Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Inks Philippines Fisherman
Good video.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Comments
Clive Robinson • October 17, 2025 10:32 PM
@ Bruce, ALL,
Flock to partner with Amazon Ring
ARS Technica has an article about the data from peoples “Ring Cameras” being made available through Flock to which ever people want to pay for it.
This includes Law Enforcment with US ICE being specifically mentioned. However as we know Flock does it’s dirty business outside of just the US.
They have a quote from US Senator Ron Wyden to Flock,
<
blockquote>“I now believe that abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable and that Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them,””
I think that is about as polite as you can say it, my own choice of words would be somewhat more pointed.
The thing is all these “ET Phone Home” send “back to base” home security systems are as I’ve noted before often the real reason for the devices. That is “surveillance is the real game” where money is to be made.
The reason I suspect for the partnering agreement is this sort of surveillance technology suffers from the “network effect” and companies like Flock are aiming to be as Tolkein put it,
“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”
That is the more “feeds” you have the more you can fulfil your customers “wants”. This in turn brings in more customers which makes other sources of feeds more likely to partner, and so on untill you become the “default goto”, then the “Only Game in Town”. Much as happened with Social Media.
ResearcherZero • October 17, 2025 10:46 PM
As the US becomes more exposed to cyber attack, thousands have been laid off from its agencies. Equipment modernization has stalled and resources re-prioritized elsewhere.
Commitment to US lead initiatives and long-term programs and partnerships are missing in action. Without well resourced federal coordination, individual states are on their own.
‘https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-china-targets-us-systems-tim-haugh-60-minutes/
A skeleton crew has been left at CISA to run America’s cyber defenses. About one third of the staff remain behind to do the job without support or being paid for their efforts.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/01/us_government_shutdown_it_seccurity/
The implications of current US policy will impact America’s defenses and national security.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/09/trump-foreign-policy/684294/
The domestic implications of US foreign policy in 2025 will be felt by the public.
https://www.stimson.org/2025/testing-assumptions-about-us-foreign-policy-in-2025/
ResearcherZero • October 18, 2025 12:53 AM
PR teams and strategists are already working hard on securing the controversy of elections.
Dominion has been purchased, renamed and will focus on the existing paper audit trail voting system. Backed by independent auditing and Christian values, the name change to “Liberty Vote” will bring with it a lexicon which sounds a lot more like “freedom”.
‘https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/09/politics/dominion-voting-systems-bought-election-ballots
lurker • October 18, 2025 1:59 AM
Live streamed podcasts are broacasting, maybe, or not …
Clive Robinson • October 18, 2025 7:54 AM
Are GPTs the way to AGI, probably not
In an opinion piece for the NY Times Gary Marcus indicates why he has reservations on the future of LLM GPT AI systems.
Silicon Valley Is Investing in the Wrong A.I.
“Buoyed by the initial progress of chatbots, many thought that A.G.I. was imminent.
But these systems have always been prone to hallucinations and errors. Those obstacles may be one reason generative A.I. hasn’t led to the skyrocketing profits and productivity that many in the tech industry predicted. A recent study run by M.I.T.’s NANDA initiative found that 95 percent of companies that did A.I. pilot studies found little or no return on their investment. A recent financial analysis projects an estimated shortfall of $800 billion in revenue for A.I. companies by the end of 2030.
If the strengths of A.I. are truly to be harnessed, the tech industry should stop focusing so heavily on these one-size-fits-all tools and instead concentrate on narrow, specialized A.I. tools engineered for particular problems. Because, frankly, they’re often more effective.”
Points I’ve also been making here several times over the past few months, along with others about the perilous state of the current US economy and how the “Current AI Hype Bubble” could be a disaster for it.
But the question of what is “Artificial General Intelligence”(AGI) is something that has at best had an elusive answer akin to “Shoulder shrug handwaving” and impossible “What ever you want it to be” type statements. It’s something that a group of 33 specialists from 28 institutions have got together to try and address more reasonably,
They come up with,
Definition : AGI is an AI that can match or exceed the cognitive versatility and proficiency of a well-educated adult.”
Which although it sounds profound is actually not that useful.
Because the use of,
“match … Well-educated adult.”
Is not actually a useful measure.
It’s been pointed out that the “use of aids” “dumbs us down” in that it causes us to “loose skills”. I first heard this when I was in school. With first electronic calculators and whilst still in school computers.
Whilst many would argue that it’s not important or even irrelevant, it is true that certain skills are not developed because of the use of aids.
What most do not realise is that those traditional skills that are seen as nolonger worth teaching due to the ubiquitous use of aids, are actually important. Not for what they directly teach, but indirectly teach. That is they give new viewpoints that are force-multiplier tools that enable us to reason in either new ways or to levels we otherwise might not.
At the end of the day the two things that have moved humans forwards over many thousands of years are,
1, Stored Knowledge.
2, Use knowledge to reason.
They were and still should be the foundations of becoming “Well-educated”.
Sadly as gets often observed these days, producing “Well-educated adults” appears to be nolonger a goal of the education system in a number of Western Nations.
Arguably whilst we push a few forward we leave many more behind, thus the average by which we would judge “Well-educated adult” steadily declines.
This gets worse because we also use the failing “free-education” to push those who do want to advance into “debt” especially where education has been taken over by political or corporate interests. A dispassionate examination of many higher-education institutions comes to two basic conclusions,
1, They have become money machines
2, They are failing those who pay in
With a third, very concerning for society in general, conclusion of
3, Undue and to often radical political indoctrination.
This is most definitely not the way to reverse the downward trend.
Thus arguably AGI will happen with no further progress in any area of AI, simply because the measure of “Well-educated adult” drops bellow the nonsense we currently have with “Current LLM and ML Systems”.
The paper has similar things in it which highlight this point.
Under “Commonsense” it asks the question,
“Does making a sandwich take longer than baking bread?”
Arguably as making part of a sandwich is baking bread the answer is “YES” not as some might say “NO”…
Also the making of butter, mayonnaise, cheese and cooked or smoked meat/fish/veggies. Even making peanut butter and jam, or just aquiring them from a store. Thus it assumes that the person being asked leads a very “western”, “convenience”, “with servant/assistant” lifestyle. Which really is only true for a very small percentage of even “Well-educated adults”[1].
In fact as is often the case with a “written work” it betrays more about the authors biases than it actually does about the subject it is written to address.
In this case it’s obvious that there are significant,
1, First world academic bias.
2, US upper middle class bias.
3, US education and lifestyle bias.
4, Implicit emotional bias.
