Schneier on Security

Even if you were to find a trail of Polonium 210 through city streets. Perhaps a dash of nerve agent here or there and video surveillance of a couple of suspicious individuals in the area at the time. This is not evidence that anything took place. The media might make a bit of a fuss. The families and individuals harmed might feel as if they were under some kind of personal assault. That may not move those burdened with responsibility to action...

@Clive Robinson, ALL

There is no way of proving the police didn’t know an ID was not fake or that a camera system misidentified a face. At least perhaps until a later point after the consequences. It is subjective. Physical harm might result and it also may not happen.

What is sure is that it certainly helps when you are grabbing people off the street. You can hold it up against their face to see if the photo matches and take it as an insurance. It does not matter if the name is correct or not, as long as the photo matches for a range of reasons that I will not get it into. Only proof matters on your end, not the poor sod...

The digital ID system will be “designed with security at its core”.

‘https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/digital-id-scheme-explainer/digital-id-scheme-explainer

Just pop your REAL ID into the government wallet on your smartphone. Problem solved. You may need it to avoid being detained multiple times while you are at work, doing your job.

If you show your REAL ID to the police they might ‘mistakenly’ arrest you again and again...

@Clive, ALL

I guess if news outlets are jigging for readers, then some are going to go with the clickbait articles given the general theme of content that they have produced by paying of cops, intruding ungraciously into lives and hacking of their target’s phone message bank.

Probably a bad move in retrospect. That particular financial model got digitally whacked.

‘https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/10/07/has-social-media-finally-peaked-the-rise-of-ai-and-decline-of-screen-time/...

Don’t forget this one: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-58959930

@ DBA, ALL,

With regards,

“But in the end, it all turns into revenue generation as it’s so easy a stream.”

You left out the part I’ve mentioned hear for years,

As the politicians can not raise taxes but can make “blame the victim legislation”. The only way they can get more money to “buy votes” is

1, Pass new “No Defence” legislation
2, With low thresholds
3, With 1-2 days medium income equivalent as a fine...

@ lurker,

“It’s a problem with AI: too many people are taken in by the sizzle, and fail to notice there’s no steak, only cheap sausage meat.”

Yup and a lot of people happily chow down on “textured vegetable protein” provided you burn it right… So high in fibre that you or I might have chucked on the composting heap. Or in older times dried out to make corn cob pipes with.

Such is the mantra of “leave nothing on the floor” type neo-con free market economics that get fed to MBA students to “chow down on”...

Well fock.

@Clive Robinson
re Turing Test fails for Audio

I had cause recently to contact the Customer Service division of a large international enterprise. The 0800 number advised me the call was being recorded for “training and quality control.” The “press 1 for this, 2 for that” bot transferrred me to an AI. It was female with a neutral accent, good local diction. It quickly established that the problem was a lack of service by the enterprise within 200km of me. It had repeated my location and postcode, so knew where I was, but then offered to send me a link to their service locations map. I hung up. I didn’t want the hassle of billing them for training their bot. Never mind the excellent voice, the thing obviously would have failed a Turing test on intelligence. How did I know it was a bot? Years of working in the recording industry...

@ Bruce, ALL,

Turing test fails for Audio.

Do you think you can tell the difference between a human voice and AI generated audio?

It appears increasingly people can not,

“Humans flunk the Turing test for voices as bots get chattier

Coin toss odds for spotting a deepfake, study finds. And that’s before the machines learn to sing “

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/09/voice_clone_detection_study/...

@David:

Back in my days of directing chess tournaments, we were prepping for one and my friend/co-director needed to borrow my car to do a supply run or something. A couple of weeks later I receive a photo radar ticket notice from an adjacent city that I hadn’t been driving in.

I go out there to find out what’s going on. I look at the first photo the clerk pulls out, and say “That’s not my car.” They look at it, compare numbers, apologize and go back to the drawer. Pulls out a photo of my car with my friend behind the wheel. I say “That’s not me.” They say ‘No, it isn’t. Would you care to identify the person?’ I say no, they have me sign a piece of paper, and that’s it...

@ Ian Stewart, ALL

With regards,

Last week I went into a Waitrose supermarket in London and there waṡ a large video screen as you entered…

You might have heard the joke that,

“Sainsbury’s only exist to keep the riff-raff out of Waitrose…”

Well there is a reason to stay out of Sainsbury’s shops. Every till and especially the self checkouts take high definition video of your face.

The excuse given on the self checkout machines is that people are making fake-refund claims...

