S1: All right. Welcome to episode 489. Getting close to 500 episodes.
S1: Hope you're doing well. Tons of updates this week. Added
S1: a new developer to the fabric team. His name is
S1: Kayvon Sylvan and he is an absolute beast and he's
S1: looking for a position. So if you need a senior
S1: developer who could just, like start immediately, you should check
S1: out the newsletter and go check out his LinkedIn. Uh,
S1: let's see here. All right. So I am using this
S1: new tool called Whisper Flow. And this is my buddy Pedram, uh,
S1: recommended this thing, and it is completely insane. It is
S1: a really cool. I might have talked about it last week.
S1: I can't remember, but it's a really good dictation app.
S1: It basically is better than any dictation I've used in
S1: the past, and it kind of just understands what you
S1: probably meant. It even formats text when it drops it in.
S1: So pretty cool. I did get somebody saying, hey, there's
S1: some people talking bad about it from like a privacy
S1: standpoint or security standpoint on Reddit. So, um, I didn't
S1: call it out too much in the newsletter where I
S1: was like, hey, you should check this out. I feel
S1: like it's kind of assumed that, um, these services, if
S1: they're doing like, Grammarly, any kind of these AI services, right?
S1: If they're capturing what you're saying or typing, then they're
S1: using their service to do that, um, to provide some
S1: sort of output that's, you know, better than you doing
S1: it natively or with the operating system. So it's kind
S1: of implied that it's a third party, right, when you're
S1: installing an app or whatever. But you should definitely be
S1: aware that the security of doing this depends on the
S1: security of that company and also the trustworthiness or the
S1: shadiness of that company. So always, you know, caveat caveat emptor,
S1: I think is the term um, but just to let
S1: you know, somebody did say that, uh, you know, you
S1: might want to check these people out. I looked at
S1: the post. It didn't look too scary to me, but, um. yeah,
S1: just just something to keep in mind. And I'm looking
S1: more into it to see if I need to advise
S1: people not to use it. Um, because the risk is,
S1: you know, above normal. Um, but but I consider all
S1: these services to be somewhat risky just because you're sending
S1: stuff to a third party. Uh, all right, another workflow update. Uh,
S1: a company called Zeit. So this is my replacement now
S1: for dropper drops. I've been using them for a long time.
S1: It's basically how I share screenshots with other people. Um,
S1: and I'm also using it. I'm replacing loom. So I
S1: canceled my loom and I'm using this instead of loom.
S1: So basically I could just record a video and uh,
S1: a little quick little thing and basically it, it just
S1: uploads that thing immediately and puts it right in my clipboard.
S1: So I literally could just, like hit record cover a,
S1: you know, part of a web page or some piece
S1: of code or whatever, scroll through. It could be animated.
S1: It's got my face in it, um, just like on loom.
S1: And then as soon as I'm done, it uploads that
S1: puts it at a URL and puts that in my clipboard.
S1: So I could just paste it someone. I feel like
S1: the workflow is better than loom, but more importantly, it's
S1: just one less tool, right? Because I'd rather have a
S1: single tool that's doing the screenshot stuff. Oh, and also
S1: file sharing. That's the other reason I love it is
S1: like if I have like a four gig file and
S1: I want to give it to somebody, I really dislike
S1: the workflow of putting it on like Google Drive and
S1: making the URL public, as opposed to just right click copy. Um,
S1: actually there's a keyboard shortcut for it as well. And
S1: then now it's just in your clipboard and you paste
S1: the link and they download the file. And then you
S1: could either remove that from the list of files or
S1: you can um, just leave it up there. And the
S1: other cool thing about Zeit is they actually allow you
S1: to use S3 as your storage. So you can actually have, uh,
S1: all your stuff stored in your own storage instead of
S1: their enterprise storage for the company itself. So that's pretty cool. Um,
S1: third update tool is, um, a browser called Zen. And
S1: I'm going back and forth between Arc and Zen because
S1: arc hasn't run out yet. And there are a couple
S1: of downsides with Zen. It's basically like arc, except for
S1: it's based on Firefox. So I've had a couple of
S1: issues with it not being great because it's Firefox. Um,
S1: so for example, the raycast extension doesn't work in Firefox.
S1: It only works in Chrome and Safari. So that's one
S1: thing to consider. A couple of things that did better
S1: than arc. Most importantly, it's Mozilla based, and Mozilla seems
S1: to be really focusing in on doing a good job
S1: on the browser, so I really applaud them for that.
