Worth Reading 072725


We sketch out the enabling technologies for AI. They include search, reasoning, neural networks, natural language processing, signal processing and computer graphics, programming and conventional software engineering, human-computer interaction, communications, and specialized hardware that provides supercomputing power.


For decades, thanks to the low latency enabled by Remote Direct Memory Access, or RDMA, a method of allowing CPUs and then GPUs and finally other kinds of XPUs to directly access the main memory of each other without having to go through the entire network software stack, InfiniBand found a niche and was one of the reasons why Nvidia shelled out $6.9 billion to acquire Mellanox Technologies more than five years ago.


Shipments of tape storage media increased again in 2024, according to HPE, IBM, and Quantum – the three companies that back the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Format.


In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses a day in the life of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Not an extraordinary day, not a special day, just a regular day.


Dumb phones represent the laziest possible solution to a complex behavioral problem. They’re the dietary equivalent of having your jaw wired shut.

Worth Reading 072425


They call themselves Scattered Spider. They’re probably younger than your college freshman. They live in suburban bedrooms across America and Britain, and they’ve just brought industries to their knees.


The RPKI makes use of RSA signatures. These “traditional” digital signatures are expected to be vulnerable to attacks with powerful quantum computers. While no quantum computer currently exists that can break traditional cryptography, the development of quantum computers is progressing rapidly, and it is expected that they will be able to break RSA and other traditional cryptographic algorithms, be it in several years or several decades.


Analysing Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) SYN segments, the initial step in the TCP three-way handshake, can reveal patterns and anomalies in network traffic, providing insights into potential threats.


One way to establish if a QUIC connection is viable without paying a time penalty is for the server to signal the capability to use QUIC to the client in the first (TCP/TLS) connection, allowing the client to initiate a QUIC session on the second and subsequent connections.


These are not bugs but are inherent limitations of the technology. The same limitations make it unlikely that LLM machines will ever be capable of performing all human tasks at the skill levels of humans.

Worth Reading 071725


Is Your Wi-Fi Router Tracking Your Browsing? Here’s What 30,000 Words of Privacy Policies Revealed.


Browser Dating wants your search history — all of it. Your 3 a.m. Reddit rabbit holes, your medical anxieties, your peculiar curiosities about President Trump’s hair, and whether cats plot murder.


Now, people are rethinking the trade-off. Ubuntu has disabled some protections, resulting in 20% performance boost.


Each time you swipe a loyalty card, you’re not just saving on groceries—you’re feeding a powerful data machine known as retail media.


Over the last ten years, more than 600 million websites have been secured with free certificates from Let’s Encrypt. Here’s how it all began and why.