Master Squinter

4 Followers
70 Following
120 Posts

Hello people.

A guy working in info-sec. Mostly consults and trains. Roaming. Broad interests, including electronics, programming, cryptography, forensics, and security that works for people. Recovering Zachtronics addict.

I love learning from y'all, and am thinking hard how to give back. Okay writer, terrible artist! #HomeDrawnAvatarsFTW

日本語ちょっとだけ話せる

How can the answer to protecting privacy be age verification?

The ICO (UK) seems to think so. Their fine against Reddit for relying on self-declaration is met with a call for intrusive biometric scans or ID uploads.

All this when privacy dangers are emerging within the industry.

Read our new blog ⬇️

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/break-privacy-to-make-privacy-age-verification-isnt-the-answer/

#ico #reddit #dataprotection #digitalid #ageverification #privacy #ukpolitics #ukpol

Break privacy to make privacy? Age verification isn’t the answer

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently published an open letter to online platforms providers, calling them “to strengthen age assurance measures to ensure young children are not accessing services that are not designed for them”.

Open Rights Group

#AI can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in #wargame simulations
Leading AIs from #OpenAI, #Anthropic and #Google opted to use #nuclearweapons in simulated war games in 95% of cases
The scenarios involved intense international standoffs, including border disputes, competition for scarce resources and existential threats to regime survival.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516885-ais-cant-stop-recommending-nuclear-strikes-in-war-game-simulations/

What could go wrong?

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases

New Scientist

Really enjoyed this scoop from the Financial Times, where a team of reporters identified 48 seemingly independent companies working from different physical addresses that appear to be operating together to disguise the origin of Russian oil, particularly from Kremlin-controlled Rosneft. The kicker: The network was discovered because they all share a single private email server.

From the (paywalled) story:

"The FT was able to identify 442 web domains whose public registrations show they all use a single private server for their email, “mx.phoenixtrading.ltd”, showing that they share back-office functions."

"The FT was then able to identify companies by comparing the names in the domain to those of entities that appear in Russian and Indian customs records as involved in carrying Russian oil."

"For example, Foxton FZCO, a Dubai-based entity listed as the buyer of $5.6bn of oil in Russian export filings, matches “foxton-fzco.com”. Similarly, Advan Alliance, an entity listed in Indian filings as having sold $1.5bn of Russian oil into the country, can be linked to “advanalliance.ltd”. "

"Filings linked by the FT to the domain list show oil exports from Russia amounting to more than $90bn."

https://www.ft.com/content/4310f010-2b3c-493e-ba0a-26dc6d156b2e

Email blunder exposes $90bn Russian oil smuggling ring

Apparent network of companies using same server includes little-known group that has become country’s largest oil exporter

Financial Times

The Kids Trump Sent to ICE’s Dilley Detention Center
---

ProPublica went inside the detention center for immigrant families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of what comes next.
https://www.propublica.org/article/life-inside-ice-dilley-children?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

#News #ICE #Texas #Immigration #Immigrants #Children #Trump #USPolitics #Law

The Children of Dilley

ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of what comes next.

ProPublica
The UK’s Information Commissioners Office has opened another investigation into X, citing serious concerns about the company’s behaviour around AI. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/elon-musk-s-xai-faces-second-uk-probe-for-grok-sexualized-images?embedded-checkout=true

This guy named Ben Palmer made an "Immigration tip line" and people call it thinking he's ICE.

He records them and shares it with the world.

What do people sound like when reporting their neighbors, coworkers, students? Are they confident they are doing a righteous good thing?

Witness the banality of evil in these sheepish suburban voices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJnkikcrHA0

PEERTUBE option: https://kinowolnosc.pl/w/p/av2NQ5ug2M7TgJzkSvyzi6

Kindergarten teacher wants kindergartener deported

YouTube
Statement from the Minnesota Timberwolves team chaplain with alt text (ht @[email protected])
90 years after the 1936 Olympics in Berlin that were instrumentalised by an authoritarian regime, I will definitely not give a minute of my time or a cent of my money to a world championship from an organisation that invented a peace prize to appease another authoritarian. #BoycottFIFA #FIFAWorldCup2026

Over the weekend, did you see the much-shared story on Reddit by a supposed whistleblower?

It started like this: "I’m a developer for a major food delivery app. The 'Priority Fee' and 'Driver Benefit Fee' go 100% to the company. The driver sees $0 of it. I’m posting this from a library Wi-Fi on a burner laptop because I am technically under a massive NDA. I don’t care anymore."

Well, it was a fake.
https://www.platformer.news/fake-uber-eats-whisleblower-hoax-debunked/

#journalism #AI

Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit

A “whistleblower” tried to corroborate his viral post with AI-generated evidence. This is how I caught him. PLUS: Grok's image-generation crisis, and the rapture over Claude Opus 4.5

Platformer

@catmisgivings @AnachronistJohn

One of the slippery things about accents is they are always changing. We tend to have a fixed idea of accents tied to a place, but that fixed idea might only apply to the older people from that region.

This video is really neat to show the change... which is still going ... everywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic

From Old English to Modern American English in One Monologue

YouTube