Top Secret #10
I had the chance to catch up with some friends over the last week, and as tends to be the case, I inevitably ended up talking about auth stuff. I have a few idle reflections that I feel might be interesting. They’re not that closely related.
“At scale, nothing’s a commodity.” As far as I know, we can attribute this precise phrasing to Satya Nadella. It’s not a totally new idea, but it’s a pretty useful reminder. Doing pretty much anything at scale gets hard. Imagine it this way. Suppose you buy a hardware device that has a 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance of failing on any given day. If you’re a consumer, you don’t care; we can’t even really think in billions. But if you’re a hyperscaler with a billion such devices running concurrently, it’s probable that at least one will fail on any given day.
“No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Feels weird to quote von Moltke, but whatever. We started onboarding users this week for a new product. We stumbled across some limitations and bugs that we hadn’t anticipated. It’s great to collide hard with reality and see how your product actually gets used.
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” I’ve talked to a lot of people recently about the future of auth for AI agents. I feel a bit strange about it. I don’t personally feel a strong need to stake an opinion about the future of AI agents. In truth, I have absolutely no idea where things are going. Maybe I’m missing something.
What We’re Reading
An Ars Technica history of the internet, part 1: looks like Ars Technica’s doing a multi-part series that lays out the history of the Internet. If you’re a dork like me interested in the history of science, you’ll appreciate this one too.
Searching for something unknow: this is a neat breakdown of some sketchy spyware Chrome extensions. The author does some clever stuff, including use of Google’s Gemini to work through some heavily obfuscated code.
Man Employs A.I. Avatar in Legal Appeal, and Judge Isn’t Amused: another lovely example of modern AI tools awkwardly worming their way into legacy processes. It’s not clear what our social expectations are here. What’s so wrong about using an AI avatar in court? It seems wrong, but I’m not sure we know exactly why.
Pentagon to end $5.1 billion in contracts with Accenture, Deloitte, others: the government has decided to axe a bunch of spending with third-party IT consulting shops like Accenture and Deloitte. This will be fine in the short run, but very expensive in the long run. I continue to be surprised by how many people have very strong opinions about consulting firms without knowing much about what these firms do.
Fruit flies can be made to act like miniature robots: this is a really interesting experiment that shows the power of instinctive behavior. It turns out that you can arrange stimuli in a way that predictably drives movement in Drosophila, effectively controlling their behavior.
Process as Punishment: An American History of Political Spectacle: this is an exceptionally thoughtful article about procedural bullying. Writes the author, comparing the current environment to HUAC’s peak, “commitment to honest discourse and respect for process are values that those of us who care about institutions strive to preserve; we want to engage in good faith. But many of the hearings Americans are beginning to see are fundamentally bad faith.”
Nerd CornerTM
Long before we had flags, we had things that are kind of like flags – called vexilloids.
Here are some things that count as vexilloids:
Bunchuks, a pole with horse tail hairs popularized by Slavic cavalry
Norse vanes, funky, heavily ornamented weather vanes for longships
Staves of office, as held by leaders of the Orthodox Church
Vexilla, icons and banners carried around on giant sticks by Roman legionnaires
Banderoles: weirdly shaped, long and thin flaglike banners
Pennons, more familiarly known as pennants, popular in college sports
Gonfalons, banner things that are popular in academia
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Other Cool Stuff
Mathler: a slightly weird math-y derivative of Wordle. I’d be lying if I said I’ve mastered it. But it’s still pretty neat and worth a quick try.
Faces of Open Source: I’m reminded of the famous xkcd about dependencies – there are tons of uncelebrated folks out there working hard without compensation on projects we all depend on. It’s nice to see some of the people who built modern computing get acknowledged for their contributions.
Powder Game: clunky website notwithstanding, this is a pretty neat physics simulation that’s fun to play with. You can spawn a bunch of particles and control their movement in 2d space. I’ve wanted to build a physics engine myself for a while… I’d love to understand in depth how these things work.
From The Archives
(1979): Xerox Alto: a personal computer
(2001): Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?
(2007): The 20 Most Successful Technology Failures of All Time
(2008): Is Google Making Us Stupid?
(2023): Turns Out Barbra Streisand Is Aware Of The Streisand Effect, But Seems Confused About It
Thanks,
Ned