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SECURITY | AI | MEANINGÂ :: Unsupervised Learning is my continuous stream of original ideas, analysis, tooling, and mental models designed to help humans thrive in an AI-powered world.
Hey there,
Lots of good stuff this week:
official_pattern_template
in Fabric. Itâs basically all my latest format and instruction tricks in one place, and itâll be the new model I apply to all my prompts. And Iâll keep it updated as the state-of-the-art advances and empirical testing becomes available. MORE
Ok, letâs get to itâŚ
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Check out this new sponsored conversation I had with Abhishek Agarwal, co-founder and CEO of Material Security. We talk about:
Abhishek seriously built this service the same way I would have, and I absolutely loved the conversation.
A Conversation with with Abhishek Agrawal from Material Security
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đď¸ My new piece on getting the perfect sound from your microphone, including a bunch of audio tips and analysis of the sounds of top podcasters.
Analysis of Mics and Mic Sounds Used by Podcasters
The difference between different mics, their sounds, post-production, desired sounds, and other podcast-related microphone information
danielmiessler.com/p/podcast-audio
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This one is political, but centrist. I think youâll like it if youâre not extreme on either end, but if you donât like political contentâskip it. đÂ
The Left's Brexit
The right hobbled the UK with Brexit, and now the left in US has done the same with Stormy Daniels
danielmiessler.com/p/left-brexit
Check Point Vuln
Check Point swiftly released hotfixes for a VPN zero-day, CVE-2024-24919, which is being exploited to infiltrate networks. | HIGH | RESPONSE: Hotfixes released for affected versions. | MORE
Massive Botnet Bust: $5.9 Billion Stolen
The US and international agencies dismantled a colossal botnet responsible for stealing $5.9 billion. This botnet, known as 911 S5, infiltrated over 19 million IP addresses across nearly 200 countries. MORE
AI Against Jamming: Ukraine's Drone Solution
Ukraine's special forces developed Eagle Eyes, a software that lets drones navigate using AI and machine vision, bypassing Russian jamming. Eagle Eyes uses AI to compare live video with pre-collected maps, enabling drones to operate independently of GPS or operator signals. MORE
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đĄThis is the exact tech from Daniel Suarezâ Kill Decision. Basically, offline drones that didnât need a connection to any network or signal to function.
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Sponsor
Enhance Enterprise Security: Trust Every Device with 1Password!
When you go through airport security, there's one line where the TSA agent checks your ID, and another line where a machine scans your bag. The same thing happens in enterprise security, but instead of passengers and luggage, it's end users and their devices.
These days, most companies are pretty good at the first part of the equation, where they check user identity. But user devices can roll right through authentication without getting inspected at all. In fact, 47% of companies allow unmanaged, untrusted devices to access their data. That means an employee can log in from a laptop that has its firewall turned off and hasn't been updated in six months. Or worse, that laptop might belong to a bad actor using employee credentials.
1Password finally solves the device trust problem. 1Password ensures that no device can log into your Okta-protected apps unless it passes your security checks. Plus, you can use 1Password on devices without MDM, like your Linux fleet, contractor devices, and every BYOD phone and laptop in your company.
Visit 1Password.com/unsupervisedlearning to watch a demo and see how it works.
 1Password.com/unsupervisedlearning
Watch a Demo  Â
Smart Home Tech in Warfare
Home Assistant is being repurposed to alert people of incoming missile and drone attacks in Ukraine. MORE
Data Deletion Services
Incogni is another service like DeleteMe that removes your info from over 170 data brokers. MORE
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Sponsor
Build Trust and Accelerate Growth with Vanta
Whether youâre starting or scaling your security program, Vanta helps you automate compliance for SOC 2, ISO 27001, and more.
Streamline security reviews by automating questionnaires and demonstrating your security posture with a customer-facing Trust Center.
Over 7,000 companies like Atlassian, Flo Health, and Quora use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Ticketmaster Breach
Ticketmaster got hit by a group called ShinyHunters, and it looks like around 560 million peopleâs data has been stolen. MORE
A Few Spread the Most Fake News
In 2020, a tiny group of 'supersharers', mainly older Republican women, spread 80% of the misinformation online. The studies reveal that small, persistent groups can have a significant impact on propaganda and misinformation, and in this case, especially on vaccine hesitancy. MORE
NSA's Easy Hack Protection Tip
The NSA released a guide to keeping your phone from being hacked. One of its top recommendations was simply to reboot your phone once a week. MORE | THE REPORT PDF
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Speed King: Groq's Llama 3 8B
Groq's Llama 3 8B model exceeded 1,200 tokens per second. Iâm telling you, this thing is FAST. It seriously feels fake. Itâs like the result is pre-run and stored, but itâs actually running in real time. MORE | GO CHECK IT OUT
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đĄSo hereâs the question: why doesnât Google or OpenAI or Microsoft just offer this guy $1 billion in cash for this technology? Or has that happened already? This is one of the most insane stories in AI right now.
One guy basically has magic beans (proprietary chip tech) that lets him run AI multiple times faster than anyone else in the world.
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OpenAI's Apple Deal: A Game Changer?
Satya Nadella is reportedly freaking out over a potential OpenAI and Apple collaboration. Cool story but I just want Apple to fix Siri. If that doesnât happen, nothing happened. MORE
Outperforming Standard Attention
Researchers have developed new attention mechanisms that actually outperform the standard multi-head attention. MORE
Recall: A Privacy Disaster?
"Stealing everything you've ever typed or viewed on your Windows PC is now a reality, thanks to a feature in Copilot+ Recall that's a privacy nightmare."
