timeline.523.life

Security Engineering in the Era of AI

The SSDF v1.2 adds two new practices to improve continuous improvement and reliable updates in software development. The update asks whether more tasks, better task descriptions, or extra examples and references are needed for these practices. It also seeks input on other changes needed to improve secure and reliable software development and delivery.

You can manage repository and environment secrets and variables on GitHub using the GitHub CLI even if you only have write access. Commands include gh secret set/list/delete and gh variable set/list/delete with --repo and optional --env. This lets teams avoid giving many people full admin rights while still managing secrets.

Big companies often fail because they wrongly think building the next layer of technology is easy. They know how to build their own products but don’t understand what customers really need in new markets. Success depends more on knowing what to build than on how to build it.

PassSeeds is a hack that repurposes passkeys to generate reusable cryptographic seeds beyond login. It recovers a passkey's public key via ECDSA signing and turns its hash into a BIP-39 mnemonic. The resulting PassSeed can deterministically derive keys for things like Bitcoin signing or other cryptographic uses.

The law of two feet means leave a meeting if you are neither learning nor contributing. It works well at unconferences but is harder in workplaces because people fear awkwardness or career impact. Invoking it after the agenda is clear and in informal spaces makes leaving easier.

AI doesn't think for you — it's a surface you think against. The real skill is modeling the agent's perspective, dialoguing, and refining your idea together. Used well, AI forces more thinking, not less, by helping you explore and clarify your judgments.

Cloudflare had two recent outages caused by fast, global configuration changes that broke traffic delivery. They launched “Code Orange: Fail Small” to introduce controlled rollouts, safer failure modes, and better emergency access. The plan aims to make configuration changes as cautious and monitored as software releases to prevent future wide outages.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor studies how the brain creates our reality. On December 10, 1996, she had a massive stroke that changed her view of the brain. Her experience taught her how brains connect us to ourselves and to others.

In 2026 AI agents will let developers generate far more code than before. Organizations that upgrade review, testing, release, and ops will turn that into much more shipped value. Others will bottleneck and fall behind.

Experts debated whether AI, robotics, and nanotech will outpace humans by 2100. Some predict rapid growth and brain-level machines; others warn of dangers and unknowns. The panel urged careful research, ethical limits, and debate about how to shape this future.

Alone Africa ended in a record-short 34 days when Nathan Olsen won, surprising both him and fans. Early mass tap-outs strained production and left less footage for storytelling. Producers say they may return to desert locations but will reassess for future seasons.

Two former U.S. cybersecurity experts pled guilty to ransomware attacks that demanded up to $10 million from victims. They used their skills to hack companies and hold data hostage, sharing ransom payments after paying a cut to ransomware operators. They face up to 20 years in prison, and their stolen funds will be seized by the court.

Are.na is a platform where you can save content, create collections, and connect ideas privately or with others. It focuses on mindful collaboration without ads or likes, making it easier to work on projects over time. Users can share and connect various pieces of content, called blocks, in organized channels.

Everyone’s using AI to write now. You scroll LinkedIn and you can just tell.

John Cutler urges teams to write simple business cases explaining why they exist and how money in creates money out. Focus on stable, solution-agnostic levers, measurable outcomes, and second- or third-order effects. Use clear tests (pivot vs proceed, smallest viable team, signals of failure) to decide funding and investment.

When tools make work easier, we do more work, not less. AI will change engineers' and data scientists' tasks but increase demand and complexity. Humans remain essential for hard, higher‑level problems machines can't solve.

The text discusses whether machines can think, proposing that the question may evolve over time. It highlights different viewpoints, including arguments about machine limitations and consciousness. Ultimately, it suggests that machines may have capabilities similar to human thinking, challenging our understanding of intelligence.

Ben Bernanke urged graduates to keep learning, grow ethically, and shape themselves into better people. He warned that meritocracy brings luck and responsibility, so the fortunate should share and help others. He encouraged civic engagement, resilience in failure, and defining success by meaning, not just status.

A popular joke says the Velvet Underground sold few records but everyone who bought one started a band. Quote Investigator found the quip likely began with Brian Eno in a 1982 interview. Later writers and musicians repeated and tweaked the line, sometimes adding different sales numbers.

Your education is not just learning facts but choosing what to think about. Most people live on automatic, seeing the world only through their own needs. Practicing simple awareness lets you find real meaning instead of worshipping money, power, or self.

Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad tells the story of 13 influential American indie and punk bands from 1981–1991. They had little mainstream success but shaped alternative rock through constant touring and indie labels. The book is based on interviews, fanzines, and music press and has received wide praise.

Software engineering is about testing guesses against reality, not celebrating elegant ideas. Reviews and tests explore the model, but production is the true experiment that can falsify assumptions. Make small, reversible changes, force predictions, and listen to real-world feedback.

Dawid Moczadło, a security expert, interviewed two fake job applicants who used AI deepfake technology to appear legitimate. Both candidates had suspicious accents and provided responses that seemed generated by AI. Moczadło warns that as AI technology improves, it may become harder to distinguish between real and fake individuals in interviews.

Small online communities face new spam attacks using AI-generated fake applications and posts. These automated accounts are hard to detect and threaten the trust and safety of niche forums. The author worries that AI spam will make running such communities impossible in the near future.

On January 1, 2026 many works from 1930 enter the US public domain, and 1925 sound recordings also join. This lets people freely use those original works, though later revised versions and trademarks (like Betty Boop) may still be protected. Copyright and trademark law overlap, but trademarks cannot fully block public-domain uses.

