Daniel Miessler's Blog, page 11
May 6, 2024
UL NO. 431: Companies are Graphs of Algorithms
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Companies Are Just a Graph of Algorithms
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AI is Mostly Prompting
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April 30, 2024
UL NO. 430: The Courage to be Disliked
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April 23, 2024
The Value of Elite Colleges is Relationships with Elite People
There’s been an unsolved mystery for a while that I want to solve in public.
I didn’t solve it. It’s been solved. But few people know the answer.
The mystery is:
Why do so many people pay so much for elite college educations when the actual education they receive isn’t that much better than online courses or state schools?
And a second mystery is:
And if the education is so similar, why do so many of the most successful people come from those elite schools.
Paul Graham solved this for me in a number of his essays.
Basically it comes down to relationships. Associations. Connections.
If you go to an elite school, it’s because you’re lucky to have great parents with lots of intelligence and lots of resources.
And when you get to an elite school you’re surrounded by lots of other people like that.
Those are people who are likely to have the luxury of not just extra IQ points and self-discipline, but the time and money to be able to go and do things with their talents.
Being surrounded by lots of people like that means you’re likely to:
Have more ideas
Have the resources to do something with them
Have the network to share and magnify those efforts
It’s a stacked deck in their favor. Not from the education, but from the network of people you meet there and the permanent bonds that are formed with them.
Nothing is more powerful in life than being surrounded by highly talented and motivated people. And there’s no better place to find people like that, early in life, than at an elite university.
RecommendationsSo, does that mean the rest of us are doomed?
No.
What you need to do is break the problem into two separate pieces.
Education
Connections to talented and driven people
You can get #1 from most anywhere.
For #2, if you can’t go to an elite school, you have to find other places to force those connections.
Like:
Moving to the Bay Area and going to lots of AI meetups, hacker spaces, etc.
Having an online presence where you talk about your learning journey, and you build things in public
Sharing those things you build with other builders
SummaryThings are stacked in favor of those at elite colleges, and if you are a parent it’s still a great way to give your kids an advantage if that’s an option.
But it’s not the only way to hack the system.
Find a path to surrounding your kids—or yourself—with the most creative and driven people possible.
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April 22, 2024
UL NO. 429: Build Your Career Around Problems
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Unsupervised Learning is about the transition from Human 2.0 to Human 3.0 in order to survive and thrive in a post-AI world. It combines original ideas and analysis to provide not just the most important stories and trends—but why they matter, and how to respond.
TOCNOTESHey there,
So Llama3 came out last week, and it’s really impressive. I’ve been playing with this new AI UI called Bolt.ai, which is quite nice. It’s basically a full application with a lot of the UX behavior of ChatGPT, but with the ability to use lots of different models.
There are many web versions of this type of thing, but this is much easier to install on a Mac.
Bolt.ai
Anyway, Llama3 has been pretty impressive at the 70B level. I haven’t done full testing yet, but I’ve had it generate at least a few responses that felt GPT-4-ish, and many that felt way worse. Remember that shaping open models with good system prompts is super important, and that going over the context window (8K for Llama3) makes it act crazy.
Also, Llama3 is significantly less restricted than previous models. In a lot of ways it behaves more like an uncensored model, especially if you tell it to act like one.
It’s insane to me that we’ll soon have GPT-4 level local models. Free. Local. And the resources required to run them will keep coming down. This is especially trippy when you realize that our standards for their performance will plateau for most tasks. Meaning, we’ll soon be able to do some massive percentage of everyday human tasks using local models that cost virtually nothing.
More stuff going on:
Continued prep for B-Sides/RSA shenanigans.
Remember to come say hi or should from across the room if you see me around BSides or RSA. Hugs, waves, finger guns, or fist-bumps all accepted, according to your preference. If I seem distracted, not very social, shy, introverted, awkward, etc., it’s because I am those things at that moment. Apologies. We can re-sync after.
My last few talks have gone extremely well. And one of them I didn’t even present that well due to some technical issues with the venue. There is just tremendous power in speaking to share an idea rather than trying to “execute a presentation” that people hopefully don’t think sucks. Night and day difference.
Updated the intro to the newsletter, focusing on Human 2.0 to Human 3.0. Let me know what you think by replying!
Another experiment this week: I sprinkled DISCOVERY into each of the SECURITY, TECH, HUMAN sections rather than being dedicated. Let me know what you think of that by replying as well! I like it because it’s clean, but don’t like it because it mixes news with links. Let me know your throughs.
🔥Oh, and you HAVE to go listen to this conversation between Tyler Cowen and Peter Thiel. I’m not a Peter Thiel fan because reasons but this conversation has caused me to re-think my assessment of his intelligence and understanding of the world. This conversation went from The Bible, to Shakespeare, to Star Wars, to the Antichrist. Seriously impressive. And if you’re wondering how I of all people could recommend Peter Thiel, see the Ideas section below. MORE
Tyler Cowen and Peter Thiel on Political Theology (Ep. 210)
Unveiling the dangers of just trying to muddle through
conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/peter-thiel-political-theology
Ok, let’s get to it…
MY WORKWrote a new essay on how the old paradigm of planning a career no longer works. READ IT
Plan Your Career Around Problems
It's no longer safe to work in an "industry" without knowing what problems you're solving
danielmiessler.com/p/plan-career-around-problems
SECURITYThe US House just passed a bill making it illegal for the government to buy your data without a warrant, calling it "The Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale." MORE
💡This is in response to people finding out that government agencies were just outright buying US citizens’ data from data brokers. I love this move.
Sandworm, a notorious Russian hacking group, has been linked to a cyberattack on a Texas water facility. MORE
The House just passed a bill that could ban TikTok in the U.S. if it's not sold of to a US company. MORE
MITRE was compromised by state-affiliated attackers using two Ivanti VPN zero-days. China-based attackers are suspected. MORE
A flaw in PuTTY versions 0.68-0.80 lets attackers with 60 cryptographic signatures from a user figure out their private keys offline. MORE
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FBI Director Christopher Wray highlights an urgent shift in Chinese hacking strategies, saying they’re aiming to gain the ability to disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure by 2027 as part of prep for going into Taiwan. MORE
Moxie Marlinspike says he’s no longer affiliated with Signal.
