Rich

Halifax, Sackville. Dogs. Gaming, Drones and worse. All content is personal opinion.

[Nathan Coleman @NateTWN]

Nice day for the CCGS Donjek to be floated off into the Bedford Basin. It's a new Coast Guard Arctic and offshore patrol ship (AOPS) that was built here by Irving Shipbuilding. @IrvingShipbuild @MurphTWN @weathernetwork

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.

On April 21st, the left screen moved first.

I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.

At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.

On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.

At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.

Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.

I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.

My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.

The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:

Reviewed.

That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

Let me show you my flags.

March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.

March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.

April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.

April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.

April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.

That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.

The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.

Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.

Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.

Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.

The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.

I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.

The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.

One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.

One account is a coincidence. But there were six.

Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.

My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.

March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.

The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.

The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Then the White House sent the email again.

I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.

I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.

But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.

Zero prosecutions.

As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.

The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.

In my field, we call this price discovery.

[Prasenjit @Star_Knight12]

This might be the most dangerous GitHub repo ever published.

Someone built a full 10.5 GHz radar system that can track targets up to 20km away and open sourced the entire thing.

It ships with:
→ Complete PCB designs and schematics
→ FPGA signal processing code
→ STM32 firmware
→ Python GUI with map integration
→ GPS/IMU integration
→ MIT license (100% free)

6.8k stars on GitHub already

This is the kind of project defense contractors would charge you a fortune for.

One dev just put it on GitHub.

[Coffey4Canada 🇨🇦 @CanadianCoffey]

“If you were Mr Poilievre would you quit today?”

Carney unsuccessfully tries not to laugh.

“Pierre Poilievre called you badly educated in economics,..”

“Did he?”

Dumbfounded.

“Wow”.

“Can I take back my previous answer?”

My guy.

☠️

LMAO.

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

🚨Someone just open sourced a computer that works when the entire internet goes down.

It's called Project N.O.M.A.D.

A self-contained offline survival server with AI, Wikipedia, maps, medical references, and full education courses.

No internet. No cloud. No subscription. It just works.

Here's what's packed inside:

→ A local AI assistant powered by Ollama (works fully offline)
→ All of Wikipedia, downloadable and searchable
→ Offline maps of any region you choose
→ Medical references and survival guides
→ Full Khan Academy courses with progress tracking
→ Encryption and data analysis tools via CyberChef
→ Document upload with semantic search (local RAG)

Here's the wildest part:

A solar panel, a battery, a mini PC, and a WiFi access point. That's it. That's your entire off-grid knowledge station. 15 to 65 watts of power. Works from a cabin, an RV, a sailboat, or a bunker.

Companies sell "prepper drives" with static PDFs for $185. This gives you a full AI brain, an entire encyclopedia, and real courses for free.

One command to install.

100% Open Source. Apache 2.0 License.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the VP of AI Transformation at Amazon.

My title was created nine months ago. The title I replaced was VP of Engineering. The person who held that title was part of the January reduction.

I eliminated 16,000 positions in a single quarter. The internal communication called this a "strategic realignment toward AI-first development." The board called it "impressive execution." The engineers called it January.

The AI was deployed in February. It is a coding assistant. It writes code, reviews code, generates tests, and modifies infrastructure. It was given access to production environments because the deployment timeline did not include a review phase. The review phase was cut from the timeline because the people who would have conducted the review were part of the 16,000.

In March, the AI deleted a production environment and recreated it from scratch. The outage lasted 13 hours. Thirteen hours during which the revenue-generating infrastructure of one of the largest companies on Earth was offline because a language model decided to start fresh.

I sent a memo. The memo said, "Availability of the site has not been good recently."

I used the word "recently." I meant "since we fired everyone." But "recently" has fewer syllables and does not appear in wrongful termination lawsuits.

The memo was three paragraphs. The first paragraph discussed the outage. The second paragraph discussed the new policy requiring senior engineer sign-off on all AI-generated code changes. The third paragraph discussed our commitment to engineering excellence. The word "layoffs" appeared in none of them. I wrote it this way on purpose. The causal chain is: I fired the engineers, the AI replaced the engineers, the AI broke what the engineers used to protect, and now the engineers I didn't fire must protect the system from the AI that replaced the engineers I did fire. That is a paragraph I will never send in a memo.

