The WorldLeaks cybercrime group claims to have stolen information from the footwear and apparel giant’s systems.
The post Nike Probing Potential Security Incident as Hackers Threaten to Leak Data appeared first on SecurityWeek.
We miss the slide rule. It isn’t so much that we liked getting an inexact answer using a physical moving object. But to successfully use a slide rule, you need to be able to roughly estimate the order of magnitude of your result. The slide rule’s computation of 2.2 divided by 8 is the same as it is for 22/8 or 220/0.08. You have to interpret the answer based on your sense of where the true answer lies. If you’ve ever had some kid at a fast food place enter the wrong numbers into a register and then hand you a ridiculous amount of change, you know what we mean.
Recent press reports highlighted a paper from Nvidia that claimed a data center consuming a gigawatt of power could require half a million tons of copper. If you aren’t an expert on datacenter power distribution and copper, you could take that number at face value. But as [Adam Button] reports, you should probably be suspicious of this number. It is almost certainly a typo. We wouldn’t be surprised if you click on the link and find it fixed, but it caused a big news splash before anyone noticed.
Best estimates of the total copper on the entire planet are about 6.3 billion metric tons. We’ve actually only found a fraction of that and mined even less. Of the 700 million metric tons of copper we actually have in circulation, there is a demand for about 28 million tons a year (some of which is met with recycling, so even less new copper is produced annually).
Simple math tells us that a single data center could, in a year, consume 1.7% of the global copper output. While that could be true, it seems suspicious on its face.
Digging further in, you’ll find the paper mentions 200kg per megawatt. So a gigawatt should be 200,000kg, which is, actually, only 200 metric tons. That’s a far cry from 500,000 tons. We suspect they were rounding up from the 440,000 pounds in 200 metric tons to “up to a half a million pounds,” and then flipped pounds to tons.
We get it. We are infamous for making typos. It is inevitable with any sort of writing at scale and on a tight schedule. After all, the Lincoln Memorial has a typo set in stone, and Webster’s dictionary misprinted an editor’s note that “D or d” could stand for density, and coined a new word: dord.
So we aren’t here to shame Nvidia. People in glass houses, and all that. But it is amazing that so much of the press took the numbers without any critical thinking about whether they made sense.
We’ve noticed many people glaze over numbers and take them at face value. The same goes for charts. We once saw a chart that was basically a straight line except for one point, which was way out of line. No one bothered to ask for a long time. Finally, someone spoke up and asked. Turns out it was a major issue, but no one wanted to be the one to ask “the dumb question.”
You don’t have to look far to find examples of innumeracy: a phrase coined by [Douglas Hofstadter] and made famous by [John Allen Paulos]. One of our favorites is when a hamburger chain rolled out a “1/3 pound hamburger,” which flopped because customers thought that since three is less than four, they were getting more meat with a “1/4 pound hamburger” at the competitor’s restaurant.
This is all part of the same issue. If you are an electronics or computer person, you probably have a good command of math. You may just not realize how much better your math is than the average person’s.
Even so, people who should know better still make mistakes with units and scale. NASA has had at least one famous case of unit issues losing an unmanned probe. In another famous incident, an Air Canada flight ran out of fuel in 1983. Why?
The plane’s fuel sensors were inoperative, so the ground crew manually checked the fuel load with a dipstick. The dipstick read in centimeters. The navigation computer expected fuel to be in kg. Unfortunately, the fuel’s datasheet posted density in pounds/liter. This incorrect conversion happened twice.
Unsurprisingly, the plane was out of fuel and had to glide to an emergency landing on a racetrack that had once been a Royal Canadian Air Force training base. Luckily, Captain Pearson was an experienced glider pilot. With reduced control and few instruments, the Captain brought the 767 down as if it were a huge glider with 61 people onboard. Although the landing gear collapsed and caused some damage, no one on the plane or the ground were seriously hurt.
Sadly, math answers are much easier to get than social answers. Kids routinely complain that they’ll never need math once they leave school. (OK, not kids like we were, but normal kids.) But we all know that is simply not true. Even if your job doesn’t directly involve math, understanding your own finances, making decisions about purchases, or even evaluating political positions often requires that you can see through math nonsense, both intentional and unintentional.
