SDF Chatter

U.S. stocks were slammed for a third day on Monday as the White House remained defiant even after President Donald Trump’s rollout of shockingly high tariff rates on most key U.S. trading partners has caused a market meltdown.

Link to the archived Tweet

https://archive.ph/AhOov

Yep this headline is from today, Monday morning.

Some snippets from the article about how efficient things are now that DOGE have injected their code changes into production without testing.

Suddenly forced offline as they were taking claims, the staff members scribbled down clients’ information, then had to wait until later to load it into the computer, doubling or tripling the amount of time and work involved, the employee said.

In other instances, Managers or security guards improvised a solution after the online scheduling system failed, the employee said. They walked out to the reception area, wrote down numbers on paper slips and started handing them out to people waiting in line.

The network crashes appear to be caused by an expansion initiated by the Trump team of an existing contract with a credit-reporting agency that tracks names, addresses and other personal information to verify customers’ identities. The enhanced fraud checks are now done earlier in the claims process and have resulted in a boost to the volume of customers who must pass the checks.

EDIT: here’s an archive link. https://archive.is/FQfBu

"If the 4.8% fall in S&P 500 futures at the Asian opening isn't reversed, then it's on course for its worst three-day selloff since the Black Monday crash of October 1987."

An anonymously-run Russian Telegram channel known for sharing leaks from the Russian security services was removed from the platform without warning on Monday, sparking fears that Telegram’s management is cooperating with the Kremlin and meeting its demands to censor certain channels.

In an editorial statement posted on its backup channel, VCHK-OGPU, which had over 1 million members, said that it believed the channel had been deleted by Telegram following a Russian court order requiring its removal for “discrediting the actions of Russian state bodies and the Russian armed forces”.

The latest Nature Index rankings reveal an astonishing trend: nine of the world’s top 10 research institutions are now Chinese

To fully appreciate China’s meteoric rise, one must look back at the academic landscape a decade ago. When the Nature Index Global rankings were first released in 2014, only eight Chinese universities made it into the top 100. Today, that number has more than quintupled, with 42 Chinese institutions now ranking among the world’s best

One of the most notable policy shifts has been the move away from publication-based evaluation metrics. Previously, Chinese academics were incentivized to publish as many papers as possible, often at the expense of quality. However, recent reforms have introduced a more rigorous peer-review system that prioritizes impactful and innovative research over sheer volume. This shift has resulted in a significant improvement in the credibility and global influence of Chinese scientific output.