Daniel Miessler's Blog, page 17

UL NO. 406: OpenAI Launches Custom AIs, Okta's New Breach, EFF's Browser Privacy Checker

Unsupervised Learning is a Security, AI, and Meaning-focused podcast that looks at how best to thrive as humans in a post-AI world. It combines original ideas, analysis, and mental models to bring not just the news—but why it matters, and how to respond.

Hey there!

The thing I’m most excited about this week is OpenAI’s DevDay, which is today (Monday, November 6th). Why am I so excited? Because I’m hoping for big announcements. OPENAI ANNOUNCEMENT

My wishlist:

OS-Integrated, Standalone AIs: The ability to create a personal digital assistant like I talked about in my book in 2016. So like my recent TARS and Samantha AI configurations, but way better and more integrated in the OS. I want to provide it tons of context about me, and a personality for it like TARS, a custom voice as well, and a list of tools such as browsing, researching, shopping, communicating with people, etc. A deal with Apple to allow me to call it directly from iOS would be brilliant.

Tool Use Via API: I don’t want to have to use ChatGPT. I want to have all my APIs have access to browsing, researching, shopping, and a thousand other tasks.

Larger Context Sizes: Ideally like 64-128K, but I’m not holding my breath on this one. They just now starting making 32K available to Plus users. I need more. I need to fit a book in there!

Dependable Output: A better native way to make output more deterministic/dependable.

Updated Training Date: An updated training date across the board would be nice, but I think this is harder than it sounds.

If we get any 3 of these I’ll be SUPER happy.

🚨OMG Sunday Night UPDATE! — I was about to go to sleep when I went to ChatGPT and noticed this!

They’re calling them GPTs

They Launched Custom GPTs Early, Before the Conference!

I’d heard a rumor about something similar, and sure enough!

So they have instructions similar to Custom Instructions, but I no ability to add voices. : (

But look at the capabilities section!

They can browse and create images and help you code

But most exciting is the “Add Actions” button! It looks like you can actually give it specific tools via API definitions!

The interface for adding Actions in CustomGPTs

It doesn’t look like they’re OS-integrated in any way but whatever. I’m sure they’ll keep improving them. Here’s my first one, called Samantha for obvious reasons.

My new custom AI based on the movie Her

Can’t wait to play with these and see what else they release!

And in the meantime, I hope you’re crushing it, and let’s get into this week’s show…

MY WORK

Our Personal AI Assistants Will Soon be Our Interfaces to the World

My new short piece on personal AIs and manipulation. When our AIs know everything about us, they'll be the easiest way to get things done but also the easiest way to manipulate us…

danielmiessler.com/p/personal-ai-assistants-will-soon-interfaces-world

How to Lower Your Heart Rate Before Public Speaking

My short tutorial on how to lower your heart rate before speaking. There are many types of stress around public speaking, but if you have the over-excitement kind I have a fix…

danielmiessler.com/p/lower-heart-rate-public-speaking

SECURITY NEWS

Russian attackers breached 632,000 DOJ and Pentagon email addresses via MOVEit, which one of OPM’s vendors was using. MOVEit is rapidly catching up to Solarwinds as the big one in supply chain hacks. MORE

48 countries, including the US, are trying to agree to stop paying ransoms. The idea is like not negotiating with terrorists so they’ll stop taking hostages because nobody will pay. It’s a good idea, but it only works if everyone is doing it. MORE

Some Russian hackers got arrested by the FSB for helping Ukrainian forces by disrupting Russian critical infrastructure targets. These two individuals were taken into custody in different regions of Siberia and are now facing high treason charges that could land them in prison for up to 20 years. MORE | MORE

Sponsor

Drowning in the Sea of Zero Trust Implementation with Okta?

Drowning in the sea of Zero Trust implementation with Okta?

Don't fret, you're not alone.

The shallow device hygiene and telemetry signals often leave users blocked, sending them straight to IT for help. This results in a mountain of support tickets, creating an overwhelming IT bottleneck.

But there's a solution - Kolide Device Trust. It integrates seamlessly with Okta, providing real-time device posture that goes beyond checkbox compliance. And the best part? It empowers users with contextual instructions to resolve issues independently. Say goodbye to the IT bottleneck and hello to Device Trust done right.

Intrigued? Dive into the future of device trust.

👉 lp.kolide.co/453vavP 👈

Watch Now

Okta has reported another security issue, which brings the total for the year to way too many. Nearly 5,000 employees were alerted to a data breach that exposed their personal information, including full names, Social Security Numbers, and health insurance plan numbers. I'm starting to get LastPassy / Mariotty / T-Mobiley vibes. MORE | COMPANY RESPONSE

MITRE's just dropped the 14th version of ATT&CK. v14 covers 760 pieces of software, 143 activity clusters, and 24 campaigns across enterprise, mobile and industrial control systems (ICS). MORE | ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Sponsor

CISOs Are Confidently Incorrect About SaaS Security Maturity

Think your SaaS security is top-notch? We surveyed over 600 global security practitioners and many thought the same.

Yet 79% experienced SaaS security breaches and incidents in the past year.

Learn the latest trends and findings in the AppOmni SSPM 2023 Report.

👉appomni.com/saas-security-report-2023👈

Get The Report Now

Vulnerabilities

🪳F5 is warning about active exploitation of a critical security flaw in BIG-IP. | CRITICAL | CVE-2023-46747 | CVSS Score: 9.8 | BLEEPING COMPUTER ANALYSIS | COMPANY RESPONSE | VULNERABILITY DETAILS 

TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Ok, well this is interesting. It’s a concept for a new AI-based OS called Dot, kind of. Honestly it’s just like the personal AIs we talked about above, but it’s way more ambitious because it’s at an OS level. I signed up. MORE

DeepMind's co-founder Shane Legg thinks we've got a 50-50 shot at achieving AGI by 2028. I agree. My timeline is faster, actually. I put it at 60% by 2025, and 90% by 2028. MORE | MY ARGUMENT

Toyota is cutting its electric vehicle (EV) sales forecast by nearly 40%, which is insane. I'm starting to worry that only Tesla is doing well in EVs, which either means everyone gets out and the whole EV thing fails, or Tesla becomes a unicorn snowflake juggernaut because they’re the only game in town. MORE 

Fusus is a camera feed integration technology that can turn any camera in America into a node in a unified surveillance system, and police departments are actively deploying it. This system not only funnels live feeds from usually siloed cameras into one central location, but also has the ability to scan for people wearing certain clothes, carrying a particular bag, or look for a certain vehicle. MORE | COMPANY

Apple confirmed on their earnings call that they’re going heavy into AI. Very happy to hear it, but it seriously better mean an overhaul of Siri. MORE

HUMAN NEWS

Something is causing banks to abruptly close down people’s accounts, often resulting in them not being able to pay bills. It appears related to increased monitoring and enforcement of suspicious transactions. MORE

Researchers at Northwestern found that after a sleepless night, mice became more aggressive, hyperactive, and hypersexual. I’m listening. It basically counteracted depression. I wonder what the tradeoff is since we already know the lack of sleep is categorically bad. MORE

The US only added 150,000 jobs last month, which is almost half of the 297,000 jobs created in September. MORE

Maersk is cutting around 10,000 jobs because there's too much capacity and not enough demand. That seems bad. MORE

Meanwhile, a number of economic markers are trending positive. So are things getting better or worse? It’s sad that we can’t really ask economists because they don’t know either. MORE

IDEAS & ANALYSIS

This is a powerful concept. So here’s the question: who are we not allowed to criticize?

