VessOnSecurity

Health (or lack thereof) update: blog.bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/en?articleId...

Health (or lack thereof) update: blog.bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/en?articleId...

there is no such thing as "age verification." All "age verification" is actually "identity verification." You can coat it in glitter and "privacy-preserving" wrapping paper. But in the end, mandating age verification means mandating surveillance be built into software and hardware. Period.

On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee will vote on four bills that would expand age verification, increase online surveillance, and make it harder to access lawful speech online. Take one minute to tell your senators to vote NO. www.acteff.org/campaign/16...

A company that uses distillation to make its AI models should not be called "Moonshot," but rather "Moonshine." Ba-dum-tss

Health (or lack thereof) update: blog.bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/en?articleId...

Health (or lack thereof) update: blog.bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/en?articleId...

NEW: I took a look at the history of using export controls to limit the proliferation of cyber capabilities. From the 1990s Crypto Wars to limit the spread of PGP, to Wassenaar to stop spyware flowing out of Europe, and now powerful AI models, I argue that this type of regulation does not work.

Health (or lack thereof) update: blog.bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/en?articleId... (Sorry about the delay, the room where the server is, is undergoing renovations and the power is occasionally off.)

UK politics explained

Making Iran look like the good guys is quite an achievement.

My "NOT A BOMB" bluetooth device name has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the device name.

boss just asked me to “send her the link” yeah okay zelda

Do not name your Bluetooth devices "BOMB", or your flight maybe diverted. I suggest something like "NOT A BOMB" to avoid confusion.

It's unethical for hackers to break into computers they don't own (or have permission for). It's unethical for vendors to threaten criminal penalties for lawful actions, especially disclosure. These are equivalent ethical breaches.

Not that ‘responsible’ disclosure shit again 🙄 No vendor uses that term unless they want to call someone irresponsible. Even if someone drops 0day, patch & move on. Going after a researcher is a great way to turn 1 bad relationship into many terrible relationships.

Watch out bug hunters! Microsoft will release its DiGiTaL cRiMeS uNiT on you if you don't play along and let them delete your MSRC account and bury bugs for the billion dollar corporation

Google: AI will make software development so much faster Me: Finally, they will finish Google Workspace Google: Nah, we’ve just jammed our garbage AI into every crevice and updated our icons for a preschool look

Donald Trump promised the war in Iran would end with unconditional surrender. But he never said which country would do the surrendering.

My son is doing an internship where (against all my attempts to persuade him into a different career) he’s looking for security vulnerabilities in Chinese-made medical devices, and oh boy is he finding them. I feel like this is unhealthy validation for an 18 year old’s first job.

What the hell is this cancer, reCAPTCHA?

Health (or lack thereof) update: blog.bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/en?articleId...

enough. i’m tired of github actions. it’s time for github consequences

Next time you call America racist I want to show you a picture of how multi-ethnic and multi-cultural our auto theft rings are.

microsoft may actually have managed mismanage github so badly that it loses its effective monopoly despite none of its aspiring competitors being remotely prepared to replace it. incredible

South Africa’s draft AI policy was just withdrawn because the references were hallucinated by AI. The department regulating "AI Ethics" couldn't even be bothered to check if their own footnotes existed. It’s a masterclass in irony: using AI to write the rules for AI. iol.co.za/news/south-a...

Health (or lack thereof) update: bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/bye.html#202...

1. Kids motivated to get around the age verification requirement can *easily* do so 2. Age verification means *every* social media user must give ID to tech companies 3. Kids in need of social/identity support unavailable IRL would suffer 4. The real solution is to regulate tech companies not kids

It’s pretty jarring to read articles about the war in Iran that mention the energy crisis and the strait of Hormuz as its consequence, but don’t mention civilian casualties at all. I feel like every article that discusses the war should include the worst consequences of it — even just two lines.

I have a long-running Claude session just for talking about Iran war news/economic shocks from the blockade. I shared the latest Trump tweet and it told me that it can no longer keep role-playing this fictional scenario because it's becoming concerning and detached from reality. Love this timeline.

(via @atomjack.com)

New, by me at TechCrunch: The developer of the widely popular Wireguard VPN says he is also unable to ship software updates to Windows users after Microsoft locked his account, marking the second high-profile app developer (VeraCrypt) in the past few weeks to face this issue.

New, by me: Mounir Idrassi, the developer of the popular file encryption software Veracrypt, says Microsoft has locked his account used for sending software updates, and warned that Windows users who encrypt their PCs with his software may soon find it "impossible to boot," Idrassi tells me.

We should be able to slow down AI takeover by a few years just by telling the model to find every bug in ffmpeg.

Health (or lack thereof) update: bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/bye.html#202...

Despite losing the US and EU market, Kaspersky reported a record revenue of $836 million last year www.kaspersky.ru/about/press-...

47% of all statistics were hallucinated by claude

This week on the newsletter: "How not to mandate device-based age assurance" educatedguesswork.org/posts/device... In this post, we examine a number of enacted or proposed requirements for device-based age assurance and some of the ways they can go wrong.

Ask Claude about the string “ba7816bf8f01cfea414140de5dae2ec73b00361bbef0469f11ef0b01d449c8e6”. When it gives you an answer: ask it to verify that this number is correct.

Health (or lack thereof) update: bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/bye.html#202...