Delivering the keynote address, Mr. Olorunyomi said:

“The survival of democracy depends not only on strong institutions and civic will, but also on innovation, knowledge and imagination. “We must ask ourselves: will this transformation strengthen democracy or subvert it?”

“The real danger is not that AI will replace journalists, but that it might replace judgment,” he warned. “Truth itself could become mechanized, stripped of nuance, divorced from ethics and devoid of empathy.”...

I love engaging with posts that inspire reflection in both men and women.
Thanks for the chance to comment! kodokhoki889 daftar

>I’m all for traffic cameras used to stop speeding. Especially the dual linked camera systems that track average speed over a given distance. Put them everywhere…

The issue with putting them everywhere is that a system designed for road safety get turned into a municipal revenue stream and these goals conflict (i.e., if road safety is the main purpose, then zero tickets should be the goal). Instead of raising taxes, that is politically unpopular, politicians lower speed limits into unreasonableness. Where I live, statistics showed that the last year there were ~0.7 automated speed camera tickets per registered auto. Meaning most people got one...

I am more than grateful to amazing hacker Vadim who helped me fix my school grades. When my school released my results, there were obvious mistakes they made and it affected my grades. I tried to get the school to correct it but they did not. So I started looking for help and I found the contact of Vadim Albert online. This man helped me fix my result and I graduated with very good grades. If you are in need of this services, reach him on Email: VADIMWEBHACK@ GMA1L C0M...

I am more than grateful to amazing hacker Vadim who helped me fix my school grades. When my school released my results, there were obvious mistakes they made and it affected my grades. I tried to get the school to correct it but they did not. So I started looking for help and I found the contact of Vadim Albert online. This man helped me fix my result and I graduated with very good grades. If you are in need of this services, reach him on Email: VADIMWEBHACK@ GMA1L C0M...

Hi! This piece is really excellent.
I will absolutely bookmark it and come back to check out more of your valuable insights.
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@ ALL,

A day or so back I mentioned that the likes of Amazon brick Internet connected devices when the MBA Mantra espoused “surveillance profit” actually shows as a deficit.

That is they realise that the design actually leads to, financial loss and path to bankruptcy…

So they “Brick the devices” or worse just “walk away” from now highly dependent customers.

The worst offending items in this regard so far are “big name, home automation devices”...

In Norway, traffic camera footage can only be used for fines if the driver is visible and recognizable, or if the driver doesn’t question the fine.

I’m all for traffic cameras used to stop speeding. Especially the dual linked camera systems that track average speed over a given distance. Put them everywhere, provided that the photos are deleted once it’s clear there was no violation. And this would have to be verified by the national data protection authority, which is independent from the police...

As usual, I wonder if anyone cares. Last week I went into a Waitrose supermarket in London and there waṡ a large video screen as you entered, a warning ‘video recording in progress’ flashing on and off, the video then froze and your face is enclosed in a square box to isolate you.
I found this invasive and threatening but most people didn’t even notice it.

@David

Chinese highway cameras capture driver, front seat passenger & number plate. Curiously the map linked by @DS (at the first comment above) shows a few Flock cameras in China.

ANPR captures are in the same league as speed cameras and red light cameras. They prove a given vehicle was on that piece of road, or committed the traffic offense, but they don’t show who was driving. It cannot be assumed that the owner of the car was driving, especially in the case of rentals and company cars.

Such captures are only as good as the OCR software used. We had a classic case in Queensland, Australia some years back, where a car owner received a penalty notice for speeding past a fixed camera. The photo showed that the “offending” car was actually on the back of a truck at the time...

‘All your personal data and travel plans will be released tomorrow,’ threatens Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters who have reportedly knocked off around 1 billion records from Salesforce.

Included in the data is the personal information of high profile officials and the names, addresses and phone numbers of a large number of people. The list of companies threatened with having data leaked includes a lot of big names who many will have done business with...

@Clive Robinson

Everything the government does is all about public safety. That is why the safety pins are only removed before takeoff and all the munitions are loaded carefully by professionals.

(there only two days left to nominate someone for the Nobel Peace Prize by the way)

This little beauty can carry 30,000 pounds of safety munitions.

‘https://newatlas.com/military/second-b-21-raider-nuclear-bomber-maiden-flight/...

Of course what we should be all worried about is the state of the buildings after those within them departed. This might point to the attitudes of those working within. I do not however want to jump to any conclusions about how these individuals might have conducted themselves. Some may have been fine and decent human beings who took great care.

