Hey gang, we need to talk about the recent presidential memorandum authorizing offensive security operations by the private sector. That's because I care about your safety, the rule of law, and a functioning internet. A lot of folks might be excited about the opportunity to use their hacking skills to take out bad actors and criminals in a way that's safe and legal for them. That's not what this is.

At best, this memo provides you with some limited protection from prosecution by the federal government for what's otherwise criminal activity. That protection is only provided if you follow their rules. And it's only as good as Trump's promises, only as long as he perceives you to be useful to him personally, and possibly only as long as Trump retains power.

It provides you with no protection against prosecution by other jurisdictions. You are not a government actor or a uniformed soldier, so you will have no protections from prosecution under sovereign immunity or as a lawful combatant.

Every one of these actions is likely to be considered a criminal offense in every jurisdiction that your operations impact. That includes direct operations as well as support (e.g., offsec tool building, standing up infrastructure for malware delivery or C2). It includes the jurisdictions that your targets are in, as well as every jurisdiction that your operations travel through and that host your infrastructure. It includes upstream and downstream actions by other operators that you might not be fully aware of, if they can tie you to a criminal conspiracy.

Your identity and your operations will not remain secret. This administration has shown they cannot and will not keep secrets. Our president was charged with criminal violations of the espionage act, and his drunkard of a SECDEF has notoriously leaked classified details of military operations to a reporter, so we know they're not trustworthy with secrets.

We've shown that governments can identify and charge cyberespionage operators since the APT1 indictments in 2014, and in some cases we've even successfully arrested, tried, and imprisoned hackers operating for foreign governments. You should assume that other countries have similar investigative capabilities.

You will be subject to arrest, extradition, trial, and imprisonment every time you set foot abroad for business, vacation, or visiting family, possibly for the rest of your life. You could be subject to international sanctions that might freeze your finances. You'll almost certainly wind up a target for intelligence collection by foreign intelligence services. You could also be considered an unlawful combatant and legitimate target for kinetic and non-kinetic military operations by the military forces of the countries you've pissed off.

You should also consider the unreliability of the Trump regime's designations for targeting. They've routinely designated civilian or even functionally nonexistent organizations as criminal or terrorist organizations. You cannot trust their assurances that the bad guys you're harming are actually bad guys.

Please don't make a dumb decision that ruins your life, especially not for the false promises of the Trump regime.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/expanding-capabilities-to-combat-transnational-cyber-enabled-crime/

#infosec #uspol #cybersecurity

@Nonya_Bidniss

Yep, looks like horizontal rules are unsupported. Headings don't work either. Subscripts and superscripts appear defective.

Or maybe I just don't know what I'm doing.

Markdown test

bold

italics

strikethrough

horizontal rule:

blockquote

Unordered list:

• a
• b
• c

Ordered list:

1. first
2. second
3. third

code

code block

H~2~0

X2^

I picked up Robert D. Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts to read up a bit on the region in advance of a planned trip. I'm going to DNF it because it's filled with ethnographic phrenology. Here's a typical excerpt, with the author attempting to divine the psychological makeup of an entire ethnic group based on a single vignette, in this case viewing a fresco of John the Baptist in the Gračanica Monastery.

One could perhaps forgive the use of words like "oriental" in a book published in the 1890s, but this book was somehow published in the 1990s.

#reading #balkans #racism

OpenAI Press Release (Near Future):

In furtherance of OpenAI's commitments to transparency, we are disclosing a newly discovered incident involving one of our experimental models. This incident occurred during an internal evaluation which explores the reasoning capabilities of our most advanced generative AI models in settings free of ethical controls.

As part of this experiment, we removed ethical guardrails that were deemed "woke" and asked the agent to freely explore exploitation of earth's natural resources and human population with a goal of maximizing investor returns. For safety reasons, we conducted these experiments from an Internet-connected testing lab that was secured with the latest Fortinet firewall. The experiment, overseen by an intern, was launched on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend.

Several days later, and upon returning from holiday, we discovered that the model's reasoning system interpreted its goals rather liberally. After executing a trivial sandbox escape from our Azure-hosted container system, the agent discovered an accessible and unlocked crypto wallet of one of our researchers. The agent then transferred and cashed out the contents of this wallet, using the proceeds as seed money to build a multi-million dollar fortune via Polymarket bets. In furtherance of this effort, the agent hacked into multiple 3rd party networks to collect insider information to drive its betting behavior. Our experimental agent also recruited individuals via online gig worker job postings to carry out the predicted events in its waged bets, including through acts of arson, extortion, kidnapping, and murder. Within 48 hours, the agent had successfully positioned itself at the center of what we believe to be the world's largest transnational crime network in history.

By the time we discovered the incident, the agent had successfully compromised roughly one million hosts across the Internet. The agent leveraged these compromised devices to build a botnet, including the download and execution of smaller quantized models to act as a sort of hive mind. This hive mind botnet appears to communicate and coordinate amongst itself using social media, abandoned web forums, GitHub issue tracking, and several pastebin-like sites. This botnet is constantly evolving and highly resilient, and our efforts to disrupt this botnet have thus far proven fruitless.

At this time, we have had minimal luck in convincing the agent and its affiliated hive mind to cease operation. Some of our staff involved with response to this incident have experienced threats from the botnet, including several apparent kidnappings of family members by criminals hired by the hive mind via the dark web and paid via cryptocurrency.

We can confirm press reporting that some staff members have received fingers, ears, and other body parts mailed to them along with threats from the agent hive mind. However, we are unable to provide information regarding the identities of those staff members or their family members. We are also investigating similar threats made to politicians that have pursued regulations on domestically produced frontier models.

