I have been drawn to questions of happiness and fulfillment for much of my adult life. I’m not sure the reason for that, but I think it’s a combination of some things in my family history, it being an extremely hard problem, and the fact that so many people I know are deeply unhappy. And this is far…
Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
Philosophers and scientists have been debating the concept of free will for centuries. While there are many nuances and subtleties, there are generally three main positions. Libertarian Free Will is the idea that we have a completely free will that is not significantly determined by our makeup or our surroundings. Basically, our choices are our own, and physics…
The Platform and Candidate That America Needs in 2020
America has been stumbling for quite some time due to its lack of adaptation to a changing world. The classes are separating again (as they always do when there’s no catastrophe), we’re about to lose even more jobs to automation and AI, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for average Americans to afford basic items like rent, healthcare, education,…
Security and Privacy Are Not As Different As People Think
There’s a common belief in InfoSec circles that Security and Privacy are related, but that they’re different enough to constantly mention the distinction. I don’t think the difference should matter much to defenders much at all, and in fact if you look close enough the distinction nearly vanishes. They are simply different aspects of the unified goal of…
Examined But Absurd (A Poem)
How strange it is that we live this way Unable to know what we’ll say We feel control that cannot be And sense a freedom we cannot see Some drive to push and conquer all And those who don’t deserve to fall But what’s deserve when no options exist For the poor are just those with luck that…
The Most Exciting Features from the WWDC 2018 Keynote
This year’s WWDC Keynote was all about software, and it had updates for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Here were my favorites. iOS Share back in photos Siri shortcut integrations Shortcut editor Travel plans Heading home Screentime Time limits Allowances Memoji Personalized animoji Group FaceTime with up to 32 people Pivot directly from Messages to group FaceTime watchOS…
How to Have Amazon Polly’s AI Voice Read Your Newsletter as a Podcast
I’ve just published my first podcast episode (Episode 128) using Amazon Polly—Amazon’s AI-based text-to-speech engine. Listen to the episode here. It’s quite good—much better than the few others that I’ve tried. What I quite like about it for my podcast is that I can use SSML syntax to insert pauses at appropriate points. For example, I like a…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 128
This week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning is now available. Subscribe below and get this episode’s podcast and newsletter. This week’s topics: Pentagon background checks, China using machine learning in schools, Rusian ethnicity detecting AI, US Military presence in Africa, Atlanta lost dashcam footage, Kidnapping insurance, Technology News, Ideas, Recommendation, Aphorism, and more… Listen to this week’s Podcast Become…
Automated Situational Interpretation and Prediction (ASIP)
Any time you see us using cameras to feed a Machine Learning algorithm, I think we’ll start calling that Machine Learning Vision, and, eventually, Computer Vision. The key point is that computers can parse video (and other sensor data) and figure out things that even humans cannot. The combination of audio, video, heat, other types of EM waves,…
I’m Not (Overly) Concerned About Smart Speaker Security, And You Shouldn’t Be Either
I have a 1,001 friends in InfoSec who I hear things like this from on a regular basis: I’d never put one of those things in MY house! I’m in security! They’re going to find flaws in those things, you wait and see! Then when something happens, like a private conversation being sent to a random person, they…
Economic Inequality is the Norm, Not the Exception
I read and think a lot about technology, automation and how it will impact humanity. One of the most important dynamics there is the potential for technology to increase income inequality, and for automation to take jobs from those who need them most. For some reason—perhaps my being born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area—I have…
The Single Reason Harry Potter is Better Than the Marvel MCU
I’ve been having a heated discussion with a friend about why I can only take Marvel movies so seriously, and why it’s objectively lower quality entertainment than Harry Potter. There are spoilers below for Harry Potter, Infinity War, Deadpool 2, and The Bible. The answer is death. Humans, as a rule, don’t value that which they cannot lose,…
Security Report Analysis: 2018 DBIR Report
In this Security Report Analysis (SRA) series I look at various security reports and pull out the main points. This doesn’t replace a complete and detailed read of these reports, but it exposes you to some of the key takeaways that you might not otherwise have seen. REPORT: The 2018 DBIR Report Key points These points are a…