💡I’ve never loved Signal so I’m going to be asking more people to switch back to Messages. Moxie was the only reason I saw it as equal or superior, and with him gone I see no reason to stay. MORE
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Join Us!Sacramento International Airport had to stop flights due to a deliberately cut AT&T internet cable that provided internet to the airport. MORE
🔧 Tailscale SSH, now generally available, simplifies SSH by managing authentication and authorization. | by Tailscale | MORE
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TECHNOLOGYDeepMind's boss says Google's set to outspend everyone in AI, hinting at dropping over $100 billion into the tech. MORE
💡Outspending isn’t the same as outproducing or outshipping. The company has lost the ability to ship good products because they’re not guided by vision and customer needs anymore. They’re guided by an ancient GMail culture of engineers making stuff and throwing it at the wall to see if someone likes it.
I think they need a fresh start with new senior leadership.
Stanford's released a quality report on the state of AI models. Here’s a Fabric create_micro_summary: MORE
ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:
The 2024 AI Index Report by Stanford University highlights AI's growing societal impact, technical advancements, and investment trends.
MAIN POINTS:
AI surpasses humans in specific tasks but not in complex reasoning and planning.
U.S. leads in AI model development with industry-dominating frontier research.
Investment in generative AI surged, reaching $25.2 billion in 2023.
TAKEAWAYS:
Training costs for top AI models are reaching unprecedented levels.
Lack of standardization in responsible AI evaluations complicates risk assessment.
AI's role in accelerating scientific progress and productivity is expanding
An interesting argument about how search engines, especially Google with its 90% market share, can sway election outcomes a lot more than we talk about. MORE
💡Another example of the power pendulum swinging back to companies.
Google fired 28 employees for protesting a $1.2 billion contract with Israel, citing policy violations and workplace disruption. MORE
Google merged its Android and hardware teams to innovate faster. MORE
Netflix runs FreeBSD CURRENT for its edge network due to a unique blend of stability and features. MORE
Reddit's showing up a lot more in Google results. MORE
Apple's AirPlay is starting to show up in hotel rooms. MORE
The TinySA is a budget-friendly spectrum analyzer. MORE
Programming is mostly thinking. MORE
A broad introduction to AWS logs sources and relevant events for detection engineering. | MORE
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HUMANSGeneration Z is outperforming previous generations at their age. MORE
This article says societal decline mirrors the "Death Spiral" seen in ants, where companies and societies fall into self-destructive patterns, often ignoring early warning signs until it's too late to reverse the damage. MORE
Why Everything is Becoming a Game. MORE
A study found that jobs that require you to think a lot are protective against Alzeimer’s. MORE
Bayer is doing an experiment where they remove most of middle management and let 100,000 employees self-organize. They’re hoping it’ll save $2.15 billion. MORE
💡This will be another effect of AI. And I don’t mean AI tech, but AI’s influence on how to think about a business. AI implementations for businesses will look at everything in a business, from the products they’re making, the people they have, and the organizational structure, and recommend ways to massively improve efficiency by removing waste.
And that will often mean getting down to vision people and executors, with very little friction in between.
The term "brainwashing" morphed into a blanket term for any unconventional behavior in the US, sparking wild government experiments like MK-Ultra. MORE
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IDEAS & ANALYSISHarvesting Ideas from Questionable People
This episode of the newsletter talks about Peter Thiel, who is basically one of the 7 anti-Christs in a lot of liberal circles. I dismissed him years ago because he supported Trump.
I feel like I’ve grown quite a bit in the last few years though. And I am conscious of making sure I just haven’t become more right-wing. I actually feel more grounded as a progressive than ever. Not a modern liberal, or leftist, but a progressive.
I guess my evolution is similar to Jonathan Haidt’s. He was super liberal before writing The Righteous Mind, which I highly recommend. It is the book that most influenced me to become a centrist. Not a move to the right, not a move away from the left, but something new.
The way I would describe it, which is not in that book, is to first define what you believe to be true, and the world you think we should live in. Don’t think about politics. Don’t think about parties. Those are all silly and ephemeral. Instead, imagine the actual society you would like to live in.
For me it’s something like (VERY raw/crude):
An understanding that evolutionary biology is the foundation of most tendencies and natural patterns for human and other animal societies
An understanding that we as humans can build on top of those tendencies to make something better
The lack of belief in libertarian (absolute) free will, such that criminals aren’t considered garbage, and billionaires aren’t considered gods
Free speech and free press, up to the point of actively/directly inciting violence against someone
It being both illegal and socially reprehensible to deny someone privileges because of their race or gender identity
Human first, tech second
Humanities first, sciences second
People’s reputations are harmed when they say things that are untrue
Simultaneous embrace of progressive and conservative ideas, accepting that for each given situation one might be better than the other to accomplish the goals of a given individual, family, or society.
A belief that most people are capable of being good and useful, if they’re properly supported when growing up
A belief that it is everyone’s responsibility to try to help everyone get that proper support growing up. Not technically, but as a society
Taxation is unpleasant but necessary, but we can’t let out of control government become so useless that it turns the rich against the idea
The rich (see lucky) see the raising of the poorest (least lucky) as not only good, but good for them as well
The primary goal of a member of society is to be useful
The successful (especially the self-made hustlers) are celebrated because hustle and usefulness are celebrated
Society is built on a blend of conservative ideas that respect our animal natures and progressive ideas that lift us beyond them, with the unifying factor being the lifting of all humans to lower amounts of suffering, and higher amounts of meaning and fulfillment
So let’s take those (but a better version, obviously, since I didn’t even use AI to write those out), and let’s say that’s our society.
Well, now I don’t care about liberal or conservative. Or right or left. Or any of those labels. They’re stuck in the current time, in the current Overton Window.
What we do instead is see parties—and the people within them—as idea sources. Because now I can discard good or bad ideas based on how they propel or distract from the world we’re trying to build.
And that brings me to Peter Thiel.
I discarded him because he supported Trump. Fair enough. Maybe he was dumb at the time. Maybe I was. That’s my own value judgement. But the point is that he could have changed (and I think I heard him say that actually).
But the point is that if I hear Peter Thiel say something smart, I’m going to listen. And if I hear him say something dumb, I’m going to stop listening.
