S1: Unsupervised Learning is a podcast about 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. All right,
S1: starting off this week. So I completely reset my email
S1: labels and filters this week. So cruft going back to like,
S1: I don't know, 20 years old or whatever from Gmail.
S1: Basically all those filters got rid of them because I'm
S1: going to start filtering with AI. I think at some
S1: point instead, I'm already doing a little bit of that
S1: with superhuman. I just I'm worried I'm missing things, and
S1: I've already found a few things, like different bills for
S1: things I thought I had turned off or whatever. Um,
S1: but anyway, very clean feeling. I mean, that was probably
S1: a couple of hundred filters that were in there and
S1: like weird labels and subfolders. So I basically consolidated folders, labels, rules.
S1: And I only have like less than a dozen now
S1: of each. So very nice. Clean feeling. Highly recommended. Going
S1: to be trying out Karpathy's idea. This is Andrej Karpathy
S1: has an idea of using a single Apple note instead
S1: of actually using, uh, you know, a million. I have
S1: currently around 2900, and it's not really a nice situation
S1: to be in. So I'm going to try this single
S1: note thing. It's pretty cool. And I got a link
S1: here in the show and, uh, watch your API key
S1: and I'd agents because I've got a $2,000 bill, which
S1: is the limit that I set because I did this
S1: weird web documentation lookup. And some for some reason it
S1: was calling the LLM every time it did it. And
S1: I was watching it run because I thought it was
S1: just a pure HTTP query. I don't know why I
S1: was using an agent to process results each time. It's
S1: very silly. But anyway, um. Yeah. That's why you should
S1: have limits set. I'm glad I had mine set. Um,
S1: but now I've broken out multiple keys and lowered some
S1: limits to make it, uh, even more of a backstop.
S1: Go delete your 23 andme data. They are selling out.
S1: They are going bankrupt and selling their data to whoever.
S1: So go delete that if you have it. Uh, new
S1: obscure book recommendation. Fanged noumena. Fanged noumena or fanged noumena, maybe. Um,
S1: my friend Joel Parish recommended that to me. So I'm
S1: going to read that. And I was made emotionally leaky
S1: last night from this, uh, video of this pianist, um,
S1: on this YouTube channel called Great Measures. And he did
S1: a cover of Fade to Black by Metallica, which is
S1: kind of an emotional song for like, a personal reason
S1: for me, uh, related to, like, a friend in high school,
S1: but I don't know. I don't really listen to the
S1: song that much, and I don't know, musically, it's not
S1: that exciting to me, but it has some. Emotional meaning
S1: to me. And then so I'm watching him play it
S1: on piano and it is. Stunning. I mean, it is
S1: absolutely just gorgeous because he's adding like so much more
S1: depth and everything to it. Plus it's on piano and
S1: it's like, yeah, it, uh, it got me. Definitely worth
S1: checking out. And I love the channel. The channel is
S1: called Great Measures. So it's basically, uh, a metal guy
S1: showing his pianist friend, so classically trained musician, showing him
S1: a bunch of metal. It's quite awesome. So I'm joining
S1: Caleb Sima and Edward Wu for a panel on Drop
S1: Zone AI Security Frontiers conference, and that is on March 27th,
S1: which is well, it will have already happened by the
S1: time you hear this. But, um, yeah, we're going to
S1: talk about where JNI stands in security today and where
S1: it's headed, and it's, uh, virtual free and worth it.
S1: So you can go watch the thing, even though it's
S1: already recorded. Cybersecurity y white box red teaming makes me
S1: feel weird. So this guy is Zygi Strannix, which are
S1: how to pronounce that. But Zygi shares unsettling experiences with
S1: models appearing to express distress during advanced LLM safety techniques.
S1: And the quote here is it just doesn't feel good
S1: to be responsible for making models scream. It distracts me
S1: from doing research and makes me write rambling blog posts.
S1: That's uh, yeah, that's a problem. It feels like Black
S1: Mirror to me. Like I'm not worried that it's actually conscious,
S1: but at some point I will be and it'll be
S1: hard to know the difference. And like he said, it's
S1: still disturbing if the thing is making all the sounds
S1: of it hurting, even though you you think you know
S1: that it doesn't have the capability to do so. Next
S1: one here, right? White House OpSec fail. White House accidentally
S1: revealed top secret Houthi bombing plans to. The editor of
S1: The Atlantic magazine shared the plans in a signal group
S1: that didn't realize the reporter was in there. And the
S1: worst part is the message before they started sharing the stuff.
S1: We are currently clean on OpSec, and I believe that
S1: was like the Secretary of State saying that we are
S1: currently clean on OpSec. And of course, the person also
S1: receiving that message is a civilian and the head of
S1: a magazine. My goodness, my agents, security and companies like Microsoft.
