Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

photograph I acquired from a large archive of negatives from a San Francisco Bay based commercial photographer taken mostly in the 1960s to 1970s.

Andy Atzert has added a photo to the pool:

Tanba, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan

Here are three papers describing different side-channel attacks against LLMs.

“Remote Timing Attacks on Efficient Language Model Inference“:

Abstract: Scaling up language models has significantly increased their capabilities. But larger models are slower models, and so there is now an extensive body of work (e.g., speculative sampling or parallel decoding) that improves the (average case) efficiency of language model generation. But these techniques introduce data-dependent timing characteristics. We show it is possible to exploit these timing differences to mount a timing attack. By monitoring the (encrypted) network traffic between a victim user and a remote language model, we can learn information about the content of messages by noting when responses are faster or slower. With complete black-box access, on open source systems we show how it is possible to learn the topic of a user’s conversation (e.g., medical advice vs. coding assistance) with 90%+ precision, and on production systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude we can distinguish between specific messages or infer the user’s language. We further show that an active adversary can leverage a boosting attack to recover PII placed in messages (e.g., phone numbers or credit card numbers) for open source systems. We conclude with potential defenses and directions for future work.

“When Speculation Spills Secrets: Side Channels via Speculative Decoding in LLMs“:

Abstract: Deployed large language models (LLMs) often rely on speculative decoding, a technique that generates and verifies multiple candidate tokens in parallel, to improve throughput and latency. In this work, we reveal a new side-channel whereby input-dependent patterns of correct and incorrect speculations can be inferred by monitoring per-iteration token counts or packet sizes. In evaluations using research prototypes and production-grade vLLM serving frameworks, we show that an adversary monitoring these patterns can fingerprint user queries (from a set of 50 prompts) with over 75% accuracy across four speculative-decoding schemes at temperature 0.3: REST (100%), LADE (91.6%), BiLD (95.2%), and EAGLE (77.6%). Even at temperature 1.0, accuracy remains far above the 2% random baseline—REST (99.6%), LADE (61.2%), BiLD (63.6%), and EAGLE (24%). We also show the capability of the attacker to leak confidential datastore contents used for prediction at rates exceeding 25 tokens/sec. To defend against these, we propose and evaluate a suite of mitigations, including packet padding and iteration-wise token aggregation.

“Whisper Leak: a side-channel attack on Large Language Models“:

Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in sensitive domains including healthcare, legal services, and confidential communications, where privacy is paramount. This paper introduces Whisper Leak, a side-channel attack that infers user prompt topics from encrypted LLM traffic by analyzing packet size and timing patterns in streaming responses. Despite TLS encryption protecting content, these metadata patterns leak sufficient information to enable topic classification. We demonstrate the attack across 28 popular LLMs from major providers, achieving near-perfect classification (often >98% AUPRC) and high precision even at extreme class imbalance (10,000:1 noise-to-target ratio). For many models, we achieve 100% precision in identifying sensitive topics like “money laundering” while recovering 5-20% of target conversations. This industry-wide vulnerability poses significant risks for users under network surveillance by ISPs, governments, or local adversaries. We evaluate three mitigation strategies – random padding, token batching, and packet injection – finding that while each reduces attack effectiveness, none provides complete protection. Through responsible disclosure, we have collaborated with providers to implement initial countermeasures. Our findings underscore the need for LLM providers to address metadata leakage as AI systems handle increasingly sensitive information.

Boards demand measurable ROI as budgets, bonuses, and jobs hang in the balance

The clock is ticking for AI projects to either prove their worth or face the chopping block.…

As an assembly member, Mamdani backed the Stop Fakes Act. Now, the NYPD has admitted to spying online – but wielding actual power as mayor is complex

When Zohran Mamdani was a New York state assembly member, he sponsored the Stop Fakes Act, which would have prohibited law enforcement from creating fake electronic communication service accounts and collecting users’ account information.