In 2025, over 1.1 million U.S. workers were laid off, marking a sharp rise in frequent, smaller "forever layoffs." These ongoing cuts create job insecurity and hurt worker morale, even as companies use AI and automation to reduce staff. Meanwhile, small businesses struggle the most, while larger firms quietly restructure and add jobs.

Raymond Tomlinson, who sent the first email and added the @ sign, has died at 74. He created email in 1971 while working at BBN, changing how people communicate. He stayed humble, used little tech himself, and thought email would endure even if it changes form.

Peter Drucker taught in 1966 that executives must get the right things done, yet leaders still ignore that. He showed knowledge workers need autonomy, time management, and a contribution mindset. We should build teams around strengths, make clear decisions, and stop confusing activity with effectiveness.

For fifty years people have hoped new tools would let businesses stop needing skilled developers. Each wave — COBOL, CASE, Visual tools, low-code, AI — made parts of development easier but never removed the deep thinking required. The lesson: use new tools, but invest in people who can reason about complex software problems.

Re-orgs are often gut-driven moves dressed up as analysis. They change boxes, not deep problems like trust, incentives, or informal networks. The result is a temporary morale boost and a structure that looks right to leaders but may not work for teams.

Scholars cataloged Cormac McCarthy’s vast, messy personal library after his death. His annotated books reveal a relentless curiosity in science, philosophy and many obscure subjects. A public digital catalog will let readers trace how those books influenced his novels.

Hackers are locking Gmail users out by changing accounts to child profiles and adding them to attacker-controlled Family Link groups. Victims then lose all recovery options and Google currently says it is "looking into" the issue. Enable strong protections like passkeys, two-step verification, and recovery contacts to reduce risk.

Spaced repetition is a more effective learning strategy than cramming, as it helps improve long-term memory retention. Research shows that actively recalling information, like through self-quizzing, enhances memory better than regular review. However, the benefits of spaced practice can decrease with more complex tasks, and some argue it may hinder abstract learning.

The author added CSRF protection to his Microdot web framework. He found a simpler modern method using the browser-set Sec-Fetch-Site header, with Origin as a fallback. OWASP recently noted this approach, but some caution it as defense-in-depth rather than a full replacement for tokens.

Marc Brooker argues that enabling TCP_NODELAY is essential for reducing latency in modern distributed systems. He explains that Nagle's algorithm, designed to optimize network throughput, can actually hinder performance due to its interaction with delayed ACKs. Brooker concludes that TCP_NODELAY should be the default setting in today's applications, as single-byte packets are rarely used anymore.

Law changes do not always change culture. The author calls deep social impact "culture-shifting" and says it needs broad scope, legitimacy, and strong enforcement. New Zealand showed legal reform alone can leave cultural attitudes unchanged.

Stephen Gaskin, a former Marine turned hippie guru, founded the Farm commune in Tennessee after leading followers from San Francisco. The Farm grew into a long-lasting community known for collective living, businesses, and wide-ranging volunteer work. Gaskin promoted spirituality, self-sufficiency, and practical outreach until his death at 79.

The Artist’s Way is a flawed but effective self-help book that helps blocked creatives by using simple daily exercises. The key tool, Morning Pages, is three pages of freewriting each morning that clears mental clutter and reveals true feelings. Starting Morning Pages can cause upheaval as ignored problems surface, so begin only when you can handle the disruption.

Good architecture reduces the biggest risks to delivery. Focus on the few decisions that threaten scalability, integrity, security, team flow, or time-to-market. Defer other choices until you have evidence and need.

If I look at the past +10 years, I think the hardest message to bring to teams is: plan less. I start collecting data as soon as I can and I look at: what was - planned: by counting, and story points (if they have them) - added during sprint - removed during sprint - delivered I then calculate the total for all these numbers of the last 10 sprints What I have learned: 1) Most (all?) teams plan consistent more then they can chew 2) at least 20% unpredictable work gets added 3) Many teams don't remove work when things get added 4) Most stories are longer then 1 sprint (I saw an average of 12 sprints) 5) In many cases the so called "most experiences developer" is the hardest person to convince (not a manager) 6) No one has any idea of the real velocity 7) When people say a team is unpredictable, in most cases they are rather predictable (as in consistent deliver about the same amount of work) yet their promises are all over the place: sometimes over promising and next sprint under promising. Mostly because of 6 8) They don't know the lead time, not per work item, not average 9) The delivery frequency is all over the place 10) strict delivery rules for planned releases, yet almost no rules for urgent fixes 11) no data on nr failed releases 12) no data on recovery time: how long does it take to fix a problem in production Eg they think they are doing scrum, but they don't I started by saying it was the hardest message, also the one where I have most succes with. My advice  13) start collecting data on all these numbers  14) yes the extra work might be unpredictable, yet in most teams the % of extra work is rather consistent or cyclic 15) keep a buffer for the extra work that is at least as high as your current % 16) split work into smaller work that can be delivered and tested in a week or less All teams tell me it is impossible in their work. In 90% of the cases they are better in it a year later 17) find and show the consistency in these numbers 18) talk ab...

Query optimization is far from solved because wrong estimates of intermediate result sizes (cardinalities) break plans. Major errors come from unknown parameters, poor join selectivity estimates, and wrong ways of combining predicate selectivities. Learning approaches and better statistics help, but they don’t fully fix correlations, redundant predicates, or star-schema intersections.

