CyberPlayGround Blog

ECP NetHappenings A computer science grad from Carnegie Mellon

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Governor Josh Shapiro @GovernorShapiro
Abortion is health care. That includes medication abortion.
And despite yesterday’s ruling, abortion — and mifepristone — remain legal here in Pennsylvania.
Visit http://pa.gov/freedomtochoose for up-to-date information and resources on how you can access the care you need as we prepare to take action against this dangerous ruling.

AI

A computer science grad from Carnegie Mellon with a 3.87 GPA

$247,832 in debt and counting

Class of 2025, recruited by Google, Microsoft, and Meta his sophomore year

All three offers rescinded “due to economic headwinds”

1,847 applications sent since graduation

47 interviews

12 final rounds

Zero offers

His roommate from Stanford drives DoorDash 14 hours a day making $11.23 an hour after gas

Another classmate from MIT stocks shelves at Target for $16 an hour

The career services office still runs LinkedIn ads about their “94% placement rate”

Based on 2019 data

Before AI murdered the entire profession

He spent four years learning React while React developers were being replaced by Claude

Learned Python while Python jobs got automated by Copilot

Learned algorithms while algorithms were writing better algorithms than humans

The ultimate fucking irony

He graduated summa cum laude in the exact skill that just became obsolete

Carnegie Mellon’s computer science program costs $61,958 per year

For a degree that’s now worth less than a community college welding certificate

But sure, keep telling kids to learn to code

// Now look at an H1-B with $500 dollar degree (maybe fake) from a Polytech in Asia…
Plenty of job offers. We are being scammed.
@ScotchNot I just heard about a tech worker who had no luck for over a year even getting interviews. On a whim, started submitting his same resume but changed his last name to Singh or Patel and started getting calls immediately. You should try the same thing and report back!

Mark Cuban @mcuban
Great line from @shellypalmer that I’ll paraphrase – AI shouldn’t be a ghostwriter, it should be a sparring partner.

Best way to keep your job isn’t to dismiss AI. It’s to engage with it and find where it’s wrong.

In order for AI to know it’s wrong, you have to spend a lot of time building context and rules before you use it.

Which is something that 99 pct of people have no clue how to do. And unless you are in a tech company, there is the same probability that the boss(es) above you have no clue what I’m talking about.

And in business, AI never knows the consequences of its actions. It doesn’t have judgement. That’s left to you

If you learn how to get the best out of AI. How to challenge AI , like it was a competitive coworker or consultant, and how to bring judgement and the ability to explain in a manner your peers and bosses understand, you will thrive.

If you just regurgitate what AI gives you, you will be fired.

New data centers are popping up across the country, driving up utility bills in at least 13 states. According to a new analysis, Americans who live near the centers are paying as much as 267% more a month for energy than five years ago.

@MatrixMysteries
“They quoted me $5,100 for an MRI—with insurance.” “Without insurance, it drops to $700.” She asked to pay the $700. They refused—because she was insured. Health insurance is a legalized SCAM.
video https://x.com/MatrixMysteries/status/2050766796009972059

If a hospital ever tells you that you must use insurance they are in violation of the HITECH act. All you have to do is tell them you do not want your health information shared with your insurance company. A lot of hospitals tell this lie to increase revenue but they are breaking the law.

Stephen Miller is personally listed in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Extremist Files. Same list as David Duke and Louis Farrakhan.
He got there after 900 leaked emails showed him promoting white nationalist literature to Breitbarteditors before the 2016 election. That is the same Stephen Miller whose White House just directed Kash Patel’s DOJ to indict the SPLC. The man they put on the extremist list is now prosecuting the people who put him there.
Think about that.

Epstein’s lawyers said he ran a legitimate financial consulting business.
IRS records show zero clients listed for 8 years.
He reported $100M+ in annual income with no documented source.

Michael Wolff: “The fear is that Ghislaine Maxwell can tie Trump to the details of what Trump and Epstein called the ‘Pussy Committee.’ The Pussy Committee consisted of Trump and Epstein in their efforts to get girls for Prince Andrew.”

