Schmidtty

Geek, Chicago Runner, InfoSec Ninja, Hoosier Alum, Chaotic Good, opinions here are my own!

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

EVERYONE IN NYC IS SINGING EMPIRE STATE OF MIND

[Signal @signalapp]

Our statement on the UK government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the country be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all.

https://t.co/VdWe9uhi8p

[Claude @claudeai]

Introducing Claude Fable 5: a Mythos-class model that we’ve made safe for general use.

Its capabilities exceed those of any model we’ve ever made generally available.

[TBPN @tbpn]

"Lest we be overconfident in Silicon Valley, let's remember a small group of activists shut down supersonic technology, and all nuclear energy in this country. It's a disaster."

@altcap explains why a data center moratorium would be "horrific" for America:

"All of our GDP growth is coming from the fact that we are building data centers and driving productivity improvements in the economy."

"A data center moratorium would thrust us straight into a recession and high unemployment."

"Secondly, it would cede the entire global game to China. Overnight, we would lose to China in the global AI race. Which is not just about AI, it's about economic security, jobs, and national security."

From his appearance on the show last week.

[CFB Kings @CFBKings]

The official College Football 27 trailer

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921.

They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year.

Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move.

They lost them for two reasons.

The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs.

In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack.

Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet.

That fight dragged on for years.

The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois.

Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting.

So now it's all gone.

The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything.

Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize.

Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up.

But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works.

Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team.

And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago.

Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes.

Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team."

There it is. "Billionaire-owned."

That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line.

Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it.

Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return."

When you run things this badly, you sell what's left.

They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect.

Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check.

But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires."

Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in.

Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster.

Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires.

[Commodore Computer Museum 🕹 @MuseumCommodore]

43 Years Ago Today — On June 3, 1983, WarGames hit theaters and gave us one of the most chilling tech thrillers ever made.

A curious kid hacks into a military supercomputer, starts a game of “Global Thermonuclear War,” and nearly triggers the real thing. Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, and that unforgettable countdown… pure 80s perfection.

Each year I ask Grok how long it would take for it to simulate the same scenario, last year it was about 10 minutes...with a special conditon, Grok emphasised each year... see below.

This year, 2026 on the anniversary of the film, I asked Grok (xAI’s AI) the big question from the film:

How long would it take a modern AI like Grok to simulate a full Global Thermonuclear War scenario?

Answer: Seconds for high-level insights, minutes for detailed probabilistic simulations — a massive leap from WOPR’s 26+ hours in 1983.

Computing power and AI have come that far!

Each year Grok after my asking this, Grok concludes with...

"Yet the movie’s ultimate lesson remains as true today as it was then: “The only winning move is not to play.”"

At least we know Grok won't be starting WWIII... I have seen other Ai's coming out with chilling answers, which don't end well for us... us being humans.

Wargames the movie is a rollercoaster ride, that still holds up today. Who else still loves this film?

[Indiana Pacers @Pacers]

26 years ago today, we beat the Knicks 93-80 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals to advance to our first Finals.

Reggie Miller led the way with 34 points, 5 3PM, 5 rebounds and 4 steals 😤

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

And this is why we must also abolish restaurants. cc @AOC

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

Disney CEO seeing “Obsession” and “The Mandalorian & Grogu” both tracking to $330,000,000 even though the indie horror cost $750,000 while the Star Wars reboot cost $165,000,000 (with another $200,000,000 more marketing)

[Socket @SocketSecurity]

It’s not every day a competitor promotes your product in their launch image.

Thanks for the endorsement, Endor Labs. 😅

For anyone wondering, sfw is Socket Firewall, and yes, you can install it from npm today:

npm install -g sfw

[Jeff Bezos @JeffBezos]

Thank you. The important part is zeroing out taxes on the bottom half. Best way to put money in someone’s pocket is to not take it out in the first place. Bottom half is only 3% of total tax revenue. But it’s very meaningful to that person. Zero it out.

[Cloudflare @Cloudflare]

Cloudflare's security team spent the last few weeks testing Anthropic's Mythos against fifty of our own repositories. What we learned about offensive AI, why faster patching is the wrong reaction, and what the architecture around vulnerabilities has to look like next. https://t.co/RSrRtIhgaV

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

The NYT is predictably tearing down Reese Witherspoon for encouraging moms to try AI before they ingest the anti-AI pablum as truth

Instead of linking to the NYT op-ed, I think you should watch this video and encourage you to follow Reese Witherspoon on Instagram

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: A jury rejected Elon Musk’s lawsuit accusing OpenAI of putting commercial gain over the public good. Jurors decided his claims were barred by the statute of limitations. https://t.co/nCmEsYax4W

[Josh Pate @JoshPateCFB]

Curt Cignetti with the highest one-day viewership in Pate State Speaker Series history

[Rachel Tobac @RachelTobac]

Whoa, Instructure (who owns Canvas) says they came to an agreement with the cyber criminals (typically this means a ransom was paid) in exchange for the stolen data being deleted instead of leaked and criminals ceasing all extortion requests from customers. Huge development.

[Liran Tal @liran_tal]

practical mitigation[1] steps[2] against the tanstack compromise and other supply chain attacks on npm

[1] reduces vulnerable surface
[2] apply to your pnpm config too

* see more security best practices on the repo

[Sam Stepanyan @securestep9]

#Checkmarx is breached again via its Jenkins plugin GitHub repo compromised in a software suply chain hack:
#SoftwareSupplyChainSecurity
👇

https://t.co/nzFWX7eq9k

[Stewart Mandel @slmandel]

I don't write longform stories very often.

But three months later, I'm still endlessly fascinated by Curt Cignetti and national champion Indiana.

Read it for free: The story of their journey to the top.

https://t.co/CMxnztStcd