Hey, we’re angry! But what, if any, strategic value did this attack have?

https://www.reuters.com/world/french-officials-suspect-iran-is-behind-refrigerator-hacks-sources-say-2026-11-09/

French officials blame Iran for refrigerator hacks, vow retaliation

French officials on Monday accused Iran's Revolutionary Guards of responsibility for the cyberattacks that knocked out commercial refrigerators and freezers across France last month, saying there would be consequences for Iran.

The hacks that struck hundreds of French supermarkets in early October were among the most disruptive cyberattacks of the Iran war that began in ‌February, a conflict that has been marked by scattered incidents of alleged digital disruption. These have included hacks against the Los Angeles transit system in March, against US water treatment plants in July and against ships bound for the United States in August.

… The effects of the October 11 hacks were dramatic. Some refrigerators had the temperature turned up so high they caught fire. In the hours following the incident, supermarket employees carted boxes full of perished meat and melted ice cream into giant trash containers. The attack's total costs could add up to tens of millions of euros nationwide, one French supermarket owner estimated.

Clearly, lots of subscribers. I wonder if that will change post-elections?

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/media/trump-media-revenue-surges-truth-social-rcna608428

Trump Media cashes in on high-speed access to social media posts

Trump Media and Technology Group reported Monday that revenue surged 205% in the third quarter, which it says was “primarily driven” by selling a high-speed feed of posts on Truth Social.

The “Truth API,” as the company calls it, allows news organizations, Wall Street trading firms and other services to pay $60,000 to $100,000 per month for a direct feed of posts on the social network. Critics have slammed the feed as an attempt to profit from President Donald Trump’s posts.

Tools & Techniques. A starting point?

https://www.makeuseof.com/a-free-windows-tool-can-sanitize-documents-before-you-upload-them-to-ai/

A free Windows tool can sanitize documents before you upload them to AI

If you've ever asked a chatbot to summarize a contract for you, there's a possibility that it passed along your client's name, email, and phone number. Unfortunately, it's easy to overlook how much sensitive information you're handing over when you upload documents to LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok.

You should consider using services like Philter Desktop. This free Windows tool strips out important details from your file before it leaves your PC. It's one way to use AI on real work with fewer privacy concerns.

Targeting quality or volume? Would it be possible to seed high volume propaganda?

https://www.bespacific.com/university-libraries-are-being-swarmed-by-ai-bots-putting-public-access-at-risk/

University libraries are being swarmed by AI bots, putting public access at risk

Academic libraries are fighting off swarms of data-scraping bots — that are slowing or crashing sites meant for students, researchers and the public — as AI companies continue hunting for content to feed their large language models. University libraries say entire collections are being knocked offline by persistent streams of unruly bots trying to access their archives, which include academic, historical and government documents. “They’re just out there on the internet, just bombarding us with trying to grab up as much material as possible,” Jill Strykowski, cataloguing and government documents lead at San Jose State University, told CBC News. The bots are used by both AI and third-party companies to scour websites and retrieve data, often to feed LLMs like Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT. Libraries, museums and other cultural heritage institutions are prime targets because they have quality, vetted information that is generally not hidden behind paywalls or logins. The bots are “causing an incredible amount of work and headache for every institution that does digitization work and every institution that is trying to make information openly available,” Strykowski says. Researchers found such reports started appearing in late 2024 across North America, Europe and Oceania and experts tell CBC News the problem continues to get worse…

Could be useful…

https://unpromptedcon.org/abstract-march2026/

[un]prompted

In this page you can find the presentation decks, transcripts, and videos of the presentations from the first [un]prompted conference, March 2026 in San Francisco.

You can find all videos on our YouTube channel.

