Unsupervised Learning NO. 499

Back home for a week and then off again for HouSecCon! Can’t wait to see all my Houston friends!

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Emad Mostaque Explains Why GDP and Capitalism is Obsolete
A new must-see blog post where I talk about this new video by Emad Mostaque. Seriously a must-see within 72 hours! I disagree with some of his timelines (1000 days is sensationalist), and he’s not right on a couple of things (XBow > Hackers). But I think the vision is 1) quite interesting, and 2) probably mostly solid. A MUST SEE. And I give my comments as well, as well as a Fabric summary. READ THE POST

Major updates to the PAI project Github Page!

PAI isn’t just a blog post and a video. It’s a free, public infrastructure for using AI for your use cases!

I’m dead serious about making AI available to everyone on Earth. We need this. As humans. Sooner, not later.

I’ve been making tons of updates to the project, adding more and more of MY ACTUAL AI STACK. Tons more custom commands (use cases basically) coming this week as well. GO STAR IT SO YOU GET UPDATES

📅 September 22, 2025 - v0.2 Release

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Wrote my response to the Charlie Kirk situation. It’s political, so feel free to skip. MY THOUGHTS ON CHARLIE KIRK’S ASSASSINATION

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Been doing mass-updates to my iPhone / Mobile / Computer setup given the launch of macOS and iOS 26. Perfect time for a bi-annual cleansing. Completely redoing my Focii (I’ve always wanted to use that in a sentence) as well as MASSIVELY cutting out notifications, etc. Check this new Dynamic Wallpaper I made of Kai working in his lair, for my Work focus.

Had a conversation with Harry Wetherald from Maze, where they’re working on using Agents for Vulnerability Management. Really love Harry’s approach to this problem. I feel like it’s from a practitioner who gets the issue deeply…which I think is the best origin story for a startup.

Oh and they’re the sponsor here too! 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

Secret Service finds massive SIM farm that could have shut down NYC's cell network
The Secret Service discovered a network of 300 SIM servers with over 100,000 SIM cards in abandoned NYC buildings that could send 30 million texts per minute and potentially disable cell towers during the UN General Assembly. CBS NEWS STORY

Github forces hardware 2FA and short-lived tokens for npm publishing
Great to see GitHub locking npm down with mandatory hardware 2FA, short-lived granular tokens, and trusted publishing to target the recent repo-to-npm supply-chain waves. BLEEPINGCOMPUTER STORY | GITHUB SECURITY ANNOUNCEMENT

CISOs say the real breach is the empty seats
Back on the talent shortage conversation. CSO Online’s piece cites Accenture’s data showing 83% of execs say the talent gap is killing posture, and Michelle Abraham thinks near-term AI triage could actually ease burnout.

So insane that companies can’t find people and people also can’t find jobs. I know I’ve covered this a million times but it just keeps coming up. the conclusion before was:

CSO ONLINE ARTICLE | ACCENTURE STATE OF CYBERSECURITY 2025 | KANWAR PREET SINGH SANDHU PROFILE

China compresses cyber breach reporting to one hour
The Register says Beijing now expects “network operators” to report serious cyber incidents within 60 minutes—or 30 for catastrophic ones—which will force real-time detection and instant triage. THE REGISTER STORY | CAC RULES (CHINESE)

CISA moves to tighten control over the CVE program
CISA basically says CVE’s future is theirs to run, pushing back on a nonprofit-led model. THE REGISTER STORY | CISA CVE VISION PAGE

SonicWall breach exposed firewall backups, forcing full secret rotation BLEEPINGCOMPUTER STORY

SonicWall ships an update that removes OVERSTEP rootkits BLEEPINGCOMPUTER ARTICLE

Real-time vuln alerts without NVD lag
BleepingComputer spotlights SecAlerts pulling from 100+ sources and pushing filtered, real-time vuln alerts so you’re not stuck waiting on NVD. BLEEPINGCOMPUTER ARTICLE | SECALERTS SITE

Samsung patches a live zero‑day on Galaxy phones TECHCRUNCH STORY

AI agents become the bug hunter’s always-on sidekick
Sudhir Singh lays out how autonomous agents can do the grunt work—recon, triage, and reporting—so humans focus on the weird stuff. Friends don’t let friends post on Medium. MEDIUM ARTICLE BY SUDHIR SINGH

The UK recognizes Palestine as a State GUARDIAN STORY

China has banned anyone in the country from buying NVIDIA chips
They now have to use internally manufactured chips. Holy crap. Huge. FINANCIAL TIMES STORY

NATO’s drone scare in Poland just unlocked more help for Ukraine
The Cipher Brief interviews General David Petraeus, who says the Poland drone incursion was deliberate, NATO’s response was fast, and this crack in the door could fund Ukraine’s drone surge. I really don’t get why Russia would provoke other countries in a way that’s bound to unify and energize them. What am I missing? CIPHER BRIEF INTERVIEW

Nasa blocks Chinese nationals from access, including Zoom THE REGISTER STORY

Danish supermarket building off-grid emergency stores MASTODON POST

Ukraine tests jammer-resistant strike drones with 31-mile reach TOM'S HARDWARE ARTICLE