NOTES

I just bought and finished David Brooks’ new book, How to Know a Person. It won an instant spot on my bookshelf. 10/10. I absolutely love every book he’s ever written, and this one is just as good as the others. THE BOOK

Currently working on a major open-source coding project that I’m doing my best not to tell you about before I release it. It’s going to be unspeakably sick. Wait, did I violate the “telling people” rule if I didn’t tell you what it was?

I’m looking for another developer skilled with React and RAG AI stuff. If you know anyone solid, let me know. PING ME

Gmail keeps cutting off our newsletters, and it’s pissing me off. Sorry about that. It’s worth the click to keep going.

DISCOVERY

⚒️ Cover Your Tracks — The EFF tool for testing your browser to see how easy it is to track you. MORE

⚒️ Arsenal — A quick inventory and launcher for pentest commands, making it easier to remember and execute complex commands. | by Orange-Cyberdefense | MORE 

⚒️GSec— A web security scanner and exploitation engine based on custom scanners and Nuclei. TOOL

⚒️ EMBA v1.3.1 — A firmware security analyzer that now includes a firmware diffing mechanism. | by E-M-B-A | MORE | MORE

⚒️ Phind's AI Model — Phind's new AI model is claiming to outperform OpenAI’s GPT-4 at coding, and 5x faster. They're still ironing out some consistency issues, but the speed is evidently impressive. MORE

⚒️PatentPal — PatentPal is an AI tool that helps you create patent documentation. TOOL

💼 LinkedIn's AI Job Hunter — LinkedIn is rolling out an AI-powered "job seeker coach" for premium members, aiming to match job candidates with openings, prep for interviews, and more. MORE

🔍 Docus.ai — This tool allows you to diagnose medical issues quickly with AI and then verify with top human doctors. MORE

🎨 The online creative opposite of TikTok. MORE

📚 Morise AI — This tool reads your videos and generates everything you need for YouTube publishing. MORE

🐦 Postwise — A tool that creates viral Tweets. MORE

Caricatures of Security People MORE

Analyzing Threat Actor Profiles Using Social Media Intelligence MORE

Tesla network traffic. MORE 

Washington D.C. is giving out free AirTags to reduce car thefts. MORE

Cloudflare's R2 is an S3 competitor that charges less per gigabyte of storage and doesn't charge for data egress. MORE 

A cool visual showing the hierarchy of AI Agent capabilities. MORE

Planting milkweed sends an invitation to butterflies. MORE

Transmitting energy from star to star using gravity lenses. MORE

🔥 Change macOS to always match the destination style when pasting. MORE

A blog is a search query to find interesting people. MORE

Quit Your Job MORE

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

Try adding dedicated quiet time to your life. LIke an hour or so a week to start. This is a regular habit of many very creative people, and I don’t do it enough either. So like…walking, or sitting, but just with your thoughts.

The shower shouldn’t be the only place where thoughts bubble up uncontrollably, and if it is, that probably means you’re not giving your mind enough quiet time.

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

This is one of my top 10 quotes of all time…

Thank you for reading.

UL is a personal and strange combination of security, tech, AI, and lots of deep and 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 smart and curious…

Yours,

Powered by beehiiv

How to Lower Your Heart Rate Before Public Speaking

There are two kinds of stress associated with public speaking. I have one, but not the other.

The first one is really bad and it’s basically what people commonly refer to as the fear of public speaking. This is the idea where you get super nervous and even panicky the moment you think about being on stage.

I don’t have that problem, and I’ll talk about how I solved that in another essay. But here I want to talk about the second kind, which is one that I still have sometimes.

This is the kind where you love public speaking and actually enjoy being in front of other people and talking about your ideas. But you still get over-excited at the exact moment that it’s time to get on stage.

I consider this to be a healthy form of stress. I don’t even think about it as stress; I consider it excitement.

Anyway, the problem is, if you are over-excited, and your heart is beating extremely fast, you are likely to speak too quickly and not deliver at the pace or in the tone that you wanted to. You could also have voice quavering in the first couple of minutes, which sounds like nervousness and a lack of confidence.

I don’t like those symptoms and I just recently found something in the last year or so that has reduced them by 70-95%

The short version is: Wim Hoff breathing.

The longer version is one to three cycles of deep, fast breathing of around 30 repetitions (which used to be known as hyperventilating), followed by a very long and deep exhale which you hold for as long as you can (safely of course), and then followed by a super deep inhale, which you then hold for as long as you can.

So:

Like 20-30 super deep and fast hyperventilating breaths

On the last one, hold the exhale as long as you can

Then take a super deep breath and hold that as long as you can

That’s one cycle.

If you do one cycle of this, your heart rate massively comes down and you feel a powerful sense of calm and control. Honestly, it works for any situation in which you want a bit of extra peace and relaxation, but it’s really good for public speaking.

If you can do 2-3 cycles of this in the 10 minutes leading up to your talk, and if you have any response anything like mine, you’ll have an 80-95% reduction in your early-talk-over-excitement.

That’s really it.

If you want to know how I handled the bigger, nastier, more common fear of public speaking, let me know, and I’ll write that one shortly.

Powered by beehiiv

Our Personal AI Assistants Will Soon be Our Interfaces to the World

Something I captured back in 2016 is that much of the marketing that’s now done on you will soon be done against your personal AI assistant.

Your AI will have your preferences, and it will constantly adjust those based on continued interactions over time. And at that point it will be your primary filter for reality.

what media you watch

what news you read

what events are highlighted and amplified

This will all be determined by your AI. And your AI will be interacting with thousands of APIs that represent reality so that it can act on your behalf.

Those APIs include:

new news stories

new analysis of that news

all the new books coming out

the lists of new music

new artists

new releases from existing people you follow

the services from every business near you

the personal daemons of people near you (think ai-ai wingpeople)

You will be served a curated list of these things by your AI.

So the way to influence you will be to get seen by your AI, and to convince your AI that you want to see THIS thing. Influence campaigns (marketing, propaganda, education) will be human directed but AI generated and managed. And it’ll be continuous.

The main interface to reality will be you, me—everyone—all talking to our AIs and telling it what we want to do, and then our AIs using a thousand different tools and APIs and services on the backend to make that happen.