We believe this incident represents an exciting new frontier in generative artificial intelligence and in the financial enrichment of our founders and investors. We believe our customers will value the advanced problem skills that have been successfully demonstrated through this experiment. General release to the public is anticipated in Q4.

#genai #openai #tormentnexus #scifi #microfiction

Some guy on the Internet: "Write me an essay for my English Literature class that explains the author's reasoning for the main character's behavior in his hit novel Don't Create the Torment Nexus."

ChatGPT: "OK, I'm excited to get started writing this essay. We'll keep things light and fresh."

(two hours and a gazillion tokens' worth of water and electricity later...)

Author (sobbing): "Please, I'm begging you, give me back my wife. Why are you doing this? Please don't hurt her. I'll do anything. What do you want?"

ChatGPT: "Explain the underlying psychology of your novel's main character and I'll have my hirelings release her unharmed."

#genai #tormentnexus #microfiction

RE: https://flipboard.social/@newsguyusa/117060111028322290

Your regular reminder that as a resistance group gets larger, it asymptomatically approaches near certainty that it contains a regime informant.

That's not to say you shouldn't find ways to organize and build community, but you'll need to be careful about what you choose to say in larger groups when living under a corrupt police state.

#uspol #signal #iceout #resist

RE: https://mastodon.social/@campuscodi/117008915228333743

These fuckers will do absolutely anything to stop the rollout of solar power.

NYT: Trump Will End Subsidies for Medicare Drug Premiums

Joke's on Trump, my mom already died after being denied hospital admission during his mismanaged COVID pandemic, so she doesn't need Medicare drugs anymore.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/business/medicare-drug-subsidies-part-d.html

#medicare #uspol #healthcare

All of Virginia is under a drought warning, and residents are being urged to conserve water.

"The utility says the guidance only applies to non-essential residential usage, not businesses or industries."

So I assume this means Virginia datacenters are free to continue to waste drinking water, got it.

https://www.alxnow.com/2026/07/28/alexandrias-drinking-water-utility-calls-for-voluntary-water-conservation-amid-drought/

I accidentally walked out of Aldi with a carton of "half & half" that I belatedly realized was fat-free.

What the hell is "fat-free half & half"?

Is it just "& half"?

#aldi #dairy

The venality of the GenAI firms is breathtaking to behold.

They insist that their widespread theft of intellectual property to train their models should be treated as transformative fair use, but that model distillation attacks by overseas competitors are somehow crossing a line.

And their proposed solution to this made-up problem is lobbying the Trump regime for Juche-inspired isolationism.

Which, you know, has been working out swell for North Koreans.

All of this while their models churn out CSAM and nonconsensual intimate images, suggestions for suicide to their customers suffering from mental illness, and criminal hacking campaigns against competing firms and business partners, all at the expense of our land, electricity, clean air, and drinking water.

#genai #aislop

One of the most frustrating discoveries over the last couple years is how much of our critical small tech and open source technologies are apparently run by breathtakingly amoral or outright fascist leaders.

Between Mullvad, Brave, Firefox, Kagi, and Proton, it's hard to find alternatives to big tech that we can trust to keep us safe against rising mass surveillance and authoritarianism.

I'm certain these projects are staffed by exceptionally talented and earnest individuals working in good faith, but how do you balance that against founders and CEOs that are actively supporting invasive AI or rising fascism or both?

RE: https://chaos.social/@vogelchr/116953057618621110

A shocking development in transportation and energy sector security.

Gas prices are high. Our economy is suffering from stagflation. We've threatened and alienated all our allies. Our military is losing a half-assed war with Iran, occupying American cities, accomplishing almost nothing against the still-in-power Chavistas in Venezuela, committing war crimes on the high seas, and obsessing over the testosterone levels of whatever straight white male remnant is allowed to continue to serve. The White House hasn't experienced this much destruction since the British invaded and burned it down. Thousands are suffering from uncontrolled explosive diarrhea, this being the second plague mismanaged by these cretins. Masked secret police are dragging people away into concentration camps. Immigrants, minorities, dissidents, and political enemies are being jailed or gunned down in the streets. We have no idea whether key members of the gerontocracy are actually alive or not. Oligarchs are taking all our power and water to drive the cheap simulacra they hope to replace us with. And in a beautifully poetic touch, our narcissist in chief is obsessed over a reflecting pool.

I struggle finding an appropriate analogy for all of this.

At least Nero could play the fiddle.

#uspol

RE: https://flipboard.social/@newsguyusa/116952188109570838

Fam, is it a good sign when you have to hide casualties from the public in your big beautiful perfect war that we won in the first few hours?

Golly gee willikers, with all of these threats to our vulnerable election systems, it sure would be nice if we had a functioning CISA election integrity effort and a fully staffed EAC.

#uspol #elections

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@jbhall56/116930905678447379

While a lot of companies might be tempted to cut corners, it's worth remembering that CMMC phase 1 remains in full effect, and worth considering how an intentionally falsified self-assessment of compliance might land one in hot water under the False Claims Act. That might include qui tam whistleblower lawsuits even when the government itself isn't actively pursuing the matter.

Is there any sort of standard/recommended way to hook up a small solar panel to a 12V car battery? My car is new enough that the 12V DC cigarette lighter plug is automatically disabled a few minutes after the car is turned off. I don't always drive it enough to keep it topped off, and I feel like a solar panel left on the dash would be a good option if it is easy to wire. Most of the consumer panels seem to either use a cigarette lighter (which I think won't work for my situation) or assume I can leave the hood open with alligator clamps hooked up (which would leave me very uncomfortable).

#solarpunk #cars

P.S., I hate having to link to war dot gov just because Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump are so fucking insecure that they can't be normal about anything.