Unsupervised Learning is a security, AI, and meaning-focused newsletter that looks at how best to thrive as humans in a world that’s changing faster than ever. It combines original ideas and analysis to bring you not just what’s happening—but why it matters, and how to respond.
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Hey there!
I did some podcasts last week talking about Fabric, and there’s one in particular that I’m excited about. It was not only the best podcast convo I’ve had about the project, but it’s also the biggest channel we’ve ever talked about the project on. Can’t wait for that one to drop!
Also, I recorded a Fabric Introduction Video, which is now on the Github page. It walks through the history, the problems it was created to overcome, and a few of its primary features. Definitely go check that out on YouTube.
Final thing—we’re about to add AGENT FUNCTIONALITY into Fabric within the next week or two. It’s going to be so, so epic. Can’t wait for this.
Let’s get into it…
MY WORK
🔥My new piece on the power of framing, both for personal outcomes and for idea exchange with others. One of my highest-rated pieces ever.
SECURITY
🤮 Avast was allegedly caught selling user browsing data collected under the guise of privacy protection. | MORE
Reddit made a $60M/year agreement allowing an AI firm to train models with its user content, which is seriously pissing off its users and community. MORE
💡We should probably expect more of this, though, since real, actual, human data is about to become the most important thing ever to an AI economy. Although, shouldn’t we also expect people to be using AI to create the content they put on Reddit? ♻️
The Pentagon is looking for high-quality data to power its AI push. The Department of Defense's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office emphasized the need for partnerships with the private sector to scale AI technologies effectively. Just like we said above with the data freshness issue. MORE
Sponsor
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Rob Joyce, NSA's Cybersecurity Director, is set to retire after 34 years of service. MORE
A leaked document revealed the locations of ShotSpotter sensors, which monitor neighborhoods for the exact location of gunshots. MORE
Researchers have found a way to recreate fingerprints from the sounds made when you swipe a screen. MORE
Signal has added usernames, so now you can connect with people without sharing phone numbers. MORE
Incidents
🚨 Attackers are exploiting a new ScreenConnect RCE flaw to deploy LockBit ransomware on unpatched servers. | CRITICAL | RESPONSE: ConnectWise released patches for the vulnerabilities. | MORE
🚨 UnitedHealth's Change Healthcare was hit by a suspected nation-state cyberattack, causing widespread pharmacy outages. | CRITICAL | RESPONSE: Retained security experts, working with law enforcement. | MORE
⚠️ Wyze Incident Exposes Home Video Camera Feeds | RESPONSE: Added extra verification layer MORE
⚠️ U-Haul reported a data breach affecting 67,000 customers due to stolen credentials. RESPONSE: Passwords reset and security enhanced to prevent future incidents. MORE
Vulnerabilities
⚠️ A high-severity flaw in Apple Shortcuts could let attackers grab your sensitive info without asking. | CRITICAL | CVE-2024-23204 MORE
CrowdStrike's 2024 Threat Report Summary (via Fabric’s analyze_threat_report Pattern).
- Generative AI lowers the entry barrier for cyberattacks, enabling more sophisticated threats.
- Identity-based attacks and social engineering are increasingly central to cyber threats.
- Cloud environments face a 75% increase in intrusions, with adversaries exploiting unique cloud features.
- Supply chain attacks continue to rise, leveraging trusted relationships for broader impact.
- The use of legitimate tools by adversaries complicates the detection of malicious activities.
- A significant increase in interactive intrusion campaigns, with a 60% rise observed.
- Cloud-conscious cases increased by 110% year-over-year (YoY).
- Victims named on eCrime dedicated leak sites (DLSs) increased by 76% YoY.
- CrowdStrike tracked 34 new adversaries in 2023, raising the total to 232.
- Cloud environment intrusions increased by 75% YoY.
- 84% of adversary-attributed cloud-conscious intrusions focused on eCrime.
- Interactive intrusion campaigns saw a 60% YoY increase.
- The average breakout time for eCrime intrusion activity decreased from 84 minutes in 2022 to 62 minutes in 2023.
