-rahman-pledges-to-work-for-democracy-after-landslide-victory-in-election/

I've been working on assembling my one-kilogram QSO¹ kit. I set a 1kg limit including the case into which to cram everything I need to work POTA on a whim because it's just bouncing around in the bottom of my backpack. I'm still working out what to carry for filter, choke, and ununs; after I'm done, I'll write up the whole kit with pictures.
I just swapped out a 20Ah Anker power bank for an 88g

I have a common problem with several work-related projects. After quite a bit of pondering, I believe I have found the solution in my archives - a bash script linking a few very cool utilities that I wrote 20 years ago in the heady days of Egressive. Probably took weeks to get it right (it automates a business-critical backup process). I'm very chuffed my archives are still with me. You can never tell when they might come in handy. This will likely save days of work.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #AfternoonShow
Caroline Polachek:
🎵 Welcome to My Island
#CarolinePolachek
https://stereonuke.bandcamp.com/track/caroline-polachek-welcome-to-my-island-stereonukes-after-work-edit
https://open.spotify.com/track/4bp2wYweUPvsBrQfntdYcr

Back at base after a successful remote field visit. Lots of data to work on in the coming days now (which is lucky as the weather looks like it will be terrible).
https://pixelfed.social/p/IceClimate/916829305152261645

It was hard to leave my teams and the small Cloud Security org that I grew, but days like this are why it was worth it
After 5 years at Netflix, I've sorely needed time off to recover. I'm deeply proud of the work that Netflix Cloud Security did, and I will miss them
In a few months, I will be looking for a security leadership role at an organization that aligns with my values
Meanwhile, I'm glad to finally feel calm, safe, and secure

Bengals' Duke Tobin after third straight season missing playoffs: 'All I can do is work us out of it' https://www.nfl.com/news/bengals-duke-tobin-after-third-straight-season-missing-playoffs-all-i-can-do-is-work…

"No ice is safe ice" is the mantra of those who work and engage in recreational activities on lake ice. This event overwhelmed the news of many other ice rescues that had to be done on the weekend across the Great Lakes basin. After a week period of *extremely warm temperatures where everything was clearly melting, it doesn't matter if you drive 2 hrs to get there. Many first responders had to risk themselves to save these people. Stay off the ice!

Japan’s Yogurt Delivery Ladies Serve as a Support Net for Country’s Aging Population https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/japans-yogurt-delivery-ladies-overtime-as-social-watchers-of-the-countrys-aging-population/

Japan's Yogurt Delivery Ladies Serve as a Support Net for Country's Aging Population
A Yakult Lady might work 4 days a week, visiting between 30 and 50 houses, stopping at times to chat and inquire after a person's wellbeing.

I spent Friday trying to hack into a customer box in India. They need support but have "secured" the system beyond the reach of the access mechanisms they have offered. None of the 4 different VPN’s we operate for their US operations can reach the box directly, so I must RDP into a domain controller in Mumbai, which they replaced without telling us. After finally getting to the box, none of the dozen passwords they’ve provided over the years work.
Definitely billable hours. <…

A federal judge orders Voice of America employees reinstated by March 23, putting hundreds of people who have been on administrative leave back to work (David Bauder/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/voice-of-america-kari-lake-trump-cd6…

Judge orders restoration of Voice of America
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore the government-run Voice of America to full operations, putting hundreds of journalists who have been on administrative leave for a year back to work. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth's order came a week after he ruled that Kari Lake, President Donald Trump's choice to effectively lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, did not have the authority to effectively dismantle the congressionally authorized Voice of America. Followin…

"We’ve neglected the power of carbon-sucking fungi. Meet the scientist determined to change that"
#Fungi #Plants #Environment

Scientist wins €215,000 award for work on carbon-sucking fungi
Dr Toby Kiers has won the 2026 Tyler Prize award after shedding light on “overlooked” fungi that can offset huge amounts of CO2.

I love how everything I write now (or edit after reviews) involves extra steps in looking up Internet Archive links for British Library web pages and blog posts so that links in footnotes actually work.
* I lied, I don't love it.

Big Picture: Maxx Crosby Staying With Raiders Might Be Best After Failed Trade https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/big-picture-maxx-crosby-staying-raiders-might-best-after-failed-trade

After freeing up today for a personal priority appointment that was cancelled, I have zero work appointments in my calendar.
So I've decided to work from home and clock off early for the weekend. A morning of admin and writing awaits me...

