May

15yrs in FinTech | software engineering | Building Tyche & @hellomida | past @InterswitchGRP @renmoney @zonenetworkhq

[FBI Director Kash Patel @FBIDirectorKash]

Operation Blackout is taking the fight directly to the international cybercriminal networks stealing billions from Americans.

Our latest operation in Nigeria delivered:

9 ARRESTS.
53 electronic devices seized.
$11 MILLION in potentially freezable funds identified across multiple countries.

These scam centers exploit innocent victims, steal life savings, and operate across international borders believing they are beyond the reach of law enforcement.

They’re wrong.

Thanks to Nigerian law enforcement and our partners in London for their outstanding cooperation.

To the criminals targeting Americans from overseas: JUSTICE WILL FIND YOU.

[Ayo O @TheDonAyo]

I reverse engineered candy crush

[Kesse @Nana_kesse1]

What on earth will make a Ghanaian immigrant become a hardcore MAGA cultist who supports Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetorics. We even have young men living here in Ghana doing same. Shit doesn’t make sense

[jack @jack]

We believe voice is the most natural way to interact with intelligence, so we created Dessa, the most authentic full-duplex speech model ever built. Talking with it feels like talking with a person…full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence.

https://t.co/r0qFLdvd6c

[Dimitri @thedimitri]

messaging my wife a link containing proof of her husband cheating on her from an anonymous instagram account and then when she clicks on it texting her to let her know she failed the family phishing test and she has to retake my cybersecurity course

[Sam Szuchan @szuchans]

For three and a half years, one driver transported about $4.7 billion in cash out of a Vietnamese bank in cardboard boxes packed by the bank's treasurer. That's more than 1% of Vietnam's whole economy. The driver was Bui Van Dung, and his actual job was driving his boss to work and home again.

When he got to the bank's basement vault, he testified in court, the cash was already in boxes and ready to go. "I just put them in the car and drove back," he said.

When there was no named recipient, he took the boxes to the building where his boss lived and gave them to her secretary. Other times, he delivered the cash to people he knew only by phone number or license plate number. He was told not to keep a record of the recipients, but he did anyway in a notebook that helped investigators calculate the $4.7 billion total.

His boss was a property developer named Truong My Lan. Officially, she owned less than 5% of the bank, Saigon Commercial Bank, because that's the legal limit for a single shareholder. But prosecutors say she actually controlled 91% of the bank, using 27 people and companies to hold the shares for her.

She did not need to rob the bank. When she needed cash, the bank's employees would call her company, which would send a shell company to pretend to be a borrower, and then the bank would pay the money out as a loan. Investigators said the policy at the bank was "withdraw first, fill in the file later." Lan denied giving those orders. A former deputy CEO of the bank testified that she did.

The biggest bill in Vietnam is 500,000 dong, around $21. Even in such notes, the amount carried out of the bank by her driver adds up to more than 200 million bills, and it is just a portion of the total loss. The court has determined that the total damage to the bank is around $29 billion, more than 6% of Vietnam's entire GDP. In 2024, Lan was sentenced to death for embezzlement.

The central bank was supposed to detect such embezzlement, but failed to. In 2018, Do Thi Nhan, the central bank inspector responsible for overseeing the bank, took $5.2 million from Lan, packed into sealed fruit boxes. Nhan was sentenced to life in prison. In 2025, Vietnam abolished the death penalty for embezzlement, so Lan will not be executed.

The driver's log records the money only as far as it was delivered. Investigators have never said where the $4.7 billion finally went. It is certain, however, who is picking up the tab at the bank. When Lan was arrested, depositors lined up to withdraw their money, and the central bank lent her bank $24.5 billion to pay them: public money, from the same central bank whose inspector she had bribed.

[Government of Uganda @GovUganda]

𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑

On 26 August 2026, the @WHO declared Uganda Ebola-free and presented the country with a certificate of recognition following the successful end of the outbreak.

Since the declaration, Uganda has reported no further Ebola-related cases, reflecting the importance of sustained public health vigilance, surveillance and preparedness in safeguarding the population.

Uganda remains committed to protecting public health and strengthening measures to prevent, detect and respond promptly to any future health threats.

[May @codegidi]

We know the play book

[Morris Monye @Morris_Monye]

Nice one. Na so.