Larry Summers visited Epstein’s Manhattan house 8 times between 2011-2014. Summers recommended Epstein to MIT and Harvard. He was Treasury Secretary. He’s now Harvard’s President Emeritus.

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ECP NetHappenings SpaceX just disclosed Musk’s new compensation package

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ECP NetHappenings News Bytes

When people can get away with crimes just because they are wealthy or have the right connections, the scales are tipped against fairness and equality. The weight of corruption then becomes so heavy that it creates a dent that forces the world to become slanted, so much so – that justice just slips off.

THE MORE POWERLESS PEOPLE ARE, THE LONGER THEY ARE KEPT WAITING ~ MASON COOLEY
Nothing annoys me more than when someone expects you to be okay with something that they wouldn’t be okay with, if iit was done to them.

HERE’S THE THING
UNDER TRUMP’S REGIME THERE ARE NO NEW JOBS CREATED THIS WHOLE TIME. NONE
THE STOCK MKT NEVER FALLS BECAUSE THE MAG 7 SEND THEIR MONEY IN A CIRCLE TO KEEP UP THE APPEARANCES OF AN ECONOMY WHEN THERE ISN’T ONE.
THE LAST TIME THE MKT FELL IN 2008 IT TOOK YEARS FOR FOLKS WHO WERE LAID OFF TO FIND A NEW JOB.
THIS TIME THE MKT WON’T FALL UNTIL THJE MAG 7 ARE READY WITH AI IN ALL THE COMPANIES WHO LAID OFF WORKERS AND IT WILL TAKE ALL THEIR JOBS. THOSE LAID OFF WILL NOT FIND ANOTHER JOB EVER.
AI WILL REPLACE ALL WORKERS.

ESSAY

George Noble @gnoble79 https://x.com/gnoble79/status/2049597193670234341
This is the most OUTRAGEOUS deal I’ve seen in my 45 years on Wall Street.

SpaceX just disclosed Musk’s new compensation package:

He gets up to 200 million super-voting shares if SpaceX hits a $7.5 trillion valuation, establishes a permanent human settlement of at least ONE MILLION people on Mars, and deploys roughly 100 terawatts of space-based computing power.

Let me put the 100 terawatts in perspective:

The entire electricity generation capacity of the United States is around 1.2 terawatts. The comp plan asks Musk to build more than 80x America’s entire power grid… in orbit.

This is a science fiction screenplay that somehow landed in front of the SEC.

But here’s why it actually matters for your portfolio…

The S-1 reportedly claims a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, with over 90 percent attributed to AI. CapeFearAdvisors flagged this one cleanly: when Palantir went public, it disclosed a $119 billion TAM and the SEC reviewed and accepted it.

SpaceX is claiming a market roughly 240x BIGGER.

Now let’s talk about what is actually being sold here:

Reported 2025 revenue is approximately $15.5 billion. Starlink delivers around $11 billion of that with healthy margins, and the launch business is genuinely dominant. The problem is xAI – the AI piece doing all the heavy lifting in the trillion-dollar valuation pitch.

xAI generated just $210 million of revenue in the first 3 quarters of 2025 while burning through $9.5 billion in cash.

Ben Brey and Rupert Mitchell – a former Fidelity portfolio manager and a former head of equity capital markets at Goldman and Citi between them – ran a serious discounted cash flow on the actual operating businesses and arrived at roughly $400 billion. Lawrence Fossi covered their work recently and the math holds up.

The IPO is being marketed at $1.75 TRILLION.

The gap between what these businesses support and what Musk is asking the public to pay is roughly $1.35 trillion of pure narrative.

Then layer on what we just learned last week…

The New York Times investigation revealed Musk personally borrowed $500 million from SpaceX between 2018 and 2020 at rates as low as 1%, while bank prime rates sat around 5%. The same SpaceX has been used to bail out SolarCity, prop up Tesla during cash crunches, and absorb xAI when the AI losses became unmanageable.

