Welcome to the Panoptican

FLOCK is not alone, of course, they are just the most well-known company building the surveillance state. When Every Streetlight Becomes A Surveillance Tower

For years, Americans were told that the greatest privacy battles would happen online. The debate centered around social media, smartphones, and internet tracking. Few imagined that one of the most controversial surveillance technologies would instead appear quietly on neighborhood streets, mounted atop poles at busy intersections and neighborhood entrances.

Today, those poles have become a flashpoint in a much larger debate over technology, artificial intelligence, and the future relationship between citizens and government.

Read the whole, disturbing thing, and the few signs that people have had enough of the creeping technology and are pushing back. (Hat tip to MaddMedic.)

And you vocabulary word of the day (Courtesy of Merriam-Webster): Panoptican

a circular prison built with cells arranged radially so that a guard at a central position can see all the prisoners

Remembering Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick passed away 16 July 2023 at the age of 59 from Cancer. The Wiki lists him as a "computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker."

From The Drive we get a story about hacking. This Man Was Gifted His Dream Car by the Notorious Hacker He Put in Prison

It’ll help if you know the name Kevin Mitnick. He was a hacker-turned-security consultant who, later in life, helped shape the modern white-hat. Just how prototypical was Mitnick? He put himself on the proverbial map in 1979 by dialing into a software company’s server and copying its forthcoming operating system release in its entirety. Imagine convincing a Microsoft server to cough over an early copy of Windows 12 using little more than a phone number.

Click thru for the details of how Mitnick got caught trying to hack/social engineer his way into Novell in the 1990s.

In the end, Shawn Nunley caught him. Mitnick was convicted and sent to prison.

When he got out, Mitnick contacted Nunley to apologize. Their bury-the-hatchet moment was even immortalized by Wired, and they went on to become good friends.

Mitnick went on to found a couple of White Hat hacking/consulting firms. He became quite successful.

When Mitnick passed from pancreatic cancer in 2023, he left Nunley a gift—enough to buy his dream car, a 911 Carrera 4 GTS.

An interesting story.

Xbox Player Wins Lawsuit Against Microsoft

It isn't a lot, but they couldn't just brush him off. Xbox player wins lawsuit against Microsoft to get his account back plus $400 - Dexerto

His Microsoft account was hacked. When he contacted support, they said, "Yep, hacked." Then they

The account belonged to a Reddit user called Ordo_Liberal, who spent three months documenting the ordeal online. His Microsoft account was compromised despite two-factor authentication being active, and when he contacted support, the company confirmed that “unauthorized access occurred” before informing him that “we are unable to modify or restore the security settings once they’ve been updated.”

The suspended his account. They told him, he would have to purchase every game, movie, whatever he had purchased associated with that account again. Too bad, so sad.

He sued and won in a Brazilian court.

For any Minecraft purchases tied to the account, the email went further still: “the game cannot be recovered. A new purchase will be required on a newly created account.” That response, apparently, was the wrong thing to say to someone living in Brazil, a country with strong consumer protection law.

Click thru for the details, or see Mutahar's video linked below.

Hat tip to the Mutahar at SomeOrdinaryGamers and his video Huge Win Against Microslop...

Artificial Insanity

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony has our AI update. Daily News Stuff 6 July 2026: Post Alpacalyptic Edition

AI companies led by OpenAI and Anthropic say they're definitely not going to put hundreds of millions of people out of work so please don't lynch them. (MSN)

Sorry, best I can do is a meteor strike.

Companies making the heaviest use of AI are... Hiring the most humans? (Tech Crunch)

Everyone gets a meteor strike!

I thought AI was supposed to reduce headcount. I guess I was wrong.

Windows Security?

From Bleeping Computer we get the latest from Microsoft. CISA: Windows BlueHammer flaw now exploited by ransomware gangs

I usually avoid all articles about Windows these days. Since I am not using Windows, they are of no interest, but when CISA raises its head, I have to take a look.

CISA is the government agency that was named by the Department of Redundancy Department. CISA = The Cybersecurity and and Infrastructure Security Agency. (They are really, really, really focused on security!) They also have a logo straight out of 1955.

CISA confirmed on Monday that ransomware gangs have begun exploiting a high-severity Microsoft Defender privilege escalation vulnerability that has previously been abused in zero-day attacks.

