S1: All right. Welcome to unsupervised Learning. This is Daniel Miessler.
S1: And this is the first podcast for the new year 2025.
S1: And I wanted to just do a quick overview of
S1: what exactly it is that we do here. So I
S1: slightly upgraded or modified the tagline for the show as
S1: being a newsletter and podcast around trends and ideas in cybersecurity,
S1: national security, AI, technology and society, and how best to
S1: upgrade ourselves to be ready for what's coming. And I
S1: think that captures this well because obviously I'm talking about security.
S1: Obviously I'm talking about AI, but really what I'm talking
S1: about is trends in those things and ways to sort
S1: of improve ourselves. Right? This is about self-improvement, but it's
S1: about self-improvement within the context of what is going on
S1: in the world. And obviously it's future stuff. Right? So
S1: you can't predict this perfectly. I'm not claiming I can
S1: predict anything like this perfectly. Nobody knows what's going on,
S1: and you should be afraid of anybody, or you should
S1: avoid anybody who thinks they have a perfect bead on anything.
S1: Nobody knows. Like too many variables. So basically what we
S1: try to do here is figure out trends. Figure out
S1: what's interesting and then figure out how to upgrade ourselves.
S1: How to improve ourselves. To be in the best possible
S1: position to basically thrive as a human going forward. So
S1: one of the things I want to talk about is, like,
S1: I always leave the newsletter with security stuff and my
S1: focus on security. Cyber security, really all types of security,
S1: but especially cyber, is to essentially figure out what the
S1: new and interesting things are, not necessarily a dump of
S1: every single breach that happened or every single vulnerability that happened.
S1: I used to do a lot more coverage of that,
S1: but I just everybody's being hacked, right? Everybody's being hacked,
S1: and everybody has vulns in pretty much everything what I
S1: care about are like. First of all, what are the
S1: criticals like? If there's if there's something really crazy happening
S1: right now, like you, you really need to check your gear,
S1: get it offline, put a firewall rule in place, put
S1: a WAF in place, change a config, something like that,
S1: like a log forge type situation, those types of situations.
S1: I would say I'm still going to largely still cover. Right.
S1: Because because I think those are topical. They're trend based.
S1: It's important to know and I would like to still
S1: be that person who lets you know about that thing.
S1: But the other 700 things that happened or the other
S1: 50 things that happened, or the other 25 things that happened,
S1: you're going to find out about it another way. You're
S1: going to get an email at work, like there are
S1: other ways to find it out. And I just feel
S1: like it's kind of noise to just constantly report about
S1: things being broken and people being hacked and breaches happening
S1: and leaks happening. But what I want to do is
S1: surface like the top ones from those and what I
S1: especially want to surface. And my favorite thing and really
S1: the focus of the security section and really all the
S1: sections here is what is a changing trend. How are
S1: attackers or defenders doing things differently? What is a new technique? Right.
S1: That's really the focus here is like what is a
S1: new technique and how do we change as a result
S1: of that. So not necessarily every single bullet story, but
S1: changes that are interesting that we should potentially look out for.
S1: So that's that's kind of the vibe for the year. Um,
S1: not really the year just going forward. And I feel
S1: like I've been doing this already, but I just wanted
S1: to tighten that up with, uh, capturing that in the tagline. So, uh,
S1: relaunch my website. Let me open a tab here. So
S1: I also switched to AAC which is pretty interesting. So
S1: this is the new website. And this is uh, these
S1: are my tabs over here on the left. So AAC
S1: is a Chrome based browser and it does tabs on
S1: the left instead of at the top. But, uh, this
S1: is the new website. This is, uh, something I've been
S1: working on for a very long time. It might look
S1: very similar to previous versions of the website. It kind
S1: of does. But what I did was break the website
S1: out separate from the newsletter. So the newsletter, instead of
S1: being Daniel Miessler, whatever it's newsletter.com/whatever. So kind of still
S1: the same. And you could also get to there by
S1: going to uh, unsupervised learning. You can find it lots
S1: of different ways, but bottom line is the newsletter is
S1: now a sub domain under Daniel Comm, and the main
S1: site is just a core site. So I'm working on
S1: getting my ideas up here. I got the blog already
S1: somewhat working, got a new post here which I think
S1: I talk about in the newsletter and all my study articles.
S1: These are all my articles going back. And these are
S1: essentially this is all my content going back to like 1996.
S1: So um, got predictions I'm going to put up here soon.
S1: But if you're a typography geek, hopefully you really love this. Um,
S1: I want to give a shout out to Matthew Butterick,
S1: who I got a lot of the site design from.
S1: I purchased his his paid fonts like six times now,
S1: I think like 4 or 5, six times, something like that.
S1: And I purchased them again, uh, in this update. So
S1: these are all custom fonts. Like this is not stuff
S1: you can get anywhere else. And, uh, yeah, really, really
S1: cool stuff. Uh, so I'm excited about that. Um, next thing,
S1: let's see here. Yeah. So I've just spent like 60 hours.
