Ouch https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/modified-power-banks-routers-and-usb-ports-i-soon-leaks-reveal-disguised-chinese-spy-tools-2507385-2024-02-26
Why do we allow any Chinese electronics to escape China?

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Here's an interesting review:


Framework Laptop 16 review: the ultimate in modular PCs
wrote:

Packed with swappable parts including the keyboard, ports and graphics card, this machine is unique...

A good idea?

IT is really what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Oh dear.
OpenAI being sued over its Microsoft links

Oh dear.
OpenAI being sued over its Microsoft links

Elon just has the sh##s because he got left behind. LOL

This is bad:
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa24-060b

that a cyber threat actor may be able to gain root-level persistence despite issuing factory resets
Based upon the authoring organizations’ observations during incident response activities and available industry reporting, as supplemented by CISA’s research findings, the authoring organizations recommend that the safest course of action for network defenders is to assume a sophisticated threat actor may deploy rootkit level persistence on a device that has been reset and lay dormant for an arbitrary amount of time. For example, as outlined in PRC State-Sponsored Actors Compromise and Maintain Persistent Access to U.S. Critical Infrastructure), sophisticated actors may remain silent on compromised networks for long periods.

It's now the world's weakest link, but 2 countries are fighting for control of it.

The cloud under the sea.

It's now the world's weakest link, but 2 countries are fighting for control of it.

It is shocking that entire continents like Australia are connected to submarine cables at just a few publicly known points. One would expect such information to be kept secret. So that potential attackers have to do extensive research into, what counterintelligence might notice.

During the Cold War, the major powers shied away from shooting at each other. Today they don't seem to have any problems destroying submarine infrastructure. This gives rise to fears of the worst possible escalation. Submarine cables, power cables, gas and oil pipelines. There are several subsea tunnels for highways and railways in the Baltic Sea. We install massive Wind power capacities far offshore out of view from the coastlines.

It's shocking that after the Nordstream pipeline was blown up, it still wasn't possible to clearly determine who was responsible because even this small inland sea cannot be monitored around the clock. Send some ships, transponders off, explosives planted, Boom. Who's the culprit? Perfect deniability.

What could possibly go wrong with this?
This ‘weapon’ can wipe the AI slate clean

The White House is also concerned about AI being used by malicious actors to develop

Artificial intelligence (AI), like other technologies such as gene editing and nuclear energy, can be used for both good and bad purposes. With so much money and effort being poured into developing AI at such a fast rate, there are concerns about large language models (LLMs) being used for harmful purposes like developing weapons.

To understand and mitigate these risks, government agencies and AI labs alike are measuring how well LLMs can understand and generate content related to dangerous topics like biosecurity, cybersecurity, and chemical security.

However, this work is under wraps and is currently private, which doesn’t really help AI’s cause in the public discourse.

Now, a group of experts thought that this limitation must be explored. They have created a new benchmark called the Weapons of Mass Destruction Proxy (WMDP) dataset.

This not only offers a method to check if an AI model has dangerous information and a way to remove it while keeping the rest of the model mostly unchanged.

I've often said that too much reliance in technology will come to the point where it will bite in the but...
...sadly, a tetanus shot won't be the cure.
Oh dear, junk/fast food eaters had to go on a diet for 7 hours worldwide

Lol ... Priceless. When fast food turns into no food all because of a 'computer glitch'

I'd say that's a dramatic improvement in food availability.....

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

And the day after that, one of our major food supermarket chains - Sainsbury's - has a similar breakdown:

Sainsbury's: 'Vast majority' of deliveries cancelled over technical issues

Have the tech-bots formed a trade union?

Saw that.
Cash is King.
The more I see incidents like that, I feel that a blast from the past will eventually return.
CiH.
Great days. :-)
We keep an emergency fund of £200 cash here.
So far & many a time over the past several years, that has been a lifesaver.
Never leave home without at least £50 cash between us.

And now the Tesco bots have joined the union. [same link]

And now the Tesco bots have joined the union. [same link]

Maybe the cyborg boys are doing an early Saint Patrick's Day celebration at the Irish pubs?

Lol Even Burger King Pokes Fun at Mc D's outage

Burger King
@BurgerKingUK
Not loving I.T.

The firm is currently trying to buy Virgin Money in a £2.9bn deal which would create the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group.

Hilarious if it wasn't so serious

Just look what 120kW can get you:


One rack. 120kW of compute. Taking a closer look at Nvidia's DGX GB200 NVL72 beast
wrote:

1.44 exaFLOPs of FP4, 13.5 TB of HBM3e, 2 miles of NVLink cables, in one liquid cooled unit

That is VERY hot!...

... And still not as bright as a human baby AI running at a mere 12W...

... But, can it play Crysis?


IT really is what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Apple very deliberately breaks a significant part of the internet:

Apple Criticized For Changing the macOS version of cURL


That little bit of techno-obscurity has badly big implications...


IT is what we allow it to be...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Apple very deliberately breaks a significant part of the internet:

Apple Criticized For Changing the macOS version of cURL


That little bit of techno-obscurity has badly big implications...


IT is what we allow it to be...
Martin

Just love this comment

The difference in behavior is due to differences in the SSL library curl is linked to. That behavior is not even formally specified, the man page even makes it clear that flag is platform specific right out the gate before even getting to the platform's SSL implementation.

And then... why is anyone using curl to do very specific SSL validation tests when tools like the openssl cli are available. Curl is just an http client, unless they rolled their own, they're at the whims of whatever SSL impl was linked in. Go talk to a senior Linux sysadmin and ask for help you sad little web developer children. This is not a Mac problem, this is an every unix is different and welcome to the party problem.

There's something very karmic about Linux tossing aside decades of Unix standards and some kids getting upset that an http client doesn't do what Linux does, made me laugh.

Apple never claimed their O/S was Linux. They do claim it to be Unix(r).