AI wrote that, and while I think itâs true, I disagree with the take. As I talked about last week, this tech is pure magic. In 10 years, almost everyone will think computers without this functionality are worthless. MORE
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đĄActually in 10 years most people will be talking and gesturing to their computers. The "computer" will mostly be monitors and/or HUD displays, and your personal AI will be the one doing the work.
So the idea of your AI forgetting work that you did, or who said what when, will be a completely asinine idea. OF COURSE your AI remembers everything! How else would it be useful?
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LLMs Arenât Just Internet Simulators Anymore
LLMs are increasingly being trained on custom, non-internet data, enabling them to exceed the limitations of "internet simulation". MORE
Nvidia vs. Apple
Nvidia is getting ready to overtake Apple in market cap. Bonkers. MORE
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đĄHereâs a way to make sense of this:
Imagine that thereâs a giant filter on how many people are capable of:
In other words, imagine the current number of major builders/creators is something like .0000000000017% of our 8 billion people. (I made that number up, just work with me.)
The reason NVIDIA is rising so fast is because itâs one of the primary pieces of tech that will remove 3-5 zeroes from that number.
Weâre talking about multiplying humanityâs creative output by THOUSANDS in the next decade.
That requires chips.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk about NVIDIA.
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Google's Playbook for Keeping Things Simple
Google's SRE Handbook champions simplicity as a core principle for reliability. MORE
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đĄThey need one for product management.
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Kaparthyâs GPT-2
đ§ Reproducing GPT-2 (124M) in llm.c in 90 minutes for $20 | by Andrej Kaparthy | MORE
Tinygrad Updates
đ§ Tinygrad's latest update slashes Python time and ditches external dependencies. | by tinygrad | MORE
Terminal Animations That Will Blow Your Mind
đ§TTE: Terminal Text Effects brings a splash of visual flair to your terminal with animations like beams, binary paths, and even a black hole effect. MORE
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INR: The Spot-On Predictions Bureau
There's this little-known intelligence bureau that nailed the outcomes in Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine. MORE
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đĄI am going to build some kind of programmatic / AI way to get this groupâs predictions into my field of vision.
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Sleep's Economic Divide
This study says sleep inequality in the US is deeply tied to economic stress and health disparities, not just bad "sleep hygiene." MORE
Exercise Rewires Brain to Forget Trauma
Mice with PTSD-like behaviors showed significant improvement after having access to a running wheel, hinting at exercise-induced neurogenesis as a potential therapy. MORE
Taste the Difference: How Ozempic and Wegovy Could Change Eating Habits
Ozempic and Wegovy might be fine-tuning your taste buds to help you lose weight by making sweets taste sweeter. MORE
Carmack Questions Work's Worth
John Carmack dives into "Bullshit Jobs," sparking a lively debate on the value of work. Carmack's review sheds light on the often unspoken reality of perceived value versus actual productivity in modern employment. MORE
The Social Lives of the Teens Who Don't Have Phones
"Imagine navigating high school's social maze without a smartphone, missing out on chats and memes but gaining a unique perspective on life and friendships." MORE
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đĄI donât have to imagine; I grew up in the 80âs. It was glorious.
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Could Eye Exercises Be the Key to Fighting Myopia?
A comprehensive review finds eye exercises might actually help in preventing and controlling myopia. MORE
Lung Cancer Breakthrough: Lorlatinib's Unprecedented Success
A new lung cancer drug, lorlatinib, has shown unprecedented success, keeping 60% of advanced-stage patients progression-free for five years. MORE
Marc Andreessen Wants You to Stay in School
Marc Andreessen's advice to a Stanford student to "stay in school" is surprisingly grounded. The real kicker is his reasoning: if you're the type to drop out, you probably wouldn't listen to advice to stay anyway. MORE
I Love My Wife. My Wife Is Dead.
Richard Feynman's undelivered letter to his late wife reveals a heart-wrenching blend of love and grief, even years after her death. MORE
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Hereâs my new favorite way to explain prompt engineering. In short, donât think of it like an AI thing, or a tech thing. Think of it this way instead.
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Prompt Engineering is how to explain to a superior intelligence what your problem is and what youâd like to happen. If you canât do that well, youâll lose to people who can.
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My X thread on why itâs so hard to find tech jobs right now, and how I think AI is affecting the situation:
The problem for the job market isn't that AI is happening. The problem is that itâs happening at the exact same moment that most companies are figuring out that 80% of their employees are worthless.
We need to stop expecting things to go back to the way they were.
The new reality is companies mostly hiring super ambitious, exceptional, proven people who are gods with AI.
This means most formal education becomes a waste of time and money because a degree doesnât certify you are any of those things.
In this model, only elite schools will matter because the filtering for being exceptional will have happened just by being accepted into the school.
Itâs like two separate things:
1. Youâre exceptional enough to be accepted here.
2. You finished some classes.
#2 you can get anywhere. #1 is the thing that employers actually care about.
So the result will be companies hiring the top 10-20% of people in competence. This will be filtered by:
1. Elite school attendance (if young)
2. Proof of competence via something youâve put into the world, like on your website, YouTube, as a tool, or as a company you built.
So, in hyperbolic form:
If youâre not 19 and at Harvardâor have your own projects or companies youâve built and talked about onlineâyou are not going to be interesting to employers.
Youâll be part of the 90% fighting for scraps.
The problem for the job market isn't that Al is happening.
The problem is that Al is happening at the exact same moment that most companies are figuring out that 80% of their employees are worthless.
We need to stop expecting things to go back to the way they were.
12:24 AM ⢠Jun 2, 2024
51 Likes  9 Retweets Â
For everyone you know who is going to be thinking about their career in the futureâwhich I guess means everyone whoâs not independently wealthyâtry to get them thinking in the following way:
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The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.
 Elisabeth KĂźbler-Ross Â
Thank you for reading.
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