Tootfinder

After the Iran war, the Gulf will never be the same again
Most observers are rightly focusing on the near-term effects of the war in Iran.
In addition to the mounting human cost,
the war has caused the largest supply shock in oil market history by volume and percentage of global supply affected.

But equally important, if less visible, are the long-term impacts that war will have on the global economy.
Iran will very likely have a government that is hostile to …

After the Iran war, the Gulf will never be the same again
The fighting may end, but the inflationary and investment effects across the region will not.

«Is End-to-End Encryption Optional For Large Groups?
One of the recent topics in Messaging App Discourse is whether it makes sense to prioritize End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) when searching for an alternative to Discord.»
— by @…
Encryption rarely has anything to do with secrecy, but with the reality of the source and the trust in their data.

Is End-to-End Encryption Optional For Large Groups? - Dhole Moments
One of the recent topics in Messaging App Discourse is whether it makes sense to prioritize End-to-End Encryption when searching for an alternative to Discord. Who’s Saying “No”? …

Yesterday I finished "The Other Side of Tomorrow" written by Tina Cho and illustrated by Deb JJ Lee. Lee's "In Limbo" was an excellent graphic memoir, and this similarly has wonderful art, although I didn't make the connection until checking the authors after reading to the end.
This book is a realistic fictional account of two childrens' escape from North Korea via China, Laos, and ultimately Thailand where they could declare themselves refugees at a US embassy and get sponsored to live in America. Along the way they're helped by various members of the Asian Underground Railroad. I'll avoid spoilers but yet definitely encounter difficulties along the way.
The ending definitely hits different now (while also accentuating my disgust with the current US regime). Like "Libertad" that I also finished recently, the "escape to the US at the end" plot line is going to become less prevalent going forward, although Libertad involved a good measure of complexity around that point.
I was a bit disappointed in one of the later plot points where a different and more-real-world-probable turn of events could have served as a better message for society, with the "lucky" outcome as written reinforcing regressive notions of family, and as an ex-Christian the Christian elements of the story made me feel a way. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist though, and can respect the idea that those willing to risk torture and death for their faith have every right to stand by it and take inspiration from it. Most (very valid) critiques of big western Church institutions just don't apply to underground churches in northern China who are helping people escape the horrors of deep fascism.
Overall a really good book.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Q&A with Walt Handelsman, who retired at the end of 2025 as an editorial cartoonist at New Orleans' Times-Picayune, on the changes in a dwindling profession (Rob Tornoe/Editor and Publisher)
https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/the-vanishing…

The vanishing newspaper cartoonist
When Rob Tornoe sat down with two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Walt Handelsman, the conversation was less about one retirement and more about an extinction. Handelsman’s decision to put down his pen marks another milestone in the quiet collapse of staff editorial cartooning in America. Once a staple of nearly every major daily, the role has dwindled from hundreds of full-time artists to fewer than two dozen nationwide. What’s vanishing isn’t just a job category — it’s a uniquely sharp, …

The NFL's final four is set, plus a soccer ending you have to see https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6981932/2026/01/19/bears-rams-patriots-texans-the-pulse/

The comic / graphic novel will be ending soon and then the wait for the final Netflix movie will start. #Heartstopper 🏳️‍🌈
#LGBTQ #AliceOseman

"You know things are bad when even OpenAI President Greg Brockman is posting stuff, like “Taste is a new core skill.” If people had taste, your company wouldn’t exist, Greg."
(Original title: The only taboo left is copyright infringement)
https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-on…

The only taboo left is copyright infringement
Read to the end for a magical sounding supermarket freezer aisle

I has a bed.
No mattress until Monday, but a bed fully stained and varnished and constructed.
Had to wait a couple of days for varnish which never came. Went out to an actual DIY shop in the end. Gonna have a lot of spare varnish soon.
Varnished the whole room with two more coats as well as the bed twice.
A few more things to buy after Xmas and the full media setup can't happen until the new Steam Machine at its heart is released. Maybe cobble together something to plug a laptop into in the meantime? All for next year though once the mattress arrives and I can actually sleep in the bedroom.

