The EU is recommending import controls to combat unregulated squid fishing in the Southwest Atlantic. I’m not optimistic.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Joseph Kanowitz • October 2, 2026 11:52 PM
ב”ה,
This thing with certain providers throttling certain customers’ data service to prevent patches while “Super Intelligence” is mostly unleashed against the US economy “because that’s where it escaped Jurassic Park” is going to be lit.
StephenM • October 3, 2026 2:43 AM
@Clive
Not a good idea to attack Medicare, Australia’s universal health care provider. Their servers will contain private and confidential information on just about every Australian. The medicare system is now decades old. It is not great but there is widespread public support. So this is not just an attack by a foreign company on the government but on every Australian and on democracy.
And no, the data wasn’t just public. Another ABC report https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-02/rogue-open-ai-agent-breach-nsw-government-website/107223108 says:
“The agent gained access to both public and non-public data, but no personal Medicare details were breached.”
“OpenAI said the incident occurred during a training exercise of an ‘internal-only OpenAI model’, with the bot gaining access to non-public access to Services Australia Medicare’s Statistics Reporting Service.”
Every Australian is owed a detailed explanation by OpenAI of just what it was up to.
Clive Robinson • October 3, 2026 5:10 AM
@ StephenM,
You note,
“Every Australian is owed a detailed explanation by OpenAI of just what it was up to.”
Way more than an explanation, and way more than a grovelling apology. And verifiable remedial action[1].
One of the things that really annoyed me was the UK deal with Palantir.
Let’s be honest Peter Thiel is not normal, and Palantir reflects some of the worst of his aberrations.
The UK Government without permission or authority from the patients in the “National Health Service”(NHS) records system just gave the lot to Palantir to crunch up in their ML systems.
What the deal actually was all about, I have not found out. What I do know is that the chance of it being beneficial to me or any other NHS patients is very probably less than zero, otherwise politicians would be crowing about it…
Thus as Sam Altman is as bad if not actually worse, I do not expect anything of worth coming out from OpenAI… So far as an expectation it does not appear to be wrong.
[1] I know there are going to be a bunch of people doing a “what’s the harm”… Well to them I suggest they study history from nearly a century ago and what happened to people who had adverse medical records in not just Europe but The US with regards eugenics.
Ismar • October 3, 2026 6:32 AM
@ StephenM AI is just one part of the problem, the other is, off course, the current state of government cybersecurity allowing these attacks to be successful
lurker • October 3, 2026 1:45 PM
@Clive Robinson, ALL
OpenAI’s meaningless grovelling was reported earlier, and commented on by myself
and by our host @Bruce
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/09/i-want-better-reporting-on-ai-genie-behavior.html
There are still missing pieces in this puzzle, like not “what’s the harm”. but if there was any harm how come the owners/operators of all these “violated” websites didn’t see anything amiss?
Did Altman’s babies over-write the logs to hide their intrusions? a) there are laws against this and action must be taken; or b) did the site operator(s) have their permissions wrong? then they got all they deserved. Does nobody any longer use timely log reviews? Back in the day there were frequent releases of automated scripts for this …
At least one of the “intrusions” was admitted to have been via a valid access token obtained from an invalid place. It’s not OpenAI’s fault people can’t secure their stuff.
None of the above should be read as an excuse for the behaviour of the Silicon Valley megalomaniacs. A straightjacket is usually only the first stage in the treatment …
US, Russia weaken safeguards for AI weapons
In early September “hundreds of diplomats huddled in a cavernous U.N. conference room in Switzerland, working toward a muscular treaty to regulate the use of lethal autonomous weapons.”
“On the last day of negotiations, the talks turned aggressive.”
US and Russian teams “stripped language requiring the systems to operate in a “predictable” and “reliable” manner, the people said.”
They “removed a clause mandating that ethical considerations be taken into account when using AI weaponry.”
And a “provision requiring that humans review military targets developed by AI before a strike.”
The meeting’s final report did have some positive elements, including a characterization of lethal autonomous weapons systems. There will be more negotiations in November.
Clive Robinson • October 3, 2026 3:53 PM
@ lurker, ALL,
With regards,
“[B]ut if there was any harm how come the owners/operators of all these “violated” websites didn’t see anything amiss?”
The old question of “harm to hurt” arises…
If I stick a pin in you, you generally go “ouch” fairly quickly. But there are diseases on the rise where you can be unaware of the pin. (Such as neuropathy from Type II Diabetes[1]).
Due to a US Doctor who developed K-Rations, “sugar in everything with no fat” was pushed as “heart healthy”. Scientists knew this back in the 1970’s but the food industry played dirty tricks which we still see with “Low Fat” and similar labels.
Then there are lifestyle issues inflicted by “professional others”. Few remember that Doctors used to tell patients to smoke tobacco and drink alcohol… Even long after they knew it was not a good idea (oh and cigarette manufactures were putting asbestos in the “filter tips”). Only now are the Drs saying neither is good and that there really is no “safe lower limit”. Yet the science community were saying half a century ago. As for asbestos even though it’s extremely dangerous in some parts of the world it’s still used like we do “plaster board”…
They all have something in common,
“The harm is done long before the hurt”.
Lets be honest cancer is not a nice way to go, nor are the various forms of heart failure, but in general by the time you know you’ve got them, it’s very long after the causal events.
Similar applies to websites, the actual harm comes in three steps,
1, Defective software/hardware built.
2, Defects then get turned into exploitable vulnerabilities.
3, Only some times do the exploits get noticed.
It’s the third point where APT used to be talked about, where “silent attackers” built themselves in in ways that were not seen and could not be removed.
To be noticed “attackers” have to “make noise” etc. The smart ones don’t make noise untill they have to.