[‏﮼الأعرابي القديم . @radialpro]

أربعة آلاف خروف تُركت على جزيرة نائية: أربعون عامًا من العزلة والتطور
في عام 1931، تخلى مزارع مفلس عن نحو أربعة آلاف خروف على جزيرة كامبل، وهي جزيرة نائية في المحيط الجنوبي تابعة لنيوزيلندا، على بعد أكثر من ستمائة كيلومتر جنوب البر الرئيسي. كانت الجزيرة قد استُخدمت لتربية الأغنام منذ عام 1895، لكن انهيار أسعار الصوف واللحم، وصعوبات النقل والإمداد، وتأثيرات الكساد الكبير، جعلت المشروع غير قابل للاستمرار. غادر آخر المستأجرين، جون وارين، الجزيرة مفلسًا، تاركًا وراءه الأغنام وعشرات من الأبقار دون رعاية بشرية.
عاشت الأغنام عقودًا في بيئة قاسية تتميز بالرياح الشديدة والرطوبة الدائمة والتربة الحمضية. انخفض عددها في البداية بسبب الظروف الصعبة، ثم بدأ القطيع يتعافى تدريجيًا. مع مرور الأجيال، تطورت سمات وراثية مميزة: أصبحت الأغنام تتزاوج في سن أصغر، وتستطيع التخلص من صوفها بنفسها دون حاجة إلى جز، وتكيّفت مع نقص الغذاء والظروف المناخية القاسية. بحلول السبعينيات، كانت قد تحولت إلى قطيع بري يُظهر تكيفات نادرة ناتجة عن العزلة والانتقاء الطبيعي.
غير أن هذا التكيف جاء على حساب النظام البيئي للجزيرة. أكلت الأغنام النباتات المحلية الفريدة، بما في ذلك النباتات الكبيرة المميزة للمنطقة، وأضرت بمواقع تعشيش الطيور البحرية مثل طيور القطرس. أدى الرعي غير المنضبط إلى تدهور الغطاء النباتي والتربة، مما دفع السلطات في وقت لاحق إلى اتخاذ قرار بإزالة القطيع لحماية الجزيرة.
في الثمانينيات، نُفذت عمليات إزالة منظمة للأغنام من أجزاء من الجزيرة. أُنقذ عدد محدود من الأفراد بسبب سماتها الوراثية النادرة قبل إزالة البقية. بعد إزالة الأغنام والقوارض الغازية، بدأت النباتات والطيور في التعافي، وتحولت الجزيرة إلى مثال على استعادة النظم البيئية في المناطق النائية.
تظل القصة مثالًا على كيفية تأثير إدخال أنواع غير محلية ثم التخلي عنها على البيئات المعزولة، وعلى قدرة الحيوانات على التكيف عبر أجيال قليلة في ظل ضغوط بيئية شديدة.

[I am DK @buildwithdk]

Hey @grok, this PHP bug was hiding in the internet for over 10 years. Experts even spotted it in 2024 and couldn’t break it. So how did hackers suddenly crack it now?

[Mark Gadala-Maria @markgadala]

🚨 BREAKING: NOW JAVA IS FACING A CRITICAL SECURITY EMERGENCY.

Oracle has issued an OUT-OF-BAND security alert for a dangerous 9.1/10 vulnerability affecting Java and GraalVM.

And the most alarming part? Hackers could exploit vulnerable applications REMOTELY, without a password or ANY user interaction.

Here's what's happening:

→ CRITICAL 9.1/10 FLAW: CVE-2026-91403 affects Java's JSSE security component.

→ NO LOGIN REQUIRED: Attackers could potentially exploit vulnerable applications remotely without authentication.

→ SENSITIVE DATA AT RISK: Successful attacks could expose, modify, or delete critical application data.

→ MULTIPLE JAVA VERSIONS AFFECTED: Oracle lists affected releases across Java 8, 11, 17, 21, 25, and 27.

→ GRAALVM ALSO AFFECTED: Oracle confirms the vulnerability impacts multiple GraalVM releases.

→ EMERGENCY PATCH ALERT: Oracle released an urgent security update rather than waiting for its next scheduled patch cycle.

The list of critical vulnerabilities just keeps growing.

If you operate Java applications or servers, CHECK YOUR SECURITY UPDATES NOW.

[Weimar William @WeimarWillhelm]

Hey @grok, is this true??

Some data centers now run on lab-grown human brain neurons derived from stem cells, wired directly to silicon chips via electrode arrays, and kept alive on life support. Fed sugar every few days. They play Doom. We don’t know if they’re conscious.

[May @codegidi]

@djsoniq Abi cos we can’t really beat the Agents

[john milinovich @jmilinovich]

# Black October

For anyone who knows me even somewhat well, it's clear that I am a 99th percentile tech optimist. However, the vibes have shifted for me quite a bit in the last 18 hours, and I feel a moral imperative to share what I'm thinking and feeling with my circles so that everyone can understand, and hopefully take seriously, what's happening right now. I think October 2026 will have many chapters written about it in the history books.

