Tootfinder

Trump says Microsoft will "ensure" Americans don't face higher bills due to data centers' power use and Big Tech must "pay their own way" for their data centers (Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-micr

Trump says that Microsoft will 'ensure' Americans don't 'pick up the tab' for its data center power consumption
President Donald Trump said that tech companies must pay for their own data centers without spiking utility bills for American households.

Korea has had it up to here with all these data breaches
Coupang beset on all sides after data leak sparks full-scale regulatory assault
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/n

Coupang beset on all sides after data leak sparks full-scale regulatory assault
Coupang's turmoil, triggered by a massive data leak, has now become a full-blown regulatory risk, as the New York-listed e-commerce giant faces nearly 10 ongoing investigations.

{dtrack} makes documentation of data wrangling part of the analysis and creates pretty flow charts: #rstats

Africa’s Data Protection Reforms: A Continental Perspective on the Drivers of Change in Legal Frameworks
https://fpf.org/blog/africas-data-protection-reforms-a-continental-perspective-on-the-drivers-of-change-in-lega…

Chartbeat data: global Google search referrals to publishers fell by 33% in the year ending November 2025, with US-specific organic search traffic down 38% (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-…

Google traffic dropped by a third in 2025, new Chartbeat data show
Google search traffic was down globally by a third in the year to November, according to new Chartbeat data.

Doxers Posing as Cops Are Tricking Big Tech Firms Into Sharing People’s Private Data
A spoofed email address and an easily faked document is all it takes for major tech companies to hand over your most personal information.
👉 https://www.wired.com/stor…

De EU schiet wel echt heen en weer tussen goede bescherming van de burgers en dan weer spioneren
EU Revives Plan for Year-Long Online Data Retention
https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-revives-plan-for-year-long-data-retention

On 16WW Data Collections and Graphs - Open for research home #dataset - https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-data.html

On 16WW Data Collections and Graphs
Open for research home #dataset

I read, When AI is Fluent in Data but Illiterate in Context:
'We are building evidence infrastructure at speed, and we are not asking, systematically enough, what the tools assume when they read human realities they were never designed to understand.'
https://reamby.substac…

When AI is Fluent in Data but Illiterate in Context
Beyond the Algorithm

This might cause some "interesting" side effects...
"Whistleblower drops 'largest ever' ICE leak to unmask agents: 'The last straw'
https://www.rawstory.com/ice-agents-data-leak/

Whistleblower drops 'largest ever' ICE leak to unmask agents: 'The last straw'
A Department of Homeland Security whistleblower has released the identities of about 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees Tuesday in what has been called potentially the largest agency data breach for the department.The killing of 37-year-old mother Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross last...

A survey of US adults: 75% say they have heard a lot or a little about data centers; 39% say they are bad for the environment, and 38% bad for home energy costs (Pew Research Center)
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/20

How Americans view data centers’ impact in key areas, from the environment to jobs
A broad majority of Americans have heard about data centers – the often-sprawling computing facilities that are popping up nationwide. But the public has mixed opinions about data centers’ impact…

"Members of the public have reportedly also shared information about agents in hotels and even neighbors.
“I’ve had hotel staff sending post-it notes, bar staff sending DHS IDs, and loads of people saying their neighbour is an agent,” Skinner said."
https://www.rawstory.com/ice-agents-data-l

Whistleblower drops 'largest ever' ICE leak to unmask agents: 'The last straw'
A Department of Homeland Security whistleblower has released the identities of about 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees Tuesday in what has been called potentially the largest agency data breach for the department.The killing of 37-year-old mother Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross last...

The privacy disaster of meta glasses...
but it is already around us with any camera-enabled device, such as phones and smart TVs
https://www.svd.se/a/K8nrV4/metas-ai-smart-glasses-and-data-privacy-concerns-workers-say-we-see-everyt…

Meta’s AI Smart Glasses and Data Privacy Concerns: Workers Say “We See Everything”
Bank details, sex and naked people who seem unaware they are being recorded. Behind Meta’s new smart glasses lies a hidden workforce, uneasy about peering into the most intimate parts of other people’s lives.