My kids have no school today.
Next week, my kids have no school on Thurs & Fri.
The week after that, my kids have no school on Thurs & Fri. It's the beginning of their spring break, which starts Apr 2nd and goes through Apr 13th.
It's fine, I don't need to work or anything!

On any given day, millions of Europeans use Microsoft software, heat their homes with American natural gas and buy U.S. stocks. Many Americans work with German software, drink French wine and take European-made medicines.
More than $5.4 billion worth of goods and services are traded between the United States and European Union each day,
backed by extensive cross-border investments that support millions of jobs.
Although Trump walked back a threat to impose extra tariffs on …

The Leverage That Europe Has Over the U.S. Economy
After the latest bout of trade turmoil with the United States, European leaders are looking for ways to project strength to the Trump administration, which considers them weak.

Crepes, bacon and egg, tea and coffee. We won Arkham last night but 3 of the 4 of us died trying. Tonight after work, mahjongg with a friend! #TogetherBreakfast https://photos.app.goo.gl/pFooYuFLBZN4VqdZA

Nach Gerichtsentscheidungen dürfen in den #USA mehrere #Offshore-#Windparks weitergebaut werden, nachdem die #Trump

America’s offshore wind farms get back to work after court victories
Ørsted, Equinor, and Dominion Energy have resumed construction on their massive offshore wind projects, nearly a month after Trump forced them to hit…

No where near enough parking for those who drive in. Can't get a monthly pass as they have oversubscribed and a waiting list that may take God only knows how long before we get a spot. Bus system is less than reliable. Not enough space so we have to 'hotel'. Even before COVID we were alternating weekly for remote working and at-office due to parking spaces.
<sarcasm>
I don't see any problems of more of us being at my work location.
</sarcasm>

Troy Aikman says he will continue role with Dolphins after consulting on GM hire https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7122796/2026/03/16/troy-aikman-consultant-miami-dolphins/

Meta VP of Public Policy Simon Milner, the company's most senior Asia-Pacific policy executive, plans to leave after 14 years to retire from full-time work (Newley Purnell/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

I’m at a spa trying to get my shit together in a 90ºC (~194ºF) sauna after my 2025 was beautiful madness but madness no less.
I’ve finally started to write a new newsletter & if you wanna know more about the madness or what’s coming up or a cute dog photo, sign up at https://buttondown.com/hynek

Hynek Did Something
Greetings friend! This is a list for those who’d like to be notified whenever I, Hynek Schlawack, do or publish something noteworthy, somewhere. Examples are new blog posts, YouTube videos, and talks, significant updates to existing work, or if I need to be bailed out of jail. It does not include announcements about new software releases. But it does usually include a cute dog photo. As a thank you for your trust, the emails aren’t just links to content. They contain a kind of “director's…

Some time ago the rules changed on using digital certificates to sign exe files, so that you had to have the key on a physical USB token, which made it impossible for me because my build server is a virtual one in Amazon EC2, so I stopped bothering.
After some annoying anti-virus false positives I thought I'd have a go again using Amazon KMS. The whole thing remains fucking mental. I'm astonished that anyone can make this work at all.

And another nice shader speedup. Not quite the massive boost of the vector frequency/phase filters, but it's next in line after them.
I'm gonna use this random-access LFSR trick on so many filters that work with scrambled data lol.
v0.1.1 (20M point memory depth)
* PRBS31 generation: 65 ms
* PRBS31 verification: 360 ms
Latest (20M point depth)
* PRBS31 generation: 3 ms (21.6x)
* PRBS31 verification: 1.7 ms (211x)

The office last night.
35°F/1.5°C, windy. Coldest outdoor gig I've ever played.
They say in Formula One that if you don't go into a corner at at least 60mph the brakes don't warm up enough to actually work, and there won't be enough downforce to keep you on the track as you turn.
Well, my fingers were completely numb after the first song, so I knew that the only way to play for 2hrs was to rock extra hard, to get the blood going!
But the

Had to expand C:\ on a VM and I'm irritated that Windows, after decades, STILL doesn't have the built-in tooling in disk management to work around their recovery partition. You can't extend a partition if the space isn't contiguous, so you have to move the recovery partition.
Why it exists at the end instead of the beginning also doesn't make sense to me. I'm sure there is a reason. 🤷
It can be easily done IF you know how to do it. This guide was perfect.…

Move Windows Recovery Partition Correctly: A Comprehensive Guide - Unite Innovations
Move Windows Recovery Partition safely and efficiently. Follow our step-by-step guide to avoid common issues.