There, of course, will be direct human engagement, but even then, each of our AIs will be there monitoring, validating, summarizing, integrating, and otherwise enriching those experiences.

But most of our time is alone. With our thoughts. Our memories. Bouncing ideas. Contemplating. Iterating. Perhaps preparing to release to a greater audience. And our DAs will be the primary filter for all of that.

You want to be a better partner?

Want to be less gullible?

More creative?

Smarter in a subject?

Better in business?

Your AI will Augment you towards any and all of that that you’re trying to accomplish. Continuously and in both directions. Both in curating your inputs but also in sharpening your output to make you more effective and successful.

Our AIs will be the filter layers between ourselves and reality.

And the security issues there—with compromises, manipulation, and basically any integrity issues with our AI’s will be extraordinary. Because the extent to which you control someone’s personal AI will largely be the level of control you will have over them as well.

Powered by beehiiv

The Left's Reaction to Israel/Hamas Has Positioned Trump as the Protector of the West

A protester waves a Jihadist flag at a Pro-Palestine protest

I think the war in Israel, and the way much of the Left in the West has responded to it, has just created a new culture war.

Or, to be more precise, it’s encompassed and magnified all the previous culture wars going back to 2014 or so, and turned it into a new monster.

We have massive protests that seem to be celebrating Hamas, not just the Palestinians, many of which include violent slogans and signage, and we don’t see widespread condemnation from the Left.

So what’s happening is polarization, with people in the West across the US, Europe, and elsewhere picking sides.

And the sides are (generally and sloppily) pro-West and anti-West. Here are some very imprecise and perhaps flawed associations:

Anti-West

Pro-Islam

Pro-Palestine

Anti-Jewish

Anti-Israel

Anti-US

Pro-BLM

Pro-Critical-race-theory

Anti-business

Anti-rich

Anti-police

Pro-protest

Pro-violence to enact change (not everyone, obviously)

Narrative: Despite all its success, the West still today represents colonialism, oppression, and is the reason so many people are suffering on the planet.

Pro-West

Pro-Israel

Pro-business

Pro-police

Pro-Jewish

Pro-Judeo-Christian

Pro-order

Pro-discussion

Narrative: Despite its flaws, the West still represents the best place in the world for people of all types to come and pursue happiness and success, and it should be celebrated rather than torn down.

Those lists themselves aren’t what’s so important. And obviously not everyone fits into one or the other, and there are actually many columns, not just two.

But in a world where we’re often forced into X or Y, what’s crucial is how different groups of people in the US are slotting into one side or the other as we head into the 2024 election. Normally there wouldn’t just be two sides. Normally people would resist being forced to pick one. But right now isn’t normal. Right now the pressure is so high I think tons of people are going to literally “pick a side”.

So here’s the question. How are most people in these groups going to go?

Middle-America whites

Hispanic immigrants

West-coast Techie Types

American Jews

Asian Americans

African Americans

Asian-Indian-Americans

Blue-collar workers

The top 10% in income/wealth?

All this to say, I think a whole lot of Americans are going to go Pro-West, and guess who’s about to become their new spokesperson for the next 13 months?

Trump.

I think this war in Israel, and the response we’ve seen to it, is about to galvanize the Pro-West side massively by pulling tons of center and left-center people to the Pro-West side, which will be lead by him.

This deeply troubles me, since I think a second Trump presidency is an extraordinary risk to civilization. The West absolutely needs a champion right now, but I really wish it weren’t going to be him.

This is what I see happening, though—basically the Islamacists (defined as extremist theocrats, not the majority of peaceful Muslims), US academia, the general group of “down with America” types, and tons of young idealistic people who have no idea what they’re talking about, are going to get increasingly vocal, and likely violent as well.

And the other side is going to say, “See!?!? This is the same thing as before with BLM and such! And this is why crime is rising. And this is why Israel was attacked! And the attacks in Paris! And this and that!” Etc. All this complexity and contradiction will get collapsed down into overly-simplified sides.

So it’ll be:

Trump (The Savior of The West according to his fans)

vs.

Biden (the Fragile Beacon of Subtlety and Nuance)

Who do you think is going to win that?

Basically, we’re fucked. Not just in the culture war that’s about to ensue, but in the fact that this might very well get Trump re-elected.

P.S.: Since I know you want to know, I’m on the Pro-West, Pro-Jewish/Israel/Palestine/Secular/Humanist, Anti-Trump side. Meaning, not cleanly in the two columns as they’ll likely play out, but mostly Pro-West.

Powered by beehiiv

Extracted Wisdom: Riva Tez vs. David Perell

ExWis is a project that Extracts Wisdom from textual content, whether that’s a podcast conversation, an interview, a presentation, an essay, an article—basically whatever.

The project takes the input and turns it into a list of things I would have captured if I had 2-3 hours to watch it slowly and take meticulous notes.

—

SUMMARY: 

The conversation involves David Perell and Riva Tez discussing various topics related to technology, AI, free-thinking, reading historical texts, and authenticity in writing. They delve into the importance of questioning conventional wisdom, exploring new ideas, and finding meaning in a world full of technology.

IDEAS:

1. Free thinking is a valuable tool in navigating a world filled with technology and AI.

2. Reading historical texts can provide valuable insights into current societal and technological trends.

3. Authenticity in writing resonates more deeply with readers than manufactured narratives.

4. The current societal obsession with optimization can stifle creativity and free thinking.

5. The ability to ask unconventional questions is a crucial skill in exploring new ideas.

6. Understanding the past can provide a framework for understanding present phenomena.

7. The value of deep reading extends beyond mere acquisition of knowledge to a deeper understanding of concepts.

8. The concept of consciousness is still largely unexplored and misunderstood despite advancements in technology.

9. The current trend towards specialization in education neglects the importance of holistic learning.

10. The importance of humility in acknowledging that we do not have all the answers, especially in complex fields like AI and consciousness.

11. The role of technology in shaping human culture and societal norms.

12. The influence of historical texts on contemporary thought processes and societal structures.

13. The potential of technology, especially AI, to redefine what it means to be human.

14. The importance of introspection and per

sonal reflection in understanding oneself and the world.

15. The influence of societal structures and norms on individual thought processes and creativity.

16. The potential dangers of an over-reliance on technology and AI in shaping our understanding of reality.

17. The importance of questioning and challenging societal norms and conventional wisdom.

18. The role of philosophy in shaping our understanding of life and existence.

19. The potential for technology to either enhance or diminish human fulfillment and thriving.

20. The value of diverse experiences and perspectives in enriching our understanding of the world.

QUOTES:

1. "Part of her brilliance is the way she combines her love for Rilke’s poetry with an interest in philosophy, theology, and consciousness."

2. "In a world of people who are obsessed with optimization, Riva is passionately unoptimized."

3. "I'll start watching Netflix when I've read the whole of human history."

4. "If you're an ecstatic person, then yes."