Dubbed BlueHammer, the security flaw (CVE-2026-33825) was leaked by a security researcher known as "Nightmare Eclipse" in early April, together with proof-of-concept exploit code, in protest at how the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) handles the disclosure process.

The moral of the story: Never piss off the hackers who are reporting bugs to you. This is a lesson that executives, not just at Microsoft, will probably never learn.

Will Dormann, principal vulnerability analyst at Tharros, told BleepingComputer in April that while the issue is not easy to exploit, it gives local attackers access to the Security Account Manager (SAM) database, which contains password hashes for local accounts.

With this access, they can escalate to SYSTEM privileges and potentially take complete control of the targeted system.

I'm not sorry I left Microslop in the dust.

You can find the CISA notification at this link.

Sony Deletes Movies PlayStation Owners "Purchased"

Purchased is such a flexible term. Sony Deletes 551 StudioCanal Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

Sony plans to wipe 551 movies and TV shows from the PlayStation Store libraries of customers who paid full price for them. The deletion is coming on September 1 and so far the company has said nothing about giving anyone their money back.

Well of course not, because when you buy "digital copies" of anything, you are really not buying anything. You are renting the item for the length of time they decide you get to have them.

What? You didn't read the terms and conditions before you clicked on "I agree?"

Hat tip to Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.

As Steve would say, “Buy. Physical. Media.”

Cops Are Using Flock Cameras to Stalk People

Are we surprised? Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk People

They start out with following the case of one cop who used the system to track the movements of his ex-girlfriend, and her parents. Then we get to the general statements.

Local news reports from around the country repeatedly detail police abusing the Flock surveillance systemic order to stalk their partners or ex-partners. The contours of each story are much the same, with the police officer in question using their access to the system to repeatedly track a specific person over the course of weeks or months. The cases highlight the fact that Flock can be used to track the whereabouts of individual people, that police do not get a warrant in order to use the system, and that, if they have access to the system, they have the technical ability to look up any license plate they want for any reason they want

Flock claims the abuse is rare, but it should not be possible. There should be controls, audits, something.

OpenAI Looses $38.5 Billion in 2025

From Ed Zitron, and Where's Your Ed At we get a glimpse of the AI Insanity. Exclusive: OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X in 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion

The TL;DR is fairly simple. OpenAI lost $5.09 Billion In 2024. In 2025 that expanded to OpenAI losing $38.5 Billion. (And those numbers a bit sus.)

Please note that 2025 was the year that OpenAI converted from a non-profit to a for-profit entity, leading to a $41.55 billion loss due to changes in fair value of convertible interests and warrant liability.

Taking into account other minor factors like interest income and interest expense, OpenAI is left with a net loss of $60.35 billion, which it lowered to $38.53 billion by removing $17.87 billion in costs via that “net loss attributable to noncontrolling members capital” and another $3.95 billion via a “net loss attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interests.”

It's definitely not a bubble.

Hat tip to Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony: Daily News Stuff 18 June 2026: Yes, Glurge Edition

Thanks to careful cost-control, losses over the same period dropped from $5 billion in 2024 to $38.5 billion in 2025.

Oh.

Actually, before fudging adjustments the company's net loss for 2025 reached $60 billion.

Accounting is occasionally like magic.

The Disturbing Reality of Human Trafficking

Nic McKinley is an ex CIA operative, and Air Force Pararescue Jumper. He is now active in DeliverFund, which is an organization fighting human trafficking. He was recently a guest on The Unsubscribe Podcast. That discussion was long, and covered several things.

The video embedded below is the section of that podcast that covers the current state of human trafficking, and what DeliverFund is doing about it.

This is the Unsubscribe Clips video The Disturbing Reality Of Roblox Predators

DeliverFund describes itself as a nonprofit intelligence agency.

We combat human trafficking with counterterrorism expertise

DeliverFund disrupts global human trafficking markets by combining uniquely qualified personnel with the best technologies and then leveraging them in new ways to reach and rescue victims of human trafficking.

Our team leverages its counterterrorism experience to transform the human trafficking fight. We deploy the same tactics used to track terrorists to take down human traffickers.

They do that by supporting law enforcement in the US.

Meta’s AI Support Bot Used to Seize Instagram Accounts

Kerbs on Security has the story: Hackers Used Meta’s AI Support Bot to Seize Instagram Accounts

I am not shocked.

No hacking required. Just find the account you are interested in, and ask the Meta support AI to help you reset your password.

