Hey, hope you’re doing well!
UPDATES
Shorter episode this week due to RSA! If you’re around come say hi!
Biggest story I’m watching right now in the news is that we might be about to have another supply chain problem similar to with COVID because of the tariffs. The Port of Los Angeles is saying they’ll get 35% less next week than normal. LINK
I’m doing this new talk on Unified Entity Context and how it’ll become the center of Enterprise AI. Here’s a teaser:
What’s driving success for 900+ security leaders?
Looking for insights and advice from other security leaders on topics like job satisfaction, key challenges, and tooling and automation? IDC recently surveyed 900+ security leaders to learn more about what’s fueling (or hindering) success across people, processes, and technology.
CYBERSECURITY
Easterly calls for unity against politicization of the cyber industry
Jen Easterly’s saying the current admin firing nonpartisan cyber leaders is really hurting our defenses, and needs to be stopped. “The biggest vulnerability we face isn’t a zero-day in our software. It’s a zero-day in our civic integrity.” 100% agree. LINK
Version checks miss real threats. Nuclei doesn’t.
Top employee monitoring app leaks 21M screenshots on users
WorkComposer, a surveillance app used by over 200,000 people, leaked 21 million employee screenshots through an open S3 bucket. LINK
Microsoft rolls out Windows Recall, a year later
Microsoft is letting people try out its “Recall” feature after a year of drama and delays. Big difference is they seem to be being more sensitive to whether it’s on by default, and they’re putting more effort into explaining the tech. LINK
Your phone isn’t secretly listening to you
Your phone isn’t listening to you, but it’s absolutely tracking tons of stuff about you. LINK
AI
Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company’s code was AI-generated
Satya Nadella says about a quarter of Microsoft’s codebase is already being written by artificial intelligence. LINK
OpenAI Puts Image Generation in the API
OpenAI is now letting you create images using 4o through the API. That’s a whole new set of startups being built and being destroyed. LINK | PRICING
YouTube Tests AI Overviews in Search Results
YouTube’s testing a feature where AI picks video clips to show right in search results for certain queries. LINK
Predicting the NBA Champion with Machine Learning
Someone builds a model for predicting the output of the NBA finals. Love this kind of stuff. LINK
Anthropic questions AI consciousness
Anthropic is officially researching whether AIs could be conscious and if, someday, they might deserve ethical treatment. Seems obvious to me that they would. It all hinges on whether or not / when they become conscious. LINK
TECHNOLOGY
Reading RSS content is a skilled activity
Really cool piece about how the act of curating and reading news is a skill in itself. And something to preserve. LINK
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai Says Waymos Could Be Personally Owned in Future
Sundar Pichai basically hinted we might eventually buy our own self-driving Waymo cars. Same dream Tesla had: you use it yourself to go places, and when you’re not using it, it does rides and makes you money. LINK
Apple Supposedly Wants to Produce All U.S. Phones in India by End of 2026
Apple is apparently moving all U.S.-bound iPhone production to India by the end of next year. In other words, get out of China as fast as possible. God speed. LINK
HUMANS
U.S. Economy Contracts at 0.3% Rate in First Quarter
It looks like the economy is about to take a serious hit. The economy actually shrank a little in the first quarter, and the port of Los Angeles says it’ll see a 35% drop in shipping next week. LINK | LINK
United Arab Emirates first nation to use AI to write laws
UAE’s actually letting AI draft and update its laws. This is an example of where we actually need more AI to properly do human things. Clarity. Transparency. Documentation. This is why I’m so excited about Substrate. LINK
GenZ grads say college degrees a waste of time/money because of AI
Some new college grads are saying their college degrees feel kind of pointless now that AI is everywhere in hiring. LINK
Economists are very confused right now
Most of the world’s economists are confused right now because standard models aren’t explaining the data we’re seeing. I think there are just too many new things that the models can’t account for. Things are too dynamic and too strange. LINK
California overtakes Japan to become the world’s 4th largest economy
California just moved past Japan to become the world’s fourth biggest economy. LINK
Why I Blog and How I Automate it (2023)
Ryan West explains that blogging is mostly about forcing himself to clarify ideas he’s picking up from everywhere else and automating it so writing is as low-friction as possible. 100% agree with this. LINK
Rare Earth elements aren’t actually all that rare
China’s attempts to weaponize rare earth exports only really work if everyone else fails to go and get the ones they have in their own countries. LINK
DISCOVERY
Reverse Zip Bombs
Ibrahim Diallo built a “reverse zip bomb” defense that crashes bad bots by handing them huge decompressed files. LINK
Backfill your blog
Backfilling your blog with past writing is an encouraging way to get a blog started. LINK
Government Funding Graph RAGGovernment Funding Graph — If you want to explore government research funding as an interactive knowledge graph with LLM querying, this new Streamlit app makes it actually usable. LINK
Someone used OpenAI’s new image API to make a personalized coloring book serviceCleverColoringBook—You can drop in your favorite photos and get a real coloring book made from them, powered by OpenAI’s new model. LINK
Writing “/etc/hosts” breaks the Substack editor
If you type “/etc/hosts” in Substack, the editor just falls over and stops working. LINK
A Prompt that does 7-8 tasks at the same timePersonal AI Assistant — This thing does browsing, file management, scheduling, and more—from one prompt. LINK
RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK
Read and think about this week’s IDEA above.
And think about which problems you most often face in business and personal life.
Now think about how to use technology to continuously gather the context you need to make those problems easier to solve.
❝
The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer.
Terence McKenna
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