2026-02-15 04:06:41
Total global VC funding to fintech startups totaled $51.8B in 2025, up 27% YoY and above pre-pandemic totals, but much lower than 2021's peak of $141.6B (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/fintech/funding-jumped-big-checks-ai-ye-2025/<…
Somewhat shaky proof that the skies above over the International #DarkSky Community MŸn and Nyord - https://darksky.org/places/mon-and-nyord-dark-sky-community/ - are good indeed: out of cam vertical 60 seconds f/2.8 shot at ISO 1600 (camera lying on an unstable table) from a place between Elmelunde and NŸrreby, still no sky background appearing. The SQM reading in the zenith was consistently 21.7 mag./sq.arcsec.
Today's NYT crossword has a heart in the puzzle design, how cute
The clue above the heart is
LOVETRIANGLES
which I *guess* is sorta Valentine's themed
And right across the middle of the heart is
SEXTAPE
so I wonder if Will Shortz has something to share with the class
Y’know, if history’s anything to go by, that kind of sentiment’s likely to have your corpse exhumed and tried for regicide. https://tomkahe.com/@GiftArticles/116073977239739909
#ThickTrunkTuesday
Mossy, rainforesty oaks above Loch Tay #Scotland
@… indeed.
My screenshot pokes fun at the contrast between the numbers (not at the seriousness of the underlying issues) with GitHub automatically – necessarily – hiding hundreds of points of view, and unfortunately doing so above the number "2".
There's probably scope for GitHub to more intelligently automate the placement of its '…
Another addition to the space battle that is being fought above my head: the #StarWars #YWing my favorite ship from the saga. #3Dprinting with a Prusa i3 Mk3s,
✍️ New post: WeissKlang L1 – Punching Above Its Weight
#audio #recording #microphones
PitchBook: US growth and late-stage venture funds raised $23.6B YTD, up from $7.4B in 2025 and above the totals for any of the past 12 years, amid the AI boom (Yuliya Chernova/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/pro/venture-capital/ai
I went out into the wood to try to assess what dangerously unstable trees still standing in places where they could cause damage when they fall.
Needless to say, besides the two trees that have already collapsed above the house, there's at least one and possibly two unstable trees hanging over the house.
H'mmm...
#TheJoyOfCrofting
wiki_science: Wikipedia Map of Science (2020)
A network of scientific fields, extracted from the English Wikipedia in early 2020. Nodes are wikipedia pages representing natural, formal, social and applied sciences, and two nodes are linked if the cosine similarity of the page content is above a threshold. See <http://www.s…
Mortgage Rates Rise as Iran War Ripples Through Financial Markets (Kailyn Rhone/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/business/mortgage-rates-rise-above-6-percent.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260312/p72#a260312p72
Just returned from a wonderful 11km Friday afternoon walk along the boundary between the seasons...
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography
Cowboys can’t sweat the small stuff, must prioritize needs on defense https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2026/03/15/cowboys-sweat-small-stuff-must-prioritize-defense-2026/89157269007/
Today, looking out of the window, it’s deceptive. It’s bright, dry and sunny. Looks very spring-like. However, step outside, and it’s like walking into a refrigerator, with the ambient temperature just a couple of degrees above freezing.
Fourth Circuit Removes Autonomy From Adults In Healthcare Ban Decision - Above the Law
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/03/fourth-circuit-removes-autonomy-from-adults-in-healthcare-ban-decision/
Stock market hits all-time high as Dow closes above 50,000
The U.S. stock market ended a bumpy week with a bang,
as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 50,000 for the first time.
The Dow crossed the threshold
— an important psychological barrier
— earlier Friday before retreating
and then surging again to close at 50,115.67.
That was a jump of 2.47 percent, more than 1,200 points for the day.
The rally extended to the S&P 500 and the …
@… I have found some forum posts that confirm the above. EagleFiler 1.x requires Rosetta 2.
I also read that a 2.0 version is in the works since late 2024. No further updates since though.
Trying to argue with car-brained people...
One says that since everyone drives above the posted speed limit that it's the speed limit signs that are wrong, and the drivers are right!
sigh...
Good morning from Harlem
#Photography #GoodMorning #Sunrise #NYC
It looks like Hungary has a long road ahead: Orbšn will almost certainly fight the results and try to throw things into chaos, his party’s tentacles still run wide and deep throughout Hungarian institutions, getting Putinism out of the dark corners of power there will be like ending a bedbug infestation, and Orbšn’s likely replacement…um, well, he doesn’t seem like the greatest guy on earth.
