When doctors in the United States refer patients to specialty or post-acute medical care such as physical therapy or long-term nursing care, nearly half never complete the process of finding help. Referrals stall in part because provider directories are outdated, insurance coverage is unclear, and much coordination still relies on phone calls and faxes.

Carenector, a Denver-based startup launched in 2024, is working to improve the process with software that quickly connects patients with appropriate care providers while protecting their personal data. Instead of presenting a long list of providers, many of whom would not be a good match, the company’s referral platform uses AI to eliminate facilities that don’t meet the patient’s rehabilitation needs, don’t accept the patient’s insurance, or are not conveniently located.

The startup’s platform serves individuals seeking care as well as health care organizations and care coordination teams that manage patient referrals. The company aims to help patients while reducing the administrative burden on clinicians and discharge planners, says cofounder Naheem Noah. As of now, Carenector works with patients and facilities only in Colorado, but it plans to expand coverage nationwide.

Noah, a Ph.D. candidate who joined IEEE in 2022 as a student member, encountered the referral problem firsthand after tearing an anterior cruciate ligament in a knee while playing soccer. Finding a physical therapist who accepted his insurance, specialized in ACL rehabilitation, had appointments available, and was near his home required hours of phone calls and searches through inaccurate provider lists, he says.

That experience helped shape the company’s direction, but Carenector is aimed at a broader, persistent failure in U.S. health care coordination.

A broken referral system

The company took shape when Noah connected with his cofounder, licensed social worker Aminata Diarra, a social director at a nursing facility. Her role included discharge planning: placing patients in post-acute-care facilities that bridge the gap between hospital discharge and the patient’s ability to independently manage life’s daily activities.

For a single patient, Diarra says, that often meant she made 10 to 15 phone calls over the course of a week to find a facility with a bed available, that accepted the patient’s insurance, and that could meet the care requirements.

She and Noah soon realized they were dealing with the same broken system from opposite sides. Existing research on referral lapses supported their experience. Primary care physicians often send referral notes—analogous to prescriptions—that list the patient’s medical history and describe the needed treatment.

Noah discovered that only about one-third of the notes are transmitted in a way that allows providers at nursing homes and rehab facilities to access the information.

Physicians often post their suggestions for ongoing treatment in sections of a patient’s electronic health records, but providers at post-acute facilities don’t have access to those because of medical privacy laws. What gets shared is a pared-down document that omits progress notes and discharge summaries.

Engineering a research-driven startup

Noah is currently a researcher in the University of Denver computer science department, where his academic work focuses on privacy and security in digital systems.

He is Carenector’s chief executive and technical lead, overseeing the system’s design, making technical decisions, and meeting with investors.

Although the startup is separate from his dissertation research, the company reflects his broader interest in building secure systems that work in real-world conditions.

Beginning a company while a student, he has access to university resources that many early-stage startups lack. He has participated in the university’s BaseCamp accelerator and received mentorship and business planning support.

The Carenector team was assembled with the plan to scale up in the future with health care compliance in mind. The group includes professionals from regulatory, legal, and data engineering fields.

Replacing phone calls with digital matching

By using standardized digital information shared among medical facilities, Carenector eliminates the need for staff to make phone calls or send faxes. At the core of the platform is a structured database that links care providers—including post-acute, specialty, and rehabilitation facilities—with insurance plan criteria and facility attributes such as accessibility and service capabilities.

One of the biggest challenges for Noah is getting accurate data on which services facilities offer, which insurance they accept, and whether a patient’s insurance plan covers the treatment proposed by the referring physician.

“Health care information in the United States is not centralized,” he says, “and insurance provider directories are often wrong or out of date.”

To address that, Carenector incorporates publicly available datasets from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), including plan attributes, service areas, quality ratings, and issuer-level transparency data. These public-use files provide plan-level and provider-level information that help standardize coverage criteria, geographic availability, and performance indicators. Carenector integrates this structured public data with facility-supplied information and referral outcome analytics to improve matching accuracy.

“By replacing manual coordination with clear rules, accurate data, and built-in privacy protections, we hope to make accessing care a routine step in recovery—not another obstacle.”

This structured data helps Carenector evaluate plan criteria, provider capabilities, geographic availability, and quality indicators to support referral decision-making. The company standardizes and organizes the information within its own system architecture and uses mapping and geolocation APIs to integrate location-based filtering and workflow functionality for patients, providers, and care coordinators.

Because CMS data is updated periodically, Carenector supplements it with additional structured data sources and referral outcome analytics to better understand plan acceptance patterns. Room availability information comes directly from participating facilities, which are responsible for updating their status within Carenector’s system.

