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

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

• SECURITY

• AI / TECH

• HUMANS

• IDEAS

• DISCOVERY

• RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

• APHORISM OF THE WEEK

Hey there!

• 👋🏼Going forward I’ll be sending this newsletter from
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• My final analysis on the 2024 US Election.
  MORE ^POLITICAL

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  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 

Continue reading online to avoid the email cutoff

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

ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ
@DanielMiessler

My new favorite way of talking about politics is to have someone
describe the world they want to live in.

Mute the sound and look at this video.

This, combined with Star Trek The Next Generation’s Federation is what I
want to help build.

youtu.be/MS-sJQkr0H4
Eat today, feed tomorrow
Chobani believes how we eat today has a direct and lasting impact on
what tomorrow brings. 

7:28 PM • Nov 4, 2024

  

2 Likes  
0 Retweets  

1 Reply

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.

Trump or Kamala? Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris Debate.

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

❝  

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

  Maria Rilke

Thank you for reading. Please forward to a friend and/or share on socials to
help support the work.

🫶🏼

Daniel