Review: 2025 Ford Expedition King Ranch – Part 1

Posted in Products with tags on October 14, 2025 by itnerd

Over the years I’ve reviewed a lot of vehicles. But I have to admit that this is the most difficult vehicle that I have ever reviewed. Before I get to why it was difficult to review, let’s take a look at the vehicle.

Meet the Ford Expedition. This vehicle is simply huge. And I am not the target audience for it. Why is that? This is for someone who wants a a huge vehicle that carries a lot of people, or stuff, or both. And tows a lot. That’s not me. Sure I could get my wife and I along with both our road bikes in it. But we can do that in an Explorer or even an Escape as well. Thus to properly review this, I need to climb inside the head someone who would use this vehicle for what it is intended to be used for.

This is the King Ranch edition. Which I always thought was a F150 trim level. But clearly not. You see the King Ranch influence everywhere. Including:

The wheels

The interior:

And the door sill plates. There’s more places where you see this influence, but we’d be here all day if I were to point them all out. And for what it’s worth, King Ranch is a real ranch in Texas.

A big vehicle needs a big engine. Right? Well sort of. This Expedition comes with Ford’s 3.5L V6 EcoBoost Engine. It’s mated to a 10 speed automatic transmission. This combo is good for 400 horsepower and 480 pound feet of torque. So while a lot of these body on frame SUVs come with a V8, this one has a V6. And I don’t think that this is a downgrade. Because you can tow 9000 pounds with this setup. And at no point did I feel that I lacked power to merge onto a highway or pass anything. What’s even more impressive is the fact that power is easily modulated with your right foot. The only gripe that I had was that it took me a bit to get used to braking which is able to bring this rather huge SUV to a stop very quickly should the need arise. But I suppose this is a non issue if you daily drive it.

When it comes to fuel economy, it’s not as bad as you might think. The Expedition is rated for 15.4 L/100 KM city, 10.7 L/100 KM highway, and 13.1 L/100 KM combined. I hit 13.1 L/100 KM during my week with the Expedition which was better than I was expecting.

Now this vehicle as I said is huge. And this took me some getting used to as I am coming from an SUV that is much smaller. I will not call it agile, but it had a surprisingly decent turning radius. You can also get it to change lanes in a hurry if needed on the highway without it complaining. Having said that, condo owners like me should take this vehicle off your shopping list as the height of this vehicle is close to the maximum limit of my garage. And parking it in my parking spot was to be frank, comical. I say that because what is normally a 1 minute exercise is 5 minutes with this vehicle as I was taking care to make sure I didn’t hit anything. Thus I spent a lot of time shuffling this vehicle back and forth to get it into my spot without hitting the pillar to my right, or the car to my left. Good thing that it has an array of sensors and cameras to warn you if you are getting too close to an object. That helped immensely. In terms of noise, vibration, and harshness, the Expedition is generally quiet except for tire noise. And while it does bounce if you hit a bump that a bit too big, it wasn’t anywhere near as bouncy as I was expecting it to be.

One other note:

Because this vehicle has about 9″ of ground clearance, this trim level comes with retractable running boards. And if you’re anything shorter than 5′ 5″ tall, you will need them to get in and out of the vehicle.

Tomorrow I’m going to walk you through the interior of the Expedition. But here’s a spoiler alert, it’s on another level.

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SimonMed Imaging Pwned By Medusa

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 13, 2025 by itnerd

Comparitech has reported SimonMed Imaging over the weekend confirmed 1,275,669 people had been affected in its January 2025 data breach, which was claimed by ransomware gang Medusa with a $1 million ransom demand.

Rebecca Moody, Head of Data Research at Comparitech has this comment: 

“This attack on SimonMed Imaging becomes the second-largest data breach on a healthcare company this year (via ransomware). Overall, we’ve noted 96 attacks on healthcare providers (worldwide) this year with over 8.7 million records breached across these attacks. The average ransom across these attacks has been $660,000, putting Medusa’s demand of $1 million from SimonMed well above average. 

The attack also highlights our recent findings that healthcare providers are facing an increased threat of attacks via the third parties they use to carry out certain services. In the case of SimonMed Imaging, it appears that this attack was successful due to a breach of one of its vendors. With such highly sensitive data on offer, healthcare organizations remain a key target for hackers and even those with the most robust of cybersecurity practices can still find themselves at the center of devastating breaches due to attacks via the third parties they use.”

