Quote for the day:
"The only way to do great work is to love what you do." -- Steve Jobs
Amazon AI coding agent hacked to inject data wiping commands
The hacker gained access to Amazon’s repository after submitting a pull
request from a random account, likely due to workflow misconfiguration or
inadequate permission management by the project maintainers. ... On July 23,
Amazon received reports from security researchers that something was wrong
with the extension and the company started to investigate. Next day, AWS
released a clean version, Q 1.85.0, which removed the unapproved code. “AWS is
aware of and has addressed an issue in the Amazon Q Developer Extension for
Visual Studio Code (VSC). Security researchers reported a potential for
unapproved code modification,” reads the security bulletin. “AWS Security
subsequently identified a code commit through a deeper forensic analysis in
the open-source VSC extension that targeted Q Developer CLI command
execution.” “After which, we immediately revoked and replaced the credentials,
removed the unapproved code from the codebase, and subsequently released
Amazon Q Developer Extension version 1.85.0 to the marketplace.” AWS assured
users that there was no risk from the previous release because the malicious
code was incorrectly formatted and wouldn’t run on their environments.How to migrate enterprise databases and data to the cloud
Migrating data is only part of the challenge; database structures, stored
procedures, triggers and other code must also be moved. In this part of the
process, IT leaders must identify and select migration tools that address the
specific needs of the enterprise, especially if they’re moving between
different database technologies (heterogeneous migration). Some things they’ll
need to consider are: compatibility, transformation requirements and the
ability to automate repetitive tasks. ... During migration, especially
for large or critical systems, IT leaders should keep their on-premises and
cloud databases synchronized to avoid downtime and data loss. To help
facilitate this, select synchronization tools that can handle the data change
rates and business requirements. And be sure to test these tools in advance:
High rates of change or complex data relationships can overwhelm some
solutions, making parallel runs or phased cutovers unfeasible. ... Testing is
a safety net. IT leaders should develop comprehensive test plans that cover
not just technical functionality, but also performance, data integrity and
user acceptance. Leaders should also plan for parallel runs, operating both
on-premises and cloud systems in tandem, to validate that everything works as
expected before the final cutover. They should engage end users early in the
process in order to ensure the migrated environment meets business needs.Researchers build first chip combining electronics, photonics, and quantum light
The new chip integrates quantum light sources and electronic controllers using a
standard 45-nanometer semiconductor process. This approach paves the way for
scaling up quantum systems in computing, communication, and sensing, fields that
have traditionally relied on hand-built devices confined to laboratory settings.
"Quantum computing, communication, and sensing are on a decades-long path from
concept to reality," said Miloš Popović, associate professor of electrical and
computer engineering at Boston University and a senior author of the study.
"This is a small step on that path – but an important one, because it shows we
can build repeatable, controllable quantum systems in commercial semiconductor
foundries." ... "What excites me most is that we embedded the control
directly on-chip – stabilizing a quantum process in real time," says Anirudh
Ramesh, a PhD student at Northwestern who led the quantum measurements. "That's
a critical step toward scalable quantum systems." This focus on stabilization is
essential to ensure that each light source performs reliably under varying
conditions. Imbert Wang, a doctoral student at Boston University specializing in
photonic device design, highlighted the technical complexity.
Product Manager vs. Product Owner: Why Teams Get These Roles Wrong
While PMs work on the strategic plane, Product Owners anchor delivery. The PO is
the guardian of the backlog. They translate the product strategy into epics and
user stories, groom the backlog, and support the development team during
sprints. They don’t just manage the “what” — they deeply understand the “how.”
They answer developer questions, clarify scope, and constantly re-evaluate
priorities based on real-time feedback. In Agile teams, they play a central role
in turning strategic vision into working software. Where PMs answer to the
business, POs are embedded with the dev team. They make trade-offs, adjust
scope, and ensure the product is built right. ... Some products need to grow
fast. That’s where Growth PMs come in. They focus on the entire user lifecycle,
often structured using the PIRAT funnel: Problem, Insight, Reach, Activation,
and Trust (a modern take on traditional Pirate Metrics, such as Acquisition,
Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue). This model guides Growth PMs in
identifying where user friction occurs and what levers to pull for meaningful
impact. They conduct experiments, optimize funnels, and collaborate closely with
marketing and data science teams to drive user growth.
Ransomware payments to be banned – the unanswered questions
With thresholds in place, businesses/organisations may choose to operate
differently so that they aren’t covered by the ban, such as lowering turnover or
number of employees. All of this said, rules like this could help to get a
better picture of what’s going on with ransomware threats in the UK. Arda
Büyükkaya, senior cyber threat intelligence analyst at EclecticIQ, explains
more: “As attackers evolve their tactics and exploit vulnerabilities across
sectors, timely intelligence-sharing becomes critical to mounting an effective
defence. Encouraging businesses to report incidents more consistently will help
build a stronger national threat intelligence picture something that’s important
as these attacks grow more frequent and become sophisticated. To spare any
confusion, sector-specific guidance should be provided by government on how
resources should be implemented, making resources clear and accessible. “Many
victims still hesitate to come forward due to concerns around reputational
damage, legal exposure, or regulatory fallout,” said Büyükkaya. “Without
mechanisms that protect and support victims, underreporting will remain a
barrier to national cyber resilience.” Especially in the earlier days of the
legislation, organisations may still feel pressured to pay in order to keep
operations running, even if they’re banned from doing so.