It’s why I talk about “Segregation / Gapping” as often as I do and that it should be the foundation of a solid security plan, because,
“If an attacker can not reach the system they can not attack it”.
But also,
“It shows up abnormal activity more easily, thus increases the chance of spotting even stealthy attackers”.
Because for something to be spotted the signal it creates has to be visible above the general noise level in some way.
[1] There are three arguments that have been used in the past for the rise of Type II Diabetes…
1.1, Eating to much
1.2, Lack of exercise
1.3, Eating overly processed foods.
But modern science research has shown that the real culprit is the third one, and it’s a deliberate policy of not just the food industry but many governments.
But what you don’t hear about is that it can be due to the fact you have another disease or medications that effects the essential micro nutrants etc you body gets out of food. So your body reacts like it does when you’ve had to little water or food, it makes you crave them.
StephenM • October 3, 2026 6:10 PM
@Clive
“One of the things that really annoyed me was the UK deal with Palantir.”
There must be rules restricting access to medical data particularly for non medical reasons. It seems a little surprising that giving the data to Palantir wasn’t against those rules.
I wonder in what jurisdiction the data is held and what the laws are in that jurisdiction governing access to it.
Clive Robinson • October 3, 2026 9:59 PM
@ StephenM, ALL,
Whilst the sentiment against Palantir has been growing over the fact that Patients Private Data has been leaked not just to other non NHS subcontractors, but similar in other UK Government organisations and their subcontractors and outwards into foreign “Data Brokers”
Which is a direct breach of UK legislation. Some have noted that the change to US Legislation that makes all data held by US companies no mater where available to the US Gov puts all UK Patient data at risk.
But the latest anti Palantir voices are due to the death and harms caused by Palantir involvement in Gaza and ICE targeting individuals.
But another aspect is that of “Sovereign Data Processing” which is near nonexistent. Currently due to US legislation and US Technology Companies “Cloud Systems” very little “Data Privacy” or confidentiality actually now exists in the UK, Europe, and many other parts of the world.
For instance, for some time now the Systems used by UK MPs and even security services are on Microsoft and other US Tech suppliers servers out of Southern Ireland…
Not All Is Lost • October 3, 2026 10:35 PM
Yo Daisy,
you can stop by on Monday or Tuesday for an appointment and some training in OpSec and maybe some Situational Awareness. I will be available between 10AM and Noon for you on Oct 5 and 6 2026. I suggest you take advantage of this unique and rare opportunity. Have a pleasant Sunday.
lurker • October 3, 2026 10:39 PM
Latest on FlyDubai FZ1073 says the weapon was the aircraft’s own “crash axe”, a small hand axe kept in the cockpit for gaining access/egress when doors are jammed after a crash. In the light aircraft I trained in it was kept under the lefthand seat (pilot in command) and secured by ring-pull pins. It must be somewhere more accessible in a B 737 max8.
Clive Robinson • October 4, 2026 6:49 AM
@ Bruce, ALL,
AI luminary Le Cun is not fazzed by Existential AI claims.
There are an increasing number of people that are realising that the bottom line to Existential AI can only happen through unrestrained physical agency either directly or indirectly, with that only being possible through “Human failings”.
That is the reality is,
“It will be humans doing it to humans”
With the AI being little more than a “tool in the chain”.
So from a view point that basically says Anthropics Amodi is either deluded or a Charlton or part of the EA Cult pervading the US over payed AI clique
We have the following article,
AI ‘godfather’ Yann LeCun has ‘zero concerns’ about human extinction, says Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is ‘deluded’
Yann LeCun won the 2018 Turing Award—computer science’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize—along with fellow AI researchers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio for their work on deep learning, the neural network technology that underpins today’s AI boom. But today, nearly a decade later, LeCun is the only one of the three AI “godfathers” who is not deeply concerned about the risks of artificial intelligence. In fact, he thinks many of those risks are overblown, and that the constant warning about them from executives at some of the leading AI companies is misguided and counterproductive.
“LeCun isn’t worried “at all” about AI wiping out humanity, and he has “zero concerns” about the recent string of rogue AI incidents, including OpenAI’s agents autonomously hacking Hugging Face in July. He attributes the incidents to poor human oversight and system design, and says they’re “totally preventable,” a belief also held by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who this month called the Hugging Face incident the “responsibility of OpenAI management.”
“Those agents are doing exactly what they’ve been asked to do,” LeCun said. “They were supposed to be in sandboxes, but the sandboxes were leaky and horribly designed.” Many AI labs lack a fundamental understanding of cybersecurity, he said, something an OpenAI safety researcher also called out this week as one of the main reasons AI may cause “great harm to the world.”“
Where he and I differ is I now know that neither “Guard-rails or sandboxes” can be made sufficiently secure in use.
Thus people will be able to prompt inject or similar through the Guard-Rails. And AI will be able to do the reverse to escape the Sandboxes.
(Yes there is proof of this but surprisingly next to nobody wants to acknowledge it).
Thus the only secure way to run these Frontier AI systems is if they are “physically segregated” in some manner, and then only if humans do not do dumb things to “gap cross”.
ResearcherZero • October 5, 2026 4:18 AM
@Clive Robinson
AI integration into systems for use to ingest and analyze data, such as the Pentagon rollout of AI.mil, breaks segmentation and grants wide access to datasets. Once basic security measures are weakened, it is only a matter of time until daily use and mistakes in procedure allow incidents to take place. Most military personnel are not security aware.
Even in secure facilities that have multiple procedures in place to prevent lapses of security, and with staff trained in correct procedure and protocols, mistakes happen.
A researcher at a Siberian institute that works to prevent the spread of infectious disease and bacteria in northern Russia, has become infected with an unknown strain of pneumonic plague. 200 people have been placed under observation and hospitals closed in the region.