Britain signs a £1.5B defense data deal with Palantir
The Register says the UK just locked in a £1.5B defense pact with Palantir. I’m guessing they would rather not have, which means Palantir must be much better than the alternatives. Or there aren’t any. THE REGISTER STORY | HACKER NEWS DISCUSSION

Red Sea cable cuts disrupt Asia and Mideast internet OODALOOP STORY

Taiwan moves to 24/7 undersea cable protection TOM'S HARDWARE STORY

Gunmen hit Chinese convoy in Nigeria, eight security officials killed
OODAloop reports gunmen attacked a security convoy in Edo state, killing eight officials; Chinese expatriate workers were kidnapped and later rescued. OODALOOP BRIEF

AI eats all of IT by 2030, but not all the jobs
Gartner expects every IT task to touch AI by 2030—25% fully bot-run, the rest human-with-AI—while entry-level roles take the hit first. Seems directionally right. What’s not talked about is the emotional and overall economic “vibe” impact of having this much change happen so quickly. ARSTECHNICA STORY | THE REGISTER COVERAGE | REVELIO LABS ENTRY-LEVEL DATA | GOLDMAN SACHS WORKFORCE NOTE

GitHub launches an MCP registry that finally makes agents usable
GitHub shipped a proper MCP server registry with VS Code one‑click installs, star‑ranked listings, and an open pipeline that syncs with the [Anthropic]-led community registry. Cool to see an official set of these. Curious how they’re doing the filtering. GITHUB BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT | BROWSE GITHUB MCP REGISTRY

OpenAI quietly ships major Codex upgrade
OpenAI pushed a big Codex update that looks like “GPT-5 for code,” with faster refactors, deeper repos, and way better tool use. I know lots of people starting to move to Codex from CC. The model seems sharper, but it lacks massive features compared to CC. And Anthropic is dropping 4.5 supposedly this week as well. OPENAI CODEX UPGRADE POST

Nvidia funds OpenAI’s AI factory buildout with 100 billion TECHCRUNCH STORY

Most people still aren’t using LLMs enough
Florian Brand argues we’re sleeping on cheap, boring automations that save hours—turn images into .ics, auto-translate clipboard, scripted scrapers, and glue it all together for $20/month. Agree completely, and this is why I created PAI! YOU'RE NOT USING LLMS ENOUGH | FLORIAN BRAND HOMEPAGE

AI tools are making everything look the same
STRAT7 argues we trained models on the internet’s quirks, and now the outputs are remixing those quirks back into reality at scale. Agree, but we have the ability to shape that. We’re not resigned to it. Don’t settle for the mediocrity that others made before AI, or after. STRAT7 ARTICLE | HACKER NEWS DISCUSSION

AI ends the career ladder’s on-ramp OODALOOP ARTICLE

Oura jumps to an $11B valuation on a massive Series E
TechCrunch’s report says Oura’s raising $875M at ~$11B, doubling since December off insane growth and $1B+ revenue. My favorite wearable other than Apple Watch, by far. Love the Readiness Score. TECHCRUNCH STORY | BLOOMBERG REPORT | TECHCRUNCH SERIES D COVERAGE

Databricks hits $4B run-rate and raises $1B THE INFORMATION BRIEFING

All the world as a monorepo, but who holds the keys
James Tiberius pushes a fun but sharp thought experiment: if everything lived in one giant monorepo, power, governance, and tooling become the whole game. IF ALL THE WORLD WERE A MONOREPO

Write the simple version first, then refactor later. BE SIMPLE ARTICLE

Reading code is the bottleneck, not writing it WRITING CODE IS EASY, READING IS HARD

Auto loan delinquencies are screaming past 2008, even for prime borrowers
Chris Chilton reports the CFA says auto finance is “at breaking point,” with $1.66T owed, $745 typical payments, and repos jumping 43% since 2022. This is the type of metric I find interesting and extremely troubling. CARSCOOPS STORY

Rich Americans are propping up “strong” consumer spending
Morning Brew highlights Mark Zandi’s read of Fed data: the top 10% now drive 49.2% of U.S. consumer spend, masking weak real gains elsewhere. MORNING BREW ARTICLE | MARK ZANDI FED DATA THREAD | MARKETMINUTE ON DELINQUENCIES | MORNING BREW JOBS PIECE | MORNING BREW CAPITALISM SURVEY

Global Peace Index 2025 shows rising instability GLOBAL PEACE INDEX 2025 MAP

DSM categories melt when you cluster symptoms directly
Ajai Sonachandran breaks down Miri Forbes’ massive symptom-level clustering study showing MDD/GAD/PTSD don’t form distinct clusters—just overlapping slices of broader spectra like Distress and Thought Disorder. I’ve always thought something like this was happening. Similar to Schizophrenia / Manic Depressive in the past? PSYCHIATRY MARGINS ARTICLE | FORBES PREPRINT ON PSYARXIV