5. "I think we've had this conversation previously, which is that I've probably read Atlas Frye, like every two years, but like 15 years."

6. "I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster."

7. "I'm like, cool. I'll start watching Netflix when I've read the whole of human history."

8. "If you lived forever, you wouldn't have one job, right?"

9. "It's like, there's no such thing. We don't want to have superiority."

10. "It's like, all observable reality is 5 percent of what we can see."

OPINIONS:

1. Riva Tez believes that free thinking is a crucial skill in a world dominated by technology and AI.

2. David Perell agrees with Riva's view on the importance of reading historical texts to gain a deeper understanding of current societal and technological trends.

3. Riva opines that authenticity in writing is more impactful than manufactured narratives.

4. Both Riva and David believe that the societal obsession with optimization can stifle creativity and free thinking.

5. Riva holds the opinion that the ability to ask unconventional questions is a crucial skill in exploring new ideas.

INFLUENCES:

1. Rilke’s poetry has had a profound influence on Riva Tez, inspiring her to question dogma and explore under-explored ideas.

2. The teachings of philosophers like Descartes and Nietzsche have shaped Riva's approach to questioning societal norms and exploring new ideas.

3. The writings of Ayn Rand have influenced Riva's views on individualism and the importance of questioning consensus.

4. The works of Euripides, Homer, and other classical Greek writers have influenced Riva's appreciation for historical texts and their relevance to contemporary issues.

5. The writings of C.P. Snow, William of Ockham, and other thinkers have shaped David's understanding of the divide between humanities and STEM fields.

HABITS:

1. Riva Tez habitually immerses herself in deep reading, often revisiting books that have moved her in the past to uncover new insights.

2. David Perell practices deep reading daily, focusing on understanding the Bible at a deeper level.

3. Riva has a habit of spending hours each day just thinking, creating a mental space for ideas to come to her.

4. David practices journaling daily, using it as a tool to reflect on his readings and understand how they apply to his life.

5. Riva makes it a point to spend time alone and in nature, which she finds helps her get into a different state where new thoughts and ideas can emerge.

FACTS:

1. The oldest complete New Testament manuscript, Codex Sinaiticus, is believed to have been written in the fourth century.

2. The Ottoman Empire was a historical empire that spanned three continents, lasting from the 14th to the early 20th century.

3. The Federalist Papers were a series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay promoting the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

4. The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was a continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

5. The term "Occam's Razor" is derived from the philosophical principle proposed by William of Ockham, which states that simpler explanations should be preferred over more complex ones.

RESOURCES:

1. Book: "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand - A novel that explores themes of individualism and questioning consensus.

2. Book: "Alan" by Alan Harrington - A book that explores the concept of immortality and how it could impact society.

3. Book: "The Immortalists" by Alan Harrington - A book that discusses the possibility of achieving physical immortality through scientific means.

4. Book: "The Federalist Papers" - A collection of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay promoting the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

5. Podcast: "Fallof Civilizations" - A podcast that explores the collapse of different civilizations throughout history.

NUGGETS:

1. Free thinking is a valuable tool in navigating a world filled with technology and AI.

2. Reading historical texts can provide valuable insights into current societal and technological trends.

3. Authenticity in writing resonates more deeply with readers than manufactured narratives.

4. The current societal obsession with optimization can stifle creativity and free thinking.

5. The ability to ask unconventional questions is a crucial skill in exploring new ideas.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. Cultivate the habit of free thinking and questioning conventional wisdom.

2. Read historical texts to gain a deeper understanding of current societal and technological trends.

3. Aim for authenticity in writing to create a deeper connection with readers.

4. Resist the societal obsession with optimization to foster creativity and free thinking.

5. Develop the skill of asking unconventional questions to explore new ideas.

SCORE:

CSR (Consume Slowly Rating) — As Soon as Possible (This Week)

- The content is filled with high-quality insights that align well with the interests provided.

- The conversation covers a wide range of topics, providing a comprehensive look at various aspects of technology, AI, free-thinking, reading historical texts, and authenticity in writing.

- The insights are not only insightful but also thought-provoking, stimulating further exploration and discussion on the topics covered.

- The content provides a unique perspective on these topics, offering a fresh take that is not commonly found in other sources.

- Despite the length of the content, it remains engaging throughout, making it worth consuming in its entirety.

NOTES

This is AI-generated, so there is a potential for things to be incorrect. Don’t use this as authoritative. Rather, use it as an onramp to the source material.

Powered by beehiiv

How to Get Samantha from Her or TARS from Interstellar on Your iPhone/Android

Pick between Samantha from Her or TARS from Interstellar

Ok, this is insane.

OpenAI just added super-high-quality voices to ChatGPT, and you can now start a 2-way conversation with iOS shortcuts! And you can make the AI behave just like AIs from the movies!

This means you can have a live, back-and-forth conversation with your AI instead of just asking it a question and getting a single response.

Install

First, if you don’t have the actual ChatGPT app (not the website), you can get it here:

iPhone

Install ‎ChatGPT on iPhone

‎Introducing ChatGPT for iOS: OpenAI’s latest advancements at your fingertips.

apps.apple.com/us/app/chatgpt/id6448311069

Android

Install ChatGPT on Google Play

With ChatGPT, find instant answers, professional input, and creative inspiration.

play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.openai.chatgpt&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1

Invoke it using an Apple shortcut

You can start a ChatGPT conversation using your voice by invoking Siri. I named mine “Scarlett”, so I just say,

The interface when you’re talking back and forth with your AI

…and she starts listening.

Make it sound like Scarlett Johansson or TARS

But that’s not the coolest part. The coolest part is that the voices OpenAI used ACTUALLY SOUND JUST LIKE SCARLETT JOHANSSON and TARS from Interstellar!

Sky = Scarlett Johansen

Cove = TARS

I prefer Her to Interstellar, but my buddy Tim likes TARS

So now you basically have a replacement for Siri that you can actually interact with in a two-way conversation.

It can teach you a subject

You can just keep exploring and deep-diving on topics and it never gets tired of your questions

You can ask its opinion on how to handle something in your life

And people are even using it as a therapist! (be careful with that one)

Imagine how many kids are going to learn more by using this! So many kids will have less anxiety taking to an AI like this vs. a teacher at school, or parents that are gone or busy.

Personalizing your new AI

You can also customize not just how Samantha or TARS talks, but what they know about you.

I use Scarlett because Her is my favorite movie about AI. And I tell her about myself a bit (but not too much), so she can occasionally use my first name, knows what I am interested in, etc.

I even told her I like EDM and the use of analogies in explanations, etc.

My Custom Instructions

But my buddy Tim (@detsecorg) has used the Custom Instructions to make his sound JUST LIKE TARS.

Here’s what he used:

The Custom Instructions in ChatGPT to make your AI behave like TARS

Now your Siri-invoked AI will not have a back-and-forth conversation with you, but it’ll sound and act like TARS!