Same for Joe Rogan. Or Andrew Huberman. Or even Sam Harris.
In an extreme form of this, if Ghengis Khan has the best bagel recipe on planet earth, I might use it. And if Peter Thiel wants to get Trump elected again, which I think would be horrible for the planet, but he also has something to teach me about political philosophy, I’m going to listen.
I. Will. Harvest. Good. Ideas.
My goal is to have the best models possible for how the world works. And if Peter Thiel or Ghengis Khan has better models than me for bagels, or supply side economics, then I will adopt them.
I can do this because I already know the society I want to help build. I know what goodness is. I know what evil is.
And because I have that footing, a bagel recipe isn’t going to somehow convince me to want a shittier society.
So, my recommendation…
RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEKEstablish your ground truth in terms of morality and the society you want to live in. Lock that in without labeling it left, right, or whatever
Widely explore ideas from anyone and everyone
Do not discard people as a source of ideas just because you disagree with them on something, even if it’s major. That’s only hurting you, and the good you could do in the world as a result of being upgraded
Feel free to label people as overall bad, or stupid, but realize it doesn’t mean they’re wrong about everything. Example, I know know after seeing Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan that Carlson is an actual idiot. Like, not a little bit. So I’ve closed my aperture to him largely, but not all the way. Again, if he has a great coffee recipe I’ll listen.
Regularly revisit your #1 and refactor everything
Regularly do #2
In short, don’t limit yourself by closing your ears to everyone who’s stupid about something. Most of us are.
And on that note, go listen to the conversation between Tyler Cowen and Peter Thiel. It was extraordinary, and it resulted in me buying a LOT of books. MORE
APHORISM OF THE WEEKThank you for reading.
UL is a personal and strange combination of security, AI, tech, and lots of content about human meaning and flourishing. And because it’s so diverse, it’s harder for it to go as viral as something more niche.
So—if you know someone weird like us—please share the newsletter with them. 🫶
Share UL with someone like us…Happy to be sharing the planet with you,
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April 21, 2024
Plan Your Career Around Problems
I see a lot of people who want to work in cybersecurity. I said the same when I got started, but now I think this is the wrong way to frame things, especially because of AI.
My thinking now is that working in an “industry” is too vague and unfocused to give you any stability in a world where AI can do most jobs.
I think the only way to get stability in this future—or at least as much as possible—is to be very talented at working on really hard problems.
Crucially, that requires that you can clearly articulate those problems, and describe how your approach and results are superior to alternatives.
My caseThe past version of myself would’ve said I wanted to be a security expert and have a long, fruitful career in security.
OK, but what do you want to work on?
I would’ve said something like:
Well I don’t really know, but I really like Recon, Web Testing, Risk Assessment, Testing Methodology Optimization, OSINT, and stuff like that.
And then my career would sort of accidentally fall into that direction, and I would hopefully become known for those things.
That path worked for me over the last couple of decades, but I don’t think it would work for me again. Which is why I don’t recommend it.
A different modelI think what people should say today, is that I am fascinated by all sorts of security problems, but my favorites include the Many Eyes problem within open source, the time delay in Attack Surface Management, and the problem of not knowing who is doing what in a world of nonhuman identities, or the problem of establishing trust in a world where anything could be deepfaked, i.e., how do you know if you’re actually interacting with a person you think you are interacting with?
These are still security. They’re still cyber. And in some ways it’s no different than where I started with my legacy narrative. But there is a crucial difference in that this doesn’t lead with “wanting to be in security”, and then rattling off some potential, ambiguous interests.
Instead, this narrative says I like security problems, and here are some examples of ones I want to work on.
I think this approach is going to be far more robust in competition with other job-seekers, and with AI. And perhaps even more importantly, it’s a way to clarify direction for those entering the field.
Get fascinated by problems.
That fascination leads to curiosity
That curiosity leads to work
That work leads to skill
And that skill over time leads to competence
Comparing old vs. new narrativesHere are some examples.
OLD: I’d like to get into security. Maybe something with pentesting.
NEW: I’m fascinated by problems in the security space, especially around the difficulty of automating manual pentesting.
OLD: I’d like to get into security. Maybe something in identity or something. I have a Github.
NEW: I’m fascinated by problems in the security space, especially around how we’re going to tell the difference between AI agents and humans. I’ve posted some small projects that start to address the issues on my Github.
The difference between these two is small but massive.
To a hiring manager, the OLD version sounds like someone who needs guidance and handholding, which virtually no company has time to give anymore.
The NEW versions capture someone who is self-motivated by purpose, and who is using their skills in a tangible way to solve real problems.
That’s someone to hire. And it’s also someone to replace last with AI.
SummaryThis is an extraordinarily bad time to not know what you want to do with your career. AI is coming for those people first.
This is why I’m so obsessed with questions and problems. They provide clarity, and they focus curiosity and talent to an edge that produces results.
So that’s my advice. Don’t think about entering an industry.
Think about problems that you want to solve because they fascinate you, and articulate/pursue the different ways that you intend to address them.
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April 17, 2024
UL NO. 428: Reason to Fear; Reason to Build
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Unsupervised Learning is a security, AI, and meaning-focused newsletter that looks at how best to thrive as humans in a world that’s changing faster than ever. It combines original ideas and analysis to bring you not just what’s happening—but why it matters, and how to respond.
TOCNOTESHey there,
Crazy week.
Sorry for the late episode; a bit over-exposed to travel/humans and needed a couple of days to fight off viruses/funk. Seem to have avoided getting fully sick, which is nice.
⚙️analyze_presentation — Added a new Fabric pattern that looks at the transcript of a presentation and tells you how much the presenter is trying to brag, vs. entertain, vs. inform. In other words, it tells you how self vs. other centered the presentation is, e.g., if they say “I” too often, talk about credentials, accomplishments, etc., vs. focusing on ideas.
Spoke at the EQUILIBRIUM conference in NYC last week. Thanks so much to Rohit Sethi for the invite, and to Chris Hughes for his great talk and our wide-ranging conversation beforehand. Seriously great event.
I finally got to attend a live UFC event, and it turned out to be one of the best in history! Also made some new friends in the process. What a tremendous weekend!
