Tech things you're absolutely fine not knowing

It may take the skills of a sleuth hacker to temporarily close a museum and a few amusement parks. But it shouldn’t be that difficult to get your Garmin to work again.

Before I get to the fun stories of the previous week, I need to talk to you about the elephant in the room. More like the Chinese dragon. Whether you care about DeepSeek or not, the topic will inevitably arise at many dinner parties where you might want to offer your two cents.

News about China releasing a powerful AI model, DeepSeek, finally reached the ears of Wall Street's wolves, sending markets into a panic mode. All of a sudden, DeepSeek is under increased scrutiny – experts are trying to jailbreak it and test it out for hallucinations, biases, and propaganda, among other things. The public discourse is not that different from when ChatGPT came around.

The panic is also a somewhat deja vu moment – TikTok’s rise and Huawei’s 5G ambitions send similar shock waves through the Western governments as Chinese enterprises showed their teeth.

Of course, the biggest critique of the ‘Made in China’ model for now is heavy censorship. More models are made in China, but we focus on DeepSeek because it seems to be the only Chinese model that can bite back simply by performing as well or even better than Western models.

The security implications of using DeepSeek are yet to be seen, as experts name quite a lot of theoretical worries. Do not be mistaken, though, as many of them will become a real headache as soon as companies implement them. And they are eager to deploy AI, but AI is reportedly a catalyst for new vulnerabilities.

But it can also be a vengeful employee who may bring you down, as happened with the British Museum. A recently fired contractor shut down several systems, including the ticketing system. Yes, the entry is free, yet you still need a ticket.

It reminded me of this scene from the BBC series, Sherlock:

Last week, Hello Kitty theme parks were also attacked by hackers. Details on the incidents are scarce, but the nature of the incident points to a ransomware attack. Criminals often target time-sensitive systems to force the victim to succumb to their demands.

Yes, scenes of children crying may balloon a company’s losses. But is there anything you wouldn’t do to try to make them feel better?

However, no cry last week was louder than the Garmin users’ public outcry during the blue triangle bug drama.

Some users are so pissed they swear they are upgrading to a different type of watch. “Another one bites the dust,” one photo caption reads.

So why are people so annoyed?

For one, the GPS issues continued for two days straight, with many users reporting they couldn’t implement the fix. For some watches, the fix would be a 13-step instruction on factory resetting your watch and losing some data along the way.

I did grow up when it was necessary to install Windows yourself, and changing spare parts of a computer was considered normal. Mainly because we were poor but also because we were resourceful. But how tech-savvy do I need to be just to update my watch?

There’s also a new asteroid scare, but maybe we should worry about the destiny of humankind instead.