[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry] was a French author, and his 1948 book Citadelle has an interesting passage that may hold part of the answer. If you translate the French directly, it is a bit wordy, but the quote is commonly paraphrased: “If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
We learned math because we understood it was the key to building radios, or rockets, or computer games, or whatever it was that you longed to build. We need to teach kids math in a way that makes them anxious to learn the math that will enable their dreams.
How do we do that? We don’t know. Great teachers help. Inspiring technology like moon landings helps. What do you think? Tell us in the comments. Now with 285% more comment goodness. Honest.
We still think slide rules made you better at math. Just like not having GPS made you better at navigation.
Bitcoin velocity RSI suggests exhausted selling pressure, though elevated trader positioning urges caution on potential recovery.
The post Bitcoin velocity RSI suggests a bottom, but trader positioning urges caution appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Researchers with Cyata and BlueRock uncovered vulnerabilities in MCP servers from Anthropic and Microsoft, feeding ongoing security worries about MCP and other agentic AI tools and their dual natures as both key parts of the evolving AI world and easy targets for threat actors.
The post Anthropic, Microsoft MCP Server Flaws Shine a Light on AI Security Risks appeared first on Security Boulevard.
Bitcoin Magazine
Epoch Ventures Predicts Bitcoin Hits $150K in 2026, Declares End of 4-Year Halving Cycle
Epoch, a venture firm specializing in Bitcoin infrastructure, issued its second annual ecosystem report on January 21, 2026, forecasting robust growth for the asset despite a subdued 2025 performance.
The 186-page document analyzes Bitcoin’s price dynamics, adoption trends, regulatory outlook, and technological risks, positioning the cryptocurrency as a maturing monetary system. Key highlights include a prediction that Bitcoin will reach at least $150,000 USD by year-end, driven by institutional inflows and decoupling from equities. The report also anticipates the Clarity Act failing to pass, though its substance on asset taxonomy and regulatory authority may advance through SEC guidance. Additional forecasts cover gold rotations boosting Bitcoin by 50 percent, major asset managers allocating 2 percent to model portfolios, and Bitcoin Core maintaining implementation dominance.
Eric Yakes, CFA charterholder and managing partner at Epoch Ventures, brings over a decade of finance expertise to the Bitcoin space, having started his career in corporate finance and restructuring at FTI Consulting before advancing to private equity at Lion Equity Partners, where he focused on buyouts. He left traditional finance in recent years to immerse himself in Bitcoin, authoring the influential book “The 7th Property: Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution,” which explores Bitcoin’s role as a transformative monetary asset, and has since written extensively on its technologies and ecosystem. Yakes holds a double major in finance and economics from Creighton University, positioning him as a key voice in Bitcoin venture capital through Epoch, a firm dedicated to funding Bitcoin infrastructure.
Bitcoin closed 2025 at $87,500, marking a 6 percent annual decline but an 84 percent four-year gain that ranks in the bottom 3 percent historically. The report states the death of the 4-year cycle in no uncertain terms: “We believe cycle theory is a relic of the past, and the cycles themselves probably never existed. The fact is that Bitcoin is boring and growing gradually now. We make the case for why gradual growth is precisely what will drive a ‘gradually, then suddenly’ moment.”
The report goes on to discuss cycle theory in depth, presenting a view of the future that’s becoming the new market expectation: less volatility to the downside, slow and steady growth to the upside.
Price action suggests a new bull market commenced in 2026, with 2025’s drop from $126,000 to $81,000 potentially being a self-fulfilling prophecy due to cycle expectations, as RSI remained below overbought since late 2024, suggesting bitcoin already went through a bear market and we are commencing a new kind of cycle.
Versus gold, Bitcoin is down 49 percent from its highs, in a bear market since December 2024. Gold’s meteoric rise presents a potential price catalyst for bitcoin; a small rebalancing reallocation from gold of 0.5% would induce greater inflows than the U.S. ETFs; at 5.5%, it would equal bitcoin’s market capitalization. Gold’s rise makes bitcoin more attractive on a relative basis, and the higher gold goes, the more likely a rotation into bitcoin. Timing analysis, as seen in the chart below, which counts days from the local top, suggests Bitcoin might be nearing a bottom versus Gold.
