Late December, St Vincent's Health (operate heaps of public and private hospitals in NSW, VIC & QLD along with aged care facilities) had a "cyber incident" and "found evidence that cybercriminals had removed some data from our network" but doesn't know what was taken or who did it. There isn't even a statement on their website and no patients have been contacted. Pathetic response considering the sensitive information at risk. Potentially just as bad is Court Services Victoria getting hit with a cryptolocker that's fucked with the audio-visual archive, placing "recordings of hearings including witness testimony from highly sensitive cases" at risk of being accessed or stolen. All organisations, big small poor rich, do better at computers in 2024 please.
Fidelity, one of the suckers/investors in Elon's purchase of Twitter, has once again written down the value of its investment, claiming it's now worth 71.5% less than what it was valued at when Elon purchased it. Masterful gambit sir, business genius! Also at X, a federal US court has told them they have to abide by California's new law that requires social media companies to tell the state twice a year "how they moderate content that contains hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference". No doubt he doesn't wanna do it because it would provide tangible evidence that X is a shit hole dumpster fire shit factory. Oh and the USA's NLRB said that "SpaceX violated the federal right of workers to collectively push for better conditions" after SpaceX fired a bunch of employees that wrote an open letter about how Musk "is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment". Will any of this harm Elon? Not at all, he's Mr. Teflon. Actions that would cripple us are like water off a duck's back for slippery ol' Elon.
Microsoft is so hyped about AI and their Copilot products that they're forcing OEMs to replace the Menu key on laptops shipping with Windows 11 with a "Copilot" key that will "provide direct access to Copilot, launching Microsoft's hub application for on-system AI". On computers without Copilot/Windows 11, "the key will instead default to opening up Windows Search, largely mirroring the existing functionality of the Windows key today". Another win for the marketing team at Microsoft. I wish they'd lose some battles every now and then. Meanwhile, the New York Times has sued Microsoft and OpenAI over using its content for training its LLM and according to this intellectual property attorney, has a very strong case as it "includes multiple extremely clear-cut examples of the LLMs spitting out The Times' content nearly verbatim or stating bald-faced lies about The Times’ content". Good luck.
Are you keen to get back into following RSS feeds but don't want yet another app to check for new updates? You might be interested in RSS Parrot - a Mastodon account that turns RSS feeds into Mastodon users you can follow. You give it an RSS feed or a website, it "looks up the link in your toot, reads the website, and retrieves the address of its RSS or Atom feed. If this is the first time the site is requested, RSS Parrot creates a new account dedicated to it. This account will send out a new toot every time a new post appears in the feed". Pretty nifty!
Low-voltage fed mini bulb, 10x magnification. Karl Deckart. (1991 Nikon Photomicrography Competition)
📻 Rascuache - At the Drive-In
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