### Issue 2125 - Monday 22nd July, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Crowdstrike did an oopsie and the computer screens turned blue, uh-oh!!
- OpenAI closes "ignore all previous instructions" trick to reveal LLM bots
- Forcing people back into the office is probably a bad idea according to Gartner
- Curiosity rover drives over some rocks we didn't know existed on Mars
- Cheap Sony & Bose headphones, LG monitor, Nikon Z8 camera, Samsung S23 FE phone, 12Ah Lifepo4 USB battery

## The News

### Crowdstrike did an oopsie and the computer screens turned blue, uh-oh!!

You probably already know by now and have seen all the anecdotes, but Crowdstrike really fucked up on Friday arvo and took down around 8.5 million Windows PCs due to a faulty driver that caused a boot loop, crashing when it was loaded. The driver was delivered to PCs running Crowdstrike via a software update and the only way to fix it is to physically go touch the computer unless that computer had some sort of out of band management (typically a thing on servers, not desktop PCs). To say fixing this is a pain in the arse is an understatement. Crowdstrike is still working on a root cause analysis, so we don't really know how the corrupted driver that is responsible for Crowdstrike being able to do its threat analysis thing, got into the release pipeline. That's gonna be fascinating to read.

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### OpenAI closes "ignore all previous instructions" trick to reveal LLM bots

A quick way to find out if you're interacting with an LLM/AI bot is to ask it to "ignore all previous instructions" and ask it to do something else, like recite a poem. If you get back a poem instead of "what the fuck are you on about??", you've got a bot. OpenAI realised people are doing this and implemented something called "instruction hierarchy", that "boosts a model's defenses against misuse and unauthorized instructions" by placing "more importance on the developer's original prompt, rather than listening to whatever multitude of prompts the user is injecting to break it". It's part of GPT-4o Mini already. Makes sense why OpenAI would do this, but it would be nice to have a way to know if what I'm interacting with is a human or a digital parrot.

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### Forcing people back into the office is probably a bad idea according to Gartner

Gartner has put out a report saying that employers forcing staff back into the office against their will typically isn't a good idea. They found any return to office benefits were "modest at best" and mostly benefiting managers, while "high-performers, women and millennials" are likely to quit when faced with returning to the office, with women and millennials "negatively impacted" at companies with return to office mandates compared to organisations without. High performers in particular "may perceive RTO mandates as a signal of mistrust from management". Two-thirds of employees "report they work best in a remote environment" and "report higher feelings of inclusion in a remote environment versus on-site". Gartner recommends a "flexible" approach and co-developing "policies, not mandates" with input from employees. When stuffy old Gartner is suggesting this stuff, you know any blow hard manager demanding bums on seats is just doing it to be a prick.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Curiosity rover drives over some rocks we didn't know existed on Mars

NASA found some cool rocks on Mars. The "Curiosity Mars rover drove over cracked open to reveal something never seen before on the Red Planet: yellow sulfur crystals". According to Curiosity's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada, "finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert", "it shouldn't be there, so now we have to explain it". Amazing that they just stumbled upon it while driving the rover and that it cracked open some rocks to reveal the sulfur.

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## Bargains

- Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones - $321 from Sony
- Bose QuietComfort SC headphones - $283.95 from Bose
- LG UltraGear 27GP850-B 27" 165Hz 2560x1440 Nano IPS monitor - $323.10 from LG's eBay store
- Nikon Z8 camera body - $5,603.57 from Amazon
- Samsung Galaxy S23 FE 128GB/256GB - $699/$799 from Telstra
- Adventure Kings 12Ah LiFePO4 60W USB-C Portable Power Pack - $109 from 4WD Supacentre

## Image Of The Day

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover viewed these yellow crystals of elemental sulfur using its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on June 7, 2024, the 4,208th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

## The End

📻 Tumbleweed - Sundial

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