5, Implicit cognitive bias.
Many of the questions suggested “for asking” to make the measures are so inappropriate as to not in any way demonstrate “intelligence” general or otherwise.
But the other issue that arises is the implicit notion that “all fruits are equal” without question, from those biases.
Consider the more obvious differences,
1, Humans are known to have “imperfect memory” and that there is good evolutionary reasons for this. 2, Computer memory in most cases is designed to have “perfect retention” for the data stored.
The two are poles apart when you get below the 20,000ft / superficial view. And why we generally do not compare “apples with oranges”.
The simple truth is AI will never be equivalent of Human Intelligence as they are not ever going to be the same at so many levels not just the measures but any conclusions will be fairly if not totally pointless.
But ask yourself a question of,
“Does this matter?”
The answer depends on your viewpoint and chosen occupations and interests.
What ever they are I can say reading the paper with it’s flaws should help people understand the problem domain better and thus use that to inform their future viewpoint.
[1] Admittedly when quite young I was actually helping my mother make bread, cooked meats and jam long before she would let me make a sandwich (I was actually cooking breakfast for me and the family before sandwich making)[2]. Further as a “certain type of engineer” as an adult I take a “production / value added chain” view of the world and actually know all the steps from water evaporating from the sea to the flour, salad vegetables, eggs, cheese and various meats (and yes how to make mayonnaise, salad cream, jam and even peanut butter).
[2] My mother had a certain viewpoint about “sharp tools” that “accidents WILL happen” if you let them. And it was confirmed one day when I was still very young when I sliced the corner of my index finger off, when cutting a piece of wood down to make a toy. Hence confirming the old,
“Children and fools should not use sharp tools.”
Mum was understandably upset, Dad on the other hand took the “live and learn” viewpoint of “that’s a lesson he won’t soon forget”. And much to Mum’s annoyance let me use a small saw from his tools to finish the job thus additionally seeding the idea of “right tool for the job” in my head.
Their views were different and apparently contradictory, but both were actually right. A point many people won’t consider in their reasoning processes.
Clive Robinson • October 18, 2025 2:45 PM
@ ResearcherZero, ALL,
With regards,
“Commitment to US lead initiatives and long-term programs and partnerships are missing in action. Without well resourced federal coordination, individual states are on their own.”
A couple of things spring to mind,
First is the “Defence Spending Paradox” of,
“You never know when you have spent to much… But spend to little gets you attacked when you can least defend yourself”.
Secondly is the “No man is an island” thesis of,
“You can not reasonably expect to defend or fight on all fronts or with more than a single enemy.”
Thus it pays to “have friends” or allies in the same boat especially if they are geographically adjacent. Because it shortens the length of boarder you have to defend whilst making the front an attacker is faced with considerably larger.
I know Gen Isma said NATO was to keep peace in Europe by keeping Germany Down, Russia Out and the US in.
But times change Germany is very much in, Russia is likely to move in, and the US is effectively out.
The only reason the current US Executive sees any purpose for NATO currently is two reasons,
1, US Arms manufacturers want the sales and lobby US politicians hard.
2, The US economy is effectively not growing but shrinking, a very much increased level of arms sales to Europe would give much needed income, jobs, credibility to the US Gov. If only to subsidize it’s arms development.
The thing about Arms Sales is they always come with a hidden price two of the most obvious aspects are,
1, You are tied in for 30-50years.
2, You are subject to the selling countries political control.
We’ve seen both of these in recent times and it’s one of the reasons EU purchase of US Arms is not at the levels the US Executive wants.
The EU saw that after the fall of both the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union that the need for “arms spending” was not as important thus in effect decided much of it was a “lost opportunity cost” thus shifted the focus of their spending.
The main manufactures of arms in Europe where Britain, France, Germany, Italy. With only Britain and France being “nuclear capable” and France being the only “fully independent” one[1]. Things however have changed and Britain is mostly seen as the “outsider” now along with the US. France is strongly pushing to have all EU defence money come into the French economy. Germany is still suffering from political issues at home and nobody really knows what is going on in Italy including the Italians. Smaller EU nations up along the Russian boarders are “working around the mess”, whilst some are “not paying/playing” like Portugal.
The thing is does the EU have enough reserves to cover the time to “ramp-up production”. Well every one wrote of the Ukraine but they managed to ramp up in only a little over a year. Unfortunately that war due to US policy / interference has turned it into a war of attrition that due to simple size differences the Ukranians are unlikely to win. Something that Moscow and Putin clearly know and are quite happy to throw hundreds of thousands of their people anually into that “meat grinder”. It’s why the tactic by them is “talk, demand, delay” but not negotiate at all.
Obviously the US Arms manufacturers do not want it to stop either, thus neither do US politicians on “The brown envelope reception committee”.
So the result is take money from the Russian’s by sanction, the Ukranians by need, and the rest of Europe by having the “Mad panty poisoner” rubbing his hands so that he can invade and use the Ukrainian resources for blackmail. On a slightly different version of the old “It’s Winter let’s turn the gas tap off” or “People are staving lets blockade and destroy the grain” till we get our way. Both of which have probably killed more people than by the bombs and bullets of war.
The real lesson is not “supply line security” but “production security” where you “Design and make with your own resources that are fully under your control” either naturally or by stockpile and cut out the “blackmailing flakes and war profiteers” that will bleed you dry.
And further realise that with the Russian attitude / tactics, “strategic weapons” that were thought of as “unusable by sane people” should now actually be considered “tactical” and “first response” against their “political / population” centers. Because oddly to many, it’s the “rational actor” response, to the demonstrated Russian “meat grinder” tactics.
In a way,
“It’s less expensive to kill them in their beds at home, than in your backyard.”
The notion of “Mutually Assured Destruction”(MAD) has always been questionable even when it was just a “two player game”. Now it’s a multi-player game MAD is at best a fantasy. China and Russia both know this, as does the US and any sensible multi-player games strategist. If you take time to look you will see the “telltales” of this in actual behaviours. Further small nations know that even low yield IRBMs are effective “Keep of the Grass” notices because they get in the “citizens minds” and they in turn “get in the politicians faces” and “line opposition pockets”. Have a look at Pakistan – India, India – China, North Korea – USA, and more recently US+Israel – Iran. You will see all you need to see to get a realisation
If you look at Iran and North Korea, the way to get them into producing nuclear weapons and more importantly effective delivery systems is for the usual nonsense from the US Executive and State Department. Each time, the US does something stipid like back out of an agreement, they both “ramp it up a notch” and don’t back it down.