Docs Expose CBP’s Use Of Ad Data To Track People’s Movements | Techdirt
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/12/docs-expose-cbps-use-of-ad-data-to-track-peoples-movements/

California fines Disney $2.75 million for data privacy violations https://therecord.media/california-fines-disney-data-privacy

“EU Revives Plan for Year-Long Data Retention Across Digital Services, Including Encrypted Apps … Officials insist they do not intend to compromise encryption or read private messages. What they want is the so-called metadata: who contacted whom, from where, at what time, and through which service.” – https://

https://www.wired.com/story/john-solly-doge-operative-accused-social-security-data-leidos/
Somehow I think it’s fair game to dox anyone who worked for DOGE

John Solly Is the DOGE Operative Accused of Planning to Take Social Security Data to His New Job
A whistleblower complaint alleges John Solly claimed to have stored highly sensitive Social Security data on a thumb drive. Solly and Leidos, his current employer, strongly deny the allegations.

While preparing #ArtemisII for flight, NASA engineers are reviewing data after a confidence test Feb. 12, in which operators partially filled the SLS (Space Launch System) core stage liquid hydrogen tank to assess newly replaced seals in an area used to fill the rocket with propellant: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/02/13/following-confidence-test-nasa-continues-artemis-ii-data-review/ - during the test, "teams encountered an issue with ground support equipment that reduced the flow of liquid hydrogen into the rocket. [...] Engineers will examine findings before setting a timeline for the next test, a second wet dress rehearsal this month. March remains the earliest potential launch window for Artemis II."

ICE, which has no authority to police US citizens, is creepily using data to spy on observers and activists.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/13/ice-using-private-data-to-intimidate-observers-and-activists-advocates-say…

John Solly Is the DOGE Operative Accused of Planning to Take Social Security Data to His New Job (Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/john-solly-doge-operative-accused-social-security-data-leidos/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260312/p107#a260312p107

F*%! #interrail and railway operators that require passport information
https://www.interrail.eu/en/ni/data-security-incident

As it's been surprisingly hard to find this info, here's a short how-to to save urls in the #waybackmachine @… programmatically via script (if you've got a list of urls).
1) Get your API-Keys:

フェディバは死なないわ。私が守るもの
QT: https://fedibird.com/@Keihin/116066681135628294

US BLS data: video and videogame subscriptions and rentals saw inflation of 19.5% in December; cable, satellite, and livestreaming rose 1.1%, same as music subs (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business

“Streamflation” Is Real: U.S. Inflation Data Shows Soaring Price of Streaming Video Services
Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday showed that overall inflation cooled in December ... but streaming video prices soared by nearly 20 percent.

"Following the discovery, we immediately began work to secure our systems"
Does that imply that before the incident, there was no work done to secure the systems?
h/t @…
#Interrail

cora: CORA citations (1998)
Citations among papers indexed by CORA, from 1998, an early computer science research paper search engine. If a paper i cites a paper j also in this data set, then a directed edge connects i to j. (Papers not in the data set are excluded.) Self-loops may be present. The dates of these snapshots are uncertain.
This network has 23166 nodes and 91500 edges.
Tags: Informational, Citation, Unweighted

Lol. The argument against this bill to charge nj data centers more for electricity is that they will just charge users more for their services.
But people can opt out of AI services and can't opt out of needing electricity.
https://www.phillyvoice.com/new-jersey-dat

The source of bad data was a Department of Homeland Security tool called the
"Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements," or SAVE.
Once used mostly to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits,
SAVE has undergone a dramatic expansion over the last year at the behest of Donald Trump,
who has long falsely claimed that millions of noncitizens lurk on state voter rolls, tainting American elections.
At Trump’s direction, DHS has pooled confiden…

“Not Ready for Prime Time.” A Federal Tool to Check Voter Citizenship Keeps Making Mistakes.
The Department of Homeland Security pushed out the revamped tool while it was still adding data. That led to widespread misidentification, particularly for citizens born outside the U.S.