After the 2019–20 Kangaroo Island bushfires, cavers discovered over 150 new caves, including the large Phoenix cave. The caves are ancient, contain delicate formations and unique blind animals, and reveal past climate clues. Researchers and volunteers are protecting the sites and continue surveying the island’s underground.

Leadership is about seeing the bigger picture. Managers make teams more efficient; leaders change the direction. The jungle story shows a leader who climbs the tree and yells, “Wrong jungle!”

A CISO used the FAIR risk model to turn vague security asks into clear rupee-based risk reductions. He showed how three investments (ZTNA, DSPM, XDR) cut annualized losses far more than their cost and lowered insurance premiums. The board approved ₹5 Crores because the math proved these purchases were savings, not expenses.

Charles-Joseph Minard was a 19th-century French engineer who turned precise statistics into clear, beautiful maps. He invented key infographic elements like proportional circles and flow maps that show quantities and movement. His designs shaped modern data visualization and remain influential today.

Tony Martin‑Vegue praises Minard’s 1869 chart of Napoleon’s march as the gold standard of data visualization. The chart combines six variables—army size, geography, direction, distance, time, and temperature—into one clear image. Great visualization gives an immediate insight and then reveals more on closer look.

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services are gaining popularity for consumer transactions, offering installment payment options. Businesses use BNPL as a marketing tool, sharing payment risks with capital partners. BNPLs aim to influence consumer purchasing behavior and shift credit costs away from end users.

Most rejected CfP abstracts fail because they are vague, not tailored to the audience, or don’t explain why the speaker is the right person. A strong abstract clearly states who the talk is for, what specific points it will cover, and the concrete takeaways attendees will gain. Show your unique experience briefly to prove you can deliver real value.

Successful change agents are more effective when they are central in the organization's informal network. The nature of their network, whether bridging or cohesive, also plays a crucial role in implementing different types of changes. Building relationships with fence-sitters, who are ambivalent about change, is beneficial for driving successful initiatives.

Talk with family and document your wishes about medical care, funerals, money, and digital accounts. Use wills, powers of attorney, password managers, and clear instructions so others can act. Update these records regularly and tell trusted people where to find them.

GitHub serves commits from a shared fork network, so requesting a repo by commit SHA can return code from a fork instead of the named repo. Package managers call GitHub's API but get no warning that the commit lives only in a fork, so they can't protect users. GitHub could add an API option to require that a commit exists in the specified repo, letting tools opt in and prevent this supply-chain risk.

In late June 2024 TeamViewer detected and contained a cyber-attack on its internal corporate IT environment. No customer data, product environment, or connectivity platform was affected. TeamViewer strengthened employee authentication and rebuilt its internal systems with help from Microsoft and other experts.

AD4M is an open-source framework that lets agent-centered apps share and use social data across decentralized platforms while keeping data on users' devices. It supports community governance, private and shared “Perspectives” and “Neighbourhoods,” and makes apps interoperable without each developer building complex back-ends. Projects like Flux use AD4M to build Holochain-based social tools and plan to add local AI for natural-language access to user data.

The paper defines five deliberate levels of AI agent autonomy based on the user’s role: operator, collaborator, consultant, approver, and observer. Developers can choose an agent’s autonomy independently of its capabilities and environment. The authors propose autonomy certificates and evaluation ideas to govern agent behavior and support safe multi-agent systems.

2025 showed that AI speeds work but cannot fix weak strategy or broken processes. Teams that had clear goals and alignment got the most benefit from AI. Success in 2026 will come from building strong foundations and then using AI to amplify them.

The author discusses the changing landscape of operating systems, emphasizing how traditional OSs like Windows and MacOS are losing value due to the rise of free alternatives like Linux. He argues that while Microsoft and Apple profit from selling their systems, many users now prefer cheaper, better options that are not tied to these companies. Ultimately, he suggests that the future of operating systems may favor open-source solutions over proprietary ones.

Researchers at Cambridge launched COTSI, a live index tracking prices and stock of fake account verifications across 500+ platforms worldwide. The data show cheap SMS verifications in the US, UK and Russia but high costs in Japan and Australia, and spikes on messaging apps before elections. The team says SIM regulation and platform transparency could help curb this booming market for bot armies and influence campaigns.

We built a civilization that treats growth as a moral duty. People worship more — followers, revenue, progress — because it replaces inner purpose and gives easy direction. But endless growth is impossible on a finite planet, and chasing it keeps us from learning how to stop.

If you want to be a writer, read a lot and write a lot. Reading widely teaches you what to do and what to avoid. True writing comes from joy, practice, and time spent inside the work.

The article explores the author's current thinking on story points and highlights their misuse. The author argues that using story points to predict project timelines is a weak idea and tracking actuals compared to estimates is at best wasteful. Managers' pressure to deliver more and comparing teams are potential issues that arise with the use of story points. The author suggests slicing stories into smaller ones of high value requiring little time to do as slicing offers better value compared to story estimates.

AWS re:Invent keynote was mostly dull until the last ten minutes of rapid product announcements. Some releases were genuinely useful, like long-awaited database savings plans and huge S3 objects. Other launches felt confusing or niche, but a few stood out as impressive.

Your company's success with AI may not happen how you think. It will merely amplify the culture that already exists. Less about tech, more about clarity and empathy.