Whilst Iran does not currently have a tested nuclear device that we know of (NK does). Estimates from independent intelligence observers say two main things,
1, Iran’s facilities are way to spread out to attack with any real chance of success.
2, It would take 6-18months for them to not just make but test a nuclear device.
But consider the delivery system does not have to hit a barn door or less, a “Circular error probable”CEP) as big as a Midwestern large Farm or bigger will be fine for even small nukes and large population centers.
We know they already have effective delivery devices with much smaller CEPs that can easily reach Israel, and most US bases in the Mediterranean and Middle East.
The thing about missile based delivery systems tactical or otherwise is their cost drops at a rate near equivalent to the drop in the cost of technology. Likewise the cost of “Physics Packages” for warheads not just drop in cost but significantly faster in getting reduced in size and mass, thus making delivery systems very much easier.
So they don’t have to hit the continental US to do considerable harm to the US via it’s interests in the region.
It’s not a game the US can win especially if Iran thinks they can get a draw or have an acceptable loss. Which they obviously have considered and in some respects already tested against a well defended opponent with a degree of success.
One dispute or another “at the border etc” is going to cause a preemptive strike, it’s not a question of “if” but “when”, many scientists and other academics have “done the math” and know this to be the case.
The problem is many authoritarian types in politics hate science and make up nonsense that is politically convenient for them irrespective of reality.
Realistically Europe needs the US and it’s influence out of Europe, likewise it needs to dump all weapons that come out of the US where the political gas tap can be turned off at any time for any reason. Thus the Europeans need to build up their own strategic and tactical weapons systems and due to advances in technology make them unmanned and semi or fully autonomous because the one thing AI systems are really good at is pattern matching which means defensive systems will be way more effective and low cost.
Just one example of this is that the Ukrainians have developed a sound based defence system that can not just detect but accurately target Russian drones by pattern matching and vectoring. Each base is small and can be easily carried. The Russians made modifications to their drones to change the sound. The Ukrainians took only a day or so to retune the system. It’s actually based on the same sort of ideas that the US City-Wide Gun Fired detectors work. Which means it could also be used for locating “Shoot and scoot” artillery “fires systems” and bring in a salvo on them before they can effectively “scoot”, hence “unmanned” fully autonomous effectively “one time” systems are getting increasingly desirable.
[1] Contrary to what many people think the US does have a veto on Britains nuclear deterrent. Though to what extent is not made public, it just gets swept under the parasitic “Special Relationship” rug. That is in reality only about 5-Eyes, leasing land to the US for bases and similar, and one sided treaties. With the UK politicians in all other ways KowTowing, fawning, and pandering to US political whims and as seen recently getting shunned and humiliated. This has got considerably worse since Brexit put the UK into isolation thus effectively having no reliable friends at it’s back (even in NATO).
StephenM • October 19, 2025 9:21 AM
@ Clive Robinson
"Contrary to what many people think the US does have a veto on Britain's nuclear deterrent."
This is another thing wrong with AUKUS. There may be a slight chance that the submarine will be delivered after being paid for but NO CHANCE that it will be free of strings. IF a submarine is delivered the danger is not just that Aus will not have the capacity to operate it independently, and be told when NOT to use it; but that it will be told WHEN to use it.
Aus will then be in a difficult position because the money spent on other defense capability will have been indirectly proportional to that spent on AUKUS. Aus defenses will be so depleted that it is hard not to get the feeling that proponents of AUKUS see it as a method of paying protection money.
The only problem is the “America first” policy. And when conflict happens and all goes wrong, as it most surely will, that policy will kick in.
Clive Robinson • October 19, 2025 11:32 AM
@ StephenM, ALL,
With regards,
“This is another thing wrong with AUKUS. There may be a slight chance that the submarine will be delivered after being paid for but NO CHANCE that it will be free of strings. IF a submarine is delivered the danger is not just that Aus will not have the capacity to operate it independently, and be told when NOT to use it; but that it will be told WHEN to use it.”
It is the last part of “WHEN to” that actually really concerns me.
If you look at NATO, there is the
“All for one and one for all.”
Clauses.
The only time that one of them has been used is by the US after 9/11. It was actually a totally invalid use, because the clauses were about nation state or recognised government attackers, not a bunch of ad hoc criminals trying to pretend they had political aspirations.
The US used the NATO Defence treaty to strong arm uninvolved European Nations into a conflict the US via the State Dept had created for “economic benefit” and cushy lifestyles for the more privileged US Middle and Upper Classes[1].
The French decided they were not going to get dragged in. Hence the “Cheese eating surrender monkeys” and imbecilic “Freedom fries”, and “Freedom units” and similar that only those with less sense under the “Red Hat” than hair lice would give would articulate.
Unfortunately what caused the whole nasty process to happen was an extremely narcissistic and venal crook who just happened to be the UK Prime Minister at the time. He wanted a war for glory so he could be in his eyes a better premier than Margaret Thatcher… Unfortunately Tony Blair is still around creating trouble, he somehow talked his way into the recent Gaza / Israel ceasefire as a “peace envoy”, thus it’s almost guaranteed to fail based on Tony’s entire previous dealings involving the Middle East[2].
Stalin had an expression for people like Tony and his cronies and that was “Useful Idiot”. Implying they are too stupid to realise they are just being manipulated by their own failings to be a stooge come puppet, come fall guy.
Unfortunately where ever you go in the world where there is political power you will always find people being “Useful Idiots” to others machinations and Machiavellian intent. As we know Australian politics is full of such “Special Relationship” idiots. The previous premier or two being no exception to this form of idiocy.
So yes I can see such an idiot “Going to war with China” just to wear a blue hat with a Southern Cross on it next to a vacuous red hat mouth breather.
People might have noticed from the quite recent news the UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has just been “dissed and humiliated” by the mouth breather in Sharm El Sheikh quite deliberately much to the amusement of those who apparently knew it was comming. The mouth breather then went on to rub Tony Blair’s nose in it with a quip about the Northern Ireland peace deal. For those that don’t know, although Tony has repeatedly tried to take credit for it, he had next to nothing to do with it.
[1] Corporate behaviour lobbying legislators via campaign money etc were getting the use of US Federal Guard Labour agencies to apply “depressing pressure” or “Highway Robbery” on nations that could not defend themselves against the “Bomb them back to the stone ages” US political attitude of “What’s ours is ours, and what’s yours is now ours”. It’s why back then about 1/50th of the worlds population was consuming around 50% of the worlds resources and why the US Standard of living after certain corrections was said to be ten times the world average (in real terms it was actually significantly higher). Basically “Might is Right” as part of the “Pope Game”, something that can clearly be seen in recent and current news is very much still going on.
