DL Open Thread Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026

The Epstein Files are like radioactive material with a long half-life, still killing the careers of people like Larry Summers, the overrated economist, long after the pedophile at the center of it all exploded. Summers out-creeped most others involved by seeking Epstein’s advice on bedding a younger colleague and “mentee” long after Epstein was convicted. Relentless reporting by the Harvard Crimson finally forced his resignation from the university.

Consequences haven’t materialized for Trump, of course, unless you count his ever-plummeting poll numbers. But there’s a chance that’s changing. As you’d expect from a gang of blithering idiots, the DoJ’s purge of Trump material in the files wasn’t entirely successful. Traces remained of allegations by a woman who said that Trump raped her when she was 13 years old, and other documents pertaining to her interviews with the FBI are missing. Democrats have seized on the discrepancies to hammer AG Pam Bottle-Blondie as the liar she so obviously is.

Political coverage is often disparaged by comparing it to coverage of horse racing, which is an insult to horse racing. Sure, horse’s asses are involved in both, but at least the horses run in an actual race rather than a popularity contest.

Regardless, the handicappers are having a field day in Texas, where both Democratic and Republican pols are gunning for the Senate seat held by John Cornyn. Democrats are bludgeoning each other over the contest between Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who garners a lot of attention with colorful criticism of her GOP colleagues, and clean-cut preacher boy James Talarico, who got lots of free media when CBS wouldn’t let Stephen Colbert interview him. A poll taken just before that foofaraw showed Crockett comfortably ahead.

The Republicans are in even more disarray as Cornyn is running neck-and-neck with one-eyed sleazeball AG Ken Paxton, with some other jerkwad taking enough of the vote to make a runoff likely. Is this the year Texas Democratic voters finally make their presence felt? As a horse player, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Knowledgable people who warned that so-called “smart” appliances could be hacked to act as spyware got confirmation this week. A Spanish engineer tried to hack his Chinese-made robot vacuum cleaner to respond to commands from his Playstation controller. He succeeded beyond his intent – he gained access to not just his own vacuum but 7,000 others around the world as well.

The Verge reported that the situation came to light when Sammy Azdoufal was trying to reverse-engineer his new DJI Romo vacuum so that he could control it with his Playstation 5 gamepad.

Azdoufal soon discovered that when his self-styled remote control app started communicating with DJI’s servers, “it wasn’t just one vacuum cleaner that replied. Roughly 7,000 of them, all around the world, began treating Azdoufal like their boss.”

Azdoufal found that he could look and listen through the vacuums’ live camera feeds and collected more than 100,000 messages from the devices. He could also use any robot’s internet protocol (IP) address to determine its approximate location. Azdoufal reportedly said he was not trying to hack into other devices. And, in fact, he contacted the Verge to inform the publication of the vulnerability.

The company claims to have fixed it, but the unanswered question for me: Who the fuck buys a $2,000 vacuum cleaner instead of hiring a housekeeper?

The floor’s yours.