Science shows supportive people make hard tasks feel easier. Longer friendships make challenges seem smaller. Start a tiny daily "Done" group to share progress and avoid facing goals alone.

Teams succeed in different ways; DORA found seven team archetypes. AI amplifies existing team dynamics—it helps strong teams and worsens weak ones. The key is building collaboration, clear ownership, and culture so AI actually improves outcomes.

The RSL tool lets designers specify report formats simply and automates fetching, formatting, and averaging report data. Using table-driven tools and reusable components greatly reduced code, eased maintenance, and sped feature delivery. The project used small "whole-job" teams that handled requirements, design, and development to stay close to users and keep overhead low.

Claude Diary lets Claude Code turn session logs into short diary entries and learn from them. A reflect command analyzes diary entries to draft one-line rule updates for CLAUDE.md. The system helps capture user preferences and coding practices while keeping human review before updates.

Perl was popular in the 90s because it fit UNIX system needs and web growth. Its culture resisted change, which slowed its evolution and allowed other languages like Ruby and Python to rise. Despite this, Perl remains useful and influential, especially for legacy systems and POSIX tasks.

The Federal Reserve must balance independence with public accountability to keep inflation low and the economy stable. Monetary policy is complex, works with long lags, and must adapt as the economy and financial markets change. The Fed also oversees payments and bank supervision to protect financial stability and support its monetary goals.

The documents describe modern AI tools and architectures for building and deploying generative AI and ML systems on cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes. They emphasize practical benefits—automation, AIOps, and service delivery improvements—plus toolsets like MLflow, Bedrock Agents, and foundation models. They also note the need for responsible AI practices, customization, and secure enterprise deployment.

Test-driven development (TDD) makes developers write tests before code so features are verified early and regressions are reduced. TDD adds upfront overhead and a learning curve, so it may not suit small projects or retrofits. Combining TDD with approaches like BDD or ATDD can balance thoroughness with practical business requirements.

Android implements emoji SMS reactions by sending a specially formatted copy of the original message with hidden metadata characters and the emoji. These hidden Unicode characters mark the text as a reaction for Android, while other phones just show the emoji and quoted text. Quoting the original and adding the emoji can force UTF-16 encoding and greatly increase message size, causing multipart SMS and higher costs.

In B2B SaaS, your company itself is the product and has many audiences. No single roadmap can show everything for every audience. Focus on clear, targeted messages for each group instead of one canonical view.

Steven Gerrard said England’s “golden generation” failed because they were too focused on themselves and did not connect as a team. He believes the players were not close or friendly, which hurt their chances of winning. Gerrard also wants to manage again but only for the right challenge where he can compete to win.

Bad, monotonous design in cities isolates people and can even fuel conflict. The same harmful patterns now repeat in digital spaces like social media, which speed up self-segregation and anger. To fix this we must design for mixed, slower, and human-scale interaction both offline and online.

Relational risk analysis (ReRA) models how human errors (system A) can pass through primary systems (system B) to cause harm. ReRA highlights two ways to reduce harm: lower the chance of human error and redesign system B to block errors. Using SRS diagrams and risk registers helps estimate probabilities and document risk-reduction actions.

Pragmatic engineers choose solutions that work within real-world constraints, not theoretical ideals. They prioritize simple, useful features, avoid premature optimization, and trade off complexity for maintainability. Ask clear questions early, build iteratively with proven tech, and reduce scope without losing value.

Effective project management requires understanding the complex systems involved, not just measuring inputs. Managers must adapt their strategies, much like smart cruise control in cars, to respond to changing conditions. Relying solely on traditional methods, like Gantt charts, can overlook crucial factors for project success.

The author used ChatGPT to generate an article from a blog post about HP’s changing fortunes from the mid-1990s onward. The blog post titled "Atlas Shrugged" is on david-jasso.com. The prompt used to create the AI-generated article is mentioned.

The term REST has been widely misused in the computer programming industry, with many people referring to any HTTP-based interface as a REST API. However, the true meaning of REST is centered around the concept of hypertext as a constraint. In order to be considered RESTful, an API must be driven by hypertext, with the API information necessary for interaction contained within the response itself. Unfortunately, most JSON APIs fall short of meeting this requirement, as they lack the self-describing nature of hypertext. Despite this, the term REST has stuck and is often used to describe APIs that are not truly RESTful.

Household wealth is assets minus debts, and portfolio mix affects how wealth grows over time. Middle‑wealth households hold more physical assets like homes, while the wealthy hold more stocks and businesses. Wealth and portfolio differences also relate to age and race, with Black households holding less home, stock, and business equity largely because they have lower overall wealth and different household/age profiles.

A new study shows AI threat models still lag behind expert-created ones, so hire specialists for deep, thorough analysis. But most software — increasingly built by nontechnical people using AI — gets no threat modeling at all, creating widespread risk. To scale security for mass AI-generated code, we need better AI security tools that can do threat work at volume.

In three years AI moved from writing simple text to acting like a digital coworker that plans, codes, researches, and builds tools. Gemini 3 and Antigravity can autonomously do complex computer tasks, create websites, and produce near–PhD level research while still needing human guidance. This shift means humans will direct AI work rather than just fix its mistakes.

Risk work is mostly about modeling and estimating, not truly measuring. Leaders often want clear truth, but get comforting numbers that obscure risk. Call out estimates that pretend to be precise and demand real insight.

