Meanwhile ÖBB has confirmed the Paris-Wien/Berlin night trains are no more. "Die ÖBB bedauern, dass nach dem Rückzug der französischen Partner, die beiden Nachtzugverbindungen ab 14. Dezember 2025 nicht mehr angeboten werden können." […]

At this point in the electoral cycle, when the proposal for national ID cards again rose undead from the grave, Ross Anderson would again sally forth to help slay it again. Regrettably it now falls to others. #idcards #rossanderson

1. I've long contended that austerity doesn't save money. It merely transfers costs from one group (the very rich, who would otherwise pay more tax) to others. Last night was a powerful reminder of that. Before I go further, I should say I’m fine. Just a black eye, cuts & bruises, no serious harm. 🧵

Trying to make heads or tails of this "SIM server" thing from the US Secret Service. https://www.secretservice.gov/newsroom/releases/2025/09/us-secret-service-dismantles-imminent-telecommunications-threat-new-york Presumably the denial of service attacks would involve overloading cell networks […]

I found out about the Heat Geek Mini Store from Loco Home Retrofit yesterday and it is very cool because it takes an established technology (hot water cylinders) makes a fairly simple change (swapping the purpose of the coil and the tank contents) and delivers a much more efficient and much more […]

WELCOME TO WINDSOR CASTLE, DONALD TRUMP 🏰🇬🇧 The British public greeted him with a gigantic banner right outside the castle where he’s staying with the King this week—funded by 1,770 people. This trip is all about polishing Trump’s image 🪞✨ so please […] [Original post on mastodon.online]

Via Led By Donkeys!: The story of Trump and Epstein on Windsor Castle, where Trump is staying. Narrated by J. Smith Cameron. Sound on.

added a cheat sheet to the official Git website https://git-scm.com/cheat-sheet

I cannot. Just. No. Saying "but don't forget to follow your universities rules!" does absolve the authors of this book, published by Springer, of their responsibility

If you're looking for resources on how your org can handle influxes of allegations based on someone's social media posts, here are two guides: 1. PEN America's guide for journalism employers: https://onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org/best-practices-for-employers/ 2. The Researcher Support […]

I'm showing fifth graders how to sew a book which we will fill with codes and encryption puzzles. They can all count in binary and came in very excited to learn since they heard about it from the older students last year. I get paid for this.

This is on the obscure side, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people get bit by this... If you're using the Perl Net::DNS library for, say a custom #dns server daemon, once you upgrade to 1.42 or later (Debian 12 had 1.36, Debian 13 has 1.50), your server is probably going to break or […]

The University of Utrecht is cancelling the #webofscience and offering training sessions on #OpenAlex. https://www.uu.nl/en/news/access-to-web-of-science-will-end-on-1-january-2026 "Discontinuing Web of Science is a logical step that fits in with the UU vision on #OpenScience. Closed commercial […]

Do you know what are the most common targets of DDoS-for-hire services (apart from other DDoS-for-hire services)? Unregulated online industries that move a lot of money, and that stop moving much money at all when they get attacked (and are thus particularly vulnerable to financial extortion) […]

When we first wrote down Loco Home Retrofit's aims in 2023 our overarching aim was: "Domestic carbon emissions in Greater Glasgow are rapidly and sustainably eliminated in order to minimise the climate crisis. Homes are adapted to cope with unavoidable climate changes." but this year we added […]

After several years of trying to use official processes to get a piece of paper stuck to a wall, I have used LaTeX, a printer, and blu tack; and stuck pieces of paper to (5 different) walls. Colleagues may notice a reduction in the number of lost people. ;-)

Taking Down Booters: The Cat-and-Mouse Game, blog post for our USENIX Security paper https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2025/09/06/taking-down-booters-the-cat-and-mouse-game/ #ddos #usenixsecurity #cybercrime #networksecurity (also this is my first USENIX Security paper after many many […]

As I have been asked for my method of identifying GenAI papers when peer-reviewing: Start with the references, check each one is fully correct and that the linked paper matches the details in the reference exactly. If references turn out to be confabulated, then reject as GenAI and you are done […]

Sometimes I need to be an energetic research leader delivering a shared collaborative vision for cybersecurity research across the university through the development of an inclusive and vibrant community, and I want to go back to bed. #academia

This should have been big news! Ten funding agencies from eight European countries have pledged to support a public infrastructure that is poised to replace academic journals: FWF 🇦🇹 RCN 🇳🇴 Forte 🇸🇪 ARIS 🇸🇮 SRC 🇸🇪 FCT 🇵🇹 CSIC 🇪🇸 DFG 🇩🇪 Formas 🇸🇪 ANR 🇫🇷 Only two of them issued press releases in […]

It is extremely useful when an institution is following a bad security practice to be able to point to the NCSC's clearly written and well evidenced guidance on the topic and go: "Look at this, your policy is contrary to this, please fix." (yes this post is about password policies) #ncsc […]

Lots of really interesting details in this article on the European support for Ukraine: https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-farther-east-one-goes-in-europe-the-more-west-one-winds-up/

This was just a sad story until I realised that I am tech support for an affected service and only realised we were affected because it is currently down: https://fastcode.io/2025/08/30/the-69-billion-domino-effect-how-vmwares-debt-fueled-acquisition-is-killing-open-source-one-repository-at-a-time/

I am trying to get better at saying no to things, but in practice people tend to come back with: This was not actually a request and you do have to do it. Only the most interesting and important things are optional.