EDIT: My first prediction above was wrong! I hope my others are too.
1/
Witnessing Magnetic Reconnection in Tangled Superpenumbral Fibrils around a Sunspot: #Sunspot: https://aasnova.org/2026/03/11/astronomers-see-braided-magnetic-fields-above-a-sunspot/
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Pelican:
🎵 An Inch Above Sand
#Pelican
https://pelicansl.bandcamp.com/track/an-inch-above-sand
https://open.spotify.com/track/4N6PFGsPddIoXyG0LPoTfN
"Faced with economic stagnation the elites are panicking. Wild eyed in the control room, they thrash around seeking to fix the unfixable, pushing all the buttons, pulling all the levers, to no avail, just making things worse. They try the old mantra “growth”, repeated endlessly, and given a priority above all else"
Reeves says 'more to do' after sluggish GDP growth - BBC News
I NEED this to be a real weather app omg 🥹
https://dribbble.com/shots/7119800-Foxy-weather
SMIC reports Q4 revenue up 13% YoY to $2.49B, above est., net profit up 61% YoY to $172.85M, above $139.5M est., and 2025 revenue of $9.33B, above 2024's $8.03B (Sherry Qin/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/busin…
Old Street Works, City Road, #London #FensterFreitag
DOJ Flames Judiciary Over Impertinent Demand For Competent US Attorneys - Above the Law
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/02/doj-flames-judiciary-over-impertinent-demand-for-competent-us-attorneys/
The White House is forcing countries to choose between opening up a potentially unbridgeable rift
or playing down the climate crisis and trying to squeeze in green priorities by the back door.
Last autumn, the US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, demanded the removal of some climate finance targets from the World Bank’s aims
and insisted it must “finance all affordable and reliable sources of energy … [with] an all-of-the-above approach to energy that includes financing fo…
February 2026 was the fifth-warmest February globally, with an average surface air temperature of 1.49°C above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level.
Temperature anomalies were unevenly spread over the world and over Europe.
#ClimateChange
"New report confirms 2025 among Hawai'i's driest, warmest on record"
#Hawaii #Climate #ClimateChange
This was too good to be checked…
But it’s bullshit.
She never said that.
(plonk) @… https://mastodon.scot/@BlytheCycles/11604739239…
Nielsen: Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show averaged 128.2M viewers, above 124.9M for the game overall and down from 133.5M for Kendrick Lamar in 2025 (Selome Hailu/Variety)
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/bad-bunny-super-bowl-halftime-ratings-123665…
Rare Colours Blues III🔷🔷
稀有的色彩蓝 III🔷🔷
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Harman Phoenix 200 II (FF)
#filmphotography #Photography #Art
RE: https://mastodon.social/@isaiah/116223186970163061
Coding is not equivalent with "here's the app that we can sell/rent".
Coding is learning. Coding is experimenting. Coding is preparing to maintain. Coding is an experience.
Indeed, for a corporation all the above do not matter. Even worse, it represents costs. Unnecessary costs.
There are many other unnecessary costs but those creating them will tend to ignore them as they are in the decision making positions.
Apple's decision not to provide security updates unless you change your operating system to the iOS 26 abomination is leading me to avoid them in the future.
Such windows like behavior is not what I pay Apple for. Given that Apple has decided to put their update metrics above customer security leads me to not trust them for the long term.
Switching to Linux will be easy (I used to use it). I don't know what I will do for a phone, maybe just downgrade to a dumb phone mainl…
Ontario regional train return to the North announced their pricing
#northlander
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #CraigCharles
Girl In The Year Above:
🎵 Mama My Heart Is Achin
#GirlInTheYearAbove
https://open.spotify.com/track/6tVk7AVFvAa5oSj2YEoB6W
February investor memo: Cohere hit ~$240M in ARR in 2025, above its $200M target, with QoQ growth of 50% and average gross margins of ~70% throughout the year (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/13/ai-startup-cohere-revenue-ipo.html
Art by Doug Beekman
#art #DougBeekman #monsters #MonsterArt #fantasy
Woman with her ponytail flying up catches air at the long jump
#photo #photography #sports #running
"Why $100 Oil Isn’t Going to Spark a New Shale Boom"
"So far, nothing has changed for us...even missile strikes aren’t shaking off the lethargy in oil right now."