Speaking at the Hardly Strictly Security conference soon! Looking forward to that one!
Speaking at the Security Frontiers AI Conference tomorrow. MORE
Speaking tomorrow at an AI Cyber event put on by Rain Capital, Icon Ventures, and J.P. Morgan at the J.P. Morgan Innovation center. Thanks to Chenxi Wang for the invite! MORE
Gearing up for RSA already. The calendar is feeling the pressure. In a good way. If you’ll be around, be sure to come get a fist bump or hug, as per your preference.
I just finished reading Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker, for the third time. I like to read it every 2-3 years. It’s my favorite writing/style guide.
Ok, let’s get to it…
MY WORK⚙️analyze_presentation — Added a new Fabric pattern that looks at the transcript of a presentation and tells you how much the presenter is trying to brag, vs. entertain, vs. inform. In other words, it tells you how self vs. other centered the presentation is, e.g., if they say “I” too often, talk about credentials, accomplishments, etc., vs. focusing on ideas.
I didn’t write any essays or make any videos this week, but I did get to do some podcasts with some smart folks, and those should come out soon.
SECURITYMicrosoft says Chinese hackers are using AI to inflame social tensions in the US. MORE
💡I seriously can’t wait to build my propaganda tracker. If someone starts a campaign, I want to see where it spreads, becomes viral, etc. I’m looking for VCs and permanent operators for this. And government backing. If you know people, let me know.
PropTrak, or something.
Over 92,000 D-Link NAS devices are under attack due to an unpatched critical RCE bug. | CRITICAL | RESPONSE: D-Link advises device retirement. Thanks D-Link. | MORE
SAP patches three high-severity vulnerabilities, including a misconfiguration in SAP NetWeaver that could let users set weak passwords. MORE
The U.S. just blacklisted four additional Chinese companies for procuring AI chips for China's military modernization efforts. MORE
The U.S. and China are racing to dominate with AI-driven drone swarms, just like Daniel Suarez’s book, Kill Decision. MORE
Google's contract reveals a partnership with Israel's Defense Ministry during the Gaza conflict, which is upsetting employees. MORE
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TECHNOLOGYGreat NYT piece on automating finance jobs using AI. “Some of Wall Street’s major banks are asking the same question, as they test A.I. tools that can largely replace their armies of analysts by performing in seconds the work that now takes hours, or a whole weekend.” MORE
💡At this point if people don’t see the impact of AI on actual jobs, it’s because they don’t read enough, or don’t want to see. This isn’t like the dotcom boom, or like crypto. This is tech that’s instantly useful, despite its flaws, and that we’re seeing actively replace human workers.
Yohei continues doing great work around AI agents. This one is agent log visualization. MORE
Despite sanctions, Russia's is getting 89% of its chips through China. MORE
Gary Marcus is betting $10M that we won't have AI smarter than humans by 2025. MORE
Mistral AI just released Mixtral 8x22B via a torrent link, which is an interesting new way of distributing models. Makes sense. Lots of people want them and they’re really big. Exactly what torrents are good at. MORE
📄 This paper says a Transformer is capable of acting like a general-purpose computer. MORE
OpenAI just shipped a new GPT-4 Turbo model that focuses on being more concise. I’ve tested it against Opus and it’s still nowhere near as good—at least for the stuff I do. MORE
After AI beat them, professional Go players didn't just catch up; they became better and more creative. MORE
💡I love this narrative where we learn from AI beating us. But I don’t think that means we’ll be able to keep up. It just means we’ll have new ways to think about being good, which is useful and interesting.
Nanotronics is rolling out CubeFab, a modular chip fab powered by Nvidia GPUs and AI, aiming to democratize semiconductor manufacturing. MORE
The Humane AI Pin got flamed by MKBHD and other reviewers. MORE
💡I think MKBHD can say whatever he wants on his channel. I just think it was out of character for him to be so negative and mean about it. He could have said the same things without the vitriol, and still made the same points. I like him for his even temperament as much as his analysis, and the dunking was a turnoff for me. But I still think it’s his channel and he can do whatever he wants.
Dyson's new CleanTrace feature lets you use AR to see where you've vacuumed, making sure no spot is missed. MORE
Sequoia's Arc Product-Market Fit Framework introduces three unique archetypes to help startups navigate their way to market success. MORE
Tesla just dropped the FSD subscription price to $99 a month. MORE
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HUMANSRight after the solar eclipse, a ton of people Googled "my eyes hurt”, which only further diminishes my hope for humanity. It’s not so much that they looked at the sun. It’s the two hit combo of looking at the sun and then wondering what’s wrong. MORE
💡One of the books that will absolutely change your life is the book Everybody Lies, which is about how Google searches reveal way more about reality than surveys.
Job interviews are pretty terrible at predicting future job performance and might even be counterproductive. Sure, but what’s the alternative? MORE
Over half of women experience sexual harassment at work. MORE
Homicides are on a surprising decline across major American cities. MORE
💡I feel like we’re this close (gesturing) to an Onion article where far-right people complain that the country’s becoming feminized and is no longer into murder.
U.S. Steel is about to become a part of Japan's Nippon Steel. MORE
Harvard's back to requiring SAT and ACT scores for admissions. It’s almost like they were a good idea in the first place, which is why we had them. MORE
💡I wish the Overton Pendulum had more than two settings—woke and racist. Can we get a compassionate/logical setting please?
Dumbphones are making a comeback. You get to stay in contact, but not be distracted. MORE
A Dungeons & Dragons show is about to sell out Madison Square Garden. MORE
What top performers do, and how to deal with critics and detractors MORE
Ernest Hemingway transformed from a humble journalist to a literary celebrity, losing himself to the fame and power that came with success. MORE
Abraham Lincoln was shaped by Aesop's fables more than any other book, including the Bible. MORE
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IDEAS & ANALYSISGuard Your Energy Reserves
Heard a cool thing recently that said that if you have a great idea, and it’s creating a lot of energy within you, you should be very careful with how you share the idea.
Basically, according to the theory, that energy you have for the idea is limited and precious, and even telling someone about it removes its energy, power, and specialness.
So instead of telling people about it, you should go work on it immediately. That first energy, the raw energy, will be the most powerful form, and you don’t want to waste it on trying to get someone else hyped on it as well.
