Tootfinder

Sources: Tencent and Alibaba are in talks to invest in DeepSeek at a $20B valuation, partly benchmarked against Moonshot's pending round at an $18B valuation (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tencent-alibaba…

Tencent, Alibaba in Talks to Invest in DeepSeek at $20 Billion-Plus Valuation
Chinese tech giants Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group are in talks to invest in DeepSeek, the AI upstart that recently started fundraising for the first time, according to four people with knowledge of the conversations. DeepSeek, owned by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer Capital Management, is ...

Inside the turmoil at Thinking Machines; sources say Meta discussed buying TML, and CTO Barret Zoph had been in talks since October 2025 about an OpenAI return (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/technology/thinking-machines-ai-startup-o…

The Drama at Thinking Machines, a New A.I. Start-Up, Is Riveting Silicon Valley
Defections, secret conversations, deal talks that fizzled and a battle for control: The turmoil at Thinking Machines Lab is the artificial intelligence industry’s latest drama.

So I look through my pile of 8" floppies for @… thinking I'll have a few random ones to send him, and I find a motherload of Perq floppies!
#retrocomputing

“The barrier to creating software has genuinely dropped. That is not hype. What it means for professional engineers is not that their skills are less valuable, but that the skills that matter have shifted up the stack, as they have in every previous transition.
The developers who thrived after the move from assembly to C were not the ones who could write the most clever assembly. They were the ones who understood what the machine needed to do and could express that intent clearly in a higher-level language. The developers who thrived after the move to managed languages and frameworks were not the ones most resistant to garbage collection. They were the ones who saw the freed-up cognitive capacity as an opportunity to solve harder problems.
The developers who will thrive in the agentic era are the ones who understand this as another step in the same arc and invest accordingly. Not in resisting the tools. Not in deferring to them uncritically. In developing the judgment, clarity, and systems thinking that make the tools maximally effective.
That means writing better specs. Investing in test infrastructure. Developing genuine architectural understanding rather than surface familiarity. Building the taste to evaluate output rigorously. Practicing problem decomposition until it becomes second nature.
The era of programming as primarily a keystroke activity is over. The era of programming as primarily a thinking and judgment activity has been accelerating for decades and just shifted into a higher gear.”
#AITransition
#
https://addyosmani.com/blog/factory-model/

Letter: 200 Thomson Reuters staff ask the company not to renew its ICE contract when it expires in May; Thomson Reuters' Westlaw service is Minneapolis-based (Kashmir Hill/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/technology/thomson-reuters-ice-…

They Don’t Want Their Company’s Surveillance Tool Used by ICE
Thomson Reuters, best known for its media outlet and legal research tools, provides an investigative tool to immigration enforcers. Its Minnesota employees want that to stop.

"I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means."
https://lithub.com/joan-didion-why-i-write/
Thanks @…

Joan Didion: Why I Write
Of course I stole the title for this talk from George Orwell. One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. There you have three short unambiguous words that share a so…

Different Corners VIII ▶️
不同的角落 VIII ▶️
📷 Zeiss IKON Super Ikonta 533/16
🎞️ Ilford HP5 400 Plus, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Been playing Roots Devour (#Steam via CrossOver on #macOS
BE THE ELDRITCH HORROR YOU ALWAYS KNEW YOU WERE
It's pretty great, put in 8 hours so far.
The general gist of the game is strategic, puzzle-like reveal of map levels - capturing cards of creatures and humans, wrapping them in your blood sucking vines, and generally conquering all.
When you get stuck, spend some of the blood to open a card pack and get random helper tools, effects, and critters.
Sounds are superb and visuals are very 𝒜𝐸𝒮𝒯𝐻𝐸𝒯𝐼𝒞 - if you dig Cult of the Lamb or Darkest Dungeon, you'll probably enjoy it.
Only downside is that there's an occasional indicator that English is not the primary language of the game developers. Very rarely you can see untranslated Chinese text on-screen, one or two oddities (uncapitalized, punctuation slightly off). This is unfortunately probably why they're getting a little beat up in the Steam reviews.
Honestly, in my 8 hours so far, I've noticed it like 3? 4? times tops so far. The game is so very much my jam, it really hasn't bothered me.
Some people are also reviewing it as "too linear" - they definitely gave up way too early. There are SECRETS, side areas, choices you can make, intentionally difficult areas that will take some thinking to unlock, etc.
Currently 10% off right now, give it a shot!

So Trump is probably looking for some face-saving delay for the deadline. After which Trump will have made himself less credible again (!) for any future deadline. Also what remains is a mentally disturbed president threatening civilzations..
#Iran #USA

Iran talks show glimmer of progress as Trump deadline looms
The thinking in the White House has shifted from "can we get there?" to "can we get there by 8 o'clock tonight?"

By 2027, 2.5 million French civil servants will stop using video conference tools from U.S. providers — including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex and GoTo Meeting — and switch to Visio, a homegrown service.
https://apnews.com/article/europe-digital…

France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US
European governments are moving away from U.S. tech giants, opting for domestic or open-source alternatives. France plans to replace Zoom and Teams with a homegrown video conference system by 2027. Austria's military has adopted open-source office software, and a German state has switched to free software for administrative tasks. This shift aims for “digital sovereignty” amid concerns over data privacy and reliance on U.S. companies. The movement has gained momentum due to geopolitical ten…