S1: It's probably more like 80 hours, honestly, at this point,
S1: Optimizing my workflows. Tooling. Operating system. Notes. Techniques. Procedures. Calendar.
S1: Everything that I do to, like, stay aware. Um. How
S1: I take notes. My operating system. My keyboard shortcuts. My
S1: text editor. Everything has been optimized. I've basically spent, I
S1: don't know how many other separate hours watching video on Neovim,
S1: on raycast, and and basically tons of different tools that
S1: I use to be able to optimize things. So just
S1: a slight teaser on this if you see in my
S1: upper right hand bar here. So this is Riverside, which
S1: we're recording in right now. This is a little active thing,
S1: but I've got CPU, GPU here. Um, I've got my network,
S1: but um, look at this one. If I pull this down, look,
S1: you can see all my different things that I have
S1: going on today. I could see. Um, this is heads down.
S1: Work that I'm doing right now. Should actually say recording
S1: a podcast, but whatever. Um, I could see my month here.
S1: This is how many people are currently on my website. Uh,
S1: so this is like a live fathom analytics thing. Got
S1: my current temperature. Got my notes here. Um, so this
S1: is called hidden bar. And this really tightens up my
S1: menu bar. Uh, because there's a whole lot of other stuff.
S1: If I click here, this is all the stuff it
S1: wanted to present to me. Right. So I've got it
S1: locked down to just this. And that's just one of
S1: the things that I'm working on. In fact, I'm doing
S1: a member, uh, episode, not an episode. A mid-month meetup
S1: is actually Thursdays, uh, the second Thursday of the month,
S1: which I think is today. And we get together. Oh, actually,
S1: I mentioned right here. So, um, I am covering everything
S1: that I did. I've got this massive document over here,
S1: and I'm covering everything that I've done for these optimizations,
S1: and I'm just going one after another in that thing.
S1: And that's going to be released as a video for members.
S1: So yeah, looking forward to doing that later on today.
S1: And I might put that out or put it partially
S1: out on YouTube. I'm not sure what I'm going to
S1: do with that, but members are definitely getting it for free. Uh,
S1: let's see here. More focus, more discipline. Primary projects for
S1: 2025 launching same page which is commercial offering and then
S1: human 3.0, which is more of a community humanity benefit
S1: type thing, as well as working on my, uh, technology stack,
S1: building out Damon, doing all the stuff that I've been
S1: talking about in my other posts. Substrate. Telos. Um, all
S1: that different stuff is basically what I'm building out as
S1: tech stacks. So they're actually going to live on my domain.
S1: So damon.com is actually going to be broadcasting a live
S1: API of what I'm finding It's interesting. My favorite preference is, um,
S1: my favorite books. What am I currently reading? This is
S1: something I did in the early 2000 with a tool
S1: called Friendfeed, and I'm now going to be doing with
S1: new technology, with API technology, with AI. Um, and yeah,
S1: it's just it's going to be absolutely insane. And it's
S1: all part of the same thing, which is H3, which
S1: is human 3.0. Um, now I'm also launching, which I've
S1: talked about before in a bunch of people have pinged
S1: me about, I'm launching a platform that you can actually
S1: sign up for, and it's got a membership, uh, which
S1: will be a whole lot cheaper for people who are
S1: already part of, uh, UL. But but anyway, there's a
S1: paid offering that, like, curates the content that you get
S1: to move through H3. There's a maturity model for H3.
S1: It's going to show you exactly where you are. It's
S1: going to show you where you need to go. Um,
S1: and I'm going to keep releasing content into there. And
S1: that's basically like a it's a managed platform for upgrading
S1: yourself to human 3.0. Okay. But I want to make
S1: very clear most of the content that's going to be
S1: in there. It's all on GitHub, right? The whole point
S1: of human 3.0 is to upgrade everyone, give everyone these tools. Right.
S1: So the stuff that I'm putting in the platform, that's
S1: just going to look prettier, it's going to have the
S1: maturity model. It's going to have like a lots of
S1: extra things like ratings and grades and like it's going
S1: to move you through like a curriculum, things like that.
S1: But the content itself I'm going to be talking about
S1: on YouTube for free, I'm going to be releasing on
S1: the blog for free. I'm going to be putting in
S1: social media for free, like all, and it's going to
S1: be in GitHub for free, because I want this to
S1: apply to everyone. I'm not trying to get everyone on
S1: some platform, like the whole thing is not a trick.
S1: To get people into a platform, is what I'm saying, right?
S1: I want to make money. I'm trying to find a
S1: way to make some kind of money off of this thing,
S1: but it is like the 19th goal of this project.
S1: The goal of the project is to get people freaking out.
S1: Not not a panic, not FUD, but I want them
S1: to be like, oh crap, this thing is coming. I
S1: need to get ready. What do I do right now?
