Programmer. Human being. Cis. He/him.
If you are in Gaza and seeking donations, get https://gaza-verified.org/ before requesting to follow me.
"In 1999, I interviewed Prince for TIME and he told me to leave my tape recorder off because he didn’t trust what future technology might do with unauthorized recordings of his voice.
At the time, I thought Prince was being paranoid ... I realize now that Prince wasn’t paranoid, he was prescient."
Alphabet has lined up banks to sell a rare 100-year bond,
stepping up a borrowing spree by Big Tech companies racing to fund their vast investments in AI this year.
The so-called century bond will form part of a debut sterling issuance this week by Google’s parent company, said people familiar with the matter.
Alphabet was also selling $20 billion of dollar bonds on Monday
and lining up a Swiss franc bond sale, the people said.
The dollar portion of the deal was upsized from $15 billion because of strong demand, they added.
Century bonds
—long-term borrowing at its most extreme
—are highly unusual, although a flurry was sold during the period of very low interest rates that followed the financial crisis,
including by governments such as Austria and Argentina.
The University of Oxford, EDF,
and the Wellcome Trust—the most recent in 2018—are the only issuers to have tapped the sterling century market.
Such sales are even rarer in the tech sector, with most of the industry’s biggest groups issuing up to 40 years,
although IBM sold a 100-year bond in 1996.
A banker familiar with Alphabet’s transaction said the company’s multi-currency bond offering is an effort to expand the investor pool given the massive amount of capital needed by Big Tech companies.
“There might be a supply-demand imbalance if you were to try to come back to the US dollar market over and over again,” the banker said.
Issuing a century bond in the sterling market is more cost-effective than in the dollar market, where the interest rate is higher, the banker added.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/alphabet-selling-very-rare-100-year-bunds-to-help-fund-ai-investment/?comments=1&comments-page=1#comments
Bloomberg - President Trump is set to direct the Pentagon to use government funding and DoD contracts to sustain US coal-fired power plants. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-11/trump-to-direct-pentagon-to-buy-coal-in-bid-to-revive-industry
So Iceland is gaming out a world where its ocean-powered “central heating” quits. In October it flagged an AMOC collapse as a national security risk; one study put shutdown odds at 25% even under Paris targets. Meanwhile NASA Goddard faces cuts—great timing, right? 😬
"Winter Olympic athletes are rightfully taking COVID-19 precautions"
"Olympians, just like anyone, are at risk of Long COVID. Studies have shown that the risk of the disabling disease may increase with each SARS-CoV-2 infection and trigger or worsen diagnoses."
"The COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing as the virus continues to spread around the world unchecked, causing further death and disability. The virus has caused over 25 million excess deaths, while more than 400 million people have been affected by Long COVID."
#COVIDisNotOVER #COVIDisAIRBORNE #LongCOVID
Source: https://archive.md/gL5dY
"Trump is aiming for a trifecta never achieved in American political history: He is attempting to convert his campaign’s top three winning issues into political liabilities of epic proportions. He has already done the heavy lifting: He has alienated voters on the economy, immigration, and the Epstein files. But there is no situation that Trump cannot make worse."
~ Robert B. Hubbell
#Trump #Epstein #GhislaineMaxwell #pedophiles #ApprovalRating
/1
https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/trump-considers-a-pardon-for-ghislaine
FDA refuses to review Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine
The move comes amid RFK Jr.'s relentless efforts to enact his anti-vaccine agenda.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/02/fda-refuses-to-review-modernas-mrna-flu-vaccine/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
@QasimRashid For some context:
Father shot daughter dead after ‘arguing about Donald Trump’
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/father-shot-daughter-arguing-donald-trump-xz2rj5032
A white MAGA man shot & killed his daughter because she criticized Trump. Why is no one asking the questions they'd ask if he was Black, brown, immigrant, or Muslim?🧐
For example:
•Where was he radicalized?
•Why is their culture so violent?
•Is this what they call "honor killing?"
•Why won't they assimilate to our values?
•What radicalism are they teaching in their churches?
•Was he here legally from Europe or was he an illegal?
•Did you know they cite their Bible to command women to be silent?
@supersquirrel This was exploratory, it needs confirmation. Otherwise, it may just be a random effect from evaluating a lot of things.
You know, when it comes to having a first date... this is... not exactly what I envisioned.
@triz and I will happily build a basic Neocities or Tumblr site for anyone trying to move off Discord!
(please help me turn this into a business model, Google is forcing me to work with chatbots)
If a #GrandJury will indict a ham sandwich, the case was obviously BS
DC grand jury declines to indict 6 #Democratic lawmakers
The lawmakers had released a short video last year advising #military members to reject “illegal orders.”
#law #MilitaryLaw #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #Trump #Hegseth #DOJ #authoritarianism #dictatorship
https://apnews.com/article/trump-military-orders-democrats-video-e1435655587ad9715c4d1cc776edd545?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=2026-02-10-Military+orders
@Em0nM4stodon @webhat #Confer sounds like a great step forward on #LLM privacy. But this article does not cover the non-privacy tradeoffs that TEEs introduce, e.g., processing is slower, energy usage is higher, as is water used for cooling, and the inability to train on the user conversations means the LLMs don't improve as fast. Customer support seems like it would be more complicated as well.
When are these tradeoffs worthwhile? Are users up to choosing?
Reading this article, then I come across the name Em. I know them, I think. Turns out it's @Em0nM4stodon , nice
Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike wants to do for AI what he did for messaging - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/01/signal-creator-moxie-marlinspike-wants-to-do-for-ai-what-he-did-for-messaging/
I wish I could force every legislator
in favor of Age Verification to watch this amazing talk by Carissa Véliz,
So that they understand the dangers
of the surveillance infrastructure they are currently putting in place.
You should watch it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSPRouBvgFE
#Privacy #Democracy #HumanRights #AgeVerification #MassSurveillance #Fascism
In today's episode of I Told You So:
May 2025 ⚠️
"Daily occurrences of data breach incidents have taught us we cannot trust these services to safeguard our data. Data breaches for this sensitive information are only a matter of time.
The concentration of such valuable data will likely be monetized and resold either by the platforms themselves, by the for-profit third-party "age assurance" providers they use, or eventually by the criminals who stole it from them."
Source: Privacy Guides
October 2025 :dumpster_fire:
"A hack impacting Discord’s age verification process shows in stark terms the risk of tech companies collecting users’ ID documents. Now the hackers are posting peoples’ IDs and other sensitive information online."
Source: 404 Media
Chat Control and Age Verification laws aren't about protecting the children. They're about mass surveillance and rising authoritarianism.
These laws endanger everyone,
including the children,
and including democracy.
I see it's once again time to post this: https://taggart-tech.com/discord-alternatives
It seems @ofcom.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy is perfectly fine with biased and inaccurate reporting as long as it claims #ClimateChange is a hoax.
www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...
Ofcom under fire after refusin...