Reason to Worry; Reason to Build
I’m worried about the world right now. I think the next few years are likely to be the highest chance of killing ourselves that we’ve ever seen. Maybe not counting the Cuba crisis.
Trump could easily be re-elected, which I think will make things far worse for sanity and stability
I don’t see how the Gaza war doesn’t turn into the Iran war
Everything is getting more expensive (or at least feeling so)
At this exact moment, AI is going to start mass-replacing jobs
At this exact moment, the smartest/luckiest are about to be able to create unbelievable value and wealth
So the K-shape is about to curve—with the top of the K hockey-sticking up, and the bottom of the K hockey-sticking down.
This will empower the far-right
It could be bad
Here’s a diagram I created about all this in 2018:
Anyway, it’s depressing.
But I’m choosing to abstain from panic. I’m saying no to despair. I’m going to build instead. I’m going to lift people up instead. I’m going to create stuff instead. I’m going to shoot for a distant and possible better thing. A thing on the other side of all this.
And I honestly think AI will be a big part of that solution.
Now, if it all goes to hell, AI will be part of that too. But like I said, I don’t care about that. I don’t plan to fail. I am not betting against the goodness and creativity of humans.
We can make it.
We can.
And even if we can’t. We have to believe we can.
So, I ask you to join me in rejecting despair.
The world sucks. Might get worse.
Fuck it. Suit up. You’re part of the optimism force now.
Not out of ignorance. As a choice.
DISCOVERY⚙️ This Colab notebook uses Claude to turn images into Magic cards. | by Max Woolf | MORE
🔧 Andrej Karpathy just dropped llm.c, a sleek GPT-2 implementation in under 1000 lines of pure C. | by Andrej Karpathy | MORE
📓 Shell history as a productivity tool. | by Martin Heinz | MORE
🔧 Aider turns your terminal into a pair programming session with AI, editing and committing code directly in your git repo. | by Paul Gauthier | MORE
⚙️ DNSViz is like an X-ray for your DNS, showing you exactly what's going on under the hood. | by DNSViz | MORE
Cohere's Rerank 3 model boosts enterprise search and RAG systems with minimal fuss. | by Cohere | MORE
📓 Terminal Tweaks. | by High Growth Engineer | MORE
🎵 ⚙️ Udio turns your text prompts into music, matching any style you fancy. | by UdioMusic | MORE
📄 A collection of content ideas that have truly resonated on TikTok. | MORE
⚙️ Firecrawl.dev turns entire websites into datasets ready for large language models to digest. | MORE
🔧 zk turns your command line into a powerful, plain text Zettelkasten or personal wiki keeper. | by zk-org | MORE
RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEKRead the piece above in the Ideas section above.
Reject despair. Embrace the work of building the better thing.
APHORISM OF THE WEEKThank you for reading.
UL is a personal and strange combination of security, AI, and lots of human content. And because it’s so diverse, it’s harder for it to go as viral as something more niche.
So—if you know someone weird like us—please share it with them. 🫶
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April 8, 2024
UL NO. 427: AI's Predictable Future (Video)
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Unsupervised Learning is a security, AI, and meaning-focused newsletter that looks at how best to thrive as humans in a world that’s changing faster than ever. It combines original ideas and analysis to bring you not just what’s happening—but why it matters, and how to respond.
TOCNOTESHey there,
Going to keynote a conference in NYC this week! Excited to talk about AI, security, and hope for the post-AI future.
Conference season is spinning up. Can’t wait to see people. Things I have on deck. Numerous private panels/talks in the Bay Area, talk in NYC, Day of Shecurity, RSA, LocoMocoSec, EDC, big con in Switzerland, possibly others. And that will be enough for the year. The main goal is to not get Covid or Conflu this year.
Had a great time at BSides Milwaukee!
The soft launch of Threshold is going splendidly. I’m already getting MASSIVE benefits from using it myself, which is honestly my north star for the project. More on that in future posts/videos.
Fabric continues to thrive, and I continue to think about the ultimate agent framework. Right now it’s Crew.ai, but I wonder what the model companies are going to have as a response, e.g., Anthropic incorporating tools right into their prompts this week.
Ok, let’s get to it…
MY WORKI finally turned my big, 9,000-word AI predictions essay into a full video! It’s like 70 minutes long and includes lots of extra narration and detail outside of the text.
Please pass it on to people who would love the content but who could never get through a 9,000 word essay.
SECURITYIsrael's top spy chief, Yossi Sariel, accidentally revealed his identity through an Amazon book sale linked to his real name. MORE
The CVE and NVD databases are struggling to keep up with the massive number of vulnerabilities being created, leading to gaps and inaccuracies. This will need to get addressed somehow, but I’ve not heard any good suggestions. MORE
In Montreal, criminals are using Apple's AirTags to track and steal cars. MORE
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No playbooks, code, or prompts required. It just takes alerts and starts investigating them, and then comes back and writes a report.
Seriously the most tangibly effective AI security tool I’ve seen yet.
It’s so good, I just became an advisor.
See a Demo of It Working on a Real AlertPanera Bread's week-long IT downtime incident was a ransomware attack. MORE
CISA's new High-Risk Communities webpage offers cyber hygiene guides, volunteer support, and discounted tools for organizations under cyber threat. MORE
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Explore Defendify NowIsrael's military used an AI named Lavender to pinpoint 37,000 potential Hamas targets, which is raising questions about the ethics of AI in warfare. MORE
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TECHNOLOGYThere’s a rumor that Sam Altman and Jony Ive are building some sort of AI wearable device through a new secret company. MORE
OpenAI released improved ways of fine-tuning models. MORE
📄 A new paper shows that adding more agents to large language models can significantly boost their performance. MORE
📄 This paper explores how AI might be leading us towards a 'knowledge collapse' by oversimplifying complex information. MORE
The U.S. is trying to get South Korea to stop chipmaking tool exports to China. MORE
The US is testing energy storage in heated sand, aiming for 135 MW power output for five days straight. MORE
Oura's rolling out Symptom Radar to give you a nudge when your body's showing signs of strain, but it's not calling it illness detection. For obvious reasons. MORE
Amazon's ditching its cashierless "Just Walk Out" tech in Fresh stores for Dash Carts, finding the futuristic checkout too costly and complex. Disappointing. Too early I guess. MORE
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HUMANSNew studies are showing that the wealthy are starting to have more kids than the poor, reversing the previous trend. MORE
NASA's doing a live stream of the eclipse. MORE | SPACEX STREAM
Despite a massive earthquake, TSMC's crucial EUV equipment remained unharmed because they have some wicked building stabilization tech. Production was almost fully restored the same day. MORE
The Israeli military dismissed two senior officers and reprimanded three others for an airstrike that mistakenly killed seven World Central Kitchen volunteers in Gaza. MORE
The UK's exporting workers to fill higher-paying US jobs. MORE
U.S. venture capital investments plummeted to $36.6 billion in Q1 2024, which is the lowest quarterly total since 2017. MORE
💡I had a wonderful conversation with Mike Privette from Return on Security about these VC and overall economic trends, which will be released soon.