Whether referrals succeed or fail provides critical feedback, Noah says. When referrals to specific facilities repeatedly go uncompleted—meaning the patient does not receive the recommended care from the provider—Carenector’s AI-driven matching algorithm adjusts to that pattern and reduces the likelihood of that facility being considered for similar cases. Facilities that consistently accept and complete referrals are ranked preferentially.

Apps for patients and facilities

The company has poured its data management wizardry and AI smarts into apps for patients and clinicians.

The patient app helps users locate appropriate health care services at no cost. Users can search for care by service type, ZIP code, or insurance company without creating an account. They receive a list of matching facilities that can be shared via clipboard or sent by email to themselves or family members..

In the facility app, clinicians enter the diagnosis, rehabilitation needs, equipment requirements, insurance type, and location without sharing personally identifiable patient information. Organizations can communicate using secure messages that disappear after a set period. Files and images are shown only once and deleted after viewing.

Facilities that use the app pay Carenector a flat fee for each successful referral. The patient app is free.

The startup does not sell or share data with third parties, Noah says.

“Privacy is a central design requirement for Carenector’s system, not a last-minute add-on to the finished product,” he says.

The company minimizes the collection of personal data to avoid becoming a data repository. Although its role is limited to coordinating referrals, Carenector is working with independent security auditors to validate that its operational and data-handling practices align with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements. The HIPAA law sets standards meant to protect sensitive patient information from unauthorized disclosure.

Noah says he is confident that Carenector will achieve that rating because the app is designed to reduce the collection and exposure of sensitive information wherever possible.

Business model and measured expansion

Carenector’s growth plan, Noah says, is strategic. Rather than scaling rapidly, he says, he is looking to enter one region at a time, incorporating feedback from each local deployment before expanding the company further.

He envisions that in five years, Carenector will serve as a core piece of health care referral infrastructure—embedded in the workflows of hospitals, post-acute facilities, insurers, employers, and major electronic health record systems such as Epic and Cerner—while also increasing visibility for care facilities in underserved and remote areas. The plan, he says, is to support thousands of facility recommendations per day, compared with the approximately 200 daily facility recommendations it currently generates. Noah also looks forward to the broader adoption of APIs that allow care coordination and facility discovery to occur directly within clinical workflows.

He says he sees his startup as a way to reduce unnecessary stress from moments when patients are vulnerable.

“By replacing manual coordination with clear rules, accurate data, and built-in privacy protections,” he says, “we hope to make accessing care a routine step in recovery—not another obstacle.”

We are just a day away from the annual celebration of all things Pokemon. The Pokemon Day event starts tomorrow morning and should be chock full of free goodies and exciting game reveals for creature-collecting fans across the world. Considering the juggernaut franchise is celebrating its 30th anniversary, it’s safe to assume there will be juicy information included in the next Pokemon Presents stream.

There’s plenty of excitement leading up to the main event. Pokemon TCG Pocket just released the Paldean Wonders card set expansion, and The Pokemon Company revealed that FireRed and LeafGreen are getting Switch ports with Pokemon Home compatibility. Now the stage is set for The Pokemon Company to reveal new mainline Pokemon games for the Switch and Switch 2.

Here’s when The Pokemon Company goes live with its first Pokemon Presents stream of the year, setting audience expectations for what we can expect to see from the world of pocket monsters in 2026.

What time is the Pokemon Presents stream on Pokemon Day?

The first Pokemon Presents livestream of the year takes place tomorrow, Friday, Feb. 27. The show begins bright and early for American audiences, so you’ll have to avoid sleeping in if you want to keep up with the latest announcements.

Here’s when Friday’s Pokemon Day livestream begins in your time zone:

ET: 9 a.m.

CT: 8 a.m.

MT: 7 a.m.

PT: 6 a.m.

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How to watch the February Pokemon Presents livestream

The Pokemon Company is responsible for the Pokemon Presents livestreams, which means you can view the announcement through any of its social media channels.

While I recommend watching the stream on The Pokemon Company’s YouTube or Twitch channels, you can also keep up with the announcements on TikTok. Regular updates will also be posted to the company’s Instagram account throughout the event.

What will be announced on Pokemon Day 2026?

It’s safe to assume that the February Pokemon Presents livestream will feature some long-anticipated reveals, since 2026 is a big year for the Pokemon brand.

The livestream marks the 30th anniversary of Pokemon Red and Pokemon Green (the original Pokemon games for the Game Boy) releasing in Japan. We know the stream will be roughly 25 minutes long, making one of the longest Pokemon Presents showcases ever. 