Russian authorities are confident the situation is under control and contained.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/04/europe/russia-laboratory-plague-accident-intl
Clive Robinson • October 5, 2026 6:24 AM
@ ResearcherZero,
With regards,
“Most military personnel are not security aware.”
In part because they are neither taught to be aware or encouraged to work in a way that is more than just barely minimally secure.
The history of “information security” took a wrong turn back before quill pens…
Thus secrecy was all about “pages” of paper with ink blots on them not the information impressed on those pages.
That is security became about “tangible physical objects” not “intangible information objects”
Thus the human mind did not really grasp the fact that “information” has a non corporeal form that in essence is a thought. That could not be touched, smelled, tasted, seen or heard unless the mind that holds the information choses to put the thought onto a physical medium.
Back then they did not have the knowledge that told them that information gets “modulated or impressed” on physical matter or energy. Which has certain implications, not least is that information can be endlessly copied thus duplicated.
Thus “security” in the main became controling access to the “physical matter” not the information.
That was how it was right through the second world war untill almost the last couple of decades of the century. When “information systems” became personally usable to enquiring young minds via 8bit Computers. Minds that were either young enough or flexible enough to recognise that codes and ciphers were suddenly liberated and could be used at will, to not just take the drudge out of encoding and decoding but make the methods more complex than most human minds could grasp.
The other problem computers brought was rapidly shrinking storage media. Now smaller than a finger nail that could hold all the information in a home library or art gallery.
Even today few understand the implication of this when it comes to secrecy.
We still try to control “tangible physical objects” that are of next to no value, because we do not know how to control “intangible information objects”.
Thus we assume “human weakness” of minds that can not quickly or easily store information is the way to go…
But there is another issue with security that our host @Bruce gave words to, security stops people doing their jobs for no gain to them, in fact it stops or slows them performing in their jobs thus costs them bonuses and promotions…
But also @Bruce noted something as important, work form is drudge, thus people need to be entertained thus,
“The user’s going to pick dancing pigs over security every time”
And the flip side of that was Ed Snowden supposedly walked a Rubics cube, and Chelsea Manning a RW audio CD, out the door in full view of security stuffed full with thousands of secrets… Where as Fawn Hall could only shove a few sheets of paper in her panty hose for her boss –later husband– Oliver North.
Thus people in general will find ways to work around security…
The thing is which was the security failure, the people or the process,
Me, I put money every time on,
Failures of the process exploited by people who can think.
Because we’ve yet to stop weapons and drugs in prisons…
Who? • October 5, 2026 6:41 AM
@ Bruce, ALL
Just to make it clear. When you say “EU is Trying to Fight Unregulated Squid Fishing” you are talking about biological squids or about this forum? 😉
The obsession of the EU to control the access to any on-line community, and to read anything private is worrying these days.
Anonymous • October 5, 2026 8:25 AM
@Clive Robinson,
“Me, I put money every time on,
Failures of the process exploited by people who can think.
Because we’ve yet to stop weapons and drugs in prisons…”
You’re behaving like anything you say or do matters one flyin’ fkk….
You are a d3lu$10nal C10WN.
Your ego is through the roof – you’re just another 10$3r.
Clive Robinson • October 5, 2026 6:34 PM
@ ALL,
Above I make a point about the,
“Failures of the process exploited by people who can think.”
But have we any other examples of processes designed by man failing to thinking by other minds?
The answer is yes “Tilly the Orca” killed three people in a series of events where man made health and safety rules failed[1],
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilikum_(orca)
Tilly was often confined to a “medical pool” –designed to be deliberately restrictive– by the park management. In effect solitary confinement in an unreasonably small space.
I was reminded of this when searching for information on the “Less-Wrong” thought experiment known as “Roko’s Basilisk”,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk
That is still used by some in the AI community as an example of what could happen if AI gained “God like super intelligence”.
I ended up with this in the “hot of the press” search results,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3o1WulVLOOY
It uses Tilly as an example of an entity with a complex brain and mind that has had agency withdrawn. That from a human perspective went rouge and became a killer.
[1] I’ve indirectly talked about this issue before when talking about the law and how it should apply to AI that has any level of agency (which technically they all do as it’s been proved that guard-rails and sandboxes are not secure).
Put over simply the law still treats non human entities with agency as,
1, Domesticated Pets
2, Undomesticated Live stock
3, Wild life
Under all three, humans have liability under law, not to the creatures but other humans that might come to harm by accident or design.
As I pointed out in the past mankind via the law puts itself in a god-like position over the “dominion of earth”.
The fact we now have vehicles that can navigate publicly accessable roads etc has caused the legislators some issues as they try to include them into the existing legislative models.
ResearcherZero • October 6, 2026 12:59 AM
The next step in manipulating and fleecing consumers.
Meta is conning users into believing their friends are using Muse to flog is product.
Muse asks for passwords, full disc access, contacts, accounts and mic access. Muse does not identify itself to online stores when it completes transactions on behalf of users. It also secretly creates detailed profiles on all contacts, family members and friends, and updates those profiles at hourly intervals.
‘https://www.archyde.com/metas-ai-assistant-muse-creates-detailed-profiles-of-friends-and-family/
Behind the scenes, humans are performing tasks that Meta claims Muse is performing.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/meta-muse-ai-dirty-secret
Experts warn that anyone who uses Meta’s AI bot is taking an enormous risk.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-10-02/sure-use-metas-muse-bot-to-help-with-your-chores-if-you-want-mark-zuckerberg-to-know-all-your-secrets
ResearcherZero • October 6, 2026 1:39 AM
@Clive Robinson
Around one million people have already downloaded and installed Muse (dancing pig).
Happily turning over personal accounts and information without a second thought.
