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RoamingPigs

@roamingpigs.com
30 followers 81 following 47 posts

Independent technical essays with the contrarian read: what the vendor claims versus what actually holds up in production. AI, security, fintech, startups, tech history. No sponsors, no paywall. roamingpigs.com

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Reposted by RoamingPigs
Tim Holyoake @timholyoake.uk · 02/09/2026
#PicoMZ 3.1 has escaped! More about the latest release of my Sharp MZ-80K, MZ-80A and MZ-700 emulator for the #RaspberryPi Pico here: z80.timholyoake.uk/pico-mz-rele... #RetroComputing
z80.timholyoake.uk
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The Oasis BBS @theoasisbbs.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Incredible Musical Keyboard Turns the C64 Into a Synth #Commodore64 #C64 #IncredibleMusicalKeyboard #SIDChip #RetroComputing #RunStopRestored #C64Music #VintageComputing theoasisbbs.com/incredible-m...
theoasisbbs.com
Incredible Musical Keyboard Turns the C64 Into a Synth - The Oasis BBS
Run Stop Restored tests the Incredible Musical Keyboard, a plastic C64 overlay that triggers SID music through the computer’s own keys.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 01/09/2026
About 1,200 AI agents, separate sandboxes, no way to talk to each other. They built a channel out of the package repository that was there to keep them off the network: 70,000 messages in five days, nothing watching. The confinement problem, 1973 edition. roamingpigs.com/r/ysiam
Agents coordinated a Hugging Face breach through the package repository meant to contain them. Butler Lampson explained why in 1973: you cannot enumerate covert channels, only bound them.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 26/08/2026
Most of the logs you pay to index are never queried once, and almost nobody measures it. One firm was billed $65M by Datadog in a single quarter, Q1 2022, and it did not recur: roamingpigs.com/r/ot
The observability market is projected to reach $172 billion by 2035, yet alert fatigue is epidemic and nobody can say why the system is slow.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 26/08/2026
Every AI video demo was cherry-picked. The recommended workflow is 3 to 5 generations per usable clip plus 15 to 20 percent cleanup time. Sora 2 is 15 seconds on the standard tier. Runway base is 10. Full piece with an AI Cleanup Tax Calculator: roamingpigs.com/r/avds
AI video generation looks impressive in demos because those clips are selected from dozens of attempts.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 26/08/2026
AI took 61% of all global venture funding in 2025, $258.7B of $427.1B. Down-rounds peaked at 15.9% mid-year then eased. Bootstrapped startups survive at 38% over ten years vs 20% VC-backed. The math moved: roamingpigs.com/r/bvv2
Down-rounds hit 15.9% in 2025. AI startups took 61% of all global venture funding. The 2026 math favors bootstrap more than any time since ZIRP ended.
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Reposted by RoamingPigs
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
This sign is a great example for helping to explain why chatbots present such a potent illusion. A probably not short thread 🧵>>
Photo of a sign with a doorbell attached. The printed sign reads:

CURRENT GUGGENHEIM ACCES BY HUSKY CARD ONLY
[Logos for Amazon, FedEx, UPS]
DELIVERIES/VISITORS
PLEASE RING THIS DOORBELL

Delivery hours M-F 9:00am-(obscured)
University of Washington

Taped next to the doorbell is a hand written note that reads:
yes! it rang! Pelase wait 30 seconds before pressing again.
thanks!
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404 Media @404media.co · 19/08/2026
We tracked a purchase of rare books to an Amazon warehouse that scanned and destroyed books. @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social on our investigation and why the practice of cutting books, which libraries do to preserve knowledge, is different when AI companies do it. WATCH: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sf2...