S1: You can watch the videos, you can go to GitHub.
S1: You can just do those things and you get to
S1: the same place that you get by using the paid platform.
S1: You do not need to use my paid platform or
S1: any other paid platform. You could just follow the stuff
S1: that I'm talking about and do it. And you're going
S1: to be, you know, pretty much there. Um, that being said,
S1: people are still saying, look, tell me exactly what to do.
S1: Where do I sign up? What do I do? So
S1: that that's the reason I'm making the paid offering, but
S1: it's all the same stuff. That's the whole point here.
S1: All right, got some items here. Uh, what I expect
S1: for 2025, a lot of chaos, which comes with opportunity,
S1: a bias towards action. So I think people who see
S1: chaos as an opportunity to just move and build and create,
S1: they're going to have a massive advantage in 25. I
S1: companies move towards agents. Everybody's saying that, uh, many AI
S1: companies start falling. So you're going to see the crash
S1: and the rise, which I talked about last year. Um, oh,
S1: is our AI companies going to crash or are they
S1: going to, like, thrive? The answer is both. The answer
S1: is yes. Both are going to happen a whole lot.
S1: Millions and millions of dollars of AI companies are just
S1: going to go out of business because they were just
S1: like it was a gimmick, or they hadn't thought of
S1: a long strategy or they got eaten up by the platforms. Right.
S1: So a whole bunch of that's going to go down.
S1: But the really smart AI companies and the platforms and
S1: the big tech who's actually using the stuff, they're going
S1: to go up that that's my guess. Yeah. Big tech
S1: and truly innovative AI companies start to hockey stick. Developers
S1: switch from minor assistance to largely AI based dev. That's
S1: a huge one. Becomes more obvious that AI will replace
S1: lots of knowledge work. AI discourse switches from AC to
S1: human work replacement. So instead of us talking about oh,
S1: how good is AI going to be or whatever, I
S1: think we're going to start talking about, Holy crap, this
S1: thing is taking jobs. Now Salesforce. Benioff he just said
S1: he's not hiring any more developers. Going forward, I would
S1: say that would be a stronger signal if somebody like
S1: Google said that or if somebody's like, I don't know,
S1: said that somebody normal who's not building AI products, right.
S1: It's it's a little bit less believable if they're also
S1: building a product that replaces humans. So essentially he's talking
S1: his own book. That being said, I think there is
S1: something real and worth listening to in what he said. Like,
S1: I mean, I don't think he's lying and he's saying
S1: his productivity from AI is way up, but you got
S1: to take it with a little bit of a grain
S1: of salt. Given the fact that he's selling a product
S1: that replaces workers, right? So he's basically saying, my product
S1: is so good that I'm using it and I don't
S1: have to hire developers. So it's a little bit of marketing. Um,
S1: all right. Next one. More people start asking what humans
S1: are supposed to do post work. Right. And that's what
S1: I've been getting in front of for the last few years. Okay. Security. U.S.
S1: Army soldier was arrested for allegedly selling AT&T and Verizon
S1: customer data as the cyber Phantom. Yeah. 20 year old
S1: communications specialist in the Army. Allegedly stolen leaked sensitive call records. Okay. Uh,
S1: there's a critical release for item two fixes. Um, but
S1: you should not be messing with that. You should be
S1: messing with this. Oh, this is so good. Um, hopefully
S1: it comes up. Ghosty site. Where are you? What are
S1: you doing? Where's the site? There we go. A glitch
S1: in the matrix. All right, this is the website. So, documentation. Um,
S1: you can get it from source on GitHub. Ghosty is
S1: the best shell. I'm telling you, it is extraordinary. Um, yeah.
S1: Let me, uh, let me just show you what it
S1: looks like. Well, it looks like a shell. It looks
S1: very similar to my kiddie setup. It looks very similar
S1: to my other stuff. Let me just tell you, it's
S1: from this guy named Mitchell Hashimoto. And, uh, this guy
S1: who's a co-founder of HashiCorp, and he is extraordinarily bright, uh,
S1: forward thinking. And he basically figured out how to get
S1: all three things. Um, I forget all the three things.
S1: It's like speed, uh, compliance and, like, usability or something
S1: like that, but basically all the different um, yeah. Compliances
S1: like standards following essentially. So what do you figure out
S1: how to do is he's building this thing to be
S1: the most standards compliant, the most fast and the most
S1: fun to use and the most easy to configure. And, uh,
S1: so if I do gconf, this is what, uh, yeah.
S1: I'll just expand this out. Oh, by the way, maximize. Oh,
S1: look at that. All right. Maximize. Boom boom boom boom.