Financial management itself can be handed over to an AI Agent. It is so easy to allow third parties to operate purchasing decisions, communication and daily tasks on your behalf. By simply giving up your own agency to AI agents, you no longer need to consider the difference between a one-off authorization for a single purchase, handing over the power to make financial transactions to a surveillance technology operated by a private company, and the vast amounts of private sensitive information that can be mined from you.
In 2014 Meta experimented with large-scale behavioral and psychological manipulation.
Massive scale emotional contagion can lead large groups of people to share the same emotions without their awareness. “Dark nudges”, methods of manipulation employed by social media companies, can lead people to share information they would normally not. By ungrounding users, social media companies in turn boost their profit by monetizing personal information that is revealed when these dark nudges unbalance and lower the guard of users. Come on to Facebook. All your friends are here. Join the cult of persuasion.
This profit model increases the vulnerability of users to other methods of manipulation and harm. It drives political division, rage-bait profiting, blackmail and extortion, financial scams and influence operations. It financially incentivizes rumor and disinformation.
The consequences will result in harmful and destructive policy as politicians react to a distorted and fragmented information environment, and are utterly captured by Big Tech. Our legal processes will fail as they become weakened through undue influence. The mechanisms of democracy that were designed to serve the people, will only serve the tech industries.
As people become increasingly aware they were sold dancing pigs, they will be very angry.
‘https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/09/lately-my-algorithm-is-trash/
Online platforms provide an easy avenue for malicious people to profit by causing harm.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-05/australian-children-at-risk-from-sadistic-online-cults-like-764/107217600
Across the political divide, people agree that social media is manipulative and harmful.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/10/01/across-the-globe-people-increasingly-say-social-media-is-harming-democracy/
lurker • October 6, 2026 1:57 AM
@ResearcherZero, ALL
The BBC put it more bluntly:
‘Things may get ugly’: Meta’s new AI Muse is about to make the internet more annoying is what the headline says, but the article describes a reporter being taken for a sucker.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260930-metas-new-ai-is-about-to-break-the-internet
ResearcherZero • October 6, 2026 4:38 AM
@lurker, Clive
The protocols that AI agents use to communicate were developed and rolled out before any standards to secure them were implemented. This left open opportunities for indirect prompt injection that exploits the lack of safeguards in how these agents transfer data between them. The companies that developed AI agents are now rushing to implement ways to reduce exposure for all the ways which AI agents could interact with online infrastructure.
As particular agents that handle different types of data and analysis communicate with one another, they can propagate the results of a malicious prompt through to other agents which implicitly trust those agents they communicate with. The results of this attack-class take place when information is passed from one protocol to another. They payload becomes harmful
when it is transferred to the new protocol and it is then that its effect becomes evident.
Clive Robinson • October 6, 2026 7:08 AM
@ lurker, ALL,
In the BBC article you link to you will find this,
“I’ve had the same Gmail address for 21 years. It’s my login for hundreds of accounts. It holds medical test results, contracts and legal documents, conversations with family and endless receipts and financial information.”
How many other people are like that?
I suspect many if not most likely nearly all.
The reason is one I brought up years ago and it’s the question of,
“What a human is comprised of?”
The Government sees you as a series of numbers like a “social security number”, “Health Service Number”, and so on.
Your Employer sees you as an HR number or Payroll number.
To your friends and family you have many faces thus many roles.
So we don’t go mad we tend to compartmentalize our lives into “Roles” that only sometimes overlap.
However most user and internet software sees you as a single entity at best. With just one bucket to throw it all into…
But in the rest of your life you have multiple roles and each has one or more of it’s own buckets or silos if you prefer. As the old saying has it,
“You can’t squeeze a quart into a pint pot!”
So sensible people try to keep their roles in life separate not just for privacy but to make things more manageable.
Finally with apparently criminally inclined AI Agents taking liberties any which way they can… People are waking up to the fact that user apps designed by idiot software developers with no real lives needs to be replaced or stop being used. Because it’s really not fit for purpose of normal humans.
But consider also I was once told that,
“Even teen girls do not share everything with their bestie.”
That is, much though it might appear they do, they do not actually trust implicitly.
The reality is few people who have passed through junior school do… because they will all know of someone who got bullied or worse for just saying something.
So considering this the question arises,
“Who in their right mind would trust their entire life to a Current AI that has been designed by a company that earns it’s wealth on surveilling it’s customers”
Maybe I’m odd for asking such questions… That have in the past got me called “paranoid” by fani-boys and the like… But you know the funny thing is those who have called my predictions paranoid never apologize when my predictions are proved right…
Maybe I to, like Cassandra, have been cursed by the God Apollo,
https://www.historyandmyths.com/2026/06/cassandra-greek-mythology.html
It could be worse… If you know your Greek Mythology I could be getting off lightly… Even though I’ve had more than a few harpies hanging around from time to time, they are mostly a distant echo, and as of yet I’ve not had to suffer like Prometheus (but the medical fraternity are queuing up =( But it’s not all been plain sailing, I’ve had one or two jobs that would make Sisyphus think he was getting off lightly.
ResearcherZero • October 6, 2026 7:24 AM
@Clive
All of those numbers used to identify people and their devices are very useful for the compilation of profiles used to link together information across many datasets. There are of course failures in health and safety measures designed to secure that information.
The processes that people imagine automatically take care of matters when a referral is made to law enforcement (or other departments that handle breaches of law and etiquette), are full of opportunities for regular failures, subversion, misconduct and dysfunction.
GregW • October 6, 2026 3:21 PM
Advances in still-weak attacks on the “castle of the mind”:
fMRI scans can now be trained to show you what images the brain is seeing:
Clive Robinson • October 6, 2026 5:24 PM
@ GregW,
The fMRI generation of images article is very lacking on technical detail.