“throwing a grenade into the center of the national security apparatus”...

@Clive Robinson

The UK has and had plenty of spy cases it could of tested to sort out the quirks of the law, but admitting that spies had penetrated government departments and the parliament is kind of embarrassing. Admitting that parliamentarians in the respective positions are regularly briefed and regularly ignore such matters – just like their pals in the police – is even more embarrassing. (Nothing like this happened in Australia) ...

Memories are made of silicon, but limited by light speed…

To see why have a read of,

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/10/05/memory13.html

“Memory access is O(N^[1/3])”

Every so often in the past I’ve explained bits of the “memory problem” issues, and I’ve put off writing it all in one go (as it gets quite long).

So somebody else has done it instead (and their goes fame, fortune, etc, etc not 😉...

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/meta-ai/articles/chinese-tech-company-develops-creepy-151000621.html

=A Chinese company has released footage of a lifelike robot head that blinks, nods, and looks around in a convincing imitation of a real human face.

The video, posted to YouTube, shows the robot head’s quizzical expression as it appears to take in its surroundings. The head, created by robotics company AheadForm, might find use in research on human-robot interactions or in various industries, including customer service and entertainment...

@ Anders Eurenius Runvald,

With regards,

“The reason seems to be being observed by hidden observers. (An aversion to being stalked by something unidentified seems like a trait that evolution would favor)”

The word you might actually be looking for, for this is “Panopticon”,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

Thought up in the mind of 18th century English social theorist and utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham...

A beat cop on uniform keeping an eye out for crimes committed in front of them is clearly something we as a society want to allow. That same cop doing door to door inventories of people’s homes without any attempt at probable cause is clearly not something to be allowed. Drawing a sharp line between those that balances the interests of society in general with those of the individual members of society is going to become an increasingly hard problem as more and more of the “potential evidence” that comes into being before any investigation starts is something more technical than an eye witness...

The day I was scammed was the-same day i lost my daughter, i was totally destroyed emotionally for 3 month. i didn’t have a dime left in my bank besides my credit. all my life savings was cleared from my bank by some investment scammers which i shared my banking details with. the police and the bank only filed a report and closed the case, i was left all alone to suffer it and i can swear it was a living nightmare. Not until my in-law introduced me to his old college mate who now works with Coin Reclaim Service a crypto ...

I think a word I’m missing here, is ‘reciprocity’.

Being the victim of a crime is often also a serious breach of integrity. I’m not against using technology, and I’m not against police being present in the street, but the cameras are still unsettling. The reason seems to be being observed by hidden observers. (An aversion to being stalked by something unidentified seems like a trait that evolution would favor)...

@CC,
but do not worry, very soon, they’ll sneak that line somewhere at the bottom of their 100-page Terms and Conditions which nobody reads anyway, just to cover their behinds, in case more people like you and I begin questioning where the data gets forwarded/sold for money. Them LOYAZ did not get the reputation they have for nothing.

@CC,
Thank you for expressing MY thoughts.

BB, with all due respect, when I signed up to drive and get license plates I agreed to share my data with the state, not with some third party corporation that does heaven knows what with it. I’ll bet my insurance company wants flock data. I suspect there’s some MBA on staff right now figuring out how they can use it to create a new revenue stream. No, sorry Hoss. Lick all the boots you want. Just dont try to convince those of us who have been paying attention that it’s benign. It’s not. Not even close...

How is a license plate a matter of privacy? It’s not. It’s a registration number that the state uses to authorize a vehicle to use public roadways. You may own said vehicle (or it may be registered in your name), but tracking the whereabouts of the vehicle is not, per se, tracking you, nor does it reveal must-conceal information that you should feel compelled to control or obfuscate in your social media posts...

@ ALL,

From the article,

“Norfolk, Virginia Judge Jamilah LeCruise also agrees, and in 2024 she ruled that plate-reader data obtained without a search warrant couldn’t be used against a defendant in a robbery case.”

The judge was right to do so for a manner of legal reasons but more importantly social reasons.

The first thing people really really need to understand is you as an individual are none of the three authentication factors of,...

The real devil is in the implications of ubiquitous surveillance of ‘public’ data for the entire population. Yes, your car is in public. So is your face. But do you want the government (and any private actor, including stalkers or other traditional criminals) to be able to get the movement of you and your family, over time?

Is this legal? Maybe so (although the courts may take a dim view of private actors selling surveillance data to law enforcement without a warrant). ...