#Shitpost #Shitposting #ShamelesslyStolenFromSomewhereElseOnTheInternetHonestlyICantKeepTrackOfThisStuffAnymore

End fracking and LNG expansion
Beyond a petition — become part of a community for change.
The B.C. government needs to end fracking and liquified natural gas (LNG) expansion now. We know that consistent, concerted pressure from as many people as possible moves decision-makers, and our aim is to make it easy for tens of thousands of people to raise their voices together.
Sign the petition and join the collective people-powered movement to end fracking and LNG in B.C.

End fracking and LNG expansion | Wilderness Committee
Sign our petition and call on B.C. to protect communities from climate disasters by ending fracking in the province!

Chinese smartphone shipments fell 1.6% YoY in Q4 2025 and 0.6% YoY for 2025 due to weak demand, rising prices, and memory shortages; iPhone shipments rose 28% (Counterpoint Research)
https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/China-Smartphone-Shipments-Q4-20…

Many consumer electronics manufacturers
'will go bankrupt or exit product lines' -- by the end of 2026
due to the AI memory crisis,
Phison CEO reportedly says
https://www.

Many consumer electronics manufacturers 'will go bankrupt or exit product lines' by the end of 2026 due to the AI memory crisis, Phison CEO reportedly says
This could go on for another 10 years.

Cowboys’ tight end room was one of its best in 2025 https://insidethestar.com/cowboys-tight-end-room-was-one-of-its-best-in-2025

Boooooo
https://gothamist.com/news/mamdani-will-bring-back-homeless-encampment-sweeps-after-vowing-to-end-practice

Mamdani will bring back homeless encampment sweeps after vowing to end practice
The administration said the city’s homeless services agency would now take charge of sweeps.

me: *low whistles*
me: "Damn, check out THOSE bollards!"
8yo: "What?"
me: "These metal things. they're nice, aren't they? No drivers parking on this sidewalk!"
8yo: *lays down on one*
8yo: "Yeah, they're good, I guess."
#SafeStreets

"[Both Trump and Rubio have] portrayed Maduro as a cartel leader, in charge of groups like the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Those assertions, however, have been contradicted by the US intelligence community, which found no evidence that Maduro controls the gang."
Five key takeaways from US State Secretary Rubio’s year-end briefing | Politics News | Al Jazeera

Five key takeaways from US State Secretary Rubio’s year-end briefing
Top US diplomat Marco Rubio reiterates hard line against Venezuela’s Maduro, says Ukraine conflict is ‘not our war’.

Getting started with Shiny to make interactive web-apps with R: #rstats

Overview | Building Web Apps with R Shiny
This class will teach you the basics of Shiny app programming, giving you skills that will form the basis of almost any app you want to build. By the end of the class, you will have created a custom app that collects and saves data, allows users to dynamically visualize the data, and produces downloadable reports.

That was Rufus Wainwright at the end right? Was he singing the Rice-a-roni song?
Am I crazy? He has a song called San Francisco but those are not the lyrics? RIGHT?
Rufus' orchestration is meant for space. He is from the future.
#startrek

Regardless, we can be careful to echo the OP in a way that doesn’t inadvertently become advertising.
❌ No: “This magical tech holds the keys to the future, and if billionaires own it then that screws the working class!” (This is a caricature, not what the OP wrote! I’m just exaggerating the thing to steer clear of.)
✅ Yes: “Whether this tech is ultimately good or bad, the investment bubble surrounding it is creating a huge wealth transfer in favor of billionaires.”
/end

It is a vile scandal that 2 of the biggest AI companies in the world attack children by inciting them to self-harm, and by generating sexually exploitative imagery of kids for profit. I wanted to document this so that people in tech will stop saying they don't know: https://www.anildash.com/2026/02/18/threat…

How did we end up threatening our kids’ lives with AI?
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Dear European “leaders”,
If you do what the US does, we will end up where the US is.
This isn’t rocket science, you muppets.