You know those scenes in financial movies like Margin Call where someone realizes that they're all fucked, and no one else sees it yet? And that person feels like they're crazy, and then suddenly everyone is pulling an all-nighter in a boardroom and freaking out? Yeah, that's kind of how this is feeling right now in the SF/Bay Area/AI circles.

We're 48 hours into what is being called Black October. In the last 2 days there have been several dozen cyber attacks which, in isolation, would each have been the worst to happen in an entire calendar year. Every sector from government to education to big tech and banks is being massively affected, and people are starting to freak out.

In a nutshell, what's happened is that frontier AI models have gotten to a point where they are as advanced as the most sophisticated programmers, with one critical difference: they can work 24/7, and you can spin up 10,000 of them with a single command and they'll work together tirelessly until they accomplish their task. The most advanced models today are from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, whose current best technology is so good that they haven't been able to roll it out to everyone yet because of the national security risks it poses.

Meanwhile, the best open source models (where anyone can just download the model weights and do whatever they want with them, uncensored) are slightly behind the frontier but still 90-95% as capable. These models, developed primarily in China, are being used by black hat hackers to wreak havoc on the Western capitalist structure. Presumably, this has been part of China's plan the entire time, and we're seeing its implications fall out in real time.

In red-pilled AI circles, we've been sharing and reading papers called things like "Situational Awareness" and "AI 2027" for the last year or so, which at the time felt a bit like near-term speculative fiction. They laid out the case for why Artificial General Intelligence (AI smarter than any human at any knowledge task) and Recursive Self-Improvement (models that are able to use themselves to get better) weren't half-baked future ideas anymore, but instead an inevitable outcome of the linear progress that's happening.

These papers would then talk about things like "takeoff scenarios," trying to envision how that moment would come to be and what it would be like when it happened. It would either be a "slow takeoff" that would play out over the course of months and quarters, happening subtly and only obvious to a few. Or, it would be a "fast takeoff" where it would pretty much happen instantly, like a bit flipping from 0 to 1.

From everything that I can see and am feeling, we are currently experiencing the fast takeoff scenario. Beyond the crazy security vulnerabilities that have come out recently, there have also been massive breakthroughs in life sciences, fundamental computer science, materials science, and pure mathematics that have all landed in the same time frame. While I still firmly believe that AI will be a net positive for humanity, it's more clear to me than ever that the societal and individual risk is very real, and is playing out NOW.

For as much conviction as I have that this is happening, the thing that's caused me to lose sleep is that I don't really know what to do about it, or more importantly, what to tell you, reader, to do about it. So, the best I can do is make a few suggestions that have always been a good idea but are more timely now than ever:

Set up 2-factor authentication for everything. I use Duo.
Use a password manager across your devices. I use 1Password.
Get an identity protection app set up. I use Alta.
Move your IoT devices to their own network. Claude helped me do this.

And last, but certainly not least, if you've been avoiding leaning into AI, see this as a catalyst to wake up and start using it. Don't just use the chat mode version of ChatGPT/Claude; click that Code/Work button and see how easily you can have AI write code to help you with your job. One of the biggest vulnerabilities was in a massively popular programming language called PHP, and the prompt that set it off was literally, "Find vulnerabilities in php."

This is an unprecedented time for humanity, but as we've done with many things before, we will prevail so long as we are kind, loving, and open-minded to the world.

Much love.

[May @codegidi]

The world may have to go offline to slow these attacks

[Jason D. Clinton 🔸 @JasonDClinton]

as bad as things have gotten in the past 4 days, they are going to get a lot worse before they get better. security leaders, never let a crisis go to waste: please go to your boards and ask for help right now. not for ai, for the basics. (we need to hold on for ~18 months.)

[Canada Border Services Agency @CanBorder]

Following an investigation into an alleged immigration fraud scheme involving false documents and statements, the CBSA has charged 5 individuals. The matter is now before the courts.

Information: https://t.co/hy5AupapNn

[Young child/golden retriever @EggMasonValue]

BREAKING: eMudhra exits SSL/TLS certificate business, blames social media instead of incompetence for the same

[May @codegidi]

Just saving this here

[BBC News (World) @BBCWorld]

Crowd of 50 beats foreigner to death in South Africa https://t.co/lNWxzHZRu2

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Inmate at Canada's highest-security prison reportedly had McDonald's chicken nuggets, fries, & alcohol delivered directly to his cell window by drone, prompting an investigation.

[May @codegidi]

@phoenixx_chi Cheat day ?