Ford Cars filed patents to read your lips, scan your iris, monitor your heart rate, and run your face through a criminal database. In your own truck. Without telling you. It's never been about safety. Ford Pro Telematics is already live, fleet managers can pull a real-time video feed of your face right now, from their phone, while you're driving. And Ford's own marketing materials explicitly connect that data to insurance outcomes. Then there's the ad-listening patent. Ford's own words: "maximum opportunity for ad-based monetization." Your conversations. In your truck. Used to sell you things. No description of how that data is protected. And the one that should end the conversation, Ford filed a patent to scan your biometrics and check them against a criminal database. In real time. Ford described it themselves as useful for police. Ford Lip Reading Patent (20260095520) Ford In-Cabin Biometrics Patent (20250258278) Ford Ad-Listening Patent (US-20240289844-A1)

Telegram

Kazani Reads

My handpicked mix of bold stories, trends & ideas in crypto, AI, privacy & inspiration. Worth your time, always. https://farcaster.xyz/kazani

Question: "Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?" I fully understand that red is the "rational" answer from the perspective of one-shot non-cooperative dominance reasoning, but I'm also very relieved that models like Claude Opus 4.7 answer blue. When it comes to what values systems that might have power over you in the future will defend, you really want to err on the side of caution. To see why, ask yourself what sort of friends you would rather have when all hell breaks loose, the sort of friends who would vote red or friends who would vote blue? "Defection is a vote for an outcome where lots of trusting people die, and the cynical inherit the earth." - Claude On a grander scale, the question becomes, in what sort of civilization/society do you want to live? An altruistic or an egotistic society? What kind of mind can even see non-kin cooperation as natural rather than insane? Or, said differently, what are the evolutionary and psychological preconditions for cooperation? Hyper-strategic kin-selection creatures might never be able to cooperate on a scale large enough to leave their planet because they are stuck in the defection equilibrium of pure dominant-strategy reasoning. A purely fitness-maximizing, kin-selected mind treats blue as madness. A human-like cooperative mind can treat blue as honor, morality, solidarity, or team reasoning. The worlds in which most decision algorithms output blue are those worlds that escaped into a basin where non-kin cooperation is stable. Altruism in the deep sense isn't genetic relatedness; it's correlated decision procedures. It's the only equilibrium that opens the positive-sum space of cooperative civilization at all.

Mullvad VPN Keeps Improving

Mullvad VPN

Force all app traffic into the tunnel | Mullvad VPN

A year ago, we wrote about how bugs in Apple

Mullvad will soon launch a new feature in its iOS app that forces all internet traffic from apps to pass through the VPN tunnel. This resolves a known issue within Apple's system that allowed for data leaks in certain situations. The option internally codenamed "Force all apps" enables a setting that blocks any connection outside of the VPN. However, it comes with a drawback: when enabled, app updates may fail, potentially leaving the device without an internet connection until it is restarted. To avoid this, users will need to disconnect the VPN or temporarily disable this feature before updating. Mullvad encourages affected users to report the bug to Apple so that it can be fixed. This improvement will be available in the next version of the app.

Scooter Knowledge Base

GitHub

GitHub - firebl0od/Scooter_Knowledge: compilation of telegram group chat and knowledge extracted from them

compilation of telegram group chat and knowledge extracted from them - firebl0od/Scooter_Knowledge

This repository collects and organizes information about electric scooter setup, maintenance, and troubleshooting. The primary source material is a large Telegram conversation exported from the "VESC help" group

Telegram

Telegram – a new era of messaging

Fast. Secure. Powerful.

The goal of the project is to extract practical knowledge from the chat logs and document it in a structured, reusable format. VESC is short for Vedder Electronic Speed Controller. It is an open-source, open-hardware motor speed controller that allows for advanced customization via software (such as the VESC Tool app). It is commonly used in electric scooters, skateboards, electric bicycles, and robotics projects to provide precise control, regenerative braking, and sensorless operation, overcoming the limitations of standard closed controllers. The knowledge/processed/themes/ directory contains 72 professionally formatted documents covering: 28 brand dossiers covering controllers, motors, and BMS systems from manufacturers like Spintend, Flipsky, Makerbase, 3Shul, and more. 44 comprehensive guides including: VESC tuning and parameter optimization Battery pack design and BMS integration Motor cooling and thermal management Conversion guides for popular scooter models (Ninebot, Xiaomi, etc.) Brake upgrades and maintenance Field weakening and high-voltage setups Diagnostic tools and troubleshooting All documents use a consistent, readable format with: Clean footnote citations linking back to source material Well-organized sections with proper headings Tables and checklists for quick reference Preserved technical accuracy from the original discussions