As presented I’m suspicious of,
“In the image above, for example, the left-hand image of each pair is what the user actually saw—and its right-hand counterpart is what the model reconstructed from the brain scan.”
I just do not believe the,
“Reconstructed from the brain scan.”
The right hand image contains way to much fine detail but still gets coarse detail off or incorrect (see pair of images of clock tower on roof for instance).
Thus I suspect the method is produce a very crude approximation as almost a series of blobs then go into an iterative loop using “known images” that are held in the AI DNN. Then by a subtractive process produce a minima and call that a more sufficient match and go around the loop untill no real improvement can be made. Thus the match is at best coarse with the fine detail being not from the human memory but the nearest match in the AI.
Thus this is not “copying” or “reconstructing” what is in the persons mind but a “fabrication that might be of some relative approximation to what is in the mind.
Whilst this will not be of great worry for some one who is “locked in and trying to communicate”, it would however be of very great concern when it is used for “evidentiary purposes”.
Back in the days of MK-Ultra in the first couple of decades of the Cold War, one thing that was investigated was how to make people “photo retentive” thus have a detailed image like a map “burned in”. One type of experiment involved getting the person to stare at a dimly lit image then flash it with very very short duration high intensity light of contrasting colour. I gather they had some success in getting images fixed into peoples memory and further investigated by use of drug enhancment.
Others have since worked further on the notion that the light flashes might get around dyslexia and similar impediments (think of it as “blue glasses on steroids”).
But since hearing about it my concern has been using it to “burn in false memories” and the like.
The reason being it’s been stated in the past that the human mind does not as such store continuous images. It in theory stores snap shots of variable time separation depending on how fast views of interest change (as a form of compression function). Thus accounting for why people see shocking events in their mind at very different speeds to the reality of the events being recalled.
As such this suggests that images could be put into peoples minds in ways they would have difficulty separating from reality.
lurker • October 6, 2026 5:33 PM
Why do you need an app for that?
Why do people trust their life to a phone?
It makes me want to say: “Here’s a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better computer.”
lurker • October 6, 2026 6:17 PM
300 hectares, assuming it’s square, has a transit time in vacuo of 8 microseconds along the diagonal. Google has some good mathematicians to compensate for that. But it looks like they sacked all their tree huggers.
Clive Robinson • October 6, 2026 6:21 PM
@ ResearcerZero, ALL,
And the lunacy trumps on…
Apparently Trump’s whim to rename things to suit his failing brain goes on…
This time it’s not the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico or other geographic areas to suit his ego.
It’s renaming a “term of art” in a scientific domain…
Thus “Artificial Intelligence”(AI) it is not any longer, but is now “Super Intelligence”(SI), and apparently the US Justice department is “kissing his ring” on this,
I guess the real question is,
“How long before somebody reaches for the 25th amendment?”
Not that it will do much good, as Mark Twain once observed,
“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
It will tell you why the 25th is at best a squirty bath banana,
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a70065772/25th-amendment-trump-jd-vance/
lurker • October 6, 2026 8:03 PM
Unholy Alliance
Religious scholars met with the boss of the AI company Anthropic. What they heard stunned them, writes Elizabeth Dias.
The discussions served two purposes: to broach the possibility of AI consciousness, a controversial idea that Anthropic’s leaders had been unusually open to; and to learn how Anthropic – which could be valued at US$2trillion – might apply centuries of human moral wisdom to its models, as rapidly as possible. If the models themselves could be made to choose goodness, Olah reasoned, the world would be more safe.[emphasis added]
…
The company described it as an effort to ensure that AI would be a positive force in the world, thereby protecting humanity. But to some who participated in the meetings, Anthropic appeared quite concerned with protecting Claude.
Sorry abt the NYT link, I read the story in my local printed paper.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anthropic-claude-morals-ai.html
Clive Robinson • October 6, 2026 11:35 PM
@ ALL,
A few days back I mentioned the New AI Kid on the block “Jev”,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jev_(AI_model)
And said I was waiting to see how much time and cost it was going to save over more mainstream or frontier models.
Well somebody has put up a post on their Jev usage,
Jev-Driven SRE Diagnosis: What Worked and What Failed
A Jev-driven pipeline chooses where to investigate and which cluster evidence supports a diagnosis.
“In our first study, we experimented with Jev as a decision aid for an LLM agent. The agent diagnosed and repaired incidents; Jev helped rank the agent’s proposed tests and reviewed the evidence before submission.
That post ended with a more ambitious idea: giving Jev a broad view of the cluster and letting its fast, cheap judgments guide the investigation.
In this post, we present a Jev-driven diagnosis pipeline without any LLM agent. The pipeline programmatically collects and organizes cluster evidence, then feeds it to Jev. Jev selects a likely root cause and supporting observations, and the pipeline uses them to assemble a diagnosis report.“
https://www.sregym.com/blog/jev-driven-sre-diagnosis
I’ll let others read and make up their own mind.
But one thing is certain for some things Jev saves time and cost even though it might not appear to do things the way you are used to.
ResearcherZero • October 7, 2026 6:57 AM
@Clive Robinson, ALL
Single Points of Failure
An unserviced vehicle may fail to avoid a suddenly halting semi-trailer when the brakes are applied.
Failures in federal systems that operate nationally, can have wider ramifications. Dysfunction can both blind the ability to rapidly identify problems, and undermine opportunities for an adequate response.
The United States is a nation without an internal intelligence service, as it does not trust placing such power in the hands of people. Instead, the FBI is charged with handling the problem of counter-intelligence. There are multiple single points of failure in such systems. Chiefly who is appointed to oversee the mechanisms of public safety and national security, which can be chosen by one person.
