The "I don't want to talk about AI" thread, and the new topic is: Halloween, costumes and candy

It's about time to buy $ 1,600 worth of candy to be distributed to the kids at Halloween. Mum and Dad will have the same issues; kids from all over their town will come to their neighborhood, in droves, to get the good stuff.
 
This is a very entertaining post. I don't understand a word of it.
UK readers let me know if I got any of this wrong:

A "consumer co-op" (co-operative) is basically a commercial organisation owned by its customers - think if a bunch of people clubbed together to set up their own supermarket rather than having some rich guy running it for his own profit.

The UK's Co-operative Group, aka "Co-op", is a merger of a bunch of different co-ops, which does retail groceries among other business. Earlier this year they got hacked, with major disruption to their systems and theft of customer data, and at least an attempt at a ransom attack.

A couple of other UK retailers also got hacked around this time, including Marks & Spencer. M&S had to stop all online sales for six weeks, losing an estimated 300 million pounds. So a lot of people had difficulties buying their groceries. The Hebrides are a chain of Scottish islands, and a lot of people there depend on the Co-op for their groceries, so the hacking crisis made it hard for people there to get fresh food.

Also, the Scots have a reputation for deep-frying just about anything.

UK has been heavily targeted by hacking/ransomware attacks lately, widely suspected to be Russian-backed. I do some work for a UK company and their IT systems were crippled by a ransomware attack last year; some of my payments were delayed by months because they had to rebuild their payment system pretty much from the ground up.
 
UK readers let me know if I got any of this wrong:

A "consumer co-op" (co-operative) is basically a commercial organisation owned by its customers - think if a bunch of people clubbed together to set up their own supermarket rather than having some rich guy running it for his own profit.

The UK's Co-operative Group, aka "Co-op", is a merger of a bunch of different co-ops, which does retail groceries among other business. Earlier this year they got hacked, with major disruption to their systems and theft of customer data, and at least an attempt at a ransom attack.

A couple of other UK retailers also got hacked around this time, including Marks & Spencer. M&S had to stop all online sales for six weeks, losing an estimated 300 million pounds. So a lot of people had difficulties buying their groceries. The Hebrides are a chain of Scottish islands, and a lot of people there depend on the Co-op for their groceries, so the hacking crisis made it hard for people there to get fresh food.

Also, the Scots have a reputation for deep-frying just about anything.

UK has been heavily targeted by hacking/ransomware attacks lately, widely suspected to be Russian-backed. I do some work for a UK company and their IT systems were crippled by a ransomware attack last year; some of my payments were delayed by months because they had to rebuild their payment system pretty much from the ground up.
Spot on!
I visited the Hebrides last month and a local confirmed the shelves at the Coop were bare for a month. The hacking world was apparently outraged by the fast response at Coop HQ because they 'pulled the plug' on their system so that not everything was lost. AFAIK no ransom was paid.

Interesting that you note the UK is a particular target - probably because of home-grown hackers using Russian software. A recent attempt to hack a nursery school chain was so heavily criticised by the Dark Web that the attack was called off. Two teenagers in the UK were subsequently arrested - one imagines their identity was supplied by the DW too.
 
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