UL NO. 429: Build Your Career Around Problems

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff issue

Unsupervised Learning is about the transition from Human 2.0 to Human
3.0 in order to survive and thrive in a post-AI world. It combines
original ideas and analysis to provide not just the most important
stories and trends—but why they matter, and how to respond.

TOC

• NOTES

• MY WORK

• SECURITY

• TECHNOLOGY

• HUMANS

• IDEAS & ANALYSIS

• RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

• APHORISM OF THE WEEK

NOTES

Hey there,

So Llama3 came out last week, and it’s really impressive. I’ve been playing
with this new AI UI called
Bolt.ai, which is quite nice. It’s basically a full application with a lot of the
UX behavior of ChatGPT, but with the ability to use lots of different
models.

There are many web versions of this type of thing, but this is much easier
to install on a Mac.

Bolt.ai

Anyway, Llama3 has been pretty impressive at the 70B level. I haven’t done
full testing yet, but I’ve had it generate at least a few responses that
felt GPT-4-ish, and many that felt way worse. Remember that shaping open
models with good system prompts is super important, and that going over the
context window (8K for Llama3) makes it act crazy.

Also, Llama3 is significantly less restricted than previous models. In a
lot of ways it behaves more like an uncensored model, especially if you
tell it to act like one.

It’s insane to me that we’ll soon have GPT-4 level local models. Free.
Local. And the resources required to run them will keep coming down. This is
especially trippy when you realize that our standards for their performance
will plateau for most tasks.
Meaning, we’ll soon be able to do some massive percentage of everyday
human tasks using local models that cost virtually nothing.

More stuff going on:

• Continued prep for B-Sides/RSA shenanigans.

• Remember to come say hi or should from across the room if you see me
  around BSides or RSA. Hugs, waves, finger guns, or fist-bumps all
  accepted, according to your preference. If I seem distracted, not very
  social, shy, introverted, awkward, etc., it’s because I am those things
  at that moment. Apologies. We can re-sync after.

• My last few talks have gone extremely well. And one of them I didn’t
  even present that well due to some technical issues with the venue.
  There is just tremendous power in
  speaking to share an idea rather than trying to “execute a
  presentation” that people hopefully don’t think sucks. Night and day
  difference.

• Updated the intro to the newsletter, focusing on Human 2.0 to Human 3.0.
  Let me know what you think by replying!

• Another experiment this week: I sprinkled DISCOVERY into each of the
  SECURITY, TECH, HUMAN sections rather than being dedicated. Let me know
  what you think of that by replying as well! I like it because it’s
  clean, but don’t like it because it mixes news with links. Let me know
  your throughs.

Oh, and you HAVE to go listen to this conversation between Tyler Cowen
and Peter Thiel. I’m not a Peter Thiel fan because reasons but this conversation has
caused me to re-think my assessment of his intelligence and understanding of
the world. This conversation went from The Bible, to Shakespeare, to Star
Wars, to the Antichrist. Seriously impressive. And if you’re wondering how I
of all people could recommend Peter Thiel, see the
Ideas
section below.
MORE

Tyler Cowen and Peter Thiel on Political Theology (Ep. 210)

Unveiling the dangers of just trying to muddle through

conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/peter-thiel-political-theology

Ok, let’s get to it…

MY WORK

Wrote a new essay on how the old paradigm of planning a career no longer
works.
READ IT

Plan Your Career Around Problems

It’s no longer safe to work in an “industry” without knowing what problems
you’re solving

danielmiessler.com/p/plan-career-around-problems

SECURITY

The US House just passed a bill making it illegal for the government to buy
your data without a warrant, calling it “The Fourth Amendment is Not For
Sale.”
MORE

This is in response to people finding out that government agencies were
just outright buying US citizens’ data from data brokers. I love this
move.

Sandworm, a notorious Russian hacking group, has been linked to a
cyberattack on a Texas water facility.
MORE

The House just passed a bill that could ban TikTok in the U.S. if it’s not
sold of to a US company.
MORE

MITRE was compromised by state-affiliated attackers using two Ivanti VPN
zero-days. China-based attackers are suspected.
MORE

A flaw in PuTTY versions 0.68-0.80 lets attackers with 60 cryptographic
signatures from a user figure out their private keys offline.
MORE

Sponsor

Learn How to Demonstrate Secure AI Practices with ISO 42001

How are you proving your AI practices are secure? ISO 42001 was recently
introduced to help companies demonstrate their security practices around
AI, in a verifiable way.

Join Vanta and A-LIGN for a live session on May 14
to dig into ISO 42001— what it is, what types of organizations need it,
and how it works.