In terms of volatility bitcoin has aligned with mega-caps like Tesla, with 2025 averages for Nasdaq 100 leaders exceeding Bitcoin’s, suggesting a risk-asset decoupling and limiting drawdowns. Long-term stock correlations persist, but maturing credit markets and safe-haven narratives may pivot Bitcoin toward gold-like behavior.
The report goes in-depth into other potential catalysts for 2026, defending its bullish thesis, such as:
Analysis of 356,423 datapoints from 653 sources reveals a fractured sentiment landscape, with “Bitcoin is dead” narratives concluded. FUD is stable at 12-18 percent but the topics rotate, crime and legal themes are up 277 percent, while environmental FUD is down 41 percent.
A 125-point perception gap exists between conference attendees (+90 positive) while tech media is generally negative at (-35). UK outlets show 56-64 percent negativity, 2-3 times international averages.
The Lightning Network coverage dominates podcasts at 33 percent but garners only 0.28 percent mainstream coverage, a 119x disparity. Layer 2 solutions are not zero-sum, with Lightning at 58 percent mentions and Ark up 154 percent.
Media framing has caused mining sentiment to swing 67 points: mainstream outlets cover the sector at 75.6 percent positive, while Bitcoin communities view it at only 8.4 percent positive, underscoring the importance of narrative and audience credibility for mining companies.
More companies added Bitcoin to their balance sheets in 2025 than in any previous year, marking a major step in corporate adoption. Established firms that already held Bitcoin—known as Bitcoin treasury companies, or BtcTCs—bought even larger amounts, while new entrants went public specifically to raise money and purchase Bitcoin. According to the report, public company bitcoin holdings increased 82% y/y to ₿1.08 million and the number of public companies holding bitcoin grew from 69 to over 191 throughout 2025.65 Corporations own at least 6.4% of total Bitcoin supply – public companies 5.1% and private companies 1.3%. This created a clear boom-and-bust pattern throughout the year.
Company valuations rose sharply through mid-2025 before pulling back when the broader Bitcoin price corrected. The report explains that these public treasury companies offer investors easier access through traditional brokers, the ability to borrow against holdings, and even dividend payments, though with dilution risks. In contrast, buying and holding Bitcoin directly remains simpler and preserves the asset’s full scarcity.
Looking ahead, Epoch expects Japan’s Metaplanet to post the highest multiple on net asset value (mNAV)—a key valuation metric—among all treasury companies with a market cap above $1 billion. The firm also predicts that an activist investor or rival company will force the liquidation of one underperforming treasury firm to capture the discount between its share price and the actual value of its Bitcoin holdings.
Over time, these companies will stand out by offering competitive yields on their Bitcoin. In total, treasury companies acquired roughly 486,000 BTC during 2025, equal to 2.3 percent of the entire Bitcoin supply, drawing further corporate interest in Bitcoin. For business owners considering a Bitcoin treasury, the report highlights both the growth potential and the risks of public-market volatility.
The Bitcoin Treasury Companies section of the report explores:
Epoch predicts the Clarity Act—a proposed bill to clarify digital asset oversight by dividing authority between the SEC and CFTC—will not pass Congress in 2026. However, the report expects the bill’s main ideas, including clear definitions for asset categories and regulatory jurisdiction, to advance through SEC rulemaking or guidance instead. The firm also forecasts Republican losses in the midterm elections, which could trigger new regulatory pressure on crypto, most likely in the form of consumer protection measures aimed at perceived industry risks. On high-profile legal cases, Epoch does not expect pardons for the founders of Samurai Wallet or Tornado Cash this year, though future legal appeals or related proceedings may ultimately support their defenses.
The report takes a critical view of recent legislative efforts, arguing that bills like the GENIUS Act (focused on stablecoins) and the Clarity Act prioritize industry lobbying over the concerns of everyday Bitcoin users, especially the ability to hold and control assets directly without third-party interference (self-custody).