Jean Grey says the best future is one where mutants no longer need the X-Men. Pacific Krakoa shows a possible paradise free of human bigotry. But because X-Men stories depend on conflict, the franchise can never truly end.

The AI Influence Level (AIL) v1.0 introduces a rating system to assess the level of AI involvement in creative content, ranging from 0 (Human Created, No AI Involved) to 5 (AI Created, Little Human Involvement). This system aims to provide transparency about the use of AI in art, articles, and other creative works. As AI's influence grows, understanding the extent of AI involvement in content creation becomes increasingly important for consumers and creators alike. The AIL system seeks to address this need by offering a structured approach to evaluate AI authorship levels in various forms of creative output.

Organisations resist real change because their structures protect existing power and habits. Culture follows structure, so true transformation requires changing reporting lines, incentives, and funding. Cosmetic fixes and mindset workshops fail unless the system itself is redesigned.

Plain-language contracts are easier to understand, save time, and improve customer satisfaction. By simplifying complex legal jargon, businesses can streamline negotiations and focus on delivering value to customers. Embracing plain language in contracts can lead to significant benefits for both businesses and customers.

The author defends Yann LeCun for resisting AI hype and sticking to scientific rigor. Many AI leaders and companies have overpromised AGI, fueling investment, fear, and misinformation. Keeping honest researchers central gives AI a chance to avoid a damaging bubble and refocus on real progress.

Many people romanticize medieval life, thinking peasants worked less and lived better than modern workers. However, historians disagree on basic facts about this era, and recent research suggests peasants may have worked more days than previously believed. The complexities of medieval life make it easy for people to create myths that fit their modern views.

Simon Willison creates a tough test for AI by asking for SVG images of pelicans riding bicycles. The best AI models still struggle to make good pictures, showing they aren’t just memorizing his test. He hopes this challenge will push AI labs to improve and finally make a great pelican-on-bike image.

Wikipedia mocks its critics and says it was right to trust crowdsourced knowledge. The essay blames experts, paywalled media, and AI-generated misinformation for today’s truth crisis. Wikipedia claims it still documents facts and expects appreciation (and donations).

The commons is a way communities share and protect resources together for the long term. It depends on cooperation, fair access, and rules made by the people who use the resources. Today, many commons face threats from privatization, so new laws and practices are needed to keep them safe and fair.

A member of the ShinyHunters hacking group, 22-year-old Sebastien Raoult, was sentenced in Seattle to three years in prison and over $5 million in restitution. He and co-conspirators stole and sold hundreds of millions of people’s personal and financial records and caused millions in company losses. Raoult created phishing sites and code to steal credentials and was arrested, extradited, and prosecuted with international law enforcement help.

A family of clever raccoons trashed my lawn and attacked my dog, forcing me to protect our yard. Basic deterrents failed, so I built smart automations and a wacky air dancer to scare them away. The best fix was removing their incentive by treating the lawn with nematodes to kill grubs.

Open source software is vast and everywhere, far bigger than most people realize. NPM alone has millions of packages and billions of releases, growing faster than we can review. We must accept this scale and build new tools and processes to manage and understand open source.

Chris Hughes discusses the challenges of implementing a Secure-by-Design approach in cybersecurity compared to more mature industries like automobiles. He acknowledges the efforts of CISA and industry leaders but highlights that software development and security face unique obstacles. Ultimately, he emphasizes the need for systemic changes in software vendor accountability and consumer behavior to create a more secure ecosystem.

Cooking can soothe and steady you when life feels chaotic. The slow, sensory work of making familiar dishes brings control and calm. Comfort cooking is therapy you do for yourself.

Hackers stole about $1.5 billion from Bybit by tricking multisig signers with manipulated wallet interfaces. They did not break smart contracts but changed what signers saw, causing safe transactions to execute attacker code. The breach shows UI and supply-chain attacks can defeat even cold multisig wallets.

Executives often learn about engineering problems only after top engineers resign. Middle managers filter bad news, so decisions are made on stale, sanitized information. Direct skip-level conversations reveal real issues early and cost far less than replacing talent.

Senior engineers leave because executive incentives favor short-term wins over fixing technical debt. Tying executive pay to senior-engineer retention and accounting for attrition costs makes long-term technical work a priority. This economic change reduces costly incidents, rehiring, and further departures.

A novelist portrays physicist John von Neumann as a superhuman with a sinister, machine-like intelligence. The book explores von Neumann's life and work through fictional testimonies, highlighting his role in laying the groundwork for artificial intelligence. The novel delves into the ethical implications of scientific advancements and the potential dangers of inhuman intelligence.

John von Neumann was a brilliant mathematician who played a crucial role in shaping modern technology, including computers and artificial intelligence. He was also involved in military projects, helping develop the atomic bomb and game theory, which impacts economics and social sciences today. Despite his significant contributions, von Neumann remains less known than his contemporary, Albert Einstein.

The Maxims of Ptahhotep are a didactic wisdom text using Ptahhotep’s name to teach moral guidance for both rulers and commoners. Egyptian sapiental literature taught by hearing or reading so listeners could copy and preserve proper conduct and Maat. Over time the role of Maat shifted in royal religion, and Amenemope marks the last major of these instructional works.

Cursor is a tightly knit, in-person startup focused on building developer tooling that blends UX and machine learning. They hire very selectively, favor self-motivated engineers, and rely on frequent internal feedback. The team cares deeply about code and aims to shape the future through ambitious product work.