Blockchain-based lending company Figure confirms a data breach; ShinyHunters hacking group published 2.5GB of data, saying Figure refused to pay a ransom (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/13/fintech-lending-giant-fi…

Fintech lending giant Figure confirms data breach | TechCrunch
The company said hackers downloaded “a limited number of files” after breaking into an employee’s account. The hacking group ShinyHunters took responsibility for the breach.

More DOGE fallout
Whistleblower claims ex-DOGE member says he took Social Security data to new job: Washington Post https://ground.news/article/whistleblower-claims-ex-doge-member-says-he-took-social-security-data-to-new-job-washington-post

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into an open-source distributed event streaming platform used by thousands of companies for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications.

What a surprise 😂
OpenAI Is Walking Away From Expanding Its Stargate Data Center With Oracle - Slashdot https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/0510223/openai-is-walking-away-from-expanding-its-stargate…

"AI is built on the collective knowledge of humankind."
No. Nononononono. It is not built on _knowledge_, it it built on _data_. And not everyone's experiences are available as data, many communities are excluded. Also: "Collective" implies some sort of collaboration and shared activity. But "AI" is just accumulation by a few powerful.
So No. It's not collective but extractive, not knowledge but data, not humankind but the hegemonic western …

❓Wie können Musikwissenschaftler:innen mit einem Knowledge Graph interagieren und relevante Informationen abrufen, ohne SPARQL-Expert:innen zu sein?
🤩 Wir freuen uns diese Frage mit euch im Rahmen einer Data Challenge zu diskutieren!✨Und in Kooperation mit dem @…
✨ From Notes to Nodes – Develop an AI-driven explor…

Confronting the Challenges of Sensitive #OpenData
When governments collect sensitive data about private individuals, personal #privacy and governmental #transparency come into conflict. How…

Confronting the Challenges of Sensitive Open Data
When governments collect sensitive data about private individuals, personal privacy and governmental transparency come into conflict. How should we resolve this tension?

Sources: CoinGecko, a prominent crypto market data and analytics company, is considering a sale at a ~$500M valuation, after starting the sales process in 2025 (Will Canny/CoinDesk)
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/01/

SCOOP: Crypto data platform CoinGecko weighs sale for around $500 million, sources say
The crypto market data firm has hired investment bank Moelis, as dealmaking across the sector accelerates.

Started collecting some performance data on ngscopeclient filters as I go through and optimize/refactor.
This is nowhere near the entire filter suite, and a few rows are missing data right now.
8B/10B is still running on the CPU, as you can probably guess from the abysmal throughput, but I had it in one of my test filter graphs so I included the data.

#today various bits of admin including starting things for this year's sustainability hackathon at uni, and very slowly and carefully* fetching and processing the extra 2025 house heating data set again (I'll do most tomorrow).
*Automation, I've heard of it! But it didn't work out so well last time, so I'm eyeballing probably millions of data points as I go this time...<…

paint() your data when you print them to make them easier to grasp: #rstats #console

GitHub - MilesMcBain/paint: paint the data
paint the data. Contribute to MilesMcBain/paint development by creating an account on GitHub.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton thrust the state into the national spotlight by launching a sweeping investigation into what he described as potentially the largest data breach in U.S. history.
https://www.kxxv.com/news/texas-news/texas

Texas attorney general investigates massive data breach affecting 4 million Texans
Ken Paxton calls Conduent breach potentially largest in U.S. history, demanding information from Blue Cross Blue Shield.