Discover the components of the framework

Gain insights into which organizations can benefit most

Learn practical strategies
and best practices for successfully integrating ISO 42001 into your
organization

Register to save your spot.

 vanta.com/webinars

Register Here

   

FBI Director Christopher Wray highlights an urgent shift in Chinese hacking
strategies, saying they’re aiming to gain the ability to disrupt U.S.
critical infrastructure by 2027 as part of prep for going into Taiwan.
MORE

Moxie Marlinspike says he’s no longer affiliated with Signal.

I’ve never loved Signal so I’m going to be asking more people to switch
back to Messages. Moxie was the only reason I saw it as equal or superior,
and with him gone I see no reason to stay. MORE

Sponsor

VIRTUAL OPEN SOURCE POWERED SECURITY CONFERENCE

Join us for Hardly Strictly Security: The Ultimate Open Source Cybersecurity Conference. This Thursday, April
25th! This free, virtual conference is for security engineers, red teamers, bug bounty hunters, and security
leaders. Hear from speakers from Vercel, Hashicorp, Datadog, Fastly, and
others who have leveraged open source tools to make themselves – and all
of us – more secure.

 hardlystrictlysecurity.io

Join Us!

   

Sacramento International Airport had to stop flights due to a deliberately
cut AT&T internet cable that provided internet to the airport.
MORE

Tailscale SSH, now generally available, simplifies SSH by managing
authentication and authorization. | by
Tailscale |
MORE

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff issue

TECHNOLOGY

DeepMind’s boss says Google’s set to outspend everyone in AI, hinting at
dropping over $100 billion into the tech.
MORE

Outspending isn’t the same as outproducing or outshipping. The company
has lost the ability to ship good products because they’re not guided by
vision and customer needs anymore. They’re guided by an ancient GMail
culture of engineers making stuff and throwing it at the wall to see if
someone likes it.

I think they need a fresh start with new senior leadership.

Stanford’s released a quality report on the state of AI models. Here’s a
Fabric create_micro_summary:
MORE

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:

• The 2024 AI Index Report by Stanford University highlights AI’s growing
  societal impact, technical advancements, and investment trends.

MAIN POINTS:

• AI surpasses humans in specific tasks but not in complex reasoning and
  planning.

• U.S. leads in AI model development with industry-dominating frontier
  research.

• Investment in generative AI surged, reaching $25.2 billion in 2023.

TAKEAWAYS:

• Training costs for top AI models are reaching unprecedented levels.

• Lack of standardization in responsible AI evaluations complicates risk
  assessment.

• AI’s role in accelerating scientific progress and productivity is
  expanding

An interesting argument about how search engines, especially Google with its
90% market share, can sway election outcomes a lot more than we talk about.
MORE

Another example of the power pendulum swinging back to companies.

Google fired 28 employees for protesting a $1.2 billion contract with
Israel, citing policy violations and workplace disruption.
MORE

Google merged its Android and hardware teams to innovate faster.
MORE

Netflix runs FreeBSD CURRENT for its edge network due to a unique blend of
stability and features.
MORE

Reddit’s showing up a lot more in Google results.
MORE

Apple’s AirPlay is starting to show up in hotel rooms.
MORE

The TinySA is a budget-friendly spectrum analyzer.
MORE

Programming is mostly thinking.
MORE

A broad introduction to AWS logs sources and relevant events for detection
engineering. |
MORE

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff issue

HUMANS

Generation Z is outperforming previous generations at their age.
MORE

This article says societal decline mirrors the “Death Spiral” seen in ants,
where companies and societies fall into self-destructive patterns, often
ignoring early warning signs until it’s too late to reverse the damage.
MORE

Why Everything is Becoming a Game.
MORE

A study found that jobs that require you to think a lot are protective
against Alzeimer’s.
MORE

Bayer is doing an experiment where they remove most of middle management and
let 100,000 employees self-organize. They’re hoping it’ll save $2.15
billion.
MORE

This will be another effect of AI. And I don’t mean AI tech, but AI’s
influence on how to think about a business. AI implementations for
businesses will look at everything in a business, from the products
they’re making, the people they have, and the organizational structure,
and recommend ways to massively improve efficiency by removing
waste.

And that will often mean getting down to vision people and executors,
with very little friction in between.

The term “brainwashing” morphed into a blanket term for any unconventional
behavior in the US, sparking wild government experiments like MK-Ultra.
MORE

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff issue

IDEAS & ANALYSIS

Harvesting Ideas from Questionable People
This episode of the
newsletter talks about Peter Thiel, who is basically one of the 7
anti-Christs in a lot of liberal circles. I dismissed him years ago because
he supported Trump.

I feel like I’ve grown quite a bit in the last few years though. And I am
conscious of making sure I just haven’t become more right-wing. I actually
feel more grounded as a progressive than ever. Not a modern liberal, or
leftist, but a progressive.