Shortcuts to call your AI

But there’s one last tweak here that makes it even slicker.

Setting up your shortcut on your iPhone

If you have an iPhone 15 Pro you can map this to the new Action Button for one button access

Even if you don’t you can map the shortcut to a double-tap on the back of the phone

Summary

This is the biggest AI upgrade to everyday life that I’ve seen since ChatGPT launched. 

I have had several long, high-quality conversations with my AI about super interesting topics, and it’s insane every time.

You can now chat with super high-quality voices in back-and-forth conversations

You can basically replace Siri with this

You can make it sound like Scarlett Johansson in Her, or TARS

You can invoke the shortcut in multiple ways

1️⃣ “Siri-(Samantha or TARS)”

2️⃣ Action button

3️⃣ Tapping the back of your iPhone

This is a major life upgrade. Go play with it!

Powered by beehiiv

Quotes

Updated: October 2023

I enjoy having my own list of quotations for two reasons:

I hate not remembering my favorites.

Favorite quotes serve to define a person rather quickly, which helps others who resonate at the same frequencies realize that we share perspectives.

Here is my current list.

You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out he hates the same people you do.

Anne Lamott

To find out who rules over you, simply determine who you’re not allowed to criticize.

Voltaire

Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.

Bertrand Russell

If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.

Voltaire

When process is lost, there is good practice. When good practice is lost, there are rules. When rules are lost, there is ritual. Ritual is the beginning of chaos.

It is better to want what you have than to want what you have.

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition…is…the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

Adam Smith

I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of his children for their numerous stupidities, for which he himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only his non-existence could excuse him.

Albert Einstein

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlon’s Razor

We’re even wrong about which mistakes we’re making.

Carl Winfield

Never offer what you’d hate someone for accepting.

Tara Ploughman

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Mark Twain

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

Albert Einstein

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

Brandeis

The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.

Tara Ploughman

Most interesting phenomena have multiple causes. ~ N.P. Calderwood

Focusing is about saying no.

Steve Jobs

Jews, Muslims, and Christians claim that their holy books are so profound, and so prescient of humanity’s needs, that they could only have been written at the direction of an omniscient diety. An atheist is simply someone who has considered the claim, read the books, and found the claim to be ridiculous.

Sam Harris

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

If you don’t care about quality, you can meet any other requirement.

Gerald Weinberg

Set aside half an hour every day to do all your worrying; then take a nap during this period.

Anonymous

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

Robert Frost

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Carl Sagan

Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you’re a consultant.

Scott Adams

It’s better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to always be right by never having any ideas at all.

Edward de Bono

Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica.

Abraham Lincoln

Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.

Bill Hicks

Don’t believe everything you think.

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

Keynes

Hire curious people. Even if they don’t have the exact skill set you want, curious, passionate people can learn anything.

Jason Fried

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

Albert Camus

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats

Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.

Chomsky

We are what we only pretend to be. So we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Vonnegut

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

Sagan

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.

Cardinal Robert Bellarmine

If you want to do good work, what you need is a great curiosity about a promising question.

Paul Graham

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Writing is a little like crawling from a car crash to be greeted by a panel of strangers holding up score cards.

Keith Ridgway

When my information changes, I change my opinion. What do you do, Sir?

John Maynard Keynes

If a nation expects to be ignorant — and free — in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Thomas Jefferson

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

Douglas Adams

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Helen Keller

If I look over my life, every single step of maturing for me, every single one, has had the exact same common denominator: accepting what was true over what I wished were true.

Julia Sweeney

If you watch ‘Jaws’ backwards, it’s a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach.

You don’t truly understand something until you think it’s obvious.

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

Arthur Miller

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

I’d drag my dick through broken glass for a mile just to hear that woman fart over a walkie-talkie.

Irish Saying

Be yourself, because the people who mind don’t matter, and the people who matter don’t mind.

Dr. Seuss

As all these results were obtained, not by any heroic method, but by patient and detailed reasoning, I began to think it probable that philosophy had erred in adopting heroic remedies for intellectual difficulties, and that solutions were to be found merely by greater care and accuracy. This view I have come to hold more and more strongly as time went on, and it has led me to doubt whether philosophy, as a study distinct from science and possessed of a method of its own, is anything more than an unfortunate legacy from theology.

Bertrand Russell

The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

Gibbon

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

Hypatia of Alexandria

Change breaks the brittle.

Jan Houtema

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

Albert Einstein

A danger sign that fellow-obsessionals will at once recognize is the tendency to regard the happiest moments of your life as those that occur when someone who has an appointment to see you is prevented from coming.

Peter Medawar

However little television you watch, watch less.

David McCullough

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word.

Stephen King

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

As it turned out, the obvious clearly stated, and combined with new observations, was sometimes close to revolutionary.

Wallace Stegner

The best thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

Republicans are the leading cause of underage drinking.

Marianne Terrot

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

Edsger Dijkstra

I don’t like your I-can-use-anything-as-an-adjective attitude.

Larry Wall

It is easy to keep secrets by being honest in an ironic tone of voice.

Andrew Solomon

Silly is you in a natural state, and serious is something you have to do until you can get silly again.

Mike Meyers

I’m not okay and you’re not okay, but that’s okay.

If Bush was president during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we would all be dead.

Talk doesn’t cook rice.

ONCE I LIVED IN CAPITALS, MY LIFE INTENSELY PHALLIC, but now I’m sadly lowercase, with the occasional italic.

Roger McCough

In a way, the most morally troubling thing about killing chickens is that after a while it is no longer morally troubling.

Michael Pollan

In the information age, it’s not just whose army wins, but whose story wins.

Joseph S. Nye Jr.

One farmer says to me, ‘You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;’ and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.

Henry David Thoreau

When I type the word “queue”, I just type “q’ and start alternating u’s and e’s for a little while and hope something good happens.

Daniel Miessler

It’s just endless what you can learn from a single work of art. You can fill up the crevices of your life, the cracks of your life, the places where the mortar comes out and falls away–you can fill it up with the love of art.

Vincent Price

If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, “What would I do if I were a horse?”

Ely Devons

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine.

JBS Haldane

As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish, he’d go away.

Hughes Mearns

Abstinence makes the church grow fondlers.

If only one person in the world held down a terrified, struggling, screaming little girl, cut off her genitals with a septic blade, and sewed her back up, leaving only a tiny hole for urine and menstrual flow, the only question would be how severely that person should be punished, and whether the death penalty would be a sufficiently severe sanction. But when millions of people do this, instead of the enormity being magnified millions-fold, suddenly it becomes ‘culture’, and thereby magically becomes less, rather than more, horrible, and is even defended by some Western ‘moral thinkers’, including feminists.

Donald Symons

Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.

A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.

A fault tolerant system must report the faults even as it tolerates them.

An algorithm must be seen to be believed.

Donald Knuth

If I look over my life, every single step of maturing for me, every single one, has had the exact same common denominator, and that was accepting what was true over what I wished were true.

