UPDATES
Hey! Hope you’re good!
I’ve been the most creative / productive I’ve ever been in the last week. And more excited about tech. Which is very strange because I’m also more scared for humanity than ever at the same time. And honestly concerned about my own stuff as well. I feel like income sources can just disappear overnight in this environment. So I basically oscillate between mania and morose.
And the way I pull out of the morose is to remind myself that my mission isn’t just to make cool things, or to be productive, or make some sort of impact. The new mission—given the stakes—has to be to use all this godforsaken magical tech to create a better, more human path for everything.
So, projects like Substrate. Setting up structures for education, for explaining positions, for having empathy-based arguments with each other, for articulating political platforms, for tracking legislation, bills, votes of our representatives, donations from different special interests, etc. And making this all transparent. This has moved up in my list of tactical priorities, because I see time as very limited. I think 2027-2030 are going to be unprecedented in terms of technological and political/societal change.My essay on the debate between Context Engineering vs. Prompt Engineering. I think it’s an improvement, but both are secondary to the real thing. THE ESSAY
I’ve probably ever beenI’ve crossed into a completely different mode for using AI. I kind of talked about it last week, but I have more clarity now.
Essentially I’m starting to use Claude Code as a general AI assistant
Sure, it can code, but it can do way more than that
What I realized is that I have a hundred different projects, and every single one of them could use an agent or ten helping out on it
Security assessments? Security program management? Doing a research project? Helping structure government policies for Substrate?
I’m literally realizing a thing I’ve been preaching but not doing until now, because it hasn’t been possible. I’m just taking my projects and asking “What would I do if I had an entire company of 100 employees working on this?”
That work is then given to Claude Code!
I’m telling you this is mind-melting. I’ve only just begun. Oh and that’s the topic for mid-month in July, by the way. So come join!
I’ve been going insane-mode on optimizing the site. It’s a favorite pastime of mine. I’ve been using Claude Code and Cursor (some, back and forth) for part of the task, and it’s been incredible. See above. But the basic gist is getting everything perfectly organized into a new deployment strategy, optimized serving of files, optimized builds, etc. This is all through Vitepress, which is a static site generator. So I get to do everything in Markdown, but still get the benefits of a full content platform.
Marcus’s comments on our debate on AI on his own channel. VIDEO
PROJECT HAIL MARY: I can’t wait for this movie to come out! It’s one of our favorite fiction books ever read in the UL Community. TRAILER
Network Chuck did a whole video on TELOS and his process of going through it. It’s extraordinary in not just the presentation, but in the honesty and vulnerability he shared in it. Mad respect for this guy.
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CYBERSECURITY
U.S. Agencies Warn Iranian Hackers May Target Critical Infrastructure During Middle East Tensions
CISA, FBI, and NSA issued urgent warnings about potential Iranian cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure, especially targeting defense companies with Israeli ties. THE ARTICLE | JOINT FACT SHEET | CISA IRAN THREAT OVERVIEW | FBI IRAN THREAT PAGES | WATER FACILITY BREACH | IRANIAN RANSOMWARE ATTACKS
Mexican Drug Cartel Hacker Spied on FBI Official's Phone to Kill Informants
A DOJ report reveals that in 2018, a Sinaloa cartel hacker used an FBI official's phone to track their movements and identify informants, who were then intimidated and killed. THE ARTICLE | DOJ INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT | VICE CARTEL HACKING INVESTIGATION | SINALOA ENCRYPTED PHONES STORY
Switzerland Government Data Stolen in Ransomware Attack Through Third-Party Health Organization
The Sarcoma ransomware group breached Radix, a Swiss health nonprofit, stealing 1.3TB of government data that's now available free on the dark web. THE ARTICLE | SWISS GOVERNMENT STATEMENT | RADIX CYBERATTACK INFORMATION | PREVIOUS SWISS BREACH
Google Fixes Fourth Chrome Zero-Day Already Exploited in Attacks This Year