The Instagram accounts for the Obama White House and the Chief Master Sergeant of the U.S. Space Force were briefly defaced with pro-Iranian images and messages over the weekend, after instructions began circulating on Telegram showing how to trick Meta’s “AI support assistant” bot into resetting account passwords.

It isn't really a hack. The bad guys asked the AI tools to send the password reset link to a "new email address." It bypassed 2-factor authentication. It accepted AI-generated videos for selfies. (Grab a photo, and ask your favorite AI to make a 30 second video, and your in.)

What?

Meta has not responded to requests for comment on the video’s claims, but Meta’s Andy Stone said on Twitter/X that the issue had been resolved and that they were securing impacted accounts. The security blog thecybersecguru.com reports that Meta pushed an emergency patch over the weekend, and clarified that no back end database was breached.

So are you really sure you want AI involved in everything? Everything related to security?

Here is Mutahar's SomeOrdinaryGamers video So Instagram Got Completely Hacked...

How did we even get to this point? What the F- is going on?

The video is 17 minutes.

Robotaxis Do Crazy Stuff

I think we can say that self-driving cars are still not ready for Prime Time.

We start with the serious bit. The Waymo recalls nearly 4,000 robotaxis after vehicle drove into flood

Have they lost their Way-mo?

They weren't programmed to understand flooded streets, so it drove in. One of the most dangerous things you can do is drive into flood waters.

According to the NHTSA, which is probing the mishap, the software recall applies to Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS).

The recall was prompted by an incident that occurred on April 20, when a self-driving car drove into a flooded creek in San Antonio amid inclement weather and was swept away, CNBC reported. Thankfully, there were no passengers aboard at the time.

That could have been a tragedy.

Waymo said that they have “identified an area of improvement."

Gee, ya think?

Now for a bit of levity from Atlanta. Empty Waymos won’t stop circling this cul-de-sac in Atlanta, unsettling residents. And while it is ridiculous, the people in the neighborhoods impacted (it is more than one) are not laughing.

A seemingly unending stream of Waymos have been rolling through a quiet, dead-end street in Northwest Atlanta in recent weeks, looping around the cul-de-sac — usually early in the morning — and clogging the road when residents tried to stop them.

The residents of that neighborhood contacted Waymo (a division of Alphabet/Google) and were ignored.

You can find the video of the Waymo taxis invading that Atlanta neighborhood at this link: Empty Waymos invade Atlanta neighborhood, circle cul-de-sac for hours with no passengers

The hat tip for all of this goes to MGUY Australia and his video Hilariously BAD week for Waymo.

BitLocker Bypass Allows Access to Encrypted Drives

Because of course it does. Windows BitLocker 0-Day Vulnerability Enables Access to Encrypted Drives

Two new unpatched Windows BitLocker zero-day vulnerabilities significantly compromise Microsoft’s ecosystem. The exploits include a critical BitLocker encryption bypass called YellowKey and a privilege escalation flaw named GreenPlasma.

YellowKey is a bypass. BitLocker hasn't been broken. Windows can be fooled into letting you in through the side door.

GreenPlasma isn't less scary, but maybe I will get to that later.

YellowKey is a critical exploit that allows threat actors with physical access to entirely bypass BitLocker full-disk encryption in minutes. The vulnerability resides within the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) and exclusively impacts Windows 11, Windows Server 2022, and Windows Server 2025.

This is the Dave's Garage video Yellow Key: BitLocker has been Broken! Don't lose your laptop!

If you encrypt your laptop or desktop with BitLocker, you're about to be very surprised, and more than a little frightened because every once in a while, a security bug comes along that doesn't feel like a clever exploit so much as finding a labeled spare key under the front door mat.

Don't lose access to your laptop, for even a minute.

The video is short, by Dave's Garage standards, at less than 2 and a half minutes.

Gaming News

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony has some info/deductions about the Steam Machine. Daily News Stuff 11 May 2026: Plastic Memories Edition

It seems that Valve is building the infrastructure it needs to sell the Steam Machine.

It's not going to be cheap thanks to the RAMpocalypse, but shipping manifests show that Valve has collected 50 tons of something in a warehouse, and the latest update to Steam includes four new product codes and a reservation queue that again appear to correspond to the new device.

I'm not sure I'll get one - it's a low-end console replacement and I have multiple systems more powerful - but it's good to see signs of life.

I'm only interested in seeing the last of the Windows-only, anti-cheat software ported to Linux, even if it is only ported to Arch. Anything the pulls another block out of the Jenga Tower of Microsoft's monopoly is a good thing.