I’m a bit mixed on this – I mean if you’re driving on a public street your license plate is plainly visible so is there really any expectation of privacy?

I suppose the real devil is in the data retention/tracking. It’s one thing to glance at your license plate, confirm if the car is wanted for something, then discard the record if not and another entirely to build a profile of your movements over a period of time...

You can see a map of where Flock has license plate readers at https://deflock.me/map

The future of AI in politics is both promising and concerning. As we approach the 2026 midterm elections, the growing reliance on AI will likely transform campaign strategies. Republicans appear ready to capitalize on the technology, while Democrats may find opportunities to use AI to strengthen voter engagement and showcase a commitment to participatory democracy. AI could serve not only as a mechanical tool for data analysis, targeting, and messaging but also as a symbolic representation of innovation and responsiveness. However, its use also raises questions about ethics, transparency, and the potential for misinformation. Balancing its benefits with responsible oversight will be key to shaping a healthier political landscape...

@Clive Robinson

What exactly are you implying? Please be clear.

Law-Following AI: Designing AI Agents to Obey Human Laws

https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol94/iss1/2/
https://law-ai.org/law-following-ai/

“Designing public policy for AI agents is one of society’s most important tasks. With this goal in mind, we argue for a simple claim: in high-stakes deployment settings, such as government, AI agents should be designed to rigorously comply with a broad set of legal requirements, such as core parts of constitutional and criminal law…...

@ Bruce, ALL,

As many are aware there is “vibe coding” which has a fairly low reputation currently.

Well it’s being suggested that the game be upgraded to “vibe engineering”

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/vibe-engineering/

NOTE : Importantly this suggestion is only for “High level software”. Not for Low level or embedded software.

However some idiot will no doubt say it should be used for computer systems hardware development...

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

Spying ain’t what it used to be!

In the UK there was a group of a half dozen Bulgarians doing some quite nasty things and other activities “in support of a hostile foreign power”. So they were effectively “Agents of a hostile power”. They eventually got convicted.

However in the court case arguments arose as to what the requirement was to be such an agent.

It appears that the result of this has been adverse to other cases,...

@ not important,

Plough Shears into swords?

From the BBC piece you link to,

“the contract would involve applying AI that has already been developed for Lincolnshire’s food production and processing industries.”

The number of livestock themed jokes that could arise from this,

“Wargames + Agricultural AI Fusion”

Is immense, especially as things as is inevitable get closer to the organic fertilizer production and distribution process...

Do we want to accept some hard truths?

You can read it here (it’s rather long):

‘https://www.congress.gov/event/118th-congress/house-event/LC73614/text

There is also a video of the Homeland Security Committee hearing on Anomalous Health Incidents. During the hearing you can listen to intelligence released for the hearing and investigator testimony. Members of Unit 29155 have been placed at the scene of incidents...

@lurker

It’s still going on. The attacks on these systems are pretty much constant. With incidents occurring every day, its not the greatest time to be without all the tools required. For a long time, incidents targeting personnel were dismissed and covered up. This sends a message to adversaries that government leadership is either naive or afraid. It emboldens not just traditional adversaries to escalate their behavior, but encourages others as well...

@ResearcherZero
re Opexus: “The brothers have since been terminated.”

Yeah, that’s the way to deal to dirty hackers. Oh, wait, that’s only ‘Merkin speak for sacked. Funny how it was all happening the same time as DoGE was running rampant …

Barriers of entry are now much lower and the aims of adversaries far easier to achieve.

‘https://theconversation.com/federal-shutdown-deals-blow-to-already-hobbled-cybersecurity-agency-266862

Not helped by the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act expiring prior to the shutdown.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/03/cyber-law-cisa-2015-shutdown-00592501

CVE-2025-49844 presents a critical vulnerability to all versions of Redis. The high risk database vulnerability was lurking undetected for years within Redis source code.

‘https://www.wiz.io/blog/wiz-research-redis-rce-cve-2025-49844

–

There could be a few reasons to ensure systems are up to date…

Well over a thousand breaches in the United States have already taken place in 2025.

‘https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/us-data-breaches-record-year/...

Suddenly, The Moderation Queue Kitty Appears!
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣤⣦⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⣤⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣰⣿⣿⣷⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣰⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀...

Butterflies.
Yeah, it’s just like a butterfly.
A butterfly flies,
to a flower…
stays with it.
Doesn’t know why, it just feels in.
Oh yeah!
She’s
She’s my flower,
and I’m her…

I’m her butterfly! She’s mine!