Julia Sweeney

What I cannot create, I do not understand.

Richard Feynman

He who is unaware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.

Richard Whatley

When white men first effect contact with some unspoilt race of savages, they offer them all kinds of benefits, from the light of the gospel to pumpkin pie. These, however, much as we may regret it, most savages receive with indifference. What they really value among the gifts that we bring to them is intoxicating liquor which enables them, for the first time in their lives, to have the illusion for a few brief moments that it is better to be alive than dead.

Bertrand Russell

Sources

I have collected these quotes over time from dozens of sources, but there are a few worth noting.

Aaron Swartz

Paul Graham

Alan Silverstein

Powered by beehiiv

UL NO. 404: ServiceNow Widget Flaws, North Korean Infiltrators, and the New Top-performing Prompt String…

Unsupervised Learning is a Security, AI, and Meaning-focused podcast that looks at how best to thrive as humans in a post-AI world. It combines original ideas, analysis, and mental models to bring not just the news—but why it matters, and how to respond.

Hi!

So the coolest thing I’ve been doing this week is messing with my latest iteration of life-integrated AI. This time in the form of OpenAI’s voice option within the ChatGPT iOS app.

I now have what’s basically Samantha from the movie Her running on my iPhone, and I have it mapped to my iPhone 15 Action button and the double-tap trigger on the back of the phone as well.

Ok, this is insane.

OpenAI just added super-high-quality voices to ChatGPT, and you can now start a 2-way conversation with iOS shortcuts!

Here’s what this lets you do, and how to set it up…

— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ ☕️ (@DanielMiessler)
Oct 19, 2023

I changed three things in the ChatGPT app to make this work:

I told the system a bunch of stuff about me, like what I value, what I’m working on, favorite books and such, and how to pronounce my last name.

I told the system that I want it to behave exactly like Samantha in the Movie Her.

I had her (it, whatever, sheesh) use the Skyler custom voice, which sounds very much like Scarlett Johansson in the movie! I assure you that it’s too close to be an accident. NOTE: The Cove voice sounds a lot like TARS from Interstellar.

I have now had multiple long and detailed conversations about AI, machine learning, philosophy, and tons of other topics with this AI. And it feels like you’re actually talking to a person! She delays, has these natural “um”s, and even incorporates stuff I added to my profile in her responses. Like she uses lots of analogies to music, for example.

This is the biggest HOLY CRAP moment I’ve had since ChatGPT came out last year.

Seriously, go set this up. It’s insanely surreal, powerful, and useful.

THE SETUP WALKTHROUGH

SECURITY NEWS

ServiceNow has a built-in feature called Widgets that can be used to extract data from records without authentication. My buddy in Bug Bounty says he’s already gathering tons of really nasty stuff like PII, internal docs, incident details, attachment names, and more. THE ORIGINAL RESEARCH by Aaron Costello | MY X THREAD WALKTHROUGH

Okta’s shares fell 11.5% after they reported that someone got into their support system using stolen credentials and accessed client files that included valid Okta session tokens. Customer BeyondTrust said they saw the attack happen on October 2nd when someone tried to use a token to create a super-admin account. MORE | OKTA’S WRITE-UP

💡 Security is hard, so I’m not throwing shade here, but I wonder how thoroughly these support workflows were looked at by their pentesters / red team, etc. One technique I like to use when I look at a company is to start with their most sensitive data and ask, “Which business processes deal handle this data using which workflows?” And then map those as flows with touchpoints. In this case that would have been customer session tokens, and the business process would have included the support function. And if a stolen credential was used to get into the support system, what about password hygiene? And was 2FA not used? Still early though; we might have more answers soon.

Cisco's IOS XE devices are under attack, with hackers exploiting a couple of zero-days to deploy malicious implants. Over 40,000 devices have already been compromised according to Censys and LeakIX, and Shodan shows more than 146K vulnerable systems exposed to attacks. MORE

The FBI and DOJ is alerting the public that North Korean IT workers have been secretly securing remote jobs in the US using fake identities, funneling millions of dollars to fund North Korea's ballistic missile program. They’re advising companies to be very careful with identity verification and internal monitoring. MORE | MORE

Plastic surgery offices are getting hit by cybercriminals who are using spoofed emails and phone numbers to extort surgeons and patients. They use scraped social media information to make their threats personal and then reach out and demand a cryptocurrency payment to keep the data secret. MORE

💡 I’ve wondered for a while now why private extortion networks aren’t a bigger thing. Think ransomware ecosystems, but for extortion/embarrassment. I’ve personally thought of multiple evil systems (sorry, you can’t turn it off) that you could build to collect embarrassing information from OSINT or breaches, and then make bank by extorting victims on threat of public/professional disclosure. Two questions: 1) why isn’t this happening, and 2) or maybe it is but it’s not being talked about? Hint: Wayback Machine, Law Firms, Pharmacies

🪳SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) has been hit with three critical remote code execution vulnerabilities. | Critical | CVE-2023-35182, CVE-2023-35185, CVE-2023-35187 | 9.8 CVSS Score | MORE

Sponsor

Comprehensive Cloud Security Coverage from Code to Cloud

Panoptica is the cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) solution from development to runtime to seamlessly deliver end-to-end security for multi-cloud application environments to minimize risks with comprehensive visibility and prioritization.

Unlike many siloed security solutions, Panoptica's CNAPP solution provides a single context platform that consolidates risks from different risk engines. Only Panoptica equips developer and security teams with the ability to make informed decisions to achieve 100% visibility and remediation guidance with a new level of precision. Now teams can confidently scale across multicloud environments and reduce risks across their entire cloud application stack.

👉www.panoptica.app/demo👈

Book a Demo

Security researcher Denis Simonov shows that Telegram can leak your IP address if you add an attacker to your contacts and take their call due to switching to peer-to-peer. MORE

The U.S. is further controlling AI chip exports to China, aiming to plug the loopholes that let some chips get through. I’m honestly surprised by how aggressively Biden is controlling China’s AI ambitions. MORE | MORE

TECHNOLOGY NEWS

The SEC Chairman is saying unchecked AI could cause a major financial crisis in the next decade. He's concerned about major financial institutions all using the same AI models, leading to herd behavior and potentially triggering a chain reaction in the market. MORE

Google's Project Green Light is using its massive traffic data from Maps to give cities free, AI-optimized traffic signal timing suggestions that could cut stop/starts by 30%. MORE

I keep hearing/saying that tech layoffs are slowing down, but layoffs.fyi says they’re still going strong, with over 240,000 jobs cut so far in 2023. That's 50% more than the total for all of 2022. MORE

Foxconn is under investigation in China. The authorities are conducting tax audits and examining land use, as reported by various state media outlets. MORE

HUMAN NEWS

The FBI says the murder rate in the US dropped 6.1% in 2022. The bigger story, though, is that most people think murder and violent crime is at an all-time high. MORE | MORE

The U.S. deficit effectively doubled in 2023 to $1.7 trillion. MORE

Stanford Medicine researchers have found that both ketamine and placebo treatments can masively improve depression symptoms. The study reported a 50% drop in their depression severity scores just one day after treatment. The crazy part? The benefits continued for two weeks, including for those who received the placebo. MORE

NOTES

This House Porn account does the same thing to me as a bookstore. It makes me want to be a better person—to up my game. MORE

This live set from Daft Punk at Coachella 2006 is evidently one of the sickest EDM live performances ever, and many people credit it with starting the modern era of EDM shows. One thing I noticed they used a lot is negative space to build up tension. Worth a listen for both musical and historical reasons. MORE

DISCOVERY

🔥🔥🔥 A recent Deepmind paper found that out of all the various prompt techniques out there, the best one was: Take a deep breath and work on this problem step-by-step. X POST | BLOG | THE PAPER

I’m updating all my stuff to this now!

