Risto Kurki

Operational Excellence @ Sandvik SMRT IT

Some stuff may be work related, most are personal interests.

[Scott Duncan @ScottDuncanWX]

Some places which observed snow just a few days ago were not far away from hitting 20°C today.

Incredible pulse of warmth wrapping into Europe right now.

[OSINTtechnical @Osinttechnical]

BREAKING: Universal Stainless and Alloy Products (NASDAQ:$USAP) is reportedly behind the deadly crash of a USAF Osprey in Japan last year.

@hntrbrkmedia found glaring issues in Universal's operation, which supplies steel to major aircraft manufacturers including Boeing.

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

"81 states"

... and these people want to shut down the Department of Education.

[Scott Waldman @scottpwaldman]

NEW: Two former Trump White House officials told me they had to show voter data to Trump to get him to release disaster funding to CA wildfire victims. He released it after learning that he had as many GOP supporters in Orange Co. as he did in Iowa. https://t.co/VU9fbGsOBl

[Amjad Masad @amasad]

AI is incredible at writing code.

But that's not enough to create software. You need to set up a dev environment, install packages, configure DB, and, if lucky, deploy.

It's time to automate all this.

Announcing Replit Agent in early access—available today for subscribers:

[Historic Vids @historyinmemes]

24 years ago, at a Techno Parade in the year 2000, the legendary Techno Viking took to the streets of Berlin

[@jason @Jason]

Apple taking 30% of creators revenue on Patreon is not cool @tim_cook -- this should be your #1 fight @linakhanFTC.

The App Store Monopolies are the true enemy -- break them.

https://t.co/KhR84RGAyu

[Paavo Arhinmäki @paavoarhinmaki]

Valtionyhtiö Fortum myi sähköverkkonsa, luonnollisen monopolin, valtaosin ulkomaalaisille pääomasijoittajille.

Syntyi Caruna. Se on Suomen suurin sähköverkkomonopoli.

Viime vuonna Caruna teki 407,2 miljoonan euron liikevaihdolla 212,9 miljoonaa euroa voittoa.

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Today in Warsaw, Poland’s Prime Minister @donaldtusk and I signed the Agreement on Security Cooperation between Ukraine and the Republic of Poland.

This unprecedented document includes a provision for shooting down Russian missiles and drones in Ukraine’s airspace that are fired in the direction of Poland. We are committed to implementing it. We will also cooperate on combat aircraft—both those already transferred by Poland and the possibility of transferring more in the future.

In our security agreement, we have formalized the formation and training of the Ukrainian Legion, a new volunteer military unit, on Polish territory. This unit will be trained in Poland and equipped by our partners.

Thank you for your solidarity with our country and people, and for all your support and assistance!

🇺🇦🇵🇱

[M.G. Siegler @mgsiegler]

Microsoft cost for an OpenAI board observer role: ~$15B
Apple cost for an OpenAI board observer role: $0

Jokes aside, this is pretty wild.

[Trevor Scott @TidefallCapital]

Toni Sacconaghi wiped out $10bn of market cap from $DELL with this question on AI profitability.

[Beefeater @Beefeater_Fella]

Taiwan - You can’t have your cake and eat it.

Despite its publicly pro-Ukrainian position, Taiwan had by January 2024 - become Russia’s most important supplier of high-precision metalworking machines. Following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, German, Japanese, and Swiss machine tools manufacturers all left the Russian market, and Chinese substitutes proved to be of inferior quality.

However, Taiwanese machining centers, lathes, and electrical discharge machines have since filled the gap, satisfying the needs of the Russian military-industrial complex. The Taiwanese technology has proven indispensable in the production of fuses, precision weapons, and other Russian military hardware.

Metal processing equipment - such as machining centers, lathes and electrical discharge machines - are an important part of Taiwan's exports. And Russia is one of its key partners. Since 2017, Russia has been one of the four largest importers of lathes from Taiwan, with an average annual sales volume of over $30 million.

Published investigations reveal the dark underside of Taiwans trade with Russia

In January 2024, a joint investigation by Taiwanese publication The Reporter and Russia’s The Insider revealed that Russia continues to import Taiwanese machinery and processing centers, despite all prohibitions. The Insider, an independent Russian website, announced in a joint journalistic investigation with the Taiwanese publication The Reporter that Taiwan had become an important supplier of metalworking machines to Russia’s military industry over the past year.

According to The Insider investigation, despite banning exports of machine tools to Russia back in January 2023, Taiwan continues to sell the equipment which travels by ship via third countries, mainly China and Turkey. Based on Russian customs data on the international trade data platform NBD, The Insider reports that in March–September 2023, Moscow imported 193 pieces of machine tools from Taiwan for almost 29 million US dollars.

Up to 50 percent of the banned equipment reaches Russia through Turkey, with the rest arriving through mainland China and other countries. As a result, Russia remains one of the largest buyers of machinery from Taiwan, with some of it destined for military-industrial complex enterprises.

On February 3, Taiwanese authorities drastically increased the size of fines for violating sanctions against Russia, but it remains to be seen how efficiently the law will be implemented. Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) amended the "List of High-Tech Goods Exported to Russia and Belarus" on January 4, 2023 by expanding the number of items covered under export controls to Russia and Belarus. It is also in line with implementing international cooperation and preventing high-tech goods from being exported for military use.