#CFP: Anthropology at the End of Worlds
https://ift.tt/E9kluoZ
Anthropology at the End of Worlds Due February 23, 2026 Northeastern University will host…
via Input 4 RELCFP

#CFP: Anthropology at the End of Worlds
Anthropology at the End of Worlds Due February 23, 2026 Northeastern University will host “Anthropology at the End of Worlds” on March 27–28, 2026! The conference explores how anthropologists can continue their work amid political turmoil, financial precarity, environmental ruination, and other conditions that foreclose access to communities and reshape ethnographic practice.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Prom Queen:
🎵 End of the World
#PromQueen
https://promqueenband.bandcamp.com/track/end-of-the-world
https://open.spotify.com/track/4ufp0TkLjeHQ9HCZUYMYYy

One of the strongest sun storms in, well, recorded era is incoming today
Watch out for auroras even down to Mexico! Also, watch out for end of the world etc

Russia’s economy has entered the death zone - Alexandra Prokopenko - Economist
#Ukraine

Trump's DOJ trying to do an end-run on Title II accessibility requirements for the web.
Don't let this happen!
What it all means, and what you can do to help...
#a11y #webAccess #accessibility

Red Alert: DOJ Web Rule in Danger
Last June, I wrote about the growing threats to the DOJ’s ADA Title II Web Accessibility Rule. That warning feels understated now. If you care about the accessibility of state and local government websites, read on. There are credible rumors…

Added a "free play area" to the otherwise unused space in the corner of the ReworkCTF board. Just a bunch of fine pitch traces on various layers, some 0402 footprints, and some vias - not wired to anything else, just a playground for circuit edit practice.
Plus a pair of crossing trace pairs on L1 and L2 that might be fun to do something with.

@… @… dave, please pack up your doctypes by the end of the day

Immigrant justice lawyers representing 13 plaintiffs sued to overturn the first Trump administration's asylum ban in "Noem vs. Al Otro Lado"
The lawsuit was filed in July 2017 by Al Otro Lado, along with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, the American Immigration Council, and other organizations located near the border.
“Customs and Border Protection officers would confront people literally standing at the line and obstruct them from coming in,” said Melissa…

US Is Legally Obligated to Provide Asylum. SCOTUS May Help Trump End It Anyway.
The federal government is appealing a case from Trump’s first term to reinstate an asylum ban at the southern border.

Snow conditions suck, but the views are totally worth the cost of the lift ticket #mtbaker

It's disasters and infrastructure week in my "History of Here," a course focused on #Mississauga and #Toronto. So we'll discuss the largest pre-Katrina peacetime evacuation in North America - the Mississauga train derailment.
As usual, I'll begin class with some music from the period a…

Canva COO Cliff Obrecht says the company hit $4B in ARR at the end of 2025, had 265M MAUs and 31M paid users, and expects to IPO in the next "couple of years" (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/canva-gets-to-4b-i…

Canva gets to $4B in revenue as LLM referral traffic rises | TechCrunch
The creative company's monthly active users increased 20%, growth that was partially propelled by adoption of its AI tools.

Holla… this is huge https://www.heise.de/en/news/BGH-bombshell-on-card-sharing-no-computer-fraud-in-pay-TV-piracy-11144974.html
The sentence by the highest German court is interesting as it seems to end a common practice …

BGH bombshell on card sharing: no computer fraud in pay-TV piracy
The Federal Court of Justice corrects previous case law and denies direct financial damage to providers for illegal pay-TV access.

Headline in Dutch @… :
"Europe draws red line after new threats by Trump."
Unfortunately, that remains to be seen. With some friends of Putin&Trump among the member states' leaders, some less courageous ones, and strong business interests, it's not so easy. We'll know more by the end of this week.

Requests are being spread on fediverse to use hashtags not inline but at the end, because screen readers. I am aiming for accessibility.
At the same time, I like using hypertext in full and not as a digital copy of printed materials, and highly value terms being links when first used, not with the main expectation that they are followed, but for clarification (eg. of definitions) and semantic linking.
Can and should I indicate such "soft" (non-intrusive) links in HTML?

Tomorrow I am having a bay of firewood logs delivered, and I'll have to spend the entire day thereafter getting them chainsawed into pieces small enough that I can move them in the van, since the tractor is still out of commission. Fun fun. I'll be pretty exhausted by the end of that.

The Trump era will end soon, in three years if not earlier, given his advanced age. Democrats obviously hate him like no other president. Moreover, Republicans absolutely hate their past presidents, and the purge of their ideas, staunch supporters, and projects will be as wild as the ride this year.

Right now is the ideal time for people with positions on the left end of the Overton Window to find offices to run for wearing a big blue D.
Anything. School board. State leg. County clerk. Sheriff.
If you want a real Left party in the US, the only serious strategy is to do to the Dems what the Fash have done to the GOP. Be the party. In the US, it really can be that simple.

