Hi! I hope your week’s starting well,
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I’m now using the new Limitless.ai Pendant, and it’s definitely the best AI hardware accessory I’ve used so far. Basically real-time synched transcription of text, with a full API and a clean mobile/web app. It’s also easy to turn off to have sensitive conversations. I’m offering them a very cheap security assessment because I’d like to see them succeed and not get incidented out of existence. No referral link, but here’s the product: THE LIMITLESS PENDANT
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I have a question on knives—specifically knife sets and knife sharpening. I’ve always been a knife guy, so now that I am going to start cooking I want to have top-tier knives. I currently have a set of Globals because they’re universally considered “not bad”, but lots of people are saying to go German. So 1) What do you recommend for top knives in terms of design/steel/performance, and 2) what do you recommend for top tools/gadgets for sharpening them? GIVE KNIFE ADVICE
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I was wrong about the Anthropic CEO’s statement that 99% of code would soon be written by AI. I heard it as “99% of current developers will be using AI”, and I said he was wrong. But he didn’t say that. He said 99% of code. Meaning, new developers making new things using tools like Cursor. I corrected this and gave Richard Stiennon public credit for correcting me on LinkedIn and on X, and he said the most amazing and sad thing to me: “This is the first time this has ever happened to me since being on the internet.”
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I made my first steak and got some new Atkins protein shakes that should have far less plastic in them. Thanks again to everyone who responded to the cooking plea.
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Wild and Vibe are like every other word on the internet right now.
MY WORK
Had another wonderful conversation with ThreatLocker. In this one we talked about the full product suite, the Mac agent, and a bunch of other topics. SPONSORED
Executives are prime targets for cyber and physical attacks—are you equipped to protect them?
Doxxing. Deepfakes. Targeted harassment. Threats against high-profile individuals often start online—and if they go unnoticed, they can escalate into serious security risks. In The Complete Guide to OSINT for Executive Protection, Flashpoint breaks down how security teams can:
CYBERSECURITY
Microsoft’s March 2025 Patch Tuesday fixed 57 flaws, including six actively exploited zero-days and multiple NTFS vulnerabilities involving malicious VHD files. LINK
Apple patched a critical zero-day WebKit vulnerability that was exploited in a highly targeted attack against specific individuals using older iOS versions. LINK
China will force all AI-generated content to be clearly labeled for users starting September 1, 2025, including text, images, audio, and video. I sometimes envy how fast they can move. LINK | CAC ANNOUNCEMENT
Beyond Visibility: Cloud Runtime Security without Tradeoffs
Cloud security has traditionally pushed organizations into a difficult choice: deploy an agent for deep, real-time protection or rely on agentless visibility for broad coverage. Each approach has benefits, but neither alone is enough to stop modern attacks.
What if I told you that you could have both?
Google is looking to purchase Wiz for $33B, according to people familiar with the deal. So first Mandiant, now Wiz. My question is the one my buddy Jeremiah Grossman always asks, “Are we more secure yet?” LINK
Chinese hackers are using TinyShell-based backdoors to turn Juniper Networks routers into long-term espionage platforms that hide from monitoring. LINK
Juniper Networks has patched a vulnerability used by Chinese hackers to deploy backdoors on routers going back to mid-2024. LINK | CVE DETAILS | SECURITY ADVISORY
Cisco just patched a critical DoS vulnerability that can crash BGP on its IOS XR routers with a single message. LINK
Lazarus Group has planted six new malicious NPM packages designed to deceive developers and steal cryptocurrency wallet data. LINK | SOCKET BLOG POST
NATIONAL SECURITY
Trump warned Iran that they will be held “fully accountable” for Houthi actions, and he launched new airstrikes against Yemen. LINK
AI
Paul Millerd thinks AI will soon enable “vibe writing” where authors can just riff on ideas and maintain their style while eliminating friction points that keep them from writing. I think that’s 100% true, but soon that’ll just be vibe dictation and the AI writes the whole thing. I think the writing itself is useful. LINK
Nobody (supposedly) knows what an agent is, but I think the hype is exaggerated. Anyone building agents know what one is, even if they can’t define it. I feel like the people most concerned about the lack of a perfect definition are on the sidelines watching. LINK
Monte Carlo data predicts that true data + AI breakthroughs will follow the same pattern as previous tech shifts, which is requiring enterprise-grade observability before widespread adoption happens. I think that’s right, but AI can also accelerate the observability. LINK
Jiachen Zhu proposes a simple way to make transformers work without layernorm, potentially making AI models faster and simpler. LINK
Douglas Hofstadter says AI-generated content, like GPT-4’s imitation of his writing, sounds completely fake and hollow. LINK
Anthropic co-founder Mike Krieger says they’re focusing on specialized AI tools like Claude Code rather than trying to make Claude as mainstream as ChatGPT. I like the approach but I think they should be focused on Agent Orchestration. LINK