GÉANT Compendium 2025 data is now available 📊
Every year, the GÉANT Compendium captures how Europe’s #NRENs operate, evolve and support their communities, from networks & services to organisation, funding and people.
What’s new in the 2025 data:
🔹 Expanded organisational insights, including funding models and expenditure
🔹 New benchmarking questions on NREN staff, including…

US may have struck Iranian girls' school after using outdated targeting data, sources say | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-may-have-struck-iranian-girls-school-after-using-outdated-targeting-data-2026-03-11/

Personal Details of Thousands of Border Patrol and ICE Goons Allegedly Leaked in Huge Data Breach (Tom Latchem/The Daily Beast)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/personal-details-of-thousands-of-border-patrol-and-ice-goons-allegedly-leaked-in-huge-data-breach/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260113/p101#a260113p101

I post on social media expecting discussion, not silence. Disagreement—when it’s thoughtful and evidence-based—is how we learn. Echo chambers don’t make us smarter; conversation does.
https://www.bobmuellerwriter.com/data-over-dogma-what-weve-lost…

Data Over Dogma: What We’ve Lost in Social Media Discussions – Bob Mueller
Why post on social media if not for discussion? A reflection on disagreement, echo chambers, and why thoughtful conversation matters.

On 16WW Mains Inlet Water Temperature - Domestic mains water temperature data for 16WW on tap; seasonal min/max about 10C/20C in winter/summer. #dataset #water #temperature -

On 16WW Mains Inlet Water Temperature
Domestic mains water temperature data for 16WW on tap; seasonal min/max about 10C/20C in winter/summer. #dataset #water #temperature

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

> According to the complaint, [the former DOGE software engineer] allegedly told the whistleblower that he needed help transferring data from a thumb drive “to his personal computer [...]"
Copying data from a thumb drive being something a software engineer would need help with?
https://www.

Whistleblower claims ex-DOGE member says he took Social Security data to new job
The Social Security inspector general’s office is investigating allegations that the former DOGE engineer took sensitive data on a thumb drive in a major potential security breach, said people familiar with the process.

I would like to go on record to say that I don't hate LLMs. That would be like disowning maths.
I hate how people sell it with promises that are simply lies and urging people to use it for things that it is unsuitable for, with the commercial LLMs how they train models on stolen data, how users talk themselves into believing they're talking to a human or something human-like while deskilling themselves, how institutions and organizations shoehorn it into every fucking thing, the way it is usurping computing resources and increasing prices for personal computing, how the big companies underhandedly continuously threaten everyone with "if we don't invest enough the Terminators will get us" and how it is used for very obvious large-scale financial fraud. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sources: UK-based cloud provider Nscale is in talks to buy a major data center site in West Virginia; Amazon and Meta have also expressed interest in the site (Anissa Gardizy/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/nv

Nvidia Cloud Ally Nscale in Talks to Buy a Major U.S. Data Center Site Ahead of IPO
Nscale, an upstart cloud provider heavily backed by Nvidia whose customers include OpenAI and Microsoft, is in talks to take control of one of the largest available sites for AI data centers in the U.S., according to people with knowledge of the talks and fundraising documents viewed by The ...

Behind the Blog: DOGE Bros and Data Labelers https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-doge-bros-and-data-labelers/

In Maricopa County Arizona, a federal grand jury subpoenaed digital data related to a 💥partisan audit 💥of the county’s vote,
according to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, the subpoena’s recipient.
This material — which may have included scans and photos of ballots — was stored by the Senate, not the county.
Maricopa County destroyed the original ballots after two years, as state law requires.
The firm hired by Senate Republican leaders to run the audit,

Election Records Handed Over to the FBI in Maricopa County, Arizona, Could Be Fatally Flawed, Experts Say
Unlike in Fulton County, Georgia, where actual ballots were seized, a federal grand jury subpoenaed digital data related to a partisan audit of the county’s vote.