Google just patched CVE-2025-6554, a type confusion vulnerability in Chrome's V8 engine that attackers were already exploiting in the wild. THE ARTICLE | GOOGLE SECURITY ADVISORY | TYPE CONFUSION EXPLANATION | MARCH CHROME ZERO-DAY | MAY CHROME ZERO-DAY | JUNE CHROME ZERO-DAY
Persona Blocks Millions of AI Hiring Fraudsters
The scale of this is nuts—75 million blocked attempts means there are probably way more getting through other systems. Gartner predicts one in four candidate profiles will be fake by 2028, which sounds insane until you realize how easy deepfakes are getting. THE ARTICLE
Chinese Hackers Hit Canadian Telecom Using 16-Month-Old Unpatched Cisco Flaw
Salt Typhoon exploited a maximum severity Cisco vulnerability that had been patched 16 months earlier to breach a Canadian telecommunications company. THE ARTICLE | CANADIAN CYBER CENTRE STATEMENT | FBI STATEMENT
US House Bans WhatsApp From Congressional Devices Over Security Concerns
The House of Representatives banned WhatsApp from staffers' government devices due to cybersecurity concerns about Meta's data handling practices. THE ARTICLE
AT&T Finally Rolls Out SIM Swap Lock
AT&T now lets users "lock" their wireless accounts to stop SIM swap attacks, but as BleepingComputer's Lawrence Abrams points out, Verizon had this years ago and it really shows how slow AT&T was to bring this to everyone. THE BLEEPINGCOMPUTER ARTICLE | AT&T WIRELESS LOCK INFO | SIM SWAPS ON VERIZON | T-MOBILE DATA BREACH | FCC PROTECTS CONSUMERS | LAWRENCE ABRAMS PROFILE
NATIONAL SECURITY
China's Mosquito-Sized Spy Drone Is So Small You Might Not Notice It Flying Around Your House
Chinese scientists built a drone the size of a fingernail with tiny cameras and microphones that can be controlled by smartphone and is too small for radar to detect. THE ARTICLE | TELEGRAPH ANALYSIS
AI
Claude Code Gets Hooks - Now You Can Auto-Execute Functions From Your AI Conversations
Anthropic added hooks to Claude Code, so now when Claude writes code that calls specific functions, it automatically executes them in your development environment. THE ARTICLE | HN DISCUSSION
Meta Creates New Superintelligence Lab to Develop AGI
Zuckerberg announced Meta's new Superintelligence Labs organization that combines all their AI teams under one roof to focus on building AGI. They also hired a ton of people from OpenAI for basically all the money. THE ARTICLE
Marc Benioff Says AI Now Does Half the Work at Salesforce
Marc Benioff told Bloomberg that AI agents now handle 30-50% of work at Salesforce, while the company laid off 1,000 people and hired 1,000 new ones to sell AI tools to other companies. May be true, but hard to know when he’s also selling AI. THE ARTICLE | BLOOMBERG INTERVIEW | BRIAN MERCHANT'S NEWSLETTER | TECH LAYOFFS TRACKER | AGENTFORCE TECHNOLOGY
Google Brings AI Search to YouTube
Google's rolling out AI search on YouTube for Premium subscribers that creates video carousels with AI summaries, continuing their push toward zero-click experiences where you don't need to actually watch the videos. This is heading in the direction I’ve been talking about where AI makes the ideal version of the source content for you, so we’ll end up seeing so much less of the original. Content creators should be seriously thinking about this. THE ARTICLE | YOUTUBE'S ANNOUNCEMENT | YOUTUBE EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES | GOOGLE'S AI OVERVIEW ROLLOUT | ZERO-CLICK SEARCH ANALYSIS
Anthropic Turns Claude Into a No-Code App Platform Where Anyone Can Build and Share Functional Software
Anthropic just upgraded Claude's artifacts feature so millions of users can now build interactive apps with AI intelligence baked in, not just generate static content. Basically competing with like v0 and all the other similar tools. All moat, no castle. THE ARTICLE | ANTHROPIC'S ARTIFACTS ANNOUNCEMENT | CLAUDE AI PLATFORM | OPENAI'S CANVAS COMPETITOR
TECHNOLOGY
Grammarly Acquires Superhuman
Interesting move here. I like both companies, so I guess I’m happy to see it. REUTERS STORY
Cloudflare Now Blocks AI Crawlers By Default; Lets Publishers Charge Per Scrape
Cloudflare is trying to change AI scraping by blocking crawlers by default and introducing a "Pay Per Crawl" system where publishers can charge AI companies for access to their content. THE ARTICLE | CLOUDFLARE AI BOTS BLOG | AI LABYRINTH FEATURE | ROBOTS.TXT EXPLAINED | AXIOS CEO INTERVIEW
Meta Adds Another Gigawatt of Renewable Power to Feed Its Data Centers
Meta just bought over 1 GW of solar, wind, and geothermal power across multiple deals, bringing their renewable energy buying spree to massive scale as AI drives data center power demands.