10 months ago, a company across the world put my neighbor's access to medical care at risk, giving us 2wks notice that software behind our 40 electric car chargers would be shut down. This is the story of how my neighborhood broke free from this potential disaster […]

I'm grateful to the hundreds of hobbyists & open hardware devs who worked together to save countless chargers from the landfill. This summer, my neighbors & I replaced the boards of our 40 chargers with OpenEVSE hardware, and we're no longer at the same level of […] [Original post on social.coop]

If someone could tell Sir Keith to cancel Peter Kyle's ChatGPT subscription immediately before his brain rots away any further, that would be lovely, ta. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/23/uk-minister-peter-kyle-chatgpt-plus-openai-sam-altman

I'm a little concerned AI chatbots are melting peoples' brains. This is the second time this month I've gotten an email from an otherwise intelligent seeming person who is convinced that there is a persona -- a being -- that exists and persists in the AI chat world, that has persistence of […]

There’s been three crashes involving a driver hitting a cycling this August. They happened in the same week. This is unacceptable. We’re riding in protest of Edinburgh’s indifference toward cyclists this Friday 22nd August at 7pm. Meet at Middle Meadow Walk. Tell and bring everyone you know

Office 365 Excel some sort of AI trying to be helpful: "We've created a formula that multiplies column Thursday by column Monday" (to fill column Friday) bears no relation to anything useful to do with these columns (which relate to who is coming on which days to our summer school)

How is independent tech research faring in 2025 amidst extraordinary headwinds & what can we do to preserve / grow it? A new report, "Power in Numbers" @transparenttech summarizes reports on interviews with 90+ researchers on the struggle for public-interest tech research worldwide: 1 […]

Seems reasonable: "Our findings reveal that the standalone LLM introduces nearly 9x more new vulnerabilities than developers, with many of these exhibiting unique patterns not found in developers'code. Agentic workflows also generate a significant number of vulnerabilities, particularly when […]

My university sent email to all faculty and staff today reminding us that if federal or local law enforcement approaches us seeking information or records about students, we're to refer them to the general counsel (as is often required under FERPA), which will generally demand a warrant or other […]

The Great Enscrapening: a period in history when AI hoovered up everything it could find. Various authorities place its end date around the mid- to late-2020s depending on how much AI generated content was mixed into the material. It was followed by the Missing Century when AI-generated content […]

After 100 days in office, the German federal government falls short on #freesoftware: Draft procurement act fails to secure tech sovereignty by prioritising Free Software. The “Germany Stack” lacks EU coordination and transparency. No reliable long-term funding for Free Software in the budget […]

It's a double whammy for younger people because the Corporate Internet has killed off most genuine online communities and car dependency has killed off most real world communities. While online communities were never a replacement for real world communities, the […] [Original post on aus.social]

The Authors Guild has launched a certification program for asserting that a book has been human authored https://authorsguild.org/human-authored/

What can you do when the government shuts down a scientific advisory group to prevent researchers and the public from working together on important issues? Start your own of course! A guide from the @ucsusa on how to establish establish independent advisory committees to fill recent gaps in the […]

Londoner arrested by 3 police, who arrived in a riot van at her door at 4.45am and seized her phone and computer, after she posted about her ex-partner, a serving police officer, on Facebook 😱https://apple.news/AUA_XWa8mTjaL0N5I0idwxQ

I have spent a bit over a week working exclusively on one research project to the exclusion of all my other work responsibilities and it has been great (long planned). Much howling in my inbox now though...

Met Office: Amber weather warning, it is really windy, be careful folks. Work: work from home if you can. Rail company: no trains past lunchtime while we assess the damage. Bus companies: actually running a better service than normal due to less traffic and lower passenger numbers. If you can […]

the LLM is _not a learning aid,_ it is an _absolute barrier to learning._ it is _not similar in kind_ to copy/pasting from stackoverflow or cliffs notes. it fully supplants the entire process of learning, and the person using the LLM _never improves their understanding_ because the LLM cognitive […]

Activists often argue for community involvement in the creation of predictive models & their implementation, but it's often dismissed as impractical. Excitedly waiting for Eos Trinidad's "Subtle Webs" on community involvement in school predictive modeling […]

ive said it a thousand times, and i can say it again: you can outsource the work, but you cant outsource the risk. if you put microsoft in charge of your entire business system structure - email, calendaring, chat, file storage etc etc and microsoft cuts you off? thats on you. you gave them […]

I replied.