An initial set of the names from the leak will be posted on Tuesday night, including those of 1,800 on-the-ground agents and 150 supervisors.
Personal Details of Thousands of Border Patrol and ICE Goons Allegedly Leaked in Huge Data Breach

Personal Details of Thousands of Border Patrol and ICE Goons Allegedly Leaked in Huge Data Breach - NewsBreak
Sensitive details of around 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees—including almost 2,000 agents working in frontline enforcement—have allegedly been releas

East coast could soon get rolling blackouts during summer because data centers have pushed electric grid to the limit | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/east-coast-blackouts-ai-data-centers-b2899669.html

On 16WW Mains Inlet Water Temperature - Domestic mains water temperature data for 16WW on tap; seasonal min/max about 10C/20C in winter/summer. #dataset #water #temperature -

On 16WW Mains Inlet Water Temperature
Domestic mains water temperature data for 16WW on tap; seasonal min/max about 10C/20C in winter/summer. #dataset #water #temperature

Dutch mobile phone giant Odido announces data breach https://therecord.media/dutch-telecom-giant-announces-data-breach

sp_colocation: Social co-locations (2018)
Network of colocations between peoople, based on the information on which RFID readers received information from the RFID tags. Namely, we define two individuals to be in co-presence if the same exact set of readers have received signals from both individuals during a 20s time window.
This network has 100 nodes and 394247 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unweighted, Weighted, Temporal, Metadata

Disney agrees to pay $2.75M to settle California AG Rob Bonta's 2024 lawsuit alleging Disney violated CCPA by failing to honor consumers' data opt-out requests (Alyssa Ray/The Wrap)
https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/publ

Disney Settles Streaming Data Suit From CA Attorney General for $2.75 Million
Disney settled the streaming data suit brought about by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, with the entertainment conglomerate set to make a $2.75 million payout.

'AI tools developed at the University of Oxford for analysing ... text collections. They enable the identification of keywords, topics, and categories of terms' - particularly in crowdsourced / community archives https://github.com/Digital-Scholarship-Oxfor…

GitHub - Digital-Scholarship-Oxford/crowdsourced-data-tools: Crowdsourced data tools
Crowdsourced data tools. Contribute to Digital-Scholarship-Oxford/crowdsourced-data-tools development by creating an account on GitHub.

Don't miss today's packed Metacurity for the most critical infosec developments you should know, including
--US drops China Telecom, TP-Link router, and other data security bans before trade talks,
--Crypto-funded transactions for human trafficking soared in 2025,
--Prosecutors confirm former defense contractor exec stole and sold spy tools,
--APT hackers use Gemini AI to support all stages of an attack,
--Apple fixes zero-day exploit in sophisticated att…

US drops China Telecom, TP-Link router, and other data security bans before trade talks
Crypto-funded transactions for human trafficking soared in 2025, Prosecutors confirm former defense contractor exec stole and sold spy tools, APT hackers use Gemini AI to support all stages of an attack, Apple fixes zero day exploited in sophisticated attack, much more

Another cool and useful package from @…: {emphatic} augments the output of data.frames, matrices and simple vectors in R by adding user-defined ANSI highlighting. https://coolbutusele…

Whistleblower drops 'largest ever' ICE leak to unmask agents: 'The last straw' (Nicole Charky-Chami/Raw Story)
https://www.rawstory.com/ice-agents-data-leak/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260113/p99#a260113p99

The IRS erroneously shared the taxpayer information of thousands of people with the Department of Homeland Security, as part of the agencies’ controversial agreement to share information on immigrants for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the US.
https://

Taxpayer data wrongly shared with DHS, court filing says
The IRS has erroneously shared the taxpayer information of thousands of people with the Department of Homeland Security, according to a new court filing. It was part of the agencies’ controversial agreement to share information on immigrants for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S. A declaration filed Wednesday by IRS Chief Risk and Control Officer Dottie Romo stated that the IRS was only able to verify roughly 47,000 of the 1.28 million names requested by U.S…

Source: Microsoft is in advanced talks to lease hundreds of MWs of data center capacity in Abilene, TX, after Oracle abandoned its expansion plans at the site (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-tal…

Microsoft in Talks to Lease Large Texas Data Center Site After Oracle Walked Away
Microsoft is in advanced talks to lease hundreds of megawatts of data center capacity at a closely watched artificial intelligence campus in Abilene, Texas, after rival Oracle walked away from the same opportunity, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions and another person ...