McKinsey's offering UK employees nine months of pay to voluntarily leave the company. MORE
Gen-Z is going for trades like welding and plumbing over college and student debt. MORE
Home insurers are now using aerial images to decide who gets dropped from coverage. MORE
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IDEAS & ANALYSISAnother View of Imposter Syndrome (Click for thread)
Working harder isn’t the solution to imposter syndrome, in my opinion.
The solution is to work on big problems that are super important to solve. That way your internal focus isn’t on you. Or your work.
It’s on the problem and what you can do to address it.
— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ ☕️📚💡 (@DanielMiessler)
Apr 5, 2024
Tyler Cowen vs. Jonathan Haidt on Teen Girl Depression
Well, I never thought I’d see Tyler Cowen be wrong about something major. But I think he did it here with Jonathan Haidt. He had Jonathan on the show and massively disagreed with him about his research into teen (especially girl) depression being caused by social media. Worth a watch.
The specific thing I think Tyler is getting wrong is the AI Mediation part, which I have written about extensively. He’s right that we’ll have AI mediation, but I think he’s wrong that it’ll work the way he thinks it will.
He seems to think that AI will stop young girls from browsing the most viral and toxic content on social media, and it’ll just send her the summary instead. Problem solved.
Um, no. That’s how HE will use it. And how I will use it. And how Jonathan will use it. And probably you, too.
But for young people consuming viral and toxic content, the content itself is the point, not the summary.
Does Tyler think AI will send people who love standup comedy a summary of the jokes made in a given standup, as a substitute for going to comedy shows?
🤖 Here’s your summary of this standup:
3 jokes on women and stereotypes
4 jokes on how clumsy he is
2 playful racist jokes
2 hecklers were addressed
Applause was 3/5 compared to other performers
We hope you’ve enjoyed this hilarious AI summary from ComixAI.
That doesn’t work for comedy, and it won’t work for young kids consuming viral/toxic content. The only way that can work is if they had a draconic blocker of all social media, and this was liked a service that summarized the content.
But it wouldn’t be something the kids would install themselves, nor happily use.
All that being said though, he is Tyler Cowen, so my chances of misunderstanding him and/or being wrong here are higher than usual.
—
Deepfaked Content Summaries (Click for thread)
Crap I just realized what the main interface for content is going to be in the next few years.
Anything you put out as text, audio, slides or video will be extracted into text, and AI will create multiple video deepfakes of it at different depth levels.
1/n
— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ ☕️📚💡 (@DanielMiessler)
Apr 7, 2024
AI and Music (Click for thread)
DISCOVERY
It’s weird that people think AI is going to ruin music.
It’s like they forgot about pop, which is little more than few cords and a hook.
Same with doing customer service, sales calls, etc.
We forget how low the bar is for being better than an average human.
— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ ☕️📚💡 (@DanielMiessler)
Apr 7, 2024
🔥⚒️Luke Stephens (hakluke) put out an amazing blog on his evolving approach to bug bounty automation. He talks about going from Bash, to Python, to Golang, and then arriving at Cloud-native. Great piece. MORE
🔥Thomas Roccia wrote an amazing piece on applying LLMs to Threat Intelligence. Includes a full notebook for running agents using Langchain that perform various TI tasks. MORE | THE CODE NOTEBOOK
🛠️SWE-agent - Autonomously fixes bugs in GitHub repos, showing a 12% success rate by leveraging language models like GPT-4. By Princeton Natural Language Processing | MORE
💻 Burr is a Python framework that simplifies building GenAI apps by managing state with easy-to-use building blocks. | by DAGWorks-Inc | MORE
📖GIAM, a free open-source textbook, makes the art of mathematics accessible, covering foundational topics and proof techniques, complete with amusing chapter quotes. MORE
⚙️ Gram turns threat modeling into a self-hosted web app, making it easier for teams to collaborate on security. | by Klarna-Incubator | MORE
🔧 ChatGPT now lets you tweak images, like removing objects or changing parts, just by describing what you want in the chat. | MORE
🔧 Claude API's new "tools" feature lets it tap into the internet, opening up a world of data it couldn't touch before. | MORE
Kids are learning math from deepfake Taylor Swift and Drake on TikTok, and it's surprisingly effective. MORE
💡 I’m honestly super excited for deepfakes for these types of use-cases. Take the bad and find the good. Like, if kids absolutely love Taylor Swift, or Star Wars, let’s use that for education, tutoring, therapy, etc.
We need to be careful with it, of course, and watch out for IP issues, but there’s a lot of good that can come from this.
RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEKCheck out one of suno.ai’s top AI-generated songs.
You might not like it, but if you don’t, how different is it from other stuff you don’t? Is it that much worse? And if you do like it, how much can you tell it’s not human-generated?
APHORISM OF THE WEEKThank you for reading.
UL is a personal and strange combination of security, AI, and lots of human content. And because it’s so diverse, it’s harder for it to go as viral as something more niche.
So—if you know someone weird like us—please share it with them. 🫶
Share UL with someone like us…Happy to be sharing the planet with you,
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April 3, 2024
UL NO. 426: Unveiling XZ, AI Monitoring, Investigative Visualizations with Fabric...
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Unsupervised Learning is a security, AI, and meaning-focused newsletter that looks at how best to thrive as humans in a world that’s changing faster than ever. It combines original ideas and analysis to bring you not just what’s happening—but why it matters, and how to respond.