[2] Speaking of Bush’s Poodle Tony, with all the signs the Israeli Government have no intention of honouring the Trump Peace Deal before the ink is dry… I wonder if Tony is going to somehow claim credit for what is in effect rapidly shaping up as a complete failure,
Clive Robinson • October 19, 2025 1:48 PM
Open AI targets own feet again
We are kind of getting used to Sam Altman making llets just call them “hallucination level claims” rather more than 1/3rd of the time. And his response on being called is “ignore or dodge”.
This time however the Open AI researchers were not only deliberately using “Weasley Words” but “deleted and backpedaled”…
This was over supposed AGI performance from GPT5.
What had happened though was rather more interesting.
GPT5 had found existing research that was not easily found.
A well known problem in Academia is publishing a paper where yhe author is unaware of existing research. So may re-invent the wheel or end up with incorrect findings.
Thus as an “agent” GPT5 may have use as a “research assistant” to those actively doing research rather than effectively wasting time reading hundreds of probably not related papers.
I happen to read papers for “fun and knowledge” and thus have a very broad if eclectic tastes for papers.
But most researchers in academia are usually narrowly focused and don’t have time for distractions, if they are also to “have a life”.
So a narrowly focused Agent that can reliably “pre-filter” or just “rank” papers would be quite desirable.
Open AI’s GPT5 might not make good on Sam Altman’s hype or money grabbing aspirations by hallucinations, but it might actually have a real use in aiding research etc.
Clive Robinson • October 19, 2025 3:27 PM
Cal law will improve security and privacy of individuals.
One of the ways ISPs gain concealed income is by theft of privacy and security from users. This is fairly well known but not many think about how the ISPs can gain the advantage.
One such way is “Bulk billing contracts” with Landlords of “Multiple Tenant Environment”(MTE) properties. In which the landlord,
1, Gets a kickback from the Service Provider.
2, Hands over all tenants personal details they know to the Service Provider.
Whilst not illegal for a landlord to do, the tenant can be sanctioned by the landlord in various ways if the tenant does not want to pay/play with that Service Provider.
The new law kills a big chunk of this scheme, thus the outcry not just from large Service Providers who disproportionately charge excessively and landlords in who’s financial interest it is to get the equivalent of “payola”.
Interestingly the article does not cover the privacy and security aspects that this law will allow tenants in MTEs the freedom they don’t currently have to acquire.
lurker • October 19, 2025 7:08 PM
Somebody’s awake:
NZ lawyers have written to the Prime Minister saying the country’s reliance on cloud computing and storage will result in catastrophic [uninsurable] and unrecoverable risks of harm.
Clive Robinson • October 20, 2025 1:20 AM
@ lurker, ALL,
How late to the funeral…
You note,
“Somebody’s awake”
But that is now, and the funeral[1] was years ago…
The things they are saying many of us “old grey beards” were saying befor “XasS” –where X is storage / software / etc– started to be called “cloud” and very specifically warning about all the problems that have been repeatedly seen and are still seeing with these “services” not least of which is that they are a waste of
“Organisational resources to no longterm benefit only increased risk”
As yhe old saw has it,
“If you want a job done properly then do it yourself.”
By which they mean you have to be the one in charge and control, not as is the case with Cloud, not the dirty/skanky end of a “service level agreement” written by and for the benefit of a service provider agent.
The thing is it’s not just “liability and insurance” that are a problem, if the service provider looses or makes unavailable your data, your business not theirs goes “belly up”. It’s you and your shareholders that take the hit not yours.
Think about AWS they were a running joke here with the “usual suspects” not that long ago. Because of AWS’s so numerous “screw ups”… yet they were effectively “teflon” no matter what they did wrong. Or how much harm they caused, etc, etc.
Dare I mention MicroSoft and it’s various disaster areas that are considered “cloud”?
How many others do I need to mention like Alphabet?
We knew way back that such online services were going to be a disaster almost immediately, and so it turned out to be. Such disasters are “so common” that they are now “normalised” and nobody bothers mentioning when another disaster happens. Just as has happened with Self Driving vehicles and is happening with LLM&ML. The have become nolonger “news worth” but “yawn worthy” in a “So what, who cares” society.
If you want to see a prime example of this it’s Web3, despite all the warnings people keep throwing money in and having it stolen or misappropriated in some way.
I mention Molly White and her site where she records the Web3 “crypto, NFT, etc disasters” she gets to hear about. But generally you don’t find mentioned else where because millions being stolen this way is in the opinion of the MSM journalists/editors “just not worth reporting”…
It’s the same with “Cloud” and you can see it’s already started with AI, which is just a disaster through and through and the “When” of “If and When” has already started because the “IF” has such high probability it’s effectively “already” happened before the starters gate has opened.
Such ICTfails are so numerous these days I can not see what “OnLine technology” is not going to suffer the same fate… And politicians want to put everything critical to a nation state in that “fail zone” so they can “look with it” whilst holding a fat brown envelope from tech lobbyists behind their back.
[1] For those not living in the UK and several other nations, there is a saying about those who are, shall we say, more than a little tardy…
So you say to them,
“You’d be late for your own funeral”
Winter • October 20, 2025 4:26 AM
@lurker
Somebody’s awake:
More like: Waking up
NZ lawyers have written to the Prime Minister saying the country’s reliance on cloud computing and storage will result in catastrophic [uninsurable] and unrecoverable risks of harm.
Cloud computing is like utilities. A power grid is much, much more efficient than everyone using their own generators [1]. Communal tap water is way better than each one digging their own well.
But such utilities require strong laws and strong oversight. Whenever there is lax regulation, disaster looms. The Texas Freeze and Flint water crisis are just two recent examples.
What we see now is “cloud” computing/storage being used universally as a utility. The increase of efficiency is phenomenal. The operational savings match this. But the oversight is absent. And without strong oversight, utilities are a disaster waiting to happen.
It is just recently that people start to notice that “no cloud”, or a “poisoned cloud” has become as big a disaster as no tap water, no electricity, or no garbage collection.
Years too late, we know. But humans seem to strongly prefer to bolt the doors only after the horses have run.
[1] Unlike some US Republicans want to tell us:
‘https://ktxs.com/news/local/colorado-city-mayor-resigns-after-controversial-facebook-post
Winter • October 20, 2025 12:34 PM
@lurker
NZ lawyers have written to the Prime Minister saying the country’s reliance on cloud computing and storage will result in catastrophic [uninsurable] and unrecoverable risks of harm.
