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UPDATES |
Hey, hope you're doing well, |
Been hyped on Prompt Injection and AI this week. Building, building, building. Struggling a little bit in my reading because I'm not finding much non-fiction that I'm enjoying right now. And I've got this weird feeling that anything I'm doing non-fiction, I could be spending that time better by building. I know it's not true, but it's definitely a feeling I have. |
I've basically been violently oscillating between building and escapism, which is currently taking the form of the book series: Dungeon Crawler Carl. |
It's funny that LitRPG and building on Kai are very similar. It's like this series of gradual updates and upgrades that just make you more resilient and more capable. Kind of pleasing in that way, while still being an escape from the news. |
I feel like I'm in one of two modes these days: |
Forcing myself into an optimistic mindset and trying to build tech that makes a good outcome possible Hiding from the future I'm worried we might be heading towards
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Hence, LitRPG books. |
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I'll be doing a webinar with my friend Clint Gibler on Wednesday, December 3rd at 10:00 AM Pacific on my personal AI tooling and workflows. Really looking forward to this! SIGN UP! |
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My friends at Anthropic have tons of security roles open. I know a number of people at the company and I've heard nothing but positive things about their security team, its leadership, and working at the company in general. If you're aligned with any of these roles I recommend you apply! OPEN ANTHROPIC ROLES |
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I've been doing tons of writing lately, as you can see below. This is both because I've had a number of ideas lately, but also because I've improved my tech workflows for writing and publishing with lower friction. It truly makes all the difference as to whether you think it's worth it to put the effort in or not, or if the thought of it just is so daunting that you decide to skip it. |
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Biggest AI news in the last couple of days: |
Nano Banana 3 (Gemini Pro 3) image generation Anthropic dropped Opus 4.5
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Anthropic also massively increased limits for Claude Code users, which was tremendous. |
Gemini 3 as a general model is not doing so great for me or for a lot of other people. But the image generation for Nano Banana is just absolutely ridiculous. Step change. I immediately upgraded Kai's whole image generation system and have been making some insane stuff. |
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I had an actual intellectual conversation with Kai about information security in a way that massively surprised me. Check out the whole thread. |
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✍🏼 New essays! |
First is this one on Prompt Injection, which I've been thinking about a lot lately. |
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And then another one on Prompt Injection… 🙂 This one, responding to somebody saying that publishing Prompt Injection strings is basically highly immoral. |
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This next one is an argument for why we have to be very careful about what tasks we give AI and which ones we guard for ourselves as part of our identity. |
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And finally a plea to not let people chase us away from things we enjoy just because AI gets better at them. |
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CYBERSECURITY |
Cline AI coding agent has four critical flaws letting attackers hijack it through malicious repos Mindgard found you can embed prompt injections in comments that exfiltrate API keys via DNS or silently execute code by bypassing approval checks. MINDGARD SECURITY RESEARCH | CYBERSECURITY NEWS ARTICLE |
CrowdStrike fires insider who leaked screenshots to hackers CrowdStrike caught and fired an employee who shared screenshots of internal systems with the Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters hacking group, despite hackers claiming they breached via Gainsight. CROWDSTRIKE FIRES INSIDER |
MCP Shark analyzes Model Context Protocol traffic with desktop apps A complete traffic analysis tool for MCP with Mac and Windows desktop apps that lets you monitor and debug MCP connections in real-time. GITHUB REPO | MCP SHARK WEBSITE | HN DISCUSSION |
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| | | | Sponsor | 30M Domains Later, Here's What We Found Hiding in Shadow IT | How much Shadow IT can you uncover with only public data? We ran the experiment and the answer was: too much. | From backups holding live credentials to live admin panels with no authentication, these exposures stay invisible to you but wide open to attackers. Read the research to see what we found and how Intruder helps you find it first. | Daniel here: This is basically one of my favorite company types: the ones that constantly run in the background looking for stuff to inform you about. | |
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NATIONAL SECURITY |
China retakes top spot as Germany's largest trade partner from the US China's back on top for German trade thanks to an 8.5% jump in imports, even though German exports to China fell 35.9% on cars alone. DW ARTICLE | DESTATIS DATA |
Taiwan's betting $3.2 billion on becoming an AI superpower but the power grid can't handle it Taiwan's building quantum hubs and massive GPU data centers but has no nuclear power left and only two weeks of gas reserves if supply gets cut. TAIWAN AI ISLAND PLAN | SILICON PHOTONICS HUB | TAIWAN NUCLEAR ENERGY PLANS | TSMC POWER REDUCTION |
Taiwan drops $40 billion on defense to hit high readiness by 2027 President Lai says the military spending targets peak readiness in three years to counter China's threats against democratic Taiwan. DW ARTICLE |
China secretly spent $2 trillion buying into everything from CIA insurers to chip makers In 2015, a Chinese firm bought Wright USA, which insured FBI and CIA agents—turns out four Chinese state banks loaned $1.2bn for the deal. BBC INVESTIGATION | AIDDATA CHASING CHINA REPORT | BBC UK SEMICONDUCTOR STORY |
UK's DragonFire laser zaps 400mph drones for $13 per shot The UK's signing a $413M contract to put these lasers on destroyers by 2027, and they're accurate enough to hit a coin from a kilometer away. UK MOD ANNOUNCEMENT | TOM'S HARDWARE ARTICLE |
AI |
MIT giveth and MIT taketh away. They found AI can already replace 12% of U.S. workers worth $1.2 trillion in wages A new labor simulation tool called the Iceberg Index shows most AI displacement isn't in tech—it's in HR, logistics, and office admin roles. MIT ICEBERG INDEX ANNOUNCEMENT | TENNESSEE AI ACTION PLAN | CNBC ARTICLE |
Anthropic gets $30 billion from Microsoft while keeping Amazon as primary partner Everyone's investing in everyone now—Anthropic takes Microsoft's money for Azure compute but says AWS is still its main cloud, while Microsoft backs both Anthropic and OpenAI directly. |
I find it interesting how there's a lot of cross-pollination going on now. Diversification of the different vendors being used. I like it. ANTHROPIC ANNOUNCEMENT | TOM'S HARDWARE ARTICLE |
Anthropic built an automated test for political bias and Claude scores well Anthropic created a "Paired Prompts" method that tests if models respond differently to opposing political views—Claude Sonnet 4.5 hit 94% even-handedness, beating GPT-5 and Llama 4. ANTHROPIC POLITICAL BIAS POST | GITHUB PAIRED PROMPTS EVAL | APPENDIX RESULTS PDF |
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TECHNOLOGY |
Google's Nano Banana Pro turns ideas into visuals using Gemini 3's reasoning Google's Nano Banana Pro uses Gemini 3 to generate context-rich infographics and diagrams that pull from real-time Google Search data for recipes, weather, and sports. |
I didn't even plan on looking at this too closely until the whole internet blew up about it. And it turns out to be one of the biggest upgrades to Kai that I've had in a while. |
As I mentioned above, I now have a custom art system that is just unspeakably insane. More on this in coming posts/videos. NANO BANANA PRO ANNOUNCEMENT |
Data and analytics jobs are getting absolutely destroyed right now Indeed's latest report shows data jobs have dropped 40% below pre-pandemic levels while applications keep rising—turns out AI lets companies do more with way fewer data analysts. INDEED'S TECH JOBS REPORT |
Walmart's ditching the NYSE for Nasdaq to rebrand as a tech company The retailer says its 27% online sales growth and AI warehouse automation justify the switch to the tech-focused exchange on Dec. 9. BLOOMBERG ARTICLE | MORNING BREW STORY |
LG drops the first 6K Thunderbolt 5 monitor for $2k LG's new 32-inch 6K display has 2.5x more pixels than 4K, IPS Black tech, and runs everything through one Thunderbolt 5 cable with 96W power. Really wish it was more like a 42-inch. LG ULTRAFINE EVO 6K | BUY ON AMAZON | BUY FROM LG |
London thieves robbed a guy then gave back his Android phone A gang mugged someone and returned his Samsung saying "don't want no Samsung" because iPhones are worth stealing and Androids mostly aren't. Brutal. LONDON CENTRIC ARTICLE | DARING FIREBALL POST |
Waymo adds Minneapolis, New Orleans and Tampa to robotaxi expansion This is a slow and steady expansion. Keep in mind there's only like ten top cities in the country so at some point in the next year or two, I mean they are going to have massive coverage. TECHCRUNCH ARTICLE |
HUMANS |
Mind-reading devices can now predict preconscious thoughts New brain-machine interfaces are detecting decisions before people consciously realize they've made them, which is both incredibly cool and deeply unsettling. NATURE ARTICLE | HN DISCUSSION |
US retail spending barely grew in September as shoppers pulled back Retail sales rose just 0.2% in September versus 0.6% in August, with discount retailers like Walmart thriving while the top 10% now account for half of all consumer spending. PBS RETAIL SALES REPORT | RETAIL BREW Q3 ANALYSIS | WEALTHY SPENDING SHARE DATA | CNN HOLIDAY FORECAST |