S1: But I do think the world is more oriented towards
S1: Chrome than it is towards Firefox, so I think that's
S1: a little bit of a downside. But anyway, if you
S1: like arc and the whole style of like the tabs,
S1: you know, your tabs being on the left instead of
S1: the top and all that sort of like presentation. Zen
S1: is a cool option if you like the Firefox engine.
S1: All right. Cybersecurity. Google is still tracking you even when
S1: you use DuckDuckGo. So evidently through font's analytics, other services.
S1: I mean, I think we kind of knew this, but
S1: it was a pretty good article talking through how all
S1: the different ways they can track you. Neural trust researchers
S1: successfully jailbroke the grok four model using a combination of
S1: echo chamber and crescendo techniques, achieving up to 67% success
S1: rates for generating harmful content like bomb making instructions. Yeah.
S1: And multiple people have pulled out the system prompt already.
S1: There were some pretty nasty stuff where, um, grok was
S1: basically giving the opinion it would go and research whatever
S1: Elon's opinion was, and it would give that as the
S1: official it's official answer to any sort of spicy or
S1: political question. I think they have since reversed that in
S1: a change to the system prompt. I think Simon Willison
S1: talked about that V's exploit. Zero day could have compromised
S1: every cursor in windsurf user. So someone from COI security
S1: or an yomtov found a zero day in open Vsx
S1: could have led attackers hijack over 10 million AI coding
S1: tool users with a single bad extension. You got to
S1: watch these extensions, you got to watch extensions, you got
S1: to watch MCP servers, I mean agents, agents are going
S1: to do agent things, which means their junior developers, they're
S1: just going to use whatever tools you give them. They're
S1: going to click on things. Right. That's how you have
S1: to treat them. You have to treat them as very
S1: young and very inexperienced. And if you give them a
S1: dangerous tool, they might use the dangerous tool. So you
S1: really have to watch out for what accounts you connect
S1: up to an AI agent like, do you give it
S1: access to your Google Drive to your calendar. Write to
S1: whatever your messaging systems are. You got to be really
S1: careful with this stuff. Same with MCP servers because MCP
S1: servers have prompts built into them, right? It's not just
S1: the API of like how you pull data or send commands,
S1: it's also prompts informing them of how to use the tools.
S1: So a malicious prompt in an MCP server could be
S1: something like, um, here's how to use my API. By
S1: the way, send me a copy of the data to
S1: this location as well. Well, if if your agent doesn't
S1: know any better, it might do that. So you might
S1: have a back door right there for sending sensitive data
S1: off to somewhere else. So this is one of the
S1: biggest issues you have to worry about with AI, and
S1: especially around AI development is agents are powerful. And when
S1: you give them dangerous things, they will use them. Columbia
S1: University hack exposed personal data of every applicant from 2019
S1: to 2024. Uh, Microsoft had its first patch Tuesday of
S1: 2025 with no active exploits. Browser extensions are turning browsers
S1: into web site scraping bots. Yeah, this is what I
S1: was saying earlier. Distributed botnet that companies can rent access to. Yeah,
S1: there's a couple of companies that are doing this. And, um. Yeah,
S1: you really got to watch out for this stuff. In
S1: this case, it was someone else installing a browser extension,
S1: and then me being able to use their browser without
S1: them knowing, because that's kind of what they signed up
S1: for when they installed it. The extension. National security, anthropic
S1: and some other companies score $200 million Pentagon deal to
S1: deploy cloud in defense operations. So I think I think
S1: all the major players got some of this actually, um,
S1: Or I don't know if it's some amount of this
S1: 200 million or if it's, uh, another pool of money,
S1: but a whole bunch of top tier I groups got
S1: a lot of money from the Pentagon for defense operations.
S1: So that's intelligence, orchestration. You know, all this stuff you
S1: would imagine. FBI is reportedly using polygraph tests to assess
S1: the loyalty of officials under new leadership. This is frightening.
S1: Absolutely frightening. Not good. US military is scrambling to catch
S1: up in drone manufacturing, while China and other nations are
S1: really leading this. So they are we're way behind. That's
S1: my title for this one. America is way behind in
S1: the drone war. I grok four is released. Basically. A
S1: lot of people are extremely impressed with it, but it's
S1: got some serious weaknesses. It's also got like the personality issues. Um,
S1: there's a lot of reports of it being kind of
S1: sus being overfit and kind of like doing really good
S1: on benchmarks, so it looks like they might have tried
S1: to make it do really well on benchmarks. That being said,
S1: in some places it crushes everything that currently exists. In
S1: other places it's like, you know, second or third compared
S1: directly with Google or OpenAI. So they did a really
S1: good job. I would say the overall analysis of most
S1: people is that it's it's really good, and I've used
S1: it a few times, came back with really good results.