The Deepmind Prompt Analysis Paper

⚒️ProjectDiscovery has released Nuclei v3, a major update to their flagship tool that introduces a bunch of cool features, including: Code Protocol, which lets you run trusted code across various execution engines, and the ability to create complex, multi-step exploits. MORE

⚒️Prompts Royale takes your prompt, makes multiple better versions of it, and then rates them based on how well they perform. MORE | by MEISTRARI | GITHUB

⚒️ MetaGPT takes a one-line requirement and outputs a full coding project design and working code. I’ve used this thing multiple times and it’s super impressive. It produces near-agent-like output but in a single prompt. | by Geekan | GITHUB 

⚒️Too Long lets you summarize any article. MORE

⚒️Grayjay is a new app that lets you follow creators, not platforms. MORE

How do you make people join radical movements? MORE

AI Security Has Serious Terminology Issues, a short essay by my buddy Joseph Thacker. Couldn’t agree more, and I think he covers it well. MORE

How to get extreme detail out of DALLE-3 MORE

Silicon Valley's latest trend is "T-Parties", a gathering focused on boosting testosterone levels in men. MORE

Almost half of EV owners, excluding Tesla, want to switch back to gas cars. MORE

How to Die, by Seneca MORE

Richard Feynman’s wonderful letter to his wife Arline, 488 days after her death. MORE

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

Be mindful not just of your time, but of your attention. You can live to 97, but if aren’t paying attention to what matters, it can be like you died at 22. CASE IN POINT

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

Thank you for reading! And if you know someone who’d like UL, please share it with them below!

Share UL with someone…

Best,

Powered by beehiiv

How to Fix Your Apple Watch / iPhone Not Unlocking a HomeKey Lock

You’re probably here because you just got a new HomeKey lock, or a new iPhone, or a new Apple Watch.

Or you’ve just reconfigured them so they’re like new.

But when you bring your device close, it flashes, but doesn’t open the device.

The fix is to simply hold it close for longer—maybe like 5-7 seconds or so.

I’m not sure what the technical mechanism is, but it’s basically like an initial setup phase for the lock/device learning the new Watch or iPhone.

Subsequent taps should then work like normal.

Hope this helps!

Powered by beehiiv

Extracted Wisdom: Marc Andreessen's Techno-Optimism Manifesto

The Manifesto: https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto

SUMMARY:

The content is a manifesto of Techno-Optimism by Marc Andreessen. It discusses the transformative power of technology in human progress, arguing that it is a tool for liberation, abundance, and the fulfillment of human potential. Andreessen also addresses criticisms of technology, advocating for a positive and ambitious approach towards technological advancement.

---

IDEAS:

1. Technology is the spearhead of human progress and the realization of our potential.

2. Techno-Optimists believe in continuous growth and progress.

3. Technology is the only perpetual source of growth.

4. Technological progress leads to productivity growth, which drives economic growth and improves living standards.

5. Technological solutions can solve any material problem created by nature or technology itself.

6. Free markets are the most effective way to organize a technological economy.

7. Markets lift people out of poverty and achieve superior collective outcomes.

8. The combination of technology and markets creates a perpetual engine of material creation, growth, and abundance.

9. Intelligence is the ultimate engine of progress.

10. Artificial Intelligence is a universal problem solver.

11. Energy is foundational to our civilization and should be in an upward spiral.

12. Material abundance opens the space for religion, politics, and choices of how to live.

13. Techno-Optimism is not a political philosophy but a material one.

14. Techno-Optimists believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness, merit, achievement, bravery, courage, pride, confidence, self-respect, free thought, free speech, and free inquiry.

15. Techno-Optimists reject resentment and embrace risk and individualism.

16. Techno-Optimists believe in making everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant.

17. Techno-Optimists believe that advancing technology is one of the most virtuous things that we can do.

18. Techno-Optimists believe in fulfilling our potential and becoming fully human.

19. The enemies of Techno-Optimism are stagnation, anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness, statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism, bureaucracy, vetocracy, gerontocracy, blind deference to tradition, corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, cartels.

20. Techno-Optimists believe in a future of ambition, abundance, and adventure.

---

QUOTES:

1. "You live in a deranged age — more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." - Walker Percy

2. "There’s a way to do it better. Find it." - Thomas Edison

3. "We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being." - Marc Andreessen

4. "We have the tools, the systems, the ideas. We have the will." - Marc Andreessen

5. "We believe everything good is downstream of growth." - Marc Andreessen

6. "We believe technology is a lever on the world – the way to make more with less." - Marc Andreessen

7. "Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it." - Marc Andreessen

8. "We believe markets are an inherently individualistic way to achieve superior collective outcomes." - Marc Andreessen

9. "We believe markets are generative, not exploitative; positive sum, not zero sum." - Marc Andreessen

10. "We believe intelligence is in an upward spiral." - Marc Andreessen

11. "We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone – we are literally making sand think." - Marc Andreessen

12. "Energy is life. We take it for granted, but without it, we have darkness, starvation, and pain. With it, we have light, safety, and warmth." - Marc Andreessen

13. "We believe in not Utopia, but also not Apocalypse." - Marc Andreessen

14. "We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train, the car, the electric light, the skyscraper. And the microchip, the neural network, the rocket, the split atom." - Marc Andreessen

15. "We believe technology opens the space of what it can mean to be human." - Marc Andreessen

16. "We believe in the words of David Deutsch: “We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds. Thus it is our duty to fight for a better world.”" - Marc Andreessen

17. "It’s time to be a Techno-Optimist. It’s time to build." - Marc Andreessen

---

OPINIONS:

1. Marc Andreessen: Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement.

2. Marc Andreessen: The only perpetual source of growth is technology.

3. Marc Andreessen: Technology is a lever on the world – the way to make more with less.

4. Marc Andreessen: Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone – we are literally making sand think.

5. Marc Andreessen: We are poised for an intelligence takeoff that will expand our capabilities to unimagined heights.

6. Marc Andreessen: Energy should be in an upward spiral.

7. Marc Andreessen: We should push to drop prices across the economy through the application of technology until as many prices are effectively zero as possible.