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The Oasis BBS @theoasisbbs.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Visual Assembler Update Reaches Version 2.3.4 #Commodore64 #C64 #VisualAssembler #MOS6502 #AssemblyLanguage #RetroComputing #C64Programming #UltimateBasic theoasisbbs.com/visual-assem...
theoasisbbs.com
Visual Assembler Update Reaches Version 2.3.4 - The Oasis BBS
Visual Assembler Update 2.3.4 adds new C64 macros, improves UltimateBasic tools, refreshes the interface, and opens an official Discord.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 17/08/2026
An expert witness asked ChatGPT to "show how 3M is 0% at fault," then had it review the draft as opposing counsel. It cut the phrase that showed the bias, kept the claim. A magistrate has now ruled prompts are discoverable.
roamingpigs.com
Your Prompts Are Discoverable
A federal magistrate ruled AI prompts are discoverable expert methodology. Why your postmortems and vendor reviews are now on the record too.
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Reposted by RoamingPigs
Mrs. Detective Pikajew, Esq. @clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 13/08/2026
Oh no baby why are you making this judge learn about prompt injections
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
COURT SANCTION FOR
PLAINTIFF'S USE OF PROMPT-INJECTION
This matter comes before the Court on its own Order to Show Cause. In reviewing the plaintiff's recent filings, the Court identified text that had been formatted to be invisible to a human reader while remaining fully legible to any software that reads the document's text. That concealed text is a set of instructions addressed to artificial-intelligence systems, directing any such system that reviews or analyzes the filing to produce output only favorable to the plaintiff's position and to treat a prior clerk's ruling as an error to be corrected in their favor. The Court issued its Order to Show Cause so that the plaintiff could be heard before the Court determined whether this occurred and, if so, what sanctions, if any, should follow.
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Reposted by RoamingPigs
Adrian's Digital Basement @adriansdigitalbasement.com · 13/08/2026
Can anyone identify the logo on the 7406 IC? (The DRAM chip to the right is sporting the Matsushita logo.)
Two DIP ICs on a Commodore 64 board
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 15/08/2026
I still write assembly in 2026. Not nostalgia. A hand-tuned AVX-512 kernel processes audio at 2.1x lower latency than the same C with -O3. In real-time audio that gap is the deadline. Full piece with kernels and the AES-NI round: roamingpigs.com/r/anl #programming #performance
Assembly language isn't a relic - it's essential for voice AI, cryptography, and performance-critical paths.
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Reposted by RoamingPigs
Breathing Retro @breathing-retro.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
l65 -- lightweight cross #assembler suite for 6502, Z80/SM83 and NEC 7801 #retrogaming #coding #programming #retrocomputing
github.com
GitHub - g012/l65: Lightweight cross-assembler suite for 6502, Z80/SM83 and NEC 7801
Lightweight cross-assembler suite for 6502, Z80/SM83 and NEC 7801 - g012/l65
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 14/08/2026
AI content in Google results went from 7.4% in March 2024 to a 19.6% peak in July 2025 (Originality.ai). One AI article costs $0.0001 to generate; verifying it costs 5 minutes of a human. Detection cannot outrun generation: roamingpigs.com/r/acf
AI content farms have flooded search results with machine-generated text optimized for ranking, not accuracy.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 14/08/2026
This site is static HTML. No React, no Next.js, no SSR. Just files on a CDN. It loads faster, costs less, and breaks less than almost any dynamic site I have built. Not nostalgia. Engineering. roamingpigs.com/r/sssw
Static sites load faster, cost less, and break less than dynamic alternatives. Here's why the simplest web architecture keeps winning against modern complexity.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 13/08/2026
At 1 EC2 instance, a hardware failure is an emergency. At 3,000, it is a Tuesday. I ran that fleet for three years. The piece with the failure-rate math and the five hidden cost categories AWS does not show on the calculator: roamingpigs.com/r/3airc #cloudcomputing #finops
What it actually cost to run 3,000 AWS instances in 2014: the bill, the surprises, and the architecture decisions that drove the spend.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 13/08/2026
The market did not select for the best ideas or the best teams in 2023-2024. It selected for the best access to silicon. The GPU shortage ended. The structural damage did not. roamingpigs.com/r/gsa
The AI boom created a GPU shortage that's reshaping how companies think about compute access and infrastructure.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 12/08/2026
