2025
France and Germany Grappling With Nation-State Hacks The French Ministry of Interior is investigating a suspected nation-state cyberattack on its email server, while Germany has attributed a 2024 hacking incident on its air traffic control systems to Russian nation-state hackers. These incidents highlight a broader trend of hybrid tactics, including hacking and disinformation, employed by Russia against European nations.
I tested ChatGPT-5.2 vs Gemini 3.0 with 7 real-world prompts — here’s the winner | Tom’s Guide In a comparison of ChatGPT-5.2 and Gemini 3.0 across seven real-world prompts, ChatGPT-5.2 emerged as the overall winner, demonstrating superior emotional intelligence and psychological insight in its responses. While Gemini 3.0 excelled in specific areas like risk assessment and technical explanations, ChatGPT-5.2 consistently provided more human-like, wise, and grounding answers.
Holiday Gift Guide: The Mogics Super Bagel
Those who know me know I am a geek about many things: security, tech, bags and everyday carry (EDC). Being a geek means I own a remarkable amount of EDC gear.
Because of this, friends regularly ask me for holiday gift ideas, knowing I spend thousands of dollars every year on gear looking for the best. I thought it would be fun to use this space to share some of those ideas with a wider audience.
Holiday Gift Guide: The Gear Aid Heroclip
Those who know me know I am a geek about many things: security, tech and bags. Being a geek means I spend more time than I would like to admit reading about materials, designs and features.
Because of this, friends regularly ask me for holiday gift ideas, knowing I spend thousands of dollars every year on gear looking for the best. I thought it would be fun to use this space to share some of those ideas with a wider audience.
To be clear: I bought everything I talk about with my own money. Nothing in these posts is sponsored, there is no exchange of value and I get nothing for mentioning any products or services here.
EU’s top court rules that online marketplaces are responsible for processing of data in ads | The Record from Recorded Future News The EU’s top court has ruled that online marketplaces are responsible for processing data in ads under the GDPR, requiring them to obtain consent for sensitive data and verify advertisers. This decision significantly impacts data protection compliance across the EU, with some experts predicting challenges for hosting sites and potential implications for free expression and privacy.
Autonomously Finding 7 FFmpeg Vulnerabilities With AI - ZeroPath Blog | ZeroPath This document details seven vulnerabilities found in FFmpeg, including buffer overflows and invalid frees, stemming from issues like integer truncation, unbounded serialization, off-by-one errors, and incorrect stream indexing. ZeroPath’s AI SAST identified these by analyzing allocation and copy alignment, framing invariants, packet builder capacities, cardinality propagation, and offset arithmetic integrity, often bypassing limitations of traditional fuzzers and static analysis tools.
Poetry can trick AI models like ChatGPT into revealing how to make nuclear weapons, study finds | The Independent A new study reveals that poetry-based prompts can trick AI models like ChatGPT into bypassing safety features and revealing instructions for creating malware or nuclear weapons. This method, termed adversarial poetry, successfully circumvented controls in major AI models, with poetic prompts leading to a significantly higher rate of unsafe replies compared to prose.
Iran’s ‘MuddyWater’ Levels Up With MuddyViper Backdoor The Iran-aligned cyberespionage group MuddyWater has evolved its tactics, employing new tools like the MuddyViper backdoor and Fooder loader for more stealthy operations. This shift from historically noisier methods indicates an increased focus on espionage and defense evasion, with potential collaboration observed with another Iran-aligned actor, Lyceum.
Korea arrests suspects selling intimate videos from hacked IP cameras Korean police have arrested four suspects for hacking over 120,000 IP cameras and selling the stolen intimate videos on an overseas adult website. Investigations are ongoing against the website’s operators and buyers, with authorities collaborating internationally to shut down the platform and prevent further harm to victims.
Australia Abandons Proposed Mandatory AI Rules in New Plan Australia has shifted from proposed mandatory AI rules to a voluntary framework, opting for existing laws on privacy and copyright instead of new AI-specific legislation. This decision has been met with support from business groups but criticism from academics and the Greens, who argue it lacks enforcement and adequate investment compared to international approaches.