@Clive Robinson

When Scomo claimed he stopped the boats, I had a suspicion he was full of it. I’ve spotted more than a few large capacity vessels off the coast while dangling my rod in the water. 😉

@Clive Robinson

We are not too worried about cost. At least officially. Currently we are selling gas internationally to our competitors at a far cheaper price than what we sell it for into our own domestic supply. To maintain this disparity, we may be willing to sacrifice much of our fishing, agricultural and manufacturing industry. We might also be willing so sacrifice our health and social cohesion (our own sanity) as well...

The hosting platforms for images, videos, memes and slop do have some benefits. They are a useful storage and link generating resource for smuggling information and payload delivery.

Research and technology companies BIETA and CIII develop a range of advanced technologies to assist the MSS in its intelligence and information capture activities. Amongst the capabilities provided are the ability to identify communications devices, control connections to infrastructure and capture information transmitted by such devices...

AI ‘wargames’ to strengthen national security
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2lx25n9j2lo

=AI will be applied to wargaming with the aim of producing “the best solutions we can”,
deputy vice chancellor Julian Free said.

“It will be used to understand our moves and an enemy’s moves and maybe come to better
decision-making,” he added.

The wargames could also inform how the government responds on future national security scenarios involving both the military and other services, such as the police, and which could include actions by hostile states, disruptions to the economy or environmental crises.=...

@Clive Robinson, ALL

I’ve been right through the “factual report” on the Iberian blackout, and not till p.259 do they allow that the “Final Report” will examine Root Causes, Voltage Control management, and Behaviour of Actors during the incident.

“Facts” include that some generators and distribution companies refused consent for the Spanish grid operator to give information from them to the Expert Panel; thus the who and where of some actions have been fudged in this report “to safeguard confidentiality while upholding transparency.” As you say, there’s still a lot of long grass …...

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

AI becomes a major Cost to major corporate name.

The cost of cheating by using AI for making an Official Report can be high when you get caught…

As the catching entity is part of the Australian Government it will be a surprise to many that firstly it was uncovered and secondly they asked for some money back.

Deloitte to pay money back to Albanese government after using AI in $440,000 report...

Citizen Lab assesses that the X account @TelAviv_Tehran may be coordinated with the PRISONBREAK group. (Instagram @telaviv_tehran.)

The posts under the accounts are visually stunning.

“As hinted in the username, @TelAviv_Tehran promotes closeness between the Israeli and Iranian populations”

They say the network was detected and referred by the Watt Family Innovation Center Media Forensics Hub. “Linvill and his team had identified an initial set of 37 X accounts presenting key similarities”...

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

Speaking of electricity infrastructure, I suspect you might still be scratching your head if the South West Europe “Iberian Peninsula” blackout / cascade grid shutdown.

The “Official Story” is still apparently at variance with “facts on the ground” so I guess either we are going to have to wait, plow through the long grass, or do both.

In the mean time a glimpse into UK Energy production and how “renewable energy” is not only not getting used, it’s actually causing scarce gas resources to be burned. Oh and of course consumers getting stiffed to carry 30% higher costs for the pleasure,...

Stanford Internet Observatory had released a similar report on US operations using generative AI to run sock-puppet accounts during the 2022 anti-regime protests in Iran – only what was “coordinated inauthentic behavior” then has become coordinated AI-enabled influence now.

@ Bruce,

Are you aware of what today’s date is?

Whilst there is a lot I could say about this threads topic. I feel it prudent to say nothing further.

@ ResearcherZero,

With regards,

“Over there water just comes out of a tap and no-one is exactly sure where it comes from.”

In theory Londoners should know where the water in London comes from… But look up “Thames Water” in the press and you might come to the conclusion that they can not tell the truth about anything…

But few as you say think more than the turn of a tap if they even think that far. It’s like electricity and gas “you just turn the tap”...

Police Used Flock Cameras To Track One Driver Over 500 Times. Now They’re Being Sued

A retired veteran named Lee Schmidt wanted to know how often Norfolk, Virginia’s 176 Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader cameras were tracking him. The answer, according to a U.S. District Court lawsut filed in September, was more than four times a day, or 526 times from mid-February to early July. No, there’s no warrant out for Schmidt’s arrest, nor is there a warrant for Schmidt’s co-plaintiff, Crystal Arrington, whom the system tagged 849 times in roughly the same period...

There is some interesting neuroscience at play.

Micro-targeting can be used to directly influence individual groups of voters in a personal way to shape and alter their perceptions. Behind the scenes of political PR and social media feeds, strategy is at play to direct public discourse and influence outcomes.

