moment – or even an entire part – is needed to discuss the worldwide or global nature of this trend. I am told by friends in several countries that not only Manchester is impacted. Let’s devote today to this.

The pandemic referred to as COVID-19 appears to have been a major contributor or accelerator of this agenda, namely a rapid deterioration of services, then expecting the public to do (for free) all the work that public servants used to do. This is outsourcing, not automation. In general, in public services (that we all pay for collectively), everything gets worse. Yes, everything, even postal services. And even here, everywhere, any place there used to be something like a “Royal Mail”. We pay more, we get less. Privatisation is a common denominator.

“It looks like a package on the way here will likely not be delivered today,” a friend told me, “and instead spend the weekend in town.”

They don’t even deliver items like they used to. Drive to pick it up… what a waste of fuel! Bad for the climate!

“The goal is to shut down all government services,” the friend told me. “I disagree with the groups and the goals but those are what are aimed at by ignorant society.”

He said “some of that agenda is pushed by tech bros on behalf of the broligarchs who all aim to destroy democracies and, if they can, establish “network states” in their places…”

He noted that “the US won a temporary reprieve, but many (most?) of the elected politicians are beholden economically to either AIPAC or Kremlin or both.”

I am saddened to see how privatisation hurts everybody and everything. It impacts us as well.

his afternoon I published this timely reminder of what happened a year ago. I then carried on with the latest series:

These issues are inherently technical, but Garrett refuses to even say a word about the latest UEFI catastrophe. This is not a mistake or some mental glitch. It is a deliberate decision made by him.

One reader said, “good work, but keep pounding on technical matters for the benefit of the spectators so they know this is about ICT and not a personal grudge.”

It was always about ICT, but Garrett is a geneticist who can write some C code, he’s not an ICT person. He’s into social engineering, that’s the only engineering he can do. He cannot even fix his own laptop!

oday, or very early in the morning, I published a somewhat chronological explanation regarding things that went on and have gone on for 15 years.

“One goal there is to associate UEFI and restricted boot with other crimes,” a community member told me, “via crazy matt [Garrett] among other connections.”

Some of these connections are full-time Microsoft staff. Some of the assisting actors are ‘former’ Microsoft staff that was arrested for strangling women and had done corrupt things. A further connection said illegal things and committed Hate Crimes against my wife and I (already registered with police for years). Two of them already got arrested.

“I’ll go as far as to say it is strategically (and politically) dangerous to keep omitting mention of Garrett’s connection to Restricted Boot,” the community member remarked. “The omission makes it look exclusively like a personal spat and that REALLY hurts TR and TM in the near term and might damage standing with the courts eventually.”

I disagreed on the basis that the Court needs to also be able to assess the character of the people, as it does not easily understand technical mechanisms such as UEFI.

It’s not outlandish to all (universally), but it would not draw the attention when dealing with lawyers.

The community member pointed to an article which said Garrett had “…many problems. Serious problems. Real problems.”

Yes, interpersonal also. His own spouse accuses him of very serious things and those things are in the UK’s National Archives. Garrett’s solicitors were required by the judge to type down what the spouse had said.

“Above and beyond having boosted code to afflict systems with Restricted Boot on behalf of Microsoft” would be the more accurate or important thing to note about Garrett, but some deaf ears it would fall on do not understand what that technically means and why it’s so important.

It’s a question of what audience it targets or a matter of tailoring one’s message based on one’s knowledge.

“If that “on behalf of” should be included or not,” I was told, “I cannot recall the details,” but they’re all in this together (the law firm as well; it doesn’t understand and never comments on anything technical).

I separately said that the threat the solicitors send my way have “…no actual legal grounds”.

It could be mentioned that the threats are “due to criticism over his helping Microsoft get let off the hook about Restricted Boot.”

But again, the judges would not relate to that aspect without me shifting focus to technical matters. The case is not about technical matters.

“By turning it / presenting it as a personal spat it allows s–tholes like social control media an easy out,” a reader remarked, adding that “social control media is a throwaway and not worth the effort but I remain firm on the above otherwise…”

When I write about these legal disputes I ensure that if read by judges they will get across the key message/s as comprehended by a person without a Computer Science background.

It’s never of any concern what a bunch of trolls say in social control media. What they say does not matter, they’re there to provoke and even make stuff up for “likes” and groupthink/affirmation.

oday, about an 80-meter distance (modest radius) from our doorstep, an entire home was cordoned off with police line (ribbons) and one police van or sedan. Both were there early in the morning and also around noontime.

We don’t know what happened and in my experience it’s impossible to know by checking the Web site of the police or even social control media ‘gossip’. All those things remain a mystery and are forgotten about a day later.

I wish we could more easily access information about crimes that happen around us. The Cost of Living crisis may have contributed to more violence; my gut feeling tells me someone got murdered in that home and they collect evidence such as fingerprints.

Crime-related transparency is something I wish was better everywhere. Sometimes you learn something by talking to a nosy neighbour.

his morning I published a short post about cybersecurity in Japan. A friend from Japan had sent that to me.

The work etiquette of Japanese people (or devotion to one’s job) is famous or notorious worldwide. People are willing to die for their country or job or company.

When cybersecurity incidents occur, and it seems like a growing problem in Japan, what would be the mental strain on IT workers?

HE BBC says that one pilot attacked another in a plane – reminiscent of what happened in Germanwing when one pilot locked the other out of the cockpit (the more senior pilot blocked) to crash everyone into a mountain.

That makes one wonder what happens to some (still) missing places like the one from Malaysia.

Fake security is already breaking systems running GNU/Linux

ore complexity means more problems. Newer code means more bugs (e.g. Rust rewrites).

Fake security means catastrophe for no actual gain/s.

As noted by several sites [1, 2], linking to a bug report, kneeling to Microsoft came at a high cost:

TPM? Who asked for TPM in Linux? GAFAM? But who am I to even mention the principal culprits? I have degrees in computing, not in genetics.

think I neglected to mention a sort of “uptime privilege” this morning. I realised this only later. It’s a kind of an “RK” privilege one can forget about. You take this for granted when you’re next to international games or actions.

My computers have high uptime records owing to good electricity infrastructure (reliability/uptime/availability); we have a sort of fortune or the mere luck of having very reliable electric grid (near a very large and famous stadium) with persistent connections and decent hardware nearby, fallbacks included, with no natural disasters, not even floods (we’re in a slope).

In some parts of the world they have extreme weather this year, including prohibitive costs of living (UK minimum wage a lot higher than the average in Europe), war, conscription, and worse. Here, unlike Ukraine, no shelter time (or risk of being hit by missiles), is expected, so carrying on as usual is almost always possible. Until someone from another continent pays $130,000 to drag you down to London. But even then, your computers remain turned on at home.

roups of tourists have gathered for the holiday around here, maybe anticipating the start of the football season. They’re typically quiet and polite people from Europe or east Asia. They choose to come to Manchester, not London, or sometimes both. They shop, stay overnight, and eventually leave to go back home.

Recently there was a data breach in Manchester Airport. Airports keep a lot of personal information about the people who fly and fliers cannot opt out because nobody can board a plane anonymously.

I certainly hope the computer systems at Manchester Airport were properly partitioned and did not use Windows. Every version of Windows has back doors and is a ransomware magnet.

etting a solution to DDoS attacks is not easy because each time the pattern to tackle (without false positives) is a bit different and each incident can be unprecedented in one single site, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

At the moment we combat another wave of nuisance bots and each time it comes there’s risk that everyone will be “away from keyboard” and therefore it won’t be detected.