UL NO. 457: China Builds a Military App Using Meta Llama

Tracking bodyguards using Strava, Bypassing Okta Using a Long Username, OpenAI's Google Competitor, and more...

Author

Daniel Miessler
November 04, 2024

SECURITY | AI | PURPOSE
UNSUPERVISED LEARNING is a newsletter about upgrading to thrive in a world full of AI. It’s original ideas, analysis, mental models, frameworks, and tooling to prepare you for the world that’s coming.

TOC

Hey there!

  • 👋🏼Going forward I’ll be sending this newsletter from [email protected] instead of [email protected], so please add [email protected] to your contact list to avoid future newsletters going to spam. 🫶🏼

  • My final analysis on the 2024 US Election. MORE POLITICAL

  • Really want to switch to nushell, but it looks highly complicated and I don’t want to use this optimization as an excuse not to do other work. LOVE the idea of output as data though. Definitely heading this direction soon. NUSHELL

SECURITY

Chinese military researchers have supposedly used Meta's Llama AI model to develop a defense chatbot called ChatBIT, which is pretty much exactly what people like me were worried about with open-source AI. MORE 

💡There’s an obvious tradeoff of risks here. On one hand, you have big model vendors hoarding all the IP and becoming EvilCorps, and on the other hand, we open source the intelligence that our enemies use to attack us. Or if it’s ASI eventually, maybe worse.

I’m honestly agnostic on this right now. The details matter a lot in deciding which is better, and the situation and calculus change constantly. But I think I lean towards not open-sourcing the best models like Llama 3 405B, Llama 4, etc.

It’s been possible to track the movements of world leaders like Joe Biden and Donald Trump through their bodyguards' activity on Strava. French newspaper Le Monde found that some US Secret Service agents use the app, revealing sensitive locations like a San Francisco hotel where Biden met Xi Jinping. MORE 

LastPass is warning users about scammers promoting a fake support number through 5-star reviews on its Chrome extension. The number, 805-206-2892, leads callers to a site where they're tricked into downloading a remote support program that’s actually malware. MORE 

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Researchers used the new real-time API in ChatGPT-4o to create voice-based financial scams like bank transfers and credential theft with success rates between 20-60%. MORE 

Cisco Talos found five out-of-bounds vulnerabilities in NVIDIA's shader processing and eleven in LevelOne routers. MORE 

Okta has patched an issue where you could login without a password if your username was over 52 characters. Jesus. How had this never been hit by all the testing they must go through? MORE 

The US has charged Russian national Maxim Rudometov for developing the RedLine infostealer after they gained full access to the malware's source code and infrastructure. MORE 

The U.S. military has made its first confirmed purchase of OpenAI products for AFRICOM, marking a significant step in OpenAI embracing the adoption of AI into national security. MORE 

Bellingcat has geolocated the site where Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by the IDF in southern Gaza. Using IDF videos and images, the location was pinpointed to Gaza’s Tal as-Sutlan area at coordinates 31.3055, 34.2467. Key visual markers included a gazebo, a red building, and a white residential tower. MORE 

AI / TECH

SearchGPT is now available to replace Google with OpenAI web search. This is basically OpenAI’s replacement for Google. I’ve switched to it as my main way of doing search. It’s vastly better than either Google or Perplexity for most of my use cases. MORE

SearchGPT results

Big week for OpenAI because you can now talk to your ChatGPT app on Mac/Windows as well. This is huge because much of AI advancement at this point is about the ease of instant use rather than just the intelligence of the models. MORE 

Google's AI is now generating over a quarter (🤯) of its new code, which engineers then review and accept. MORE 

💡Um, this whole AI thing started like 2 years ago. And Google is using it to generate over a quarter of its code. Imagine what this will be in 2 more years.

I cannot express to you how much you need to become all of these if you want to be employed / employable going forward.

  1. Thinker / Creator

  2. Product Manager

  3. Developer (AI Augmented, of course)

  4. Sales / Marketing expert (AI Augmented, of course)

These are all merging. It’s all one thing. It’s just called being in the workforce.

You have to be able to come up with ideas, implement them, and then get them to market. Full stop. This is the work side of Human 3.0.

Hamel Husain shares insights on setting up LLM-as-a-judge systems to evaluate AI outputs effectively. He highlights common pitfalls like unmanageable metrics and arbitrary scoring, and introduces "Critique Shadowing" to streamline evaluations. MORE 

Meta is using over 100,000 Nvidia H100 AI GPUs to train Llama-4. MORE 

Microsoft's GitHub is no longer exclusive with OpenAI, now integrating Anthropic and other models. 💪🏼 MORE 

Meta is developing its own AI-powered search engine to reduce reliance on Google and Microsoft. So happy the search space is getting blown open! People are tired of pages of ads, and the world is adapting. MORE 

Ghost jobs are fake job listings that are frustrating tech workers, especially in California. A 2024 survey found 81% of recruiters admitted to posting these ads, often to gauge employee replaceability or create an illusion of stability. MORE 