The report points out a discrepancy between what crypto-owning voters want — a majority preferring above all, the right to transact. While the Clarity and Genius Acts focus on less popular special interests, they just fall within the 50% support range. Epoch warns that “This deviation between the will of the voters and the will of the largest industry players is an early warning sign of the potential harm from regulatory capture (intentional or otherwise)”.
The report is particularly critical of the way the GENIUS Act set up the regulatory structure for stablecoins. The paragraph on the topic is so poignant that it merits being printed in its entirety:
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:
Last year, in our Bitcoin Banking Report, we discussed the structure of the 2-tier banking system in the US (see figure below). In this system, the Central Bank pays a yield on the deposits it receives from the Tier II Commercial banks, who then go on to share a portion of that yield with their depositors. Sound familiar?
The compromise structure in the GENIUS Act essentially creates a parallel banking system where stablecoin issuers play the role of Tier I Central Banks and the crypto exchanges play the role of Tier II Commercial Banks.
To make matters worse, stablecoin issuers are required to keep their reserves with regulated Tier II banks and are unlikely to have access to Fed Master accounts. The upshot of all this is that the GENIUS act converts a peer-to-peer payment mechanism into a heavily intermediated payment network that sits on top of another heavily intermediate payment network.”
The report goes into further depth on topics of regulation and regulatory capture risk, closing the topic with an analysis of how the CLARITY Act might and, in their opinion, should take shape.
Quantum Computing Risk
Concerns about quantum computing potentially breaking Bitcoin’s cryptography surfaced prominently in late 2025, in part contributing to institutional sell-offs as investors reacted to headlines about rapid advances in the field. The Epoch report attributes much of this reaction to behavioral biases, including loss aversion—where people fear losses more than they value equivalent gains—and herd mentality, in which market participants follow the crowd without independent assessment. The authors describe the perceived threat as significantly overhyped, noting that claims of exponential progress in quantum capabilities, often tied to “Neven’s Law,” lack solid observational evidence to date.
“Neven’s law states that the computational power of quantum computers increases at a double exponential rate of classical computers. If true, the timeline to break Bitcoin’s cryptography could be as short as 5 years.
However, Moore’s law was an observation. Neven’s law is not an observation because logical qubits are not increasing at such a rate.
Neven’s law is an expectation of experts. Based on our understanding of expert opinion in the fields we are knowledgeable about, we are highly skeptical of expert projections,” the Epoch report explained.
They add that current quantum computers have not succeeded in factoring numbers larger than 15, and error rates increase exponentially with scale, making reliable large-scale computation far from practical. The report argues that progress in physical qubits has not yet translated into the logical qubits or error-corrected systems needed for factorization of the large numbers underpinning Bitcoin’s security.
Implementing quantum-resistant signatures prematurely — which do exist — would introduce inefficiencies, consuming more block space on the network, while emerging schemes remain untested in real-world conditions. Until meaningful advances in factorization occur, Epoch concludes the quantum threat does not warrant immediate priority or network changes.
Mining Expectations
The report forecasts that no company among the top ten public Bitcoin miners will generate more than 30 percent of its revenue from AI computing services during the 2026 fiscal year. This outcome stems from significant delays in the development and deployment of the necessary infrastructure for large-scale AI workloads, preventing miners from pivoting as quickly as some market narratives suggested.
Media coverage of Bitcoin mining shows a stark divide depending on who is framing the discussion. Mainstream outlets tend to portray the industry positively—75.6 percent of coverage is favorable, often emphasizing energy innovation, job creation, or economic benefits—while conversations within Bitcoin communities remain far more skeptical, with only 8.4 percent positive sentiment. This 67-point swing in net positivity highlights how framing and audience shape perceptions of the same sector, with community credibility remaining a critical factor for mining companies seeking to maintain support among Bitcoin holders.
The report has a lot more to offer including analysis of layer two systems and Bitcoin adoption data on multiple fronts, it can be read on Epoch’s website for free.
This post Epoch Ventures Predicts Bitcoin Hits $150K in 2026, Declares End of 4-Year Halving Cycle first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.
Cyber regulations are where politics meets business – where business becomes subject to political realities.
