Ars Technica – Anthropic VS code extension on Cursor backdoored for nearly 12 hours

Oct 312026
 

An official extension for Anthropic’s Claude model was backdoored and threatened as many as 5,000 developers’ machines, multiple sources reported Friday. Anthropic so far has yet to warn customers of the incident.
The compromised package was a VS Code extension available in the marketplace of Cursor, a maker of AI-assisted developer tools, the company said Friday. The malicious version, 2.1.313, subsequently affected “at most 5,000 users,” presumably when they either downloaded it or their systems automatically fetched and installed it. Anthropic pushed version 2.1.314 several hours after the previous version became available on Cursor, according to independent researcher Kevin Beaumont. Both Beaumont and the CTO and co-founder of security firm Phorian said that version 2.1.313 was distributed through…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/10/anthropic-vs-code-extension-on-cursor-backdoored-for-nearly-12-hours/

 2026-10-31  No Responses »

Techdirt. – MapQuest Adds New ‘Surveillance Layer’ That Shows Locations Of ALPR Cameras

Oct 312026
 

Well well well. All it took was a regime change and the persistent abuse of camera networks by police officers to change MapQuest from “Remember MapQuest?” nostalgia to “hey where can I download MapQuest” demands.
First, there’s the regime change. Trump has been stupid as fuck all the time since day one but nothing was much stupider than issuing an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Oh wait. There was more stupidity. Trump — again saying anything that momentarily glanced off the shiny, wrinkless lobes of his forebrain — demanded Lake Ontario be renamed “Lake America.”
If that were the end of the story — a wet-brained spray-tan-maxxing fuckmook participating in…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/10/30/mapquest-adds-new-surveillance-layer-that-shows-locations-of-alpr-cameras/

 2026-10-31  No Responses »

Ballot Access News – U.S. District Court Keeps Part of California Ballot Access Case Alive

Oct 242026
 

On October 23, U.S. District Court Judge Maxine Chesney held a hearing in Peace & Freedom Party v Weber, n.d., 3:24cv-8308. This is the case filed by several minor parties against the California top-two system and some of its characteristics. The state wanted the lawsuit dismissed. Judge Chesney did dismiss the part of the case that challenges the essence of the top-two system. But she kept the case alive on the issue of ballot labels for candidates who are registered into unqualified parties. Current law says they must have “party preference: none” on the primary ballot. Thus, when California candidates registered into such parties as the American Solidarity Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Constitution Party,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2026/10/23/u-s-district-court-keeps-part-of-california-ballot-access-case-alive/

 2026-10-24  No Responses »

Local Articles – e.Republic – & – Government Technology State – This New Raleigh, N.C., IT Help Desk Agent Is, Well, Agentic

Oct 082026
 

The newest member of the IT help desk in North Carolina’s capital city, the product of a public-private alliance, joins a unit of just four people charged with resolving issues across roughly 13,000 devices. Oh, and despite being able to resolve problems rather than directing a staffer to an instruction article, they — Alli — are not real. They are an agentic AI bot that is stepping in to assist the four human technicians addressing problems the Raleigh Information Technology Department oversees. Technically speaking, Alli is an L1 IT Service Desk AI Specialist. Alli is a project co-developed by the city and its technology partner ServiceNow. The two worked together to build a tool designed not…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.govtech.com/artificial-intelligence/this-new-raleigh-n-c-it-help-desk-agent-is-well-agentic

 2026-10-08  No Responses »

Deeplinks – When No ID Means No Internet: Age Verification and the Right to Access Information

Oct 082026
 

This post was co-authored by Sheila B. Lalwani, a doctorate student and recent COMPASS Fellow hosted by EFF.
Age verification proposals are often presented as a simple tradeoff: sacrifice a little privacy to better safeguard children online. But that framing overlooks a more fundamental question. What happens to people who cannot verify their age at all? This is particularly a problem when users are required to prove their age with identity documents.
Age-related restrictions are developing quickly around the world. While they differ radically across jurisdictions, in the past year, we’ve witnessed a sharp uptick toward mandatory age assurance for social media access but also for other high-risk digital services.
For example:

In late 2025, Australia became the first country to…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/when-no-id-means-no-internet-age-verification-and-right-access-information

 2026-10-08  No Responses »

Wikimedia blog – OpenAI “rogue” agent activities found on Wikimedia projects

Oct 052026
 

Recently, multiple organisations have disclosed how clusters of so-called “rogue” AI agents attempted to break into websites and online services, sometimes successfully. Agents from OpenAI’s environment, in particular, are known to have used other public wikis (collaboratively edited websites not owned by us) to communicate and coordinate with each other. These types of successful intrusions can expose sensitive data or disrupt website services that users rely on, while clusters of agents can attempt attacks at a scale that is difficult for defenders to manage. They affect people behind the websites who may not understand the nature of the attack, or have the tools to effectively fight back. For a site like Wikipedia, agents might find and…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/10/05/openai-rogue-agent-activities-found-on-wikimedia-projects/

 2026-10-05  No Responses »

Helloween 2026 Horror Movie #4: Ju-On: The Grudge (2002)

 NO  No Responses »
Oct 022026
 

Even further behind… I watched this the night after The Eye so yeaaaaah. Hopefully I can catch up but there will probably be a few combined posts with very brief notes on each movie given the gap between me seeing these and writing about them.

Ju-On: The Grudge (2002) / Arrow 4K

Two ghost movies from 2002 that I’ve never seen before in a row? Sure why not. Unlike the previous night’s movie, Ju-on is super super creepy. Like spine tingling creepy. For some reason I still find certain kinds of ghost actually scary, probably because of a creepy furnace room in the hallway to a childhood bedroom and watching stuff like Sightings and The X-Files as an eight year old. This movie features some of the creepier ghosts I’ve experienced through the teevee screen. My girlfriend has just been randomly making weird ghost noises at me since we watched this because of how much it got me.

The story is told very non linearly and it seems to reference the previous direct to video movies in the series, and has some kind of cycle with the first and last people possessed by the ghosts. The story isn’t really critical for this though.

I highly recommend this, especially if you’re totally desensitized to horror. It might actually give you that creeped out feeling many of us stopped being able to feel years ago.