🚲 The Mayor of Greater Manchester has been accused of a “flagrant misuse” of taxpayer money on preparations for an Ultra Low Emission Zone Read more about the scrapped scheme ⬇️

The Nowak case clearly highlights that we need to stop treating racism as an ~infinite evil, not because Nowak was racist (no evidence of this) but because any time you create a social superweapon like accusations of racism are now, it’ll be misused horribly. What is racism? Ask 10 people and you’ll get 12 opinions. Historically, it meant someone who treats people badly in interpersonal interactions because of their race. Which is just, like, kinda annoying and slightly boorish. It’s not the apocalypse. There are many personal traits that are equally or more annoying. Now the definition has been ludicrously expanded to include a bunch of things even less objectionable than that, including belief in very plausible scientific claims and policy preferences that were near-universal for almost all of human history. Racism just isn’t a big deal. We have to take it off its pedestal. If Nowak had said something racist, it would morally change exactly nothing about the horror of what happened to him. He didn’t, but I feel over-focusing on that distracts from the fact that it wouldn’t matter if he had. Murder is worse than racism. Hell, shoplifting is worse than racism. Enough. Who cares.

GitLab has apparently taken down the Nightmare-Eclipse account just days after the researcher moved there following the GitHub ban. The drama started after Nightmare-Eclipse released several Windows exploits and Defender bypass tools, including BlueHammer, RedSun, and UnDefend. GitHub removed the account earlier this week over concerns that the tools could be misused and weaponized. Security company Huntress says some of the tools have already been seen in real-world intrusion cases, showing how quickly proof-of-concept research can end up being used in actual attacks.

Google has published exploit code for a security problem in Chromium, the engine used by browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, and Opera. The problem is linked to the Fetch API feature, which helps websites handle background internet requests. Security researchers say hackers could misuse it to keep hidden connections active in a user’s browser, allowing attackers to send large amounts of traffic to websites or build browser-based botnets. What makes the situation especially concerning is that some browser sessions may continue maintaining these connections even after the browser or device has been restarted. Reports also indicate the vulnerability had been known internally for more than two years before proof-of-concept exploit code became public.