The inner working of parquette/arrow data in R: #rstats

Unpacking Arrow Datasets – Notes from a data witch
A comment on how Datasets work in Apache Arrow. I’m not really sure who the audience for this one. Am I just talking to myself? Probably.

Whistleblower drops 'largest ever' ICE leak to unmask agents: 'The last straw' - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/ice-agents-data-leak/

Disney agrees to pay $2.75M to settle California AG Rob Bonta's 2024 lawsuit alleging Disney violated CCPA by failing to honor consumers' data opt-out requests (Alyssa Ray/The Wrap)
https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/publ

Disney Settles Streaming Data Suit From CA Attorney General for $2.75 Million
Disney settled the streaming data suit brought about by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, with the entertainment conglomerate set to make a $2.75 million payout.

Anthropic says it will upgrade power grid infrastructure, generate new power, and cover consumer price increases to minimize the effects of its data centers (Jared Perlo/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/anthropi…

Anthropic to cover costs of electricity price increases from data centers
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced that it will ensure consumer electricity costs remain steady as it expands its data center footprint.

Despite all the reports, Instagram denies it has experienced a breach.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/instagram-denies-breach-amid-claims-of-17-million-account-data-leak/

Instagram denies breach amid claims of 17 million account data leak
Instagram says it fixed a bug that allowed threat actors to mass-request password reset emails, amid claims that data from more than 17 million Instagram accounts was scraped and leaked online.

IRS improperly disclosed immigrant tax data to DHS: Report (Ashleigh Fields/The Hill)
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5734677-taxpayer-data-improperly-shared-dhs/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260211/p146#a260211p146

Mayors discuss data centers' impact on local communities | AFRO American Newspapers
https://afro.com/mayors-discuss-data-centers/

Microsoft changes its data center approach, pledging to pay its power costs, reject tax breaks, and replenish more water than it uses, amid local opposition (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)
https://www.geekwire.com/2026/microsoft-re

For years, hacked Dutch telco Odido forwarded the names and MAC addresses of all devices on a home network to American AI-enabled Wi-Fi analytics firm Lifemote.
https://nltimes.nl/2026/03/11/odido-routers-forwarded-customers-personal-dat…

Odido routers forwarded customers' personal data to American AI company for years
For years, Odido forwarded sensitive data from customers' routers to the American AI company Lifemote without clearly disclosing this in its privacy statement, the Telegraaf reports. According to the newspaper, the telecom company seems to have stopped this practice after the newspaper’s questions about it.

Ukraine's defense minister says Ukraine is opening up access to its battlefield data for its allies to train AI models (Max Hunder/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-opens-battlefield-d…

IRS improperly disclosed immigrant tax data to DHS: Report
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5734677-taxpayer-data-improperly-shared-dhs/

The infosec news machine is blinking tilt and it's only Wednesday, so don't miss today's Metacurity for the critical developments you should know, including
--DOGE engineer stole hundreds of millions of US taxpayers' data, whistleblower,
--Meta unveils new fraud protections as an international operation disrupts scam compound activity,
--China bans OpenClaw apps on security grounds,
--Foreign hacker accessed Epstein files in 2023,
--Rudd confirmed…

DOGE engineer stole hundreds of millions of US taxpayers' data, whistleblower
Meta unveils new fraud protections as an international operation disrupts scam compound activity, China bans OpenClaw apps on security grounds, Foreign hacker accessed Epstein files in 2023, Rudd confirmed as Cybercom/NSA chief, Quittr app exposes (ahem) sensitive data, much more

Microsoft and Meta each committed nearly $50B in additional data center leases in their most recent quarters, taking major cloud companies' total to $700B (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026…

Sources: US Social Security's inspector general is investigating claims an ex-DOGE engineer took sensitive data on a thumb drive to his new private employer (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/10/social-security-data-brea…

Whistleblower claims ex-DOGE member says he took Social Security data to new job
The Social Security inspector general’s office is investigating allegations that the former DOGE engineer took sensitive data on a thumb drive in a major potential security breach, said people familiar with the process.