I have to say I don't hate the faces of DLSS 5. Maybe I don't get the Snapchat reference because I've never used it? They don't look exactly off and uncanny to me either. Maybe because of the comparison which shows they are more or less derived "from the artwork"? The more upsetting explanation would be that my uncanny valley threshold is kind of low.
One thing I strongly agree with--the end results look uniformly AI-perfect, dull across the board even with th…

Confirming Nunki as the closest #CoreCollapse progenitor candidate to the Sun: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.17011 -> it's a pair of 6 M_Sun stars at 69 parsec that will merge into a 10 M_Sun star and thus end as a supernova.

*shlorp shlorp shlorp*

Raiders Get Blunt Sean McDermott Message After Bills Firing https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/sean-mcdermott-bills-head-coach-firing/

When I need an energy boost this performance usually does the trick.
I love the way this video gets better and better as it goes along. I love seeing the interplay between Handsome Dick Manitoba and Ross the Boss near the end. Just pure rock and roll energy from an iconic time, location, and band.
#music #rock

I do not want to talk about what companies want. Why they want to push for AI (even if I had a pretty good intuition and understanding of why).
I do care about my career and I am probably quickly tempted to generalize my thoughts on this.
I wouldn’t really enjoy spending my time reviewing, debugging, correcting, and fixing, and most importantly carrying the responsibility, for a statistical engine. I don't see what the career progression is either. Is it “push as fast as possible to get a promotion and get out of this area before the 💩 starts breaking and you end up spending 1000% of your time in incidents?”

Bloomberg News: «There is still a very real gap in the current value, or stock, of all the investments that the US and China have out in the world. At the end of 2024, the total value of US companies' long-term physical investments overseas was some $6.8 trillion», 5 more than China.
https://archive.is/WR8NN…

Idea: new business listings site called "uck", that exists solely to fill the space between the Facebook logo (f) and the Linked In logo (in) and the Google logo (g) on corporate websites.

A thought, after listening to all the fucking securocrats wanking off over their Munich Security Conference.
In the Franco-Prussian war, the Paris Commune happened. At the end of the first world war, Russia had a #communist revolution, while the German navy mutinied in an explicitly left wing revolt. After the second,

Who's making money on the Iran conflict?
https://www.racket.news/p/warriors-casino-the-people-making

Warriors’ Casino: The People Making A Killing Gambling On War
Insider trading on the end of the world?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@verge/116257102307053080
There's no fucking mystery here (the Verge doesn't imply one, the article is well written, Im just saying aloud) - there is zero fiscal incentive for automakers to PUSH low end models.
Auto…

The Times and Sunday Times had 659,000 digital subscribers at the end of 2025, up 7% YoY; editor says digital subscribers now cover cost of 700-strong newsroom (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/nationals/tony-gall…

Times editor says digital subs now cover cost of 700-strong newsroom
Times editor Tony Gallagher has revealed revenue from digital subscribers is covering the cost of the Times and Sunday Times newsrooms.

Our Panic World episode about ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis is out.
You can watch the video version by clicking the embed and you can listen to an audio version anywhere you get your podcasts.
The situation in Minneapolis is escalating rapidly.
Last night, the Department of Homeland Security said they arrested eight “rioters,”
after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tried to clear out protesters camped out at the Whipple Federal Building,
ICE’s de f…

Where are the Democrats???
Read to the end for Randall Girl

I just wrote this.
"In 2013…CBP…knew that their agents would sometimes '…intentionally put themselves into the exit path of the vehicle, thereby exposing themselves to additional risk and creating justification for the use of deadly force.'"
https://stuff.davidaugust.com/preme…

Premeditated State Violence Must End
Planning to kill is bad. In 2013, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) knew that their agents would sometimes “…intentionally put themselves into the exit path of the vehicle, thereby exposing themselves to additional risk and creating justification for the use of deadly force” (PDF from CBP web server). Jonathan

Article updated (note at the end) because I found errors in both the Guardian article and the original report.
See also the long Tim Parrique piece linked in a post here yesterday.
Decoupling …… again – degrowthUK
https://degrowthuk.org/2025/12/16/decoupling-again/…