S1: So this this is what the config looks like. It's
S1: kind of similar to kiddie config, but, um I've got
S1: my Tokyo night theme going here. Uh, I've got a
S1: whole bunch of work I put into configuring this after watching, like,
S1: 25 videos from people who've done their various things. Uh,
S1: shout out to link Arzu on YouTube. Okay. He was
S1: a big influence on my configs. Uh, one of the
S1: first videos I looked at for go see config. He
S1: was one of the people who was beta testing it earlier.
S1: And in general he's just been doing some pretty cool stuff,
S1: so I would definitely recommend checking him out. In fact,
S1: I'm going to pull him up right now. Link carzou.
S1: I think that's how you pronounce it. YouTube. Oh, look
S1: at this, I switched. I did something crazy. I switched
S1: my main browser, uh, search engine. In fact, my main
S1: search engine. Overall to perplexity. I'm trying it. I know
S1: Google is probably going to come out with perplexity killing
S1: features soon, and I might switch back at that point,
S1: but I'm trying to use Link Perplexity as my main
S1: browser search engine, and it's going pretty well. So this
S1: is the thing. Link carzou. That's how I'm saying it. He's, uh, Latin,
S1: so I don't know. I'm not sure how he says it,
S1: but anyway, uh, this guy has a bunch of cool
S1: videos about basically terminal configs. Um, kind of like super
S1: nerdy stuff. And I like it. There are good videos,
S1: and also it's very geeky and in the weeds. And
S1: this is why I've spent probably 60 to 80 hours
S1: messing around with my terminal config and raycasts and stuff
S1: like that. Not sure if he uses raycast, but anyway, uh,
S1: worth looking at. And then command S to get rid
S1: of the sidebar. All right. Where are we at? Um, yeah.
S1: Use ghost instead of Iterm. Uh, that's where we're at. Uh,
S1: basically iterm major problem. I went from Iterm2 to alacrity
S1: to kitty, and then to ghosty. I think that was my, uh, movement.
S1: So it was terminal iterm alacrity, Kitty. Ghosty. And I
S1: think I'm going to be on ghosty for a very
S1: long time. Uh, assuming he maintains that project, which that's
S1: why I think I'm likely to stay with them, is
S1: because it is likely to maintain it for a very
S1: long time. He's just putting that sort of future work
S1: into it. China's turned one of its most prominent pro-democracy
S1: dissidents into a spy by threatening his sick parents. Okay,
S1: so this calls attention to China's use of emotional pressure
S1: and family ties to coerce members of its diaspora into
S1: becoming intelligence assets. Hard to say how big this problem is,
S1: but I'm definitely worried about it. They could basically activate
S1: millions of people in their diaspora by leveraging nationalism, political pressure,
S1: threats to family or whatever. Right. And it doesn't mean like, oh,
S1: anybody who's Chinese works in a tech company. Like you
S1: need to worry about them because they're a spy. That's
S1: not the case, right? Uh, vast majority of anybody in
S1: any company who's, you know, from another country, they're just
S1: there to do their thing. Right. They've bought into the US.
S1: They bought into the company. They're doing their thing. The
S1: problem is, China is so controlling and so powerful. They
S1: could just be like, look, you are a Chinese citizen. Like,
S1: I don't care where you live, you are a Chinese citizen.
S1: And by the way, um, I hope your Aunt Nancy
S1: is doing well. Um, yeah, we just paid a visit
S1: to her. It looks like she needs groceries. Um, hope
S1: she doesn't get sick or something. That kind of pressure
S1: coming from China when if you if you know about
S1: Chinese citizens, they are really afraid and really respectful of
S1: their government. They do not talk bad about it. They
S1: do not acknowledge many, many of them do not even
S1: acknowledge Tiananmen Square. I mean, we're talking about extreme pressure,
S1: which has been drilled into them for their entire education, right?
S1: Their entire lives. And that pressure is dangerous, is what
S1: I'm saying. It doesn't mean everyone's going to automatically just
S1: be like, okay, of course I'm going to do what
S1: I'm going to do. But it's something to consider and consider,
S1: and it's something that not enough people are talking about.
S1: The trick is you want to be as a company.
S1: You want to be able to understand this. See it
S1: as a problem. Acknowledge it as a threat, but not
S1: switch into some racist mode where you're like, oh, all
S1: Chinese people are, you know, foreign government agents of, you know,
S1: the CCP. So the question is, how can you maintain
S1: vigilance and maybe have a threat, internal threat, uh, program
S1: without being, uh, basically racist and biased and like, nasty, right?
S1: That that's the trick. And it's really difficult to pull off.
S1: And I think very few companies are doing that. First
S1: of all, most people don't have an insider threat program.
S1: It's hard to run, and it's hard to run without
S1: getting sued. Right. Because it tends to be nasty by
S1: its very nature. If you're doing this and you're not
S1: doing it well and very careful to avoid bias. You
S1: are going to do it improperly and you're going to
S1: get sued. And so a lot of companies are just like, hey, look,
S1: don't look at that stuff, because that's going to get
S1: us in trouble. And the fact that people are taking
S1: a hands off approach to this is going to put
S1: more people at risk. So this is a huge problem.