Could Shakespeare write like Agatha Christie? Isaac Asimov?

https://ardjij.com/index.php/ardjij/en/article/view/55

Recreating Shakespeare: A Qualitative Inquiry into Authorship, Style and Simulation in the Age of Generative AI

The growing unification of generative artificial intelligence (AI) into creative practises has unresolved prolonged assumptions about individual artistry, authenticity and authorial identity. AI systems are capable of writing poetry, drama, fiction and other literary texts. The question is not about whether algorithmic machines can generate academic texts, but how they reproduce and mirror identities conventionally associated with human writers. This progress leads to a wider issue in which a well-known literary voice can be reconstructed from the patterns found in already-existing works computationally. Hence, the challenge is to figure out the relationship between style and authorship, originality and replicated text or literary recognition and individual artistic autonomy. With this upcoming backdrop, Shakespeare acts as a specifically targeted case through which we analyse the AI formation of literary identity. Shakespeare’s writing style, stylistic characteristics have become identifiable to an extent that they can be provoked as a model of machine-generated production. This research paper explores what happens to the idea of Shakespeare—as writer, stylistic features and cultural motifs when AI models are tasked with recreating him. Instead of questioning if AI can generate convincing pastiche, the paper asks a more significant question. It asks, “what kind of Shakespeare does AI actually produce and what does the formation unmask about the identity?” Relying on the poststructuralist theories of authorship (Barthes, 1967/1977; Foucault, 1969), computational creativity theory (Boden, 2004), and empirical research on stylometry and large language model (LLM) style recreation, this qualitative paper examines AI-driven Shakespeare-recreation projects — from LSTM and GPT-2 pastiche generators to modern LLM benchmarking studies. The investigation finds that AI does not recreate Shakespeare's authorial mindfulness. It reconstructs an average, decontextualized "Shakespeare-function". It is a surface level rhythm of diction, syntax, and meter taken from ancestral, sources, and biographical peculiarity. This conclusion has implications for literary pedagogy, digital humanities methodology, copyright law, and the ethics of algorithmic cultural memory.

Russia should know…

https://vestnik.msal.ru/jour/article/view/3173

Artificial intelligence technologies as a means of committing crimes

Modern information technologies, permeating all spheres of private and public life, generate not only new opportunities but also unprecedented threats that require immediate scientific and practical understanding. This study examines the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies as a means of committing crimes. The author proposes a classification of crimes committed with the use of AI based on several forensically significant factors: the type of technology used, the perpetrator of the crime, and the object of the criminal offense. The main methods of using AI in the implementation of criminal intent are examined: both as an integral element of the crime's method of commission and as an auxiliary means. The changes that the use of AI in crimes introduces to forensic characterization are analyzed, particularly in the description of elements such as the criminal's identity and trace evidence.

A conclusion is made about the transformation of the criminal landscape and the need to adapt investigative methods to new challenges.

Looking for a steady income stream?

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/putin-seizes-three-more-japan-tobacco-businesses-bringing-takeover-to-37-billion-24169

Putin Seizes Three More Japan Tobacco Businesses, Bringing Takeover to $3.7 Billion

… JTI has operated in Russia since 1999 and previously controlled up to 40% of the country’s cigarette market, selling brands including Winston, Camel, Sobranie, and LD.

The changing face of war.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/11/06/28-ugv-assault/

Attack of the robots: Ukraine sent 28 armed ground robots, eight rigged to explode, at Russian lines. Russian drones stopped them—this time

… It seems the Russians spotted the assault from far away and swiftly defeated it, mostly by sending in explosive first-person-view drones. But it could be a temporary win. UGVs are cheap, some costing a few tens of thousands of dollars, and Ukraine is building a lot of them. Former Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov claimed Ukraine would acquire 25,000 UGVs in just the first six months of 2026. The figure for the rest of the year is likely to be as high or higher.

(Related) Be careful what you wish for…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/nov/06/autonomous-weapons-ai-russia-us-binding-rules

Russia and US seek to block plan for binding rules on autonomous weapons

Are you old enough to remember floppies? (I don’t believe this is the first time they promised this upgrade.)

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/trumps-transportation-secretary-sean-p-duffy-begins-retiring-decades-old-floppy-disks-air

Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Begins Retiring Decades Old Floppy Disks from Air Traffic Control as Part of Ongoing Modernization Effort Deployment of Brand New Air Traffic Control Continues at Record Pace

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy today announced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is continuing its historic modernization of America’s air traffic control system by replacing outdated floppy disks that contain vital weather and other critical information with a streamlined, 21st-century system.