TOCHey there,
Ok, probably the coolest thing I’ve seen this week is this video of Chris Cappetta having deep philosophical conversations with custom AI’s based on Anthropic’s Claude.
I watched almost an hour of these conversations (he’s on video #3 already) and I was blown away by the quality of the AI’s responses. I mean, I think the answers were nearly perfect about meaning, self, morality, and free will. Like, they’re very similar to answers I, or Sam Harris, or my ideal philosophy professor would give if we were given an hour to write each response. Just unbelievable. Highly recommend this video. WATCH IT
Ok, let’s get to it…
MY WORKMy new essay on why it’s often so frustrating to be in security.
Efficient Security Principle (ESP)
A way of explaining why security's baseline is so low in places, and why it's so hard to raise
danielmiessler.com/p/efficient-security-principle
Here’s a new video on how to create custom patterns in Fabric, i.e., patterns that only you can run and that aren’t shared with the project. WATCH THE VIDEO
The YouTube channel is going decently well after just a few videos. Please take 14 microseconds and go hit the subscribe button. It saves kittens. SUBSCRIBE
SECURITYThe most interesting story this week has to be the XZ situation. So insane. Here’s my favorite write-up of the whole thing. (HT Joseph Thacker). I’m trying to figure out what I find so interesting about it, and here’s what I’ve come up with:
It’s movie shit
Pre-meditated
The attacker with kindness, plays the long game
The attacker eventually takes over the project just via attrition
They’re still patient
Very technical hack of a related library to ssh, but not it directly
The submitted code was obfuscated too, and would have been hard to find
And then, complete heroism / luck on finding it so soon
I love the jokes about us being lucky that this was the only one, and we caught it. 😃 . Also 😭
You probably couldn’t guess this, but I’m going to talk about how AI can help here.
So one of the subsystems of my massive Human 3.0 project is going to be continuous monitoring engines for tons of stuff.
Voting records compared to lobbying donations
Watching meteors so we don’t miss one
Finding vulns in OSS and submitting fixes or hitting up the devs
Tracking propaganda / viral content and doing OSINT on the people using it
That’s one of my favorite ones. And I love the idea of being able to look up an OSINT profile on anyone who’s submitting code. Imagine comparing:
Username / email
How many commits
Reactions to their commits
Analysis of trends
Seeing if they ever went rogue
You could do this not just for coding, but for gamers regarding cheating, politicians with regard to affiliations and influence, and tons of other stuff.
Basically, AI will give us the ability to continuously monitor activity that today doesn’t happen because it’s too resource-intensive. But AI doesn’t get tired. It never sleeps. It can just monitor and alert.
This is one of the things I’m most excited about building and see others build.
—
Related to that, check this out:
create_investigation_visualization MORE
This is a new pattern we just added to Fabric that—um—creates a visualization of an investigation.
So my buddy John Hammond just did a video about a hack of an Apex Legends tournament, and he walked through investigative work that he and some other folks did throughout like a 20-minute video.
Well, this pattern turns investigations like that into conceptual timelines! Here’s the one for his work on that story:
Hammond’s investigation of the hack. Click to enhance.
I showed a buddy that and he sent me the new massive investigation on Havana Syndrome done by Insider. This is the potential energy weapon campaign that’s been being waged against high-level US officials for years now. The investigation is super elaborate but so big it’s hard to wrap your head around. Here’s what Fabric produced for that one!
Insider’s Havana Syndrome Investigation. Click to enhance.
And you can basically send ANY investigation or research or timeline into this thing, and it’ll do its best to piece it together visually. CHECK OUT THE PATTERN
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Watch a DemoiPhone users are getting bombarded with legit-looking Apple ID reset notifications in a new phishing scam called "push bombing." MORE
My buddy just headed over to work at this vendor Dazz, and it turns out they’re a sponsor this week, which came in completely separately. Pretty excited about what they’re doing, might talk to them about advising. Check it out.
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Get the Guide!AT&T just admitted that the data they said didn’t come from their systems was a real thing, but they said it was old. It affected around 72 million people. | RESPONSE: Passcodes reset for affected customers. | MORE
NYC is rolling out AI gun detectors in subways, but there’s a history of pretty bad results up til now. MORE
Police are now using GPS darts to tag and track fleeing cars, making high-speed chases a thing of the past. MORE
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TECHNOLOGYEvery US federal agency is now mandated to appoint a chief AI officer to ensure the responsible use of AI technologies. MORE
Databricks and Mosaic's collaboration on a 132B parameter MoE model showcases a significant leap in AI performance. Can’t wait to play with this one. MORE
💡One thing I don’t think is intuitive about AI progress is that the battle of local vs. pinnacle won’t always look the same.
There’s might be a bar of quality beyond which it doesn’t matter how much smarter or more capable the thing is. And I think local models are going to hit that—for most people—for most tasks—before too long. Like for daily and common tasks.
Like once you have an EA with a 120 IQ that has full access to everything in your life and takes care of you 24/7, how much will it matter if GPT-6 can make you a better one with a 145 IQ?
Maybe I’m wrong there, and you just keep getting more and more returns, or maybe EA is a bad example because they really are the brain of your life. But I think there are lots of types of tasks where you don’t get that much more benefit from a fleet of AIs performing most life tasks at like a 120 IQ level.
And I don’t think we’re far from that with local models? My point is that common tasks for humans aren’t likely to change much. Nor are our expectations of quality for those tasks (this I’m less sure about).
So what happens when good enough gets hit for most situations? Does it just become a question of getting that level of model into toilet brushes and baby seats and wallpaint?
Microsoft and OpenAI are eyeing a $100 billion project for an AI supercomputer, dubbed "Stargate", that could redefine computing power. MORE
OpenAI's Voice Engine can mimic someone's voice from just a 15-second sample, opening up new possibilities and ethical questions. MORE
💡I don’t get this announcement timing. It’s 2024. Why release this? And even better, why release it and then not have a release?
Maybe it was just a public service announcement to be careful of voice deepfakes? Kind of has that vibe at the end of the blog.