I guess my evolution is similar to Jonathan Haidt’s. He was super liberal
before writing The Righteous Mind, which I highly recommend. It is
the book that most influenced me to become a centrist. Not a move to the
right, not a move away from the left, but something new.

The way I would describe it, which is not in that book, is to first define
what you believe to be true, and the world you think we should live in.
Don’t think about politics. Don’t think about parties. Those are all silly
and ephemeral. Instead, imagine the actual society you would like to live
in.

For me it’s something like (VERY raw/crude):

• An understanding that evolutionary biology is the foundation of most
  tendencies and natural patterns for human and other animal societies

• An understanding that we as humans can build on top of those tendencies
  to make something better

• The lack of belief in libertarian (absolute) free will, such that
  criminals aren’t considered garbage, and billionaires aren’t considered
  gods

• Free speech and free press, up to the point of actively/directly
  inciting violence against someone

• It being both illegal and socially reprehensible to deny someone
  privileges because of their race or gender identity

• Human first, tech second

• Humanities first, sciences second

• People’s reputations are harmed when they say things that are untrue

• Simultaneous embrace of progressive and conservative ideas, accepting
  that for each given situation one might be better than the other to
  accomplish the goals of a given individual, family, or society.

• A belief that most people are capable of being good and useful, if
  they’re properly supported when growing up

• A belief that it is everyone’s responsibility to try to help everyone
  get that proper support growing up. Not technically, but as a society

• Taxation is unpleasant but necessary, but we can’t let out of control
  government become so useless that it turns the rich against the idea

• The rich (see lucky) see the raising of the poorest (least lucky) as not
  only good, but good for them as well

• The primary goal of a member of society is to be useful

• The successful (especially the self-made hustlers) are celebrated
  because hustle and usefulness are celebrated

• Society is built on a blend of conservative ideas that respect our
  animal natures and progressive ideas that lift us beyond them, with the
  unifying factor being the lifting of all humans to lower amounts of
  suffering, and higher amounts of meaning and fulfillment

So let’s take those (but a better version, obviously, since I didn’t even
use AI to write those out), and let’s say that’s our society.

Well, now I don’t care about liberal or conservative. Or right or left. Or
any of those labels. They’re stuck in the current time, in the current
Overton Window.

What we do instead is see parties—and the people within them—as idea
sources. Because now I can discard good or bad ideas based on how they
propel or distract from the world we’re trying to build.

And that brings me to Peter Thiel.

I discarded him because he supported Trump. Fair enough. Maybe he was dumb
at the time. Maybe I was. That’s my own value judgement. But the point is
that he could have changed (and I think I heard him say that actually).

But the point is that if I hear Peter Thiel say something smart, I’m going
to listen. And if I hear him say something dumb, I’m going to stop
listening.

Same for Joe Rogan. Or Andrew Huberman. Or even Sam Harris.

In an extreme form of this, if Ghengis Khan has the best bagel recipe on
planet earth, I might use it. And if Peter Thiel wants to get Trump elected
again, which I think would be horrible for the planet, but he also has
something to teach me about political philosophy, I’m going to listen.

I. Will. Harvest. Good. Ideas.

My goal is to have the best models possible for how the world works. And if
Peter Thiel or Ghengis Khan has better models than me for bagels, or supply
side economics, then I will adopt them.

I can do this because I already know the society I want to help build. I
know what goodness is. I know what evil is.

And because I have that footing, a bagel recipe isn’t going to somehow
convince me to want a shittier society.

So, my recommendation…

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

1. Establish your ground truth in terms of morality and the society you
   want to live in. Lock that in without labeling it left, right, or
   whatever

2. Widely explore ideas from anyone and everyone

3. Do not discard people as a source of ideas just because you disagree
   with them on something, even if it’s major. That’s only hurting you, and
   the good you could do in the world as a result of being upgraded

4. Feel free to label people as overall bad, or stupid, but realize it
   doesn’t mean they’re wrong about everything. Example, I know know after
   seeing Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan that Carlson is an actual idiot.
   Like, not a little bit. So I’ve closed my aperture to him largely, but
   not all the way. Again, if he has a great coffee recipe I’ll listen.

5. Regularly revisit your #1 and refactor everything

6. Regularly do #2

In short, don’t limit yourself by closing your ears to everyone who’s stupid
about something. Most of us are.

And on that note, go listen to the conversation between Tyler Cowen and
Peter Thiel. It was extraordinary, and it resulted in me buying a LOT of
books.
MORE

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

❝  

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

  Linus Pauling  

Thank you for reading.

UL is a personal and strange combination of security, AI, tech, and lots of
content about human meaning and flourishing. 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 the newsletter with
them.  

Share UL with someone like us…

Happy to be sharing the planet with you,