Journalist and media professional. Posting mostly about science, technology, media, photojournalism, philosophy, and the American Dream.
Joined April 2009
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Reinhard Kargl retweeted
A small U.S. team used AI to build a test worm that can take over a WeChat account from an incoming call. You don’t have to tap anything. The phone can still be ringing.
The firm, Calif, says AI found the flaw and had a working hack in about two days. In about a week, it had a version that jumps from iPhone to Android. A call from someone already in your contacts can seize the account, then call their contacts and spread. Hanging up can stop that one try. They can call again.
This was a lab test on three phones, not a real-world attack. Calif told Tencent in July. Tencent fixed it by late August and says it has no sign that regular users were hit.
What scared people is the estimate. Experts quoted by the New York Times said a live version could have reached hundreds of millions of accounts in hours. In China, WeChat is not just chat. People use it to pay and deal with the government. It has about 1.4 billion monthly users. One Chinese scholar compared knocking it out to “a new kind of nuclear weapon.”
Calif used a mix of open-source AI and top U.S. models. People still pointed it at the target. The leap is speed: work that used to take months got squeezed into days.
China’s foreign ministry said it was “not familiar” with the case. AI safety is now on the list for the Sept. 24 Trump-Xi meeting. Don’t expect a ban. Each side will build stronger AI and call it defense. The other side will call it an attack.
Self driving automobiles will be able to provide mobility to seniors and handicapped people at levels never seen before in human history.
Larry, a 98-year-old, just bought a new @Tesla Model Y, and he uses FSD (Supervised) to drive him everywhere. His first car was a 1931 Ford Model A haha. He uses Grok to navigate.
"It has no problems. In fact, the other day FSD stopped when a chipmunk was crossing the road."
Definitely a video worth checking out: youtube.com/watch?v=aqVrSErW…
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
This post looks like the start of a VERY sophisticated and well-funded PR operation to get support for Democrats to regulate AI into oblivion. Let me show you how it works:
1.) This guy, with minimal followers and no previous account activity, goes to the Wall Street Journal which publishes an exclusive with quotes from him on his resignation 18 minutes BEFORE this post goes up. Planning was clearly done in advance.
2.) Within hours, it has tens of thousands of reposts and the account has 100k+ followers. The post is punchy, quotable, it almost seems professionally written. The first three accounts to quote tweet it all do so within 15 minutes of the initial posting. Remember, this account had basically zero engagement beforehand, so an organic reach explanation seems unlikely.
According to Grok those accounts are @_NathanCalvin (General Counsel at Encode AI), @peterwildeford (Head of Policy at the AI Policy Network), and @DKokotajlo (Head of the AI Futures Project), all of which are up-and-coming AI-Doomer policy advocacy nonprofits.
The AI Futures Project website says it is funded “primarily” by the Survival and Flourishing Fund, which says on its own website that it has advised Jaan Tallinn, Skype creator and one of the leading investors in Anthropic, to grant over $2.5 million to the AI Futures Project since 2024.
Encode AI says on its website that it is ALSO funded by the Survival and Flourishing Fund, which in turn says that it told Anthropic investor Jaan Tallinn to grant $516,000 to Encode AI in 2025.
And wouldn’t you know it, the Survival and Flourishing Fund ALSO says it told Jaan Tallinn to grant $2 million to the AI Policy Institute, the 501(c)(3) affiliate of the AI Policy Network, as well.
What are the odds that the first three quote tweets of Coxon’s post would all be major AI-restriction policy advocates funded generously by the same donor, who also happens to be one of the leading investors in, and a board member of, Anthropic, the company Coxon was resigning from? And all within 15 minutes of posting (two within ten)?
3.) Jacob Coxon doesn’t have much of a resume, but we do know that, in 2022, he got a $20,159 scholarship for the “long term future scholarship program” from the Good Ventures Foundation, one of the philanthropic vehicles of Dustin Moskovitz, a notorious AI-doomer who has spent tens if not hundreds of millions on policy advocacy to strictly regulate AI, while also being an Anthropic Investor himself.
It also just so happens that the 14th person to quote Coxon’s post was @MaxNadeau_ (27 minutes after posting) who is the program officer for the Technical AI Safety team at Coefficient Giving, another of Moskovitz’s philanthropic spending vehicles. Max is not a frequent poster, his last posts before quoting Coxon were before Labor Day, but he was remarkably quick off the mark for this one.
