- Unsupervised Learning
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- Unsupervised Learning Newsletter No. 294
MEMBER EDITION | Episode 294 | Monday: August 16, 2021
SECURITY NEWS
The NSA has signed a little-known $10 billion contract with Amazon to put their data in the cloud. More
Researchers at DEFCON talked about they used an AI service to write customized phishing emails for attacking a target. More
Microsoft released 44 security updates, and one was for a zero-day in the Update Medic service. More
There's a random number generator flaw in billions of IoT devices, and most will never be patched. More
Chinese hackers went after Israel while dropping false flags to appear as Iranians. More
Synology is now following QNAP in having ransomware affect their internet-facing NAS devices. More
Vulnerabilities:
Incidents:
St. Joseph's Candler health system in Georgia has had a data breach. More
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
TikTok has passed Facebook as the most downloaded app of 2020. More
OpenAI has improved its engine that translates natural language to code. More Demo
Netflix is facing headwinds on user growth, so they're cracking down on account sharing. They're doing VPN bans now. More
Deepfakes are now being used to make business pitches. More
Some people in tech are working multiple remote jobs at the same time. I think this is what keeps some managers up at night, and makes them want to force normal office commutes. More
Reddit is now worth more than $10 billion. More
Companies:
Disney+ has hit 116 million subscribers already. More
HUMAN NEWS
"There was no "Afghan Government." It was a fiction the entire time backed only by US dollars, US blood, and US military might. The lie of building up a credible ally for 20 years falls in just 3 weeks Every General, diplomat, and President who pushed this lie is responsible." More
It appears that Moderna is far more effective than Pfizer against Delta. More
The pediatric medical bed situation in the US seems . More
To address climate change, Methane is more important than CO2 because it's 80x more potent. More
Ariana Grande did a virtual concert in the Fortnite metaverse. More
CONTENT, IDEAS & ANALYSIS
Machine Learning is Pattern Matching For Things That Matter to Humans — My latest attempt to explain AI/ML in a way that resonates with both engineers and regular people. More
What Happened to the Intellectual Dark Web? — How is Sam Harris one of the few sane members left in the IDW? More
The EM Wave of Crisis and Appreciation — Humanity's oscillation between thriving and suffering. More
I'm So Very Sad About Afghanistan — Such an overwhelming human failure. What's the plan now? More
Apple's Privacy MIsstep — Apple's CSAM debacle has disappointed me. More
Why is the NYTimes So Down on the US and The West? — My new essay on how the NYTimes is constantly bashing the West, and what we can do about it. More
NOTES
As you just saw above, I wrote six short essays this week. That's the most writing I've done in years. The new routines coming from the move are starting to pay their dividends.
I got my Reverse Osmosis water filter installed for the house. I ended up getting the iSpring RCC7AK 6-Stage model, after many recommendations from the UL community. Thank you so much for all that great feedback! The water tastes spectacular. I do have a very slow leak coming from one of the three filter housings however, right at the top where it screws in. I'm going to call iSpring and see if they can help me out, but I think it could be that it's too tight and is smashing the o-ring too much? So I'll be really happy with it once I get that taken care of.
I had another run-in with plagiarism while perusing r/netsec. Someone lifted my entire talk on Security by Obscurity, and then had the gumption to ask his Patreon supporters for money based on the content he's producing. Super annoying. But I always come into these thinking the person is young, and could be open to change. More
DISCOVERY
Portswigger's Top Attacks from DEFCON and Blackhat More
An interview with the security community's d0nut, who is awesome. More
Red Teaming Notes — A collection of notes on Red Teaming. I wish more people did this kind of thing. More
Threat hunting with Kubernetes audit logs. More
Someone likes Nano's modeless vibe, but wanted to make it work more like Vim. More
Falsehoods that programmers believe about phone numbers. More
Malware Unicorn's reverse engineering classes. More
Diablo II Resurrection goes into open beta on August 20th. More
DirtyWords — A targeted wordlist generator. More
This movie CODA has great reviews from Sundance, and I'll be watching it soon. More
Programming Idioms — A list of programming idioms. More
A visual OSINT breakdown of location tracking. More
RECOMMENDATIONS
If you know someone with family in Afghanistan, reach out to them.
APHORISMS
“No man is free who is not a master of himself.”
~ Epictetus