S1: A lot of people don't want to talk about it.
S1: A lot of people can't even do it even if
S1: they wanted to. And they had the right morals and
S1: the right ethics. It's still technically very difficult. You need
S1: a large. It's difficult to pull off. Right? You need
S1: someone who's with a lot of expertise to run the program.
S1: Then you need the right tech to be able to
S1: do it. So, I mean, Google is doing this obviously,
S1: because they found a whole bunch of, uh, threat actors
S1: this way. Not not just Chinese, but lots of different
S1: threat actors using their insider threat program. So it's very,
S1: very mature. But that's Google. I mean, they they've got
S1: billions of dollars to throw around. Amnesty International says attackers
S1: use a HomeKit vulnerability to deploy Pegasus spyware on Serbian
S1: journalist and activist phones. And holy crap about this one.
S1: Russia is using Ukrainian kids to help them target airstrikes,
S1: so they're basically giving them these quest games that involve
S1: taking photos of military targets as part of a game.
S1: They go and take pictures of it. They get like whatever,
S1: they get points. And then the Russian military uses those
S1: pictures as Intel for where to launch strikes. That's diabolical.
S1: Microsoft says it's going to delete passwords for a billion
S1: users as a password. As password attacks double every year.
S1: They're now blocking 7000 password attacks per second. Treasury Department
S1: got hacked through their Beyond Trust remote support software by
S1: Chinese state actors. Hackers combined two words cool vulnerability and
S1: nuclei lets attackers bypass template signature verification to execute malicious code.
S1: This was actually fixed back in September. And just as
S1: a reminder, I am an advisor there. Just disclosure this
S1: is a solid breakdown of how to use any runs
S1: threat intelligence lookup for proactive threat detection. So talking about
S1: regional threat monitoring, artifact verification, TTP tracking, threat evolution monitoring,
S1: and report enrichment. Congressman Mike Waltz says the incoming administration
S1: plans to shift from defense to offense in cybersecurity, especially
S1: against Chinese threat actors. Happy to hear it. Missile attacks
S1: have now become the leading cause of commercial airline passenger deaths.
S1: 926 people have been killed by missile strikes since 2014.
S1: So nine? Yeah. 926 in 2014 or no? Since 2014,
S1: compared to 458 during, uh, for traditional accidents during the
S1: same period. So like double traditional accidents for 458. Missiles. 926.
S1: That's still a low number, but that's concerning. And a
S1: wilderness survival instructor spent two years infiltrating multiple militia groups,
S1: including becoming a top leader in AP three and gaining
S1: access to Oath Keepers leadership. It turns out to be
S1: someone named John Williams. Not sure if that's their full
S1: name definitely isn't anymore. I could tell you that and
S1: surveilled a student journalist ultimately going public with what he learned.
S1: And that report was fairly disturbing. All right. AI and
S1: tech Sam Altman claims in a new blog post, came
S1: out end of last year that they figured out how
S1: to create AGI. And I want to reiterate why I
S1: think this is the case. Um, it's because AI deploys
S1: as systems, not models. Right. You don't need the perfect
S1: model to come out. That is AGI, and it just
S1: does everything. Competent AI that's going to get rolled out
S1: and replace human jobs is actually dozens of models or
S1: dozens of versions of models, all working together as like
S1: agents passing off to other agents with a bunch of
S1: glue and plumbing and duct tape all around it. And
S1: the whole thing works the same way. Human brain does
S1: a similar way as the human brain does. We've got
S1: multiple things going on in our in our brains, uh,
S1: some of which evolved way longer ago than other parts.
S1: And if you disconnect different pieces from each other, none
S1: of it works. You can't have consciousness and rational thinking
S1: and logic and stuff like that. If you mess with
S1: different parts of the brain, it's the same way with
S1: an AI system. Okay, sure, you need the model, but
S1: you also need, um, supporting models. You also need the context.
S1: You also need the memory mechanism. You also need to
S1: be able to store long term memory and use short
S1: term memory and move things out of memory when they're
S1: all used up. Right. Just like garbage collection in the
S1: in the human brain. So the thing is a giant
S1: mess of lots of legacy traditional tech and automation and
S1: programming combined with all these different AI components. And that
S1: giant thing rolls out as something that can actually replace
S1: a human worker. So you shouldn't be thinking, oh, Claude
S1: four is going to come out and it's going to
S1: replace humans. No. Somebody's going to release a product around cloud.
S1: Cloud four. And those models and that product as a
S1: giant amalgamation is what's going to be able to do
S1: some damage in terms of human work replacement. Um, the
S1: second point here, replacing most human knowledge work jobs is
S1: easier than most think. if you if you think about
S1: what an average person does day to day with like,
S1: you know, collecting emails, doing, uh, reading a summary, creating
S1: a summary, sending out an email, uh, setting up meetings, uh,
S1: writing a report about, uh, security assessments, um, finding vulnerabilities
S1: in a thing. These things are not ultimately that difficult.