This is the same playbook he’s run for two decades.

Use a privately controlled entity as a personal piggy bank, and when the bills come due, find new investors to absorb the losses.

The IPO is structured to keep that game going FOREVER.

The Texas reincorporation strips away Delaware’s fiduciary protections. Controlled-company status on the Nasdaq eliminates independent board requirements. And retail is being offered up to 30% of the offering (3x the normal allocation) because the institutions who actually do the math are quietly stepping away.

Here is the part that finishes the case for me:

Roughly $40 billion of the IPO proceeds are already spoken for before a single dollar reaches operations. About $23 billion retires SpaceX debt. Another $17 billion retires the high-interest debt sitting on xAI and X.

This raise is not funding the future. It’s just plugging existing holes that retail investors will now own.

In my 45 years I’ve never seen a deal where the comp hurdle is colonizing another planet.

I’ve never seen a disclosed TAM that exceeds verified comparables by two orders of magnitude.

I’ve never seen a company asking the public to fund the retirement of debt incurred by separate private entities controlled by the same individual.

Every red flag I’ve watched precede a major bust over four decades is sitting in this prospectus, in plain sight.

The Tesla mispricing is being repeated on a far larger scale.

And this time the bag is being handed directly to retail.

Don’t be the one holding it.

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ECP NetHappenings Contempt, Lawlessness and Authoritarianism

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NetHappenings News Bytes

AP – Trump flouts lower court rulings in unprecedented display of executive power.

Can someone let the AP know that violating court orders is not a sign of “executive power. “ It is a sign of contempt, lawlessness and authoritarianism.

An interesting tidbit of history is that many prominent leaders in the Confederacy, including Jefferson Davis, had dreams of a tropical empire that spanned the Gulf of America and extended down into South America. The Confederate government couldn’t get some of its own senior officials and richest planters to pay taxes. The notion that it was going to get its act together and conquer Meso America, Latin America, and part of South America is beyond fanciful to put it kindly.

PETE BUTTIGIEG: “What if we selected our President by letting the person who got the most votes take the office, instead of the Electoral College?”

The Supreme Court’s Death Blow Against Voting Rights Is the Culmination of Racist John Roberts’s 50-Year Crusade
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/jon-roberts-callais-v-louisiana-supreme-court-voting-rights/

BREAKING: MAGA influencer Craig Long — “MAGA to the core,” 560K TikTok followers, photographed with Trump — was just arrested in a human trafficking sting. He’s married. He frequently posted videos praising the sheriff who just arrested him. Sheriff Judd’s response at the press conference: “Well, there you go. You got arrested in a human trafficking sting. Influence that for a while.” Never stop connecting the dots.
In a wild plot twist, MAGA was the deep state pedophile ring the whole time. Who would have thought that MAGA the cult of cucks that elected one of the most well known predators to lead them would be a breeding ground for child predators.

Who Killed Spirit Airlines?
One upside of the Spirit liquidation is you can see all the Wall Street guys and political hacks who lie for a living blaming this on Biden. A useful litmus test.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/who-killed-spirit-airlines

BITCOIN

ALBERTA CANADA JUST ANNOUNCED THEY BOUGHT $220,000,000 WORTH OF #BITCOIN EXPOSURE VIA $MSTR COUNTRIES ARE BUYING THE DIP.

BILLIONAIRE TIM DRAPER JUST SAID THE COMING HALVING WILL SEND #BITCOIN ABOVE $250,000
“SUPPLY GETS CUT”
“DEMAND GOES UP”
“PRICE GOES UP

FED CHAIR NOMINEE CONFIRMS US WILL NEVER ISSUED A CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY A MASSIVE WIN FOR #BITCOIN

AI

Scientists have discovered AI data centers are even worse for the environment than we thought. Big data centers create “heat islands” that raise local surface temperatures an average of 3.6°F, enough to potentially devastate local wildlife and water supply. New data centers are popping up across the country, driving up utility bills in at least 13 states. According to a new analysis, Americans who live near the centers are paying as much as 267% more a month for energy than five years ago.