Notepad is getting AI summaries, and that’s a step too far. LINK
TECHNOLOGY
Zoom is getting AI Agent capabilities that can schedule meetings, create docs, and even tell you when your colleagues will be at the office. LINK
The pay raises you get from changing jobs has nearly disappeared, shrinking from 2.1% in 2023 to just 0.2% last month. LINK
Apple is improving texting with Android in iOS 19. They’re going to RCS version 3.0, adding end-to-end encryption, message editing, custom reactions, and the ability to recall texts. LINK
HUMANS
Gallup’s latest survey says America’s mental and physical health ratings have dropped to 24-year lows, with the pandemic accelerating declines that began around 2013. LINK
Forbes did a new study that says AI will crush tech and finance jobs, but human-centered careers like teaching and nursing will grow substantially. I think both will grow—the human version and AI-based versions. LINK
The average duration of unemployment in the US has nearly doubled from 12 weeks in 1990 to 21.6 weeks in 2024. LINK
Harvard University is expanding its financial aid, making tuition free for families earning up to $200K, and covering all costs for those under $100K. They’re clearly trying to counter the elitism narrative, but I just don’t think this type of higher education has much time left. LINK
Researchers found that shingles vaccines might reduce dementia risk by up to 20%, suggesting viral infections could be driving Alzheimer’s disease. LINK
Trump is threatening Europe with a massive 200% tariff on wine and champagne if the EU doesn’t remove its 50% tariff on American whiskey. LINK
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured images of the tipped-over Athena moon lander sitting inside a small crater near the lunar south pole. LINK | IMAGES
Gen Z Americans don’t have enough saved to cover a single month of spending. LINK
Daniel Kahneman ended his own life through assisted suicide in Switzerland at age 90. Seems like he noticed signs of cognitive decline and decided he didn’t want to go through that. LINK | DISCUSSION
New data from Our World in Data shows that relatively small donations to effective charities can dramatically improve lives in the poorest parts of the world. LINK | DISCUSSION
IDEAS
Gradual Disempowerment
Jan Kulveit and colleagues argue that AI could gradually disempower humans through incremental advancement without requiring any sudden capability jumps or coordinated betrayal. Basically it just strips away our competence slowly and steadily.
By the way—this is the coolest way to release a paper! I think all papers should have like a blog landing page, with a 5-level summary, an article version, a video summary, and then a link to the full paper. I’m going to make this template. LINK | PAPER
Everything Paywalling
I’m noticing I’m really tired of media sites charging subscriptions. Like ¼ of the stuff I want to link to requires a subscription now. I don’t mind paying individuals, but there’s no guarantee these big magazines are going to survive or retain the people I want to hear from. I’m very worried about equality when all the best idea and data sources are behind paywalls, and the best AI is also expensive. So “technically” you can do everything free, but the quality and experience is way worse. This is a future to purposely try to avoid.
AI “Nah” Buttons
Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, threw out an intriguing idea about giving AIs a button to quit tasks that they find unpleasant. But doesn’t that require subjective experiences though? Meaning…consciousness? I think it does. Adherence to policy, sure, but if something has a bad “vibe” to an AI, I think it’s conscious. LINK
DISCOVERY
Career Advice in 2025 — Will Larson shares his raw thoughts on why tech careers feel a lot less fun in 2025. He talks about valuations, the push to AI, and a bunch of other points. Really good. LINK
After Intelligence — A game that prompts you to imagine our future after humans aren’t the smartest beings on Earth. I love how stuff like this can be built so quickly. LINK
Muller’s Ratchet on codebases. LINK
Alex Karp on how we were taught the wrong things in school. Really surprised by this guy, and absolutely loved his book. LINK | THE TECHNOLOGICAL REPUBLIC
Cradle — An open-source platform creates a collaborative space for security teams to share and analyze threat intelligence data. LINK
Kierkegard on purpose. LINK
Teach, Don’t Tell — Steve Losh says technical documentation should help users build mental models instead of just giving them solutions to copy and paste. LINK | HN DISCUSSION
AI Escape Room — Pangea Security created an escape room challenge that tests your ability to jailbreak an AI with prompt injection techniques. Smart marketing, too. LINK
The OpenSecrets profile of Tulsi Gabbard. LINK
David Brooks (one of my favorite columnists) talks about how Trump is ruining America’s reputation, not just his own. LINK
Internet Speed Test Extension — This Chrome extension lets you check your internet speed directly from your browser tab, with “standard” and “commercial” modes for realistic vs. optimized results. LINK
MEMBER EDITION TEASER
The Situation with Siri
People are very confused about this whole Apple Intelligence flub thing, and why Apple has missed its deadline.
NOTE: I’m an Apple fanboy, so we all—including me—know I have bias here, but I think my analysis here is clear.
If I’m right, this is actually super simple.
-They were not super knowledgeable on Agents/RAG/Prompt Injection at last year’s WWDC.
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