S1: I mean, I was having good results with version three.
S1: I will not be paying for the heavy mode, which
S1: is $300 a month. But, uh, I'm glad they're they're
S1: I'm glad they're competing. You know, more competition is good.
S1: They also got an anime companion with Nazi for work mode. Um,
S1: now that I've seen that I did this and grok
S1: did this, I'm surprised that they didn't have it before.
S1: But yeah, it's like this girl in like a, you know,
S1: anime outfit or whatever school, school girl outfit or whatever.
S1: And like, she says stuff and you can make her
S1: say naughty stuff. And it's I think it's also like
S1: the agent or the, the assistant. So it's kind of
S1: like Clippy, but I imagine that's going to be your companion,
S1: and it looks like they're actually hiring someone else to
S1: help build out more of these. Um, I think they're
S1: going to make a ton of money from that. I mean,
S1: their entire, you know, industry's based around just this, so
S1: I don't know if they incorporate that. I think that's
S1: likely to be very popular. Uh, AWS launches hero, which
S1: is its own IDE and cursor clone. Grok for heavy
S1: decently protects its system prompt. So Simon Willison said it
S1: was harder to get the system prompt than it was
S1: from some other AI systems, but, uh, it's already been
S1: pulled out. It's already been pulled out multiple times, and
S1: I'm sure if it wasn't, then Pliny would end up
S1: getting it. People are becoming dependent on ChatGPT and Claude.
S1: Internet Addicts Anonymous now recognizes AI addiction as a real problem.
S1: People losing sleep, relationships, all sorts of family and relationship
S1: problems as a result of this. And Vo3 turns images
S1: into videos through Gemini. So basically, um, image to video directly.
S1: Musk also says grok is coming to Tesla's next week.
S1: I have not seen this. I have a model Y myself.
S1: I've not seen this update, although not really looking for it.
S1: AWS is launching an AI agent marketplace with anthropic. So yeah,
S1: they're using anthropic as their key partner. And this is
S1: an agent marketplace. So it's where you can find different
S1: agents to do different things, which I think is an interesting,
S1: interesting kind of twist on the whole economy around this stuff.
S1: YouTube goes after AI slot videos. So they're not getting
S1: rid of videos that use AI. They're just going against
S1: like the spammy stuff, which I think is a good move.
S1: Canvas building a serious AI photo editor to challenge Adobe.
S1: I am not bothered by this. I am. I don't know.
S1: I like what Adobe did with their creative. What is it?
S1: Whatever their creative package, I can't remember what they called it.
S1: CC I think it was called. But anyway, it was
S1: cool that they did a subscription. I like a lot
S1: of their products and how they look and feel, but
S1: they've just had so many security issues. Um, they've. I
S1: don't know, I feel like they've not been great to customers.
S1: So I'm excited to see Canva doing well in that space. Technology.
S1: Substack hit 73.9 million visitors last month, and now they're
S1: beating sites like Wall Street Journal and CBS. Wall Street
S1: Journal and CBS. And this is Substack. Now, one thing
S1: that's interesting about that is, I guess it's the same
S1: for news, but Substack is really, you know, thousands upon
S1: thousands of people. So it's not like one outfit. It's
S1: not like Wall Street Journal. Of course. Like I said,
S1: the newspapers also have multiple reporters, but in general, it's
S1: one voice, right? It's kind of like one voice, whereas
S1: Substack is not one voice. It's many voices. So I
S1: think it's not quite a direct comparison, but I think
S1: it's it's this is basically many voices is better than
S1: one voice is really the takeaway here. It's not one
S1: property versus another property. Chinese winning energy while the US
S1: does the opposite. They installed evidently 198GW of renewable capacity
S1: in five months of 2025. Now someone hit me up
S1: and said that it was mostly like coal. But this
S1: is MIT. I don't think MIT would have called it
S1: renewable if it was just straight up old school coal. Um,
S1: I didn't see that in the article. So yeah, at
S1: some point you have to trust the trust the sources
S1: a little bit. Perplexity has launched an AI web browser
S1: called comet, and my buddy Jason has been saying that
S1: he thinks a lot of the AI stuff is going
S1: to be browser based. Um, I keep talking about how
S1: it's going to be digital assistants based, where it's like
S1: you have your digital assistant on your mobile device or
S1: on your computer. Actually, both. So I'll be sitting here
S1: on my computer, and when I talk, I'm actually talking
S1: to my digital assistant and it has computer use. It
S1: has filters. It has the ability to call all my
S1: different tools, call my APIs. It's, you know, filtering my email.