Amazon obliges us by showing the problem in full size, as if on demand.
Clive Robinson • October 20, 2025 4:49 PM
@ Winter, ALL,
You forgot a link to a news story on the AWS Face Palm… So,
that’s fixed 😉
But it’s kind of odd, I mention AWS bad behaviour above with,
“Think about AWS they were a running joke here with the “usual suspects” not that long ago. Because of AWS’s so numerous “screw ups”… yet they were effectively “teflon” no matter what they did wrong. Or how much harm they caused, etc, etc.”
And then they go and prove me a truth-teller beyond doubt by throwing a US & EU blackout of lots of sites. According to the Bleepingcomputer News item,
“AWS outage has taken down millions of websites, including Amazon.com, Prime Video, Perplexity AI, Canva and more.
The outage started approx 30 minutes ago[1] and it’s affecting consumers in all regions, including the United States and Europe.”
Yup all jolly good fun, posibly a DNS issue we will just have to wait and see if AWS tell the truth (but don’t hold your breath unless you think “blue in the face” is a good look…
[1] Actually it started a little before 04:00 Mon 20th Oct, if you are reading this later.
not important • October 20, 2025 5:44 PM
@Clive: as I expected with probability close to 100%, Moderator (by own discretion or following offer can’t reject) deleted my yesterday made post related to Article 5 of NATO Charter interpretation and so called independence of Australia, Canada, New Zealand.
Do you recall this statement from old movie ‘You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth.’ I could only add ugly truth in particular. Deleted post was probably used for training AI what should be filtered out. That is echo chamber mode.
lurker • October 20, 2025 7:19 PM
@Clive Robinson, ALL
“possibly DNS related”
Now DNS probably means something different to AWS than it does to us mere mortals, but also
“If you want a job done properly then do it yourself.”
which is why I’m so much happier with pdnsd
Winter • October 20, 2025 11:54 PM
@lurker, Clive
Re: AWS outage
The Register has two “insightful” [1] articles. It’s not “just DNS”, it’s also centralization and very bad HRM.
AWS outage exposes Achilles heel: central control plane
Too many services depend not just on one cloud provider, but on one location
“Although the impacted region is in the AWS US East region, many global services (including those used in Europe) depend on infrastructure or control-plane / cross-region features located in US-EAST-1. This means that even if the European region was unaffected in terms of its own availability zones, dependencies could still cause knock-on impact,” he said.
Today is when the Amazon brain drain finally sent AWS down the spout
When your best engineers log off for good, don’t be surprised when the cloud forgets how DNS works
- Internal documents reportedly say that Amazon suffers from 69 percent to 81 percent regretted attrition across all employment levels. In other words, “people quitting who we wish didn’t.”
- The internet is full of anecdata of senior Amazonians lamenting the hamfisted approach of their Return to Office initiative; experts have weighed in citing similar concerns.
[1] It’s The Register, so caveat emptor
Clive Robinson • October 21, 2025 3:04 AM
@ Winter, lurker,
I suspected DNS from the very wide spread symptoms. Put overly simply sometimes things are so wide spread the logical conclusion is it’s something they all have in common and that often means something fundemental like an OS or service/supply issue OS’s are dependent on.
We know there are more than three OS types hit but where things were working they did not break for a while.
So something everyone is dependent on, and something only used as a initial / startup step in communications that has “sticky/tacky” information held locally.
Which kind of points at DNS or related issues (I’m still erring toward “related” as insufficient hard info so still “hedging my bets” as they say 😉
Which is why the “human element” issue you mention is not just fairly believable, we’ve seen “Quiet Quitting” and similar become rather more than just a label in recent times.
But that also brings up other news of interest with regards “Human Element” issues.
I can not get hard info on this but it does not in the least surprise me,
https://intelnews.org/2025/10/20/01-3416/
Further I would not be surprised if “the US receiving agencies” have not been doing similar with regards the “top layer that has been “pushed on” from above.
But this “Madness of King George” issue is being seen in other places. As you know I’ve been watching Palantir and it’s boss for quite some time and the plans/behaviours that are odd even by US standards,
https://futurism.com/future-society/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures
But there are signs that this might be “catching” and hitting other Big Tech leaders. They do say “it’s a thin line between genius and madness” and “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. It’s not just the mania for building and staying close to “five year bunkers” at the “last bus stop to the South Pole” “south islands”. There is the more obvious “back to office” demands that are so “out of date” and organisationally debilitating. Driven by what can only be described in terms we find more normally attached to “Strong Man”, “Authoritarian leader” type extreme idiology politics that heralded WWII and now is becoming much in evidence again a century later. Worse the almost medieval “Estates of Man” type resurgence, that I’ve mentioned as being part of the “King Game” and like wise the behaviour patterns of “Barons and Bishops” that we had hoped had disappeared pre-industrialisation. Which was most exemplified by the “You will own nothing and be…” That some try to paint up as utopian,
‘https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/welcome-to-2030-i-own-nothing-have-no-privacy-and-life-has-never-been-better-ee2eed62f710
But let’s be honest, human history tells us it will be anything but idyllic. The “Grind the faces of the poor in the dirt” outlook has been an almost constant with humanity and those that get called “Hawks” not “Doves”. Even supposed “Saints” on analysis are found to have the same outlook, that is people used as a means to an end of personal power etc. As I warn from time to time beware the “Humble Servant”.
Clive Robinson • October 21, 2025 5:16 AM
@ not important,
Thanks for the thanks etc.
@ ALL,
A security failure that I’ve found an easy example to demonstrate purely by chance.
We all get told “the rules of passwords” but how many realise the same rules should also apply to usernames?
Yes it’s true, the “authentication token” is USUALLY “two part” and it is ASSUMED by security people with checklists that,
“As long as one is strong…”
But ordinary users do not see things that way in fact we are rarely sure how they see things.
So what happens if “two part” nolonger holds?
Well I can give a real world example, with “throw away email addresses”.
These are used by people for very good reason and I’ve talked about it when mentioning ICT implementors do not support “roles in life”. That is most have “A work life”, “A home life”, and “A social life” that when you think about it “are separate roles and should be kept separate”. Technologists have what is a perverse view that,
“everything should be lumped together”
And that is a major security fail.
So people use “throwaway email” addresses…
Which is problematic. There are a number of services that are popular.
One of which is,
It has “usernames” but not “passwords”. It goes down a different route of “two user names” a public one that is “send to only” and a private one that “allows read access”. I’ll assume that the public one is some kind of anonymization hash of the private one.