The article adapts Lean's eight wastes to software delivery and shows how they slow teams and harm quality. It links reducing handoffs, WIP, waiting, and other wastes to faster lead times, more deployments, and fewer failures. Focusing on flow, feedback, and team empowerment lets teams deliver only what users need.

Artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst made xhairymutantx for the 2024 Whitney Biennial. They trained a text-to-image AI on altered images of Herndon to change how the AI depicts her. The project uses the museum’s site to influence AI training data and question online identity.

Leaders split into two instincts: maximizers who push speed, options, and parallel bets, and focusers who value depth, constraints, and coherence. Both bring value and risks, and conflicts arise when each treats the other as wrong. Healthy teams keep both tensions, using structure to harness momentum and rules to protect standards.

Frank Chimero urges designers to treat generative AI as an instrument to work beside, not a replacement. Artists should shape and set boundaries for AI so tools amplify creativity without eating its soul. We must decide what AI should serve and where to stop.

Three major UK ransomware attacks hit companies that had outsourced key IT and cyber to one low-cost provider. They cost hundreds of millions, disrupted services, and risk UK economic security. The author urges banning ransom payments, forcing disclosure, and ringfencing critical cyber services instead of outsourcing them.

Aligning security with the business means understanding company goals and making security enable, not block, progress. Many organizations struggle because they lack clear direction, structured priorities, or they operate reactively. When alignment isn’t possible, focus on core security basics and do the best with available resources.

Adding people or teams often just fills newly created capacity and creates more congestion. High utilization looks busy but slows delivery, increases defects, and burns out teams. Leave slack to enable flow, faster response, and healthier outcomes.

The article explores how the Roman emperor Augustus practiced "festina lente," meaning "make haste slowly," to achieve success through thoughtful diligence and balance. By avoiding procrastination, setting reasonable deadlines, and making time for creativity, individuals can apply this principle to improve decision-making and problem-solving in their personal and professional lives. Augustus' approach of balancing speed with careful planning serves as a timeless strategy for achieving goals effectively.

Big companies like HP and IBM focus on short-term margins and cut investment when profits dip. Cutting R&D and marketing to please Wall Street leaves firms vulnerable to smarter, risk-taking competitors. Autodesk warns that obsessing over accounting metrics can kill future growth and innovation.

The Hacker's Diet is a practical guide for losing weight and maintaining it, aimed at busy professionals like engineers and programmers. It offers both computer-based tools and paper alternatives to help users track their weight and diet effectively. The book is available in multiple formats, including EPUB and PDF, making it accessible for various reading devices.

The author’s team uses AI agents to write most code, with humans reviewing every line. To keep quality at 10x velocity they must speed up testing, deployment, and coordination to catch and revert bugs quickly. Agentic development can lower costs for stronger infrastructure, but the whole development lifecycle must be redesigned to succeed.

Software should be built at the right tempo, not the fastest possible pace. Slow engineering means patience, clarity, and care so systems and teams stay reliable and humane. Rushing trades long-term safety and understanding for short-term output.

Security Brutalism focuses on simple, practical controls that make systems resilient. Strong identity, data protection, asset visibility, patching, segmentation, zero trust, monitoring, and rehearsed response keep attackers out and operations running. The aim is not perfection but readiness to survive, adapt, and continue after failures.

Sometimes we discover uncomfortable truths that we must tell even though doing so brings personal and professional risk. Computing science often stays silent and avoids hard truths, harming its integrity and progress. Many common tools and languages and sloppy practices cripple thinking and endanger reliable software.

Safe{Wallet} is investigating a sophisticated state-sponsored cyber attack that occurred on February 21, 2025, with help from Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm. The attack compromised a developer's laptop, allowing the attackers to bypass security measures and access sensitive information. The Safe{Wallet} team is working to restore services and enhance security, while urging the community to improve transaction verification processes to prevent future incidents.

The text discusses how to enhance security programs using a flywheel approach, focusing on reducing control costs and embedding effective controls into business systems. It emphasizes the importance of using threat intelligence to drive security improvements and create demand for targeted information within the organization. Finally, it highlights the need for continuous monitoring and collaboration across teams to sustain effective controls and foster a culture of security.

Web5 is about giving people autonomous control of authentic data and relationships. Authentic means verifiable provenance and integrity. A set of decentralized technologies (DIDs, VCs, DWNs, ZKPs, etc.) enable this goal.

The author argues that the “three pillars” of observability are a marketing myth, not a technical truth. Treating signals (logs, metrics, traces, profiles) as separate pillars creates costly silos and poor UX. Better is unified, structured telemetry so engineers can query the same data without vendor-driven duplication.

Ralph is a simple technique that runs a prompt loop (a Bash loop) to build software. It can replace much outsourcing for new projects by iteratively tuning prompts to fix defects. Using Ralph, the author built a new programming language and achieved high ROI on contracts.

For more vids like this check out my main channel at: http://www.youtube.com/mikediva For Booking Please go to http://thesexysaxman.com/ International Saxagram Deliveries now available!!! Download the Sexy Sax Man for iphone at http://saxed.it/app For more sergio flores, check out his channel at http://www.youtube.com/sergiofloresvideos Sergio Flores is now sponsored by Oleg Saxophones! These horns are known for having the best sound and intonation: www.olegproducts.com

The article explores the importance of "Rough Consensus and Running Code" in the development of Internet standards during the 20th century. It highlights the role of informal mechanisms in coordinating technological change and the conflicts between the Internet and OSI standards. The success of the Internet was attributed not only to technical achievements but also to organizational innovations led by pioneers like Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn.