Oracle and the Rise of the AI Surveillance State Under Trump While Peter Thiel's firm Palantir has rightfully gained the ire of the American public, Larry Ellison's Oracle is also steadily becoming entangled with the US governmentand that should worry all Americans. ➡️ tl;dr Oracle is expanding its influence through Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, strengthening its relationship with the US government under the Trump administration. Oracle pledged $100 billion to the Stargate AI project, announced by Trump, aimed at building data centers to power AI initiatives. Oracle signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, committing to cover the increased electricity costs for AI data centers, potentially lowering energy prices for communities. Trump's National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence includes recommendations for age-assurance requirements for AI platforms accessed by minors, raising concerns about potential biometric age verification and an internet ID. The framework also proposes preempting state AI laws to establish a national standard, limiting states' ability to regulate AI development. Key figures involved in the AI framework, Michael Kratsios and David Sacks, have deep connections to Peter Thiel and Palantir, and are part of Trump's newly formed Presidents Council of Advisers on Science & Technology (PCAST). Other PCAST members include tech leaders like Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Jensen Huang, suggesting a focus on policies benefiting Big Tech companies and expanding the surveillance state. Oracle announced multiple AI deals with the Trump administration, including an AI Data Platform for the US Federal Government and expanded AI infrastructure options. Concerns about Oracle's data handling practices are heightened by a past lawsuit where the company paid $115 million to settle accusations of illegally collecting and selling personal information. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has a long history of government ties, including the CIA as its first customer, and has previously advocated for national ID cards and the use of AI for surveillance to ensure citizens behave.

The Last American Vagabond

Oracle and the Rise of the AI Surveillance State Under Trump

While Peter Thiel's firm Palantir has rightfully gained the ire of the American public, Larry Ellison's Oracle is also steadily becoming ...

Telegram

Kazani Reads

My handpicked mix of bold stories, trends & ideas in crypto, AI, privacy & inspiration. Worth your time, always. https://farcaster.xyz/kazani

Artemis II is being called humanity's return to the Moon but not everyone is convinced. Launched on April 1, 2026, this mission is designed to send astronauts around the Moon for the first time in over 50 years. But one question keeps coming up: Why are we only doing a flyby... and not landing? In this video: The official Artemis II mission plan Why NASA says this is only a test flight The controversy around the April 1 launch date The symbolism behind 322 and 330 The argument that we never went to the Moon And the theory of a hidden or secret space program Is Artemis II a real step forward... or something else entirely? Watch until the end and decide for yourself.

Tucker Carlson: "We're moving toward one of two endpoints." "One is a totalitarian society, where... you have to obey, because you've got programmable digital currency and universal surveillance." "Or, we're going to have a revolution." "The current course won't work because it's a lie. If you tell people they own the government, they're in charge, they rule through the representatives in this democratic republic... and you don't deliver on it, they go crazy. They go totally crazy." "If you tell people they can't say what they think, and their vote doesn't matter, how many options have you left for them?" "Just one."

The Verdict Against Meta and Google That Could End the Anonymous Internet

Reclaim The Net

The Verdict Against Meta and Google That Could End the Anonymous Internet

If the design-as-defect argument survives appeal, more than 1,600 similar cases waiting in courts across the country inherit a ready-made blueprint...

A Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in platform design, awarding $3 million to a plaintiff who experienced mental health issues, with punitive damages totaling $6 million. This verdict could dismantle anonymous internet access by establishing a legal precedent for holding platforms liable based on their design, bypassing Section 230 protections. The legal argument treats social media architecture (infinite scroll, algorithmic notifications) as a defective product, similar to a car without brakes. If this verdict survives appeal, it provides a blueprint for over 1,600 similar cases nationwide. Classifying social media as an addictive product could lead to government regulation, requiring identity verification and access controls for users. Mark Zuckerberg testified that age verification should occur at the operating system level, managed by Apple and Google, rather than within individual apps. This proposal, if implemented, would require identity verification for all smartphone users across all apps and websites, effectively ending anonymous internet access. New legislation like California's SB 976 and the federal Kids Online Safety Act are moving towards device or OS-level age verification, mirroring Zuckerberg's suggestion. Mandatory identity verification creates a significant risk of data breaches, potentially exposing sensitive personal information. Anonymous and pseudonymous online speech is crucial for whistleblowers, dissidents, abuse survivors, and journalists, and OS-level ID checks would eliminate this protection for all users.

