Apologies again for fanging yesterday’s edition down the wrong pipe. I also crossed my wires and didn’t properly link to this very important story from our friends at PC Mag, so here it is: Melania Trump Dubs Herself First Lady of Technology.

The News

China’s Salt Typhoon had a poke around Australia’s networks

Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon has been “observed” active in Australia, according to a new Five Eyes+ report detailing their tactics (Cyber dot gov dot au). After making headlines for an enormous, long-running hack of US telco and government organisations, the FBI now says Salt Typhoon hit “at least 200 American organisations and 80 countries” that went “beyond traditional spying” (Washington Post, free link). Security agencies from 14 countries have published a joint document that includes specific details about how the group carried out their cyberattacks.

The Sizzle: Salt Typhoon’s hacking operation has been one of the most successful spy operations in modern history. It’s hard to even conceptualise how much the West has been pwned, and the sheer breadth of information accessed by China.

Ah well, what can ya bloody do, ey?

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Looks like Deloitte used AI to write a government report on its automated system problems

More errors seemingly caused by AI have been found in a $439,000 Deloitte report about Australia’s automated welfare systems (AFR, gift link). On top of the initial reporting that the government-commissioned report had half a dozen fabricated references that I linked to earlier in the week (AFR, $), further review of Deloitte’s report for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations on welfare compliance systems shows that the report also includes a fabricated quote from a judge and other errors. Deloitte initially defended its report, saying that it stood by its conclusions despite referencing errors.

The Sizzle: Let me just check that I understood this correctly. You’re telling me that the government has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for hallucination-riddled vibeconsulting on a dodgy automated system that has historically denied people’s welfare claims? It’s almost too on the nose.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Dispatch from India: the internet is more local than I thought

One of the little delights of travelling is seeing how everything changes around you, even the internet! As soon as I touched down in India and activated my eSIM — god’s gift to travellers btw — many platforms and services immediately changed based on my location. There were obvious changes like being served Indian-local pages in search and local ads. Even still, I was surprised by some subtler changes. Like, I was unfortunately looking at X while monitoring the Victorian shooting and I noticed that its algorithm was picking (almost hilariously stereotypical) content seemingly based on me being in India. The internet, while inherently global, is being shaped by your location more than we sometimes think.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

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Oh, Also

Researchers have discovered AI’s weakness: bad grammar

Sorry I know there’s been a lot of AI content but I came across this blog from security researchers who found that you can jailbreak AI by using bad grammar and typing your prompts all in one sentence because the lack of a break or gap means that the safety guardrails don’t have an opportunity to kick in and honestly i find it really amusing that we’ve invented a computer that you can overpower by refusing to use a full stop (The Register)

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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