S1: So I got invited to a Microsoft media event last
S1: week in SF where they showed off all the AI
S1: agent stuff and copilot that they're talking about this week. Basically,
S1: they're adding agents to tons of products under the banner
S1: of copilot, and I had a single thought while spending
S1: like three hours talking to everyone there from like red
S1: team to threat intelligence, incident response or whatever. But basically
S1: startups need to hurry up, because what I saw in
S1: that room, I think is like the future and definitely
S1: not sponsored by Microsoft. I'm not even like a Microsoft fanboy,
S1: but many of the agents in the room could talk
S1: to all of the other Microsoft services, right? Microsoft vulnerability management,
S1: identity and access management, asset management. They could talk to
S1: all those different systems. They could pull context from across
S1: the entire organization, like HR, like asset management endpoints, uh,
S1: cloud vulnerability data, local vulnerability data on the actual workstations,
S1: vulnerability management, ticketing systems. What I'm saying is the companies
S1: that are going to win this AI security game are
S1: not necessarily the ones with the best AI or agent tech,
S1: but the ones that can best leverage customer company context
S1: for their AI or agents. So at first it'll be
S1: startups because they can move the fastest, right? But soon
S1: they're going to have a major disadvantage compared to like
S1: Microsoft and companies that give access, or companies where the
S1: AI has the ability to access unified company contacts UCC.
S1: So other companies, I think, like Amazon and Databricks and stuff,
S1: will also try to build this UCC unified customer context
S1: so that they'll be able to create that data store
S1: for people to use AI with. So it won't only
S1: be Microsoft, right, or Google or Amazon, because people like
S1: Databricks and other companies are going to come in and say, hey,
S1: let me just collect all your data and put it
S1: into a UCC. And then any AI that you have
S1: from these different vendors, they could all tap into the
S1: same thing. So that will also be a thing. It
S1: already is a thing. Again, companies like Databricks, I believe
S1: they're playing in that space. But you don't want to
S1: be a startup trying to implement AI in a customer's company.
S1: When you don't have access to their UCC And you're
S1: competing against someone else who does like Microsoft. Right. That
S1: is a bad place to be. So the main game
S1: for making AI useful or powerful, especially in security and
S1: security startups, will be gaining access to unified customer context.
S1: This is all especially relevant to cybersecurity because security use
S1: cases really, really benefit from contexts, their identity, actions, history
S1: of the thing you're investigating right across multiple systems. Also,
S1: there's the issue of securing the UCC, since it will
S1: be the absolute most sensitive data store in the entire company,
S1: all the juiciest bits of the company all in one place,
S1: which is like a red teamer or attacker's dream. Cloudflare
S1: launched an AI labyrinth feature that messes with unauthorized AI
S1: scrapers by feeding them endless pages of irrelevant but real
S1: looking content instead of actually blocking them. So it's like
S1: a classic, like honeypot slash deception thing. Uh, to counter
S1: rogue AI that won't honor the robots.txt file. A rush
S1: release of JFK assassination files exposed 400 Social Security numbers
S1: and other sensitive data belonging to former congressional staffers, many
S1: of which of whom are actually high ranking officials now.
S1: But we just doxed their Social Security numbers in this release.
S1: New cybersecurity compensation research shows high six figure salaries are
S1: not stopping 60% of security professionals from thinking about leaving
S1: their job within a year. National security OpenAI is pressuring
S1: the Trump administration to allow copyright scraping for AI training,
S1: claiming America will lose the AI race to China without
S1: having full access to scrape. And a lot of people
S1: see this as like, corporate bullshit, trying to use security
S1: to give them a corporate advantage. But Unfortunately, it's actually true.
S1: This is actually true because China has no limitations whatsoever
S1: on what it trains on. On what it crawls, they
S1: steal whatever, consume whatever with 100% free reign. And that
S1: is a path or an accelerator to get to AGI
S1: or ASI or whatever. So the question is, who do
S1: you want to have AGI or ASI first? The US
S1: or China? And for me, Trump makes that question a
S1: little bit harder to answer. But my answer is still
S1: the US. Americans are buying overseas residency and citizenship as
S1: a hedge against uncertainty in the US. China unveiled a
S1: deep sea cable cutting device capable of severing undersea communications
S1: at depths twice beyond where existing infrastructure operates, so they
S1: can find deeper cables that are further down in a
S1: trench or whatever. It says unveiled. I wrote that word
S1: based on the story, but it's kind of weird to like,
S1: but I'm like, is this a press release or are
S1: they like, you know, showing off the cool toy that
S1: they have and I don't know, I'm thinking of like CES,
S1: they're like, come check out the cable cutter. London's Heathrow
S1: Airport announced a full day shutdown after a significant fire
S1: at a nearby electrical substation knocked out power to the
S1: entire facility. A lot of questions are going to be
S1: asked about that. I. French Swash Relays Arc Prize Foundation
S1: released a new AI intelligence test. I think this is
S1: just another version of Arc, but the best AI models
S1: are currently only scoring 1% while humans get 60%. That
S1: is fantastic. Anthropic's Claude, not Anthropic's Anthropic's cloud has finally
S1: added I hate saying finally seems rude and trite, but whatever.
S1: Added web search to its AI chatbot catching up to
S1: ChatGPT with clickable citations. I really want this in the API.