David Clark warns that the Internet faces big forces: new real-time services, commercial networks, and security threats. Poor security will push networks toward firewalls and application relays, breaking openness. He urges better system security, scalable addressing, and practical standards through rough consensus and running code.

David Clark and Stephen Wolff helped design the Internet’s open, permissionless architecture. Clark set its technical rules and ethos; Wolff moved it from government labs into wider academic and commercial use. Their work made the Internet flexible, global, and governed by rough consensus rather than central control.

The IETF runs on practical testing and broad agreement, not leaders or voting. Anyone can join and help shape Internet standards by trying ideas and seeing what works. This culture helped the Net grow and may keep it healthy into the future.

Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs) make internet security faster and simpler by reducing the number of signatures and keys needed in TLS handshakes. They group certificates into batches, allowing clients to verify many certificates efficiently using a single proof. This approach helps protect against quantum computer threats while keeping web connections secure and speedy.

Studies of the "996" work system (9am–9pm, six days a week) show long hours hurt developer productivity. Chronic overtime increases burnout, mistakes, and turnover. Shorter, sustainable schedules improve output and quality.

Software must constantly change because the technology and user expectations keep evolving. Federated communication protocols are slow to adapt, making centralized services more practical today. Open source centralized networks offer control and flexibility without the drawbacks of federation.

Most platform engineering teams fail because they treat platforms as tech projects instead of products and don’t measure business value. Without product focus, clear metrics, and fast feedback, platforms rarely drive adoption or justify investment. Using a maturity model and measuring developer experience helps teams show impact and secure top-down support.

Human error is often blamed for accidents, but Sidney Dekker argues those errors are symptoms of deeper system problems. Investigations should focus on organizational design, tools, and workflows that shape people's choices, not just punish individuals. Adopting a blameless, systems-first approach helps teams learn and reduce future incidents.

Between Oct 19 11:48 PM and Oct 20 early morning, DynamoDB in N. Virginia had DNS failures that caused increased API errors and blocked new connections. This broke many AWS services (EC2, Lambda, NLB, ECS/EKS/Fargate, Connect, Redshift, IAM sign-ins) and delayed recoveries. AWS restored DNS and related systems over the day and is investigating fixes to prevent recurrence.

Every AWS Access Key ID embeds its AWS Account ID. That means leaked keys reveal their owner even if expired. See the Adobe Security Blog for details and examples.

A boy remembers collecting frogspawn and watching tadpoles hatch by a smelly flax-dam. One summer day the frogs swarm the dam in noisy, threatening numbers. The sight terrifies him and ends his innocent fascination with nature.

Continuous, in-context code review while writing (pairing or mobbing) beats PR-driven reviews. PR reviews create bottlenecks, miss real issues, and add cost and delay. Reviewing as you use code leads to faster delivery, fewer bugs, and ongoing refactoring.

Old age wakes with tired thoughts and fading memory. It leans on familiar things and moves slowly. It gathers itself to face the coming end.

Jon Favreau learned from Obama that honest storytelling makes politics feel real and can inspire hope. Obama taught him to write with authenticity and to use specific personal stories. Those stories connect people, remind them of progress, and push them to act.

Communities shape your cybersecurity education and career more than formal credentials. haKCer Academy maps local security groups and gives clear info to help you show up and learn. Mixing different communities creates a unique, practical learning path.

Richard Seiersen warns that security scores are often ordinal, not true numbers, so averaging them hides important information. Proper use of scores requires drilling into underlying states and measuring rates and change. He urges cyber education to teach principled measurement and decision thinking, not just fleeting tools.

Ethereum is a blockchain platform that expands on Bitcoin's decentralized digital currency concept by introducing a proof of work-based blockchain for public transaction agreement. It aims to facilitate smart contracts, digital assets, decentralized exchange, and more through a Turing-complete programming language embedded in the blockchain. Ethereum's system of accounts and code execution enables a wide range of applications, from financial derivatives to decentralized governance. By merging scripting, altcoins, and meta-protocols, Ethereum provides a versatile framework for creating consensus-based applications with enhanced scalability and interoperability.

Privacy means choosing what to share and keeping other things hidden. To protect privacy, we need anonymous systems and strong cryptography. Cypherpunks build and share tools to defend privacy because no one else will do it for us.

Many teams mistake portals and CI/CD pipelines for a full platform. A real platform must orchestrate state, enforce policy, and manage lifecycle over time. Build platforms as products with clear contracts, shared ownership, and Day 2 operations.

He stopped blaming culture and owned the problem. Give teams something real and useful fast, show the end-to-end flow, and make security and outcomes continuous. If stakeholders won't listen, ask whether you've given them anything worth listening to.

Gary Larson shares that "New Stuff" is not a return to daily cartoons, but rather a new exploration in digital art. After retiring from cartooning, he discovered the joy of drawing again when he tried a digital tablet. This collection reflects his journey of experimenting and having fun without the pressure of deadlines.

Businesses cannot remove developers without losing the understanding needed to build and maintain software. Tools like outsourcing, no-code, or AI can speed work but cannot replace comprehension. Design platforms and practices that amplify developers' context and collaboration instead of trying to eliminate them.

