Vort3x | Cybersalon | November 15, 2025
Vort3x, published on the 15th of each month, aims to pick out significant developments in the intersection of computers, freedom, privacy, and security for friends near and far. The views expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect those of Cybersalon, either individually or collectively.
Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman.
Contents: Cybersalon events | News | Features | Diary
Cybersalon Events
Nov 18th, 6.30- 9.30(Tue) “Zero To Coder” – Newspeak House (London)
We will be at vibe coding coworking and social – run by Jethro for those on the coding journey
Indian Workers Perform Household Chores to Train Physical Models
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Workers in India and other countries are creating physical data used to train AI for humanoid robots, Nilesh Christopher reports at the LA Times. The job includes precisely repeating numerous everyday tasks such as folding hands towels hundreds of times wearing a GoPro camera to capture the movements. The video data is captured by companies like the data labeling company Objectways and sent on to clients such as startups whose employees use them to build foundation models for the physical world.
At the Wall Street Journal, Joanna Stern tests 1X’s new Neo robot, which costs $20,000 to buy on preorder or rent for $500 a month. The company goes to some effort to insist that the robot is safe, but requires users to agree that a remote human wearing a VR headset may operate the robot, peering through its camera. Finally, at Billboard Xander Zellner finds that at least one “AI artist” has appeared on its music charts per week for the last five weeks. Zellner cites as an example “AI-powered” Xania Monet, which is backed by the songwriting of the Mississippi-based human Telisha “Nikki” Jones and was signed to a multimillion-dollar deal by Hallwood Media.
Comment: “AI” remains humans all the way down, at least for now.
HMRC Errors – Freeze of Family Benefits Based on Passenger Data in a breach of privacy laws
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Nearly half of the 23,500 families flagged as immigrants no longer qualifying for child benefit and other payments by His Majesty’s Revenue of Customs based on passenger data are in fact still living in the UK, Luke Butterly and Lisa O’Carroll report at the Guardian. In these cases, HMRC based its decisions on passenger records supplied to it by the Home Office.
Many of the flagged cases, especially in Northern Ireland, had returned home via a different route; others didn’t travel at all. In other pieces, Lisa O’Carroll reports that MPs and the Information Commissioner’s Office have asked questions about how these errors were allowed to happen.
Can’t win with drones? Russians change tack as State Hackers Targets Ukraine with Wiper Software
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A ruthless and advanced state-controlled Russian hacking group known as Sandworm has launched a series of cyberattacks on Ukrainian targets with wiper software that destroys data and often infrastructure as well, Dan Goodin reports at Ars Technica. Recent targets have included a university, organizations active in government, energy, and logistics, and organizations in Ukraine’s grain industry.
At last someone with cojones! Python Software Foundation Rejects Grant to Save DEI program
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After rejecting a $1.5 million National Science Foundation grant because its terms and conditions included ending any program that promoted DEI, including programs unrelated to the grant and gave NSF the right to claw back funds already disbursed, the Python Software Foundation has received hundreds of new donations totalling over $157,000, David Cassel reports at The New Stack. At the Foundation’s blog, Loren Crary explains that the grant was for work to address structural vulnerabilities in Python and PyPl.
Comment: A tough but necessary decision of the kind few are making at present. As described, the terms and conditions posed an existential risk.
Buggy Jeep Software Update Bricks Wrangler 4xe Hybrids
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A buggy update to Jeep Wrangler 4xe hybrids bricked the vehicles while they were being driven on public roads, Jonathan M. Gitlin reports at Ars Technica, based on user reports on Reddit and web forums. Jeep has since fixed the problem. At Tom’s Hardware, Jowi Morales reports that iLife shut down a customer’s A11 smart vacuum cleaner after the customer, an engineer, blocked the cleaner’s ability to continue sending telemetry data and logs to the manufacturer’s servers.
He was able to disassemble the vacuum cleaner, reverse the kill command, and restore the vacuum cleaner’s functionality, this time as a wholly local device.
Comment: The Jeep story is a sad example where a software crash, so named as an analogy, could become a real one. Both stories remind that even expensive items no longer fully belong to the people who “buy” them but remain under their manufacturer’s control, even if said manufacturer fails to test its updates adequately before distributing them.
FEATURES and ANALYSIS
Indian Town Grows Rich From Cybercrime
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In this extract from her new book, Scamlands, at the Guardian, Snigdha Poonam studies the rise over the last fifteen years of the small town of Jamtara in India’s eastern Jharkhan state, which has become extremely wealthy from cybercrime.
