Public Relations for Jeffery Epstein
February 12th, 2026Via: The Verge:
In between hobnobbing with royalty and world leaders and abusing children and young women, Jeffrey Epstein appears to have been googling himself regularly. Across several batches of documents related to the convicted sex offender made public, we see Epstein shoot off emails to associates, complaining that his digital footprint includes factual information about his crimes.
Epstein regularly directed his gripes at Al Seckel, a fixer type who appears over and over in Epstein files and promises to bury news articles and other content that mentions his abuse. But Seckel didn’t do it alone. Over thousands of documents, it’s clear that many people — SEO consultants, contacts in the sciences, and even unrelated acquaintances — helped to obscure Epstein’s past whenever someone searched for him online. Even after Epstein had pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution, making him a registered sex offender, his network was happy to do him favors and reputation management firms took him on as a client.
U.S. Budget Hole Set to Deepen by Trillions
February 11th, 2026Via: Wall Street Journal:
The U.S. budget deficit will remain roughly flat for the next two years and then widen over the next decade as interest costs consume an increasing share of spending, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday in a forecast that highlighted the country’s long-run fiscal challenges.
The U.S. is projected to run a deficit of $1.85 trillion, or 5.8% of gross domestic product, in the year that ends Sept. 30, and then stay about level at 5.7% of GDP in fiscal 2027. For every $1 the U.S. collects in taxes and tariffs, it will spend $1.33 this year. That continues a trend of high and persistent deficits that is historically rare outside of emergencies, wars and recessions.
Individuals Can Be Identified And Tracked By Wi-Fi Signals
February 11th, 2026Via: PC World:
As if you didn’t have enough to worry about when it comes to surveillance, researchers have discovered a new way to identify and track people using Wi-Fi signals—and I’m not talking about anything relating to your electronic devices. This tech can identify a specific, individual person, and track them in a physical space and across locations, based on how their body interacts with Wi-Fi signals.
“WhoFi,” a system developed by researchers at La Sapienza University of Rome, makes me think of that one “sonar” scene from The Dark Knight. And to be sure, tracking the way wireless electronic signals interact with the physical world isn’t anything new—almost a decade ago they figured out how to make a 3D map of a building using Wi-Fi. But this new system can “fingerprint” individual people (or at least their bodies), track them in physical space, and re-identify them in the same or a different location, based on the way Wi-Fi signals bounce off and through them.
Similar attempts have been made as recently as 2020, but only achieved a 75 percent accuracy, which wasn’t good enough for true surveillance. According to the research paper (spotted by The Register), the WhoFi system can be up to 95.5 percent accurate when used with its neural network. This setup could beat conventional identification with cameras in many ways, as it isn’t affected by light conditions and can “see” through walls and other physical objects.
The implications are staggering, given the ubiquity of Wi-Fi in nearly every public and private space. A fairly innocuous but still creepy use might be a system that determines when a specific customer returns to a store and texts them a coupon as a “welcome back” present. A far more sinister application would be simply tracking where a person goes and when, including private residences, if the Wi-Fi data were sold or otherwise obtained. It goes without saying that government agencies would be extremely interested in getting access to that data.
More:
The Spy Who Came in from the WiFi: Beware of Radio Network Surveillance
BFId: Identity Inference Attacks Utilizing Beamforming Feedback Information
Anthropic AI Safety Researcher Quits: “The World Is In Peril.”
February 11th, 2026Today is my last day at Anthropic. I resigned.
Here is the letter I shared with my colleagues, explaining my decision. pic.twitter.com/Qe4QyAFmxL
— mrinank (@MrinankSharma) February 9, 2026
In other Anthropic news…
“It was ready to kill someone, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
"It was ready to kill someone, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
Daisy McGregor, UK policy chief at Anthropic, a top AI company, says it's "massively concerning" that Anthropic's Claude AI has shown in testing that it's willing to blackmail and kill in order to avoid being shut down. pic.twitter.com/RuNO4LJKcu
— ControlAI (@ControlAI) February 10, 2026
Elon Musk’s Latest Scheme Is a Satellite Catapult on the Moon
February 11th, 2026My guess is that Musk has read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and that we’re all being trolled.
Via: Engadget:
With his newfound focus on the Moon, Elon musk is making some wild new plans. In an xAI meeting with employees, Musk said the company needed to build an AI satellite factory on the moon with a gigantic catapult to launch them into space, according to audio heard by The New York Times.