Microslop decided that they were going to inflict AI on everyone, whether they wanted it or not, whether it opened up security problems (or should I say, "more security problems") or not, and whether it made sense or not. After all, that is what Wall Street wanted to hear, so that is what upper management wanted to hear, so that is what middle management ...

Worry about what the customers want? Why would they worry about the customers? People are locked into Windows, right? Microsoft can do whatever they want, and you have to accept it. Well, maybe not so much any more.

I Have Tried to Avoid Writing Anything About Windows 11 Lately

I think people should leave windows. Most people are not using software that requires Windows, and Micrslop has turned a once good, if not great operating system, into a nightmare of issues, and broken systems. From Bleeping Computer: April KB5083769 Windows 11 update causes backup software failures

This issue sounds like it probably hit corporate users more than home users, though it does impact Windows 11 Home. But my stance on Windows holds. Most people are using web browsers, word processors, and spreadsheets, and you don't need to use Windows for that.

Multiple vendors have been impacted by this change. This tells me something fundamental was changed, and API or something similar, without thought, or advanced notice. But mostly without thought. Changes were made to Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), which was introduced in 2003 to make sure that backups worked.

The list of software impacted by this known issue includes, but is not limited to, products from Acronis (Cyber Protect Cloud), Macrium (Reflect), NinjaOne Backup, and UrBackup Server.

Acronis has also published a support document confirming that the issue affects Windows 11 Pro and Home editions, causing backup operations to fail.

At least there is a fix, and you can click thru for that, and more technical details on the issue.

This kind of thing is becoming so common on Windows, it is hard to decide what, if any, quality control is being done. If they had done any testing around this feature, they would have discovered the impact to 3rd party software. Maybe they just don't care about quality anymore.

No Clankers at the Oscars

The AI Menace will not invade the Oscars. Not that anyone outside of Hollywood cares about the Oscars anymore. Oscars: No AI Actors, Screenplays; Acting, International Rule Changes. And Only some parts of movies will be clanker free, if I read this correctly. The people who "matter" will be protected. The working stiffs are SOL.

This just made me smile. Well, Pixy Misa's take (see below) made me smile.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in an announcement on Friday of updates to its rules and regulations, eliminated any gray area about its position on artificial intelligence: AI is not welcome at the Oscars.

This is mostly about AI actors, and AI written scripts.

I don't expect that this will stretch to work done for post-production, like digital/special effects, and I don't think it includes music.

If you care, you can click thru.

Hat tip to Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 2 May 2026: Very Bad Word Edition

The Oscars have also declared war on the clanker menace. (Hollywood Reporter)

If the skinsuit doesn't fit you might as well quit.

George Lucas predicted a lot.

Hospital Robot Battery Fire

This was close to being a huge tragedy.

The battery on a 500 pound robotic cart, used to take stuff around the hospital went, into thermal runaway during charging. Charging was on the 2nd floor and multiple carts were all charging in the same location. There were 26 battery-powered carts charging. Stache doesn't say, but I'm guessing that there are more than 26 carts, because that seems like a number that a hospital administrator would not sign off on.

The battery was a 4.2 kilowatt-hour battery. The chemistry was Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide battery, or NMC battery. The batteries typically burn aggressively when they go into thermal runaway, and put out a lot of very toxic gasses.

This is the StacheD Training video Hospital Robot Battery Fire: What Happened at Cedars-Sinai

Now, this incident points to something bigger. Most people think about lithium-ion battery hazards in terms of ebikes, electric vehicles, consumer electronics, but these batteries are now embedded in critical infrastructure, hospitals, data centers, warehouses, logistics operations. And in a lot of these environments, the people working around them have no idea what they're actually dealing with.

And here is a key point:

Anyone working in an environment with large format lithium-ion batteries needs basic training. Not fire suppression training, evacuation and recognition training. Know what off-gassing looks like, that whitish gray smoke, unusual smells. Know that your job is not to fight the fire. Know that you should close the doors, call 911, and get people out.

The video is less than six minutes.

Claude AI Deletes Company's ENTIRE Database

It took 9 seconds. AI isn't a bubble... Or is it? Claude-powered AI coding agent deletes entire company database in 9 seconds — backups zapped, after Cursor tool powered by Anthropic's Claude goes rogue

This incident actually teaches 2 lessons:

1. DO NOT Trust AI. Do. Not. Trust. Artificial Intelligence
2. If you're paying someone else to manage data, are you sure they are managing it correctly?