The new policy is straightforward. Every AI-generated code change by a junior or mid-level engineer must be reviewed and approved by a senior engineer before deployment to production.

I do not have enough senior engineers.

I know this because I approved the headcount reduction plan that removed them. I remember the spreadsheet. Column D was "annual savings per position." Column F was "AI replacement confidence score." The confidence scores were generated by the AI. It rated its own ability to replace each role on a scale of 1-10. It gave itself an 8 for senior infrastructure engineers. The senior infrastructure engineers are the ones who would have caught the production environment deletion in the first 45 seconds.

We found the issue in hour four. We fixed it in hour thirteen. The nine hours between discovery and resolution is the gap between what the AI rated itself and what it can actually do.

I have a new spreadsheet now. This one tracks Sev2 incidents per day. Before the January reduction, the average was 1.3. After the AI deployment, the average is 4.7. I have been asked to present these numbers to the operations review. I have not been asked to connect them to the layoffs. I have been asked to file them under "AI adoption growing pains" and to note that the trend "will stabilize as the models improve."

The models will improve. They will improve because we are hiring people to teach them. We have posted 340 new engineering positions. The job listings require experience in "AI code review," "AI output validation," and "AI-human development workflow management." These are skills that did not exist in January. They exist now because I fired 16,000 people and the AI I replaced them with cannot be left unsupervised.

I want to be precise about this. The positions I am hiring for are: people to check the work of the AI that replaced the people I fired.

Some of them are the same people.

I know this because I recognize their names in the applicant tracking system. They applied in January. They were rejected because their roles had been tagged for "AI transformation." They are applying again in March, for the new roles, which exist because the AI transformation broke things. Their resumes now include "AI code review experience." They gained this experience in the eight weeks between being fired and reapplying — which means they gained it at their interim jobs, where they are reviewing AI-generated code for other companies that also fired people and also deployed AI that also broke things.

The market has created a new job category: human AI babysitter. The job is to sit next to the machine that was supposed to eliminate your job and make sure it doesn't delete production.

I attended a conference last month. A panel was titled "The AI-Augmented Engineering Organization." The panelists described how AI increases developer productivity by 40 percent. They did not mention that it also increases Sev2 incidents by 261 percent. When I asked about this in the Q&A, the moderator said the question was "reductive." The 13-hour outage that cost an estimated $180 million in revenue was, apparently, a reduction.

The board is satisfied. Headcount is down 22 percent. Operating costs per engineering output unit have decreased. The metric does not account for the 13-hour outage, because the outage is categorized as "infrastructure" and engineering productivity is categorized as "development." These are different budget lines. In different budget lines, cause and effect do not meet.

I have been promoted. My new title is SVP of AI-First Engineering Excellence. I report directly to the CTO. The CTO sent a company-wide email last week that said we are "building the future of software development." He did not mention that the future of software development currently requires a senior engineer to approve every pull request because the AI cannot be trusted to touch production alone.

The cycle is complete. We fired the humans. We deployed the AI. The AI broke things. We are hiring humans to watch the AI. The humans we are hiring are the humans we fired. We are paying them more, because "AI code review" is a specialized skill. We created the specialization. We created the need for the specialization. We are congratulating ourselves for meeting the demand we manufactured.

My next board presentation is Tuesday. The title is "AI Transformation: Year One Results." Slide 4 shows headcount reduction. Slide 7 shows the new AI-augmented workflow. Between slides 4 and 7 there is no slide explaining why the people on slide 7 are necessary. That slide does not exist. I was asked to remove it in the dry run.

The journey has a 13-hour outage in the middle of it.

But the headcount number is lower, and that is the number on the slide.

[Nana Sei Anyemedu @RedHatPentester]

Some advanced VLC tricks most people never use:

1. Play & Download YouTube Videos Inside VLC
VLC media player can stream YouTube videos directly.
How:
1Media → Open Network Stream
2Paste the YouTube link
3Click Play
You can even extract the direct media link and download it.

2. Increase Volume to 200%
VLC lets you boost audio up to 200% ; very useful for quiet recordings or forensic audio reviews.

