There's such a thing as too much anti-fraud protection.

I tried six times to order a replacement part from Braun's website. Each time I'd get a confirmation of the order, followed immediately by a notification that it had been canceled.

I finally get on customer support and they dig into it and come back and tell me that my IP address is too far from my address.

Ummm. Okay, so maybe it's Apple's private relay. But no. I turn that off and it still does the same thing. Also, curiously. Apple Pay fails as well as soon as I enter my address.

My shipping address is a couple miles away from my house in the same town. Most IP locators think my IPV4 address is an about 20 miles away in another town. My IPv6 is listed as being in Oregon, another state.

But seriously. Who expects IP location to be accurate enough to protect against fraud? That's nuts. Is this some European concept of how IP addresses work?

I wrote some words for ~ this week in security ~ about the security and privacy risks with AI browsers, like Perplexity's Comet and OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas, and why they should really come with enormous warning labels: "⚠️ Use at your own risk! ⚠️"

Read online: this.weekinsecurity.com/ai-bro…

Sign up for (or RSS) the weekly newsletter: this.weekinsecurity.com

AI browsers are a hot mess of security risks

AI-enabled web browsers are putting their users' data, security, and privacy at risk from rudimentary prompt injection attacks.

^{Zack Whittaker (~this week in security~)}

Twenty Thousand Hertz - Inside Walt Disney Imagineering: 20k.org/episodes/disney-imagin…

Sound is a crucial part of what makes Disney parks feel magical… and it all starts inside the closely-guarded rooms of Walt Disney Imagineering. In this episode, Imagineers John Dennis and Greg Lhotka break down how they use music and audio to bring attractions to life, from speaker systems hidden in rock work, to the intricate timing of a Frozen water ride. Then, they reveal the surprising story of how one of Disney’s most iconic songs got a brand new verse, more than half a century after its debut. Watch Dallas' trip to Walt Disney Imagineering on ⁠Youtube⁠. If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠mystery.20k.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Support the show and get ad-free episodes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠20k.org/plus⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow Dallas on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Join our community on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Reddit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Explore incredible speakers, soundbars and more at ⁠sonos.com⁠. Visit ⁠⁠quince.com/20k⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order & 365 day returns. Find a therapist who takes your insurance at ⁠⁠⁠growtherapy.com/20k⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial at ⁠⁠⁠shopify.com/20k⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 20k.org/episodes/disney-imagin…

Inside Walt Disney Imagineering

^{Kelly Nowels (Twenty Thousand Hertz - The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds.)}

"More than £100m was spent last year by local authorities and the government on failed efforts to block support for children and young people with special educational needs in England...

The enormous cost in legal fees and staff resources came after councils won just 136 out of more than 10,000 tribunals in 2022-23, a success rate of 1.2%..."

From theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/d…

The system is fundamentally broken. Each case involves a child or young person who is missing out on the support they need.

£100m spent in England on failed efforts to block children’s Send support

Exclusive: Councils win just 1.2% of tribunals, as experts see signs provision is becoming a battle with desperate families

^{Richard Adams (The Guardian)}

#трамп: ты можешь заявить три требования для остановки войны
путин: снятие санкций, разморозка активов, возвращение западных компаний, денафификация и демилитаризация Украины - это раз.

а если без шуток, эти дегенераты УЖЕ требовали возвращение западных компаний и инвестиций как УСЛОВИЕ прекращения войны во время переговоров в стамбуле. так что вменяемости ждать не стоит.

"Amazon sold cloud-computing services to two Israeli weapons manufacturers whose munitions helped devastate Gaza, according to internal company materials obtained by The Intercept.

Amazon Web Services has furnished the Israeli government — including its military and intelligence agencies — with a suite of state-of-the-art data processing and storage services since 2021 as part of its controversial Project Nimbus deal. Last year, The Intercept revealed a provision in that contract requiring Amazon and Google, the other Nimbus vendor, to sell cloud services to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israeli Aerospace Industries, two leading Israeli weapons firms.

New internal financial data and emails between Amazon personnel and their Israeli corporate and governmental clients show that Amazon has consistently provided software to both Rafael and IAI in 2024 and 2025 — periods during which Israel’s military was using their products to indiscriminately kill civilians and destroy civil infrastructure. Rafael purchased artificial intelligence technologies made available through Amazon Web Services, including the state-of-the-art large language model Claude, developed by AI startup Anthropic.