The post Cyber Insights 2026: Regulations and the Tangled Mess of Compliance Requirements appeared first on SecurityWeek.
More than half of UK employees retain access to company spreadsheets they no longer need, leaving sensitive business data exposed long after people change roles or leave organisations, according to new research from privacy technology company Proton.
The study, based on a survey of 250 small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) in the UK, found that 64% still had access to files that should no longer be available to them. In some cases, this includes documents containing financial information, client data, salary details, or internal planning material.
With around 16.9 million people working for SMBs across the UK, the findings suggest that millions of current and former employees could still have access to sensitive company data without their employers’ knowledge.
The research highlights a growing gap between the critical role spreadsheets play in daily business operations and the poor governance of their access. Spreadsheets are now widely used as informal systems of record, with 64% of respondents using them for project management, 47% for financial reporting, and 45% for managing client or customer data.
Despite this reliance, access controls remain weak. Nearly four in ten respondents (39%) said they had shared spreadsheets using “anyone with the link” permissions, while 20% said they only review who has access to their spreadsheets once a year. Manual offboarding processes remain common: 44% of access removals are handled manually, while just 36% are automated.
Proton says this combination of link-based sharing and manual offboarding helps explain why access often persists long after an employee leaves.
“Spreadsheets are often treasure troves of sensitive data, from financial and strategic planning information to HR and client data,” said Patricia Egger, head of security at Proton. “Yet they’re not handled like other high-risk data. When someone leaves a company, access to shared spreadsheets is often nobody’s problem. Links stay active, permissions aren’t reviewed, and data remains accessible without anyone noticing.”
Confusion over cloud security and data use
The study also found widespread misunderstanding about how secure cloud-based spreadsheets really are. Two-thirds of respondents (67%) believe their Google Sheets files are private and accessible only to intended viewers, while almost a quarter said they were unsure what information Google can or cannot access.
There is similar uncertainty around encryption and provider access, particularly with Microsoft. Almost a quarter of UK respondents said they were unsure whether Microsoft could view spreadsheet content.
Uncertainty also extends to data use. More than a third (34%) of respondents believe spreadsheet data could be used to train AI models, and 84% said they would find that concerning.
Personal and work accounts are being mixed
Nearly half of respondents (45%) admitted to opening work spreadsheets using personal cloud accounts, while 46% said they had accessed personal spreadsheets using work accounts. Security researchers warn that this blurring of personal and professional data increases the risk of accidental data leakage, unauthorised access, and compliance failures, particularly where sensitive financial or customer data is involved.
The UK is among the most spreadsheet-reliant countries
Proton compared its UK findings with results from other countries, including the US and France. While lingering access in the UK (64%) was slightly lower than in the US (67%), it was significantly higher than in France (40%).
The UK also showed the highest levels of uncertainty about provider access and encryption, particularly for Microsoft-hosted spreadsheets. Proton noted that these risks are amplified by European data sovereignty concerns, as data hosted by foreign cloud providers may fall under legal regimes outside a company’s control.
Everyday tools, enterprise-level risk
The findings point to a broader problem: spreadsheets are increasingly used to run core business processes, but without the governance, visibility, or controls normally applied to more formal business systems. Researchers say this creates a growing blind spot for SMBs, particularly as collaboration tools, consumer cloud accounts, and AI services become more deeply embedded in everyday work.
“Most of these risks don’t come from malicious behaviour,” Egger added. “They come from everyday process gaps; manual offboarding, weak defaults, and a lack of visibility into who can still access what.”
The post More than half of former UK employees still have access to company spreadsheets, study finds appeared first on IT Security Guru.
Pwn2Own participants disclosed a total of 76 vulnerabilities during the three-day event.
The post Infotainment, EV Charger Exploits Earn Hackers $1M at Pwn2Own Automotive 2026 appeared first on SecurityWeek.
After an Instagram impersonation, Alan Shimel reveals how Meta’s AI moderation dismissed a clear security threat—showing why identity protection is broken.
The post Someone Is Impersonating Me on Instagram — and Meta Doesn’t Give a Sh*t appeared first on Security Boulevard.
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