But what if a user choses a private username that does not follow all the “password rules”?
Try entering just an ordinary name such as,
Ferdinand
Opps…
nobody • October 21, 2025 6:28 AM
@not important: as I expected with probability close to 100%, Moderator (by own discretion or following offer can’t reject) deleted my yesterday made post related to Article 5 of NATO Charter interpretation and so called independence of Australia, Canada, New Zealand.
Was you post polite enough? if so, why don’t you try splitting it up into smaller pieces and post them individually?
Winter • October 21, 2025 8:21 AM
@Clive
that is people used as a means to an end of personal power
That is the whole point of hierarchy. Humans are obligate social animals, no less social than ants and honeybees. We need other humans to fulfill our psychological, mental, and bodily needs. But we care only for those we know personally, and then only some of those we know personally.
In principle, you can assume that a person in power that does not know you personally, will not care for you in any positive meaning of care. However, this person might very well need you, or rather your attention, money, vote, or work. As they don’t care about you personally, they will use you and take what they need from you, irrespective of what you think of that.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely follows from this psycho-economic basis.
The ultimate form of this affliction is narcissism.
It is telling that a majority of American voters selected a ridiculous obvious narcissist as their leader. It aligns well with the long tradition of adoration and worshiping wealth and wealthy people above all.
It looks like Mammon is currently the most openly worshiped god in the US.
It is a very brutal truth, but in the end:
Every nation gets the government it deserves
Clive Robinson • October 21, 2025 11:57 AM
@ Winter,
“It looks like Mammon is currently the most openly worshiped god in the US.”
I believe the correct reply would be,
“It was ever thus”
Rather than the usual hjghly cringe worth US reply of,
“Have a nice day”
Which appears to be as obligatory as saluting the flag, and repeating the Pledge of Allegiance at school for every assembly[1][2].
[1] I find it curious that a “Nations leaders” feel it’s citizens could potentially be so unloyal to it, that they see it “as essential” that they must use unlawful brain washing by legislation as an indoctrination process on them…
[2] The nearest thing we have in the UK is a poem set to a tune written by Gustave Holst. The tune comes from his “Planet suite” and is to “Jupiter the God of War”… so much more fun 😉 But in a more modern and fondly adhered to tradition we bounce along to “Land of Hope and Glory” most well known for being played to “The Promenaders” at “The Last Night of the Proms”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN_5LhnbW5k
Where it’s seen by some as a reward for the charity work they do,
https://promenadersmusicalcharities.com/
Oh and if you go you are encouraged to bring your own nations flag to wave.
not important • October 21, 2025 5:56 PM
@nobody – thank you for advice. Bruce stated this blog is his home, all us – just his guest. As a host, he is in charge by his (moderator) discretion to delete any posts. I am totally agree, but when post is deleted it sounds reasonable to provide reason why. Nobody on this planet perfect human being. Bruce is not as well. But with the same token as immigration, host country is in charge of immigration.
@ALL
https://www.dw.com/en/china-artificial-intelligence-deepseek-us-technology-
semiconductors-chatgpt-graphics/a-74361630
=In 2017, China declared its ambition to become the world’s leading AI power by 2030 and has pumped in billions, spurring domestic innovation. Between the state and the private
sector, the country is projected to spend nearly $100 billion on AI in 2025 alone.
So far this year, China has stunned the global tech community with the rise of DeepSeek, a startup whose large language model (LLM) rivals top Western brands like ChatGPT and Grok. DeepSeek delivers mostly comparable performance at a fraction of the cost and computing power.
E-commerce giant Alibaba, meanwhile, has launched a powerful new AI model and announced plans to build more data centers around the world, showing that China’s biggest tech firms are serious about challenging US AI dominance. Tencent added fuel to the race this year with its release of Hunyuan-A13B, an AI model designed to be faster, smarter and open to developers.
With over a billion people online, China’s huge population acts as a built-in testing
ground, allowing new AI products to scale rapidly among consumers, services and
industries. As Chinese models are also designed to run on cheaper hardware, they’re far more cost-efficient to deploy.By making powerful models like DeepSeek, Qwen-3, and Kimi K2 open-source, Chinese firms are giving developers free access to cutting-edge tools. Western rivals often keep
theirs locked behind paywalls.
China now boasts 14 out of the global top 20 AI models when ranked on tasks like
reasoning, knowledge, math and coding skills, according to OpenCompass’ LLM leaderboard on October 18, 2025. Although US players still hold the top positions, nine of their
Chinese rivals are open-source, versus none produced in Silicon Valley.
“US chip export restrictions to China are counterproductive. They incentivize firms
like DeepSeek to optimize older hardware, advancing research,” Domingos said, referring
to how the Chinese firm built powerful AI models using less advanced chips by finding
smarter ways to train them.=
fib • October 21, 2025 6:17 PM
Systems or protocols that use rotational models or rotation‑metaphors (broadly construed) in the security / cryptography, like Protocols based on qubit rotations or quantum “rotations” have work to do, apparently.
The article ref bellow reports a way to undo rotation sequences in certain groups (e.g., SO(3)/SU(2)) by using a scaled version of the same sequence applied twice[*].
Affected areas: Rotational Cryptanalysis; Protocols based on qubit rotations or quantum “rotations”; Symmetric‑key encryption based on a “rotation–translation equation”, etc.
Risks / vulnerabilities
Unexpected reversibility: if the system’s logic assumes “once you traverse away, you cannot easily return exactly” (or that the sequence is one‐way), this reported result undermines that. If someone can compute the scale factor and apply the scaled sequence twice, then a traversal that was meant to be “irreversible” becomes reversible. That could impact invariant assumptions.
Adversarial “reset” attack: If orientation sequences correspond to meaningful state transitions (e.g., in a state machine, robotics control, or security logic), then an adversary might exploit this reset trick to force the system back to a prior state (undoing progress, resetting orientation). The security annex might not currently account for this kind of “hidden reset” vulnerability.
Precision / threshold issues: While mathematically the trick works in ideal continuous groups, in real numeric/discrete quaternion systems (floating‑point, thresholding) there might be small errors. If the system uses angular thresholds to decide traversal or branching (e.g., only traverse children within X radians) then a “reset” operation might drift slightly so that post‐reset orientation lands just outside a threshold, causing subtle logic errors. The security/robustness model must consider this.
State tracking / audit: Because the reset can be done by applying the same sequence (scaled) twice, it may bypass existing “undo logs” if the library or system assumes only explicit inverse operations will produce “reset”. Without logging, this might mask state transitions unexpectedly.
