BREAKING: David @friedberg says "California is functionally bankrupt"
"People don't realize how screwed California is, & I worry that if California falls, so does the union.
"$250 billion to $1 trillion short."
"This is because for California to get rescued would be a big cost to red states, & I think it creates in the years ahead a lot of tension."
"California's functional bankruptcy is a major risk to the country. & I think we need to figure out what we can change to fix it."
How we got here:
"California has a public pension system, & that public pension system retirees have paid into it & they get some benefits out, & the amount that they're owed back out is somewhere between $250 billion - $1 trillion dollars more than has been paid in.
$250 billion to $1 trillion short.
If it was the federal government, it would be like, okay, we'll just print more money. California doesn't have the ability to print money, so California has to pay this out, and you can't restructure retirement benefits.
There is a Supreme Court case in California that said that once an employee has been offered retirement benefits, even if they're currently an employee, you can never restructure their retirement benefits.
It has to stay forever, and the state cannot declare bankruptcy. There's no way for the state to functionally declare bankruptcy. There's no law to allow it. No state has ever declared bankruptcy, and the retirement benefits sit senior to the bonds in California.
So you have to pay out the retirement benefits before you pay out all the bond holders that have loaned California the money that they use to run all their programs and services."
Hill & Valley Forum 2026 (@HillValleyForum)
๐งต Thread 1/ So you want to track Scattered Spider but Censys and Shodan are just too slow? Here's the cheat sheet! ๐ต๏ธโโ๏ธ
Scattered Spider registers their domains using the nameserver ns3.my-ndns[.]com. We can passively monitor this DNS for new domains. ๐ธ๏ธ
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Let's dive into the science! ๐คฟ
There are just 3 days left to support Project Transfidelity! Still not sure how it fits into brain health and longevity? @benjileibo put on his science teacher hat and walked us through the whole project. ๐งโ๐ซ
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@SchrodingrsBrat How does this fit with the idea that pushing our boundaries and doing difficult things leads to growth?
So many people change their lives.. https://t.co/FXclo96DKo
When does pushing oneself look like surrendering to your nature, and when is it trying to be someone you're not?
๐จ Dive into our newest blog post: Detecting "Effluence" - an unauthenticated Confluence Web Shell
๐ต๏ธ Stroz Friedberg discovers a persistent backdoor installed by threat actors after exploiting Confluence vulnerabilities. This backdoor is accessible remotely without Confluence authentication. Thorough investigation recommended for Confluence servers, even post-patch!
Read here: https://t.co/YPcDNoGHpa
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