Alaska's Fairbanks airport is deploying a headless, dog-sized robot camouflaged as a coyote to scare off birds and wildlife. MORE
In this piece, an engineering manager argues their own role shouldn't exist, claiming it's a mishmash of tasks done poorly. Love these kinds of write-ups. MORE
U.S. tech giants are now eyeing Mexico for AI gear production, moving away from China. Yes please. MORE
EV owners are finding out the hard way that their vehicles chew through tires much faster than expected, often without prior warning. Is this because of increased torque? I should just ask AI, pretty sure the answer is yes. MORE
X, formerly known as Twitter, is exploring NSFW Communities for adult content sharing, a move that could reshape its engagement with online sex workers. MORE
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HUMANSThe Philippines is preparing for countermeasures against China's coastguard, signaling a possible escalation in their maritime tensions. MORE
Despite the pandemic's initial hit, we're witnessing a roaring 2020s with record highs in net worth, stock market, and housing prices. This always trips me out and makes me sense danger when you have such weird asymmetries in how things are going. MORE
U.S. literacy has plummeted to 79% from 96% in the late '80s, costing the country up to $2.2 trillion annually. Seriously? Tracking nicely with vaccination rates. MORE
Vinyl records have not only outsold CDs for the second consecutive year but also made over twice as much money. MORE
Florida just made it a law that kids under 14 need parental consent to have social media accounts. MORE
Chronic absenteeism in U.S. schools has surged post-pandemic, affecting students across all demographics with no easy fix in sight. MORE
💡Has it surged in immigrant households where the parents massively value education? Where the parents are extremely adamant about pushing self-discipline in their kids.
I doubt it.
I’m starting to thing the absolute biggest divide in upbringing, achievement, and outcomes comes down to the mindset given by parents. It’s a type of privilege for sure, but not like the word is being thought of today.
More to come on this because I got the idea from Dr. Kennedy on Huberman’s podcast recently. The idea is that you have to teach your kids how to get good at doing things that they don’t like, and make them uncomfortable.
This might be THE superpower. And it might be one of the things kids have lost the most in the last 10-30 years. I’ll continue reading on this, but if you have any supporting or opposing data let me know.
Silicon nanospikes are shredding 96% of viruses on contact. MORE
Martin Scorsese is a secret VHS hoarder, amassing over 4,400 tapes of broadcasted content over decades. MORE
Finland's been crowned the happiest country for the seventh year, despite its past high suicide rates and current geopolitical tensions. MORE
📄 A new paper says your financial health might be influencing your brain's wiring and how sharp you stay as you age. MORE
Nearly half of all single-family homes bought in 2023 were snagged by private investors, says Washington Times. MORE
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IDEAS & ANALYSISWhy 3 Body Problem Is So Good (and why so many other things suck)
I think I figured out why 3 Body Problem is such a great TV show.
First, it’s based on great books. I’m not sure how closely it’s following the books because I read them a long time ago, but the point is that they do have good content to go off of.
But I think I figured out the main ingredient this show has that so many others don’t: authenticity—or, in other words, adherence to a cold reality.
Conversely, I think the biggest problem with most shows and movies today is that they aren’t there to show you something real. They’re there to create a franchise with lots of staying power and spinoffs and sequels. And as a result, you hardly ever see anyone you care about die. Truly bad things hardly ever happen. Or at least that the viewer cares about.
Marvel is a great example. How many core characters have died after dozens of movies? How many stayed dead? Now think about how many regular people died. Millions? Billions? Do you ever remember caring about that? They have thousands of people dying in scenes and the cast is barely struggling in the fight, and they’re cracking jokes and posing the whole time.
3 Body Problem is great for the same reason Game of Thrones was so good in the early books and movies. You didn’t know what was going to happen, but you did know two things.
The world is dangerous.
Because the world is dangerous, any character you care about could die at any moment.
3 Body Problem is good because it’s real. Real danger. Real characters. And uncertainty. It’s authentic. True to life. But with creativity and fiction added on top, of course.
Anyway, you should check it out. It’s good. And if you like it, maybe you’ll agree that this is why.
NOTESFeeling strange about this new talk I’m doing. It’s quite personal. Not in that it’s about me, but it’s about something I’m very passionate about, and I’m going to be trying to convey that passion to others. Feels vulnerable, but authentic. Can’t wait to see if it’s accepted well or if I’ll need to go back to a more classical style.
DISCOVERY⚙️ Tracecat is an AI-native, open-source rival to Tines and Splunk SOAR. | by tracecatai | MORE
🔧 Centerpiece turns your search bar into a supercharged launcher for just about anything on Wayland. | by friedow | MORE
🔧 Metaview's AI tool revolutionizes hiring by recording, analyzing, and summarizing job interviews, letting managers focus on candidates, not notes. | by Kyle Wiggers | MORE
⚙️ Composio is crafting tools to empower AI Agents, seamlessly meshing with crewAI for a smarter integration. | by Soham Ganatra and Karan Vaidya | MORE
⚙️ Edgar lets you simulate building a Dyson Swarm, turning sci-fi into interactive fun. | by HackerNewsX | MORE
Someone just scraped the entirety of OpenAI's Community Forum, and it's a goldmine of insights. MORE
Yohei Nakajima discovered an AI that can list, read, and answer questions about its own code. Sick project. MORE
Emmett Shear suggests learning parenting from the parents of people you admire. MORE
Moxie Marlinspike says working on OSS projects is like working with everyone who ever applied to your company. lol. MORE
In a world overflowing with content, we're facing a crisis of quality, not quantity. MORE
RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEKCheck out the video above of the guy talking philosophy and ethics with an AI. It’s stunning. And then, given whatever you feel about AI, ask yourself a few questions:
What does it mean for an AI to be that good at those conversations?
How much does it matter if it’s completely “fake”?
What does it even mean for that conversation to be “fake” if it’s that good?
At what point does it become uncomfortably similar to us? I mean we’re moist robots, right? What if we’re doing a very similar thing when we answer questions to what that AI is doing?
Where does that leave us?
Let me know your thoughts. EMAIL ME
APHORISM OF THE WEEKThank you for reading.
UL is a personal and strange combination of security, tech, AI, and lots of deeply human content. And because it’s so diverse, it’s harder for it to go as viral as something more niche.
So if you know someone weird like us, please share it with them. 🫶
Share UL with someone like us…Yours,
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