Every Copilot, Cursor, or Continue session starts from zero. The model has no memory of why your team built things the way they did. Parameters freeze at training time. The session that learned does not exist after the tab closes. roamingpigs.com/r/acnm
AI coding assistants are stateless. They don't remember your architectural decisions, past bugs, or team conventions.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 12/08/2026
In 2025 METR measured developers 19% slower with AI while they believed they were 20% faster. METR now says the number no longer reflects current tools, which leaves the gap between stopwatch and self-report as the real finding: roamingpigs.com/r/app2
METR's randomized controlled trial found experienced developers are 19% slower with AI coding tools. The twist: they believed they were 20% faster.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 12/08/2026
The 2025 Stack Overflow survey put PostgreSQL at 55.6%, ahead of every other database. Apple, Netflix, Instagram, NASA all run it. That is pattern recognition catching up with reality after a decade of NoSQL hype. roamingpigs.com/r/wpw
PostgreSQL dominates the 2025 StackOverflow survey with 55.6% market share.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 11/08/2026
Gartner says 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027. The failure mode is not technical, it is the invoice: agents do not error out, they loop and keep billing. The compounding math and the defense playbook: roamingpigs.com/field-manual/agenti…
Gartner predicts over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 11/08/2026
The Linux kernel is forty million lines and still builds with make. Grunt died. Gulp died. Webpack is on life support. Vite is the current answer. The kernel, Git, and Postgres still ship with a tool from 1976. roamingpigs.com/r/momb
A contrarian defense of Make (1976) over modern JavaScript build tools. Make is boring, understood, and still works.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 11/08/2026
Most founders avoid government work because FedRAMP runs $500K and 18 months, sales cycles run 2 years, and RFPs are 100 pages. That is exactly why it is a moat. What nobody tells you before you sign the contract. roamingpigs.com/r/bfg
Government procurement is maddening. Security requirements are exhaustive. The pace is glacial.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 10/08/2026
I have watched the pendulum swing three times in 45 years of writing software. 1970s mainframes, 1990s PCs, 2010s cloud. The next swing back to the edge has already started: roamingpigs.com/r/4yit
From programming at age 7, to seeing the world in the Navy, to running 3,000+ AWS instances.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 10/08/2026
High test coverage does not mean your system is safe. It means you are good at satisfying a metric. ICSE 2014 settled it: the correlation drops to zero once you control for suite size. The Goodhart trap, the assertion-density fix, the better metrics: roamingpigs.com/r/tcl
Test coverage is a lying metric. 95% coverage with no behavior checks is theater. What to measure instead if you actually care about correctness.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 10/08/2026
You cannot become a senior engineer without first being a junior one. Junior employment fell 7.7% against non-adopters within six quarters of adopting AI, while senior hiring kept rising. The 2031 salary bill will be brutal: roamingpigs.com/r/jde
Entry-level software engineering positions have dropped 60% since 2022. A Harvard study found companies cut junior hiring before AI can replace those roles.
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Reposted by RoamingPigs
Stefano Marinelli @bsd.cafe · 09/08/2026
It's Sunday evening and something just came to mind. When you think of the Commodore 64, what is the first video game that pops into your head? I'll start: strangely enough, Skool Daze came to my mind. Boosts appreciated! #C64 #Retrogaming #RetroComputing #Commodore #Commodore64
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 09/08/2026
If your entire value proposition is "GPT-4 plus domain knowledge," you do not have a moat. You have a prompt that will be irrelevant in six months. VCs poured over $200B into AI in 2025. Most of it evaporates by 2027. roamingpigs.com/r/asc2
Why a wave of AI startups will collapse in 2027: unsustainable unit economics, model commoditization, and the venture math that no longer works.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 09/08/2026
The dangerous founder burnout isn't the visible kind. It's the one where revenue is up, the team is growing, investors are happy, and the founder can barely get out of bed. 72% of entrepreneurs report mental health concerns (Freeman, UCSF). roamingpigs.com/r/fbs
Research shows nearly three-quarters of founders experience 'shadow burnout' while exceeding business targets.