Using new technologies as they became available, the village’s young men have become adept at siphoning money from strangers’ bank accounts in amounts Poonam say are more like bank heists, undeterred by police actions and arrests. Poonam goes on to profile some of the scammers, examine the impact of prime minister Norendra Modi’s emphasis on digitizing, and draw a picture of the inequality that fuels the scams.
Agentic AI Brings News Security Vulnerabilities
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In this article for IEEE Security & Privacy posted at his blog, Bruce Schneier writes about the security vulnerabilities inherent to agentic AI using the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop introduced by US Air Force Colonel John Boyd as a model for real time continuous decision making. Using the loop as a frame, Schneier examines each part of agentic AI to identify the points attackers can exploit.
Internet Archive Founder Mourns Losses from Copyright Suits
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In this article at Ars Technica, Ashley Belanger finds Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle lamenting the library that’s been lost even though he’s relieved that the Archive has survived years-long copyright battles over its Open Library and Great 78 Project. In a settlement, the Open Library was forced to delete 500,000 scanned books.
Military Technology Coopts Personal Data
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In this article at Tech Policy Press, Ilia Siatitsa writes that Europe’s race to catch up with the US in defense technology is reshaping our societies and threatening democracy as much of this innovation is underpinned by personal data and fueling a fusion between military and civil technology.
Comment: This is an extension of the “military-industrial complex” outgoing US president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about in 1963. In this case, however, what’s being coopted is not companies who are depending on military funding but all of us.
Taiwan Uses Reundancy to Protect Undersea Cables from Chinese Threat
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In an excerpt from his new book, The Web Beneath the Waves, at Rest of World, Samanth Subramanian examines the threats Taiwan’s undersea cables face from Chinese vessels and how Taiwanese hospitals and others manage after cuts. The island’s preoccupation with protecting its cables, he writes, is “almost existential”, as Taiwan is heavily digital. The result is multiple redundancies using different technologies, a strategy other countries may also need to adopt.
DIARY
Chaos Communication Congress 2025
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December 27-30, 2025
Leipzig, Germany
Europe’s largest hacker conference, the Congress, now in its 39th year, has become a Europe-wide renowned event with more than 17,000 participants annually, drawing an ever-growing group of international guests.
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February 3-4,. 2026
London, UK
SOOCon is the UK’s Open Technology Conference – Open Source Software, Open Hardware, Open Data, Open Standards, and AI Openness.
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February 23, 2026
Washington, DC, USA
The State of the Net Conference Series is hosted by the Internet Education Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public and policymakers about the potential of a decentralized global Internet to promote communications, commerce and democracy. IEF works closely with leaders on Capitol Hill and in the private sector to host the most important debates in Internet policy. IEF’s board of directors comprises public interest groups, corporations, and associations representative of the diversity of the Internet community.
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February 28, 2026
London, UK, and online
Now in its fourteenth edition, State of the Browser is a yearly one-day, single-track conference with widely-varying talks about the modern web, accessibility, web standards, and more, organised by London Web Standards.
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March 3-5, 2026
Berkeley, CA, USA
The fifth ACM symposium on computer science and law is the flagship conference for the emerging field of computer science and law. It brings together a community—scholars, practicing lawyers, and computing professionals—who are fluent both in computational thinking and its rigorous mathematical formalisms and in legal scholarship and thought with its equally rigorous yet human-centric set of principles, methodologies, and goals. Central to the study of “computer science and law” is the creation of a body of scholarship aimed towards the co-design of law and computing technology to promote social goals. We seek papers that combine rigorous technical computer-science reasoning with rigorous legal analysis to integrate the two disciplines.
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April 13-16, 2026
Boulder, CO, USA
For over 75 years, the Conference on World Affairs (CWA) has brought together global leaders and experts from a wide range of fields to spark lively, thought-provoking conversations on the most pressing issues of our time. Free and open to all—whether in person at CU Boulder or via livestream—CWA is designed to inform, inspire, and engage diverse audiences.
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April 25-26, 2026
Manchester, UK
OggCamp is an unconference celebrating Free Culture, Free and Open Source Software, hardware hacking, digital rights, and all manner of collaborative cultural activities and is committed to creating a conference that is as inclusive as possible. If you’ve got a story to tell, no matter your background or current status, whether it’s your first talk or you’ve loads of experience, as long as the talk is connected (somehow) to our theme then we want to know about it.
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May 5-8, 2026
Lusaka, Zambia and online
Our goal for RightsCon 2026 is to strike a balance between a clear, familiar structure and the flexibility to respond to a rapidly changing digital landscape. At a time when the digital rights sector is facing unprecedented pressure and uncertainty, from political volatility to disruptive emerging technologies, we want to ensure that the program is able to address urgent, time-sensitive issues, while maintaining a stable foundation for participants to prepare and engage meaningfully.