Ensar Seker, CISO at SOCRadar follows with this comment:

“The SimonMed breach illustrates the perfect storm we often fear in healthcare cybersecurity: a long dwell time, a wide scope of compromised data, and a ransomware group bold enough to publicize both the theft and ransom demand. Attacks like this are not just about health records they compromise full digital identities, from SSNs to login credentials, and create cascading risks of identity theft, insurance fraud, and even social engineering attacks on hospitals or insurers.

What’s especially troubling here is the theft of authentication credentials, which could be weaponized for secondary attacks or network persistence.

This attack isn’t a good one. And I have the feeling that this one will have far reaching effects for some time to come. By that I mean months or even years.

Healthcare organizations remain attractive targets because of their sensitive datasets, complex third-party ecosystems, and historically underfunded cybersecurity operations. Ransomware gangs like Medusa don’t just want to encrypt but they want to extract maximum leverage by exfiltrating and publishing stolen data. This reinforces the urgent need for real-time anomaly detection, segmented architectures, and a zero-trust posture across healthcare networks. It’s also a wake-up call that disclosure timelines must improve; weeks of unauthorized access is far too long in any sector, but in healthcare, it’s catastrophic.”

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Forcepoint Expands Self-Aware Data Security Platform to Enterprise Databases and Data Lakes with AI-Native DSPM

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 13, 2025 by itnerd

 Forcepoint has announced the expansion of its Self-Aware Data Security platform to protect enterprise databases and structured data sources. With this launch, Forcepoint is the first to extend AI Mesh Data Classification technology across both structured and unstructured data throughout the hybrid enterprise, delivering unified Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) and adaptive data loss prevention in a single platform.

As enterprises accelerate SaaS, cloud and AI adoption, structured data remains a critical blind spot. Databases and data lakes house customer records, financial assets and intellectual property but have lacked consistent visibility and policy enforcement alongside files, emails and SaaS apps. By extending AI Mesh Data Classification to structured sources, Forcepoint enables organizations to discover, classify and remediate risks in real time with a single-policy framework.

With Forcepoint DSPM, enterprises and government agencies can discover and classify regulated and proprietary information across databases, data lakes and files, track its movement and apply safeguards in real time, without manual queries or fragmented tools. This automation is enabled by Forcepoint’s AI-native approach to Self-Aware Data Security, which unifies visibility and enforcement in a continuous loop, making security responsive and adaptive, not static.

A Self-Aware Approach to Data Security 

Self-Aware Data Security is Forcepoint’s AI-native strategy that turns risk visibility into protection. Rather than separating discovery from enforcement, it creates a continuous, adaptive loop, analyzing context, posture and intent, while discovering sensitive data, classifying it, prioritizing risks, remediating exposures, and protecting information across all environments, everywhere people work today. The result is security that knows, adapts and protects automatically as data moves — for example, coaching users in real-time, adjusting access or blocking attempts to share sensitive data externally.

Powered by AI Mesh, Forcepoint delivers precise, explainable and customizable data discovery and classification, while a single-policy framework applies consistent prioritization, remediation and protection. In this self-aware architecture, data is governed consistently at rest, in use, and in motion, closing gaps legacy tools leave behind.

With the Forcepoint DSPM expansion, organizations can simplify security, reduce risk and cost, and accelerate AI and cloud initiatives with confidence. Leaders gain insight into where data resides, how it’s accessed and what risks it carries, all in a single, unified system. Compliance teams benefit from nearly 2,000 policy templates, automated reporting and explainable, auditable AI, making it easier to keep pace with complex regulations. Employees work without disruption, knowing sensitive information is protected wherever it moves. 

How Forcepoint DSPM Closes Gaps in Controlling AI and Data Risk:

  • Structured Data Discovery and Classification. Extends Forcepoint’s industry-leading discovery and classification to Microsoft SQL, Oracle, MySQL and other enterprise databases and data lakes like Databricks and Snowflake, unifying risk management across structured and unstructured data.
  • Precise Enforcement and Remediation at Scale. Beyond visibility, admins can adjust file permissions, prevent oversharing, move sensitive files to secure repositories, or clean up redundant, outdated or trivial (ROT) data. Integration with a single-policy framework applies controls across SaaS, email, websites, networks, endpoints, clouds and AI workflows.
  • Enterprise-Ready Compliance. AI Mesh delivers more accurate, customizable and explainable classification than generic LLM tools. Integration between policy templates, automated reporting and transparent AI logic streamlines compliance and audit readiness while reducing false positives.
  • Executive Risk Visibility. Dashboards surface high-level trends in regulated data exposure, helping leaders prioritize mitigation with less overhead.
  • Financial-Impact Estimates. An industry-first capability estimates breach or compliance costs, helping leaders prioritize remediation and data access governance. 