“Digital dragnet surveillance is widespread and dangerous, yet it continues to go unregulated,” Mamdani co-wrote in a 2023 City & State op-ed. “Although the NYPD claimed in a Department of Justice report to keep detailed records of its undercover accounts, the department refuses to provide any documentation of its social media surveillance policies or practices for public review.”

Huge project by Norwegian-owned Scottish Sea Farms gets go-ahead amid concerns over the environmental cost of fish farming and threat to traditional way of life

At Collafirth, north Shetland, Sydney Johnson is unloading bags of two-dozen scallops by throwing them over his head like medicine balls to the pier above. Johnson, who has just finished a 10-hour shift on his boat, the Golden Shore, is concerned that plans for a new salmon farm will put fishers like him and his two sons out of business.

“They say it’s just one farm,” says Johnson. “But it’s one farm more. There’s only so much water and we’re at saturation point.”

A man accused of having placed secret cameras in Altach’s changing room is appearing in court next week

A man who has been accused of having videos from secret cameras in the changing room and showers of the Altach women’s team is appearing in court next week in a case that has shaken football in Austria.

About 30 women have been identified on the recordings, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Feldkirch, and some are considering a civil lawsuit against the accused. The team play in the top division in Austria.

This is an extract from our free email about women’s football, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts is delivered to your inboxes every Tuesday and Thursday.

Our cartoonist reflects on the Manchester United co-owner’s recent statements and electioneering, via the prism of Cracker’s DCI Bilborough

• Buy a cartoon | David’s favourite works of 2025

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

His maximal studies of US institutions such as welfare bureaucracy and an intensive care unit were packed with human detail and free from explicit commentary

• Frederick Wiseman, prolific documentary film-maker, dies aged 96

The documentary form is often thought to be governed by a manageable feature-length high concept: the story of a person, an institution, an historical episode. The subject itself and the film’s attitude towards it, its editorial slant, are habitually plain enough and the procedure is metonymic: the camera focuses on a part, and the whole is illuminated by implication. Often they have a sexed-up, quirky story to tell, which might mean a selective and sneakily tendentious approach to editing the material. But that is not quite the case with the films of Frederick Wiseman. His colossal, immersive movies about ordinary people and ordinary lives enclosed in some kind of institution, and characterised by the absence of voiceovers, intertitles or the off-camera directorial presence of the interviewing voice, are not amenable to the elevator pitch; they are the entire elevator shaft itself, and the whole building that houses it.

Whereas epic-length films might be generally held to be appropriate for big and distinctively historical subjects, such as Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah or Marcel Ophüls’s The Sorrow and the Pity, Wiseman applies the maximal approach to static cross-section studies of sometimes less obviously momentous topics such as Paris’s Crazy Horse nightclub or the French restaurant Le Bois Sans Feuilles. However his greatest works are top-to-bottom body-politic pictures of public institutions, huge, intricate constructions of unglamour; his movies themselves were virtual institutions, movie-edifices mirroring their subjects in architectural form and indeed almost always funded by one particular public institution: PBS, the Public Broadcasting System.

‘Get the files out’, says former secretary of state, adding that she and Bill Clinton have ‘nothing to hide’

A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Monday ordered the National Park Service to reinstall a slavery exhibit at a Philadelphia historic site, pending the outcome of litigation after the city sued the federal government over its removal.

The National Park Service last month dismantled and removed a long-established slavery-related exhibit at the Independence National Historical park, which holds the former residence of George Washington, in response to Donald Trump’s claims, which have been rejected by civil rights groups, of “anti-American ideology” at historical and cultural institutions.

Heading to D.C. Will give an Air Force One Press Conference, shortly. Marco was fantastic in Munich! AOC and Newscum were an embarrassment to our Nation. For one thing they shouldn’t be talking badly about the U.S.A., especially on “foreign soil.” They made fools of themselves, and always will! Crooked Hillary merely showed her anger and Trump Derangement. Really bad representatives of our now very successful Country!