Influencers and other effects unique to social media add an additional force. The lack of accountability and added polarization this creates can further widen differing views...

@KC, Clive

It would seem like an awful waste of power – both electrical and political.

All of these political chat bots are placing an extra load on the electrical grid and serve no purpose other than to annoy people. Exacerbating the waste of resources and adding to an already precarious political climate without bringing any benefit to the public arena. It is rather sad that politicians have resorted to the tactics of losers in the basement...

@Clive Robinson

They were talking about building another desalination plant purely for the mining industry, but as they would then need to pipe the water hundreds of kilometers inland, who knows?

Perhaps the AI data centers could build their own desalination plants and a large number of turbines and solar farms to power them. We have plenty of gas, coal and uranium, though it takes about 40 years for anyone to make a decision anywhere on the continent. Australia does have a record number of daylight hours. Figuring out what to do with it is hard because the distances are vast and its hot, so nobody can be f–ked (bothered) building infrastructure and no-one likes power lines if they are greenish hippy power lines...

@Clive Robinson

Around AU$20 billion for AI data centers is earmarked for Sydney and Melbourne. Over there water just comes out of a tap and no-one is exactly sure where it comes from.

It was around 175 new data centers planned and there are an existing 250. The details are pretty vague as nobody has figured out exactly where the water will come from and how to avoid inundation from flood waters in areas with heavy rainfall. The government could build levies and other flood mitigation systems, but over the last 30 years little progress has been made on that front. Since 1980 the cost of damage from extreme weather events has increased year on year, leaving some areas under insured and highly susceptible...

If [the rapid cycling of 100 to 300k SIM cards crashes a 5G network ] or [ worse yet crashes half a countries telecom network ] then [someone better review their detailed design documents] and [ ensure they have set aside enough internal contingency to address the financial and political blowback]

How China is challenging Nvidia’s AI chip dominance
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgmz2vm3yv8o

=Last month, Jensen Huang – the boss of Silicon Valley-based AI chip giant Nvidia – warned that China was just “nanoseconds behind” the US in chip development.

China’s DeepSeek sent shockwaves through the tech world in 2024 when it launched a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

It was said to have been created using far fewer high-end chips than its rivals, and its launch temporarily sank Silicon Valley-based Nvidia’s market value...

@ KC,

I was aware that there are several UK MP’s which have/use an AI assistant from some MSM Blurb.

But did not follow it up, because I’d earlier looked into one of the campaigns that was entirely AI based. And unsurprisingly had polled the minimum number of votes of all the candidates for that constituency so “lost his deposit”[1].

But getting back to the MP Mark Sewards site, I guess it either has had problems or has predicted people might try to DDOS or similar it. Because it has,...

@ Clive

re: “Marry Ham-2be-in-debt”?

lol. just one more…

GovNewson @GovPressOffice: IF THE PEASANTS ARE POOR, MAYBE THEY SHOULD START A REALITY SHOW LIKE OUR QUEEN! WORKED OUT BEAUTIFULLY FOR HER. NOW SHE’S RICH AND YOU LOSERS ARE ABOUT TO LOSE YOUR HEALTH CARE!

Also, I was having a look at British MP Mark Sewards’ AI chatbot.

(As an aside: I am shocked at the less than curious response on social media. I mean why?)...

@ KC,

With regards the gruesome one.

Is that first one a picture of,

“Marry Ham-2be-in-debt”?

As for the second, well I know the other one had “little hands” but honestly I did not realise just how little the gruesome head is…

Just remember to be satire it has to be “believably true in humour, not “actually true in fact”…

With regards,

“… seems rather quaint in a year where the president posts AI-generated images of himself as the pope on official White House accounts.”

Did I miss the research paper that showed how you could build a Current AI device out of a very large block of lard with very small interfaces kind of just hanging on?

Maybe I need more bleach in my diet?

There is no need to worry about AI in elections anymore because the Murica is now an authoritarian regime.

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

With regards,

“Along the southwest and southeast coastline the reduction in rainfall is approaching a 10% per decade decline.”

OK, now refresh my memory, how many Current AI LLM and ML Systems are they looking to build there?

After all,

1, Rising temperatures.
2, Falling precipitation.
3, Increasing arid/uninhabitable areas.

Thus we assume “land prices will drop”. So acquiring land to build mega-data centers and the power plants and so on to support them will be less expensive...

Gov Newsom isn’t one to be left behind.

