🐝 Hive Five 207 - Brain Rot and One Man Armies

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Hi friends,

Greetings from the hive!

The internet is wild right now. Yesterday's meme coin is today's fortune. Social media musical chairs.

Here's what's working for me:

1. Treat your content like food. Most people mindlessly consume whatever shows up in their feed. Don't do that. Be picky.

2. Build your digital toolkit. I use 5-6 core apps daily. That's it. Each one serves a specific purpose. No random downloads. No shiny object syndrome.

3. Use AI as a multiplier. It's like having a team of assistants. I use Claude for the majority. They don't replace thinking - they amplify it.

4. Detach strategically. Schedule deliberate offline time to disconnect. Your best ideas come when you're not plugged in.

Have you sharpened your tools for 2025 yet?

Let's take this week by swarm!

🐝 The Bee's Knees

1. Exploiting Number Parsers in JavaScript. There are two general ways to parse numbers in JavaScript: using the Number Constructor and its static methods or using npm packages like numeral or parse-int. MORE

2. Limited Path Traversal to RCE results in a $40,000 bounty. MORE

3. A review of editing with LLMs. Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized code and document generation, but precisely editing content with them remains a significant challenge. MORE

4. 'Everything is a Remix' explores the creative process, examining how all innovation is built on existing ideas. From music to technology, the series uncovers the origins of creativity and the interconnected nature of our world. MORE

5. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 predicts major disruptions in the job market. MORE

Join leading brands making an impact here. Explore partnership opportunities today.

📰 Updates

✅ Changelog

1. GitHub continues to evolve GitHub Issues and has released sub-issues, issue types, and advanced search. MORE

2. Bishop Fox has released raink, a command-line tool using a novel LLM-based listwise ranking algorithm. Originally showcased at RVASec 2024, raink solves complex ranking problems, including linking code diffs to security advisories. MORE

3. Lazygit v0.45.2 includes enhancements to branch coloring, file collapsing, and undo functionality, along with several bug fixes and routine maintenance updates. The release also welcomes new contributors to the project. MORE

4. OWASP Noir's latest release v0.19.0 introduces AI-based functionality, including an AI Analyzer and LLM integration, as well as a new ZAP Site Tree Analyzer for enhanced site tree analysis. MORE

5. Spinning up instances is now 80%+ faster on Ax framework. MORE

💼 Work

💰 Career

1. AirBnB offers engineering apprenticeships, bridging the opportunity gap for entry-level engineering candidates. Candidates from underrepresented backgrounds and unconventional paths are encouraged to apply. MORE

2. Resume Matcher is an open-source, free tool to improve your resume. It works by using AI, and Reader LLMs, to compare and rank resumes with job descriptions. MORE

3. Gift card security research reveals a divided attack surface: easily accessible free areas, and harder-to-gain paid access points. MORE

4. Networking in InfoSec extends beyond TCP/IP, focusing on forging human connections essential for aspiring hackers. MORE

5. First job role I've seen looking for an AI-first Director of Finance who can automate drudge work and bookkeeping with advanced AI tools, while performing the work of 10 people. MORE

🚀 Productivity

1. Obsidian 2024 Gems of the Year: Nominate your favorite Obsidian projects that shined in 2024! MORE

2. The obsidian-lazy-plugins plugin allows you to load Obsidian plugins with a delay, ensuring sub-second startup times. MORE

3. 17-minute AI workflow to stand out at work. combine critical thinking with ai tools like elicit and notebook lm to gain a competitive edge. MORE

4. Evidence-Based guide on how to actually get in shape in 2025. MORE

5. Raycast users share their favorite extensions and features for daily use. MORE

🌎 Community

🎉 Celebrate

1. Student bug bounty discovery supports picoCTF’s cybersecurity education efforts with $462,000 gift. MORE

2. Vivek celebrates a $10,000 bounty from Google VRP for finding a critical bug. MORE

3. Tal's exciting career milestone! Promoted to Staff ASE at Bugcrowd, grateful for amazing colleagues and the hacker community. MORE

4. @Samm0uda has received a record-breaking $250,000 in total bounties from Meta, thanks to his collaboration with the "Yes Team" (@phwd_, @JosipFranjkovic, and @vulnano). MORE

5. Meg's year - from traveling to new continents and countries, to losing a beloved pet and finding love, to buying a new home that brings her peace. MORE

⚡️ Timeline

1. Rez0 is leaving his role as a Principal AI Engineer at AppOmni to become a full-time bug bounty hunter and solo founder. MORE

2. Ankit is back in the world of hacking and bug bounties after a long break, ready to explore his true passion once again. MORE

💛 Follow
Awesome accounts to follow. Randomly selected from my curated Twitter lists.

1. @vinodsparrow: Vinoth Kumar | co-founder & ceo @ProxyPalAI |

2. @unmeg: Research engineer & PhD candidate working on microgrids+control+ML. OSCP. Techstars alumna.

3. @alexjplaskett: Alex Plaskett | Security Researcher | Pwn2Own 2018, 2021, 2022, 2024 | Tweets about 0day, OS, mobile and embedded security.

4. @p4fg: Peter | Are developers better hackers? I think so...

5. @k8em0: Katie Moussouris (she/her) | CEO @LutaSecurity Founder @payequitynow MIT &Harvard visiting scholar, hacker.

