🔗 Scripting News: Tuesday, February 3, 2026

I don’t understand the connection, other than RSS is always useful, as a way of formalizing the output of an app so other apps can use it as input.

I understand - it forms the foundation of one if my new modules in the Engagement Platform we are building.

A Public Service Announcement

🔗 Microsoft is Giving the FBI BitLocker Keys - Schneier on Security

Microsoft gives the FBI the ability to decrypt BitLocker in response to court orders: about twenty times per year

I mean I could have just pasted the whole article now I look down this post.

🔗 Why Tech (&) Media is complicated – On my Om

Obviously, he didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. Maybe he was worried that an old-school reporter like me would do my homework and ask basic, but tough questions. The kind of questions that used to be standard fare, but now they get you ignored.

and

I told founders to step back and think about why their stories mattered to anyone but themselves

and

We built systems that reward acceleration, and we act surprised when everything feels rushed, shallow, a little manic. The algorithm doesn’t care if something is true. It cares if it moves. Nothing moves like titillation, gossip, and startup psychodrama.

and

A16z’s backing no longer means what Sequoia’s meant in 2005, and a TechCrunch launch no longer means what it did in 2008. The technology ecosystem is noise. Its media outlets are just the outward expression of that noise

and

There are fewer than a dozen journalists I can name-check those who don’t disappoint. Nilay Patel of The Verge for example.

… totally agree. When he took his paternity break recently .. he had some good names stand in for him … don’t think I ever got to the end of any of them. A couple I knew not to even start.

🔗 Ranked: The Most Reliable Car Brands in 2026

I listened to the CEO from the 26th most reliable brand on this list talk to Ms. Swisher the other day. That conversation alone was sufficient for me to want one of his cars.

🔗 How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life – The Marginalian

Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being

I have no idea why I have so much to share from Maria - other than my RSS feed was suddenly full of her posts for some reason - so why not share the love.

🔗 Your Life is the Sum Total of 2,000 Mondays

Then we spend the actual substance of our lives doing laundry and feeling crappy about it…

Telling that 🔗 moltbook.com - where humans are invited to observe agentic ai chatting amongst themselves - offers no RSS feed. What’s that about?

When Ed’s on a roll … Ed’s on a roll

“Stargate” is commonly misunderstood as a Trump program, or something that has raised $500 billion, when what it actually is is Oracle raising debt to build data centers for OpenAI. Instead of staying in its lane as a dystopian datacenter mobster, Oracle entered into negative-to-extremely-low margin realm of GPU rentals, raising $58 billion in debt and signing $248 billion in data center leases to service a 5-year-long $300 billion contract with OpenAI that it doesn’t have the capacity for and OpenAI doesn’t have the money to pay for.

🔗 The Hater’s Guide to Oracle

🔗 Ranked: The 35 Countries with the Highest Household Debt - that is highest a percentage of GDP.

New Zealand comes in a 5th, the UK 11th and the USA - 13th. Seperately both Australia and Canada beat out New Zealand for the ‘top 5 honors’.

Not sure what that all means. I certainly can’t see obvious corolations with others on the list.

🔗 Trump Demands $10 Billion From Taxpayers For Leaked Tax Returns; His Own Lawyers Get To Decide What He Gets | Techdirt

… and why shouldn’t he? He was wronged. And anyone who tells him different will be sent to the gulag. Tяump - you are wrong.

🔗 Theatre Review: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy – Immersive Experience – Terence Eden’s Blog

Tickets start at £42.

🔗 Cancer might protect against Alzheimer’s.

And vice versa apparently.

If correct - today’s good news - Alzheimer’s is not in my future

🔗 You Can Just Say No to the Data - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

You can - but perhaps a better thought is to consider the data, ask where it comes from, how was it arrived at, who compiled it, whether it’s relevant and … and …and

.. is - I think - basically what Jim is saying … so unclear where the title came from.

🔗 Age verification on Roblox using AI is not good – FlowingData

In fact, WIRED has found multiple examples of people advertising age-verified accounts for minors as young as 9 years old on eBay for as little as $4.

🔗 Wellington, New Zealand - from a (not so) different time.

When the Fischer-Spassky match #2 was being played in Yugoslavia, I relied on the moves of the games being faxed to me.

🔗 Just My Opinion writes @derekpeden

Maybe - but an excellent hierarchy. Going forward .. could well be adopting. Thank you sir.