His press office appears to be utilizing Gen AI for some creative campaigning.

PR: “NEW PROFILE PIC! In honor of our Queen!”

There’s more. And here’s Newsom as King of NYC.

Some are saying he’s learned to stop worrying and love satire Gen AI 🙂
https://reason.com/2025/10/02/gavin-newsom-loves-ai-satire-now/

@ Another reason to keep using IRC!, ALL,

Hmm,

“Discord has revealed that one of its customer service providers has suffered a data breach.”

This sort of thing happens so often these days… That, it rarely gets reported these days as it’s nolonger considered news[1].

However using the old press maxim of,

“If it bleeds it leeds!”

Means that under certain circumstances even the mundane gets elevated to the extraordinary by it’s “newness”, “novelty”, or “shock” factor...

There are a lot of practical reasons for monitoring the movement of populations, especially if the future becomes somewhat Mad Max-like and you would like to catch and eat them.

Where are fish moving to after they pack their bags and p–s off?

‘https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ddi.70022

Algal blooms like the one affecting South Australian coastal communities, could begin to occur in other coastal regions in future...

The QNX Operating System

Quantum Software and the microkernel UNIX

Gordon Bell and Dan Dodge were finishing their time at the University of Waterloo in Ontario in 1979. In pursuit of their masters degrees, they’d worked on a system called Thoth in their real-time operating systems course. Thoth was interesting not only for having been real-time and having featured synchronous message passing, but also for originally having been written in the B programming langue. It was then rewritten in the UW-native Eh language (fitting for a Canadian university), and then finally rewritten in Zed. It is this last, Zed-written, version of Thoth to which Bell and Dodge would have been exposed. Having always been written in a high-level language, the system was portable, and programs were the same regardless of the underlying hardware. Both by convention and by design, Thoth strongly encouraged programs to be structured as networks of communicating processes. As the final project for the RTOS course, students were expected to implement a real-time system of their own. This experience was likely pivotal to their next adventure...

Instagram says it is not listening to users’ microphones to serve ads

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, has shared a video on his account to dismiss the myth that Instagram is actively listening to users, to show them relevant ads. Now, why would you say that? Unless, it was true! Right?

Jokes aside, the timing couldn’t be worse. Yesterday, Meta announced that it will be updating its privacy policy by December 16. Why? Because Meta says that it will use the data collected from user interactions with its AI, to sell targeted ads across its social networks. So, how is this going to work, privacy-wise? Well, that’s another story...

Discord customer service data breached; Government-ID images, and user details stolen

Discord has revealed that one of its customer service providers has suffered a data breach. The attackers gained access to Government-ID images, and user details.

MSM is now reporting the Iberian electric blackout of April 28 was caused by a “power surge.” entso-e has an updated factual report dated October 03, 264pp (so far I’ve only admired the pretty cover) pdf in English linked from

https://www.entsoe.eu/publications/blackout/28-april-2025-iberian-blackout/

@Elongated Musk, Clive Robinson, ALL

Shhh. The government is listening to what you say. 😉 The good news is that you are all carrying location trackers to ensure the government knows where you are at all times. Now what we would like to do is monitor everything you say all of the time. You have nothing to hide so you having nothing to fear, right?

I’m sure that we will find all of your comments to be appropriate, courteous and without a single inference that could be interpreted as disloyal or a threat...

Blend in this year. Be a bad AI generation. 😄

https://sora.chatgpt.com/p/s_68e2a245b5a48191bdad81718c621370

The AP:

https://apnews.com/article/sora-ai-video-generator-slop-openai-meta-ea4e4444bf90ca43c20a41b64b6716bf

The Sora app’s official launch video features an AI-generated version of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaking from a psychedelic forest, and later, the moon and a stadium crowded with cheering fans watching rubber duck races. ...

@ ALL,

What do you do when your cloud turns into a puff of smoke?

And perhaps more importantly,

1, There are no backups
2, It contains the work of 3/4 million civil servants.
3, From the more important Government departments.

As the last paragraph in the article says,

<

blockquote>“Criticism continues to build regarding the government’s data management protocols.
“

<

blockquote>

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-10-01/national/socialAffairs/NIRS-fire-destroys-governments-cloud-storage-system-no-backups-available/2412936...

Singapore to launch mandatory AI literacy course for public servants

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/ai-artificial-intelligence-dpm-gan-kim-yong-5357851

Of the 150,000 public servants in Singapore, about one-third regularly use an in-house AI assistant called Pair, said Mr Gan, adding that more than 16,000 custom AI bots have also been created to automate tasks and improve responsiveness. […]...