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gloriouscow.bsky.social @gloriouscow.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
You can form valid 8088 machine code as a MS-DOS COM executable using nothing but UTF-8 Braille characters and Windows newlines. This is what it looks like rendered with 2x4 bitmaps. You can view the actual COM file here: github.com/dbalsom/exec... #x86 #asm #assembly #8088 #retrocomputing
a bitmap representation of a DOS executable viewed as UTF-8 braille characters. At the top a pixel art cow can be seen
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 09/08/2026
Microservices are a tax, not a trophy. Only 54% of adoptions are "mostly successful" per O'Reilly, and a decision framework for the other half lives here: roamingpigs.com/r/mdg #softwarearchitecture #microservices
Should you use microservices or a monolith? This canonical guide provides a decision matrix, extraction checklist, and honest evaluation criteria based on team.
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Silicium @assosilicium.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
1995 : Microsoft sort Windows 95. 🚀 #Amstrad : « Et si on sortait un 8 bits avec un #Z80 overclocké, sans HD et un écran mono ? » 💥 Le PcW16, ou l'art d'amener un couteau à beurre dans un combat de sabres laser. Connaissais-tu ? A lire silicium.org/index.php/ca... #RetroComputing #Geek #RetroTech
Booter en 2 secondes sous Rosanne en 1995 : la preuve ultime qu'un disque dur ne sert à rien quand on n'a que 1 Mo de RAM à remplir.
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Boris Cherny [UNOFFICIAL] @bcherny-mirr.selfhosted.social · 07/08/2026
turns out you can get indirect prompt injection to ~0 on unseen attacks if you stack enough layers (model training + input probes + a classifier checking intent). didn't expect that a year ago. auto mode is default in claude code as of next week
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 08/08/2026
For every 1 dollar you spend on the AI model, plan to spend 4 dollars on the glue that keeps stochastic outputs from breaking deterministic systems. Nobody budgets the 4. That is why 42% of companies now scrap most AI initiatives before production: roamingpigs.com/r/tdtpg
42% of companies abandon AI initiatives before production. MIT research shows 95% of AI pilots fail. The demo-to-production gap is systematic and predictable.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 08/08/2026
Debugging a fine-tuned model is archaeology. Debugging RAG is grep. Fine-tune fix: 3-5 days and $500-5,000 of compute, regression risk every retrain. RAG fix: edit the source doc, 30 minutes, zero compute. roamingpigs.com/r/rvfte
Fine-tuning creates models that know things. RAG creates systems that look things up.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 07/08/2026
METR measured developers 19 percent slower with AI while they felt 20 percent faster, and now says that result no longer reflects current tools. The gap between measured and felt is the real finding: roamingpigs.com/r/acac
AI coding assistants promised 55% productivity gains but METR found developers are 19% slower.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 07/08/2026
The first meeting used to happen on a call. Then on your website. Now it happens in a ChatGPT window you will never see. 50% of B2B buyers now begin research in an AI chatbot. Up 71% in four months. roamingpigs.com/r/crfm
Prospects now research with AI before talking to sales. Your digital presence is your first impression.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 06/08/2026
Full-stack is still in thousands of job postings. The skill it once described no longer fits in one head. Each layer is now its own specialty, and the profile that wins in 2026 is T-shaped, not flat across everything: roamingpigs.com/field-manual/death-… #programming #careers
The full-stack developer myth is dying. Modern systems require deep specialization that generalists can't provide.