Decoupling …… again
Post updated 12 Feb to draw attention to an error in the Guardian article and another in the ICIU report. An article appeared in The Guardian on Thursday, December 11th, entitled “Economic gr…

Weekend project: set up an IP cam server with Frigate on a Raspberry Pi I had lying around at my parents' house.
I'm worried about those old bastards, but I'm also worried that the stream from those cameras will end up on some hidden Internet forums.
I'm not interested in using the "cloud services" so kindly offered to me by big companies.
#privacy

Using the Browser’s <canvas> for Data Compression
When building static websites and Single-Page Applications (SPAs), we sometimes need functionality in JavaScript front ends—such as compression—that is usually handled on the back end instead. […]
🔄 https://jstrieb.github.io/posts/canvas

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@rsc/115924064984026510
This may finally be the end (for me at least) of a conversation started 30 or so years ago, when Ken Thompson and I tried to figure out a clean way to convert to and from digital representations of floating point numbers.
Nice work, @…

Just finished "Song of A Blackbird" by Maria van Lieshout. It's an excellent and extremely timely historical fiction graphic novel about rediscovering a family connection that was severed by war, and the Dutch Resistance figures under Nazi occupation who saved many lives, in some cases at the cost of their own.
Despite being fiction, it's very closely grounded in historical facts, and the inclusion of photographs within the illustrations is really cool.
Now is an interesting time to be thinking about the fates of Nazis, collaborators, their victims, and the resistance, as well as how we remember them all. I especially liked the section at the end about the real historical figures and their fates. So "fascinating" that none of the Nazis were executed or died in prison (mostly they did serve long terms before their release), even those who oversaw mass killings and deportations to concentration camps. I'm a prison abolitionist and not a fan of state capital punishment, so on *some* level this seems like an outcome I should be happy about, but I somehow doubt that the state was this lenient for all prisoners during this time period...
#AmReading #ReadingNow

I think the reason Meta et al are pushing for the OS age thing is that they know there's no way that anything they can do themselves for age verification will satisfy the regulators and/or cause them to have to pass data to 3rd party dodgy verifiers; they'll always get the blame if kids find a way around it if it's done at their end.

❝
After 30 minutes of standing in a window recess surrounded by people, being hit with water balloons, "marched" to his hotel
He has reportedly retreated / led the crowd to his hotel, very smart guy 🙃
I sincerely hope that all of the bluster of the nonstop national news networks, as well as the massive mobilization of forces, all end up being for a huge nothing-burger. 20 people?! Even ICE recruits better than that.
❞
Thanks to all the folks on the ground and following the video who are sharing all these reports.
4/

A review of a book from the Venezuelan left.
The debacle due to,
1) US imperial sanctions and blockade,
2) Vz leadership failure, despite rhetoric, to challenge & replace capitalist relations,
3) Continued dominance of oil and dependency on primary exports.
Venezuela: the end game – Michael Roberts Blog

Venezuela: the end game
The kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Maduro and his wife by US military forces, the subsequent takeover by the Vice President Rodriguez and her agreement to allow the US to control Venezuela’s o…

I’m at the five minute mark of this video and he calls me out directly as I’m ironically watching it on a screen BUT also cannot focus entirely on what he says as these glasses keep me in a compulsive side quest to share my admiration and their weirdness with you on my second screen.
(I will put my phone on its charger and keep watching to the end without y’all by my side!)

I bought a pair of 25' Intellitron stainless steel whip antennas from GigaParts while they were on sale ("two is one and one is none" and the second one tipped me me into "free shipping" making its marginal cost pretty low). On removing them from the packages, however, loose roll pins fell out, and the bases fell off the antennas. Both of them.
A roll pin is an inappropriate fastener to use to connect two concentric thin-walled tubes, so this is a design failure. And the roll pins are …