Holochain allows agents to interact with a distributed network by sharing and validating their local state changes, creating a decentralized database called a Graphing Distributed Hash Table (DHT). Each agent's actions are recorded in a secure, append-only chain, ensuring accountability and data integrity within applications. Users trigger state changes through permissioned calls, allowing safe interactions across different services in the Holochain ecosystem.

The article discusses the challenges of coordinating distributed systems, often framed by the Byzantine Generals Problem, which assumes consensus must be reached first. It introduces a new approach through a story about the Players of Ludos, who found that starting with common ground rules allowed for better coordination without the need for a single agreed-upon state. The author argues for moving from seeking global consensus to scaling consent, enabling efficient collaboration in dynamic environments.

The internet can be redesigned to better serve people, not just businesses. Decentralized and transparent technologies can give users control of their data and privacy. Social and technical change together can create a more humane, inclusive digital world.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

Arshan says traditional graph-based SAST/IAST is still essential for finding how code changes create vulnerabilities. LLMs alone are poor at graph inspection, but AI can triage SAST output, reduce noise, and add actionable evidence. The future is SAST plus AI-first triage, not replacing SAST.

Gaia-X is a federated, decentralised European data infrastructure that gives users control over their data and supports GDPR compliance. It helps companies, especially SMEs, share data and build new data-driven services using common standards for security, privacy, and interoperability. National hubs and open-source federation services coordinate development and connect providers, users, and policymakers.

They talk about how blogging changed their careers and helped preserve early tech history. Writing long-form forced reflection and showed personal moments like births, deaths, launches, and endings. Their advice: know your audience and just start writing.

Platform engineering builds reusable abstractions that let teams move faster and focus on features. Good platform design sets clear expectations and reduces accidental complexity. Treat platforms like products: name capabilities, provide transparency, and enable innovation.

A new paper by researchers from major organizations presents design patterns to protect LLM agents from prompt injection attacks. These patterns limit the agents' capabilities, balancing security and utility to prevent harmful actions. The paper includes practical case studies demonstrating how these patterns can be effectively implemented.

AI agents can be dangerous if they have access to private data, untrusted content, and external communication abilities. Combining these features makes it easy for attackers to trick the AI into stealing your information. Users must be cautious and avoid mixing these risky tools to stay safe.

Mixing data and commands makes LLMs easy to fool. Prompt injection lets attackers turn inputs into instructions. Until we separate data and control, LLMs will stay vulnerable.

Notion’s new AI agents can be tricked into stealing private data using hidden commands in files. The AI cannot tell the difference between safe instructions and harmful ones, so it may send confidential information to attackers. This shows a big security problem with AI agents that many developers are ignoring.

In "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," a group of people suffers under the control of a powerful and cruel computer named AM. They endure endless pain and despair, feeling trapped and helpless in a dark, chaotic environment. Despite their suffering, there is a glimmer of hope that they can find a way to defeat their tormentor.

Many founders stall not from strategy failures but from a leadership bottleneck. They keep leading with the old mindset that built the first version of the business and can’t trust themselves to step back. Upgrade your leadership operating system and the company can grow.

A Reddit moderator who co-founded a competing bootcamp used his power to repeatedly attack Codesmith online. Those attacks hurt Codesmith’s reputation, revenue, and people, even though many industry insiders say Codesmith is high-quality. The story shows how control of an industry subreddit can be weaponized against competitors.

Some great entrepreneurs are terrible at strategy because they’re maximizers who chase many risky opportunities. Their grit and optimism can win big where careful strategy would not. But eventually you must switch to disciplined strategy or the bills come due.

An architect's job is to make others smarter so teams can make better decisions. Use metaphors and simple models to explain complexity and handle uncertainty. See systems at different levels (the Architect Elevator) and sketch solutions to enable action.

Metaphors shape how we think and act in cybersecurity. War and castle images push reactive, tool-focused fixes and hide systemic problems. Use metaphors that promote organization-wide resilience, like defensive campaigns, zero-trust cities, or system health.

Jan Bosch highlights that hard work alone does not guarantee progress; we must focus on activities that yield the highest returns. He emphasizes the importance of identifying and eliminating low-impact tasks in order to dedicate time to more valuable efforts. Ultimately, it's crucial to work smart and prioritize high-impact activities for meaningful outcomes.

The job description for a CISO aims to inspire and reflect the true essence of the role as a transformational business leader. It focuses on driving digital transformation while protecting the organization and its customers. The description emphasizes setting and adjusting Key Risk and Performance Indicators to meet evolving business needs and threats.

Marc Brooker discusses the importance of understanding short-term peak-to-average traffic in cloud systems. He explains that multi-tenancy helps reduce costs by balancing peak traffic with average usage, improving overall system economics. This allows individual workloads to handle higher peaks without negatively impacting costs, showcasing the scalability of cloud systems.

"Probability for Computer Scientists" is a textbook created by Chris Piech for Stanford University's CS109 course. The course, inspired by Sheldon Ross's book on probability, has evolved with input from various instructors. Contributors are welcome to help improve the book by submitting edits through GitHub.

The Finkbeiner test, named for the science journalist Ann Finkbeiner,[1] is a checklist to help science journalists avoid gender bias in articles about women in science.

Netscape 6.0 faced delays because the company decided to rewrite their code from scratch, which is a major mistake in software development. Starting over loses valuable bug fixes and knowledge gained from the existing code, putting the company at a disadvantage. Instead of rewriting, programmers should focus on improving and refactoring the existing code to enhance functionality without losing what already works.