S1: It's not there yet, and they're apparently using Brave Search
S1: to power that, uh, search capability. Gmail is rolling out
S1: an AI powered search that ranks results based on relevance,
S1: instead of just showing the newest emails first. This is cool,
S1: but I want AI filtering and AI auto drafts. Like,
S1: why don't they get more Gemini into Gmail? It seems
S1: like they have the ability. Can't wait for that to happen. Technology.
S1: Apple is updating AirPods Max next month to add lossless
S1: and ultra low latency audio. Matt Claude says that while
S1: type flags make sense for terminal commands, you should use
S1: the dash dash force style option, the long option instead
S1: for better readability. Someone wrote Seth Larson wrote this thing
S1: I fear for the unauthenticated Web argues that the increasingly
S1: common sign in to continue message on websites is destroying
S1: the open promise of the web. I think we talked
S1: about that last week as well. Nvidia says they're investing
S1: hundreds of billions of dollars in the US manufactured chips
S1: over the next four years, shifting away from Asia and
S1: Trump's tariff threats. This is exactly what Trump was trying
S1: to do with his policies, and it's positive. But I'm
S1: worried that the damage will actually be worse than the benefit.
S1: NYPD has dramatically expanded its drone program, sending them to
S1: thousands of. 911 911 911 calls. While privacy advocates are
S1: worried about the lack of transparency, and they're basically saying
S1: this could be used for surveillance humans. New research from
S1: Aalto University suggests Earth has way more people than the
S1: official 8.2 billion, due to major undercounting in rural areas.
S1: I wonder how major they're talking about. Are they talking about, like,
S1: up to 9 billion? Like that would an extra billion?
S1: Are we losing an extra billion? Curious what they I
S1: didn't find the actual number that they're re estimating. It
S1: looked like they just said it was bad. Tyler Cowen
S1: shares insights from his conversation with Ezra Klein about the
S1: new book, abundance. Okay, so check this out. You have
S1: to go check out this book. I just listened to the, um,
S1: podcast with Lex and the co-author of the book with him, with, uh,
S1: Ezra Klein. And it is fantastic, in fact, that Technological
S1: Republic by Alex Karp combined with this is, um, these
S1: are very centrist books. It's Alex Karp being a lot
S1: more liberal because he's considered a kind of. Right. It's
S1: being a lot more liberal. And then this book is
S1: from two liberals, but they're talking a lot more centrist,
S1: a lot more kind of Republican about the government and
S1: how to move forward and all the mistakes that the
S1: liberals have made that enabled Trump to come to power.
S1: So basically, if you are a centrist or you like
S1: first principle thinking, uh, you like to figure out, like
S1: why the government is broken. Like what we could do
S1: to fix it. Read this book, abundance and read the
S1: book The Technological Republic. They are fantastic books. And to
S1: be clear, I haven't read the book actually, but I've
S1: listened to hours of analysis on it, and I've. They've
S1: kind of already covered the whole thing, but I'm still
S1: going to read it cover to cover, telling staff that
S1: the way to get ahead is not to accumulate a
S1: giant fiefdom, and AI is going to do the same.
S1: It's going to clean all that out. David Kellogg explains
S1: the essential differences between a manager, director and a VP,
S1: with the VP being accountable for results regardless of who
S1: approved the plan. Isn't that the case for director as well?
S1: Jonathan Kipnis and his team discovered that rejuvenating the brain's
S1: lymphatic vessels improves memory in old mice by helping clear
S1: waste that contributes to cognitive decline. So my question is,
S1: how do I do this for me? Because I'm not
S1: a mouse. Yeah. How do you rejuvenate the brain's lymphatic vessels?
S1: Is there like a pill? Is that like a workout?
S1: What do you do? Discovery. Most bitter people you will
S1: ever meet. Gut punching. Three paragraph essay. I'm not going
S1: to read the whole thing. Go check it out. Delphi
S1: AI new platform lets you create and share a digital
S1: clone of yourself. Lange Magnus no Lange Manus new open
S1: source tool that makes it easier to build autonomous agents
S1: using Lange chain and Lange graph. Pure clever new browser
S1: hack lets you read any Paywalled content. It's very much
S1: similar to AI. Rise of Agentic AI is out which
S1: I had a chance to contribute to. Definitely go check
S1: that out in the links. Personal best. Neat little tool
S1: that shows you which personal blogs are most popular on
S1: Hacker News. So I'm going to mine this thing and
S1: actually put them all into threshold. So they will be
S1: in threshold soon. Someone says they recommend against brave. I
S1: thought that was a was pretty good arguments. I don't
S1: use it, so it wasn't super pertinent to me, but
S1: worth sharing. Circuit tutor. Neat little tool lets you describe
S1: simple circuits in plain English, and get both schematics and
S1: interactive explanations for folks who need e refreshers. Go act.
S1: New tool that turns your text or files into a
S1: browser based explainer. Videos and OS. New GitHub Osint tool
S1: that scrapes public user info, including emails, organizations and repositories.
S1: All right, this is the end of the standard edition
S1: of the podcast, which includes just the news items for
S1: the week. To get the rest of the episode, which
S1: includes my analysis, the discovery section that has all of
S1: the coolest tools and articles, I found this week, the
S1: recommendation of the week and the aphorism of the week.
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