#80 Daemonic Influence, Tools And Toys

+ Going Direct, Feels Just Right, Teleshopping’s Porn Paradox, Thrown For A Hyperloop etc.

The Week that Was:

A look back at the tech world of the past week.

Daemonic Influence:

This past week, developer Andres Freund was confused to find that regular testing of some stuff was taking up a lot more system resources than it should and that certain processes kept failing at the same point. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that some potentially apocalyptic shenanigans were afoot . If you’d like a more detailed overview of exactly how the so-called “XZ hack’ works, here you go ! For those who just want the most basic breakdown, here it is:

·?????? A bad actor spent several years tricking the solo developer of the XZ utility, Lasse Collin, to let them take over the project. This bad actor was called Jia Tan (presumed to be a cover, not a real name). They made genuinely useful contributions as smokescreens for figuring out the intricacies of XZ. Knowing exactly how XZ ticked made it possible to integrate a nearly imperceptible backdoor.

·?????? The liblzma (that’s what it’s called) library relied upon by XZ processes is altered to serve as this backdoor, rather than any of the software or protocols themselves. This means that none of the actual utilities are flagged as compromised yet all data interacting with the compromised library can be intercepted and modified.

·?????? The vast majority of internet servers use Linux so this ability to intercept and alter data would have been particularly catastrophic now that cloud compute is more in demand than ever .

·?????? ‘Would have been’ is so important to emphasize here because Freund found the backdoor (seemingly) before it was put to use.?

The situation is still unfolding, but here’s a timeline of the saga so far at the time of writing . You might reasonably think that this is a purely technical story, right? Wrong. Jia Tan preyed upon Collin’s mental health issues and insecurities to all but force a transfer of maintenance responsibilities for XZ. They didn’t get caught until now because they played the long game of pretending to be a hard-working, compassionate contributor to the project.

Freund found this backdoor because he knows and respects that the devil in the details always gets his due. Human vulnerability, human ruthlessness, human diligence. That’s the real story here. For this hack to have worked, it relied on the automated nature of processes called ‘daemons,’ an alternative way to spell demon. That’s so darkly ironic when you think about it. If you ask me, the real demon(s) here is/are the person or collective behind Jia Tan. LINK

Tools And Toys:

A colleague asked me recently how I felt about the state of prompt engineering and to what extent this affected my views on AI in the workflow. At the most fundamental level, I think any tool should be intuitive and elegant. A great tool is an extension of the body that engages the mind in a harmonious dance, the result of which is something that could not have happened nearly as quickly, if at all, without the tool. The beauty of a tool is in its efficiency, and when I work, I want to have the most efficient tools.

A toy, to me, is the polar opposite. Toys should be impractical enough to force creative approaches to problems, open-ended enough to make such freedom of choice possible, and not at all geared toward efficiency. Build yourself a temple to worship efficiency and it can double as a graveyard for creativity. Prompt engineering is the ugly compromise for a technology that doesn’t know whether it wants to be a tool or a toy. To be clear, I think short and intuitive prompts such as those on Anthropic’s website are great. Informing an AI assistant what the context of your request is, is akin to having different heads for a screwdriver . My problem is more with entire walls of symbols that are machine readable but look like ugly, barely coherent gibberish to humans. They are efficient, but there’s no beauty in them.

I’m not alone in thinking this way, far from it. Popular AI image generator MidJourney now favors natural language style prompts for its most recent algorithms, OpenAI now has an ‘artist in residence’ , and ever more tech workers are flocking to the arts to make sense of the kinds of impact AI may have on society. All work and no play makes for a dull mind. All told I am very happy with the state of prompt engineering.? As technology advances and becomes more refined, awareness of the necessity and value of art and artists only grows. That’s because “our tools shape us”, as Stanford Humanities Fellow Bryan Norton puts it, and so do our toys. People becoming better aware and mindful of this fact is a wonderful thing. LINK

A Glass Case Of Emotion:

Covering the emotional and psychological effect and affect of tech.

Going Direct:

More and more tech CEOs are ‘going direct’ by granting interviews to befriended tech podcasters instead of to news publications they don’t like, which to be fair, is their fair right. Interviews and other in-depth coverage of tech’s power players have always been especially vital to tech journalism because the world of tech is particularly cult of personality-driven. Thus, tech news finds itself increasingly divided.

On one side there are powerful and respected publications such as The Atlantic and The Verge. These publications are financially and reputationally secure enough to write hard-hitting investigative reports regardless of how mad it might make those in power.