There are a lot of takeaways from this:
1. Organizing locally gives you a massive advantage because you will always know your local area better than ICE ever can.
2. Be agile. You can always change tactics faster than a centralized organization.
3. Organize now. The sooner you build your networks, the sooner you can learn.
4. Identify ICE facilities and organize monitoring them directly.
But I think the most interesting one that's not explicitly in there, one that's hinted at the last one, is to go on the offensive. ICE is already afraid. If we all take the anger we have at the murder of #ReneGood, find the local ICE facility that they'll stage from, and bring that anger to #OccupyICE we might be able to just shut the whole thing down preemptively. Completely stop all ICE operations across the US. If they want to fight, they can fight *with everyone, all at once.*
Shut down their ability to operate at all. They have a logistics pipeline. They need cars, they need oil in those cars, they need to be able to move those cars to target areas. They also need money to pay those agents. All of those can be disrupted.
The regime needs your money and labor to maintain the illusion of legitimacy. They chose a bad time because you can hit both of those at once *right now* with a combination of #GeneralStrike and #TaxStrike, and then #BoycottEverything.
The regime is weaker than it's ever been. It's flailing. Their own base is demanding the release of the #EpsteinFiles. Their last gasp attempt to prevent the radical change that's coming is just to ethnically cleanse the US back to the 50's (which is what they always meant by "Make America Great Again"). Trump will do anything to stay in power, even if it means killing everyone on Earth in the process. But Americans can end it now by going on the offensive.
Now is the time.
#USPol

Statement on President Trump's Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict (The White House)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/01/statement-on-president-trumps-comprehensive-plan-to-end-the-gaza-conflict/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260116/p143#a260116p143

In a decisive vote Friday,
the Virginia Senate approved a
constitutional amendment that would automatically restore voting rights to people with felony convictions
after they complete their sentence
and guarantee the right to vote in the commonwealth.
The measure will now head to voters for final approval.
The amendment, which passed the Senate 21-18 after earlier approval by the House of Delegates,
would fundamentally change how Virginia treats vot…

Virginia takes key step to end ‘overt and intended effort to block Black people from voting’
Read more here.

I will not vote for Gavin Newsom. Just like I refused to vote for Eric Adams.
I voted for Kamala Harris, despite her veering to the right during her campaign. But there are lines that I will not cross, and voting for Newsom is one of them.
If the Dems end up picking Newsom, that's them snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Source: Browns signing former Bills DE Epenesa https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/48243658/defensive-end-aj-epenesa-signing-1-year-deal-cleveland-browns

‘Intriguing’ Role Predicted for 6-foot-7, 270-Pound Cowboys Tight End https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/brevynn-spann-ford-bigger-role/

We need to start contemplating this. It’s not easy to picture; if it is easy, you’re doing it wrong. But we need to do it. We need to imagine this while we still have the capacity to imagine.
We need to make sure that there is, somewhere in this authoritarian noise, a red line whose crossing actually matters because we •make• it matter.
If enough people know where their red line is, and if enough people are prepared to take action if the regime crosses it, well, •that• helps Minnesota — and the whole world.
/end

As news outlets treat prediction markets like news, especially heading into US elections, every dip and swing in the odds may end up wildly misleading people (Saahil Desai/The Atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/202

America Is Slow-Walking Into a Polymarket Disaster
Why is the media obsessed with prediction markets?

«Instagram is killing its end-to-end encrypted chats - here's what changes May 8:
Instagram will end support for end-to-end encrypted chats on May 8, 2026. What the feature does, how it works, and what users lose when it goes.»
Instagram has never been safe, because although it uses encryption, the clearly visible metadata says a lot about something.
💬

Instagram is killing its end-to-end encrypted chats - here's what changes May 8
Instagram will end support for end-to-end encrypted chats on May 8, 2026. What the feature does, how it works, and what users lose when it goes.

Nvidia says it will sell 1M GPUs and a broad mix of other chips, including new Groq chips, to AWS by the end of 2027; financial terms were not disclosed (Stephen Nellis/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-con…

@… this boy had his comeuppance, in the end

Trump appears to careen between two opposing visions for victory in Iran:
He has demanded Tehran’s “unconditional surrender”
and also has signaled that he might abruptly declare victory and leave.
Neither scenario is likely to end this war, because neither reflects any real understanding of the adversary.
Washington appears to have begun the conflict on the assumption that sustained military pressure would either collapse the Iranian regime or force its leadership to…

Trump May Not Be Able to End This War
The Islamic Republic is designed to endure crises and fight asymmetric conflicts.