Sesame Street goes big on YouTube, with creator training baked in
So happy about this! Sesame Street raised me significantly as a kid. Can’t express enough thanks. Sesame Workshop’s new deal is putting hundreds of full episodes on YouTube plus creator workshops—basically acknowledging kids meet Ms. Rachel before Big Bird now. ENGADGET ARTICLE | YOUTUBE PARTNERSHIP POST

Trump floats a $100k H-1B visa fee
Reuters says the White House is pushing a $100k H‑1B fee, which, if real, would have a massive impact on tech hiring. Elon came out promising war over it, saying his companies are only possible because of H-1B visas. REUTERS STORY | HACKER NEWS DISCUSSION

More people feel safe while wars expand
Gallup says a record 73% feel safe walking at night despite broader conflict, with huge gender gaps and South Africa lowest and Singapore highest. GALLUP ARTICLE

Homicide rates in US and Canada mapped cleanly
/u/Fluid-Decision6262 dropped a crisp map comparing homicide rates across the US and Canada—it’s simple, stark, and way more telling than headlines. REDDIT POST | FULL-RES IMAGE | REDDIT COMMENTS

Frying eggs quietly wrecks your indoor air
Chill Physics Enjoyer shows how a simple egg fry spikes indoor pollution way more than people expect, and gas vs. electric changes the game. SUBSTACK POST

Three-minute at-home EEG flags Alzheimer’s risk years earlier
Fastball EEG from George Stothart: a passive, three‑minute at‑home brainwave test that spots risky memory patterns well before a typical diagnosis. SMITHSONIAN ARTICLE | BRAIN COMMUNICATIONS PAPER

How a single fire unlocked Hitler’s emergency dictatorship
Wikipedia captures how the 1933 Reichstag fire—blamed on Dutch drifter Marinus van der Lubbe—let Hitler push Hindenburg to suspend civil liberties and bulldoze the Enabling Act. WIKIPEDIA ENTRY

Becoming the person who does the thing
Frederick Rivett argues the real unlock isn’t tactics—it’s identity—so you stop “trying” and start acting like someone who already does the thing. FRED RIVETT ARTICLE | HACKER NEWS DISCUSSION

We work too much because we worship work
Bertrand Russell argues in “In Praise of Idleness” that most “hard work” is theater and we’d be saner and kinder if we cut hours in half. One of my favorites. HARPER’S ESSAY | HACKER NEWS DISCUSSION

AI now does most analysts’ grunt work HACKER NEWS POST

Link graphs make reading feel like a conversation again LINKGRAPHS ARE FUN ARTICLE

Runj parallelizes any unix command with clean line-buffered I/O
Karim Chergui released runj, a tiny tool to run any command across N subprocesses with line-buffered stdin/stdout—super handy for clean parallel test runs and build steps. RUNJ RELEASE POST

Fifty things you can do with a software-defined radio FIFTY SDR THINGS ARTICLE

The Culture might actually be a quiet dystopia
Still reading this series, but Ben Arthur flips Iain M. Banks’ Culture on its head—arguing the “post-scarcity utopia” looks a lot like a velvet cage run by inscrutable gods. THE CULTURE AS DYSTOPIA ARTICLE | HACKER NEWS DISCUSSION

Statistical differences only matter if they change your decision TOWARDS DATA SCIENCE ARTICLE

Refactor your “unit of work” to unlock real productivity
Nilenso argues your core abstraction isn’t sprints or commits—it’s the unit of work—so make it a customer-visible slice with clear acceptance, negotiable size, and one place for all context. NILENSO ARTICLE | AI UNIT OF WORK POST BY ATHARVA | INVEST USER STORIES REFERENCE | USER STORY ORIGIN ON C2

A vape runs a real web server fast TOM'S HARDWARE STORY

Nanobot turns MCP servers into full agents with UI
Turns any MCP server into a stateful reasoning agent with a system prompt. NANOBOT SITE

Visual Story-Writing makes story editing visual VISUAL STORY-WRITING GITHUB

Em dashes aren’t an AI tell, they’re a human thinking tool THE RINGER ARTICLE

Quitting the iPhone breaks the addiction, not the utility
Kevin Kelly spends a year off iPhone and realizes the phone wasn’t the problem—the dopamine loops were—and that swapping platforms doesn’t fix your habits. SUBSTACK POST | KEVIN KELLY HOMEPAGE

A creator shows how partial automation actually makes a better newsletter
A Reddit User walks through his n8n + GPT‑5 loop that saves 1–2 hours a day, but the punchline is keeping him in the loop makes it good. REDDIT POST | WORKFLOW SCREENSHOT | CARD EXAMPLE IMAGE

See if you can start thinking of political opponents (not the worst ones, but like mid-level ones) as possibly good people who are good in a different (alien) way than you.

See if you can assume they’re actually trying to do good, and grapple with them and yourself to see if you can find things to agree on.

See if you can find a common, desired destination! And then part as opponents but friends who disagree on how to get there.

This won’t be possible with everyone, but we have to try. It’s the only way to fix this.

📚 Book Recommendation: The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt