1) A few hours after I wrapped up the last roundup I learned about CVE-2024-3094. It’s a fascinating —and terrifying— situation: a vulnerability was intentionally introduced by one of the core maintainers of xz over a couple of years. It was randomly discovered by pure luck, and one wonders what other issues are out there like this. And also, who was behind it. Read more at Everything I Know About the Xz Backdoor .

2) Lots of great advice over at How To Efficiently Advance Your Software Engineering Career . The title sounds click-baity but it’s really not. I guess for some people it will be obvious, but for me it was useful.

3) A Grand Unified Theory of the AI Hype Cycle . In my view, we’re on step 7, closing in on 8. For anyone interested in a book-length treatment of the topic, I enjoyed The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do , although it is not without faults.

4) Presented without further comment, Game of Life, simulating itself, infinitely zoomable