Let the reprisals commence!

https://www.bespacific.com/house-oversight-committee-announces-four-point-investigation/

Lawyer Up – House Oversight Committee announces four point investigation

ABC News 7: Garcia pointed to Democrats’ electoral victories nationwide as a mandate. He said the Oversight Committee will be focused on four areas.

• “The first is: We’re going to take on the Trump crime family,” Garcia said. “The amount of grift and corruption is unprecedented in American politics.” Garcia is expected to seek to interview Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner along with other Trump family members about their alleged business dealings.

• “Our second investigation is focused on DHS and the abuses of ICE,” the congressman said, referring to the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “What we see on the streets — across the country, but I want to talk about California – whether it’s been here in Orange County, in Long Beach, in Los Angeles. “When people are being kidnapped and detained, thrown to the ground, arms broken, people snatched up on their way to immigration appointments that we the government gave them – that’s inhumane, it’s wrong, and I think the American public – regardless of party – are sick of it.

• Garcia said he plans to investigate corporate donors to the White House ballroom, no-bid contracts like the Reflecting Pool contractor and companies he has said are “ripping off” the American public. “While you’re struggling, CEOs and companies across this country are making record profits,” he said. “They’re putting in systems of surveillance pricing, so that when you go to the supermarket, you might be paying a different price than your neighbor.”

• As it relates to the Epstein investigation, Garcia said that he wants to hold public hearings, which would replace the interviews that occurred behind closed doors when Republicans were in control.

Because now everything is perfect!

https://www.bespacific.com/trump-declares-oval-office-cabinet-room-national-landmarks/

Trump declares Oval Office, Cabinet Room national landmarks

USAToday: “…Trump signed a proclamation designating the Oval Office and Cabinet Room a national monument, continuing his focus on White House beautification efforts following Republicans’ midterm disaster. Trump said the proclamation will prohibit significant overhauls or destruction of the two iconic White House rooms, both of which have undergone major cosmetic changes by Trump during his second term. The restrictions include keeping the Oval Office shaped like an oval. “It will not be allowed to be touched by anybody ‒ destroyed, ripped down by stupid people in order to build something in a slightly different shape,” Trump said. “We like the Oval Office, and it’s a symbol, like the White House itself.”…The proclamation directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to create a management plan to preserve the Oval Office’s “structural and significant architectural features. It requires “documentation, review, and consideration of alternatives before any action that would substantially alter or demolish” the Oval Office and Cabinet Room….” [this is the person who ordered the destruction of the East Wing to build a massive unnecessary ballroom, as well paving the lawn in the icon Rose Garden and so much more – Obama responds ….]

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.makeuseof.com/check-your-license-plate-in-flocks-database/

Check if someone searched your license plate in Flock’s database on this website

Remember Have I Been Pwned? Now, there's a free website that offers a similar service, but instead of checking your email address, you can run your license plate to see if it shows up in Flock's surveillance database. Have I Been Flocked can search your plate number across publicly released audit logs from Flock customers.

Become Big Brother as a defensive strategy? (Or be sued when such content becomes public?)

https://thehackernews.com/2026/11/apple-to-start-scanning-publicly-shared.html

Apple to Start Scanning Publicly Shared iCloud Photos and Files for Harmful Content

Apple has revealed that it plans to start checking public iCloud links for harmful content starting with iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, macOS 27.3, and visionOS 27.3.

The change specifically applies to scenarios where users share iCloud content, such as photos in iCloud Photos or files in iCloud Drive, by sharing a link and making it accessible to "Anyone with the link."

When users choose this option, it makes the content accessible to anyone who has the link, including Apple, the iPhone maker said.

… That said, it's unclear what prompted this change, what Apple considers as "harmful content," and whether these checks will also be applied retroactively to previously generated links, as well as any new links created before the 27.3 updates are officially rolled out later this December.

The tech giant has also warned that if users attempt to upload harmful content, it can be removed or deleted at any time.

How can I not personalize?

https://www.hunton.com/privacy-and-cybersecurity-law-blog/ftc-announces-inquiry-into-personalized-pricing-and-employee-compensation

FTC Announces Inquiry into Personalized Pricing and Employee Compensation

On October 28, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission announced the agency had launched an inquiry into the use of personal information to set prices and employee compensation, issuing detailed requests for information to nine airlines, ride-sharing companies, and food-delivery firms.