[*]https://www.newscientist.com/article/2499647-mathematicians-have-found-a-hidden-reset-button-for-undoing-rotation/
not important • October 21, 2025 6:52 PM
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/leaked-signals-reveal-spacex-defense-151000345.html
=SpaceX’s classified Starshield satellites are transmitting on radio frequencies reserved exclusively for ground-to-space communications, violating international standards that prevent orbital chaos. Amateur satellite tracker Scott Tilley discovered this regulatory breach while monitoring the defense constellation from British Columbia.
His findings reveal approximately 170 Starshield satellites broadcasting on the 2025-2110 MHz band—spectrum the International Telecommunication Union explicitly designates for uplink-only use. This represents what experts call a systematic disregard for the rules that keep our increasingly crowded orbital highways functioning.
The frequencies exhibit temporal variability, suggesting SpaceX is intentionally frequency-hopping—possibly to conceal operations in what should be a quiet uplink band. No major disruptions have been publicly reported to date, though the severity of any interference remains undetermined.
Low-bandwidth transmissions hint at specialized military applications rather than commercial broadband.
Starshield’s bandwidth limitations—roughly equivalent to early 3G networks—indicate these aren’t commercial internet signals. Gifford suspects SpaceX chose this “quiet” spectrum precisely because few legitimate users occupy it, following a “use it first and deal with regulations later” philosophy.
The frequency-hopping behavior suggests operational security takes precedence over international compliance, potentially serving as operational concealment for the classified defense network.=
Clive Robinson • October 22, 2025 1:50 AM
@ Winter,
With regards the subject in hand, my “unnamed source” usual supplier of things that might amuse, directed my attention to this very recent vid,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M1QvVnjiegE
And the fact it’s extraordinary number of hits kind of makes it “viral”, and the inordinate number of comments it got obviously raised some opinions.
They also mentioned that the follow on vid was even better…
It certainly amused the heck out of me.
On a side note he mentions cycling in London and Europe, something I used to do before “life caught up with me”.
It crashed into me the day I was talking to a Dr who was looking at a scans of my back, legs, and feet joints and asked me what sort of exercise I did. I mentioned that due to the pain it was not at all these days compared to what I had done in the past when I walked, ran, and cycled “a bit”.
And they asked what “a bit” was as they could clearly see wear…
So I said I used to cycle a hundred or so miles most weekdays, longer at weekends, if I was not climbing hills/mountains or running 4-20 miles, or walk 20miles a day with a backpack (we used to call it “tabbing” when run or “yomping” when walk in the 80’s, but apparently it’s now called “Rucking” in the US). A couple of more questions about why, how often, and how long gave rise to the Dr noting that for a person of my size, three decades or more of every day, was the equivalent of more than thirty times round the equator and I really should expect some significant damage… They went on to note that the damage they could see was not as bad as they had seen in others who were Ex-Mil and Athletes, but it was significant and not much could be done… Which was the real “Ouch” moment, they said I should apart from mild non impact exercise avoid activities that would cause further wear as it would only get worse and not heal.
So I’m stuck on the sticks from now on, which is annoying to say the least as I like being out in the wilds as it gives a clear head and peace to be able to think in.
not mportant • October 22, 2025 6:29 PM
‘An urgent public health crisis’: Why so many people are struggling to get medicine
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251021-why-youre-having-trouble-getting-your-meds
=In some cases, such shortages have proven lethal. In 2022, two-year-old Ava Grace
Hodgkinson died of sepsis after a pharmacist couldn’t amend a prescription for out-of-stock antibiotics. The case has led to policy discussions of how to better handle drug
shortages in future.
!!!!The majority of shortages affect generic drugs – unbranded medicines containing the
same chemicals as a branded drug whose patent has expired. These compete on the market
according to their cost, not branding. This has led some to become so cheap – antibiotics plummeting to costs lower than a pack of chewing gum, says Fox – that they become loss-making products for manufacturers. As a result, many manufacturers quit
making those drugs at all, leaving a gap in the supply chain.
Trade tariffs – particularly on China – have placed further strain on the supply chain.
More than 92% of the facilities manufacturing generic pharmaceuticals for the US market
are on foreign soil. Much of the global supply of active ingredients for medications
come from China.
“If a company can’t sustain the added costs of tariffs on the raw materials or other
ingredients or packaging, then they may simply choose to just discontinue the product,” Fox says, who notes this will likely not be “immediately, but more in the six to twelve months after tariffs are implemented”.=
Clive Robinson • October 22, 2025 8:43 PM
@ Bruce, ALL,
Hopefully not like the Microsoft Chip.
Hopefully people remember the controversy of the MicroSoft Quantum Chip “Majorana 1” back in Feb/March this year,
‘https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/quantum-computing/microsofts-latest-quantum-computing-claims-have-been-named-unreliable-by-scientists
And how it quickly generated skepticism by quite a few acknowledged experts (which started with claims of lack of peer review and went down hill from there).
Well Google has apparently made a new quantum chip,
Our Quantum Echoes algorithm is a big step toward real-world applications for quantum computing :
Our Willow quantum chip demonstrates the first-ever algorithm to achieve verifiable quantum advantage on hardware.
https://blog.google/technology/research/quantum-echoes-willow-verifiable-quantum-advantage/
I’m going to have to read the paper it refrences,
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6.pdf
A couple of times again and mull it over some more[1].
However it does look interesting.
Back last year the team working on Willow produced some interesting results on “error correction” which has potential benefits outside of just Quantum Computing.
In the same way what has made me curious about this announcement is,
“We send a carefully crafted signal into our quantum system (qubits on Willow chip), perturb one qubit, then precisely reverse the signal’s evolution to listen for the “echo” that comes back.
This quantum echo is special because it gets amplified by constructive interference — a phenomenon where quantum waves add up to become stronger. This makes our measurement incredibly sensitive.”
This likewise can be seen to potentially have benefits outside of Quantum Computing.
[1] Because this sort of Quantum “C” of Computing, does not “grab my attention like the other “C” of Cryptographic systems for “Quantum Key Distribution”(QKD). Something that the Chinese have got to the point where the use of satellites is working sufficiently well to be usable to securely send OTP keys from land to a submarine at sea.
However,
Clive Robinson • October 23, 2025 4:54 AM
@ fib,
I hope you are well.
With regards the New Scientist article you link to, it is unfortunately “behind a pay wall” these days which is why I stopped reading it (I used to have a sub to the printed version but stopped it when they put up the paywall in protest).
