(Infowars now beong owned by The Onion is a really cool story and I'm glad things like this also happen in 2026.)

Not trying to brag, but I was an avid Infowars reader long before it became cool.

Oh wait. No, no I wasn't.

Koala is not on Bluesky?

I was checking Wikipedia to see how bad M.I.A. (whose music I kinda like) really is these days and she is "announced her anti-5G clothes line on Alex Jones's show" bad.

Valid!

(Business idea: band t-shirt with a QR code that goes to their Bandcamp.)

Valid!

(Business idea: band t-shirt with a QR code that goes to their Bandcamp.)

Doesn't wearing a band t-shirt serve the same goal?l

Doesn't wearing a band t-shirt serve the same goal?

Humanoid robots race past humans in Beijing half-marathon, showing rapid advances Dozens of Chinese-made humanoid robots showed off their fast-improving athleticism and autonomous navigation skills as they whizzed past ​human runners in a half-marathon race in Beijing on Sunday, hi...

Sure, a robot can run a half marathon faster than humans, but can it run the half marathon in well over two hours, poorly trained while forgetting to drink enough water? That's when I'll get worried about robots taking over my hobby www.reuters.com/sports/human...

I suddenly remembered that five years ago, @lodrina.bsky.social and I gave a Black Hat talk with 'trauma' in the title. I still think that was really cool.

Hey. That's my To Read list.

Under John Paul II, who was considered arch-conservative, it was popular among Dutch Catholics to say that you were Catholic but disagreed with the Pope. (The Catholic student pastor at my university was openly gay, to give you the picture.) So there is some kind of precedent to vanceplaining.

Oh no, I haven't even read your previous book and you're already writing a new one.

PS congratulations!

Digital Rights Amid a Regional War: April 17, 2026 - SMEX Beirut, April 15, 2026 — On April 8, Israel launched its heaviest bombardment on Lebanon since the start of the...

On April 16, U.S. president Donald Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel. The Lebanese army reported violation within hours of it taking effect.

The digital front has no pause. Here is what we followed this week.

smex.org/digital-righ...

I will be at PivotCon next month. It's kinda exciting to be going to a security conference again.

Botconf is streaming live: www.youtube.com/@BotConfTV/s...

Recommend the watch. One of the Top 5 security conferences out there

(S+) Polizist auf der Flucht: Vor Schloss Neuschwanstein setzte er sich ab, nun enthüllt dieser Mann Chinas Verbrechen Er verfolgte Uiguren und brachte sie in Foltergefängnisse. Dann floh der Polizist Zhang Yabo aus der Volksrepublik nach Deutschland – und liefert seltene Einblicke in Chinas Repressionsapparat.

A fascinating read by my colleagues on a police officer who was part of the detention system in Xinjian and now has fled the country and now is speaking out, because if one day, he was asked, what he did to fight the injustice, he can say: "I spoke the truth"

www.spiegel.de/ausland/chin...

You haven't really visited a country if you've not been inside at least one supermarket.

War as a Pretext: Gulf States Are Tightening the Screws on Speech—Again War does not only reshape borders. It also reshapes what can be seen, said, and remembered. When governments invoke “misinformation” during wartime, they often mean something simpler: speech they do n...

I published this yesterday. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20... Today I learned that my friend Ahmed Shihab Eldin is among those detained. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Me: I don't need an AI agent to help me with basic tasks.

Also me: schedules meeting in the wrong time zone. Again.

"volatile, difficult, unpredictable people"

Her daughter was killed by gunfire in Gaza school. For her and others, 6-month Israeli ceasefire isn't working | CBC News Tent schools like the one where nine-year-old Ritaj Rihan was killed by gunfire this week are symbolic of the fragile hope Palestinians have for the future and the paralyzing fear they still live with...

Everything in this CBC article on the 'ceasefire' in Gaza that very much isn't a ceasefire is important to read, so I just say here name: Ritaj Rihan. 9 years old. Killed by Israeli forces in front of her classmates www.cbc.ca/news/world/g...

This is a good and slightly scary article written by an expert, on whether traditional cryptography algorithms will soon be broken by quantum computers. TL;DR: it is likely enough to really care.
(ECDH, which I once had fun explaining in conference talks, is now considered a "legacy algorithm".)

Price Updates to be renewed for a second season.

And Ali Khamenei has both threatened to annihilate American civilization and excitedly celebrated future cooperation with the United States by saying "God bless America and the American People".

When an AI tool recommends an action and an employee carries it out, audit logs capture a legitimate human decision. The AI's role disappears. Addressing that blind spot takes more than awareness training. https://zeltser.com/ai-influence-awareness-training

FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database The case was the first time authorities charged people for alleged “Antifa” activities after President Trump designated the umbrella term a terrorist organization.

Signal has a setting to stop this (Settings > Notifications > Notification Content). It's likely not an issue limited to just Signal, but more fundamental friction between secure chat apps and phones. Very interesting data point when talking about forensics www.404media.co/fbi-extracts...

FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database The case was the first time authorities charged people for alleged “Antifa” activities after President Trump designated the umbrella term a terrorist organization.

New from 404 Media: the FBI was able to extract incoming Signal messages from a phone even though the app was deleted. Why? Because parts of messages were stored in the iPhone's internal notification database. Shows how secure chat data can come from unexpected places www.404media.co/fbi-extracts...

Rotten Apple: An Invasive Threat Actor Targeting Civil Society in Lebanon - SMEX Executive Summary  The SMEX Digital Forensic Lab presents a report on a spear-phishing campaign that targeted a high profile Lebanese...

A high-profile Lebanese journalist was targeted with advanced phone hacking in May 2025.

The investigation identifies the involvement of BITTER, a known threat actor prominent in South Asia whose operations may now extend into West Asia and North Africa.

Full findings: smex.org/smex-may2025/

Yeah, that has an awkward typo. Teaches me to proofread better.

Anyway, I decided to use this place for musings about books I read, including books I read long ago that I feel like saying something about.

Cross-posting these on Instagram, if that is your thing www.instagram.com/martijnreads...