1. Recent ‘MFA Bombing’ Attacks Targeting Apple Users
Total comment counts : 22
Summary
Apple customers have recently fallen victim to elaborate phishing attacks that exploit a bug in Apple’s password reset feature. The attacks involve flooding the target’s Apple devices with system prompts, halting device use until the user responds to each prompt. The scammers then call the victim, posing as Apple support, and claim that the user’s account is under attack. They request the user to verify a one-time code. Upon denying the password reset prompts, victims receive a call that appears to be from Apple Support, but the caller provides accurate personal information except for the victim’s real name. The goal is to trigger an Apple ID reset code, allowing the scammers to reset the password and lock the user out, as well as remotely wipe all Apple devices connected to the account. Victims are advised to disregard unsolicited calls claiming to be from Apple.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article and comments mention a potential vulnerability where allowing access on a device does not give an attacker permission to change a password on a web browser. When someone taps “Allow” on their device, they receive a 6-digit pin, which they can use to change their password on their own device. The attacker then calls using a spoofed Apple phone number and asks the person to provide the 6-digit pin. If the person gives the pin to the attacker, they can use it on their browser to reset the person’s password. The omission of this detail in the article is surprising.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author and their wife experienced a series of requests and text messages in 2021 or possibly 2022, claiming to be from Apple. To protect themselves, they set up recovery keys and advanced data protection, ensuring that only trusted devices can access their accounts and enroll new devices. These measures stopped the attackers from gaining access to their accounts.
2. DBRX: A new open LLM
Total comment counts : 33
Summary
Databricks has introduced DBRX, an open, general-purpose language model (LLM) that surpasses GPT-3.5 in terms of performance. It provides capabilities previously limited to closed model APIs and is competitive with Gemini 1.0 Pro. DBRX is particularly strong in programming and offers marked improvements in training and inference performance. With its fine-grained mixture-of-experts architecture, DBRX is more efficient than other open models. It is available for Databricks customers to use via APIs and can be pretrained from scratch or continued training on existing checkpoints. DBRX is already being integrated into Databricks’ GenAI-powered products and is performing well in applications like SQL and RAG tasks. The model was pretrained on 12T tokens of carefully curated data and utilizes various techniques to enhance its performance. Overall, DBRX demonstrates superior quality and efficiency compared to other established open models.
Top 1 Comment Summary
According to the author, the leading models currently in use are the Miqu 70B for general chat, Deepseed 33B for coding, and Yi 34B for chats with over 32K context. There are also fine-tuned versions of these models. The author mentions that there are other models in the 34B-70B range that they haven’t tried, and they were not impressed with the Qwen model. The author states that the Llama 70B, Mixtral, and Grok models, as seen in the charts, are not what they would consider to be state of the art (SOTA), although Mixtral is good for batch size 1 speed.
Top 2 Comment Summary
This article discusses the transition from tracking parameter count to tracking memory usage (GPU and CPU RAM) in evaluating models. It emphasizes that a model with fewer parameters but higher RAM usage can outperform a larger model. It also highlights that simply quantizing a model to fit on one GPU does not guarantee its superiority; metrics need to be re-evaluated.
3. Daniel Kahneman has died
Total comment counts : 46
Summary
Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist and Nobel laureate, has died at the age of 90. He is best known for his research that challenged the idea of humans as rational beings acting out of self-interest. Instead, he found that people rely on shortcuts and make flawed decisions due to being influenced by recent events. Kahneman’s work integrated psychological research into economics and helped establish the field of behavioral economics. His research has had a significant impact on various fields, including sports, public policy, and medicine. Kahneman’s ideas were presented in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” which distinguished between two modes of thought and highlighted the cognitive biases that affect decision-making.
Top 1 Comment Summary
I’m sorry, but I am unable to access or summarize specific websites or articles on the internet. However, I can help with summarizing any specific text or information you provide to me. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can assist you with.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” and the author’s perspective on its content. The author initially resisted reading the book but eventually found it to contain profound ideas that are still relevant and not widely understood. They suggest that while some chapters may drag on in the second half of the book, the main premises can be summarized by using a chat GPT.
4. FuryGpu – Custom PCIe FPGA GPU
Total comment counts : 17
Summary
The FuryGpu is a hardware GPU implemented on a Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ FPGA. It has hardware features equivalent to a high-end graphics card from the mid-1990s and a full modern Windows software driver stack. It can render games from that era at frame rates that exceed real-time. The FuryGpu is built on a custom PCB and connected to the host computer using PCIe.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author introduces their project and mentions their intention to open-source the entire stack, including PCB schematic/layout, HDL, drivers, and a port of Quake. However, they mention legal issues and the need to make decisions regarding licensing. The project has been in progress for over two and a half years, with videos documenting its progress available on their YouTube playlist. The author plans to write blog posts about the PCIe interface but does not provide a timeline. They express appreciation for the questions and promise to answer them in the relevant threads.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the influence of Ben Eater’s breadboard computer series in hobby electronics and the writer’s inspiration to design their own retro CPU. They express the desire for a CPU similar to the 6502 but with additional capabilities like more registers and hardware division. Despite the daunting task, they consider using a microcontroller unit (MCU) to simplify the process, but they are stuck on the problem of generating graphics.