AI vs. actual intelligence
– Babies draw conclusions without words.
– Animals reason without language.
– The text in the book didn’t solve the mystery – the author did, long before writing a single word. The book is just where the answer was stored.

“In summary, there is very little evidence for LLMs benefiting patients or doctors for health outcomes” – Dr. @EricTopol https://x.com/EricTopol
Read his full review here: The Paradox of Medical AI Implementation
From Missed Opportunities to Missing Evidence
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/the-paradox-of-medical-ai-implementation

AI ESSAY

Paul M. Roe @ZadienLabs

For someone to conflate predefined computational algorithm enabling chat bots to SIMULATE conversation with true mental cognition or even worse, consciousness; really shows the state of idiocy within our culture.

It highlights the lack of fundamental knowledge provided by Public Education, and further exemplifies the effects of “Social Media” and Echo Chambers.

Electro Mechanical Computation ≠ Conciousness

One works on pre-defined algorithms.

The other works in ways we have yet to completely determine.

Let’s examine what we know about the brain, what we know about computation, and compare the differences.

The differences are strikingly alarming and plainly obvious that processing 1’s and 0’s to render an output does not equate to anything remotely “living”.

We are conscious. We have organs. These organs work together.

Electro Chemical processes make consciousness. This is a far cry from processing with Electro Mechanical Computation.

Huge difference.

The world would do good to understand this.

Biologists and Physicists understand this.

Why doesn’t the average public?

Ohh. Because @elonmusk and @DarioAmodei have Money, Popularity, and agendas to push.

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ECP NetHappenings Pig Butchering in Cambodia

News Bytes

Comparing Trumpp to Hitler when the parallels are obvious !!!
TRUMP WILL NEVER LEAVE THE WHITE HOUSE
HE HAS TO WIN ANOTHER TERM CAUSE IF HE LOSES / LEAVES HE GOES TO JAIL.
HE WILL DO ANYTHING TO STAY IN THE WHITE HOUSE
THEY WILL HAVE TO TAKE TRUMP OUT OF THE BUNKER IN A STRAIGHT JACKET
Trump saw the Bunker before in his last term – didn’t like it – it’s located UNDER THE BALLROOM
BUILD A BALLROOM put everything in the bunker he wants to have so he lives in the bunker while the USA burns. He can’t leave the bunker or he goes to jail.
THAT’S THE REASON FOR THE BALLROOM@!!!!

As with Hitler before him, this kind of mania needs to be chemically maintained, the drugs stop it all comes crashing down in a bunker somewhere.
Said to be true of all the top-ranking Nazis: fueled by drugs akin to amphetamines.

NYT: A manufacturer of the abortion pill mifepristone asked the Supreme Court on Saturday to immediately restore full access to the medication, putting the contentious issue of abortion back before the justices in an election year. This means that the Supreme Court will decide whether or not to ban medication abortions right before the midterms.

Trump’s disapproval just reached a new high in the Post-ABC-Ipsos poll. Disapproval of Trump on:
62% his job as president
76% cost of living
72% inflation
66% situation with Iran
65% relations with U.S. allies
65% the economy
61% taxes
59% immigration

ABC/WaPo/Ipsos: Trump’s disapproval rating hits 62% – the highest of either of his terms
-He’s underwater on every single issue tested
-2/3 of Americans say the country is on the wrong track
– Republicans who strongly approve is 45%, lowest across both terms
@GMA

Paul Ryan, Who Proposed Raising the Retirement Age to 70, Retired at 48 With a Full Government Pension. This Needs To Stop Happening!

Democrat Quentin Wiltz has beat Republican Tony Carbone in the Pearland, Texas. Quentin Wiltz will be the next mayor. Democrats continue to flip seats from Florida, Texas, Ohio, and all over US. Grapevine–Colleyville ISD, once a strong, major, Republican-leaning district, has now flipped. All three Republican trustees lost their re-election bids. Huge defeat for Texas Republicans.