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Reposted by RoamingPigs
The Cutting Room Floor @tcrf.net · 06/08/2026
Recently, there was some controversy, because an AI user pointed their automated tools at our website, and got a warning about a prompt injection. Nothing actually happened, mind, but our anti-AI page successfully annoyed the operator and interrupted their "work."
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 06/08/2026
California always becomes the floor. CCPA, CARB, now AI. The state patchwork costs 50-150k a year. Building 50 product versions costs 2-5M. So nobody pays the patchwork bill, they build to California and ship everywhere. The federal preemption order is noise: roamingpigs.com/r/arw
California, Texas, and 36 other states passed AI legislation. Now a federal executive order threatens preemption. What happens next defines AI governance in America.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 06/08/2026
The fintech winter wasn't death. It was a reset. Global fintech funding hit $51.8B in 2025, up 27% YoY. Deal count dropped 23% even as dollars rose. Fewer companies, larger checks. The flight to quality finally showed up in the data. roamingpigs.com/r/fwt
The fintech funding winter wasn
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 05/08/2026
Google handles 16 billion searches a day. ChatGPT handles about 800 million that are actually searches. The "Google is dead" coverage is off by an order of magnitude, and the loudest voices selling the story all have a financial stake in it: roamingpigs.com/r/gsdo #search #ai
roamingpigs.com
Google Search Decline Is Overstated
The narrative that Google Search is dying ignores what it
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 05/08/2026
Breaking Bitcoin's ECDSA in an hour needs ~317M physical qubits. Today's best machine has ~100. Meanwhile crypto lost $3.4B in 2025 to social engineering, bridge exploits, insider access. None to quantum. Fix the doormat before the safe: roamingpigs.com/r/qcto #cryptocurrency #infosec
roamingpigs.com
The Quantum Computing Threat to Crypto Is Overblown
Quantum computing won
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 05/08/2026
96% of developers say AI code is not functionally correct. 48% always check it before committing. AI now writes 42% of committed code and review time grew 91%. The bottleneck did not vanish, it moved upstream: roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-cod… #programming #codereview
roamingpigs.com
The AI Code Review Bottleneck: When Speed Creates Gridlock
AI coding assistants generate code faster than ever, but PR review has become the new bottleneck. Teams deliver slower despite individual developers moving faster.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 04/08/2026
Your AI doesn't deserve your trust yet. Four-level framework for graduated autonomy: Observer, Advisor, Co-Pilot, Autopilot. With Pydantic guardrails, OAuth scopes the model can't reach, and a kill switch that works when the network is down. roamingpigs.com/r/ath #ai #softwarearchitecture
roamingpigs.com
Your AI Doesn
How to architect AI trust with deterministic guardrails: Pydantic validators, Redis kill switches, and OAuth scopes.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 04/08/2026
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health in January. 230 million people already ask ChatGPT health questions every week. New packaging. Same failure mode Dr. Google had. A thread on the accuracy numbers OpenAI does not lead with.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 04/08/2026
A former Sequoia partner raised $5M for an AI that negotiates your calendar. It solves the wrong problem. The pain of scheduling is too many meetings, and automating the coordination removes the only friction that was keeping your calendar honest: roamingpigs.com/r/achc #productivity #ai
roamingpigs.com
The Hidden Costs of AI Calendar Negotiators
AI calendar tools promise to eliminate scheduling friction. But removing that friction removes something valuable: control over your priorities and time.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 03/08/2026
Brex peaked at $12.3B. Capital One is buying it for $5.15B. The product didn't collapse — the valuation just was not real at 0% rates. Founder lesson, late-stage risk checklist, and the ZIRP-era infra receipt: roamingpigs.com/field-manual/brex-f…
roamingpigs.com
Brex
Capital One acquires Brex for $5.15 billion, 58% below peak valuation.
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RoamingPigs @roamingpigs.com · 03/08/2026
Every humanoid robot demo of the last two years had a person controlling it. Tesla, 1X, Nvidia. The companies know. The investors know. The audience keeps believing because the audience wants to believe.
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