Here is a collection of miscellaneous news articles, blog posts, and other web content I’m reading (or planning to) today, Tuesday, February 17, 2026:
“AI Companies Bought Out All of Western Digital’s Hard Drives for 2026 Already“ @ Gizmodo
Too bad data centers aren’t looking at my Facebook Marketplace listings…
“60 Years Ago, The Highest Mileage Car Of All Time Started Its Journey“ @ Jalopnik
Spoiler alert: “As fate would have it, Irvin Gordon passed away in November 2018. At the time of his passing, the P1800’s odometer had a final tally of 3,260,257 miles — unbelievable numbers for an extraordinary man and an iconic car.”
“Why are Epstein’s emails full of equals signs?“ @ The Verge
“The scrambled text is so ubiquitous that it’s spurred conspiracy theories that it could be some kind of code.” (Of course it has.. OFC it has…)
“Whatever software the Department of Justice used to extract the emails and convert them to PDFs appears to have mangled some of the decoding…”
“Open source registries don’t have enough money to implement basic security“ @ The Register
“Open source may indeed be like free beer, but no one enjoys their frothy lager served chock full of parasites and bacteria. So maybe we all should get used to ponying up at the bar.”
It is becoming more and more public knowledge that, just like American democracy was largely held together with gentlemen’s agreements and traditions, our entire Capitalism-dominated global technology infrastructure is held being held together by volunteers and donations. The donations are drying up and the volunteers are getting really tired.