Spirit CEO specifically said the reason they could no longer do business was because of higher fuel cost. This under the Trump administration.

Trump administration stalls 165 U.S. onshore wind farms over national security concerns. Trump is anti wind and solar.

A group of more than a dozen dwarfs has reportedly raided the Church of Scientology.

This idea that consolidation leads to more local news has never been proven empirically, and all FCC efforts to demonstrate the theory in practice have failed. It has been the justification in hundreds of media mergers since 1996.

In the last 5 days, Michigan’s average diesel price has soared 90 cents per gallon to $6, a new record, just as farmers are getting into their fields. Illinois has also set a new record, and Indiana and Ohio are poised to be next.

ESSAY

Sweep @0xSweep https://x.com/0xSweep/status/2050586670366687723
May 2

The US government announced the biggest crypto seizure in history. China says it was actually the biggest crypto hack in history and the hacker was the US itself

In December 2020 a Chinese Bitcoin mining pool called LuBian got “hacked” for 127,271 BTC. Worth $3.5 BILLION at the time and $15 BILLION today

To understand why, you need to know who Chen Zhi is

He’s the chairman of Prince Group, a Cambodian conglomerate that on the surface ran real estate, finance and hotels in 30+ countries

In secret it ran one of the largest transnational criminal organizations in Asia

Prince Group operated dozens of forced labor compounds across Cambodia. Workers were lured with fake job offers, imprisoned on arrival, beaten and forced to run pig butchering scams against victims worldwide

Pig butchering is the scam where operators build fake online relationships, slowly fatten the victim up emotionally, then convince them to “invest” their savings in fake crypto platforms before disappearing with everything

The DOJ found facilities staffed with 1,250 phones controlling 76,000 social media accounts. Every account a different fake persona, running a different romance scam, on a different victim somewhere in the world

At peak the operation generated $30 MILLION PER DAY

The proceeds got laundered through Bitcoin

In December 2020 LuBian got “hacked”

The pool’s private keys had been generated by a weak random number generator and bruteforced in days

LuBian sent transactions to the thief’s wallet begging for the money back

The funds sat untouched for nearly 4 years

In June and July 2024 the entire 127,271 BTC moved in a coordinated sweep to new wallets. Nobody knew who controlled them

Then in October 2025 the DOJ unsealed an indictment against Chen Zhi and revealed they’d been holding the entire stash the whole time

Largest forfeiture action in US history. $15 BILLION in Bitcoin in US custody

The 2020 “hack” was either an insider self heist within Chen Zhi’s own organization, or something far stranger

China is now publicly accusing the US government of being the actual hacker and claiming American intelligence brute forced LuBian’s weak keys in 2020 and quietly held the BTC for 4 years before retroactively “seizing” it through court filings in 2025

The DOJ has not explained how the funds came into US custody

If China is right, this is the first known case of a state level cryptocurrency theft

The US identified weak keys belonging to a criminal organization, drained the wallet years before the public knew and waited for the legal infrastructure to catch up

OFAC sanctioned Prince Group as a Transnational Criminal Organization. 146 associated targets added to the SDN list

Senior Chinese government officials from the Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of State Security were named as direct co conspirators paid bribes to shield the compounds from law enforcement

Byex Exchange, a Prince Group linked crypto exchange that had received $1.3 BILLION in transactions – sanctioned

Jin Bei Group, the casino and hotel chain hosting scam compounds – sanctioned

Chen Zhi was at large for months. In January 2026 he was arrested in Cambodia and deported to China. His current whereabouts are unclear

But the industry he was part of is bigger than him. KK Park in Myanmar. Sihanoukville in Cambodia. Compounds across Laos and the Philippines. The UN estimates the global pig butchering industry generates $75 BILLION per year

Chen Zhi’s $15 BILLION is maybe 5% of one year of the industry’s revenue

And if China’s accusation is true, the US government has been quietly executing onchain seizures for years

The “biggest crypto crackdown in history” might actually be the moment we found out the most powerful actor on the blockchain has been the United States all along

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