De Kansspelautoriteit (Ksa) roept het Amerikaanse platform Polymarket op direct de "illegale activiteiten" te staken. Als dit niet gebeurt, krijgt het bedrijf achter de website een dwangsom van 420.000 euro per week opgelegd. Op Polymarket kunnen gebruikers wedden op onder meer wie naar huis gaat met de Oscar voor beste film, het aantal X-posts van Elon Musk in een week, wie de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen van Amsterdam wint en of Jezus Christus terugkeert voor 2027.

Het bedrijf heeft geen vergunning voor het aanbieden van kansspelen in Nederland. Adventure One, het bedrijf achter de voorspelsite, stelt zelf dat het geen kansspelen aanbiedt. Polymarket noemt zichzelf een voorspelplatform. Maar de Ksa ziet dat anders en heeft in een eerder stadium het bedrijf benaderd. "Na contact met het bedrijf over de illegale activiteiten op de Nederlandse markt is geen zichtbare verandering opgetreden en is het aanbod nog steeds beschikbaar." De last onder dwangsom bedraagt maximaal 840.000 euro en kan worden omgezet in een omzetgerelateerde boete.

Voorspelplatform

Met een vergunning mag het platform dit soort weddenschappen overigens ook niet aanbieden, verduidelijkt directeur vergunningen en toezicht bij de Ksa Ella Seijsener. "Prediction markets zijn in opkomst, ook in Nederland. Dit soort bedrijven biedt weddenschappen aan die op onze markt hoe dan ook niet zijn toegestaan, ook niet door vergunninghouders."

Begin dit jaar kwam Polymarket in het nieuws toen een anonieme gokker ruim 400.000 dollar won door te gokken op de gevangenneming van de Venezolaanse president Nicolás Maduro. Volgens het platform zette de gokker zo'n 34.000 dollar in. Wie datzelfde bedrag op de terugkeer van Jezus Christus inzet, kan ruim 8 ton winnen.

TEHERAN (ANP/AFP/RTR) - De leider van Iran, ayatollah Ali Khamenei, heeft dinsdag gewaarschuwd dat Amerikaanse pogingen de regering van Iran omver te werpen gedoemd zijn te mislukken. Hij sprak aan het begin van naar verwachting tweedaagse onderhandelingen tussen beide landen in Genève. Die gaan over het omstreden Iraanse nucleaire programma. De diplomaten uit Oman zijn tussenpersonen in de gesprekken.

In juni vorig jaar bombardeerden de VS en Israël dagenlang nucleaire installaties in Iran. Momenteel heeft president Donald Trump veel marineschepen en vliegtuigen in de regio samengebracht. Hij hoopt op een machtswisseling. Khamenei zei dat "we horen dat de VS een oorlogsbodem naar Iran hebben gestuurd en dat is een krachtig wapen, maar nog krachtiger is het wapen dat het schip tot zinken kan brengen".

Eind vorig jaar zijn er massale protesten in Iran losgebarsten tegen het impopulaire autoritaire bewind van de sjiitische geestelijkheid. De protesten zijn neergeslagen.

ARNHEM (ANP) - Femke Bol loopt donderdag niet de 600 meter op de indoorwedstrijd uit de World Tour in het Franse Liévin. De Nederlandse topatlete meldt op Instagram dat ze kampt met een peesblessure in haar voet. "Helaas zal ik deze week niet lopen in Liévin. Het is geen makkelijk besluit, maar ik moet luisteren naar mijn lichaam", schrijft ze.

Bol, de tweevoudig wereldkampioene op de 400 meter horden, liep vorige week zondag haar eerste wedstrijd over 800 meter. De Amersfoortse is overgestapt van de horden naar de middenafstand. Ze liep een tijd van 1.59,07 en dat was meteen een Nederlands indoorrecord.