A systemd fork has set out as a fu*k you to age verification. Liberated systemd is a fork of mainline systemd started by Jeffrey Seathrún Sardina, a machine learning/AI researcher who apparently had enough of where things were heading.

GitHub

GitHub - Jeffrey-Sardina/liberated-systemd: Liberated systemd -- no surveillance. Ever.

Liberated systemd -- no surveillance. Ever. Contribute to Jeffrey-Sardina/liberated-systemd development by creating an account on GitHub.

The project is straightforward about its purpose; strip out what it considers surveillance-enabling code, keep everything else intact, and stay in sync with upstream as it develops.

It's FOSS

Someone Forked Systemd to Strip Out Its Age Verification Support

The project removes the birthDate field systemd added last week in response to age verification laws.

USA FCC bans imports of new routers made in other countries, on national security concerns The US Federal Communications Commission has just announced a ban on imports of "all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries," which would be... almost all of them, except that the rule only affects new routers that haven't yet received FCC authorization. https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-updates-covered-list-include-foreign-made-consumer-routers Last year, news broke that Government officials had been considering banning sales of TP-Link routers manufactured in China, ostensibly because of concerns that they could pose risks to national security. But the FCC's announcement goes much, much further by "prohibiting approval of new models" of any router manufactured outside the United States. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/30/tp-link-proposed-ban-commerce-department/

Liliputing

FCC bans imports of new routers made in other countries, on national security concerns - Liliputing

FCC bans imports of new routers made in other countries, on national security concerns

AWAKE: A Guide to Android Attacks and Exploitation https://zahidaz.github.io/awake/ I found a really awesome resource - AWAKE: Android Wiki of Attacks, Knowledge & Exploits - essentially a one-stop shop for those involved in malware analysis, reverse engineering, and vulnerability hunting on Android. It includes descriptions of attack techniques, exploits, and methods for analyzing APKs and the platform itself. It's aimed at analysts, reverse engineers, penetration testers, and threat intelligence researchers. In other words, it's not just abstract theory, but a very practical reference with specific details. What I particularly liked is the "offense-first" approach. Everything is presented from the attacker's perspective, not the defender's. For those of us involved in mobile security analysis, this is exactly what we need: understanding how attacks work so we can know how to defend against them. And as a reference for our own research - it's perfect!

It's an on-chain privacy scanner of #Bitcoin I'd like to introduce you to a new tool called:

am-i.exposed

am-i.exposed - Bitcoin Privacy Scanner

Is your Bitcoin traceable? Paste an address or txid - get a privacy score with 33 chain analysis heuristics. Free, client-side, no tracking.

Paste an address or transaction ID and you'll get a score from 0-100 with specific findings. Tags for 30 million addresses from over 650 entities have been included. • It works from your computer, they don't store data • No backend, no tracking. • It can be used from TOR

Systemd Adds Age Verification & Reddit Linux Censors Age Verification Posts Plus: Which Open Source Operating Systems plan to include Age Verification? The Lunduke Journal compiles a list. Does It Age Verify?

GitHub

GitHub - BryanLunduke/DoesItAgeVerify: The age verification status of Open Source Operating Systems

The age verification status of Open Source Operating Systems - BryanLunduke/DoesItAgeVerify

The Lunduke Journal

HEALTHEX announces a partnership with Microsoft to connect consumers "digital identity, comprehensive health records, and consent infrastructure" to power Copilot Health.