Whilst reading the article would be nice, Copyright prevents that.
However New Scientist Copyright does not cover the URL to the actual original paper the article is about.
The URL –except possibly in Australia– falls under “fair use”.
Can you post the URL?
Clive Robinson • October 23, 2025 6:06 PM
@ Bruce, ALL,
As a sort of follow on from the thread before this one on Unencrypted Satellite down links, we can add,
“SpaceX disables 2,500 Starlink terminals allegedly used by Asian scam centers :
SpaceX said it disabled over 2,500 Starlink terminals suspected of being used by scammers in Myanmar. Lauren Dreyer, vice president of Starlink business operations, described the action in an X post last night after reports that Myanmar’s military shut down a major scam operation.“
As the article notes the Myanmar Government does not “officiall allow” the use of Starlink.
However the government is a somewhat brutal military dictatorship, and as we all should know by now the one thing such governments leaderships love is “cash from criminals”.
Which might account for why there are so many Chinese Criminals there with probable links to the triads and thus drugs, enslaving people from other nations to be “Internet scammers”.
There is also a long running civil war for getting rid of the dictatorship which makes life difficult for many and we certainly know the CIA were and still are active in adjoining Thailand.
Which makes life somewhat interesting for Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Interestingly it does not appear to have got through to those making comments on the ARS Technica site, that Elon Musk and his organisations by US Law are obligated to do as the US Government indicates in various ways. That is the US has an “exceptionalism viewpoint” that US writ applies across the globe superseding any other Nations Laws and Regulations.
So it begs the question,
“What is the US Gov or some of it’s entities/agencies[1] upto in Myanmar?”
As using Starlink as the comms system works as well for “US Assets on the Ground” as well as it does for the Myanmar Government protected Criminal Gangs”. Whilst also bypassing any “Great Firewalls” or similar “National Information Control” system.
[1] As we know at the very least the CIA is fond of using the Internet to communicate with their agents/spys and NOCs in hostile foreign nations etc[2]. The theory being that the use of the Internet is “normal” in most places these days. So “US Assets on the ground” will mostly not “stand out” but hopefully “blend in” with the general population.
[2] Sadly it did not work a few years back with China and Iran finding then exploiting the CIA system. With the consequence of rounding up the assets. And in China’s case having them executed infront of work colleagues etc as an example to others,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932012_killing_of_CIA_sources_in_China
lurker • October 23, 2025 7:17 PM
@Clive Robinson
So somebody got offside with one of the generals, who marched in and closed down the scam farm. With no paying traffic thru those terminals, and who knows where they might be redeployed, Elon’s best bet may have been to brick them from this end
Clive Robinson • October 23, 2025 9:22 PM
@ lurker,
With regards,
“So somebody got offside with one of the generals, who marched in and closed down the scam farm.”
The most likely cause for that is a “turf war” amongst the generals.
It’s like with all Mafia type setups where “protection money” is payed. You are not actually getting “protection” just “paying extortion”.
The implication of this is actually Elon would keep getting his money.
Because the scammers if they are “seasoned” would have thought about “continuity measures” and have “recovery plans” in place. That would probably involve “relocation out of area” to somewhere outside of any given Generals turf.
Also consider the fact that it’s in Elon’s interests not to allow “unlawful use” because he has clearly been a target for the SEC and other US Agencies on a “Trophy Scalp hunt” before. And let’s just say the current executive is sufficiently volatile that Elon needs to think Tornado Alley style “head down”.
Thus I don’t think “allowing” unlawful use in Myanmar was Elon’s idea, but a US agency “string pull”.
The trouble is I don’t have information on Starlinks operations in other parts of the world, to make a sufficiently qualified comparative call.
Clive Robinson • October 23, 2025 10:19 PM
How good hobby AI?
We are repeatedly told that AI is getting more realistic but how good is it?
What about old fashioned faking with lip-sync video editing?
How do they vi with each other?
Especially when not done by professionals with lots of funding and high end equipment etc…
Watch,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_wK8Z_Ek87c
And try to guess which it is?
But also ask yourself what would your parents or grand parents think?
Then think about what it actually will mean when you can nolonger tell the real from even home hobby fakes.
At which point you,
“Won’t own anything, not even your mind”
Will you be “happy” I guess that will depend on the level of delusion.
Remember one thing though,
“The best way to sell a lie, is to tell the verifiable truth.”
Winter • October 24, 2025 6:11 AM
@lurker, Clive
The most likely cause for that is a “turf war” amongst the generals.
Rumors have it the Chinese government gave Myanmar some names to arrest. And so they did.
‘https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/10/23/spacex_starlink_myanmar/#c_5167075
In context, there was an actual war between Myanmar and Thailand that was officially about some historical sites, but did involve these Myanmar scam farms. It also lead to some kerfuffle inside Thai politics.
The border war with Thailand did not go particularly well for Myanmar, so there might be some consequences there too.
Clive Robinson • October 24, 2025 2:58 PM
@ Winter, lurker,
You note,
“The border war with Thailand did not go particularly well for Myanmar”
Actually not very surprising. It was Burma untill the 1990’s and let us just say that although the population is equivalent to a number of European nations, the Myanma junta troops are not exactly experienced at fighting troops trained in “military combat”. They were doing fairly badly untill very recently when the Chinese sent in “gifts and advisors” etc which in the past four weeks has changed their “combat effectiveness” quite significantly,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c051m0jn392o
Prior to this they were mostly more along the lines of largish thuggish highly corrupt units against very small groups like families or individuals who are not armed or violent.
The recent anti Scam operation was almost certainly at the behest of the Chinese. It raided 250 places and arrested 2000 individuals, and was not really covered by western media, but others,
It’s highly likely that the Chinese Advisors will not be going home “any time soon” if ever… I suspect Chinese people will shall we say be encouraged to migrate southwards.
I guess we will find out by the end of the year.
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
cls • October 17, 2025 6:07 PM
Interesting article about learning the solution to K4, the 4th and final puzzle of the CIAs Kryptos sculpture.
2 researchers learned the solution via human engineering, looking through archives at the Smithsonian.
http s://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/science/kryptos-cia-solution-sanborn-auction.html
But, that doesn’t solve the puzzle, the cryptography is still not deciphered.
fractured quote from the article
Elonka Dunin, a game designer who helps lead the most active online discussion about Kryptos, said in an interview that she hoped the text didn’t get out. But for true lovers of cryptographic skill, she said, the real challenge is not having the answer but knowing how to get there. “That’s the exciting part for me,”…