@ , ALL,

With regards,

“[Flock is] rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for the cities that adopt it: detection of “human distress” via audio. As part of their suite of technologies, “

Yes it probably falls foul of “wiretap legislation” and similar. Such legislation is often the reason “CCTV Systems” although easily fitted with microphones directional or not, very rarely have them fitted in quite a few jurisdictions...

Flock’s Gunshot Detection Microphones Will Start Listening for Human Voices

Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network of automated license plate readers spread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for the cities that adopt it: detection of “human distress” via audio. As part of their suite of technologies, Flock has been pushing Raven, their version of acoustic gunshot detection. These devices capture sounds in public places and use machine learning to try to identify gunshots and then alert police—but EFF has long warned that they are also high powered microphones parked above densely-populated city streets. Cities now have one more reason to follow the lead of many other municipalities and cancel their Flock contracts, before this new feature causes civil liberties harms to residents and headaches for cities...

@ Winter,

Whilst,

“… a falling tide lowers all boats.”

It was pointed out to me when I was quite young and had got into the repair, building, and design of boats, that the tide was gentle and regular and the least of your worries…

It was the wind[1] that you should worry about.

Because it made the waves that rocked a boat, and broke across it’s decks and pressed it down some times to break deep down. Likewise the gales and tempests that broke a boat asunder and draged anchors and drove a ship onto lee shores. Then there were the cyclones that threw entire ships as easily as a child does a toy, and a sensible man like Admiral Beaufort decided were beyond the whit of man thus left off his wind scale[2]...

@Clive

1, Who in the US will not pay for the madness?
2, Who will be running over the hill and far away laughing with pockets full of loot?

Now we see how the current Cryptocurrency&gold bubbles relate to the AI bubbles.

When the AI debt bubble pops and takes down with it US politics, economy, and dollar, the money will have moved out onto the blockchains and into more solid assets.

Or so the people riding the current MAGA bubble believe and hope...

@Clive, ALL

“Every piece of technology that you consume today will have GenAI in it,”

Uhuh, that means us little guys will be picking up the tab when it pops. $1 extra on the price of every smart-device would soon cover the cost of any real money lost, whether we use the AI or not, whether it works or not.

“we have deep respect for the financial system’s ability to conceal leverage in unexpected places”...

re: quantum tech

(part 3, and lastly)

In June 2025, a leading research institution in South Korea purchased an entangled photon source from QCi to ‘support research in quantum networking and secure communications.’

The product is a broadband, standalone entangled photon source built on Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion (SPDC) using a periodically-poled, bulk format lithium niobate (PPLN) structure. Designed for stability and compatibility, the source operates in the C-band telecommunication range and is compatible with current fiber optics infrastructure. It integrates seamlessly into research environments advancing quantum communication protocols. ...

re: quantum tech

(part 2)

Their “FPGA-based analog reservoir computer is built for directed AI applications.” It’s reported they have sold the product to a major automotive manufacturer. It can solve problems related to “serial data structures including time series prediction and image recognition in a fast, affordable, and energy-efficient manner.”

Any quick thoughts on their quantum cybersecurity...

“To be or not to bw an AI doomer”

I’ve been a lead vocal on “Current AI LLM & ML System” hype bubble, and have given my reasons as to why it could easily bring the US economy into serious trouble.

Well it appears, more and more people are “following in the foot steps” as even more ridiculous fiscal numbers come out on a near weekly basis.

The Register has a piece on it, but shocking as it might be to some, it’s the comments folks should read,...

@Clive, All

re: quantum tech

(part 1)

So, it looks like QCi uses photonics (light-based) technology in particular. Whereas IonQ uses trapped ions. And Rigetti and D-Wave use superconducting circuits. And please do take what I say with a grain of salt, as this is very first pass.

The technology has potential applications in biomedical imaging. Think deep tissue imaging, tumor diagnosis, etc.

QCi has developed a ...

Entirely predictable, age verification user data not just leaking over the ‘net, but being sold to known undesirables, and by design. The full report is rather brief but gives more gory detail.

https://www.aiforensics.org/work/agego-porn-platforms

Scientists grow mini human brains to power computers
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7p1lzvxjro

=Welcome to the weird world of biocomputing.
Among those leading the way are a group of scientists in Switzerland, who I went to meet.

One day, they hope we could see data centres full of “living” servers which replicate
aspects of how artificial intelligence (AI) learns – and could use a fraction of the...