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Why-100-Oil-Isnt-Goi…
Fleet of ‘Flying Ferries’ Will Provide Zero-Emission, Silent EV Boats for Commuters and Tourists Along Norway’s Coast https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/fleet-of-flying-ferries-will-provide-zero-emissio…
Microsoft raises prices for Surface PCs, with Laptop 7 and Pro 11 now $500 more expensive than at their 2024 launch, citing higher memory and component costs (Zac Bowden/Windows Central)
https://www.windowscentral.com/hardware/s…
@… I edited
@… into the post above (they made the call) …
… I can't answer the question (I use VirtualBox, and occasionally VMM, on Kubuntu).
Reddit reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $726M, vs. $665M est., DAUq up 19% to 121.4M, above est., forecasts Q1 revenue above est., announces a $1B share buyback (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/05/reddit-rddt-q4-2025.html
Tech jobs are highly cyclical and lots of the gen AI stuff is ridiculously overhyped, and I’m hopeful that the wheel will keep turning and the professional prospects of software developers will improve again…assuming human civilization survives, that is.
But what I said above applies regardless. We should all be doing this meaning-making work all the time, even in the best job markets. In fact, that work is a part of •making• human civilization survive.
Good morning from Harlem
#Photography #GoodMorning #Sunrise #NYC
Cross To The Other Side ❎
去向另一边 ❎
📷 Nikon FE
🎞️ Lucky C200
If you like my work, buy me a coffee from PayPal #filmphotography
ICE Has Kidnapped The Staff At My Favorite Burrito Shop - Above the Law
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/02/ice-has-kidnapped-the-staff-at-my-favorite-burrito-shop/
"China expects up to 287 GW of new PV capacity additions in 2026"
#China #Energy #SolarPower #Renewables
Approximately 35(ish) years ago Green Day played a show above an abortion clinic on Milwaukee after the “Fireman’s Picnic” in Tichigan, Wisconsin got canceled because someone stabbed an inflatable Hamm’s (Beer) Bear.
Anyway, I hope they tell MAGA to fuck right off today.
With oil hovering above $100 a barrel for much of Monday
and Middle Eastern allies fearing a further tumble into regional conflict,
Trump appeared in Doral, Florida with the mission of
calming global markets and reassuring skittish allies that he has a clear vision for how to end the largest US intervention in the Middle East since the Iraq war.
If there is one, it was not delivered in this press conference.
In a 35-minute appearance, the US president eschewed th…
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #6Musics00sForever
CSS:
🎵 Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above
#CSS
https://cocolah.bandcamp.com/track/lets-make-love-and-listen-to-death-from-above
https://open.spotify.com/track/1Jd9W7k8DTnBSovDSxK77n
‘No Kings Act’ sails through House despite Republican pushback
https://marylandmatters.org/2026/04/10/no-kings-act-sails-through-house-despite-republican-pushback/
pam bondi screaming that oil is above $100 right now, and that's now we should be talking about - not epstein!
BMBL jumps 30% after Bumble reported Q4 revenue above estimates and unveiled an AI-driven app overhaul to lure back users; BMBL is down 90% since its 2021 IPO (Kritika Lamba/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/bumble-shar…
Golden Hour Pastoral
(two minutes after sunrise)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography
Spotify reports Q4 revenue up 13% YoY to €4.5B, Premium users up 10% YoY to 290M, MAUs up 11% YoY to 751M, and a €701M operating income, above €639.1M est. (Ashley Carman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02…
The Executive Branch Discovers Judicial Independence, Hates It - Above the Law
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/02/the-executive-branch-discovers-judicial-independence-hates-it/
Adobe reports Q1 revenue up 12% YoY to $6.4B, vs. $6.28B est., adjusted EPS above estimates, and forecasts Q2 revenue between $6.43B and $6.48B, vs. $6.43B est. (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boa
Some Places with Snow II ❄️
一些有雪的地方 II ❄️
📷 Nikon F4E
🎞️ Ilford FP4 Plus 125, expired 1993
If you like my work, buy me a coffee from PayPal #filmphotography
Applied Materials reports Q1 revenue down 2% YoY to $7.01B, vs. $6.86B est., and forecasts Q2 revenue above estimates; AMAT jumps 12% after hours (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-12/appli…
From Curling To Constitutional Crisis: Team USA Athlete Calls ICE Shootings ‘Wrong’ - Above the Law
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/02/from-curling-to-constitutional-crisis-team-usa-athlete-calls-ice-shootings-wrong/
The latest in our climate chaos theatre: Arctic ice melting in January!