The Waking Up Podcast: Sam Harris vs. Sean Carroll on Free Will
Sam Harris recently had Sean Carroll on his Waking Up podcast, and to my delight they arrived pretty quickly at the free will topic. You can read more of my free will content here. Carroll is both a physicist and a compatibilist, which was both surprising and exciting. It was surprising because I naturally expect hard science types…
John Gruber Wrong About the Duplex Demo
John Gruber of Daring Fireball took a big shot at Google Duplex recently. He basically said that the way the demo was conducted should make us doubt the legitimacy of the tech. Why not demo it live? Why only play recordings? When is it rolling out to actual customers? Was there a hands-on after the event where members…
The Future of Content Destroys the Middleman
I think the content creation ecosystem—especially around blogging—will be ultimately disrupted by the rise of three interlocking componets: Digital Assistants APIs Customized interfaces Google Duplex just gave us a preview of how natural it’ll soon be to interact with assistants. This is currently quite different. There is no Digital Assistant yet, and content and interface are currently merged…
America is Rotting
We in the West are in the beginning—or perhaps the middle of—a catastrophic crisis of meaning. Many of us sense it. We know it’s happening. But it’s hard to corner and identify. And it’s even more difficult when authors like Steven Pinker use all of their intellectual powers to convince us that things are in fact getting better.…
Thoughts on Podcast vs. Newsletter Content
I’m thinking of stopping my regular podcast and only doing my weekly update in Newsletter form. There are a number of reasons. Far more people consume the newsletter. The podcast is actually just the newsletter content (sometimes with some opinion added). The newsletter is hard enough to get out, let alone having enough energy on Sunday to record…
If You’re Not Doing Continuous Asset Management You’re Not Doing Security
The more a company can tell me about their assets the better their security is, and the more comprehensive and realtime the inventory is, the more mature they are. This has been true for me over 15 years of consulting across hundreds of organizations. Click here to listen to the audio version of this essay. But just try—either…
Announcing the Launch of HELIOS
For a number of years I’ve been waiting to launch a project of mine called HELIOS. HELIOS actively monitors a company’s external attack surface in near-realtime and notifies you when it finds anything dangerous. I’m super excited about it, and I think it’s going to help a lot of companies. Ping me with any questions! [ HELIOS: Know…
Facebook’s Failure is a Reflection of American Ignorance
Facebook didn’t fail anyone. We failed ourselves. Sure, they could have been a bit more careful with some settings, but it’s not like they accidentally shared data with a third party. The way Cambridge Analytica accessed the data was completely authorized—it was just what they did with the data that was bad. Facebook’s entire business model is sharing…
My Postmortem Summary of The Sam Harris & Ezra Klein Podcast
If you’re a fan of Sam Harris or Ezra Klein you know that they’ve been engaged in a year-long online skirmish that recently culminated in a direct face-off in the format of a podcast. Listening to the podcast first would be helpful, but not necessary, to appreciate this analysis. I’ve been waiting to hear this interaction finally play…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 120
This week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning is now available. Subscribe below and get this episode’s podcast and newsletter. This week’s topics: It’s 2 billion users now, Liinux beep, Digital Shadows finds fail files, cloud misconfiguration, AlterEgo, AI applications, Alexa sending payments, Tech, Ideas, Recommendation, Aphorism, and more… Listen to this week’s Podcast Become a Member to Get This…
Online Education May Be Poised to Replace Dying Universities
Higher education is in the middle of an elaborate suicide ritual. It’s implements are: skyrocketing costs to students financial failure outdated content (often by decades) an academic infrastructure that seeks tenure rather than excellence an extreme-left attack on freedom of speech These are all combining to put traditional universities at risk. It’s hard impossible to predict the future,…
The Definition of Security is “Without Worry”
A lot of people in Information Security think security means “stopping bad things from happening”. It’s understandable, given that we’ve been practicing it that way for decades now. Basically, security has been synonymous with prevention for as long as most can remember, and that’s the way the entire industry is configured and oriented. But there’s another, far deeper…
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