DecartAI's Oasis world model is a new AI-powered Minecraft clone that runs without a game engine. It’s rendered on the fly using AI. MORE 

Dropbox is laying off 20% of its workforce, cutting 528 jobs due to slowing growth. I don’t see how this could have gone any other way. All main platforms will have cloud storage, and it’ll get harder and harder to compete with them over time. Seems natural. MORE 

Claude can now view images within a PDF, expanding its capabilities beyond text. MORE 

There's a surge in "national-interest startups" in Silicon Valley, focusing on tech that benefits the US directly. These companies, part of a trend called American Dynamism or New World, are working on projects in aerospace, critical infrastructure, and government sectors. MORE 

Google is adding a Google Home extension to the Gemini app, letting you control your smart home with natural language prompts like "Set the dining room for a romantic date night." MORE 

💡Super excited about this. And we’re seeing the same promise (hopefully) with ChatGPT integration with Siri. Basically we need real AI in these home automation systems. There are risks though, so it needs to be done carefully.

HUMANS

Warren Buffet is selling Apple and BofA and going HEAVY into cash. Question: What does he see that we don’t? MORE 

💡I’ve been tracking a lot of analysis on this and I keep hearing that you don’t want to be in cash because of inflation. Which means he sees something that is going to hurt equities even more?

Research says starting a business might actually reduce stress. Entrepreneurs report lower stress levels, better health, and more meaningful careers compared to traditional employees. MORE 

💡This is all very Human 3.0 as well. They have less stress because they have a vision for how to solve a problem, and they’re pursuing it—which is one of the centers of happiness.

Note: Being a founder can also be extremely stressful as well. But it’s a different kind of stress if you believe in the mission as opposed to being at a random company being tossed around by idiot middle managers.

Someone sequenced a genome in just 24 hours using a device plugged into their laptop. Way different than the 90s when the Human Genome Project cost billions and took years. MORE 

A study found that even minor dehydration (less than 1% body mass loss) can negatively impact cognitive functions like memory and attention. MORE 

A study found that sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration. MORE 

NASA's Voyager 1 had to switch to a backup radio transmitter that hasn't been used since 1981 due to recent communication issues. Worked fine. But iOS 18 is super buggy. MORE 

A new US rule now mandates automatic refunds for canceled or significantly delayed flights, so no more begging airlines for your money back. MORE 

Plants use air gaps between their cells to scatter light, helping them determine its direction and grow toward it. MORE 

IDEAS

DISCOVERY

Add study.new in front of any YouTube Video and open a chat with the video! MORE

Wasp Flamethrower Drone Attachment — This drone kit lets you attach a flamethrower to your drone, offering a 25ft range and a 1-gallon fuel capacity for 100 seconds of firing time. MORE 

 vim-medieval — This Vim plugin lets you evaluate code blocks directly within Markdown files. By using the :EvalBlock command, you can execute code and even redirect output to other blocks for a form of literate programming. MORE 

Vector databases are the wrong abstraction MORE 

Prompts are Programs MORE 

My post on how to fix WiFi Roaming in Ubiquiti MORE

Brendan Gregg has introduced AI Flame Graphs, a new tool for visualizing AI model performance and resource usage. MORE 

Do Hard Things Carefully MORE 

Pimp My Man — This article explores enhancing the experience of using man pages by changing the default pager. The author suggests using bat, a Rust-based tool that offers syntax highlighting, as a replacement for less. Alternatively, neovim can be used for those who prefer a color scheme, though it may be slower due to plugin loading. MORE 

My setting: 

export MANPAGER='nvim +Man!'

Transformer Explainer — This tool from the Polo Club of Data Science at Georgia Tech visually breaks down how Transformer models like GPT-2 process text. MORE 

Rachel changed her mind on employee metrics. MORE 

Make It Yourself — A digital book featuring over 1000 DIY projects from creative minds worldwide. Each project links to its original site, offering all the details you need to make it yourself. MORE 

Drakkenheim Maps — A Reddit user, AcrobaticLanguage517, has shared a collection of 104 AI-generated maps for Drakkenheim, a setting for Dungeons & Dragons. MORE 

lynx.boo — A minimalist website for sharing all your links. Just enter your username, click "Edit/Create," and you're set. You can update your link page anytime by visiting /yourusername/edit. MORE Title: Show HN: A minimalist (brutalist?) website for sharing all your links

Textcasting — A new approach that brings the philosophy of podcasting to text, allowing for a more engaging and serialized reading experience. MORE 

Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read MORE 

If you're coding or working with spreadsheets all day, consider an 8K TV instead of multiple monitors. An 8K TV offers better image quality and resolution, and can double as a 4K 120 Hz gaming screen. MORE ← I keep thinking about this. Soooon.

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

My two favorite debaters on opposite sides of the election.

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

❝

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Maria Rilke

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Daniel