- Malware-free activity represented 75% of detections in 2023, up from 71% in 2022
- Accesses advertised by access brokers increased by almost 20% compared to 2022 READ THE FULL REPORT
The U.S. plans to spend billions replacing China-made cranes at its ports. MORE
Apple is rolling out quantum-resistant cryptography for iMessage. Mad props to be thinking that far ahead. MORE
Microsoft just dropped PyRIT, a tool to make it easier to red-team generative AI technologies. MORE
TECHNOLOGY
Someone used Gemini 1.5 to put an entire large codebase into a single prompt. They claim, like a lot of others, that the million tokens of context is actually relatively bulletproof. Meaning, it doesn’t forget or miss pieces of the context the way GPT-4’s 32K sometimes can. MORE
Enjoyed this article on prompt engineering, which I think is a lot more than it appears to be. MORE
💡I think “prompt engineering” should be renamed something far more lofty and respectable.
Something like: Wisdom Manipulation. Or Knowledge Engineering. Or Insight Whispering. Because the best people at it are good at thinking about the extracts of knowledge. The essence. The je ne sais quoi.
Google has apologized for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated pictures of racially diverse Nazis. Now the bigger pushback seems to be on the fact that the model refused to create pictures of white people. Which is why if you asked for Nazis, you got diverse Nazis. MORE
💡I’ve been looking for a name for this phenomenon where something good is taken too far. So we don’t like racism, right? So let’s make racism illegal. Done and done. Total win. But let’s take it to an extreme and refuse to produce pictures of white people. Fail.
Reminds me of Brexit. You have this idea of independence and identity, which is good, so the UK decides to leave the EU. What? And now most everyone realizes it was stupid, and wishes they could go back.
There’s a lot of that happening right now. A good thing—taken to some malignant extreme—which ends up causing more harm than good. And the US might be about to do its own version of Brexit by voting in Trump because they’re tired of extreme wokeism.
We need to stop with the violent overreactions. They only hurt us and cause another overreacton as a response.
Worldcoin's value has jumped 40% following OpenAI's Sora launch. The surge in WLD's price, now at $7.44, began on February 15, coinciding with OpenAI's release of the Sora app. MORE
💡My (casual, not serious) theory is that Worldcoin is the future currency of the planet. I think Sam Altman is building AGI which he knows will eliminate most current work, and at the same time he’s trying to engineer a UBI-based transition period where people have to be given money to survive (and not take to the streets).
I think Worldcoin is a huge part of that plan. Just an intuition.
Nvidia is blowing up. They just posted a 265% increase in sales, reaching $22.1 billion, and net profit soared to $12.3 billion from $1.4 billion the previous year. MORE
Tech workers are feeling massive pressure with layoffs and tougher interviews. MORE
Google's actions have significantly hindered the adoption and use of RSS feeds. Most of all, killing Google Reader. 😠 MORE
HUMANS
Stanford researchers have developed an AI model that determines a person's sex from brain scans with over 90% accuracy. This not only advances our understanding of brain development and aging but also opens new paths for addressing sex-specific vulnerabilities in psychiatric and neurological disorders. MORE
Ways to age your brain: multitasking, skimping on sleep, sticking to monotonous activities, and overestimating your memory capacity. These habits tax the prefrontal cortex and impair memory formation. MORE
💡My take on young mind is simple: Act as much as possible like a child. Constant new things. Tons of learning. Tons of cognitively difficult things. Tons of sleep.
Gallup data reveals women aged 18 to 29 are now 15 percentage points more likely to identify as liberal than their male counterparts, a gap five times larger than in 2000. MORE
Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is now billions of miles from Earth, experiencing a slow demise due to a software glitch and power depletion. MORE
💡This makes me irrationally emotional. I imagine a loyal dog who’s done SO much for its family. And it’s struggling to stand, to walk, to bark, and to play. Because it just wants to keep being with its family and doing its job. 😢
Measles is making a comeback at a Florida school, spotlighting the risks of low vaccination rates. At Manatee Bay Elementary, only 89.31% of students were fully immunized, below the 95% target to prevent outbreaks. MORE
💡Anti-vax (both left and right versions) is another example of Brexit Effect.
Actually, yeah, that’s the name. The Brexit Effect. It’s basically where extremists take over the narrative and steer the group in a direction that undoes decades or centuries of collective progress.
The average American's yearly spend on streaming subscriptions is nearing $1,000. MORE
A quarter of New York City's children now grapple with poverty. The cessation of pandemic-era government support is pinpointed as the primary catalyst for this surge in poverty levels. 25% of kids. In an American city? Shame. MORE
Germany's Bundestag has decided to legalize cannabis for adult private use, allowing possession up to 50 grams. MORE
Forget about overpopulation worries; we're actually facing an underpopulation crisis due to plummeting birth rates. Global fertility has dropped to about 2.3 births per woman, barely above the replacement rate. MORE
Despite its romantic reputation, France is experiencing a significant "sex recession." A recent survey found that 24% of French adults hadn't had sex in the past year, a massive increase from 9% in 2006. MORE
📄 A study explores the link between Facebook adoption and well-being across 72 countries. MORE
IDEAS & ANALYSIS
I love the fact that we’ve brought back the long-form conversation. I think it would make Neil Postman very happy. Here’s one such conversation between Mike Wallace and Aldous Huxley. In 1958! They’re talking about what will ultimately damn America, and it’s brilliant.