I suspect the livestream will serve as a victory lap celebrating Pokemon’s cultural impact before pivoting to the future and showing fans what’s coming next.

And what treats are in store for tomorrow’s event? I expect to see updates and freebies for Pokemon mobile games first, since these are some of the big moneymakers. If this Pokemon Day presentation mirrors the one from last year, we’ll be treated to some goodies in Pokemon Go, Pokemon Masters EX, Pokemon Cafe ReMix and Pokemon TCG Pocket. We might also see an announcement for a special Pokemon Scarlet and Violet raid event and Pokemon Legends: Z-A Mega stone distributions.

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After celebrating the currently released games, it’s likely that the presentation will pivot to what’s coming next. We’ll almost certainly get a reminder that Nintendo Switch ports of Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen are available starting on Pokemon Day. I expect the biggest news will be a concrete release date for Pokemon’s big new competitive game, Pokemon Champions, which is slated to come out in time for the Pokemon World Championships 2026.

If we’re really lucky, we might even hear about the 10th generation of mainline Pokemon games. While Game Freak has unmoored itself from a consistent release schedule, we’re certainly due to see the rumored Pokemon Wind and Wave. While the infamous Teraleak hints toward what the development studio might show off next, it’s high time we get a glimpse of what the next big Pokemon games are really all about.

Gemini 3.1 Pro is a surprisingly large upgrade from Gemini 3. The decimal point hides what feels more like a generational leap designed to tackle the messy, non-linear logic of the real world. In practice, Gemini 3.1 Pro offers fewer generic answers and more specific help. But to really showcase what it can do takes some creativity. To demonstrate, I came up with some prompts designed to push different aspects of the model, each leaning into a specific capability.

1. Date night debate

• AMD’s Ryzen 5 Zen 4 prices jumped from $200 to $400 without warning
• Average pricing chart shows an abrupt sustained spike beginning in February 2026
• Inventory shifts and supply constraints could explain the surge

Anyone tracking PCPartPicker’s pricing charts may have noticed a sudden upward spike in the average price of AMD’s Ryzen 5 series.

For more than a year, the selling price for models such as the Ryzen 5 7600X and 9600X sat between $170 and $220. That changed at the start of February 2026, when the average price suddenly shot up toward $400 and stayed there.

The chart shows not a gradual upwards trend but rather a sudden leap. One week the chip was a reliable midrange option, the next it cost nearly twice as much.

from the let’s-make-it-happen dept

Late last year, Mike was a guest on Seb Agertoft’s Humans in the Loop podcast for a wide-ranging discussion all about restoring the promise of the decentralized internet. That interview was just released, and we’re dropping the whole conversation here as well on this week’s episode of the Techdirt Podcast.

You can also download this episode directly in MP3 format.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Filed Under: decentralization, podcast

AirSnitch “breaks worldwide Wi-Fi encryption, and it might have the potential to enable advanced cyberattacks,” Xin’an Zhou, the lead author of the research paper, said in an interview. “Advanced attacks can build on our primitives to [perform] cookie stealing, DNS and cache poisoning. Our research physically wiretaps the wire altogether so these sophisticated attacks will work. It’s really a threat to worldwide network security.” Zhou presented his research on Wednesday at the 2026 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium.

Previous Wi-Fi attacks that overnight broke existing protections such as WEP and WPA worked by exploiting vulnerabilities in the underlying encryption they used. AirSnitch, by contrast, targets a previously overlooked attack surface—the lowest levels of the networking stack, a hierarchy of architecture and protocols based on their functions and behaviors.

The lowest level, Layer-1, encompasses physical devices such as cabling, connected nodes, and all the things that allow them to communicate. The highest level, Layer-7, is where applications such as browsers, email clients, and other Internet software run. Levels 2 through 6 are known as the Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, and Presentation layers, respectively.

Identity crisis

Unlike previous Wi-Fi attacks, AirSnitch exploits core features in Layers 1 and 2 and the failure to bind and synchronize a client across these and higher layers, other nodes, and other network names such as SSIDs (Service Set Identifiers). This cross-layer identity desynchronization is the key driver of AirSnitch attacks.

The most powerful such attack is a full, bidirectional machine-in-the-middle (MitM) attack, meaning the attacker can view and modify data before it makes its way to the intended recipient. The attacker can be on the same SSID, a separate one, or even a separate network segment tied to the same AP. It works against small Wi-Fi networks in both homes and offices and large networks in enterprises.