Walter Wong

Love science and technology. Trying to satiate curiosity.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

a post from President Trump: "I don't think the GOP fully grasp how badly they are fucking up right now"

[Ted Lieu @tedlieu]

This is a fascinating re-post from trump.

And I approve his message.

[David Stockman @DA_Stockman]

Nailed it!

Bottom line on Trumpy: "Scratch beneath the surface and there's no hidden brilliance, no master strategist, no misunderstood genius. Just an impulsive, self-absorbed figure stumbling from one failure to the next, desperately trying to drown incompetence in a torrent of bluster and spectacle."

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Remember, we were told it was only about *illegal* immigration.

[Arthur @Arthur_NC_]

we missed our entire YC batch to build in Ukraine.

we went from idea to field testing, landed $500M in LOIs, and sold 45 units to a special forces unit

all in 8 weeks.

some things you just can’t build in SF

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

Could somebody explain to Lutnick that his boss prefers North Korea to South Korea, and Russia to Canada, and that this will continue till he's driven away in a padded van

[Hannibal999 @Hannibal9972485]

Look at the code WIRED pulled from Flock’s own servers. Flock built an AI tool called OS Investigate.🚨👀

It accesses "commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates." It also accesses "police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records." The prompts can generate dossiers ("workups") on people based purely on driving patterns, without a crime, a plate, or a name. It Can identify drivers, track patterns, find "witnesses," generate suspicion based on behavior without a target. Code was found publicly on Flock's website. 🚨

Flock is performing automated, suspicionless background checks (pulling SSNs, DOBs, relatives) using commercial databases on citizens who have committed no crime, have no warrant, and are not named in any case file. The trigger is purely an AI algorithm flagging their driving pattern.
🚨
NO officer initiates the search for the suspect, Flock's AI essentially acting as the investigator, but doing so through commercial data brokers. Flock pulls consumer reports without a permissible purpose.
⚠️⚠️
Why did Flock build OS Investigate? Because selling LPR cameras is a hardware game with limits. Selling an "AI investigator" is a high-margin SaaS play. To justify the valuation ($1B+), they need to monopolize the investigative workflow. To do that, they fused LPR data (which they hold) with police records (CJI) and commercial data (SSNs). ⚠️

Why are they doing this? Because Flock’s hardware is a commodity. The cameras are just metal on a pole. The real valuation the nearly $1 billion in venture capital is in their proprietary datasets. To justify that valuation, they have to build a total surveillance map of America that links physical movement to full digital and financial identities. They cannot legally buy that data on the open market because of the FCRA. So they built an AI to force the police to pull it for them. Flock gets the fused data, the police get the dossier, and Flock gets to declare the new AI-generated identity maps as "Flock Property" under their contracts.
⚠️⚠️
Flock is using the police as a legal shield to run unauthorized mass identity resolution queries for their own proprietary training and profit. The "perpetual license" terms gives Flock ownership of these AI-generated dossiers. They are building a national private surveillance database of SSNs linked to movement patterns, bypassing the FCRA by routing the queries through police terminals.🚨

Now look at their new August 2026 "Trust" updates. They announced a reduction in data retention to 7 days, but they created an exception called "Evidence Mode" where searched data is preserved instead of aging out. 🚨

Here is the trap. If they actually deleted data in 7 days, their AI prompts which ask for people "arrested more than twice in two years" would not function.🚨

The AI needs a multi-year historical window to track patterns. "Evidence Mode" is the backdoor they built to force all searched data into permanent retention so their AI can keep running. The 7-day retention is theater for the city councils. The permanent retention is the actual product.🚨

And the Audit Assistance" they say is to catch police misuse? It is a complete deception. The audit logs track the police officer. But the AI generates the lead before the officer interacts with the system. The AI does the suspicionless searching in the backend. The officer just clicks the prewritten prompt. The audit log captures the officer clicking a button, but it does not capture the unauthorized API calls Flock’s AI is making to the commercial databases to pull the SSNs. They built the logging system to cover their own corporate trail.🚨

https://t.co/iuTZcosABs

[Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing]

The rampant anti-vax lunacy and racism is boundless—“Nearly all of Florida is <95% immunization rate for herd immunity for measles. Is message to vaccinate kids?” Donalds: "No. The reason we see a measles outbreak is because of rampant illegal immigration." 🤦🏻‍♂️

[Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla]

WSJ EDITORIAL BOARD: “.. One reason for Mr. Trump’s frigid approval rating is that voters believe Mr. Trump is waging blunderbuss wars without a strategy, and on trade they’re right.”

@WSJopinion
https://t.co/GjQZcNRuwV

[GBC @GBC_Press]

🚨 BREAKING:

"We will not prosecute the abusers named in the Epstein files or reveal their names to the public."

— Todd Blanche, US Attorney General

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

This is the result of constant anti vaccine messaging

Brainwashing

Scary

[Norman Ornstein @NormOrnstein]

What a disgrace to common decency

[Karun Pal @karunpal]

Intelligent people live a boring life. They go to bed at 10. Wake up at 6. Eat simple foods. Go for long walks. Read thick books. Say no to things that drain them. The world chases excitement. But they chase calm. Things that align with their soul. A calm routine. A quiet mind. A healthy body. Meaningful work. A small circle. A private life. Their life may look boring from the outside. But from the inside, they experience a kind of freedom most people spend their entire lives searching for.

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

To be clear: this has zero basis in science and will only endanger children

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

Gardasil HPV vaccine prevents cancer and is on the way to eliminating cervical cancer in many countries

RFK Jr said it causes cancer

Even by his desperately low standards, this is an absolutely whopping piece of bullshit

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

An engineer that built this 400m-running humanoid robot explained the wild form:

▫️initially designed it with human arm swing
▫️but swinging arms too much put heavy load on shoulder joints, led to overheating (and robot couldn’t finish 400m)
▫️robot invented the new running style on its own (hands held up near face to reduce shoulder load while legs could keep trucking)
▫️per Global Times, “in a simulated learning environment…the team gave the robot continuous rewards, and through repeated iteration on the data it gradually settled into a posture that suited it better.”

***

Full read here (fascinating): https://t.co/hfd7PCRIqM

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

Doug Ford: "President Trump is the type of person that would steal your lunch money the first day. He'd steal the toque off your head the second day, and the third day he'd steal your running shoes. He is not to be trusted whatsoever."

[Financial Times @FT]

The Trump economy: $40tn debt, 6.7% mortgages and $5 diesel https://t.co/9SKepLrG8S

[Scientific American @sciam]

The mathematical reality of a $40 trillion national debt is unfathomable.
https://t.co/AxfGJl1npG

[Norman Ornstein @NormOrnstein]

Simply monstrous