The Psychology of Tyranny ➡️ TLDR; - Governments utilize psychological manipulation to influence thought, emotion, and behavior, often without explicit consent, by exploiting fundamental human needs like security and belonging. - Twelve core psychological manipulation tactics identified include gaslighting, bandwagon effect, scarcity manipulation, framing and narrative control, guilt and moral shaming, FOMO, carrot and stick, othering, cognitive overload, authority bias exploitation, emotional priming, and desensitisation. - Governments employ propaganda, fear-based messaging, nudge tactics, disinformation, censorship, and social credit systems as examples of psychological manipulation. - The 'carrot and stick' approach combines rewards for compliance with punishments for non-compliance, seen in systems like China's social credit system and wartime rationing. - Othering creates an 'us vs. them' dynamic by portraying a group as inferior or threatening, used in contexts like the Israel-Palestine conflict and anti-immigrant rhetoric. - Cognitive overload overwhelms individuals with excessive or conflicting information, making them more likely to rely on authority, as seen during the Brexit referendum and COVID policy rollouts. - Authority bias exploitation leverages trust in figures of authority to promote policies, often by suppressing dissenting experts, exemplified by tobacco regulation and climate policy endorsements. - Emotional priming uses evocative imagery and rhetoric to trigger strong emotions, bypassing rational analysis, as seen in post-9/11 patriotism and atrocity propaganda. - Desensitisation gradually exposes the public to controversial ideas or policies to reduce shock and resistance over time, observed in the normalization of drone strikes and surveillance expansion. - Repeated exposure to psychological manipulation can alter brain function through neuroplasticity, potentially weakening critical thinking, increasing anxiety, and reducing autonomy, though recovery is possible through education and reflection.

The Psychology of Tyranny

How Governments Undermine Consent and Legitimacy Through Psychological Manipulation

❌ #fdroid security problems: ⁨https://privsec.dev/posts/android/f-droid-security-issues⁩⁩ ⁨⁨https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1883895255142932816 https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1497272529223917575 ⁨⁨https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox/-/issues/7⁩⁩ ⁨⁨https://github.com/obfusk/fdroid-fakesigner-poc⁩⁩ ⁨⁨

GitHub

Issues · CatimaLoyalty/Android

Catima, a Loyalty Card & Ticket Manager for Android - Issues · CatimaLoyalty/Android

⁨⁨https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/593⁩⁩ ⁨⁨

GrapheneOS Discussion Forum

F-Droid or Obtainium? - GrapheneOS Discussion Forum

GrapheneOS discussion forum

⁨⁨ ⁨⁨ ⁨⁨ ⁨⁨https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IAoCfrqx⁩⁩

AI Can Now Easily Unmask Your Secret Online Life (Even If You Use a Fake Name)

It's FOSS

AI Can Now Easily Unmask Your Secret Online Life (Even If You Use a Fake Name)

New study shows smart chatbots can figure out who you really are from just a few posts... and it only costs a couple of dollars.

Imagine this: You're on Reddit, Hacker News, or some forum, posting with a silly username like GamerCat2025 or SecretCoderX. You think you are anonymous, and no one knows you and so you can freely express your thoughts. Well, a brand-new research paper just blew that idea apart. It's called "Large-scale online deanonymization with LLMs" which is a fancy way of saying "figuring out the real person behind a secret online name". Research:

arXiv.org

Large-scale online deanonymization with LLMs

We show that large language models can be used to perform at-scale deanonymization. With full Internet access, our agent can re-identify Hacker New...

🥸 Smart glasses detector on your mobile Its author, a sociologist who programs as a hobby, devised an application after seeing how these accessories are used to record people without permission, and considers it a small gesture against constant surveillance. The program checks the typical Bluetooth signals emitted by these devices and sends push notifications to alert. It is now available and its code can be viewed openly. It may not be 100% effective depending on the environmental conditions, but it is a good advancement. You can download it from the PlayStore here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pocketpc.nearbyglasses and review its code on Github here:

GitHub

GitHub - yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses: attempting to detect smart glasses nearby and warn you

attempting to detect smart glasses nearby and warn you - yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses

How Epstein Hijacked Bitcoin with Aaron Day From the hijacking of Bitcoin to the passing of the GENIUS Act, a deep dive in the Epstein files reveals Epstein's fingerprints are all over the transformation of the global economy and our digital currency enslavement. "The Hijacking of Bitcoin," his detailed and well-documented breakdown of how and why Epstein hijacked #Bitcoin

The Corbett Report

Interview 2005 - How Epstein Hijacked Bitcoin with Aaron Day | The Corbett Report

Aaron Day joins us today to discuss "The Hijacking of Bitcoin," his detailed and well-documented breakdown of how and why Epstein hijacked bitcoin.

Brownstone Institute

The Hijacking of Bitcoin

The original vision for Bitcoin was simple: digital cash, free from banks and government. However, Bitcoin is pushed as "digital gold."