Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my current or any previous employer. This blog may also contain links to other websites or resources. I am not responsible for the content on those external sites or any changes that may occur after the publication of my posts.
End Disclaimer
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
-William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
AIML
Holy Smokes Reflection 70B: I mentioned this model last week and how it had yet to be vetted, and it turns out things are, “sus”:
Reflection 70B model maker breaks silence amid fraud accusations
Post summarizing:
The underground world of black-market AI chatbots is thriving-
“Illicit large language models (LLMs) can make up to $28,000 in two months from sales on underground markets”
Something New: On OpenAI's "Strawberry" and Reasoning-
“ The AI “thinks” about the problem first, for a full 108 seconds (most problems are solved in much shorter times). "
What’s different about GPT-o1 aka Strawberry
Spends more time “thinking” about the answer- will help in certain domains like coding where a question may be decomposed into smaller pieces.
Painting
Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre, 1974, Victor Pasmore
Cyber
Exploiting CI / CD Pipelines for fun and profit- step by step
“ I discovered a severe exploit chain, starting from a publicly exposed .git directory, which led to a full server takeover”
Markets
Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech-
“Tech has become all Jobs and no Woz.”
Amazon Wants Your Palm and TSA Wants Your Face. What Saying Yes Will Mean- a biometrics primer.
After I chose a credit card to link to my palm? I’ll take, “This comes back to haunt me, for 600, Alex”
“After I chose a credit card to link to my palm, I visited my nearby Whole Foods. I hovered my hand over a palm sensor at checkout and walked out with a box of chocolate-chip protein bars.”
What happened to predictions of a ‘historic’ hurricane season?-
“The trend could be a preview of future decades, in which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted climate change could make hurricanes less frequent, while encouraging a higher proportion of them to become monster storms.”
“There’s still 60 percent of the hurricane season left to go,” Rosencrans said. “We could still end up with another 10 named storms this year, easily.””
Your company needs Junior devs- I will always hire junior developers as long as I have the opportunity to do so.
New blood = new ideas, new brain scratches, new ways of thinking = new dug-out neural pathways for your team overall.
“Coaching junior employees becomes its own force multiplier for innovating at scale. “
“A stable team of long-term colleagues falls into groupthink and loses some ability to innovate. They sometimes form an immune system to outside ideas and experience. Onboarding anyone, especially juniors may seem like an annoying chore, as the colleagues don’t enjoy teaching and learning. We’ve all met that entrenched employee living in their knowledge silo, not excited to open their work up to others. They lose that “learning behavior” muscle.”
Are Professional Forecasters Overconfident?-
Hi- I’m a professional forecaster and I’m here to…guess the future.
“We find that for long horizons—between two and one years—forecasters are overconfident by a factor ranging from two to four for both output growth and inflation. But the opposite is true for short horizons: on average forecasters overestimate uncertainty, with point estimates lower than one for horizons less than four quarters (recall that one means that ex-post and ex-ante uncertainty are equal, as should be the case under RE).”
Ukraine’s ‘dragon drones’ rain molten metal on Russian positions in latest terrifying battlefield innovation- something discovered in the 1890s and used in WWI now being used again in the Russia-Ukraine War, except this time, dropped by drones.
“Thermite can easily burn through almost anything, including metal, so there’s little protection from it.
It was discovered by a German chemist is the 1890s and was originally used to weld railroad tracks.
But its military potency soon became apparent, with the Germans dropping it from zeppelins as bombs over Britain in World War I, according to a history from McGill University in Montreal.”
Misc
Perplexing the Web, One Probability Puzzle at a Time- Do you like brainteasers?
Bill Belichick’s Unexpected Second Act: Media Star- Belichick is so knowledgeable in a completely technical, rabbit hole way about football that I find listening to him talk almost soothing, like a Belichick lullaby…too much?
The Hobby That Changed My Life- Ryan travels and makes sure there’s a pool nearby. I travel and make sure there’s a bjj school to drop in for a couple days.
Podcasts for a Road Trip
Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen
Books
My Favorite Business Mischief Books
4 books I’ve read and 5 books I want to read