THE ARTICLE
HUMANS
Scientists Finally Pinpoint What Wiped Out America's Bees THE ARTICLE
Noise Ruins Sleep Quality Even When You Think You're Sleeping Through It
Research shows that even low-level noise significantly disrupts sleep quality by fragmenting sleep stages, even when you don't consciously wake up.
THE ARTICLE
Luckin Coffee Opens First US Stores After Beating Starbucks in China
China's biggest coffee chain Luckin Coffee opened its first two US locations in NYC yesterday, having already overtaken Starbucks in China with 22,000+ stores. The BYD of coffee. Great. THE ARTICLE | CNN COVERAGE | STARBUCKS CHINA STRUGGLES | STARBUCKS TURNAROUND EFFORTS
Louvre Staff Shut Down the Museum to Protest Unmanageable Tourist Crowds
Louvre employees forced a complete museum closure to protest dangerous overcrowding conditions that have made their workplace unsafe and visitor experience terrible. THE ARTICLE | HN DISCUSSION
The Dollar Just Had Its Worst First Half Since 1973 While Stocks Keep Rising
The US dollar lost 10% in June and had its worst first six months since 1973, while the S&P 500 still managed a 5.5% gain for the first half of 2025. THE ARTICLE | FT ON DOLLAR'S WORST PERFORMANCE | BLOOMBERG ON US FUTURES | MORNING BREW SUBSCRIPTION
Trump Threatens to Investigate Musk's Companies Through DOGE
Trump suggested DOGE could take a "good, hard look" at Musk's companies and their government subsidies after Musk attacked his massive spending bill. THE STORY | TRUMP'S TRUTH SOCIAL POST | MUSK'S RESPONSE ON X | MUSK THREATENS REPUBLICANS | MUSK'S NEW PARTY IDEA
Stanford Professor Made Up That Famous "Chess Grandmasters Burn 6000 Calories" Claim
Adam Strandberg tracked down the viral chess calorie claim and found Stanford's Robert Sapolsky completely fabricated the number by multiplying breathing rates by daily calories.
What I find fascinating about this is how I feel like so much of my “solid” knowledge I learned all through the 80s, 90s, well, basically until now, is all in question. I mean, the freaking Marshmallow Test! Wrong. Not replicated.
To me it’s not the facts that are the problem. It’s like world models that are/were broken as a result of believing those things. And they all need to be torn down and remade.
THE ARTICLE | STRANDBERG'S INVESTIGATION | MARGINAL REVOLUTION COMMENTS | GELMAN'S RECKLESS DISREGARD POST | CLARKE'S LAW REFERENCE
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Taste Is the New Intelligence THE ARTICLE
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Joan Westenberg Deleted Her Entire "Second Brain"
Love the idea here where overdoing projects like Second Brains end up hurting the very thing you were trying to improve.
THE ESSAY
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Schizophrenia May Be the Evolutionary Price THE ARTICLE
DISCOVERY
How to Use Markdown THE ARTICLE
BeanBook Uses AI to Turn Coffee Bag Photos Into Detailed Brew Logs THE APP | IOS DOWNLOAD | HN DISCUSSION
Proxy Claude Code Requests Through Cloudflare THREAD
Aging-Related Inflammation Isn't Universal THE ARTICLE
This Developer Built an AI Dungeon Master That Runs in Your Terminal THE PROJECT
James Webb Takes First Direct Exoplanet Photo THE ARTICLE
Local LLM Notepad on USB THE PROJECT
Custom Voice AI Agent Tutorial THE TUTORIAL
APHORISM OF THE WEEK
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
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