The materials reviewed by The Intercept also indicate Amazon sold cloud-computing services to Israel’s nuclear program and offices administering the West Bank, where Israeli military occupation, population displacement, and settlement construction is widely considered illegal under international law."

theintercept.com/2025/10/24/am…

#Amazon #Israel #Gaza #AWS #CloudComputing #Genocide

As Israel Bombed Gaza, Amazon Did Business With Its Bomb-Makers

The Intercept has learned that Amazon sold cloud services to Israeli weapons firms at the height of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

^{Sam Biddle (The Intercept)}

🚨 Warnings over Perplexity’s Comet Browser 🚨

AI browsers are the new hype but it doesn't mean they are safe to use 👉🏼

Security researchers from LayerX Security have revealed that the AI browser is vulnerable to CometJacking attacks, allowing hackers to hijack sessions and access user data.

For more info on why you're better off not using Comet: tuta.com/blog/perplexity-comet…

#Perplexity #AIBrowser #CometBrowser

I cleaned up today and found a floppy disk. Popped it in a convenient Quadra and it had a screenshot from more than thirty years ago (1995!) with a DOpus window open showing a list of files in one of my pics folders.

I still have the same files backed up on my NAS.

ARE YOUR BACKUPS WORKING?

My story “Death and the Gorgon” was voted best novella of 2024 by the readers of Asimov’s SF. You can read it online at the link below.

I also have a new novella in the Nov 2025 issue of Asimov’s, “Spare Parts for the Mind”, and they have an excerpt from that on their web site.

Link to “Death and the Gorgon”: asimovs.com/wp-content/uploads…

Link to excerpt from “Spare Parts for the Mind”: asimovs.com/current-issue/stor…

Supermarket. Grocery store. Israeli style 🇮🇱

#SuperMarket #GroceryStore #HebrewLanguage #LearnHebrew #LanguageLesson

Spain completes its 'most ambitious space project' with the launch of the satellite SpainSat NG II

The SpainSat NG II satellite successfully took off from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. With it, Spain completes its SPAINSAT NG secure communications programme and reinforces its role as a technological and strategic reference in space.

euronews.com/next/2025/10/25/s…

Spain completes its 'most ambitious space project' with the launch of the satellite SpainSat NG II

^{Cristian Caraballo (Euronews.com)}

Version 2 of UpSiteDown, Seediffusion's free and accessible website monitoring tool, is out now!

* Version 2 is the first UpSiteDown release to use codenames. Each major version will use a British celebrity name for a codename. Version 2 is codenamed after the TV and Radio presenter Jamie Theakston.
* UpSiteDown is now using accessible_output2 instead of cytolk for a speech library, helping the program on its way to cross platform.
* The program can now send push notifications to iOS devices via Prowl.
* The program can now monitor other types of servers that don't use web ports, such as FTP servers, mail servers, game servers etc. Simply start a URL in your sites.txt file with either icmp:// to have the host monitored via ping requests, or tcp:// to have it monitored via TCP connections.
* UpSiteDown is now completely open source and in the public domain, being licensed under the Unlicense license.

GitHub repository: github.com/seediffusion/UpSite…
Latest release: github.com/seediffusion/UpSite…

GitHub - seediffusion/UpSiteDown: The simple, accessible website monitoring solution without limits

The simple, accessible website monitoring solution without limits - seediffusion/UpSiteDown

^GitHub

RE: mastodon.social/@ebassi/115429…

Got nerdsniped around lunchtime yesterday, and ended up implementing a shared "reduced motion" setting for GNOME and the rest of the xdg stack:

- gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/m…
- gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gsettin…
- github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop…
- gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/xdg-des…
- gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-c…

#a11y #accessibility #gnome #gtk #xdg #portals

Add a "reduced motion" preference to the settings portal · flatpak xdg-desktop-portal · Discussion #1839

Under GNOME we're currently abusing the boolean "enable animations" toggle, but this poorly maps to the actual accessibility issue of reduced motion. Ideally, we want to map to the same kind of set...

^GitHub

Emmanuele Bassi

2025-10-24 14:28:37

Time for plumbing a whole new accessibility setting from desktop to toolkit: 3 hours

Time for knowing what to plumb: 20 years

Time for bikeshedding on the type of the setting: Positive infinity

Sensitive content Reveal/hide

Did you know that you can get your news from Wikipedia?

It isn't sensationalized. It is based on high quality sources. Edited by volunteers who care more about accuracy than politics and guided by open editorial process / rules among peers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:C…

You can donate to Wikipedia via the Wikimedia foundation.

#Wikipedia #News

A gold ceremony to remember

daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/10/25…

A gold ceremony to remember

There are those moments in life you know already from the start are going to be the rare once in a lifetime events. This evening was one of those times.

^{daniel.haxx.se}