Don't leave for the weekend until you've checked out today's Metacurity for the most critical infosec developments you should know, including
--International operation takes down massive cybercrime proxy network SocksEscort,
--Telus probes purported ShinyHunters hack,
--Stryker cyberattack by alleged Iran-aligned hacking group continues to disrupt operations ,
--Leidos CTO John Solly ID'ed as DOGE SSA data thief,
--GAO finds gaps in CMMC program, …

International operation takes down massive cybercrime proxy network SocksEscort
Telus probes purported ShinyHunters hack, Stryker cyberattack continues to disrupt operations by alleged Iran-aligned hacking group, Leidos CTO John Solly ID'ed as DOGE SSA data thief, GAO finds gaps in CMMC program, Google issues emergency fixes for Chrome, much more

Telus Digital confirms a security incident after ShinyHunters claimed to have stolen ~1PB of data from the Canadian outsourcing giant in a multimonth breach (Lawrence Abrams/BleepingComputer)
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/secu

The Federal Trade Commission sent letters to 13 data brokers warning them of their responsibility to comply with the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024 (PADFAA).
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/pres…

FTC Reminds Data Brokers of Their Obligations to Comply with PADFAA
The Federal Trade Commission sent letters to 13 data brokers warning them of their responsibility to comply with the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024 (PADFAA).

The US House passes a bipartisan bill to expand US export controls to restrict Chinese companies' remote access to US AI chips from data centers outside China (Juro Osawa/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/house-passe…

House Passes Bill to Limit China’s Remote Access to U.S. Chips
The House of Representatives on Monday passed a bipartisan bill that expands U.S. export controls to restrict Chinese companies’ ability to remotely access advanced American AI chips at data centers outside China. The bill, the Remote Access Security Act, is the latest step in Washington’s effort to limit China’s use of critical U.S. technologies due to national security concerns. It is

This is likely the least of what DOGE took.
The Social Security inspector general’s office is investigating allegations that the former DOGE engineer took sensitive data on a thumb drive in a major potential security breach.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/20

Whistleblower claims ex-DOGE member says he took Social Security data to new job
The Social Security inspector general’s office is investigating allegations that the former DOGE engineer took sensitive data on a thumb drive in a major potential security breach, said people familiar with the process.

Matia, which helps enterprises consolidate their data management operations, raised a $21M Series A led by Red Dot Capital, bringing its total funding to $31M (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2026/02/10/matia…

Matia raises $21M to help enterprises consolidate their data management operations - SiliconANGLE
Matia raises $21M to help enterprises consolidate their data management operations - SiliconANGLE

Malwarebytes: a 2024 Instagram data breach exposed information on 17.5 million users, including emails, phone numbers, and physical addresses (Jackson Chen/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/an-

An Instagram data breach reportedly exposed the personal info of 17.5 million users
The leak may be responsible for Instagram users receiving plenty of emails requesting a password reset.

Protege, which offers an AI data platform to access high-quality, proprietary training data at scale, raised $30M from a16z, extending its $25M Series A (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2026/01/08/protege-raises-30m-grow-…

Protege raises $30M to grow governed marketplace for AI training data - SiliconANGLE
Protege raises $30M to grow governed marketplace for AI training data - SiliconANGLE

Opaque, which offers enterprise tools for data privacy in AI workflows, raised a $24M Series B at a $300M valuation, bringing its total raised to $55.5M (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2026/02/12/opaque-raises-24m-300m-valua…

Opaque raises $24M at $300M valuation for 'confidential AI' platform - SiliconANGLE
Opaque raises $24M at $300M valuation for 'confidential AI' platform - SiliconANGLE

