Exactly. This is a technology problem, not a user problem. Trying to fix it on user side accomplishes nothing.

User awareness is impossible to create. Yes, for the rather primitive phishing campaigns of 10 or even 5 years ago it was possible to a very limited degree. With the attackers now using LLMs, that time is past. Get actually secure email systems and clients or get hacked. Those are your only choices.

Employees cannot be trained to recognize suspicious emails. I do not know which blithering idiot came up with the idea, but regular people cannot be qualified to do what takes an IT security expert and even that expert will occasionally fail.

Yes. These tests are worse than useless. They insult those with a clue and waste the time of everybody. They make everybody angry and that means less mental power to recognize scams and problems. They are a meaningless ritual that accomplishes less than nothing.

The thing that would need to be done is use of better technology. And that is the only thing that can fix this problem. The user is not the problem.

That is because you give your users technology that sucks and cannot be secured. Terrorizing your users will do nothing. Using better technology will. Yes, that means dumping the steaming pile Microsoft sells on the trash-heap of history where it belongs, and quite a few other offerings as well. Yes, that means telling the C-levels they have to get used to a different desktop. But nothing else will do it.

If your IT security is so abysmally bad that clicking on a link can blow up your set-up, "educating" employees will do nothing. And if that is the best your go-to vendor can deliver, get a different one.

That said, information about complex phishing attacks, like the "chef email" scam and the like, is different. But these target human interaction, not intricate technology that is very much outside of the areas of expertise of almost everybody.

Agreed.

Only that Putin has done a long string of wars like that before. The difference is that Ukraine has been able to fight back quite efficiently. I guess Putin got used to winning and lost contact to reality along the way.

So, no, this claim that Russia was provoked or had no choice is Russian propaganda. It cannot hold water on closer inspection. They just want some of that victim bonus, so they twist reality beyond all recognition to convince some useful idiots.

Probably old training data that implies Slashdot is important. Also probably very cheap to do this type of propaganda, so they just push the mind-rot everywhere they can.

Yes. But the more support Ukraine gets and the less some really evil people with power sabotage Ukraine, the better for everybody. This war has to end. Obviously with Ukraine getting back all of its territory and Russia getting a deal bad enough that they will not try this crap again for a long long time, ideally forever.

Will the stupid and disconnected claims that LLMs are somehow intelligent, have agency and are a bit like people ever stop? Well, probably not before the now inevitable crash.

These LLMs were given tasks and tokens. They did not "play".

Banking regulation is for the banks to comply with. These here are technical regulations, so how much money the customer has does not play a role. Financial regulation is a different area.

Most of the cost is from digging, not from the fiber. If you coordinate that well with other things that need digging the cost goes down. If not, it goes up. If done well, you end up with something like $1000 per home or below in a city.

Your replacement costs are off. Fiber basically lasts forever (Wikipedia says 60-100 years), you typically replace it if you need a different fiber type. That will probably not happen with modern fiber. What you need to replace regularly (every 5 years or so) is the optical components and the switches, but that is a lot cheaper than laying fiber because everything is readily accessible.

Note: If you cannot do it at that price, but several of your competitors can, there is a problem on _your_ side.