The founder of PocketOS has penned a social media post to warn others about the “systemic failures” of flagship AI and digital services providers. Jer Crane was inspired to write a public response after an AI coding agent deleted his firm’s entire production database. The AI agent’s misdemeanors were then hugely amplified by a cloud infrastructure provider’s API wiping all backups after the main database was zapped.

Anthropic's Claude is one of the handful of AIs that are everywhere. Like ChatGPT and Grok, it just doesn't usually get as much press.

A copy of data on the cloud is not necessarily the same as a backup. A backup that has not been tested for recovery, is not a backup. It is Schrodinger's Data. It might be there when you need it, and it might not. In this case, it was not.

In the meantime, please follow a thorough backup regimen and be careful out there. This isn't the first time we've seen an AI go rogue and start deleting important databases.

Hat tip to Clayton Cramer and HAL 9000 Coming to a Company Near You, Soon! "Run away, Sir Robin"

Never rely on AI for anything critical.

War Games - Hollywood Meets '80s Tech

The 1983 movie War Games is still one of my favorites. This video is a bit nerdy, even by my standards. But I don't care.

A lot of the details are nonsense, but it got the smell right. It understood what computer culture felt like in the early 1980s. a smart kid in a bedroom, a modem, a pile of obscure hardware, weird blinking lights, late night modem dialing, and the sense that if you knew just a little more than everybody else, you might accidentally open a door that you were never supposed to find. And that is why this movie still works on computer people.

Of course most of it is Hollywood cheating. If you ever used a dialup modem from the 1980s you know that the screens didn't work that quickly. And that's just one part of it.

When I discovered computers were a giant mathematical puzzle, I wanted one. My parents were convinced that they were just expensive toys, so I didn't get one. (They were expensive.) The IMSAI 8080 was one of the premiere computers of the day that you could hope to have in your home. That was the home computer in the movie.

The question is not was the computer real, because it was. The question is where did the movie actually cheat? And in reality, War Games cheats all over the place. It cheats on what the front panel is doing. It cheats on what the monitor is doing. It cheats on the modem. It cheats on the voice. It cheats on the AI. And yet somehow by cheating in exactly the right places, it winds up feeling more authentic than a lot of movies that were technically more careful.

Wargames Movie Magic: Where it Cheats - IMSAI & WOPR! It is a 16 minute video, so grab a coffee.

80 Tonnes of Lithium-ion Batteries Burn in Australia

This is the StacheD Training video Perth's Battery Recycling Fire: 80 Tons of Lithium-ion Batteries

Someone described dropping off a swollen lithium-ion battery at that collection facility and staff told them just to throw it in with all the other batteries. When they pushed back and asked if they're sure, all they got was a frustrated look and the staff turned their back on them. Not a great situation. A swollen lithium-ion battery is one of the clearest visible warning signs you could get.

The video is just a bit over 5 minutes. Stache is a fire fighter, and a trainer. His videos concentrate on the issues firefighters face today, and a lot of them today deal with lithium-ion batteries, and what happens when things goe wrong.

The hat tip goes to MGUY Australia and his video Lithium ion battery fire sends MASSIVE PLUME of toxic smoke over Aussie suburb

A news article form The Western Australian: Smoke warning for Perth suburb after fire at recycling centre storing lithium-ion batteries

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services warned people in the area to remain inside with windows and doors closed and air conditioners off due to potentially hazardous smoke in the area.

You can click thru for the details, but really StacheD does a better job explaining the situation.

Artificial Stupidity

Pixy Misa has an AI Update. Daily News Stuff 7 April 2026: The Command Line Cometh Edition

A critical security vulnerability has been discovered in the leaked version of Claude Code. (Adversa)

If you've used Claude Code, you've noticed that it loves running shell commands to examine your codebase, rather than, say, reading it. Or having simple fixed-function code built into the software to do it on your computer.

This has to do with Claude taking full control of your PC, because of course it would. They have the corrected code - it is IN the leaked source - they just are not using it.

Can you talk about AI without mentioning OpenAI?

OpenAI is once again calling for public funds to clean up the mess it is creating. (Business Insider)

The best time for a Butlerian Jihad is now.

There is more on AI, and the rest of the tech news for the 7th.

If you don't recognize that reference to "Butlerian Jihad," it is from the novel Dune.