4.) Basically every major Democrat politician and candidate has suddenly glommed on to this post, and conveniently, as the people cry out foe answers, Bernie Sanders already has a bill written to “ban super intelligence” and regulate AI into oblivion, and will be releasing later this week. The bill, among many other things, will create “a new cabinet-level federal agency to safeguard the public from the dangers of artificial intelligence” that will be “advised by an Artificial Intelligence Advisory Board comprised of experts on artificial intelligence.” Do you think, perhaps, Anthropic and its many investors who fund AI policy advocacy might have interest in getting to place a pet “expert” on the board of an entity that dictates what AI is and isn’t allowed to do? And isn’t it fortuitous that this whistleblower came forward with his oh-so scary stories so close in proximity to the release of the most radical piece of AI legislation ever introduced?
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
~69,000 Powerwall owners across California are currently dispatching more than 500 MW to the grid, helping meet peak demand during today's heatwave
Equivalent to the output of a power plant, but from Powerwalls already in people's homes
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
EXCLUSIVE: A Nigerian chieftain billed Medicaid more than $36 million, then snapped up luxury properties in California and built a magnificent palace in Abatete, Nigeria—including a golden statue of himself.
The experts told us it has all the red flags for fraud.
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
Almost all wind’s carbon cost is paid up-front in materials and construction. But economic success depends on actual output over 20–30 years.
In many regions the capacity factor is a third to a half of nameplate (what they say it will produce) — about 23 percent for the existing European onshore fleet, around a third for the US fleet, but higher for new machines on good sites and offshore.
Lifecycle studies still put operating wind well below coal or gas on grams of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour. They already use the electricity the machines actually produce, but again, lower than nameplate rating.
Modern wind turbines are industrial objects on the soaring scale of skyscrapers. A full-blown turbine can stand 400–500 feet tall with blades longer than a football field. Size is not cosmetic. It's how you chase elusive wind energy out of thin air.
The steel tower, the nacelle, copper in the generator and cables, rare-earth magnets in some generator designs, and especially the concrete foundations, all have to be manufactured first. Copper is modest by mass next to the volume of steel and concrete. Permanent magnets are not in every machine.
Cement production is one of the most carbon-intensive industrial processes on earth — roughly a tonne of CO₂ for every tonne of cement. A typical onshore foundation takes on the order of several hundred tonnes of concrete per megawatt of nameplate capacity.
That pour is not optional. A 400-foot rotor on a skinny tower will try to tip over unless you pin it down with a massive concrete and rebar plug in the ground.
When the wind dies, something else has to replace it. On many grids that something is gas. Hydro interconnects demand response and batteries fill part of the gap as well. You still pay for generation plus whatever keeps the lights on when the wind is not there.
Then there is the wire. Wind is best where there are no people — such as high plains, ridges and offshore. Getting that power to cities means long, expensive transmission lines that often exist just to serve the turbines. Those lines are not free in dollars, land or materials, and they don't make the energy more reliable. They move an intermittent product further down the energy food chain.
'End of life' is the part the industry still doesn't have an answer for. Steel and copper can be recycled. Blades generally cannot, not as blades, and not at commercial scale. They are fibreglass or carbon fibre locked in thermoset resin. You can't melt that sandwich back into useful life the way you melt aluminium.
The Great Plains already have blade graveyards: they are cut up and buried because it's cheaper and more practical than recycling. Cement-kiln co-processing is now the main industrial route. Chemical breakdown plants exist as pilot schemes.
Closed-loop recycling still lags the retirement tsunami, expected this decade and the next.
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
Canada's biggest fentanyl superlab had enough drugs to kill every Canadian twice over. Nearly two years later, nobody has been charged with actually running it.
The RCMP raided the site in Falkland, BC in October 2024, seizing 54 kg of fentanyl, 390 kg of meth, 89 firearms, and $500,000 cash, denying the operation an estimated $485 million in profit. Police called it Canada's most sophisticated superlab ever found, using Mexican cartel-style production methods and Chinese-supplied precursor chemicals. The only person charged so far pleaded guilty this September, but only to exporting meth to the Philippines. The lab itself, the fentanyl, the actual production, none of it appears in his plea deal.
The trail behind this lab is the part that's gone quiet. US sources say the DEA flagged Chinese precursor shipments to a Vancouver-area importer back in 2022 and offered to work the case jointly. The RCMP reportedly declined. The importer got sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2023 for alleged ties to Chinese fentanyl-precursor suppliers. When the RCMP finally briefed US agencies in mid-2025, they opened by saying it was "not an open discussion", just a one-way readout, not real cooperation. A former DEA official called the whole handling a "major disaster."