S1: And it doesn't mean the far edge of those things
S1: aren't difficult because they they very much are. And they
S1: might stay difficult for a long time. But if we
S1: could do the easy stuff much, much better, that would
S1: move the economy forward in a massive way. Okay. And
S1: that's what companies are going to go for. They're going
S1: to go for the 95% being done 10,000 times faster
S1: for 100 times cheaper, and for that last 5%, guess what?
S1: They'll hire experts. They'll hire human experts, along with the
S1: AI team, which is designed to whittle down that 5%. Right.
S1: That's why I'm so worried about this. And that's why
S1: this is such a threat in my opinion. Um, because
S1: we're not talking about ACI, right? ACI is like, that's
S1: the supercomputer. That's the thing that OpenAI is now talking about,
S1: where it could do it better than Einstein or whatever. Well, fine. Cool.
S1: Keep working on that. What I care about is human
S1: work replacement because that is a human thing. Humans are
S1: what I care about, not this tech. So the bar
S1: for doing this decently well is not that high. And
S1: that's what I think. AGI is a system good enough
S1: to replace an average knowledge worker. And I think it's
S1: a good definition because it deals with the thing we're
S1: actually concerned about, which is human worker replacement. AGI is
S1: not or should not be about benchmarks or lab results.
S1: What matters is humans and how humans are affected by technology.
S1: That's why I use a human definition of AGI. So
S1: given that, I think we'll get there in 25 or 26,
S1: I'd say 40% likely in 2025 and like 50% likely
S1: in 2026. And I would say like 10% in 2027
S1: or beyond. CIA built a tiny robot dragonfly spy in
S1: the 1970s that could fly 200m to deliver a miniature
S1: laser reflectors for eavesdropping. In the 1970s. 50 years ago. Insects. No. Insects. Orthoptera. Insect. Orthoptera.
S1: That's actually a pretty cool name. Could flap its wings
S1: 1800 times. They're doing that in the 70s. Waymo's autonomous
S1: vehicles are showing they're significantly safer than human drivers. Accident
S1: rate 6.7 times lower than human drivers. United Airlines is
S1: rolling out Starlink. I cannot wait to get this. Cannot wait.
S1: Vision Pro just got a planetarium experience. I still haven't
S1: set haven't set this up. It's downstairs. I need to
S1: update it and get this going. I love planetariums. I
S1: grew up going to the planetarium in San Francisco on
S1: field trips. It's probably why I love astronomy so much
S1: still today. And I cannot wait to check out this
S1: planetarium thing on Vision Pro. All right. Uh, den makes
S1: a compelling case for owning your own corner of the internet.
S1: Argues that while big platforms like YouTube and Reddit are useful,
S1: they increasingly, increasingly optimize for engagement and monetization. This is, uh.
S1: This is what I've been saying. You got to have
S1: a website. This is why, uh, I made the upgrade
S1: to my current website. It's like you got to broadcast.
S1: You got to broadcast yourself. You got to be yourself.
S1: Full spectrum self. Put yourself out there and have it
S1: on your own domain. Using your own tech. YouTube can
S1: go away. You don't think it can, but it can.
S1: It's probably the least likely one, honestly. Um, but anyway. uh,
S1: look at medium. Look at, uh, so many different blogging, Tumblr, uh,
S1: so many different blogging platforms. Myspace that used to be around,
S1: they were the only thing going for a long time,
S1: and then they just disappeared. You need to have it yourself.
S1: Not in some platform. Look, I see people putting amazing
S1: stuff into LinkedIn and LinkedIn could just change their algorithm.
S1: The stuff disappears and you're like, where did that go?
S1: How many hours did you spend putting stuff into LinkedIn?
S1: And now it's just that that's gone. Your your thoughts
S1: are gone. Your ideas are gone. It lives in their
S1: infrastructure somewhere. It's no longer useful to them, so they
S1: won't service it anymore. You need to have your ideas captured.
S1: This is part of Telos. It's part of human 3.0.
S1: You need to have your list of ideas available to yourself. Okay.
S1: You put them online because it helps you track them,
S1: but it also helps other people find you so you
S1: can have meaningful human conversations about those topics. You cannot
S1: do that if the stuff lives inside of medium, or
S1: it lives inside of Facebook or X or wherever. Get
S1: the stuff where it where it needs to be as
S1: your own stuff. Okay. So look, I'm going to have
S1: all my stuff here as ideas. I've already got this.
S1: I just need to move it over. Right? I just
S1: need to go and collect the stuff. But that's where
S1: it's going to be. My list of predictions from, like,
S1: the book Super Forecasting, which you need to check out. Um,
S1: my predictions are going to be labeled, listed and labeled
S1: in the kind of the style of super forecasting which
S1: talks about making good predictions. But you don't want to
S1: be making this prediction on LinkedIn and having it disappear.
