Marvel and the Pentagon caught in the act, via Bud Burridge on Facebook

Happy Friday, kittens! A fraught week it has been, and that’s not even counting the family scene at Thanksgiving! Let’s pray that upcoming holidays are less dramatic. May you live in uninteresting times, kittens! But not just yet, as our news roundup indicates.

Huge flaw exposes VPN user IPs (TorrentFreak) If you don’t know what this means, not to worry. You’re just as exposed as you ever were. Which isn’t great.

This gizmo knows your Amex number before you’ve received your new card (PCWorld) American Express appears to have used a weak algorithm to generate new card numbers

Psychological Tricks You Can Use To Get People To Do Whatever You Want (IFLScience) Social Engineering 101

OpNimr: Saudi Arabia: Shi’a activists and juvenile offenders among 50 set to be executed (Amnesty)

A Computer For the Price of a Latte (TheRegister) And significantly less than a RASPBERRY latte.

UK To Combat Cyber Criminals In National Security Strategy, Strategic Defense And Security Review (DeepDotWeb)

From the Department of Kicking Them When They’re Down: Ripping Off Prisoners’ Families (TechDirt)

The Logic Behind America’s Drone Wars (WarIsBoring) The U.S. fields killer robots instead of soldiers, but do they keep us safe?

Preternatural machines: Robots came to Europe before the dawn of the mechanical age. To a medieval world, they were indistinguishable from magic (Aeon)

Fraudsters: They’re Just Like Us! (Pymnts)

Encryption stops criminals. Weakening it doesn’t make sense (Cluley)

How to (Really) Engineer a Human Baby (MIT)

The Story Behind this Mystifying Photo of KKK Members at a Colorado Fair (AtlasObscura)

Categories: Crime, Drones, Hackers, Interwebbed, News, Prisons, Robots, Saudi Arabia, Security, Surveillance, VPN