uchi uchi has added a photo to the pool:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

uchi uchi has added a photo to the pool:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

m01229 has added a photo to the pool:

Kyoto, Japan - April 20, 2026: Busy narrow crowded streets near Gion Kiyomizu-dera temple

m01229 has added a photo to the pool:

Lush Japanese garden and pagoda near Kiyomizu-dera Temple in Kyoto

A security researcher says evidence suggests the U.S. military has been using an obscure GPS message field for nearly 20 years to broadcast encrypted key-distribution data, effectively turning GPS satellites into a global "numbers station." The hidden-looking 176-bit messages appear tied to the Pentagon's Over-the-Air Distribution system for remotely updating cryptographic keys, meaning ordinary GPS receivers may have been receiving the traffic all along without anyone outside the military noticing. The findings have been detailed by Steven Murdoch, an information security expert, in a new article in Inside GNSS. 404 Media reports: [...] From the beginning, he suspected that the subframe field contained encrypted transmissions because the data was so random. "Random data is actually very unusual to get in nature," Murdoch said. "If you see it, either it's been carefully designed to be random -- but then, why is someone sending out random data? -- or it's encrypted data. I thought encrypted data is by far the most likely explanation." He returned to the subframe on and off over the years, and solicited guesses about its content on Stack Exchange in 2023. Ahmed Kamruddin, a master's student at UCL, developed the project further in 2025. Then, this year, Murdoch put the last pieces of the puzzle together over several weeks by analyzing open archive Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) recordings collected since 2007 and kept by GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences.

This dataset included more than 12 million observations of Subframe 4, Page 17, yielding 3,994 unique 176-bit messages. Within this corpus, Murdoch pinpointed key-repeating "sentinels" including a pattern that appeared in February 2010 and was broadcast on and off across dozens of satellites for more than a decade. Murdoch discovered that this particular sentinel was transmitted by all 31 operational satellites within a window of a few hours on May 26, 2011, potentially heralding the activation of a new operational system. He confirmed that this timeline coincided with the rollout of the military's Over-the-Air Distribution (OTAD) and the Over-the-Air Rekeying (OTAR) by cross-referencing declassified documents, including a 2015 presentation about the dates of the operation.

"There was a perfect match between the timeline and that presentation and the change points that were automatically identified from the data," Murdoch said. "That was the smoking gun that made me think: This is what it's for." These automated systems replaced the cumbersome manual distribution of cryptographic keying material, allowing military GPS receivers around the world to be rekeyed remotely through satellite broadcasts rather than through onsite procedures. For the next 11 years, this expansive rekeying operation was overlooked in public GPS data. In 2022, the system entered a new phase, according to Murdoch's analysis. The shift was characterized by a slowing in the message rotation rate. Later, in December 2023, broadcasts carrying a distinctive "TEXT" prefix emerged then gradually spread across the constellation.

Murdoch isn't sure what explains the recent transition, though it could be a possible modernization of the infrastructure or the introduction of a new protocol. But to him, the bigger takeaway is that the signals were always available for anyone willing to take a closer look, a discovery that suggests that there could be more revelations hidden for the cryptographically curious among us. "Every receiver in the world decodes Subframe 4, Page 17," Murdoch said in his new article. "Almost none of them have ever looked at it. The lesson generalizes: There is more to learn from the bytes already arriving at our antennas than from the bytes we wish were specified differently. The data are publicly available. The signal is overhead, twice a day, every day."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John from Brisbane has added a photo to the pool:

Brisbane River, Queensland. Eco Tour on the river, note they are being pulled by the power boat. Riverside Expressway behind and city. Traffic above and below of different types, three layers here! Looks like fun if you don't have to paddle!

KERKRADE (ANP) - Aan de Toupsbergstraat in het Limburgse Kerkrade is in de nacht van vrijdag op zaterdag een auto een woning binnengereden. De bestuurder en een inzittende van de auto raakten gewond. Zij zijn met letsel naar het ziekenhuis gebracht. Dat heeft de politie bekendgemaakt.

Het incident gebeurde rond 01.30 uur. De woning liep schade op, maar volgens de politie bestaat er geen instortingsgevaar. De bewoners liepen geen verwondingen op.

HAVANA (ANP) - De voormalige Cubaanse leider Raúl Castro (95) is vrijdag op de staatstelevisie verschenen. Hij was aanwezig op een evenement op het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken dat werd uitgezonden.

Het was de eerste publieke verschijning van de oud-president sinds hij vorige maand in de Verenigde Staten werd aangeklaagd wegens moord.

De VS menen dat Castro betrokken was bij het neerhalen van twee civiele vliegtuigjes in 1996. Daarbij vielen vier doden, onder wie drie Amerikanen. Volgens de huidige Cubaanse regering is de aanklacht gebaseerd op valse beschuldigingen die bedoeld zijn als excuus voor een invasie van het eiland. Het is al tijden onrustig tussen beide landen, mede vanwege de Amerikaanse brandstofblokkade en dreigementen van Trump richting Cuba.

De VS stelden deze week nog sancties in tegen de Cubaanse president Miguel Díaz-Canel en leden van de familie Castro, onder anderen tegen de zoon en kleinzoon van Raúl Castro.