Nearly two years after seizing enough fentanyl to kill a country twice, the actual operators of the lab are still unnamed and uncharged.
RCMP Told U.S. Agencies Falkland Was “Not an Open Discussion.” A Year Later, No One Has Been Charged With Running the Superlab thebureau.news/p/rcmp-told-u…
153 million driver’s licenses appear to have been stolen from an ID verification system. The vendor, IDScan, offers identity card and passport verification services to clients, including Hertz, FedEx, and video game retailer GameStop. apple.news/AFEbvR3CxS6OqLdv0…
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
Starbase Louisiana will ultimately have over a dozen launch towers, enabling more than 30 Starship flights per day and making it the biggest launch site on Earth!
SpaceX makes sci-fi real.
Introducing Starbase, Louisiana – a high-cadence launch site that will enable Starship to open a pathway to the stars for humanity.
Thank you to @LAGovJeffLandry and the great people of Louisiana for all of their support as we work together on this audacious project → spacex.com/sites/starbase-la
In the long run, nuclear fusion (not fission) is the only energy source which can supply all of mankind’s needs. It’s the same process that powers the Sun and thus powers all life on Earth. apple.news/AmBitTHOMQSyz3D38…
Against all odds, SpaceX finally tugs Starship into port after 24 days at sea - Ars Technica apple.news/A2_CKrvlPRBSBKX7o…
Booksellers suspect AI firms are buying and then destroying rare books - Ars Technica apple.news/Al_waMDxyR12V5noO…
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
Technology from China cannot be trusted. All versions of a Chinese made router came with a preinstalled backdoor
The routers would contact servers in China every few seconds. The servers could take complete control of the routers and ultimately other devices on the network
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
I visited Seattle’s $165 million dollar downtown library and it was OVERRUN with drug addicts.
Not only is this library filled with adults who are high on drugs, but they also offer FREE fentanyl test strips, syringes and injectable narcan that anyone, including children, can access.
Visitors have complained of “foul odors”, unusable restrooms and harassment by the homeless and I experienced all of this while at this location.
Seattle residents just passed a tax increase to raise $480 million dollars for libraries just like this one and this is unfortunately the state that they’re in:
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
Here are the binders of the 25,000+ pages of permits and applications required by Germany for Tesla to complete the Gigafactory and begin building autos.
Yes, paper copies were required.
The approval came on March 4, 2022 for Tesla to begin building autos at Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg.
That final decree is shown in the center of the table.
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
This actually happened
Elon Musk reveals what happens when a rocket launch needs approval from Fish and Wildlife
Elon: "Nonetheless, we were forced to kidnap a seal, strap it to a board, put headphones on the seal and play sonic boom sounds to it to see if it would be distressed."
Elon: "This is an actual thing that happened. This is actually real. I have pictures."
Before the seal, there was a shark.
Elon: "One of the things that was a bit of a challenge at one point is that they were worried about our rocket hitting a shark."
He asked for the data to calculate the odds. They refused, in case shark hunters got hold of it.
Elon: "Then they said, well, there's another part of Fish and Wildlife that can do this analysis. I'm like, well, why don't you give them the data? They don't, we don't trust them. Like, excuse me, but they're literally in your department."
Then a second agency raised whales.
Elon: "If our rocket does hit a whale, which is extremely unlikely beyond all belief, that whale has some seriously bad luck. It's the least lucky whale ever."
The seal test was for launches out of Vandenberg, where the seal population has been rising for years.
Elon: "So if anything, rocket booms are an aphrodisiac based on the evidence."
Elon: "The amazing part is how calm the seal was. Because if I was a seal, I'd be like, this is the end. They're definitely gonna eat me."
Elon: "Its seal buddies are never gonna believe him that he got strapped to a board and they put headphones on his ears."
They did it twice.
Elon: "I don't think the public is quite aware of the madness that goes on."
Reinhard Kargl retweeted
Milton Friedman on 4 ways to spend money:
1) Your money on yourself (you’re careful about both cost and quality)
2) Your money on others (you care about cost, less about quality)
3) Someone else’s money on yourself (you care about quality, not cost)
4) Someone else’s money on others (you care about neither)
The last one is how government spending works.