My phone got stolen, which caused all kinds of trouble. The thief managed to make wireless payments with the phone. The way how he was able to do that remains a mystery and it raises several serious questions about fintech and mobile security.
See my blog:
identitywizard.net/blog/2026/03...
If you are not careful you might think that software engineering is all about writing the code.
The say βI am aliveβ comic
Iβm reminded of this comic almost every time I check LinkedIn
I am convinced we are on the verge of the first "AI agent worm". This looks like the closest hint of it, though it isn't it quite itself: an attack on a PR agent that got it to set up to install openclaw with full access on 4k machines grith.ai/blog/clineje...
My phone got stolen. As I'm dealing with cybersecurity-related stuff for more than 30 years, I thought that I was prepared for such an eventuality. I was not.
There was a lot of trouble to get me to a (relative) safe positions again, even more that I have expected.
identitywizard.net/blog/2026/03...
Well, right, somehow good news. There are few little problems: 1. I have used Motorola phones for decades, migrated away due to their annoying bloatware.
2. I doubt they will go opensource.
3. They are Chinese.
True. Not a complete liberation yet. However, it is an excellent first step. Then, Murena provides its own services, they do not rely on Google as identity or service provider (except for some cases such as push notifications and Play store access, obviously). It is a very good start!
πΉ ChatGPT account deleted
I have managed to escape Google mobile slavery last year. It was much easier than I have ever imagined. Go for @murena-com.bsky.social on @fairphone.com
It works surprisingly well.
Moreover, getting rid of Google feels so liberating!
I'm running on Linux desktop for more than 20 years. You have to get used to it and you have to learn some stuff. Once you do that, it just works.
But hey OpenAI has put βtechnical guardrailsβ in place! Problem solved!
π€‘
It is not artificial superintelligence that is going to wipe us. Before we can even start to work on superintelligence, we will get wiped by cold war weapons wielded by artificially stupid GenAI.
Embedding unreliable AI deep into the source code of the military without human oversight is the single stupidest thing we could do as a species.
And that is *exactly* what the United States is about to do.
This is genuinely scary!
It make one look back to the "good" old times of deepest cold war, when we still had two whole minutes to midnight.
Microsoft tries to rewrite history. They did a terrible thing, now they are trying to hide it.
US tech giants cannot be trusted. Period.
Switch to European tech. The sooner the better. ICC has learned this lesson the hard way, switching to OpenDesk:
www.theregister.com/2025/10/31/i...
Now, tell me again what am I supposed to like about AI-assisted coding?
... and especially deal with code structure which somehow works, but is not adequate for qualities and future needs, which I did not originally mentioned, but somehow assumed that everybody knows and can reflect in the code. I always felt that it is much more efficient to just do it all myself.
I absolutely hate it when I need to explain to somebody what needs to be done, provide meticulous details how to do it, check the result, review the code, fix problems in the code which I did not write, review and fix the documentation, add missing tests, ...
I do not fear the rise of superintelligence.
I do, however, fear the rise of billionaires, organizations, and world powers who seek to use computing to maximize their power, influence, and control.
Meta thinks now is a great time to launch facial recognition surveillance tech in their creepy glasses because EFF will be too distracted by fascism to notice.
We noticed.
www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...
To paraphrase (in)famous words of wisdom:
Do not believe anything until Big Tech warns against it.
However, since I have de-googled my phone and migrated to @murena-com.bsky.social , the number of problems with nexcloud mobile sync went down to zero. Zero!
Obviously, the tech could work surprisingly well. All you have to do is to remove Big Tech from the equation.
From the "Marvels of de-googled life" series:
I'm using @nextcloud.com.web.brid.gy for many years. I use nextcloud mobile app to sync data (mostly photos) from my Android phone to my personal nextcloud server. However, the synchronization process was breaking all the time.
We should not expect AI to be secure anytime soon. There are just too many hurdles to overcome, and we are hitting all kinds of skeletons in cybersecurity closet.
identitywizard.net/blog/2026/02...
I am losing it at how many of my peers have forgotten what software engineering is. It is not typing in lines of code.
It is not about "just make AI secure". It is not "just". It is like trying to teach 2 year old child to play with matches in a haystack safely.
AI will make everyone more secure, they said ...
