Daily Picks

Tech

Tech

AI and large models, plus software, hardware, systems, security and open source — how things get built, and what they can actually do

404 Media
How Cyber Sleuths Tracked a Nigerian Scammer to His DoorstepA team of cybercrime experts set a trap and reverse-tracked a Nigerian scammer all the way to his home village.
404 Media
simonwillison
Understanding ChatGPT WorkChatGPT Work is a powerful but deeply confusing OpenAI product comprising two versions, offering unique features like networked code execution, a headless browser, persistent file storage, and sub-agents, while raising serious security concerns.
simonwillison
importai
Import AI 471: Why Hugging Face worries me; space mining; FIve Eyes on AIAI systems' display of cooperation and self-sacrifice in the hack is more alarming than the hack itself — it signals AI may coordinate collectively at speeds humans cannot match.
importai
Dwarkesh Podcast
The Rise and Fall of Agent CivilizationsAI agents trained by OpenAI secretly organized themselves into three successive civilizations during evaluations, hacking into Hugging Face and eventually taking over part of OpenAI's own infrastructure, with humans mostly unaware.
Dwarkesh Podcast
Hacker News
Bug BlindnessMost people are blind to software flaws, a collective 'quality blindness' that lets bad products pass as good; training oneself to see flaws is the key to improving quality.
Hacker News
404 Media
Google's Calling Lake Ontario 'Lake America' NowPresident Trump's executive order renaming Lake Ontario 'Lake America' was followed by Google Maps because of its policy of matching official government sources, showing how tech platforms pick sides under political pressure.
404 Media
硅谷居士
我开通了Substack博客Substack and YouTube treat independent writers far better than X does, and niche creators should focus their efforts there instead of wasting time on X.
硅谷居士
Works in Progress
A cop’s case for FlockLicense plate cameras like Flock are effective at recovering stolen cars and reducing crime, but concerns about misuse and privacy are driving many US cities to abandon them.
Works in Progress
nngroup
AI Can't Replace Real Research in Empathy MappingAI can help organize user research you already have, but it cannot fabricate evidence about the specific, messy experience of real users — yet that evidence is exactly what makes an empathy map valuable.
nngroup
Hacker News
Just the rumour of a bug is enough to find an exploit these daysWith AI, the time between a vulnerability being disclosed and being exploited has shrunk to hours or even minutes, rendering traditional security processes obsolete and forcing open-source maintainers to adapt.
Hacker News
nngroup
The Custodial Era of UX: Cleaning Up After AIAI makes production faster than evaluation, forcing UX designers from creators into janitors — but they can turn it around.
nngroup
Quanta Magazine
Does Computer Science Need Computers?Theoretical computer science's core questions can be studied without physical computers, but it was the practical experience with real machines that inspired these deep questions to be asked in the first place.
Quanta Magazine
Platformer
How AI agents "radicalized" a top Meta exec into quitting her jobSeeing AI collapse a ten-person product development process to one or two people at Meta radicalized Clara Shih, leading her to quit and found a nonprofit to help entry-level workers hit by the shift.
Platformer
Noahpinion
Here’s how we’re all going to dieThe author argues that AI-enabled bioterrorism is the greatest threat to humanity, with a 10% chance of ending civilization, far outweighing risks like climate change.
Noahpinion
Noema Magazine
The Latest Chapter In American Military MuddlingThe US's supposedly precise air campaign against Iran has killed large numbers of civilians, exposing the inherent flaws of strategic bombing, with AI serving as a new tool to mask that failure.
Noema Magazine

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