AI Unleashed: Shaping the Future of Cyber Threats
AI optimizes reconnaissance and targeting, giving hackers the tools to scour
public sources, leaked and publicly available breach data, and social media to
build detailed profiles of potential targets in minutes. This enhanced data
gathering lets attackers identify high-value victims and network vulnerabilities
with unprecedented speed and accuracy. AI has also supercharged phishing
campaigns by automatically crafting phishing emails and messages that mimic an
organization’s formatting and reference real projects or colleagues, making them
nearly indistinguishable from genuine human-originated communications. ... AI is
also being weaponized to write and adapt malicious code. AI-powered malware can
autonomously modify itself to slip past signature-based antivirus defenses,
probe for weaknesses, select optimal exploits, and manage its own
command-and-control decisions. Security experts note that AI accelerates the
malware development cycle, reducing the time from concept to deployment.
... AI presents more than external threats. It has exposed a new category
of targets and vulnerabilities, as many organizations now rely on AI models for
critical functions, such as authentication systems and network monitoring. These
AI systems themselves can be manipulated or sabotaged by adversaries if proper
safeguards have not been implemented.
Agile and Quality Engineering: Building a Culture of Excellence Through a Holistic Approach
Could Metasurfaces be The Next Quantum Information Processors?
Broadly speaking, the work embodies metasurface-based quantum optics which,
beyond carving a path toward room-temperature quantum computers and networks,
could also benefit quantum sensing or offer “lab-on-a-chip” capabilities for
fundamental science Designing a single metasurface that can finely control
properties like brightness, phase, and polarization presented unique challenges
because of the mathematical complexity that arises once the number of photons
and therefore the number of qubits begins to increase. Every additional photon
introduces many new interference pathways, which in a conventional setup would
require a rapidly growing number of beam splitters and output ports. To bring
order to the complexity, the researchers leaned on a branch of mathematics
called graph theory, which uses points and lines to represent connections and
relationships. By representing entangled photon states as many connected lines
and points, they were able to visually determine how photons interfere with each
other, and to predict their effects in experiments. Graph theory is also used in
certain types of quantum computing and quantum error correction but is not
typically considered in the context of metasurfaces, including their design and
operation. The resulting paper was a collaboration with the lab of Marko Loncar,
whose team specializes in quantum optics and integrated photonics and provided
needed expertise and equipment.
New AI architecture delivers 100x faster reasoning than LLMs with just 1,000 training examples
When faced with a complex problem, current LLMs largely rely on chain-of-thought
(CoT) prompting, breaking down problems into intermediate text-based steps,
essentially forcing the model to “think out loud” as it works toward a
solution. While CoT has improved the reasoning abilities of LLMs, it has
fundamental limitations. In their paper, researchers at Sapient Intelligence
argue that “CoT for reasoning is a crutch, not a satisfactory solution. It
relies on brittle, human-defined decompositions where a single misstep or a
misorder of the steps can derail the reasoning process entirely.” ... To move
beyond CoT, the researchers explored “latent reasoning,” where instead of
generating “thinking tokens,” the model reasons in its internal, abstract
representation of the problem. This is more aligned with how humans think; as
the paper states, “the brain sustains lengthy, coherent chains of reasoning with
remarkable efficiency in a latent space, without constant translation back to
language.” However, achieving this level of deep, internal reasoning in AI is
challenging. Simply stacking more layers in a deep learning model often leads to
a “vanishing gradient” problem, where learning signals weaken across layers,
making training ineffective.
For the love of all things holy, please stop treating RAID storage as a backup
Although RAID is a backup by definition, practically, a backup doesn't look
anything like a RAID array. That's because an ideal backup is offsite. It's not
on your computer, and ideally, it's not even in the same physical location.
Remember, RAID is a warranty, and a backup is insurance. RAID protects you from
inevitable failure, while a backup protects you from unforeseen failure.
Eventually, your drives will fail, and you'll need to replace disks in your RAID
array. This is part of routine maintenance, and if you're operating an array for
long enough, you should probably have drive swaps on a schedule of several years
to keep everything operating smoothly. A backup will protect you from everything
else. Maybe you have multiple drives fail at once. A backup will protect you.
Lord forbid you fall victim to a fire, flood, or other natural disaster and your
RAID array is lost or damaged in the process. A backup still protects you. It
doesn't need to be a fire or flood for you to get use out of a backup. There are
small issues that could put your data at risk, such as your PC being infected
with malware, or trying to write (and replicate) corrupted data. You can dream
up just about any situation where data loss is a risk, and a backup will be able
to get your data back in situations where RAID can't.
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