Inside Jahmyr Gibbs' historic start, future with the Lions https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47969914/detroit-lions-jahmyr-gibbs-2026-contract-extension-fifth-year-option

The real stars of the winter Olympics are the dapper dudes in the blue coats and caps handing the winners the selfie camera at the end of the medal ceremony.
#MilanoCortina2026

Turkish Galatasaray winger
Noa Lang
was taken to hospital and may need surgery on a lacerated thumb injury
after he collided with an advertising hoarding during the defeat to Liverpool.
In a freak accident during the second half the substitute ran into the advertising hoardings where,
in an attempt to stay upright,
his thumb became jammed between the two panels which then shut tight.
The end of his right thumb was severed.

Noa Lang severs thumb in horror collision for Galatasaray
Substitute, who was carried off on stretcher, taken to hospital and may need surgery after defeat at Anfield

Cowboys Headlines: Future at TE; starters in jeopardy; Parker on Dallas-Philly rivalry https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2026/02/20/news-head…

If you are at Apple and you ever sneak back in even a hidden setting to pin the Dock at one end instead of centering it, I will buy you the pastry of your choice.

Stroud on career-worst 4 INTs: 'Let people down' https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47656592/cj-stroud-shoulders-blame-4-ints-texans-loss-pats

Intel unveils the Core Ultra 200HX Plus CPUs for high-end gaming laptops, offering an Intel Binary Optimization Tool to improve native performance in some games (Antonio G. Di Benedetto/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/895921/intel-core-ul…

Intel announces Core Ultra 200HX Plus CPUs for high-end gaming laptops
The new flagship Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus is accompanied by a Core Ultra 7 270HX Plus.

Sources: the UK has shelved proposed anti-SLAPP legislation, fearing a backlash from lawyers, despite appeals from the editors of The Times and The Sun (The Times)

Fears for free speech as crackdown on Slapps is shelved
The editors of The Times and The Sunday Times have urged No 10 to end the use of strategic litigation against public participation

Mastodon, a decentralized, open source social media platform and alternative to centralized social media apps like X and Threads,
announced on Wednesday its plans to make its platform more approachable for newcomers
while also targeting creators with the launch of new features.
The changes follow the expansion of Mastodon’s core development team over the past 18 months
to include people with experience across web and mobile and back end,
as well as the hiring o…

Mastodon, a decentralized alternative to X, plans to target creators with new features | TechCrunch
Mastodon is looking to grow its open source, decentralized social network with new features aimed at creators.

NFL to honor MLK with 'Choose Love' in end zone https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47639329/nfl-honor-martin-luther-king-jr-choose-love-end-zone

Luminate 2025 report: the global music industry hit 5.1T streams, up 9.6% YoY and a single-year record; AI artist Xania Monet had 125M on-demand audio streams (Maria Sherman/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/music-listen…

Global music streams hit 5 trillion in 2025
The global music industry hit 5.1 trillion streams in 2025. That’s a new single-year record, up 9.6% from 2024. That’s according to a 2025 Year-End Report from Luminate. They are an industry data and analytics company that provides insight into changing behaviors across music listenership. In the U.S., on-demand audio streams hit 1.4 trillion. That’s a 4.6% increase from last year. But attention is on older music. Less than half all U.S. on-demand audio streams were from tracks released i…

In 2027, the second year of Trump's Middle East War,
we will need to recall how this all got started
So today…
—The worlds largest natural gas deposit was set on fire
—Trump demanded $200 billion more for his batshit war
—Serious talk of U.S. boots on the ground
—Netanyahu went full-bore End Days Expansionist for Evangelical extremists
—Gas over $5/gallon
Sleep well, everyone!

Charles Gaba ✡️ (@charlesgaba.com)
So today… —The worlds largest natural gas deposit was set on fire —Trump demanded $200 billion more for his batshit war —Serious talk of U.S. boots on the ground —Netanyahu went full-bore End Days Expansionist for Evangelical extremists —Gas over $5/gallon Sleep well, everyone!

Dillon Thieneman Could be the Cowboys' 2nd First Round Pick https://insidethestar.com/dillon-thieneman-could-be-the-cowboys-2nd-first-round-pick

At least six high-profile congressional Republicans have voiced their staunch opposition to Trump’s desire to take over Greenland.
“I’ll be candid with you: There’s so many Republicans mad about this,”
Nebraska Representative Don #Bacon told the Omaha-World Herald.
“If he went through with the threats, I think it would be the end of his presidency.
And he needs to know:
The off-r…

Republicans Say Trump’s Greenland Plan Is “Dumbest Thing” Ever
At least a handful of Republicans in Congress are pushing back against President Trump’s quest to take over Greenland.