5. Butterflies Full of Wasps Full of Microwasps Are a Science Nightmare (2021)
Total comment counts : 21
Summary
Scientists introduced caterpillars of the Glanville fritillary butterfly to the island of Sottunga in the Åland archipelago in order to study their dispersal. However, they unintentionally introduced three other species, including a parasitic wasp, a “hyperparasitoid” wasp, and a bacterium called Wolbachia pipientis. These species have managed to survive on the island for 30 years, despite the vulnerability of small island populations. The parasites’ ability to fly or be carried by strong winds between islands contributed to their survival. The study serves as a warning about the unintentional release of organisms during species reintroduction projects. Additionally, the climate crisis, which causes droughts, poses a threat to the survival and genetic diversity of the butterfly and its associated species.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the fascinating behavior of chalcid or jewel wasps, which are a highly diverse group of animals. These wasps lay their eggs in other organisms, including other eggs, and act as parasitoids, ultimately killing their hosts. Despite their prevalence, many people are unaware of these wasps’ existence. The article also mentions fig wasps, which exhibit unique behaviors and interactions with the fig trees they inhabit. The author provides a link to a website for further exploration of this topic.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article describes a rare and tiny parasitic wasp called Mesochorus cf. stigmaticus, which lives inside larger wasps. This hyperparasitoid wasp kills its host wasp at the same time as the host wasp kills a caterpillar. It then emerges from the caterpillar’s remains 10 days later.
6. Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring
Total comment counts : 42
Summary
The author shares their experience as a student at MIT, highlighting the difficulties they faced in getting help and resources to learn. They mention the policies implemented by the school that hindered their ability to learn independently, such as blocking access to past problem solutions and not recording explanations to increase attendance. These policies had unintended consequences, making help resources inefficient and causing students to struggle to catch up if they fell behind. The author felt bitter and fell into depression due to these challenges. They believe that universities prioritize prestige over effective teaching and that there is a lack of accessible educational resources, like Khan Academy and YouTube. Inspired by this, the author created explanations.app, a platform where students pay a small fee to access personalized video lessons taught by experienced teachers. The platform currently offers math and physics subjects and is open to anyone who wants to learn or teach.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article discusses how help resources in academic settings can become inefficient due to restricted materials and the limited availability of teaching assistants. The author shares their personal experience as a TA and later a professor, where they found it difficult to encourage students to attend office hours despite offering one-on-one tutoring. The author suggests that the problem may not lie with the teaching staff, but could vary from university to university.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article is a 53-year-old individual preparing for their first semester in Georgia Tech’s online MS CS program. They express excitement about relearning linear algebra, statistics, and calculus after a 30-year hiatus from college. The author mentions their satisfaction with the free assistance they have received from chatgpt-3.5, an AI model. They provide an example of a question they asked, which initially yielded a wrong answer but was promptly corrected. They also mention their intention to check out another website and compare it to AI tutors.
7. Death and typos: my six years screening online obituary comments
Total comment counts : 13
Summary
The article discusses the author’s experience working as a content moderator for an online memorial company. Their job involved reviewing condolence messages attached to obituaries and ensuring that they were appropriate. The author shares examples of the errors and typos they encountered in these messages, which often resulted from autocorrect. They also talk about the challenges they faced, such as not being able to read the related obituaries and having to screen references to family fallouts and estrangement. Additionally, the author reflects on the emotional toll of the job and the lack of understanding from others about the nature of their work.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article discusses an individual who worked in moderation, specifically in monitoring obituaries and related comments. It is noted that the person was not allowed to read the obituaries themselves, therefore lacking context about the subject being a human or dog. This lack of context may be seen as a distancing mechanism, but it is also criticized as dehumanizing. The article also highlights the individual’s efforts to maintain a “safe and sugarcoated” comment section by deleting comments that reference family conflicts or negative aspects of the deceased. The author questions the culture of sanitizing people’s images after their death and argues that it is unfair to silence those who have been harmed by them. It is suggested that this approach prioritizes the grieving of supporters while disregarding the complexities and experiences of those who were abused. Ultimately, it is seen as an attempt to preserve order by ignoring anything unseemly.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author worked as a developer for a startup that created an online memorial product. Moderation duties were shared among the team, and although violent or horrible content was rare, it was deeply memorable when it did occur. The author found it surprising that some individuals could have such intense hatred towards a deceased person that they wanted to inflict it on their grieving loved ones. Despite this, there were also many deeply touching comments. The author felt the most sadness when encountering memorials with no comments and obituaries that simply stated there would be no service.