On the other side are those in power, and the arguably just as influential content creators they’ve befriended. It’d be a lot more clear-cut if such podcasts were pure shilling (shameless promotion), but a lot of these ‘tech friends’ do genuinely good work as well. Thus a large ravine has formed. A ravine into which more and more publications appear to be falling to their doom. Case in point, Vice Media.

Vice media collapsed because its founder Shane Smith seemingly ran out of borrowed time. This time was borrowed from wealthy investors who have run out of patience. And so it goes that the entire organization is now paying the price for leadership supposedly never having…well…provided any leadership. At least if the bombshell exposé by The Verge’s Elizabeth Lopatto is to be believed.

The power struggle between the remaining staff at gaming publication Kotaku and owner G/O Media is similar in the sense that G/O Media wants a quick fix to what it considers to be underperformance by Kotaku. That quick fix is to pivot the site toward guide-style content such as game guides and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Kotaku’s editor-in-chief already left over this directive, and the remaining staff continue to fiercely protest against it . They are protesting because there are no quick fixes for the fact that organizations rot from the top. In fact, the deaths of Vice, and potentially Kotaku only deepen the chasm.

Those people confident enough to answer tough questions are more likely to talk to ‘the big publications’ as a badge of honor. Those who want softball questions from friendly faces can just go to their podcasting friends. So yeah, growth hacks are indeed effective, but in the same way as cancer technically counts as a growth hack for the human body’s cells. LINK

Feels Just Right:

I happened to come across a batch of articles this past week about the game feel in some popular games such as the farming simulator Stardew Valley and the Right To Repair advertisement The Legend of Zelda Tears of The Kingdom (TotK). Huh, almost most like some kind of game development event happened recently or someth…oh my god I forgot about the Game Developers’ (GDC) Conference because the AI world caught fire again last week, didn’t I…? Ahahaha well, in the immortal words of myself when I drop a cookie on the floor that I still want “It’s still good!” So let’s get to it.

Whilst ‘just vibing’ might not seem like it would be particularly relevant or logical a term to describe the general uh…vibe… that’s exactly what’s going on with the success of these games. Vibes are behind young generations embracing retro and retro-style games in droves. We are, all of us, adrift in an ocean of stimuli and obligations. Water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink. Yet to allow oneself to just ‘vibe’ with something means that it both literally and figuratively resonates in a way that allows relief from all of those compounding tensions of modern life.

I refuse to do a ‘back in my day!’ style shaking of the digital cane at the sky here, partly because game skies actually make some people feel particularly mellowed out and immersed as well. But also because the appeal of this wave of nostalgia is that it’s timeless. Rather than a paradise lost in which everything was right and proper, this ‘evergreen nostalgia’ is like a warm comfortable blanket people are discovering they can put on when they need it.

This is also why I jokingly referred to TotK as a ‘right to repair’ simulator. One of the core mechanics of that game is that you can break just about anything, weapons, encounters, puzzles, and how you navigate the world itself. And you can repair everything yourself with a series of intuitive, robust tools. Perhaps the fact that so much of the media we have today is directly or indirectly built atop the media of yore might say something about the present state of the creative indust…oh come on Mickey, put the gun down, I didn’t even mention labor rights in Hollywood this time! LINK

Rules of Engagement:

Ethics and legal matters regarding tech engagement.

Teleshopping’s Porn Paradox:

As some of you in the advertising and e-commerce branches might be aware, YouTube creators recently weighed in on the platform’s revenue share for its latest affiliate marketing drive. Affiliate marketing is actually something most tech companies operating social media platforms want to crack. Examples of affiliate marketing hopefuls include Meta across all its apps, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitch, and of course YouTube. It’s the modern equivalent of older ‘teleshopping’ via TV.

Affiliate marketing is massively popular in China yet has failed to take off in Western markets thus far. I’ve covered the many reasons for that in previous newsletters, but one topic not often touched upon is the phenomenon of ‘growth hacks.’ These are somewhat related to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) but focused on exponential follower growth on social media rather than showing up at the top of search engines. Here’s another softball for the marketers, you remember the slogan ‘sex sells’ right? Well, as it turns out, it doesn’t sell to prudish advertisers!

Twitch, Amazon’s popular live-streaming platform, has long fought against savvy users walking the razor’s edge of permissible behavior. One example of such users is the controversial streamer Morgpie. The reason this streamer is controversial is because of how close she manages to keep getting to outright pornographic content despite Twitch’s best efforts to reign her in . This behavior is extremely lucrative for the streamers themselves, because ‘milking’ horny viewers is big business. Yet it makes such star performers of Twitch’s platform advertising cyanide to large companies who don’t want their family-friendly images tarnished by association.