I am not resting easy yet.
A bunch of people who are basically straight-up Nazis just got humiliated. They’re hurting, they’re angry, and they’re in my city.
And they’re pants-on-head dumbshits. (One of their posters bemoaned the “erogion [sic] of our rights.”) That’s not a comfort: sometimes that’s the most dangerous kind of right-winger. Their utter amateurishness means they have no sense of constraints and no sense of consequences. I don’t know what they’ll try to do next.
We remain wary and •highly• watchful. But I’m going to take the win on this round.
/end

Judge questions Trump aides’ ‘brazen’ claims on White House ballroom
A federal judge on Tuesday grilled Trump administration lawyers on the legal justification for the president’s $400 million White House ballroom plan,
accusing the Justice Department of “shifting” arguments as historic preservationists urged him to halt the controversial project.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said he hoped to issue a ruling by the end of March.
The White House has said that…

Judge questions Trump aides’ ‘brazen’ claims on White House ballroom
The planned $400 million project has been a top priority for the president. Judge Richard Leon said he hopes to rule this month on whether to halt construction.

Bengaluru-based Stable Money, whose app lets users invest in fixed deposits and corporate bonds, raised $25M at a $175M valuation, taking total funding to $65M (The Economic Times)
https://economictimes.indiatimes.…

Stable Money secures $25 million in fresh equity from Peak XV Partners and others
The startup plans to grow its overall business five times by the end of this year, enter new cities through physical expansion and new product areas around real estate investments. Cofounder Saurabh Jain said his company has helped book around Rs 5,000 crore in fixed deposits and distributed around Rs 1,600 crore in corporate bonds.

A lot of arguments in community chats broke out about who was supposed to be where, about what community was asking for people to show up or steer clear, about age-old militant vs. pacifist debates that have basically been stuck on loop since the 1960s (and are, IMO, just •incredibly• boring at this point, sorry).
But that’s organizing. It’s messy. People argue. People find consensus. People chaotically self-organize despite lack of consensus. People make good things happen.
And in the end, the people who believe in inclusion and reaching across differences and •building• community instead of destroying it — they have an intrinsic advantage.
7/

Four NFL teams that could steal Brandon Aubrey from the Cowboys with kicker set to be a restricted free agent

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/brandon-aubrey-cowboys-kicker-res…

Texans lose TE Schultz (calf) for rest of game https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47653919/texans-lose-te-dalton-schultz-calf-rest-game

49ers TE George Kittle (Achilles) aiming for early return in 2026 https://www.nfl.com/news/49ers-te-george-kittle-achilles-aiming-for-early-return-in-2026

Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( #ice ), is urgently seeking a powerful new
artificial-intelligence model
to find and prioritise individuals eligible for deportation
—ranging from those who overstayed their visas to violent criminals.
A prototype of the “streamlined end-to-end immigration lifecycle” software, called

Fears about the global economic fallout from the war in Iran grew on Sunday
as the U.S. energy secretary acknowledged in a televised interview that there were
“no guarantees” that oil prices would fall in the coming weeks.
A day after President Trump called on other countries to send warships to the region to end the de facto Iranian blockade of the economically vital Strait of Hormuz,
foreign governments responded with caution— if at all

Iran War Live Updates: Israel Launches Strikes as Trump Urges World to Defend Strait of Hormuz
Iran has largely closed the Strait of Hormuz to America and its allies, but the president’s earlier call for more naval reinforcements has gained little traction. The U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, acknowledged energy prices could remain high.

In a sensational turn of events in the fight against Chat Control,
a majority in the European Parliament voted today to end the untargeted mass scanning of private communications.
In doing so, the Parliament firmly rejected the error-prone and unconstitutional surveillance practices of recent years.
Pressure is now mounting on EU governments to respect the MEPs’ vote and bury untargeted mass surveillance in Europe once and for all.

Historic Chat Control Vote in the EU Parliament: MEPs Vote to End Untargeted Mass Scanning of Private Chats
In a sensational turn of events in the fight against Chat Control, a majority in the European Parliament voted today to end the untargeted mass scanning of private communications. In doing so, the Parliament firmly rejected the error-prone and unconstitutional surveillance practices of recent years.