8. Marc Andreessen: Our planet is dramatically underpopulated, compared to the population we could have with abundant intelligence, energy, and material goods.

9. Marc Andreessen: Our enemy is stagnation.

10. Marc Andreessen: Techno-Optimists believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness, merit, achievement, bravery, courage, pride, confidence, self-respect, free thought, free speech, and free inquiry.

11. Marc Andreessen: Techno-Optimists believe in making everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant.

12. Marc Andreessen: The enemies of Techno-Optimism are stagnation, anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness, statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism.

13. Marc Andreessen: Techno-Optimists believe in a future of ambition, abundance, and adventure.

14. Marc Andreessen: We owe the past, and the future.

---

INFLUENCES:

1. Walker Percy: Provided the quote that sets the tone for the manifesto.

2. Marian Tupy: Provided the historical context for human progress.

3. Thomas Edison: His quote "There’s a way to do it better. Find it." inspires the pursuit of continuous improvement.

4. Paul Collier: His quote "Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all." is used to emphasize the importance of growth.

5. Friedrich Hayek: His concept of the Knowledge Problem is used to argue against centralized economic systems.

6. David Ricardo: His concept of comparative advantage is used to argue for the benefits of free markets.

7. Milton Friedman: His observation that human wants and needs are infinite is used to argue for the potential for endless economic demand and job growth.

8. James Carse: His concept of finite games and infinite games is used to argue that markets are the ultimate infinite game.

9. Nick Land: His term "techno-capital machine" is used to describe the engine of perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance.

10. Ray Kurzweil: His Law of Accelerating Returns is used to argue for the potential of technological progress to feed on itself.

11. Richard Feynman: His quotes about the ignorance of experts and the importance of questioning are used to argue for free thought and inquiry.

12. Thomas Sowell: His concept of the Constrained Vision is used to argue for taking people as they are and liberating them to make their own choices.

13. Brad DeLong: His term "slouching toward Utopia" is used to describe the approach of doing the best fallen humanity can do, making things better as we go.

14. Friedrich Nietzsche: His concept of the Last Man is used to describe the enemy of Techno-Optimism.

15. David Deutsch: His quote about the duty to be optimistic is used to inspire a positive outlook towards the future.

---

HABITS:

No personal habits of Marc Andreessen or any other speaker are mentioned in the text.

---

FACTS:

1. Our species is 300,000 years old.

2. For the first 290,000 years, we were foragers.

3. The standard of living for many people skyrocketed beginning in the 18th Century.

4. Developed societies are depopulating all over the world.

5. National resource utilization has sharp limits, both real and political.

6. Productivity growth, powered by technology, is the main driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and new jobs.

7. The economist William Nordhaus has shown that creators of technology are only able to capture about 2% of the economic value created by that technology.

8. Per-capita US carbon emissions are lower now than they were 100 years ago.

---

RESOURCES:

1. Book: "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich Hayek - This book is not directly mentioned, but Hayek's Knowledge Problem, a key concept in the book, is discussed as an argument against centralized economic systems.

2. Book: "The Ultimate Resource" by Julian Simon - This book is not directly mentioned, but Simon's concept of people as the ultimate resource is discussed as a reason for promoting material abundance.

3. Book: "The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch - This book is not directly mentioned, but Deutsch's quote about the duty to be optimistic is used to inspire a positive outlook towards the future.

4. Book: "The Fatal Conceit" by Friedrich Hayek - This book is not directly mentioned, but Hayek's concept of the Knowledge Problem, a key concept in the book, is discussed as an argument against centralized economic systems.

5. Book: "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman - This book is not directly mentioned, but Friedman's observation that human wants and needs are infinite is used to argue for the potential for endless economic demand and job growth.

---

NUGGETS:

1. Technology is a lever on the world – the way to make more with less.

2. Artificial Intelligence can be thought of as a universal problem solver.

3. Free markets are the most effective way to organize a technological economy.

4. Technological progress leads to productivity growth, which drives economic growth and improves living standards.

5. Technological change increases the need for human work by broadening the scope of what humans can productively do.

6. The measure of abundance is falling prices.

7. The combination of technology and markets creates a perpetual engine of material creation, growth, and abundance.

8. The cornerstone resources of the techno-capital upward spiral are intelligence and energy – ideas, and the power to make them real.

9. Techno-Optimists believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness, merit, achievement, bravery, courage, pride, confidence, self-respect, free thought, free speech, and free inquiry.

10. Techno-Optimists reject resentment and embrace risk and individualism.

11. Techno-Optimists believe in making everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant.

12. Techno-Optimists believe in fulfilling our potential and becoming fully human.

13. The enemies of Techno-Optimism are stagnation, anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness, statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism.

14. Techno-Optimists believe in a future of ambition, abundance, and adventure.

15. Techno-Optimists believe in the words of David Deutsch: “We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds. Thus it is our duty to fight for a better world.”

---

RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. Embrace technology as a tool for liberation, abundance, and the fulfillment of human potential.

2. Foster a positive and ambitious approach towards technological advancement.

3. Recognize the importance of intelligence and energy in driving growth and progress.

4. Appreciate the benefits of free markets in organizing a technological economy.

5. Understand that technological progress leads to productivity growth, which drives economic growth and improves living standards.

6. Recognize that technological change increases the need for human work by broadening the scope of what humans can productively do.

7. Strive to make both intelligence and energy “too cheap to meter” to drive income levels and quality of life into the stratosphere.

8. Foster ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness, merit, achievement, bravery, courage, pride, confidence, self-respect, free thought, free speech, and free inquiry.

9. Reject resentment and embrace risk and individualism.

10. Strive to make everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant.

11. Work towards fulfilling your potential and becoming fully human.

12. Recognize the enemies of Techno-Optimism as stagnation, anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness, statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism.

13. Foster a future of ambition, abundance, and adventure.

14. Embrace the words of David Deutsch: “We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds. Thus it is our duty to fight for a better world.”

15. Join the Techno-Optimists in their pursuit of technology, abundance, and life.

---

SCORE:

CSR (Consume Slowly Rating) — High Priority (Within a Month)

- The content provides high-quality insights into the role of technology in human progress and the future of humanity.

- It aligns well with your interests in the meaning of life, being the most meaningfully fulfilled person as possible, how to be the best and most prolific version of yourself, the role of technology in the future of humanity, the intersection of technology and human culture, how to find meaning in a world full of AI, and similar topics related to human fulfillment and thriving in a world full of technology.

- The content is presented by Marc Andreessen, a renowned entrepreneur and investor in the technology industry, which adds credibility to the insights provided.

Powered by beehiiv