After so many years being a front-end dev, I got to say that huge bulk of the work is just upgrading dependencies. It never ends.

Since September last year, Trump has announced several changes to the H1-B visa category, which allows highly skilled immigrants to live and work in the U.S. for up to six years.
From higher costs to increased scrutiny in the process,
the uncertainty has made applicants and companies wary.
FY2027 applications will close at the end of February 2026, and the lottery will run after that.
A presidential proclamation subjects new H-1B applications to a $100,000 fee,

What it takes to get an H-1B visa in Trump’s America
An immigration lawyer explains the behind-the-scenes challenges of getting the coveted U.S. visa in 2026.

I then walked up to the top of the hill, and to my surprise the pub at the top was already had open at 10.30am! Well, it was thirsty work, all that uphill walking , so I had to have a pint. That’s my excuse. After that I walked to Petersham, and then took a 65 bus into Kingston.

Not reproducible, however I have a VirtualBox snapshot of the bugged installation.
I can restart SDDM and login, again I get a black screen. Xorg.0.log has one error:
open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
Maybe negligible. The same error occurs when I successfully startx and use twm instead of Plasma (X11).
'reboot -r' is not enough to work around the issue.
Plasma did work, once, after 'shutdown -r now', however this is not a consis…

Highlight & Shadow 🔦
高光与阴影 🔦
📷 Nikon FE
🎞️ Ilford FP4 Plus 125, expired 1993
If you like my work, buy me a coffee from PayPal #filmphotography

Alright, the internet is all too much right now. I'm gonna take a break for a bit and work on some projects. I have some organizing to do and some bugs to find.
The horrible things in the world don't change what we have to do. Our work is and has always been the same. They may make it easier to get other folks on board, they may make it more obvious that we were right all along, but they don't change our job.
We will do our work of building community, supporting each other, and creating the world we want to see. It will take as long as it takes to do. None of the news changes any of that. So I'm gonna take my break and hopefully come back after I've gotten some of that shit done.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Remember that when you start to feel guilty about taking a breath.

Back and leg pain was terrible from around 4am to 11am but I managed to get moving after that and doing some kitchen work helps distract me from the pain... I still feel a little dizzy, but whatever.
So I am attempting a "tavern style" pizza today, the "other" Chicago style, a thin, cracker crust. (Also St. Louis or Milwaukee style to some folks.)
I'll report back on my results after lunch, unless I fall asleep again from the medication.

Labor unions, community leaders and faith groups are calling for an #economic #blackout in Minnesota-on Friday
to protest the surge of federal immigration agents in the state
and mourn Renee Good.
Organizers are urging Minnesotans not to work, shop or go to school.
The Trump administration has d…

Crepes (mine with wild huckleberry syrup my Spokane-born housemate got us), eggs and bacon, tea and coffee. Just drinks tonight after work. #TogetherBreakfast https://photos.app.goo.gl/zJbFs1ti3RzPFogn9

The Writers Guild Staff Union calls a work stoppage, one month before the WGA begins AMPTP negotiations, accusing the WGA West of bad faith bargaining (Katie Campione/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2026/02/wga-west-staff-strike-ahead-of-amptp-negoti…

WGA West Staff Goes On Strike Ahead Of Writers Union’s AMPTP Negotiations
The WGA West staff has called a strike after negotiating its first contract with union management since September

Sources: AI legal software startup Legora is in talks to raise $400M at a $5B valuation, after raising $150M in October 2025 at a $1.8B valuation (Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2026/02/17/legal-…

Legal AI Startup Legora Eyes $400 Million Raise At $5 Billion-Plus Valuation
As investors double down on the promise of automating legal work, the company is in talks to raise $400 million following two rounds in late 2025.

I’ve just had occasion to use Svelte / SvelteKit on a web project, and…
…it’s quite good. The core features are well chosen, and they work. The learning curve pays dividends. The resulting code is reasonably pleasant to read. As often as not, the surprises have sensible decisions behind them. It feels like it •is• the thing that React is •trying to be•.
There are gaps and quirks and barriers — it is a tool, after all — but if you’re writing a highly interactive SPA-style site, it gets the Paul Seal of Approval.