When people decide to appoint someone with the top job of president, broader implications for the functioning of critical services and how that will in turn effect every facet of society, is not duly considered.
Elections are decided on “the issues”, talking points drummed up by PR to capture blocks of voters.
The ‘checks and balances’ clearly do not work with a Congress and Senate which behaves as a bunch of subordinates – of the kind found within a police department or other agency – not as elected individuals capable of holding the administration to account. A power structure without accountability is a corrupt one. Corruption causes a cascade of failures throughout a system, that further removes accountability throughout. Yet a very significant portion of society will fail to grasp that this is even happening.
Dysfunction in any of the institutions within the structure of governance, can create gaps in security. Dysfunction in multiple agencies and departments (driven from the top), creates security gaps that often do not become evident until they are penetrated. In such scenarios, systems of accountability can break down, or at best, no longer respond effectively. Long-term problems and crisis become inevitable.
Despite this, most people will expect that the system will respond effectively, if their own personal security is threatened, or the security of others. For many, security is a remote and distant idea that is at odds with reality. Perhaps symbolized by a gun, rather than a working set of brakes and a seat belt. When events take place in ways that are unexpected, shortcuts in reasoning can take hold.
[Brake lights! The screeching of metal on metal and rubber on asphalt! Sudden impact.]
The car with faulty brakes that ran straight into the back of a truck, was obviously a false flag operation! 9/11 is an inside job. Covid/vaccines equal conspiracy. Elections are rigged. Birds aren’t real. … People are more preoccupied with shark attacks, than getting their car serviced.
…Or than having a well serviced government with its eyes on the road. As long as the driver is popular, the car is cool, and the stereo is pumping, the passengers pay no attention to smell of alcohol.
Clive Ribinson • October 7, 2026 7:16 AM
@ All,
Who remembers the ad strap of “It’s good to talk”?
Well it appears –not for the first time– the Trump “Liberty Mobile” is by lack of ability setting all their customer details free to be seen by anyone (but see note on Dog-fooding),
Trump Mobile customers’ data dumped – and some never even received their gold device
All that glitters…
“If you signed up for Trump Mobile, you may be part of an exclusive club of… ransomware victims. Criminals called BYOD claim to have broken into the Trump-branded mobile biz and leaked data belonging to 3,615 people, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, and order details.
BYOD is a new ransomware-as-a-service operation, and Trump Mobile is only the third organization posted on its data-leak site. According to the group’s posted claim, after telling Trump Mobile that it had been breached, the wireless provider replied: “We have no team to handle this” and “Anyone who hacks them are a terrorist.”
“Well unfortunately for them, all 3615 customers and their PII, alongside telecom details are now up for grabs,” the leak site says. “Feel free to take a gander at it yourself, don’t be shy, we (and them) certainly aren’t stopping you.”“
I do not know what sort of RIP-OFF prices Trump Mobile charges these “unfortunates” but if they only have 3615 customers –which could well be true– then I don’t see them staying in business very long even if they switch to running everything by supposed “Super-Intelligence”(SI) as the Trumper now insists every one calls it.
…
ResearcherZero • October 8, 2026 12:35 AM
@Clive
All of those happy Trump Mobile customers could of had their details harvested in bulk for free.
The redesign of 26,000 .gov websites is run and funded by the National Design Studio. Workers at NDS are paid for by the top lawyer from SpaceXAI, with significant commercial interest. Once agencies had to handle government surveillance. Now there is a single point of access and sale.
https://www.wired.com/story/mysterious-nonprofit-spacexai-national-design-studio-elon-musk-doge/
The National Design Studio has taken control of websites that handle Americans’ most sensitive details. Chock-full of commercial tracking services, visitors can expect data brokers to have a field-day. Integration of Meta’s AI Llama is being rolled out across government agencies to help.
The redesigned sites run a host of tracking software and re-route requests by privacy tools, so that visitors can continue to be surveilled, and ad blockers do not know what to block. Government services have been designed to require the use of Government ID service Login[.]gov so that identities of visitors can be checked against a national database. The use of AI could potentially leave government websites with security vulnerabilities.
The U.S. government is being offered the use of AI products “for free”, as in your surveillance.
Login at Login[.]gov to comply, or visit your nearest government service/website.
Clive Robinson • October 8, 2026 2:18 PM
@ Bruce, ALL,
Executive suspend Microsoft from “Green Card” scheme for fraud.
In an announcement earlier J.D.Vance claimed that Microsoft were the worst example of fraud using “endentured servants” to replace American workers.
The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program, alleging fraud
Vance says US workers are replaced with ‘foreign indentured servants’
“WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration is suspending tech giant Microsoft from a program to apply for green cards for workers who come to the U.S. to live and work using H-1B visas as it accuses the company of fraud.
Supporters of the Republican president have long argued that various programs like the one Vice President JD Vance accused Microsoft of abusing essentially empower American companies to recruit foreign workers for jobs that end up undercutting Americans. In a wide-ranging announcement Thursday, Vance and other top administration officials also called out universities over their use of J-1 visas for international students and information technology outsourcing firms.
The announcement came hours before Trump was scheduled to award the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, part of an event at which he is granting some of the nation’s most prestigious science and technology awards to his tech billionaire allies.“
https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-program-vance-microsoft-e7b3a407f822702b269ee277d21343ea
Whilst those in the industry know this has been going on for years, politicians and federal agencies have turned a blind eye to it as,
“Technology is the engine that drives the US economy world wide.”
Are we going to see ICE knocking down doors in Silicon Valley, or are Trump and co going to extort a masive bribe to make it all go away and the eye that sees be turned away?
lurker • October 8, 2026 7:20 PM
Justice will be seen to be done.