All of that would be part of the billionaire’s plans to create a massive orbiting AI “data center” that uses satellites powered by the sun and kept cool by the vacuum of space (a bad plan, some experts say). Any satellites launched from the Moon would presumably orbit the Moon as well, though Musk didn’t provide any additional details.
“You have to go to the moon” in order to build the required AI capabilities, Musk told employees. “It’s difficult to imagine what an intelligence of that scale would think about, but it’s going to be incredibly exciting to see it happen.”
Such a catapult would certainly need to be powerful — though the Moon has only one-sixth the gravity of Earth, the minimum escape velocity required for orbit is still around 3,800 MPH or five times the speed of sound. That’s currently possible with electromagnetic railguns that launch projectiles at speeds up to Mach 8.8, though any satellite launched by such a device would need to withstand acceleration forces around 10,000 g or more.
Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
February 11th, 2026After using Notepad on Windows for about thirty years, I uninstalled it on Windows 11 because it could interact with Copilot. Even though I uninstalled Copilot, the fact that Notepad had any hook at all to it was creepy and ridiculous.
I now use Notepad3, which is great.
Via: TechSpot:
One of the first-party Microsoft apps that received a hotfix this week is Notepad, which was recently updated with a range of AI features. Tracked as CVE-2026-20841, the remote code execution vulnerability exploited the improper neutralization of special elements used in a command, enabling malicious actors to execute arbitrary, unauthorized code on the host machine over a network.
More: And Now Notepad Is Complex Enough to Support Remote Code Execution
Discord Will Require a Face Scan or ID for Full Access Next Month
February 9th, 2026Via: The Verge:
Discord announced on Monday that it’s rolling out age verification on its platform globally starting next month, when it will automatically set all users’ accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless they demonstrate that they’re adults.
Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won’t be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels, and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive. They will also get warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, and DMs from unfamiliar users will be automatically filtered into a separate inbox.
Direct messages and servers that are not age-restricted will continue to function normally, but users won’t be able to send messages or view content in an age-restricted server until they complete the age check process, even if it’s a server they were part of before age verification rolled out. Savannah Badalich, Discord’s global head of product policy, said in an interview with The Verge that those servers will be “obfuscated” with a black screen until the user verifies they’re an adult. Users also won’t be able to join any new age-restricted servers without verifying their age.
Elon Musk Announces Plans For City on The Moon
February 9th, 2026Via: Newsweek:
Elon Musk said SpaceX has shifted its near-term priority to building a “self-growing city” on the Moon, arguing the project could be completed in less than a decade and ahead of any comparable settlement on Mars.
In a post on X on Sunday, Musk contrasted lunar and Martian launch windows, said the Moon enables faster iteration, and added that a Mars city would still begin in five to seven years.
New York Budget Bill Proposes Mandatory File-Scanning Tech and In-Person Sales for 3D Printers
February 8th, 2026Via: Reclaim the Net:
New York’s latest budget proposal would place new obligations on manufacturers of 3D printers and other digital fabrication equipment, tying the operation of these tools to mandatory software controls.
The 2026–2027 executive budget bill, S.9005/A.10005, directs that devices sold in the state include “blocking technology” capable of scanning every design file and stopping production when a “firearms blueprint detection algorithm” flags a file as a potential gun or gun component.
The bill, similar to the ones we recently reported on in Washington state, treats file scanning as a workable technical safeguard, even though digital design files only describe shapes.
Many ordinary objects share the same geometric traits as regulated firearm parts. Pipes, housings, brackets, mounts, and mechanical connectors all overlap with components that appear in firearms.
Software that evaluates geometry alone cannot reliably separate lawful designs from prohibited ones. Such systems inevitably interrupt legitimate work while offering little resistance to deliberate misuse.
Although public discussion often centers on consumer 3D printers, the statutory language reaches much further.
The definitions extend to any machine capable of making three-dimensional changes to an object from a digital design using subtractive manufacturing. That scope covers equipment found in repair businesses and small manufacturing firms throughout the state.
Statement Announcing Jeffrey Epstein’s Death Emerges from Files… Dated a Day Before He Killed Himself
February 8th, 2026Via: Daily Mail:
A federal statement announcing Jeffrey Epstein’s death has surfaced in newly released Justice Department files but it carries a date that appears to precede the moment he was officially found dead inside his New York prison cell.
The document, issued by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and dated Friday, August 9, 2019, states that Epstein had already been found unresponsive and pronounced dead.
But prison records and official accounts show Epstein was not discovered unresponsive until the morning of August 10, 2019, when a corrections officer delivering breakfast found him in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