@… on Bluesky:
SUMMER IN WINTER IN GREENLAND
Crazy Temperatures tonight up to 9C (above summer average), persisting during the day.
24 stations at low elevations out of 31 above freezing today.
Kitsissorsuit is chasing the WORLD RECORD of the highest monthly…
Toblinger Knoten / Torre di Toblin
(October 2024)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography
Airbnb reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $2.78B, vs. $2.72B est., Nights and Seats Booked up 10% to 121.9M, and forecasts Q1 revenue above estimates (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/q4-airbnb-abnb-earnings-2025.html
Yep, *that* Ken Starr...
Ken Starr Writing To 'My Friend, My Brother' Jeffrey Epstein - Above the Law
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/02/ken-starr-writing-to-my-friend-my-brother-jeffrey-epstein/
AppLovin reports Q4 revenue up 66% YoY to $1.66B, vs. $1.61B est., and forecasts Q1 revenue and adjusted EBITDA above estimates; APP drops 6% after hours (Luke Kawa/Sherwood News)
https://sherwood.news/markets/applovin-q4-earnings-software-adtech-ai/
Shopify reports Q4 revenue up 31% YoY to $3.7B, vs. $3.59B est., and forecasts Q1 revenue growth at a low-thirties percentage rate, vs. 25% est.; SHOP jumps 10% (Deborah Sophia/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-co
The Justice Department Is Lowering Its Ethical Guardrails - Above the Law
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/03/the-justice-department-is-lowering-its-ethical-guardrails/
TSMC reports Q1 revenue up 35% YoY to ~$35.6B, above est., suggesting global chip demand remained intact during the first weeks of the war in the Middle East (Debby Wu/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-…
Indian IT giant TCS reports Q4 sales up 9.7% YoY to $7.63B, net profit up 12.2% to $1.48B, both above est., and says new AI models did not hurt services demand (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-tcs-beats-fourth-quarter-revenue-v…
Former Biglaw Attorney Was Epstein Victim, Drafted Sex Contract - Above the Law
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/02/former-biglaw-attorney-was-epstein-victim-drafted-sex-contract/
Reddit reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $726M, vs. $665M est., DAUq up 19% to 121.4M, above est., forecasts Q1 revenue above est., announces a $1B share buyback (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/05/reddit-rddt-q4-2025.html
Cloudflare reports Q4 revenue up 34% YoY to $614.5M, vs. $591.3M est., and forecasts full-year and Q1 revenue above estimates; NET jumps 14% after hours (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2026/02/10/cloudflare…
Spotify reports Q4 revenue up 13% YoY to €4.5B, Premium users up 10% YoY to 290M, MAUs up 11% YoY to 751M, and a €701M operating income, above €639.1M est. (Ashley Carman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02…
Affirm reports Q2 revenue up 30% YoY to $1.12B, vs. $1.06B est., GMV up 36% to $13.8B, and forecasts Q3 revenue slightly above est.; AFRM drops 6% after hours (Reinhardt Krause/Investor's Business Daily)
https://www.investors.com/news/technology/affir…
Sources: Alibaba anonymously released an AI video model called HappyHorse-1.0, which ranks top of Artificial Analysis' AI model leaderboard, above Seedance 2.0 (Juro Osawa/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/alibaba-anonymous…
How Black Forest Labs, a 70-person startup based in Germany, became a top competitor in AI image generation; sources: it recently declined to partner with xAI (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/black-forest-labs-ai-image-generation/
Internal memo: Sam Altman tells staff that ChatGPT is "back to exceeding 10% monthly growth", and OpenAI plans to release "an updated Chat model" this week (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/09/sam-altman-touts-cha…
Dell reports Q4 revenue up 39% YoY to $33.4B, vs. $31.73B est., and forecasts FY 2027 revenue above estimates; DELL jumps 10% after hours (Jaspreet Singh/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/dell-forecasts-fiscal-2…
Samsung reports preliminary Q1 operating profit of ~$38B, up more than 8x YoY and above ~$27B est., a record, and revenue up 68% YoY to ~$88B (Hyunjoo Jin/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sus
Salesforce reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $11.2B, vs. $11.18B est., forecasts Q1 revenue above estimates, and announces a $50B share repurchase program (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sus
Snowflake reports Q4 product revenue up 30% YoY to $1.23B, vs. $1.18B est., and forecasts Q1 and FY 2027 product revenue above estimates (Jaspreet Singh/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/snowflake-expects-annual-p…