Forcepoint AWARE 2025, Oct. 7-8

Forcepoint’s premier AI data security user conference is a two-day virtual summit providing actionable strategies to safely adopt AI innovations. With high-profile speakers, a dynamic agenda and tailored breakout sessions, attendees will explore how to control AI workflows, simplify compliance, and transform security into a competitive advantage. Register today to attend live or access content on-demand.

To learn more about Forcepoint DSPM, visit the product page, data risk assessment page, or read the blog Forcepoint DSPM Adds Structured Data Support.

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Hammerspace Demonstrates Breakthrough in GPU Storage Performance at Oracle AI World 2025

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 13, 2025 by itnerd

Hammerspace today announced that it will demonstrate the power and performance of its Tier 0 architecture at Oracle AI World 2025, October 13–16 in Las Vegas. With Tier 0, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Supercluster – a bare metal GPU server cluster – operates with ultra-high-performance shared storage, helping to reduce bottlenecks and minimize GPU idle time.

By transforming existing local NVMe storage in OCI GPU shapes into a persistent, ultra-fast shared storage tier, Hammerspace eliminates data silos and unifies storage, unlocking a new level of efficiency and performance for AI workloads. Hammerspace will demonstrate its Tier 0 architecture, which enables AI training, checkpointing, inference and agentic AI workloads to run with higher throughput, lower latency and better GPU utilization, while providing access to all this data in a single namespace.

Performance That Redefines the Rules
Recent benchmark testing on OCI proves the power of the Tier 0 architecture, which includes:

  • Up to 7x improvement in latency vs. traditional cloud file storage.
  • Up to 6x improvement in storage performance vs. traditional cloud file storage.
  • Checkpointing at extreme speeds, crushing idle time.
  • Throughput so fast it keeps GPUs fed 24/7, not waiting on data.
  • Policy-driven flexibility to move cold data to lower-cost tiers without touching the hot path. 

In addition, Hammerspace will demonstrate the power of Tier 0 at the event:

     Topic: Increase Performance and Reduce Idle Time of Your GPU Workloads in OCI
     Presenter: Raj Sharma, Cloud Field CTO, Hammerspace
     Location: NVIDIA Booth #1013
     Date/Time: Tuesday, October 14, 5:30–6:00 p.m.

Learn More:

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Surfshark launches the world’s first 100Gbps VPN servers

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 10, 2025 by itnerd

Surfshark has announced that they have introduced 100Gbps bandwidth servers in response to the growing demand for higher bandwidth and to ensure VPN services won’t become a bottleneck as internet speeds continue to rise.

Surfshark’s new 100Gbps servers allow VPN technology to be future-proof and ready for the growing demand when the shift to higher-capacity hardware happens.

Increased bandwidth also reduces the need for throttling or deprioritizing traffic, allowing users to get closer to their maximum internet speeds more often, even when backing up heavy documents to the cloud or downloading a game.

For this solution, Surfshark has chosen the Amsterdam location due to its impressive internet exchange (AMS-IX), which handles over 14 trillion bits per second, making it one of the world’s largest internet exchanges by traffic volume. To put this into perspective, that’s roughly 1.75 terabytes of data every second, ~560,000 simultaneous 4K streams, equivalent to about 7.5 million people watching TikTok videos simultaneously, or around 63 million people playing Fortnite at once.

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Anker SOLIX announces the C2000 Gen 2 Portable Power Station

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 10, 2025 by itnerd

Anker SOLIX has announced the C2000 Gen 2 Portable Power Station, a 2-kWh unit that brings flagship-level efficiency, charging speed, and flexibility to the portable power category.

Launching today, the C2000 Gen 2 will be available for pre-order at this link for $1,999 CAD and will begin shipping to customers on October 28.  

Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 also features: 

  • 2,400 W output / 4,000 W peak power – enough for 99% of home or RV appliances 
  • 58-minute full recharge via AC + solar (2,600 W input) 
  • Ultra-low 9 W standby draw, the most efficient in its class 
  • LFP battery rated for 4,000 cycles, or up to 10 years of daily use 
  • Compact 18.9 kg frame, 25% lighter than competing 2 kWh units 
  • Expandable to 4 kWh with the BP2000 Expansion Battery 
  •  

This announcement comes on the heels of Anker’s recent SOLIX lineup expansion, including the F3000, X1 and most recently, the C1000 Gen 2. Following its debut, the C1000 Gen 2 now headlines Anker SOLIX’s Fall Prime Day event (Oct 7 –10) with discounts of up to 55% off (CAD $449), or CAD $699 with a 200 W solar panel — setting the stage for the C1000 Gen 2’s debut as its bigger, faster sibling. 

Compared to the C1000 Gen 2, the new C2000 Gen 2 doubles capacity (1024 Wh → 2048 Wh), increases power output by +400 W, adds RV compatibility via a TT-30 port, and retains the record-setting 58-minute recharge speed. 

Following Amazon Prime Days, you can still get a steal on the Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 with the following early bird deals: 

  • From October 10-27, signups open on ankersolix.ca for a 45% off redemption code to receive a free C200 DC with adjustable strap. 
  • From October 28-November 3, during official launch, the Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 will be available on both ankersolix.com/ca and Amazon. You can get a single-unit C2000 Gen 2 at a discounted price of $1,099. 

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AI Browsers Vulnerable to OAuth Attacks, Malware and Malicious Link Distribution

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 9, 2025 by itnerd

Researchers have uncovered major vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to exploit AI Browsers to exfiltrate sensitive data, distribute malware and gain unauthorized access to enterprise SaaS apps  —significant news as OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and The Browser Company have announced or released their own AI browsers. Chrome and Edge alone represent 70% of the browser market share. 

You can read more details here: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/squarex-shows-ai-browsers-fall-prey-to-oauth-attacks-malware-downloads-and-malicious-link-distribution-302578487.html

Davit Asatryan, VP of Research at Spin.AI, provided the following comments:

“One key to preventing browser compromise is proactively blocking OAuth and extension-based attacks, where users are misled into installing third-party tools that seem legitimate but contain exploitable gaps or malicious intent. Consistent monitoring and governed approval of third-party apps and extensions is essential, enabling IT and security teams to assess risk before deployment.”

This is the second major threat to browsers that I am covering today. The first being this one. Thus proving that you need to be really careful when you surf the Internet as the bad guys are everywhere.

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Attackers Actively Exploiting Critical Vulnerability in Service Finder Bookings Plugin- Expert Perspectives

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 9, 2025 by itnerd

Threat actors are actively exploiting a critical authentication bypass vulnerability (CVE-2025-5947, CVSS 9.8) in the Service Finder WordPress theme and its bundled Service Finder Bookings plugin. The flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to gain access to any account, including administrators, by exploiting improper cookie validation in the account-switching function. Attackers can hijack sites to inject malicious code, redirect users, or host malware. The issue affects all versions up to 6.0 and was patched in version 6.1 on July 17, 2025. Exploitation has been observed since August 1, with over 13,800 attempts detected to date.

Gunter Ollmann, CTO, Cobalt:

     “The pure deja vu of another critical WordPress vulnerability cannot be ignored. Threat actors are increasingly automating the exploitation of common CMS plugins to gain persistent access to web infrastructure. Once inside, adversaries can pivot to distributing malware, stealing credentials, or using compromised sites in larger botnets. The WordPress ecosystem’s accessibility makes it a prime target, and with so many vulnerabilities like this over the years for WordPress, security teams should treat the service as untrusted and strengthen systems around it to protect critical data and connected systems.”

I’m a WordPress user so any report of a vulnerability in this platform concerns me. If you’re running a self hosted instance of WordPress, you might want to make sure that you’re fully up to date as soon as you can.

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New Shuyal Infostealer Steals Credentials from 19 Web Browsers

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 9, 2025 by itnerd

Researchers have discovered a new infostealer dubbed Shuyal Stealer, a browser-targeted malware strain that steals login credentials from 19 different web browsers, widening its scope beyond popular platforms like Chrome and Edge. It also takes a more invasive approach by conducting deep system reconnaissance collecting granular details about disk drives, input peripherals, and display setups while capturing screenshots and clipboard contents. All of this, including Discord tokens, is funneled out through a Telegram bot infrastructure, making Shuyal a highly efficient and stealthy data-exfiltration tool.