Basically, he argues that the method of control won’t be forced, but rather diversion. It’s essentially Brave New World vs. 1984. And yes, it does look like Brave New World is winning.
Also, what’s so great about this conversation is that Wallace is doing his best to extract Huxley’s vision. He’s challenging. He’s probing. And it really gets to the center of the ideas.
I’m so thankful to Rogan and Fridman for making these kinds of conversations in fashion again. Fridman does this exceptionally well. And the joy of today is that there are so many podcasters doing this now, where back then there were only a few Mike Wallaces. THE FABRIC AI SUMMARY OF THE CONVERSATION
NOTES
I’ve done some insane shell enhancements lately. If anyone’s a nerd about this stuff like me, hit me up in UL Chat. Teaser: Alacritty, Zoxide… UL SHELL NERD CHAT
If anyone wants to buy me this watch, I’d appreciate it. MORE
Or this one. MORE
DISCOVERY
My friend Robert (RSnake) Hansen has released his new book on developing a positive relationship with AI as it becomes conscious. Cannot wait to read this one! MORE
Also check out Robert’s podcast. It’s more Lex Fridman style, and is quite good. Linking my appearance on the show last year. MORE
What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About Mental Health (ft. Lori Gottlieb) MORE
🔍 SiCat — A tool that streamlines the search for exploits across open and local sources. | by justakazh | MORE
🛡️ BounceBack — Stealthy reverse proxy with WAF for operational security | by D00Movenok | MORE
🛠 Try X in Y minutes — A quick dive into programming languages for learners. | by antonz | MORE
ChatGPT Is Funnier Than You MORE
🛠 Augmend — Record your screen. Capture knowledge.
Your team's shared brain. | by Augmend | MORE
🛠JSON Lines — A handy format for storing and processing structured data line by line, especially with Unix tools. It requires UTF-8 encoding, each line to be a valid JSON value, and uses '\n' as the line separator. MORE
🛠️Cloudlist simplifies tracking assets across multiple cloud providers for blue teams. It supports a wide range of providers and configurations with minimal setup. by Project Discovery | MORE
📄 Gemini turns screen captures into replicable code. The tool was showcased in a recent screen capture demo by DynamicWebPaige | MORE
🔓 ArchiveButtons — Bypass paywalls with a simple URL entry and click. | MORE
REMOTE jobs that are always hiring. | MORE
ChatGPT-4 has the same Big 5 personality profile as the average human being. | by Steve Stewart-Williams | MORE
NSA Lead Hacker Explains How to Keep Him Out of Your System MORE
⚙️ Heeps.ai lets you churn out and post articles super fast. | by Amy Wang | MORE
⚠️ A new AI-powered vulnerability scanner detected an issue, showcasing the tool's effectiveness. The detection was shared on Mastodon | by @bagder | MORE
Securing VNC with SSH. MORE
Peter Thiel is paying people $100K to skip college. MORE
People are experimenting with ChatGPT for music creation, sharing samples and techniques online. Someone successfully generated midi music and a computer-generated voice track, while another created a singing voice sample using ChatGPT and the Sinsy voice synthesis system. MORE
Using ChatGPT to Set Ambitious Goals MORE
Meet the new Google sign-in page. Spoiler: it’s more horizontal. MORE
TikToks as Audiobooks MORE
RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK
Take a look at CrewAI. It’s the agent framework I’m looking to integrate with Fabric, and its (AI Agents) are the future of AI. It’s not about individual models or queries. It’s about teams of AI agents working together, in an organized way, with coordination. I believe that’s how we’ll get to AGI, but even before then it’s going to increasingly be the way to get the most power out of AI. Basically all the most advanced functionality will come from agents. MORE
APHORISM OF THE WEEK
❝
If you have a why, you can bear almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thank you for reading.
UL is a personal and strange combination of security, tech, AI, and lots of deeply human content. And because it’s so diverse, it’s harder for it to go as viral as something more niche.
So if you know someone weird like us, please share it with them. 🫶
Yours,
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