Are you using Dropbox cloud storage? You do not want 3rd party AI technology partners to have access to your Dropbox files? Flip this switch, which is on by default. Go to web->account-> settings- 3rd party AI. Please turn it off. Please boost so everyone know how bad this move is … 😡

Gmail has once again blacklisted my mail server because of the SIX emails I have sent in the entirety of December so far, because obviously that constitutes "an unusual rate of unsolicited mail".

I set up SPF, DKIM, DMARC, first get lumped in with a bad /24 IP block, slowly build up a reputation as a non-spammy IP, etc. etc., but none of that matters.

This is nothing but a racketeering scheme to force everyone to pay for Gmail for business.

Computers are like onions. Everything is layers built on layers, and every layer makes you cry. #sysadmin

We need a word for real-life enshittification caused by online culture. Like being unable to find an organisation’s info because they’ve Instagram but no website. Or panicked people being sent a videolink to download to their phone when they ring for an ambulance. Or being excluded from residents' association news if you're not on Facebook. Or having cash payment refused. Or staff in the business you’re physically standing in telling you to find the answer to your question on their website.

Computer science pioneer and United States Navy rear admiral Grace Hopper was born #OTD in 1906.

As far as I’m aware, she is the only person who has both a supercomputer and a US Navy destroyer named after her.

Image: Computer History Museum

Annoyed that a website is doing something custom on right-click?
Did you expect the browser's context menu (Back, Reload, Save Page As, View Source etc.)?

Just hold the ⇧Shift key while clicking and Firefox will show the built-in context menu.

Edit: I had no idea this was such a widely appreciated post. Credit where credit is due: @dveditz told me about this trick a couple of months ago.

How the first gen ipod was reverse engineered to run #Rockbox:

1. Someone figured out that when loading a particular HTML page (for viewing on the device), the device would reboot. It crashed. A buffer overflow in the HTML viewer!

2. The device remembered what it did before the crash, so it would reload the HTML page again after boot. Unless you connected to it over USB and removed the HTML file it would stick in this cycle.

(continues...)

Apache CouchDB 3.3.3 is now available. It is a maintenance release that among a number of bug fixes addresses CVE-2023-45725, the details of which will be released in seven days. We recommend all CouchDB users upgrade.

[Update: the blog post has now been amended with the CVE details.]

https://blog.couchdb.org/2023/12/05/3-3-3/

I can finally reveal some research I've been involved with over the past year or so.

We (@redford, @mrtick and I) have reverse engineered the PLC code of NEWAG Impuls EMUs. These trains were locking up for arbitrary reasons after being serviced at third-party workshops. The manufacturer argued that this was because of malpractice by these workshops, and that they should be serviced by them instead of third parti
es.

1/4

Provisional agreement reached between the Council of Europe and European Parliament on the CRA.

For us software security needs, this is BIG.

The EU is the only jurisdiction to be proposing a bespoke regulatory regime for hardware _and software_ products, as opposed to merely using procurement regs/consumer protection law.

Of course, in Australia, we will never have the temperament to propose anything like this for software security. We prefer voluntary self-regulation and eventually fixing procurement regulations (see Shield 2 of our cyber security strategy).
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2023/11/30/cyber-resilience-act-council-and-parliament-strike-a-deal-on-security-requirements-for-digital-products/

Three days after Amazon announced its AI chatbot Q, some employees are sounding alarms about accuracy and privacy issues. Q is “experiencing severe hallucinations and leaking confidential data,” including the location of AWS data centers, internal discount programs, and unreleased features, according to leaked documents obtained by Platformer.

An employee marked the incident as “sev 2,” meaning an incident bad enough to warrant paging engineers at night and make them work through the weekend to fix it.

https://www.platformer.news/p/amazons-q-has-severe-hallucinations

NEW: David Vincenzetti, the founder of spyware maker Hacking Team, has been arrested.

Vincenzetti is accused of attempted murder. He allegedly stabbed a relative at his home. A judge has ordered him to stay in prison as a precautionary measure, and has ordered a psychological evaluation, according to Italian media reports.

I'm honestly in shock. Hacking Team's story is still getting crazier, eight years after it got spectacularly hacked.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/29/founder-of-spyware-maker-hacking-team-arrested-for-attempted-murder-local-media/

Terry Pratchett was wise

Whenever I explain my #research at Google into mobile text editing, I'm usually met with blank stares or a slightly hostile "Everyone can edit text on their phones, right? What's the problem?"

Text editing on mobile isn't ok. It's actually much worse than you think, an invisible problem no one appreciates. I wrote this post so you can understand why it's so important.
https://jenson.org/text
#UXDesign #UX

Microsoft paid money for this. A lot of money.

Dear Microsoft. Here is a list of things I want the Start Menu to do:

* Show my installed programs
* Search my local files
* Provide access to system settings

Here is a list of things I do *not* want the Start Menu to do:

* Show the weather for a randomly-selected town near my network's public IP infrastructure
* Show tabloid headlines
* Show programs I *don't* have installed
* Search the web via Bing
* Show adverts(!)
* Attempt to engage me in conversation with a hallucinating LLM

Thanks.

Check it out, it's tmp.0ut Volume 3!

https://tmpout.sh/3/

Turing test.

When we warn the real threat of AI is how it’s used against people in the present, not the fantasies that some day computers might think for themselves, this is exactly the kind of thing we’re talking about: health insurers using AI to deny care.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/ai-with-90-error-rate-forces-elderly-out-of-rehab-nursing-homes-suit-claims/

#tech #ai #health #healthcare

the eu is fucking wild man
“hey, we just passed landmark privacy regulations!”
“oh by the way we’re trying to mandate backdoors into every encryption scheme”
“we are forcing google, apple, and microsoft to stop locking down their ecosystems!”
“oh yeah we’re also trying to mandate backdoors in all browsers’ certificate stacks”
“anti-adblock is spyware ^_^ we’re suing youtube”