More details can be found here: https://www.pointwild.com/threat-intelligence/shuyal-stealer-advanced-infostealer-targeting-19-browsers

Davit Asatryan, VP of Research at Spin.AI, provided the following comments:

“We’ve seen a major increase in browser-level risks recently, indicating an emerging trend. It makes an attractive threat vector because it’s often an afterthought for security teams. It’s essential to keep an eye on this, as it’s only a matter of time before these attacks start cascading into serious SaaS compromises.”

If you’re concerned about a plug in or something similar sneaking its way onto your browser, this article can help you to stay safe: Uninstall or Disable Plugins to Make Your Browser More Secure

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Starburst Unveils AI-Ready Data Platform to Power the Agentic Workforce

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 9, 2025 by itnerd

 Starburst today announced at AI & Datanova, a new set of capabilities designed to operationalize the Agentic Workforce—a paradigm where humans and AI agents collaborate seamlessly across workflows to reason, decide, and act faster and with confidence. With new, built-in support for model-to-data architectures, multi-agent interoperability, and an open vector store on Iceberg, Starburst delivers the first lakehouse platform that empowers AI agents, with unified enterprise data, governed data products, and metadata, empowering humans and AI to reason, act, and decide faster while ensuring trust and control.

Unlike legacy platforms that require data movement or rely on black-box retrieval, Starburst gives AI agents secure, governed access to data wherever it resides, on-premises or in the cloud, at enterprise scale. This federated, model-to-data approach helps organizations maintain sovereignty, reduce costs, and avoid compliance pitfalls, especially in highly regulated industries or cross-border environments.

To further strengthen enterprise confidence in AI, Starburst is introducing advanced observability and visualization features for its agent framework. Organizations can now monitor usage of LLM interactions, set guardrails with usage limits, and view activity through intuitive dashboards. In addition, Starburst’s agent can visualize responses into charts and graphs giving teams not only accurate answers but also clear, actionable insights. These capabilities provide a new level of transparency, governance, and usability as enterprises scale AI adoption.

Key Innovations Driving the Next Generation of AI and Analytics

Starburst’s new AI capabilities are built upon the core principle of flexibility, giving organizations the freedom to choose between model-to-data and data-to-model architectures. This approach enables enterprises to scale AI securely, while preserving sovereignty, reducing infrastructure costs, and ensuring compliance. These enhancements include:

●      Multi-Agent Ready Infrastructure: A new MCP server and agent API allows enterprises to create, manage, and orchestrate multiple AI agents along-side the Starburst agent. This enables customers to develop multi-agent and AI application solutions that are geared to complete tasks of growing complexity.

●      Open & Interoperable Vector Access: Starburst unifies access to vector stores, enabling retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and search tasks across Iceberg, PostgreSQL + PGVector, Elasticsearch and more. Enterprises gain flexibility to choose the right vector solution for each workload without lock-in or fragmentation.

●      Model Usage Monitoring & Control: Starburst offers enterprise-grade AI model monitoring and governance. Teams can track, audit, and control AI usage across agents and workloads with dashboards, preventing cost overruns and ensuring compliance for confident, scalable AI adoption.

●      Deeper Insights & Visualization: An extension of Starburst’s conversational analytics agent enables users to ask questions across different data product domains and provide back a natural language response in natural language, a visualization, or combination of the two. The agent is able to understand the user intent and question to do data discovery to find the right data before query processing to answer the question.

Beyond Dashboards and Copilots: The Next Era of AI

AI is rapidly moving past dashboards and copilots toward autonomous workflows that demand both real-time decisioning and long-term context. For enterprises in regulated sectors, including finance, telecom, manufacturing, and public services, this shift raises a critical challenge: how to harness AI’s potential without compromising on data sovereignty,governance,  or compliance.

Starburst’s Platform: Built for Global-Scale, Compliance-First AI

Building on its core capabilities, Starburst enables enterprises operating across the EU and other regulated regions to deploy AI without breaching data residency, privacy, or compliance mandates. The platform provides federated access to distributed data, allowing organizations to query and analyze information in place without unnecessary movement.

By design, Starburst ensures data sovereignty across borders, clouds, and business units, while metadata-driven policy enforcement supports GDPR, Schrems II, and other evolving global regulations. With governance embedded at every layer, enterprises gain the confidence to scale AI securely and compliantly, no matter where their data lives.

Availability

New innovations in the Starburst Data Platform will be generally available in Q4.

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