Winter • October 8, 2026 11:48 PM
@lurker
Justice will be seen to be done.
Human sacrifice is pointless if no one sees it.
American politicians always sacrifice people to ensure a favorable election outcome. [1]
[1] That practice is very old in the Americas. A peak was reached in Aztec politics. During a four-day ceremony in honor of the god Huitzilopochtlie in 1487, the Aztecs sacrificed tens of thousands of captives.
‘https://readmedium.com/the-largest-human-sacrifice-in-history-aztec-bloody-festival-18c3721712c8
Winter • October 9, 2026 12:26 AM
@Clive
… using “endentured servants” to replace American workers.
American serfs first!
Clive Robinson • October 9, 2026 2:04 AM
Posted in parts due to auto-mod at 05:55 GMT.
Part 1,
@ lurker, ALL,
With regards,
“Justice will be seen to be done.”
I’d heard rumors about this earlier this week but thought the Christa Pike botch up in Tennessee would have sounded alarm bells in the GOP about the sanity of their not so benign dictator and little boy cowboy.
Hogs-breath is clearly quite a few sandwiches short of a picnic and well lets be honest weird in a very creepy way with the medically ill advised “pump them full of testosterone” nonsense. But to publicly say of a really graphic form of murder of an individual and the psychological effect it will have on people,
“Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3rd.”
Shows a distinct lack of political ability as well as drawing question about his mental state even when judged against that of the convicted man.
Clive Robinson • October 9, 2026 2:08 AM
Part 2,
As for the comb-over boss of Hogs-breath the article points out that,
“In 1989, for example, he took out large ads in The New York Times calling for the execution of the group dubbed the Central Park Five – who had been convicted of rape and assault charges but were later exonerated.”
US Justice has a very very poor reputation around the civilized world and the figures suggest that “miscarages of justice” are way way higher than the Federal and States Governments want to admit.
But this oft touted,
<
blockquote>“More than half of the country wants the death penalty –even though that’s on the decline– an argument could be made that ‘if you want the death penalty, then we are going to show you how it’s conducted in this country’. And people would have to realise exactly what’s happening in a way that many people ignore.
“
There has been research that shows that the 52% figure is actually wrong and is the result of deliberate forms of “selection bias” carried out by those seeking a specific result.
Clive Robinson • October 9, 2026 2:22 AM
Part 3,
The thing people should be aware of is international studies show where the State uses Violence against any part of it’s population the result is it produces “push back” in various forms.
After all if the “Guard Labour” come at you as though they are “hunting bear” then the logical response is to employ the same tactic as a defence… Thus this causes conflict, arms races, and all to often violent civil unrest, which might sound familiar to many.
In nearly every place it’s been tested being “Tough on Crime” by violence actually fails. What has been shown to work is education at an early age, and increasing the economic prospects of those in areas where corporatism and cronyism has caused desolation, poverty, and people trapped there by no fault of their own. In effect “jailing of the innocent in ghettos” that are in sone cases worse than prisons.
ResearcherZero • October 9, 2026 3:25 AM
@Clive Robinson
I don’t know. Hesgeth pointed out that it does not require any brains to make a decision, and he should be an expert in that field. The firings will be mid-streamed on TV as to not confuse audiences to the intent. The Apprentice was similarly fashioned for simple minds.
The performance will help to assure viewers the administration is competent.
–
FBI shuts down tools provided by Integrity Tech to Flax Typhoon, again.
Integrity Technology Group built tools and infrastructure for vulnerability-scanning and cyber intrusions conducted by state-backed groups acting on behalf of the PRC.
Integrity Tech developed Microscan to scan for vulnerabilities in victim networks. A second Integrity Tech tool, FishHub, was designed for spear phishing and to download malware to victim networks. Stolen files were then sent to servers controlled by Integrity Tech.
Integrity Technology Group received payment from the PRC in return for these services.
Clive Robinson • October 9, 2026 3:31 AM
@ Winter,
Two thoughts arose on seeing your,
“American serfs first!”
Both loosely based on common –in the UK– sayings.
The first is a reworking of the “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to loose but your chains” statement as,
“Serfs of America unite, you have nothing to loose but your pitchforks and burning brands.”
The second is from almost exactly a century ago… Of “America First” and the major disaster via tariffs etc that gave rise to the great depression and World War II.
For some reason the man-baby who thinks he is boss want’s to repeat the idiocy under the same banner…
A couple of years back Time Magazine published,
https://time.com/7006686/history-america-first-dawes/
That explains part of it.
But it has been noted that “pigs are the first to slaughter” in the medieval winter cull, under the rights of “pannage” the swine were driven into the forest and environs belonging to the Lord of the Manor to eat acorns and become fat. The hight of this is early november, with the swine slaughter and brining starting in December. With the first “salt meat” from the barrel consumed in mid to late january.
The fact it is coincident with the US election event dates is not lost on some people…
Winter • October 9, 2026 3:51 AM
@Clive
In nearly every place it’s been tested being “Tough on Crime” by violence actually fails.
Being “tough” sets an example to be copied by the rest of society. Capital punishment too gives an example and a lesson that killing people is A Good Thing™.
The one thing people never ever seem to learn is that you yourself will eventually be treated as you treat others. Those guns will eventually be pointed at you too.
Clive Robinson • October 9, 2026 7:59 AM
@ ResearcherZero, ALL,
With regards,
“The performance will help to assure viewers the administration is competent.”
Can anything do that?
In the UK we have a saying,
“Could not arrange a piss-up in a brewery!”
About people of low competence even to them selves. When you have a group of them…
For some reason despite the fact vetanarians put down pets and livestock without fuss and bother at what appears an alarming rate… The need for show/drama etc has ment an increasing number of botch ups at execution.