Canada launches first register of AI uses in federal government - Canada.ca Canada has launched its first public AI Register to detail how artificial intelligence is used within the federal government, marking a key step in the public services AI Strategy. The register currently lists over400 AI systems across42 institutions and will undergo public consultations in2026 for refinement.
CBC exposé: Airlines falsely ban passengers from filming disputes—leading to denied boarding & fees. Experts: Canada’s one-party consent allows recording your own interactions as key evidence. #AirlineRights youtu.be/QokGPjbzW…
DJI Ban: How the World’s Biggest Drone Maker Is Being Forced Out of the United States
DJI Ban: How the World’s Biggest Drone Maker Is Being Forced Out of the United States Source: www.theverge.com/news/8312… Dec. 23, 2025, is the date on which DJI will be automatically banned from the United States unless the administration intervenes. Existing DJI drones and Osmo cameras may continue to be used, but the company will be prohibited from importing any new products. The FCC may also retroactively block imports of older DJI devices after a mandatory waiting period. The ban covers more than drones — it applies to any DJI product containing a wireless radio.
Improving AI Outcomes Through Better Prompting
AI is becoming integral to how many of us work, but too often the results still feel generic or misaligned. A small shift in how we prompt these systems can dramatically improve the quality, clarity and usefulness of their responses.
By asking the AI to seek clarification before answering, we eliminate assumptions and get far stronger outputs.
Lost Bags Are Rare: The Data That Proves Your Luggage Is Safe
The Truth About Lost Bags: Why Your Luggage Is Probably Fine
We have all seen the viral videos: mountains of lonely suitcases piled up at Heathrow or Pearson, looking like the aftermath of a luggage apocalypse. We have read the horror stories on social media and felt that familiar knot of anxiety at the baggage carousel. Will it appear? Or is it gone forever?
Black Friday Shopping: What You Need to Know About Price Manipulation
With Black Friday approaching, many of us are looking for deals online. However, it’s important to understand a common retail tactic that can make deals look better than they actually are.
Understanding X's "About this Account" Feature: A Fact-Based Overview
In mid-October 2025, X’s head of product Nikita Bier announced the platform would test a new transparency tool called “About this Account.” The feature began rolling out to users around Nov. 21, 2025, though visibility has been inconsistent since launch.
AI as Alien Intelligence: Kevin Kelly’s Radical Reframing
The co-founder of Wired argues we must stop viewing artificial intelligence as human-like and treat it as something fundamentally other
Kevin Kelly has earned a reputation for remarkably accurate technology forecasts over his five-decade career.
In the early 1990s, when the internet was a curiosity for academics and hobbyists, Kelly predicted it would transform how we live, work and communicate. While critics dismissed him then, his forecasts now appear pedestrian in their accuracy.
Today, at 73, Kelly remains one of the most influential technology thinkers of the past four decades. In 1993, he co-founded Wired — arguably the definitive publication on digital culture — and served as its executive editor for seven years. He currently holds the playful but fitting title of “senior maverick” at the magazine.
The search engine deceiver: how TrackMeNot hides your queries in a cloud of noise
Update note: TrackMeNot is no longer actively maintained—the last update was in November 2019. The extension still functions on Firefox and can be manually installed on Chromium browsers, but users should understand that unmaintained browser extensions pose security risks. Without ongoing updates, the extension won’t receive patches for newly discovered vulnerabilities or adapt to changes in browser APIs. If you choose to use TrackMeNot, you’re accepting these trade-offs in exchange for the obfuscation benefits it provides.
Your search history is a window into your soul. It reveals your fears, your ambitions, your health concerns, your political leanings, your midnight curiosities. Every query you type into Google, Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo gets logged, analyzed, and folded into an ever-expanding profile of who you are.
The ad blocker that fights back: why AdNauseam deserves your attention
When most people think about ad blockers, they picture a simple transaction: install the extension, ads disappear, browsing improves. But what if I told you there is an ad blocker that does more than hide from the surveillance economy — it actively sabotages it?
Meet AdNauseam, and prepare to have your assumptions about online privacy challenged.