Similarly, it is also increasingly prevalent in game algorithms via external marketing agencies. This is hardly new, and though often slimy, hardly illegal. However, the current advertising landscape remains heavily volatile and oversaturated. Not only does ‘growth hack’ advertising now undermine the advertising arm of platforms themselves, but it also places influencers using such services into direct competition with companies looking to partner with them. Thus, Teleshopping’s Porn Paradox is that sex still sells, but the tactic is an example of how influencer and advertiser interests are increasingly diverging in an oversaturated space where they now have to fight with and against each other for attention. LINK

Thrown For A Hyperloop:

I really wanted to write a hype piece about how a new Hyperloop in the Netherlands may finally prove the viability of this high-speed shuttle technology. But given previous railway network projects in the Netherlands, chances are that we’ll finally have a new government, and probably also have a Queen again, by the time this project is actually finished.

Hyperloops, for those that don’t know, are pressurized tubes with near-vacuum conditions to minimize friction. Powerful magnets are used to propel pods through these tunnels at tremendous speeds. There are both valid and somewhat more farcical objections to the hyperloop. On the farcical end are complaints that being stuffed into a small dark pod and shot through a long tunnel at high speeds is uncomfortable and potentially dangerous. Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binaries, the London Underground and Amsterdam Metro would like to inform you that you are absolutely correct. Your boss would like to inform you that you are still expected in the office on time for work, safe travels!

Joking aside, even Shanxi province in China, which saw a roughly 3km test track enter service around 2022 has yet to crack the hyperloop formula because there are significant technical hurdles to overcome, on top of the obviously high initial investments required to build such systems. Not to mention the fact that our old existing infrastructure may conflict with such new projects. A recent accident with a cargo ship ramming into a US bridge served as a stark reminder about just how disastrous such a disconnect between old infrastructure and new traffic can be.

For my money, I still think that it is most likely for ‘charging roads’ to be the main driver of cleaner transport. An Indiana road in the US seems to have shown promising results at wirelessly charging electric cars that drove across it, greatly reducing a key bottleneck of Electric Vehicles (EVs), the fact that their range sucks compared to petrol cars and trying to recharge mid-journey (hah) sucks even worse. I remain somewhat apprehensive about whether or not the supply chains of such a recharging road could be clean enough to make it a net gain, but it at least excites me conceptually. LINK

A Nice Cup of Serendipity:

Cool bits and bobs from around the web.

NERDS LINK

Khan Interview LINK

Water Holes LINK

Return Of The Baby Hacker LINK

Physicality LINK

80,000 Levels Later LINK

Buying The Future LINK

Tag You’re It LINK

GDDR7 LINK

Amazon’s Anthropic LINK

Chinese Academics LINK

OSS Thug Lyfe LINK

Well Shit… LINK

The Deep End:

A weekly batch of long-form content recommendations.

Marios’s Pain:

Can Mario feel pain? LINK

DeepMind Big Brain Time:

Can Demis Hassabis lead Google to AI victory? LINK

In Plain Sight:

Games that hide horror in the ordinary. LINK

Click, Click, Click!

A Diablo series retrospective. LINK

The Hubberman Affair:

Some pretty spicy accusations against prominent Podcaster Andrew Hubberman. LINK

Sony’s Big Picture:

Sony Music boss Rob Stringer gives his take on the present state of the music industry. LINK

One More Thing…

I have obtained books! I love books, my whole house is full of them. Several months ago, a boss asked me to name my favorite book, and I struggled to answer him before ultimately deciding that it was a book I hadn’t ever opened, a book I’d yet to read, yet which had already brought me tremendous joy and fulfillment despite the fact that I’d never read it. The imagination this book sparked in me, and the amount of thought and contemplation it provoked, made me really happy. They say not to judge a book by its cover, but what they don’t tell you is how a well-made cover can in and of itself make for a great ‘read’ as well.

This brings us to my latest treasure, two massive tomes that I could barely lift because I should exercise more… There’s so much going on with this cover in terms of colors, textures, and patterns, that I don’t want to unpack to the books yet. Also, easter happened, and the easter lunch at work was lovely. Luckily my books hadn’t arrived yet back then. I shudder to think of the existential anguish of having to choose between taking home some of the leftovers and my books. Ah… the duality of food for thought…