Tootfinder

It Turns Out That When Waymos ('self-driving taxis' in the US) Are Stumped, They Get Intervention From Workers in the Philippines* "They provide guidance."
*) According to Waymo, some operators live in the US, but others much further away, including in the Philippines
https://

It Turns Out Waymos Are Being Controlled by Workers in the Philippines
During a Congressional hearing, Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company's reliance on overseas workers.

Ed Zitron offers 15K words on whether Nvidia is like Enron (or several other famous fraudsters) or not. It's amusing and erudite and most people just won't have time to plow through it. Which is a pity, because 80% of the way through there’s a section called:
“Is NVIDIA Shipping Millions Of GPUs And Putting Them In Warehouses? Where Are The 6 Million Shipped Blackwell GPUs?”
His findings are absolutely shocking. Tl;dr: That headline just above.

NVIDIA Isn't Enron - So What Is It?
If you enjoy this free newsletter, why not subscribe to Where's Your Ed At Premium? It's $7 a month or $70 a year, and helps support me putting out these giant free newsletters! At the end of November, NVIDIA put out an internal memo (that was leaked to Barron's reporter

The US military has always had a massive global advantage against enemies by having bases all over the world. There are bases in every NATO country. This would appear to be a powerful threat to anyone willing to oppose American hegemon, and under normal conditions it would be.
But a lot of those kids serving on those bases joined, not because they love America but, because they needed a ticket out of poverty. They joined for the education, for the money, maybe a bit for the adventure, but, more than anything, to escape the ghetto or podunk backwater that trapped them. Under normal times, this is the best deal they could expect. Maybe they risk their lives, usually they sit around being bored for a few years, and they get to come out with respect and paid college.
But what they are being offered is normal in most of the countries they're stationed in. Free healthcare, cheap or free education, is just what citizens in a lot of countries have come to expect. If the US attacked a NATO country, how many would snap up citizenship if they were given a chance to defect? Bonus points for taking some hardware with you, I'm sure.
But there are some who love their country. There are some patriotic Americans on those bases. Some of them joined specifically to protect the US from all enemies, foreign *and* domestic. Given a chance to fulfill that oath or violate international law, what happens?
There are a good number of former military folks too who now are unsafe in the countries they served, who would do just about anything for citizenship in any EU country and almost any NATO ally. Some of those folks know things they swore an oath to never share, but the country they swore an oath to has betrayed them. Today there's no value in leaking those secrets, but in a war between the US and NATO allies things would be different. Some of those former military folks still believe in their oath, and know exactly who the real enemy is. What happens when there's a real threat of war, when they can use their knowledge to fulfill that oath to protect the US against those domestic threats?
There are a bunch of civilian tech workers who have become targets of the regime. Some of them had clearance, or know about the skeletons in the closet. They know about critical infrastructure, classified systems, all sorts of things that would be extremely valuable to an opponent. But the opponents of the US have always been a frightening *other*, never familiar societies these folks look up to, have visited, have thought about moving to, are trying to escape to.
All I'm saying here is that invading Venezuela and kidnapping the president has a very different calculus than does attacking Greenland. I don't know if Trump or his people are able to understand that, but if he and his folks aren't then I hope European leaders are. But more than that, I hope it never comes down to finding out.
But perhaps we should all think about what we would do to make sure things ended quickly if American leadership ever made such an incredible mistake.

220,000 Fewer Workers: How Trump's Cuts Affected Every Federal Agency (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/09/upshot/trump-workforce-cuts-table.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DFA.Y-Uo.a9yrh4xIr_wE&smid=url-share
http://www.memeorandum.com/260109/p103#a260109p103

An interview with 10 Kenyan AI annotators shows Chinese companies hire data labelers via opaque middleman networks and WhatsApp groups to avoid accountability (Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/kenya-china-ai-workers/

The hidden Kenyan workers training China’s AI models
An unemployment crisis has created fertile ground for companies to step in with opaque systems built on WhatsApp groups, middlemen, and bargain-basement wages.

After identification of a Thai worker's remains, the first phase of Gaza’s tenuous 8-week-old ceasefire is
a step closer to completion, with one more hostage’s remains still to be returned.
The subsequent phases under a U.S.-drafted, U.N.-backed plan for Gaza remain deeply uncertain.
There has been no word on how provisions for Hamas’ disarmament will be carried out,
or how a planned international administration and security force will be established.

A single hostage remains in Gaza after identification of Thai worker's remains
JERUSALEM (AP) — The subsequent phases under a U.S.-drafted, U.N.-backed plan for Gaza remain deeply uncertain.

Resulta que los Waymos estšn siendo controlados por trabajadores en Filipinas
“It Turns Out Waymos Are Being Controlled by Workers in the Philippines”
https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-workers-philippines

Venezuela's union representing press workers said at least 14 were detained on Monday, including 13 from international media organizations; one was deported (Sibylla Brodzinsky/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan

Waymo “self-driving” may be due for some extra scrutiny.

During a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Waymo’s chief safety officer,
Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company’s use of Chinese-made vehicles
and reliance on overseas workers, as Business Insider reports.
The stakes and public safety implications are considerable.
The news comes roughly a week after a Waymo robotaxi struck and injured a child near a Santa Monica, California, elementary school…

It Turns Out That When Waymos Are Stumped, They Get Intervention From Workers in the Philippines
During a Congressional hearing, Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company's reliance on overseas workers.

It Turns Out That When Waymos Are Stumped, They Get Intervention From Workers in the Philippines (Victor Tangermann/Futurism)
https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-workers-philippines
http://www.memeorandum.com/260206/p124#a260206p124