S1: And you can't even remember. I had to write a
S1: rag for myself, which I just recently did. That allows
S1: me to query any content that I've made I've made
S1: since 1996. Right. Um, and you want to be able
S1: to do that for yourself? You want to be able
S1: to say, what was that thing I was talking about
S1: that about, uh, that pizza recipe or woodworking or, um,
S1: how to play the guitar a certain way. Right. These
S1: these are all deeply human things. You need to have
S1: access to them. This is like a second brain. This
S1: is the augmentation of your brain with tech around you
S1: that helps you remember who you are and what you are.
S1: Continuing on here, the chart of everything economists created a
S1: stunning visualization to show how literally everything in existence emerged
S1: from the Big Bang. This one was really cool. How
S1: do you fit everything in the universe on a chart? Okay.
S1: That one, that one's paywalled. I need to log in.
S1: Paul Cohen makes a compelling case for universities to start
S1: training polymaths again instead of specialists arguing that modern problems
S1: like climate change and sustainability require broad systems level understanding 100% agree.
S1: Massive 40% 44% of US unicorn founders between 97 and
S1: 2019 were born outside the US. That's half guys. Half.
S1: Half of unicorn founders from the last 20 years are
S1: foreign born. That is how crucial immigration is. Survey of
S1: 86 convicted burglars confirms that security cameras and alarms actually
S1: do work as deterrents. Ideas I as founder augmentation and
S1: bet on doers that treat failure as fuel. This is
S1: why I'm so big on, uh, Jensen Huang and Elon
S1: is because they just push, push push push wake up
S1: in the morning. Similar to myself. I wake up in
S1: the morning and I'm just like massively excited. I'm like, oh,
S1: there's so much I need to do. I've got to
S1: fix the website. I've got to do all these things.
S1: I've got all these cards in front of me, I've
S1: got my projects list for the year. I'm just like, boom, boom, boom, Go.
S1: You want to bet on people like that? I'm actually
S1: betting on people like that because I'm in Tesla and
S1: I'm in Nvidia. In terms of stocks, the point is
S1: it's not because of the model Y or the 4090 GPU.
S1: It's because of the person. So that's the point there. Discovery.
S1: New Kaido Kaido plugin product by my buddies Joseph Thacker
S1: and Justin Rhino Rader. Basically, this is a new plugin
S1: for using AI to help you do security assessments, especially
S1: on web apps within Kaido, which is a burp competitor.
S1: And Joseph launched this as a product. Well, both of
S1: them launched it as a product. So it's a plugin
S1: inside of Kaido and you should check it out. Joseph
S1: is a close friend and super cool and you should
S1: go check it out. Brand AI Analysis Tool. Someone made
S1: a cool agent that shows you how ChatGPT perceives and
S1: recommends different brands. This is becoming huge. Okay, you ask
S1: I to compare brands. And if you are a brand
S1: and I says something about about you, guess what? That's
S1: the new SEO. That is the new SEO. Because guess what?
S1: The AI presumably has looked at thousands of different forum
S1: posts or whatever it is representing reality. If you score
S1: worse than something else or it says something about about you.
S1: If the AI is decent, which it probably is, that
S1: thing that's negative that was said about you is probably true.
S1: So this is a way of getting to ground truth
S1: about how you are perceived. You could do this for people.
S1: You could do this for countries. You could do this
S1: for whatever. In this particular thing it's looking at brands.
S1: But this is the this is kind of the way
S1: things are going is you ask AI what the current
S1: state of the world is. That's what this comes down to.
S1: And then if you don't like that Like that state,
S1: you do something about it hitting OKRs versus doing your job.
S1: Great explanation of how OKRs should focus on new initiatives
S1: and changes rather than duplicating regular work tracking. Amen to that.
S1: Amen not amen. I say amen at the table. I'm
S1: an atheist, by the way, so you do the calculus
S1: on that. But I think anyway, it doesn't matter. Raspberry
S1: shake a line of professional grade seismographs for home and
S1: educational use. It can detect ground movements smaller than 1/100
S1: of a human width of hair. So it's going to
S1: hear me listening to music in this studio. I didn't
S1: buy one yet, but oh man, I really want one.
S1: You know what? I'm just going to get one. See
S1: what you made me do. See what you made me do.
S1: All right, 25 Useful Ideas for 2025. This guy Gurwinder
S1: is one of my favorite thinkers right now. This is
S1: an extraordinary list. You should have gotten the newsletter already.