Another taxpayer funded income source?

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/11/want-to-rent-an-internet-address-at-the-white-house/

Want to Rent an Internet Address at the White House?

Several staffers at the White House are using computers or mobile devices equipped with residential proxy services that render their internet address available for others to rent, security experts warned today. One of the proxy services is a Russian company whose founder’s web hosting business was ground zero for cyberattacks against election systems in Arizona and Illinois in 2016.

The problem is they sometimes work…

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/11/were-asking-ninth-circuit-hold-reverse-location-warrants-categorically

We’re Asking the Ninth Circuit to Hold Reverse Location Warrants Categorically Unconstitutional

Yesterday, along with the ACLU, EFF filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit court of appeals in United States v. Spurlock, a case involving a “tower dump” warrant. These overbroad warrants require cellular providers to turn over location data about every phone in a given area at a given time. This is the first such case to be heard by a federal appeals court since the US Supreme Court ruled this summer that highly similar “geofence” warrants are searches under the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

What to expect (dread).

https://www.bespacific.com/things-are-going-to-get-ugly/

Things Are Going to Get Ugly

The Atlantic gift article: “…[Trump] holds hundreds of millions of dollars in his MAGA super PAC and related entities. Whatever remains after the races this year could then go toward sustaining the Trump family’s political power—conceivably backing a future presidential bid by one of Trump’s children. If the Democrats take the House and subpoenas start arriving, Trump will still retain control of the U.S. military and U.S. security services. He can indict people, he can invade nations, he can invoke emergency powers. He will get angrier, noisier, and crazier. He doesn’t care about the future of his party. He doesn’t care about the future of the country. He will want to punish a nation that, in his view, has ungratefully rejected him. Corruptly obtained money never feels secure. Trump, his children, and his inner group of close friends and sycophants most enriched in the past two years have a lot to worry about as the minutes of Trump’s presidency tick down…”

It won’t end with the fridges..

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/cyber-chief-uk-facing-ai-powered-attacks-on-critical-infrastructure-in-two-years

Cyber chief: UK facing AI-powered attacks on critical infrastructure within two years

… The NCSC's State of the Cyber Nation warns that within the next two years, AI adoption by hostile actors is “highly likely” to increase the scale and efficiency of their operations, including ransomware attacks, social engineering, and vulnerability exploitation.

Creating an artificial environment for students? How will they learn to deal with the real world?

https://pogowasright.org/elementary-school-children-using-laptops-schools-gain-direct-control-over-google-ai-search-tools/

Elementary School Children Using Laptops Schools Gain Direct Control Over Google AI Search Tools

Jesse Jacobs reports:

K-12 school district administrators now have the ability to restrict artificial intelligence features directly within Google Search across student devices.

Digital safety company Lightspeed Systems introduced Google Search AI Controls within its web-filtering platform, enabling schools to block Google AI Overview summaries and its conversational AI Mode.

[…]

Under the new tool, districts can route student searches directly to traditional web link results, bypassing the standard default landing page where AI Overviews are displayed. Administrators can also restrict specific categories such as shopping, images or video tabs, as well as embedded widgets and browser games.

Read more at Campus Security.

(Related)

https://x.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/2117714815477059722

News from Google

We want to clarify what we announced today about our education services. Today’s announcements give schools more choice, not less. Here’s what we announced:

- Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Search will be OFF 🔴 by default. This is based on K-12 schools asking for more control over student use of AI services.

- Schools are in control: They can choose to turn ON 🟢 one, two, or all of these services individually.

- We are also updating Search for schools to make it better for learning. Specifically, AI Mode and AI Overviews will offer step-by-step guided learning through problems, so that students don’t get quick answers to schoolwork.

Nerds with guns?

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/space-force-special-operations-command-activated/

Special operations guardians must ‘maneuver with their SOF counterparts,’ commander says

… “As we look to assign guardians to this component, especially as we look to assign them to the space special warfare teams for employment attached to other [special operations force] units around the world, we’re looking for those guardians who are expert at their craft — whether that’s operations, intel, cyber — and that they are able to maneuver with their SOF counterparts,” Norsky said.