🍄 Level up

📰 Read

1. Americans are increasingly spending more time alone, profoundly impacting our personalities, politics, and perception of reality. This alarming trend is reshaping the very fabric of our society in ways we're only beginning to understand. MORE

2. Microsoft shares 8 lessons from red teaming 100 Generative AI Products. MORE

3. Bidding Like a Billionaire - Stealing NFTs With 4-Char CSTIs. An impactful and technically interesting client-side bug found in a major NFT site. MORE

4. Reproducing CVE-2024-9042: Command Injection in Windows Kubernetes Nodes. MORE

5. "You And Your Research" is a transcript of famous & widely-quoted 1986-03-07 lecture by Turing-Award mathematician Richard Hamming about how to do scientific research and development based on his life. MORE

💡 Tips

1. How to get your life together when you procrastinate or often make decisions that you regret later. MORE

2. How meditation deconstructs your mind. Want to learn how to meditate? Scientists have a new theory that might change how you practice. MORE

3. Script Commands let you tailor Raycast to your needs. Think of them as little productivity boosts throughout your day. MORE

4. Deck Gallery offers beautifully designed decks, curated for inspiration and submission. MORE

🧠 Wisdom

1. Oxford named 'Brain rot' the word of the year, discover 10 expert tips to boost your brain and avoid mental decline. MORE

2. A hacker and cardiologist on how AI is going to change medicine. MORE

3. One pattern in miserable people: overthinking and underacting. The solution: a system to escape the cold, dark prison of overthinking. MORE

4. The Configuration Crisis and Developer Dependency on AI. Tech is a labyrinth of settings and dependencies. AI has powerful ways to navigate this complexity, but does it solve the underlying problem? MORE

5. "Success is being excited to go to work and being excited to come home." MORE

📚 Resources

1. Curated list of Frida resources and useful scripts. MORE

2. Comprehensive checklist on getting unauthorized access to third-party workspaces. MORE

3. Comprehensive knowledge base on the security of Chromium extensions that will help with basic understanding and key attacks. MORE

4. The Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List, or BADBOOL, is a comprehensive resource to help individuals opt out of data broker services. MORE

5. The internet holds hidden secrets waiting to be uncovered. Dorks, or search engine queries, are the key to unlocking these mysteries. Here are some hidden ones. MORE

🛠 Explore

🧰 Tools

1. A smarter web fuzzing tool that combines local LLM models (via Ollama) and ffuf to optimize directory and file discovery. MORE

2. Powerful LLM Query Framework with YAML Prompt Templates. Made for Automation. MORE

3. CewlAI is a domain generation tool that uses Google's Gemini AI to create potential domain variations based on seed domains. It's inspired by tools like CeWL but focuses on domain name pattern recognition and generation. MORE

4. Unlock the power of AI to create stunning McKinsey-inspired visuals in seconds. MORE

🎥 Watch

1. Escaping the L.A. Fires. Beautifully filmed, but a hard watch. MORE

2. Coast Contra delivers a breathtaking hip-hop theatrical performance, redefining the boundaries of acapella and raising the bar for the genre. MORE

3. How to learn AI in 2025 by a lecturer and researcher in Computer Science at Nottingham University. MORE

🎵 Listen

1. Beneath the Surface explores complex global challenges and the people building solutions to address them. Each episode dives deep into infrastructure, technology, and societal issues shaping our world. MORE

2. Mitchell Hashimoto, the creator of Ghostty, shares insights on Zig, open-source software, and terminal workflows, offering a captivating look into his innovative approach to software development. MORE

3. Chung Ju-yung's inspiring autobiography chronicles his journey from poverty to founding the global automotive giant Hyundai - a true rags-to-riches story that will leave you in awe. MORE

4. The Crazy Story of Google: 7 strangers that made the greatest investment of all time. MORE

🌐 Technology

1. Downloading the same file 102+ times can lead to unexpected results across different browsers. The outcome can vary in surprising ways, depending on the browser you're using. MORE

2. Doom running in a PDF file? Unbelievable! This source port leverages the PDF format's support for JavaScript, blurring the lines between static and interactive content. MORE

3. Ambient agents leverage LLMs to create AI assistants that seamlessly integrate into our daily lives, enabling us to scale our capabilities without the overhead of traditional chatbots. MORE

4. Simon Willison and Swyx discuss the future of AI, exploring insights from Willison's blog post on the state of AI in 2025. MORE

5. Kieran built Cora—a totally new way to manage your inbox with AI—in just 3 months. He even shipped the original MVP of the product in a single day. MORE

👀 Interesting

1. Engineer Eats Efficiently (for $2.50 a Day) is a food experiment where the author met their price target and discovered new favorite foods. MORE

2. Monopoly's dark history revealed: a tale of theft, obsession and corporate deception behind the beloved capitalist game. MORE

3. The secrets of in-flight entertainment revealed. Discover the surprising complexity behind getting movies from studios to airplanes. MORE

4. Favorite one-person (or mostly one-person) projects. MORE

5. The ideal blogging platform should offer Markdown writing, full WYSIWYG, easy image integration, static page rendering, and minimal HTML bloat. MORE

💭 Quote

📈 Learned something?

Until next week, take care of yourself and each other,

Bee 🐝

^{This newsletter may contain affiliate links that support its costs. These links lead to tools, courses, and resources that I've personally found helpful.}