Transiting via Turkey

According to Russian customs records from NBD (a platform specializing in international trade data collection), between March and September 2023, Russia imported at least 193 Taiwanese-made machining centers worth a total value of nearly $29 million. Close to 80% of the Taiwanese comprehensive processing machines flowing into Russia are transshipped through third countries, with Turkey and China being the top culprits.

If we look only at data on transit through Turkey, the situation seems even more alarming: as of September 2023, almost half of the machine tools Russia imported from Turkey were produced in Taiwan.

Taiwanese customs statistics also reflect the fact that Turkey has been serving as a transit point for the island’s exported machine tools. The total value of Taiwan's machining exports to Turkey between January and October 2023 showed a 45% increase over that of the same period in 2022. This jump suddenly made Turkey the leading export market for Taiwan’s machine tools makers.

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Next 👉 Taiwans position on the invasion of Ukraine

[Ukraine Battle Map @ukraine_map]

Greece 🇬🇷 “We need Patriots to defend from Turkey”

Spain 🇪🇸 “We need Patriots to defend against Morocco”

France 🇫🇷 “We need SAMP-T to protect our Nuclear Weapon Facilities”

Poland 🇵🇱 “We need Patriots to defend our Eastern Flank”

US 🇺🇸 “We don’t have enough Patriots to defend our country, bases, and allies worldwide”

Romania 🇷🇴 “We won’t give any of our 4 Patriot Batteries”

Italy 🇮🇹 “We only have 3 SAMP-T Batteries and can’t send any to Ukraine”

Netherlands 🇳🇱 “We can give launchers but not a Patriot battery to Ukraine”

Germany 🇩🇪 “We gave 2 Patriots and will give one more, so another country should give their Patriots”

Sweden 🇸🇪 “We only have 4 Patriots and can’t give any to Ukraine; someone else should send theirs”

And those are all the NATO and EU countries with Patriots

With all these excuses, Ukraine 🇺🇦 won’t be getting 7 Patriots or SAMP-T Batteries or even 4 more if this continues; no country wants to give even one battery because they face some threat, don’t have enough, and want another country to send them. It’s always the: another country should give them because we can’t excuse.

Thank you to Germany; they have given Ukraine 2 Patriot batteries and will be sending another Patriot battery, while no other European Countries have given a Patriot battery, other than France, who sent 1 SAMP-T Battery to Ukraine; France has 7 SAMP-T Batteries left.

[Katie Phang @KatiePhang]

NEW: Justice Engoron in the NY AG civil fraud case beefs up the role, control, and oversight of the Independent Monitor, Retired Judge Barbara Jones.

https://t.co/KryUoTWEc6

[AI Breakfast @AiBreakfast]

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to board members:

"If OpenAl disappeared tomorrow, we have all the IP rights and all the capability. We have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have everything. We are below them, above them, around them."

Wow.

[Patrick Moorhead @PatrickMoorhead]

I’m rarely a “you need to listen to the earnings call” guy, but the $CRM call was epic. It was a good sermon from @Benioff on AI and Data. I recommend you listen to it, get the transcript to get the Q&A. Here were some of my highlights:
- CEOs want 3 things from AI: productivity through augmentation, higher value customer relationships, resulting in higher margins
- discussion on public models based on ‘amalgamated stolen public data sets..”
- “hallucinations are not a feature”
- $NVDA the ‘Levi’s jeans of the gold rush’ and @salesforce as the actual gold; “I love @nvidia by the way” 🤠
- only SF offers the 3 critical layers of AI: UI, model, deep integration of data/metadata
- “trapped data” in Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft, Amazon, Google; “put your hand up if you’re using $SNOW every day”
- Data Cloud the “fastest growing product ever”; 25% of Q4 deals >$1M included it; 7T record ingested in Q4
- ‘text or email’ “me and tell me what you think. Because if you see anyone else being able to deliver on the promise of enterprise AI at the level of quality and scale and capability of Salesforce. I’ll be very surprised.”

Looking forward to what’s announced at Trailhead DX.
https://t.co/FxtcNppfi8

[Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1]

The New Hampshire attorney general's office says it's investigating what appears to be an "unlawful attempt" at voter suppression after NBC News reported on a robocall impersonating President Biden telling recipients not to vote in the presidential primary. @MSNBC

[Keskusrikospoliisi @krp_poliisi]

Tapahtumien kulku on pystytty osoittamaan todistusaineiston ja datan perustella, ja vaurion aiheuttajaksi epäillään Hongkongin lipun alla purjehtivaa Newnew Polar Bear -alusta.
#KRP #poliisi
https://t.co/wVOaDrTxin

[Mr Ro-Jo @Rojoclick]

West Antarctic Ice sheet (~5m of sea level rise) now cannot be saved, no matter what we do.

The East shelf (10 x more sea level rise than west) can in theory be saved, if we were to start acting. But we’re not. Have a great day everyone.

https://t.co/CN2aVspZe9

[Vatnik Soup @vatniksoup]

In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a South African-American(!) businessman and social media figure, Elon Musk (@elonmusk). He's best-known for being the wealthiest man in the world, running Tesla Inc., SpaceX & Twitter, and for parroting Kremlin's propaganda narratives.

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