S1: By the way, if you're not getting the newsletter, you
S1: go to Daniel newsletter and sign up for it. That
S1: is the way to get all these show notes because
S1: I'm jumping around all over the place. It's very clear
S1: right here in the newsletter, which is the thing that
S1: I'm reading, right. So go check that out. Okay. Uh,
S1: let's see here. SF purity test. Someone made a hilarious
S1: checklist scoring system for how deep you are in SF
S1: tech culture. Which items like apply to OpenAI switch from
S1: ChatGPT to cloud and back. Uh, told somebody you won't
S1: date because AGI is coming. Those are accurate and they
S1: shouldn't be. YOLO security. Somebody made a parody Pentesting company
S1: website that generates empty pen test reports to make management happy. Yep.
S1: Python one shot tools by Simon Wilkinson CF hero new
S1: tool for finding real IP addresses behind Cloudflare. Technical debt
S1: is entropy in software. The title itself is good. I mean, yeah,
S1: types make hard problems easy. I am a TypeScript convert.
S1: I'm learning it. I'm using it. I'm not learning it deeply. Honestly,
S1: I'm just using it more as I'm building things. And
S1: I'm especially telling my AI to use TypeScript when I'm
S1: having it build things for me. But in the process,
S1: I'm slowly converting over. Oh, by the way, whenever I
S1: do anything with Python, I'm using UV now. And this
S1: is actually in my cursor notes. In fact, I'm going
S1: to show my cursor notes real quick. Oh yeah. Look
S1: at this. Uh, look at that. I almost showed a
S1: whole bunch of keys. And that's specifically what I was
S1: trying not to do. And I'm almost dragged the window
S1: over and showed a whole bunch of keys. Um, I
S1: don't think I am now. So I'm going to drag
S1: this over. Look at this. This is my rules for AI.
S1: This tells it exactly how to build things for me
S1: and how to interact with me, and how to modify
S1: my code when I change code. I tell it not
S1: to do certain things to it. I tell it all
S1: my preferences. I tell it only use UV to do
S1: dependency management, and this is within cursor, where you can
S1: essentially talk to your agent and tell it how to
S1: work with you. All right. Hopefully I didn't dox myself
S1: with anything in there. Hopefully the team will clean it
S1: up if I did. Jetson. Um, okay. Yeah. Speaking of Nvidia.
S1: Nvidia just released a $249 AI computer. It's half the
S1: price of the previous model aimed at hobbyists. I'm getting
S1: one of these, I think. Raspberry Pi, but, like, way
S1: better and cooler. And Nvidia and GPU and AI based.
S1: So I'm getting one and I want one of these too,
S1: but I'm not sure if I'm going to get it.
S1: Project digits you you can develop and run inference on
S1: models using their own desktop system. Hours guide to mechanical Keyboards.
S1: I have the old 75, which I highly recommend, and Lobn.
S1: Nice little tool that shows you which stories are being
S1: discussed on both Lobsters and Hacker News. Recommendation of the week.
S1: When dealt chaos, find a way to benefit from it.
S1: 2025 might be completely insane, but like Littlefinger said, chaos
S1: is a ladder. He actually died in the end, but
S1: I think it's still a good lesson. Seriously though, it's
S1: a tremendous opportunity when change is happening. The more chaos,
S1: the more opportunity. And like I was saying in the
S1: very beginning, the more chaos, the more I think the
S1: bias moves towards people who take action. There is something
S1: to be said for like being cautious and just like
S1: going into a bunker and not doing anything. I think
S1: that is sometimes a way to go. So you have
S1: to use your judgment here. But I would say doing
S1: that too much while there's chaos happening. It means you're
S1: not evaluating the situation and looking for leverage opportunities. Okay,
S1: when there's chaos happening, it means there are new needs
S1: rising up, unfulfilled needs from large user bases, and that
S1: is an opportunity for you to jump in, boom, build
S1: a service, build an application, launch it, put stripe on it,
S1: and boom, you just made a ton of money off
S1: of that and and helped a bunch of people. And
S1: you made it from nothing. You made it yourself from
S1: nothing with I probably, but, um, I would say use
S1: the positive framing for the chaos that is coming. Um,
S1: I'm using this to help myself. I mean, I'm just
S1: as sad about the current state of the events as
S1: anyone else. South Korea is in chaos. Hoo hoo! Guest
S1: 3 to 5 years ago, South Korea would be in chaos.
S1: That makes no sense to me. Like, things are absolutely crazy.
S1: But I'm asking you to use a stoic mindset to
S1: basically say, okay, cool. Lots of chaos. Awesome. That's time
S1: for me to read. That's time for me to read
S1: even more and join book clubs and focus on my
S1: own projects. Oh, and by the way, there's going to
S1: be lots of business opportunities. Cool. I'm finding the positive,
S1: if I can, as much as I can, as often
S1: as I can. And this is a technique for doing that.
S1: And the aphorism of the week when tomorrow is uncertain,
S1: it's often dangerous to be exactly the same person you
S1: were yesterday. Chaos makes it risky to not take risks.
S1: When tomorrow is uncertain, it's often dangerous to be exactly
S1: the same person you were yesterday. Chaos makes it risky
S1: to not take risks.