Notices by Julian Oliver (julianoliver@mastodon.social)

@mirabilos In fact it scans all networks on L2, finds the one any member of the target MAC array is associated with, assumes the BSSID of the AP, sends deauth packets to the client (glasses), which it automatically abides as a function of the 802.11 spec built-in. It does this in a loop. With more NICs to put in Monitor mode, you have effective detect and deauth 'threads' in parallel.

@jackemled What my Glasshole script did/does is send specially crafted deauthentication packets, pretending to be the device the glasses are connected to. This effectively disables most functionality, alongside any streaming from the glasses to a remote or local service. I am curious to see what can be done with the Meta glasses. If they use WiFi, it is positive.

In another project I automated it, detecting the connection and blocking the devices, whenever in presence of device running script

Worth mentioning that if I can get hold of a pair of Meta's new face recog RayBan glasses I will study them with the aim to detect and hopefully disable them at a distance.

I did the same for Google Glass (covered by Wired, Hackaday, Time) back in the day. I named it Glasshole.sh.

https://julianoliver.com/projects/glasshole/

The working title for my future Meta RayBan blocker is BanRay.sh

FWIW I have never had a Facebook nor Instagram account, but can only guess how much of a sacrifice it is to leave all those connections behind, especially for heavy users. But the fact these platform giants use our conversations and expressions as an implement of blackmail - threatening to delete it all - shows very clearly they are no better than a shitty landlord. It is an act of care for community and self to stop feeding such toxicity. Stop paying rent.

Meta have been asking some users to confirm their identity with a 'video selfie', & for supposed account recovery. Soon, more users will be asked with threat of blocking or deleting their account as Meta prepares to launch their facial recog glasses (soon on shelves).

But it's not just about feeding their new product. Meta are harvesting biometric data on a vast scale, perhaps globally, & in full cohort with a dangerous regime.

Leaving Meta is an important act of resistance, now more than ever

Interesting to see how 'AI' is sneaking ever more deeply into the lives of people in my circles, even those whom have voiced ethical opposition or wariness in the past. The most common vector seems to be through knowledge summaries, with one person citing her high mental load working through large bodies of information as the reason she started using it more readily. Understandably, too.

Convenience is the worm of Ethos, and the planet-eating, culture-eating technopolists know this.

Billionaire investors are already eyeing up Greenland to build a high-tech and stateless Freedom City, "a new, libertarian-minded municipality characterized by minimal corporate regulation and a focus on accelerating emerging technologies like AI and mini nuclear reactors."

This is an old story of colonisation dressed up in semiconductors & utopianism, where the self-celebrating 'bold free will' of the invader comes at the cost of exploitation, extraction & oppression.

https://www.popsci.com/technology/billionaire-freedom-city-greenland/

The current US administration is positioning any support of Palestinian people as a vehicle for bootstrapping the implementation of processes & precedents for crushing dissent.

While Mahmoud's own rights must be fought for tooth & nail, it is a mistake to assume his deportation is solely about him & his views. They have used him to prepare the ground for wide scale criminalisation of protest itself.

For the Far Right, speech is only free when it comes from their mouths

https://apnews.com/article/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-protester-ruling-deport-fd9e80583af3109d7de0a5264e79ea61

Guardian article in advance of forthcoming series on UK spy cops. It details how 1/5th of those sent to infiltrate political movements ended up in intimate relationships with women therein, some even fathering children while using fake identities.

In my work for defenders of human rights & the environment I hear many awful stories as regards infiltration - the worst of social engineering. Arguably the UK has among the lowest, most disgraceful history within this space

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/02/revealed-at-least-25-uk-spy-cops-sexual-relations-deceived-women

Starlink became a geopolitical lever, just as we knew it would https://www.reuters.com/business/us-could-cut-ukraines-access-starlink-internet-services-over-minerals-say-2025-02-22/

Detailed analysis by The Observer finds that Google has been cooperating with the censorship requests of about 150 countries worldwide.

Harriet Moynihan, associate fellow at thinktank Chatham House, cited in the article:

"Transparency is the big issue. We are only scratching the surface as researchers into what these tech companies are doing, including the use of their algorithms … The balance of power has shifted way in their favour.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/15/google-helped-facilitate-russia-china-censorship-requests

#censorship

Hard to come up with words other than 'takeover' and 'coup' to describe what's happening in the US, in what is set to be the most documented and studied slide from a functioning democracy (however unhealthy) in history.

We are watching the country being ripped apart in realtime, and with it profound impacts across the globe.

China's new DeepSeek 'AI' product claims to have used much less powerful chips than rivals to develop its models, making them far cheaper to produce.

This has freaked investors out, worried that their massive investments in AI were overblown, in turn wiping 465B off Nvidia's value - the largest fall in US stock market history. Other US Big Tech firms took a hit, with OpenAI, DeepSeek's rival, esp unhappy:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/27/tech-shares-asia-europe-fall-china-ai-deepseek

(Notably, as soon as DeepSeek topped app stores, it was DDoS'd)

“The definition of fascism is the marriage of corporation and state.”
― Benito Mussolini

A good time to re-read climate scientist Kate Marvel's warnings on an over-dependence on hope.

"We need courage, not hope. Grief, after all, is the cost of being alive. We are all fated to live lives shot through with sadness, and are not worth less for it. Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending."

While her text is indeed about climate, we can just as well apply her warning to fighting the rise of fascism.

https://onbeing.org/blog/kate-marvel-we-need-courage-not-hope-to-face-climate-change/

Rafah, Gaza, Jan 20, 2025.

Photograph: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu/Getty Images

A few years back the Abandon Normal Devices festival (UK) asked me to submit a 'challenging constraint' as part of a pack of cards they were putting out entitled Abandon Normal Strategies. The deck is based on Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies, a method for promoting lateral thinking, breaking creative blocks.

Here's my offering. Feeling like a good time for this card.

In my opening keynote for the Ada Symposium 2024, I conclusively and decisively argued that what we call 'A.I' is in fact a pet rock.

I also argued some other things.

https://vimeo.com/952557065

(lecture starts at 3:35)

#ai #ml #technologicaldeterminism

It appears that melting Antarctic sheets may result in larger volcanic eruptions This is due to the unloading of ice mass shifting pressure across vast chambers of magma.

"The researchers note that even if anthropogenic warming ceased immediately, the effects of ice mass unloading that the West Antarctic Rift System has already experienced will still affect volcanic behavior here for thousands of years to come."

https://phys.org/news/2025-01-antarctic-ice-sheets-larger-volcanic.html

#climatechange #geophysics #fossilfuels

The ML-enabled voice-theft space is heating up.

Here's an article from presenter Georgina Findlay, who had her own voice cloned and used in far-right disinformation videos on YouTube.

"I was horrified to find that eight out of 12 of the channel’s most recent videos had used my voice"

In the article Georgina also provides some good coverage of the state of 'AI' voice-cloning policy and mitigations.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/07/ai-clone-voice-far-right-fake-audio

#ai #ml #opsec