8. Backpressure explained – the resisted flow of data through software (2019)
Total comment counts : 10
Summary
The article discusses the concept of backpressure in software engineering, explaining that it refers to the resistance or force opposing the desired flow of data through software. It provides examples, such as a candy packaging plant and file system operations, to illustrate how backpressure can occur in different scenarios. The article suggests strategies to mitigate backpressure, such as controlling the producer’s speed and only reading data as fast as it can be written. It also mentions that backpressure can occur in communication between servers in a microservice architecture.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses backpressure and criticizes its lack of mention of synchronous requests as a simple solution. It explains that the options presented are buffering, dropping, or controlling the producer. However, the article suggests that the simplest approach is for a producer to not send a second request until the first one is completed. This method can limit concurrency and ensure requests are acknowledged by the upstream system. The need for ad-hoc signaling is highlighted when unbounded concurrency is desired. The article emphasizes that synchronous requests may be slower but are the simplest and most reliable way of handling tasks.
Top 2 Comment Summary
This article discusses the issue of queues building up due to fluctuating input and processing rates. It states that even if the average rates are acceptable, the variability in these rates can cause problems. The article provides an example of a single server queue, where the average queue length is determined by the utilization, which is calculated by dividing the average arrival rate by the average processing rate. It suggests that in order to keep queue lengths reasonable, the average utilization should be kept below 80%.
9. How I would automate monitoring DNS queries in basic Prometheus
Total comment counts : 5
Summary
This article discusses the problem of monitoring DNS query results using basic Prometheus and the Blackbox exporter. The author suggests using a script to generate the configurations needed to monitor multiple DNS queries across different DNS servers. The script would create a separate Blackbox instance and generate stanzas for each DNS query. It would also generate a list of scrape targets and labels in the format expected by Prometheus file discovery. The author mentions that more elaborate breakdowns are possible, such as separating external DNS servers from internal ones. The article concludes by stating that while it is possible to create a comprehensive DNS monitoring system with such a generation system, the extra complexity may not be worth it in terms of detecting problems and maintaining the system.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the importance of monitoring DNS by running HTTP uptime checks over both IPv4 and IPv6. By doing separate checks, it ensures that if there is an issue with one type of record but not the other, a failure will still be detected. The author mentions that they have not found any commercial SAAS uptime checkers that offer this feature. The article also provides instructions on how to set up this monitoring in Prometheus using the blackbox module. The author suggests using two modules, one for each IP version, and mentions the use of Jinja templating to automate the configuration setup. The article concludes by noting that this approach is useful in host downtime situations where one type of traffic may be dropped while the other still functions.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the use of CoreDNS, a DNS server, as a “proxy” to monitor and log all outgoing DNS queries. The author modified the CoreDNS code to include the request in the exported metrics, allowing users to track their DNS requests over time and identify any abnormalities.
10. After Appalachian hospitals merged, their ERs became much slower
Total comment counts : 17
Summary
The article discusses the experiences of a city council member in Bristol, Virginia who had a medical emergency and had to wait for 30 hours in the emergency room before receiving treatment. The council member’s experience highlights the growing wait times in Ballad Health, a 20-hospital system in Tennessee and Virginia that benefits from a state-sanctioned hospital monopoly. Reports indicate that ER visits in Ballad have become three times longer over the past six years. Despite this, there have been no steps taken to reduce wait times in the ER. Ballad’s latest annual report shows that the median time patients spend in the ER before being admitted to the hospital is nearly 11 hours. Ballad ranks among the slowest ERs in the country based on federal data. The hospital system attributes the delays to a nursing shortage and a backlog of patients awaiting discharge. Although Ballad performs well on other measurements of ER performance, such as fewer patients leaving without treatment, critics argue that the monopoly creates a lack of options for patients.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses five greedy systems within the US healthcare industry. The first system mentioned is the American Medical Association (AMA), which artificially controls the number of medical graduates based on a quota, leading to a shortage of doctors and preventing experienced doctors from other countries from practicing in the US. The second system is hospitals, many of which are owned by private equity firms, that prioritize maximizing profit per patient. They do not show prices and often charge exorbitant amounts for basic care items like Ibuprofen and bandages. Furthermore, patients continue to receive bills for months after receiving care. The third system is doctors who face significant debt and therefore need to charge inflated prices for basic care in order to pay off their debts. Additionally, specialist appointments are often booked months in advance. The fourth system is insurance companies, which are only allowed to make a maximum of 20% on administration costs. They benefit from the high prices and frequently deny claims. Finally, politicians profit from lobbying insurance companies and big providers, and the employer-sponsored health insurance system weakens the bargaining power of individual workers. The article suggests that pooling the approximately $5 trillion spent on healthcare into a government-funded insurance pool, removing artificial license quotas and market-advertised prices, would result in a more efficient healthcare system. The article also highlights that the lack of coordination among individuals allows corporations to capture the market. This leads to administrative bloat, reliance on crowdfunding platforms for medical expenses, and lower mortality rates compared to other wealthy countries. Overall, the US healthcare system is described as being problematic and in need of significant reform.
Top 2 Comment Summary
According to the article, the median emergency room (ER) time for admitted patients at Ballad in 2022 was six hours. This increased to seven hours and 40 minutes in 2023, and the latest report shows a further increase to 10 hours and 45 minutes.