Amr Rizk

Social media feeds today are optimized for engagement, often leading to misalignment between users' intentions and technology use.

In a new paper, we introduce Bonsai, a tool to create feeds based on stated preferences, rather than predicted engagement.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.10776

Briefing on risks to the EU vehicle market and road safety of recognising US-market vehicles as ‘equivalent’ The US government under President Trump is pursuing an aggressive trade policy towards the European Union, threatening tariffs of 25% on cars and other goods. ETSC understands that the US has…

Even if the EU market for US spec vehicles remains small, our wider fear is that all non-US manufacturers will put enormous pressure to level EU standards down, with devastating results for road safety.

Briefing: etsc.eu/briefing-on-...

Mit anderen Worten: die AfD will ARD, ZDF, Deutschlandfunk, 3sat, Phoenix, Arte und alle öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkprogramme abschaffen. Motto: AfD statt ARD. Der ÖRR war die Antwort auf Goebbels und ist ein Bollwerk gegen rechtsextremistische Wirklichkeitsverdrehung. Gut, dass es den ÖRR gibt

Faut-il boycotter l'IEEE ? Le CNRS condamne la création de la Repository License Fee Alain Schuhl, DGDS du CNRS, attire l’attention sur les nouveaux frais de publication nommés Repository License Fee (RLF) introduits par IEEE en avril 2025.

The scientific director of CNRS (France's biggest decentralized research institute) has expressed his insatisfaction with IEEE adding an additional fee for papers made available by authors.

I think all CVF papers will eventually be targeted.

www.science-ouverte.cnrs.fr/actualite/fa...

ln(😅) = 💧ln(😄)

After all these reports of authors adding language instructions for LLM reviews in their papers I wanted to check this myself and I downloaded the .tex source from one of these papers.

Here is an example.
(I will not share the identity of the paper)

Microsoft Copilot flaw raises urgent questions for any business deploying AI agents Microsoft fixed the Copilot flaw, but researchers warn the real danger lies in how all AI agents are built.

Prompt injection means email viruses are back. A researcher found a security vulnerability where you send an email with hidden instructions which when CoPilot scans the email, executes and then hides the source of the instructions.

It took Microsoft 5 months to fix the issue.

Cause for celebration: millions of euros in continued funding for research on photonics, measurements at the quantum frontier and personalised care for hearing loss. #LUH has been granted funding for three Clusters of Excellence and will apply for University of Excellence status.

Roadmap on computational methods in optical imaging and holography [invited] - Applied Physics B Computational methods have been established as cornerstones in optical imaging and holography in recent years. Every year, the dependence of optical imaging and holography on computational methods is ...

Rosen, J., et al. Roadmap on computational methods in optical imaging and holography. Appl. Phys. B (2024).

This roadmap reviews four major areas: incoherent digital holography, quantitative phase imaging, imaging through scattering layers, and super-resolution imaging.

doi.org/10.1007/s003...

A record increase in atmospheric CO2 according to data released by NOAA gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/..., much higher than projected in the Global Carbon Budget essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/....

This occurred in the presence of an El Niño (red bars, data also from NOAA!).

What does this mean?

1/

Wie groß ist die Gefahr, dass die Atlantikströmung kippt? Was wir dazu wissen erkläre ich im neuen Spektrum-Heft - meine Quintessenz nach über 30 Jahren Forschung zum Thema. Am Kiosk oder als Download erhältlich!
🌊
www.spektrum.de/inhaltsverze...

Die automatisierten Versuchsfahrzeuge der Uni Ulm (weiß, im Vordergrund) und von Bosch (blau, im Hintergrund) bei der Demofahrt zum kooperativen Fahren. Dafür wurde an der Pilotanlage in Ulm-Lehr eine Spur durch ein „liegengebliebenes“ Fahrzeug (weiß, im Hintergrund links) blockiert

Sichtung der Recheneinheiten, die im Kofferraum eines automatisierten Versuchsfahrzeugs der Uni Ulm verbaut sind

Kooperativ überholen mit automatisierten Fahrzeugen🚗? Was Menschen mit Blicken klären, fordert autonome Systeme heraus. Dass es geht, zeigte der PoDIUM Demo-Event im Bereich einer Testkreuzung im Ulmer Stadtteil Lehr t1p.de/Demo-Event *wt/Foto: PoDIUM @nokia.bsky.social @unidue.bsky.social #uulm

It goes both ways. While there is still no official policy on that matter we are starting to see self censoring by students if the venue is in US.

Planet Definitions

I'm a Jupiterist: only objects massive enough and far enough from their star such that the system barycenter is outside the star's surface should be called planets.

xkcd.com/3063/

Computer vision has some work to do to detect fake walls, compared to Lidars ... it's not even clear to me how this can be reliably solved.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL...

Five years on, the right’s Covid narrative has been turbo-charged into the mainstream | Laura Spinney Before the next outbreak, we need a serious conversation about how to cope – but first, the more strident, misguided voices must pipe down, says author Laura Spinney

"The mRNA vaccines prevented millions of deaths. [...] Masks worked. And as with every pandemic in recent history, subsequent reviews have found that the advice to go early and hard with containment was correct."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I love the new citations preview in overleaf, this is really useful!
😍 @overleaf.com

This review paper by @guillaume-garrigos.com on SGD-related algorithms is a fantastic resource, offering elegant, self-contained, and concise proofs in a single, accessible reference. arxiv.org/pdf/2301.11235

Exponential backoff with randomization certainly helps (converges). If you have many clients doing that you get a low throughput through (at least that was one of the lessons learned with older wifi)

A single point of failure for academia...

‘Walz’s appreciation for maps pairs with Vice President Harris’s oft-mentioned love of Venn diagrams in what might be the most data visualization-oriented ticket in history.’

oh my god

We're attending ACM Multimedia Systems 2024 next week in Bari, Italy w/ contributions in various tracks, ranging from research track, open-source software and datasets, technical demos, doctoral symposium to the 2nd ACM Green Multimedia Systems Workshop. athena.itec.aau.at/2024/04/athe...