What this article says while trying not to say it: Chrome and friends wield an unhealthy monopoly over the browser world, and a single bug can wipe most WWW users off the map.

This is not hyperbole, but a true statement of fact, and it's not good.

No such data is given, instead the article provides "CFOs think this and that" and "Financial professionals see an increase". The most credible number is "14% of all fakes have been created with AI tools", but it's still not mentioned, which percentage is seen as fake overall. As expected it also advertises ways for companies to make that problem go away by spending money on software.

If you don't believe my words, read for yourself here

I have as much concern for job stability as anyone else, but as one, who has suffered through educational software that long I can only say: it couldn't have hit a more deserving target. I really wish, that all companies in this same business environment go extinct soon. They really have it coming.

You can call AI output degenerative all day long, but it's still miles ahead of what I have seen in educational software products: English language testing requiring exactly the expected wording of the answer, endless delays and hangs when uploading homework assignments, ridiculously bad UI, anything non-Windows completely unsupported. It ranks in the same league as software for medical doctors and corporate software for time booking.

If you want to shed honest and deserved tears for tech workers losing their jobs due to AI, then please look elsewhere.

I know (or at least hope), that you meant this in jest, but hear me out anyway: there is this common perception, that war clears out the deadwood, burns away the dry shrubbery, and after all the killing has been done and done to, fresh minds will spring to life and reinvigorate society. Reality shows a very different pattern, though. Russia tried to bring this concept to life in the last almost four years, lost over a million convicts, misfits and whatnots, and total alcohol consumption went up, not down.

If you send all these "less than average" people to slaughter, you leave behind a lot of misery, which bogs down the rest of society. This "cleaning steel bath" is a dangerous myth mostly spread by people, who think themselves so far above average, that they don't expect to get sacrificed in this madness..

For over a decade I have heard these lame stories by American phone companies, that it is completely impossible to block calls/messages with obvious fake displayed numbers. Hand wringing stories are being told about something, which every half-competent router admin considers a 101 level skill.

Then you have the Chinese government, which is very strict on perpetrators against their own people. They handed out 11 death sentences, 2 suspended death sentences and multiple life terms against one of their crime families running scam centers in Myanmar targeting Chinese people.

At the same time they are extremely lax against their own perpetrators, who facilitate crimes against westerners. British stolen/robbed cell phones end up there, they are on lists of stolen phones and still operate without problems inside China. They just don't care. Now you have these scam messages and there will be, again, no reaction from Chinese government.

I am not very optimistic about this, neither about US phone companies clearing up the mess, nor about the Chinese government doing anything about it.

My old, grumpy and cynical interpretation of this garbled sentence is: "These are the files of those 6 companies, who did not pay the ransom."

All these "revolutionaries", who'd like to "stick it to the man" and communicate their schemes through smart phone based means, are not going to be protected by any app's design or technology, and whether Signal changes encryption algo or not will not make much of a difference. Anyone decrying this as tinfoil hattery or conspiracy theory driven nuttery shall reread the serious reporting about the US gov't communicating over Signal.

The main criticism was not directed at Signal's encryption standards, and the fact, that a journalist was carelessly added to the conversation was only a side act. The real criticism came about, because they hosted their app on private, i.e. insecure, phones. Signal can use whatever encryption they want, they have no control over the platforms their software is run on.

A few months ago top US officials discussed secret stuff over Signal, and the outrage over this was heard world wide. So much for the trustworthiness of Signal. Pepperidge Farm remembers ...

I am shocked, shocked to hear, that Crowdstrike has sloppy software management practices in place!

I am glad, that you found a cancel mob's rationale to ditch Proton. Anyone using Proton should take a closer look at the Crypto AG story. If you think, that Swiss companies are neutral, humane and fair, then you will be in for a rude awakening, They're in it for the money, and if you are in the way, you're gone. Or betrayed. Or both.

That's exactly the point. The fake names used were intentionally chosen to not fit the "white old man" template, because anyone questioning these two identities would "obviously be driven by rabid misogyny and unmitigated racism". These fraudsters knew well, how to play that fiddle.

We can point fingers at Wired for this all day long, but unlike other news papers they at least fessed up to it.

Stiff penalties will not prevent sudden acts of stupidity "this dude just beat me in the game so I'll show him" "this woke princess just got someone cancelled so I'll show her", but they will eventually stop people acting in a planned and coordinated way. While initial evidence seems to prove you right - the founder of "Purgatory" just received a 15 year sentence and these arse holes still continue their ways - I am fairly convinced, that as the number of such sentences goes up the number of intelligent perpetrators will go down.

Speeding tickets are an interesting case. They are expensive and unpleasant, but don't really mess with your way of life like a 100k compensation you'd have to pay or a jail sentence. At the same time most speeders know they'll eventually get caught, so most will eventually stop racing their cars when the speeding tickets start adding up. Yes, many communities enjoy the financial benefits from speeding tickets, but this doesn't diminish the social costs from all these needless traffic accidents.

Unlike speeding swatting is not exactly a popular sport, and the penalties are quite stiff, we're talking felonies and multi year prison sentences. It will - over time - decrease in popularity.

Swatting used to be amateur league, done by little brats who couldn't stand losing in a computer game or who had some qualms about your political youtube channel. The way this article sounds swatting has become more professional, with whole teams developing advanced strategies and offering their services for money. Their swat calls become more believable, they play sounds of a real shooting at least credible enough to fool first responders. They know how to contact law enforcement in untraceable yet somehow trusted ways.

I would expect this to get worse and more frequent until a significant number of folks pursuing this as a career path end up with year long prison sentences.

The biggest problems of the FBI right now are not unavailability of cash, but presence of Kash.