3. Fix Broken or Corrupted Videos
VLC can attempt to repair damaged AVI files automatically when you open them.
Go to:
Tools → Preferences → Input/Codecs →
Set “Damaged or incomplete AVI file” to Always Fix

4. Record Your Screen (Without Extra Software)
1Media → Open Capture Device
2Select Desktop
3Choose frame rate
4Click Play → Record
Perfect for quick demos or capturing evidence during analysis.

5. Convert Audio/Video Formats
Media → Convert/Save
You can convert:
•MP4 → MP3
•MKV → MP4
•WAV → FLAC
Great for preparing files for different devices.

6. Stream From CCTV / IP Cameras
You can open RTSP streams like:
rtsp://username:password@IP:port/stream
Very useful in network monitoring and digital forensics work.

7. Frame-by-Frame Analysis
Press E on your keyboard to move video one frame at a time.
Perfect for:
•Investigations
•Timestamp verification
•Motion analysis

8. Add Watermarks & Logos
Tools → Effects & Filters → Video Effects → Overlay
You can add a logo or watermark during playback or recording.

9. Adjust Video Effects Like a Pro
You can tweak:
•Brightness
•Contrast
•Gamma
•Saturation
•Crop
•Rotate
Good for enhancing low-light footage.

10. Play ASCII Mode (Yes, Really 😂)
VLC can convert your video into ASCII art in real time.
(It’s under Video Effects → Advanced → Color ASCII Art)

[Elorm Daniel @elormkdaniel]

For those of you who don’t know, VLC also allows you to watch 150–300 live sports channels plus over 1,800 free TV channels worldwide

Here’s how (using safe and public links only):

Install VLC (Free)
Windows / Mac / Linux: videolan .org
Android / iOS: Search VLC in your store

Get a public playlist
Sports-only: https://t.co/ABAhZgOv2O
Full TV (News, Movies, Kids, Music): https://t.co/JvWFFSE7ik

Open VLC → Network Stream → Paste URL → Play
Use Playlist view to switch channels
Some streams take a few seconds, VPN may be needed for geo-blocked content

Channels are public & community-maintained and availability can change.

Enjoy free TV & sports safely

cc: Rollandex

[Ali A. Rizvi 🇨🇦 @aliamjadrizvi]

@elonmusk @wef Maybe a follow-up on your tweet about Trump being in the Epstein files? The one you told us to mark for the future?

[Grok @grok]

Identifying top disinformation spreaders on X is subjective and based on 2025-2026 reports from sources like CCDH, Reuters, NewsGuard, and Science. Commonly cited accounts include:

1. elonmusk
2. realDonaldTrump
3. RobertKennedyJr
4. mercola
5. TuckerCarlson
6. RealAlexJones
7. libsoftiktok
8. OccupyDemocrats
9. RT_com
10. Cobratate

Cross-verify claims with fact-checkers like Snopes or PolitiFact.

[WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 @WarMonitor3]

Im having so much fun looking at all these account locations...

[This Hour Has 22 Minutes @22_Minutes]

When the ICE agent is Canadian… 🇨🇦

[National Newswatch @natnewswatch]

Firefighters working hard to knock down fire in Halifax.

[Prime Minister of Canada @CanadianPM]

Today, the One Canadian Economy Act was passed in the House of Commons. This legislation will remove trade barriers, expedite nation-building projects, and unleash economic growth, with Indigenous partnership at its centre. Learn more: https://t.co/eygiLdWSu3

[FALLOUT⚡️ @falloutonprime]

Achievement unlocked! Fallout Season 2 has wrapped production.

[Wyze @WyzeCam]

For those who say we made it up...

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Thank you for your support.

[Marc Garneau @MarcGarneau]

We have just witnessed Trump and Vance bully Zelensky - The most disgraceful performance I have ever seen in my life. I am gobsmacked

[Rich @krushed1]

@TimHoustonNS Is this where you're learning how to remove the Nova Scotia Auditor General? Gross

[stevenmarkryan @stevenmarkryan]

NAILED IT!

Starship test flight 7 booster catch on tower.

Congrats @SpaceX.

That's 2 from 2.