Jan 17, 2024 4 min read

MidWeek Briefing #3

What will happen to us in 1 billion years? Scroll down.

Good Wednesday morning! In this week's MidWeek Briefing, we look at using Emacs to build a dashboard, processing Lidar data in Snowflake, a cautionary tale of bad app development security, and watching the increasing tech layoff trend.

Hackers break into AI hiring chatbot, could hire and reject

This is a both funny and scary. It appears that hackers broke into a poorly secured Firebase (a backend cloud app development platform) that was running a chatbot created by Chattr.

But the data exposure was not limited to a single set of KFC data. The researchers found they were able to access an administrator dashboard, revealing a list of organizations using Chattr and granting the ability to accept or deny job applicants, as well as refund payments made to Chattr, MrBruh writes.

While this isn't the fault of the chatbot that Chattr created, it's really the fault of poor security they used to for their app development. Moral of the story, don't take security for granted.

Google layoff takes out 6% of it's workforce

How's 2024 treating you so far? If you work for some silicon valley stalwarts, its a not so good start to the year. Google cut 6% of its workforce, or about 12,000 people.

The Silicon Valley company laid off employees in its core engineering division, as well as those working on the Google Assistant, a voice-operated virtual assistant, and in the hardware division that makes the Pixel phone, Fitbit watches and Nest thermostat, three people with knowledge of the cuts said.

It appears that this is growing trend and other companies like Meta, Amazon, and Twitch are laying workers off.

Processing LiDar data in Snowflake

This is a neat blog post about how to process LiDar data in Snowflake. While this might not make sense for a small surveying or engineering business, this could make a lot of sense for larger infrastructure companies or the Federal Government.

Using Emacs to build an RPG dashboard

Over the Holiday break I was experimenting with Common Lisp and Emacs. I was curious to see what you could do with Emacs and discovered a fun way to organize and build a dashboard for all your RPGs.

I've tried juggling multiple desktops, several PDF reader windows, and a spreadsheet for initiatives; while it's a fine experience, nothing has equaled the fluidity of Emacs as my RPG dashboard.