Cowboys' Projected Win Total For 2026 Season After First Free Agency Wave https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/onsi/news/dallas-cowboys-projected-win-total-2026-season-first-nfl-free-agency-wave

Troy Aikman says he will continue role with Dolphins after consulting on GM hire https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7122796/2026/03/16/troy-aikman-consultant-miami-dolphins/

The Pentagon says Stars and Stripes will move "away from woke distractions" and cease publishing AP "reprints"; its EIC says he'll work to save its independence (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/20

Pentagon to overhaul independent military newspaper, calling it ‘woke’
Plans for more Defense Department control of Stars and Stripes surface after job seekers were asked about their commitment to President Donald Trump’s policies.

Rashan Gary Shows Immediate Buy-In With Cowboys in Viral Workout Clip https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/onsi/news/rashan-gary-shows-immediate-buy-in-dallas-cowboys-viral-workout-clip

John Paulson, a hedge fund billionaire and one of Donald Trump’s earliest Wall Street backers,
is planning to offshore an Ohio manufacturing plant to China despite heavy pushback from employees.
Workers at the plant call the move “a slap in our face”,
after Paulson vocally defended domestic manufacturing, and are fighting to keep the plant open.
Conn Selmer, the largest US manufacturer of brass and orchestra instruments,
told the union it planned to offshore mos…

Sources: Elon Musk pushed out two more xAI co-founders after getting frustrated with xAI's coding product progress and brought in "fixers" from SpaceX and Tesla (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/e5fbc6c2-d5a6-4b97-a105-6a96ea849de5

Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters
Tesla and SpaceX managers sent in to review work as billionaire’s start-up struggles to keep pace with rivals

ICE has used the "Mobile Fortify" facial recognition app to identify immigrants and citizens alike
💥over 100,000 times, by one estimate.
❌It wasn't built to work like that
—and only got approved after DHS abandoned its own privacy rules.
https://www.…

ICE and CBP’s Face-Recognition App Can’t Actually Verify Who People Are
ICE has used Mobile Fortify to identify immigrants and citizens alike over 100,000 times, by one estimate. It wasn't built to work like that—and only got approved after DHS abandoned its own privacy rules.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe is seeking answers after
four enrolled members were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis.
Tribal President Frank Star Comes Out said in a statement on Facebook that the men,
who were homeless and living near the Little Earth housing complex in Minneapolis,
home to nearly 1,500 people,
many of whom are Native American.
The men were taken into custody without their names being recorded, the tribe …

ICE Detains and Holds Four Native Americans, Tribal Leader Says
Oglala Sioux Tribe demands action after ICE detains four members in Minneapolis. Tribal attorneys work to confirm identities and secure release.

Anthropic's dispute with the DOD raises critical questions for US military partners like Nvidia, Google, Amazon, and Palantir, which work closely with Anthropic (Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-supply-chain-risk-shockwaves-silicon-valley/…

Anthropic Hits Back After US Military Labels It a 'Supply Chain Risk'
Anthropic says it would be “legally unsound” for the Pentagon to blacklist its technology after talks over military use of its artificial intelligence models broke down.

Sunny Naqvi, a 28-year-old U.S. citizen, is now back at home
after her family says she spent about 43 hours in Department of Homeland Security custody.
Customs and Border Patrol officials are now disputing her relatives' claims.
Naqvi was born in Evanston and raised in the Chicago suburbs.
A few weeks ago, she was set to travel overseas on a work trip with five other people. That group included three U.S. citizens and three green card holders, all in the U.S. legal…

DHS detains US citizen from Evanston at O'Hare, releases her in Wisconsin after nearly 2 days
Family said agents told them Sunny Naqvi was not in custody despite her phone location showing her at the Broadview facility.

OpenAI said it had struck a deal with the Pentagon to supply AI to classified US military networks,
hours after Donald Trump ordered the government to stop using the services of one of the company’s main competitors.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, announced the move on Friday night.
It came after an agreement between Anthropic, a rival AI company that runs the Claude system, and the Trump administration broke down after Anthropic sought assurances its technology would not be use…

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has so far been unable to access data from a Washington Post reporter’s iPhone
because it was protected by Apple’s "Lockdown Mode"
when agents seized the device from the reporter’s home, the US government said in a court filing.
FBI agents were however able to access the reporter’s work laptop by telling her to place her index finger on the MacBook Pro’s fingerprint reader.
This occurred during the January 14 search at the…

FBI stymied by Apple's Lockdown Mode after seizing journalist's iPhone
Post reporter was compelled to unlock MacBook Pro with fingerprint, however.