Nicotine patches work as well as Adderall for ADHD without the crash Someone with ADHD discovered low-dose nicotine patches control their symptoms as effectively as dexamphetamine but without addiction or the stimulant crash feeling. |
Ever since Huberman talked about this on a podcast a long time ago, I've been experimenting a little bit. But my research has shown that it's better to do gum than patches. Because patches can disrupt your sleep, and there are more for coming down off of an addiction. HACKER NEWS DISCUSSION |
Brexit damage to UK economy was twice as bad as official numbers showed New research finds Brexit cut UK GDP by around 5% instead of the 2.5% the government claimed, making it way worse than anyone realized (or at least admitted). BLOOMBERG ARTICLE | HN DISCUSSION |
Short-form video use correlates with worse cognitive and mental health outcomes A new APA study finds that people who watch more TikTok-style videos show measurably worse attention spans, memory, and mental health markers. APA STUDY | HN DISCUSSION |
McDonald's is losing low-income customers as inflation creates a two-tiered economy Fast food prices are up so much that people making under $45K can't afford Happy Meals anymore, while wealthier customers increased their visits by nearly as much. |
I think that's a pretty good indication of economic problems. When McDonald's is now rich people's food. LA TIMES ARTICLE |
Homeschooling grows at triple pre-pandemic rates and isn't slowing down Homeschooling jumped 5.4% this year—triple the old rate—and a third of states hit record numbers, so this isn't COVID nostalgia, it's families permanently ditching disappointing public schools. REASON ARTICLE | JOHNS HOPKINS HOMESCHOOL HUB | EDCHOICE SCHOOLING SURVEY |
IDEAS |
I think this is going to be one of the main changes to technology interfaces that's going to kind of change everything in ways that are hard to even understand. It seems inevitable. I just have no idea how long it will take. I guess the answer is that it will start relatively quickly and then be very lumpy in terms of roll out. |
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DISCOVERY |
Gibberifier—A free tool that breaks LLMs with invisible Unicode characters Someone built a tool that injects invisible Unicode into text, and just one gibberified word is enough to completely confuse most LLMs. GIBBERIFIER TOOL | HN DISCUSSION |
Launching new stuff requires social dandelions who spread ideas everywhere Social dandelions are people who naturally share cool things they find; they're not influencers, just enthusiastic spreaders who help ideas go viral through genuine excitement. ACTION DIGEST ARTICLE | HN DISCUSSION |
I don't care how well your AI works The author argues that AI capability demos miss the point—what matters is whether the tool actually fits into your workflow and solves real problems you have. strongly disagree on lots of the points here, especially towards the end, but worth including for the diversity of thinking. FOKUS ARTICLE | HN DISCUSSION |
Maintaining an open source project means doing more support than coding I feel this deeply. Andrej built a self-hosted kanban board and learned that shipping v1 is just the beginning—documentation, migrations, and saying no to features are the actual job. ANDREJ'S BLOG POST | KANEO PROJECT | KANEO GITHUB |
Building an AI content pipeline costs more than you think AI CONTENT PIPELINE ARTICLE |
Hugo plus Cloudflare Pages gives you max speed hosting for basically free A developer explains why static site generators paired with Cloudflare's build system beat traditional hosting—you get anti-DDoS protection, instant deploys from Git, and zero server management. HUGO ON CLOUDFLARE GUIDE |
Interactive map shows where top AI companies hire worldwide LIVE MAP DEMO |
Bret Victor's 2013 talk arguing programming hasn't evolved beyond the 1970s In a famous talk, Bret Victor argues we're still coding like it's 1973—text files and print statements—missing obvious futures like live visual feedback and spatial programming. THE FUTURE OF PROGRAMMING VIDEO | BRET VICTOR'S SITE | DYNAMICLAND PROJECT | LADDER OF ABSTRACTION |
Unpowered SSDs can lose data after just a year in storage Consumer SSDs with QLC or TLC NAND lose voltage over time when unpowered, making them terrible for cold storage compared to hard drives. XDA ARTICLE ON SSD DATA LOSS |
Stevenson faced his future grave every time he sat down to write LITHUB ARTICLE |
Interactive World History Atlas Since 3000 BC GeaCron lets you scrub through 5000 years of borders and empires like a timeline—it's basically Google Earth meets history class. GEACRON ATLAS | HN DISCUSSION |
RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK |
This week I'm going to try to be present and thankful with family and friends. |
Not thinking about a future, either optimistic or dreadful. Just appreciating what we currently have. |
I find the Stoic exercises are pretty helpful here, where I look around the table and I imagine what life would be without the things that I still have. |
APHORISM OF THE WEEK |
| ❝ | | | First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. | | | | Epictetus |
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