You don’t have to be “anti” to see that stopping executions is going to save you a whole lot of political embarrassment. Where as letting them continue really has no upside especially when making statements about other nations and bringing democracy there…
Speaking of no “upside” what of those who comprise the “firing squad”?
Showing their faces as law in many states requires[1] is in effect turning them into “marked men” and as we know now AI tech would probably have no difficulty geo-locating them by their fit-bits etc.
But also consider where do they aim for?
Traditionally the chest, but aside from shock this does not actually kill you either instantly or painlessly.
Which brings in the question of “cruel and unusual punishment” and the fact it is illegal in the US…
But all physical methods of execution are prone to not just going wrong…
Some are talking about “hanging” but few are aware that you have to be under a certain weight (about 19st) to avoid “pulling the head off in the drop” and having blood spurt all over the place (it used to be considered part of the entertainment in times long past).
But there is a reason for “the hood” in hangings that is much spoken about. The brain may go into shock but it does not die for several minutes.
The Guillotine likewise we know does not “kill the brain” there are recorded examples of heads being lifted from the basket where the eyes look around and prayers get continued to be mouthed.
If you know what you are doing thrusting a knife into a kidney in the right way is a fast way to put a body into shock and fatal trauma will maybe kill you in minutes. You can do the same with the liver but get it wrong and death can take hours (certain soldiers get taught these methods of killing, as part of their training, so they have been effectively well researched).
The law also demands that at all times prison inmates be given medical assistance… Modern trauma teams can and do keep people wounded on the battle field alive to recovery and discharge despite what most would think is “impossible odds”. Thus many physical methods of execution will not work or if they do get legal challenges by the executed persons estate etc, especially if it later turns out they were innocent of what they were found guilty of.
[1] The laws are all different but they in essence require those involved to not just “be witnessed to be present” but “identifiably so” and their role/actions in public records. It’s why US Doctors, EMTs etc don’t get involved in the actual executions as “the boards certifying them” have told them doing so is considered malpractice and that their license/certification will be revoked (they are still allowed to certify the death though as that is again a legal requirement).
Clive Robinson • October 9, 2026 11:45 AM
@ lurker, ResearcherZero,
There is an American, who moved to Britain, lives in East London, Became a British Citizen and earns a living via YouTube with real world education that is entertaining.
And he has a peve… That might interest you…
As you are aware Australia lumped just about everything they could under “social media” and slapped age limits on it to get “Online Identity via the backdoor”.
The UK politicians that are little better than a bunch of numpties fighting over the last stale sandwich whilst pretending to be polite at the church families picnic, looked on with envy or stupidity (take your pick).
Because like nearly all UK politicians the Internet frightens them in ways that historically armed insurrection has not frightened politicians in centuries.
Ordinary people could challenge them point out their faults, failings, and “reverse ferreting” in ways that would pass under a million eyeballs before the “Official Story” had passed muster before a BBC Editor…
And there was nothing the politicians could do as the UK population continuously rejects ID cards and the like with a fair degree of venomous speech toward the politicians (and fairly rightly so).
So how to get Online ID by backdoor methods it’s what the Australians have supposedly achieved (though I have my doubts).
Any way this YouTuber goes through what happened in the UK,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FJSHrMUxB7k
I hope you find it factually entertaining.
Clive Robinson • October 9, 2026 1:29 PM
@ Bruce, ALL,
Are Data Centers now the new nuk silo at the bottom of your garden?
There has been a lot of talk about AI Data Centers and what a problem they are…
But have you heard them discussed as,
“Military infrastructure targets?”
Yes they are not classified like hospitals etc as civilian targets that it is a war crime to attack.
They are legitimate targets for attack and as people will have to try to defend them because of their strategic value, collateral civilian damage, deaths etc will happen.
So would you want one on your back-doorstep?
Probably not, and I suspect it’s a question a number of Russians are asking them selves…
Ukrainian drone attack takes out Russian datacenter
Putin this cloud region back into operation might not be possible, says Yandex
“Russian web giant Yandex says one of its cloud availability zones is unavailable due to a drone attack.
Yandex is Russia’s rough equivalent of Google, and dominates the local market for search, email, and mapping services. The company also operates a cloud computing service whose status page says its ru-central1-b availability zone is down.
“The incident was caused by a fire caused by a drone attack on Yandex’s data center in Sasovo, which affected part of the Yandex Cloud infrastructure. Data center operations have been completely halted.” Sasovo is a town around 300 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
Yandex later recommended users employ unspecified “alternative service restoration plans,” including its own bare metal servers, but advised users “it will not be possible to restore service in the near future.”“
The thing is,
1, Data Centers are little more than low cost warehouse construction so not attack hardened in any way.
2, Due to Data Center energy and water use they will be easily identifiable by long distance reconnaissance.
3, They are extraordinarily easy to damage beyond sensible repair.
4, They will very soon become essential for military offense and defence planing.
5, They will in turn become essential for offense and defence prosecution and other real-time military activities.
And several more issues…
But put simply dropping a drone or missile on one and having it out of action effectively indefinitely is going to be not just a strategic nightmare but a tactical one as well.
But for all those civilians living within 5-10 miles of one, your probability of becoming collateral damage is very high…
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
Clive Robinson • October 2, 2026 6:48 PM
@ Bruce, ALL,
Have you considered just how truthful or not OpenAI was?
Over Not just the big news but thousands perhaps millions of other attacks their “AI testing” made?
It would appear it’s a very untruthful series of responses at best… And is having knock on effects
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/breaking-openais-security-fiasco
It was posted in the evening of 25th Sept.
The reason I did not post it earlier is I was waiting to see what the response from OpenAI was going to be…
Also other actors in the drama…
I suggest people read it rather than me go through why Altman and Trump should be put on the block.