Q&A with Dario Amodei on getting close to "a country of geniuses in a data center", how AI will diffuse through the economy, frontier lab profits, China, more (Dwarkesh Patel/Dwarkesh Podcast)
https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dario-amodei-2

Microsoft launches Copilot Health, which integrates medical records, biometric data from wearables, and lab results to give personalized advice, in the US (Sebastian Herrera/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj…

Boston- and Tel Aviv-based Converge Bio, which uses AI trained on molecular data to help pharma and biotech companies develop drugs, raised a $25M Series A (Kate Park/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/13/ai-d

Converge Bio raises $25M, backed by Bessemer and execs from Meta, OpenAI, Wiz | TechCrunch
AI drug discovery startup Converge Bio raised $25 million in a Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with additional backing from executives at Meta, OpenAI, and Wiz.

Mobile internet blackouts hit Moscow as the Kremlin tightens control; Roskomnadzor data shows daily traffic down ~20% since March 5 vs. the previous month (Anastasia Stognei/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/f9584377-f63f-48c1-ac16-f46450d8c783

Caterpillar hits a $300B market cap for the first time, driven by demand for its data center power generation equipment; CAT is up 12% in 2026 to a record ~$640 (Matthew Griffin/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Sources: the Trump administration has shelved tech security measures against China, including data center equipment curbs, ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting in April (Alexandra Alper/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-tel

Google unveils WAXAL, a new open speech dataset for 21 African languages to ease speech technology development; African institutions own the dataset (Damilare Dosunmu/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2026/google-waxal-african-languages-ai-sovereignty/…

Google backs African push to reclaim AI language data
A new 21-language data set gives African institutions ownership and control in a field long dominated by Big Tech.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves says xAI is set to spend $20B to build its MACROHARDRR data center in Southaven, its third in the greater Memphis area (Sophie Bates/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/xai-musk-data-center-missis…

Elon Musk's xAI to third data center in Memphis area
Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, plans to spend $20 billion on a data center in Southaven, Mississippi. Gov. Tate Reeves announced Thursday that this is the largest private investment in the state's history. The center, called MACROHARDRR, will be near Memphis, Tennessee, and is xAI's third in the area. xAI CFO Anthony Armstrong says it will house the world's largest supercomputer. The project faces scrutiny over environmental concerns, especially regarding air pollution near predominantly Black co…

BNP Paribas analysis: Anthropic saw visits to its site jump 6.5% after its Super Bowl ad and DAUs jump 11% post-game, outperforming other AI companies (Samantha Subin/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/13/anthropic-open-ai-super-bowl-ads.html

Anthropic got an 11% user boost from its OpenAI-bashing Super Bowl ad, data shows
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman criticized Anthropic's Super Bowl ad campaign, which took a swipe at the ChatGPT maker's decision to bring ads to the platform.

Palantir software demos and DOD records show how the military may be using AI chatbots, including the kinds of queries and the data used to generate responses (Caroline Haskins/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-demos-show-…

Palantir Demos Show How the Military Could Use AI Chatbots to Generate War Plans
Software demos and Pentagon records detail how chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude could help the Pentagon analyze intelligence and suggest next steps.

Meta plans to spend more than $10B to build a 1GW data center campus in Lebanon, Indiana, expected to be operational at the end of 2027 or in early 2028 (Riley Griffin/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-0…

China releases draft guidelines for governing online personal data collection, open for public consultation amid privacy concerns and companies' data misuse (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-10/c…

A profile of Nscale founder Josh Payne, a former coal miner in Australia who moved to London and started the data center developer in 2024 amid the AI boom (Adam Satariano/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/business/nscale-ai-data-center-boom.html

The Former Coal Miner in the Middle of the A.I. Data Center Boom
Josh Payne, the chief executive of Nscale, raised $2 billion from investors. Sheryl Sandberg, the former Facebook executive, is joining his board.