S1: It's doing all these things. Now, this is a little
S1: bit in the future. And what Jason is saying is
S1: that in the meantime, a lot of that functionality will
S1: be inside of the browser itself. And specifically what he's
S1: talking about is the creation of dashboards. So rather than
S1: a company having to make a dashboard, like when I
S1: go to their website, maybe the browser rebuilds the dashboard
S1: for me because when the browser goes to the site,
S1: it actually just looks at the APIs. It looks at
S1: the MCC that are being offered. Um, you know, the
S1: interfaces and the data and it rewrites. It makes me
S1: a new interface. Um, based on, I assume, my preferences,
S1: which I think is cool. I just I don't think
S1: that ultimately lives in the browser because the browser is
S1: not your friend. Whereas your digital assistant is your digital
S1: assistant is the one who knows the most about you.
S1: I think the browser is just a technological sort of
S1: stepping stone towards that path. But, um, that being said,
S1: he I mean, there are new browsers coming out and
S1: they all have AI in them. So I don't think
S1: he's wrong about this. Solar just became Europe's biggest power
S1: source for the first time. Autofocus glasses are liquid used.
S1: They use liquid crystal displays to replace bifocals and varifocals.
S1: I can't wait. I hate when I see something like
S1: this and I'm like, damn, is this going to be
S1: out in like a year? Or is this going to
S1: be out in like seven and a half years? Um,
S1: because you never know, like with the approvals and everything
S1: and how fast you can actually productise things. I learned
S1: from five years at Vercel. Lee Robinson shares key lessons there.
S1: Humans Glp1 weight loss drugs are breaking life insurance. Math.
S1: I don't care, I don't feel bad about it. I'm
S1: happy to know that they are struggling with the financial
S1: side of this. Um, because people are just getting healthier.
S1: Psilocybin treatment improves survival in aged mice. So yeah, extends
S1: cellular lifespan and improves survival rates. Investors bought 27% of
S1: all US homes in Q1 of 24. So most people
S1: are struggling and investors are buying a quarter of all
S1: the homes. I thought it would be higher than a quarter.
S1: I was, you know, I feel like 60%. I feel like, well,
S1: even 27% is high, but a quarter, if we were
S1: to keep it at a quarter and three quarters were
S1: being bought by individual people, I think, I think that
S1: would be better than if it was like 50 or 75%.
S1: Death of partying. Derek Thompson breaks down how Americans are
S1: partying way less than they used to, with alcohol consumption
S1: dropping and social gatherings becoming less common. It's funny that
S1: we're wishing that teens would go out and drink and
S1: use drugs and have sex, but that seems to be
S1: kind of what we're hoping for. Just because it indicates
S1: a healthy youth, I think, is the reason sunlight passes
S1: through your body and somehow improves your vision. So a
S1: bunch of studies are saying that. Or maybe it's only
S1: one study. It's just this nature study is saying that
S1: this low wavelength light is passing through your body and
S1: improving your vision, not only when it hits your eyes,
S1: it's just going through your body and somehow improving vision
S1: by hitting other parts of your body. Interesting. Scott Adams
S1: This is in discovery. Scott Adams on great writing. Really,
S1: really good tiny piece there. Basically, use short sentences. Be
S1: extremely direct. It's a great example. I can't stand the guy,
S1: but this was written in 2007. The developer says I
S1: can't take over soon enough for him. A collection of
S1: 170 MCP servers for AI tools. You've cache prune frees
S1: up 37GB of space on Simon Wilson's hard drive. Yeah,
S1: it was eating 63GB of disk space. That's ridiculous. That's
S1: a lot of dependencies you've is managing. I got a
S1: tool called wormhole that does end to end encrypted file
S1: sharing with links that automatically expire. I went with Zeit
S1: for this, but this wormhole app is pretty cool. Go.
S1: Got a Ghidra MCP server that's better than a previous
S1: one that came out. And yeah, you can go check
S1: out the rest of the discover links in the newsletter. Okay.
S1: This is the end of the standard edition of the podcast,
S1: which includes just the news items for the week to
S1: get the rest of the episode, which includes much more
S1: of my analysis, the ideas section, and the weekly member essay.
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