JustinG

My Lethal Trifecta talk at the Bay Area AI Security Meetup I gave a talk on Wednesday at the Bay Area AI Security Meetup about prompt injection, the lethal trifecta and the challenges of securing systems that use MCP. It wasn’t …

I gave a talk on Wednesday at the Bay Area AI Security Meetup about prompt injection, MCP security and the lethal trifecta. Here are the annotated slides from my presentation, including notes on my weird hobby of trying to coin or amplify new terms of art simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/9/b...

New Study Shows Hurricane Hunter Flights Significantly Increase Forecast Accuracy The researchers focused on Hurricane Hunter missions conducted with NOAA’s Gulfstream IV during recent Atlantic hurricane seasons.

Hurricane track forecasts made with dropsonde data from the NOAA jet 2018-2022 were up to 24% more accurate than those without the data. Congressional testimony by former NOAA/HRD chief Frank Marks: ~50% of their staff who do dropsondes were let go this year. Will this reduce missions?

The Geology of the Mother Lode Gold Belt, Foothills Metamorphic Belt, Sierra Nevada, California ABSTRACT. The Mother Lode gold belt is a striking example of tectonically and structurally controlled gold deposits. The goldquartz veins are discontinuous

Oh OK that makes sense then, it’s vein deposits and placer gold. Yes that’s a pretty bedrock map but not going to help you’re right. pubs.geoscienceworld.org/books/book/2...

It kinda looks like the tightly clustered faults might be part of a thrust fault system (contractional tectonics) that likely goes deep and thru different geology. The faults on right side of map I’d guess are more often shallower normal faults (extensional).

I’d add that the distribution of mines versus faults suggests there’s more correlation between the two when faults go through certain geology or are part of a deeper fault system versus shallow. I’d explore add bedrock layer rather than shaded relief or fault depth if you have that information.

Props to google on this. Hopefully, start of a trend.

But still not certain. The wave interface with shore is still weird? Water seems to go higher than it should? Periodicity doesn’t bother me quite so much as I’m interpreting the breaking waves being normal waves just breaking higher up and the video only showing one side of first tidal wave.

Much more believable at the high resolution.

Destroying active satellites like this is incredibly financially wasteful. Also, takes useful data away from farmers and ranchers.

This is the type of thing I could see the administration backing down on if enough people complain to Congress. www.congress.gov/members/find...

And I like Houston

Coming home from a trip to Seattle back to #Houston in July is especially rough. You leave perfectly refreshing sunny but not hot 70-80s weather and walk out the Houston airport door into air that’s most comparable to the too small industrial kitchen of a rotten soup factory.

Been to that market multiple times as my in-laws live down the street and somehow have missed the meat rock!

Should You Use Passkeys Instead of Passwords? - Consumer Reports Passkeys are an alternative to passwords, and they provide robust protection against phishing attacks and website breaches.

There’s probably better explanations but this one pops up in web search, isn’t from tech company, and gives some info on why they’re more secure but perhaps not the greatest UI yet www.consumerreports.org/electronics/...

Because passkeys are usually used in conjunction with identity info stored on an app or physical device so losing control of the passkey alone doesn’t let someone hack you but it would with a password.

@hawaiinewsnow.com is doing nice live coverage of the tsunami

Oh wow that’s interesting! For the non-geologists, there can be a pattern where earthquakes release stress and then it builds up again over time before breaking again. The average time interval is called a recurrence interval.

View of the structure with the Scorpius constellation lit up. You can see other bulbs which are not lit, belonging to the first constellation we hung up.

The side view of Scorpius. I imagine the constellation from this angle looks like a long necked bird or a leaping ballerina.

We hung Scorpius, I am in love ⭐️

I’ll take some more pics and video later once it’s fully dark. #SciArt #FrameOfReference

any sufficiently advanced social network is indistinguishable from facebook

There’s useful stuff and not so useful stuff and it’s not clear to many which is which.

Eventually, there will be a big shake out. The shakeout will take out some useful stuff too, because a lot of this works more like tides than an individual person beach cleaning.

AI is at the pet.com stage not the chewy.com stage.

1/ Since January, over 5,500 NIH-funded projects have been paused. That includes cancer trials, Alzheimer’s research, maternal health studies. This is work that directly impacts our lives.
And people aren't talking about it enough.
Let’s fix that 🧵

We need a European Sovereign Tech Fund With a new feasibility study, GitHub’s developer policy team is building a coalition of policymakers and industry to close the maintenance funding gap.

For the EU policy or open source funding nerds:

"Explores how one of the open source world’s most successful government programs, the German Sovereign Tech Agency, can be scaled up to the European Union level. "

github.blog/open-source/...

Adding repository custom instructions for GitHub Copilot - GitHub Docs Create a file in a repository that gives Copilot additional context for the work it does in that repository.

In GitHub Copilot chat you can do that through a repository level instruction file that instructs copilot to refer to itself as ____. Where ___ could be something less anthropomorphic. docs.github.com/en/copilot/h...

But if you do go tour NASA you have to time it for lunch at Viola & Agnes for amazing soul food down the street. That’s why you never visit NASA on Mondays!

This is funny but seriously don’t visit Houston without a local to guide you. You’ll just be confused and disappointed instead of confused and had a good time.

Every time I see a social media thread about a published study I have to remind myself the numbers are probably….

200 commented after reading post
50 after reading replies
10 after reading article about study
2 after reading study
0-1 after looking at actual data in appendix

For sale or lease: NASA satellites, slightly used Government spacecraft would be available for purchase under a plan being discussed by the Trump administration.

NEW: Senior NASA officials considering selling or leasing satellites already in orbit. Billions of $ already spent to send probes into space, savings are minimal. Trump WH focused on satellites producing climate data, but they provide weather and other essential data. www.eenews.net/articles/for...

do you ever stare at the ceiling and think about how the worldwide scientific establishment did the impossible and created a COVID vaccine in under a year and the response of the general public has been to go on an unstoppable rampage to destroy science and scientists

The only reason this type of thing doesn’t happen with open gov data, (purely available via Snowflake’s sorta public portal for example) is clear language in open data laws. With weather disasters it’s a bit more emergency management calvinball, which maybe isn’t always great?