Cisco Talos researchers identified two separate ClickFix-style social engineering campaigns that trick victims into executing malicious code themselves, one aimed at stealing cryptocurrency and another designed to gain persistent enterprise network access. One campaign uses a publicly shared Google Sheet to distribute malicious browser code that hijacks Chrome transaction interfaces, while both operations abuse legitimate cloud services and trusted software to disguise malicious activity as normal user behavior.
darkreading.com
· 2026-09-08
Malik Piara has released an updated version of LogiCola 3, a modern port of Professor Gensler's 2008 Windows-only logic drill software, after two years of work. The new release restores infinite translation drills for mastery learning and reintroduces the original's colorful, playful visual style, responding to feedback from Hacker News, GitHub and email.
logicola.org
· 2026-09-08
Jane Street released a puzzle challenging participants to reverse engineer an ASIC chip from just two files: a GDS layout file and a VCD file with example inputs and outputs. Kjartan van Driel and Leander Post worked through the challenge, breaking down how the chip's physical layout, organized into layers and reusable cells representing logic gates, could be decoded to understand its function without access to the original Verilog design.
kjartanvandriel.github.io
· 2026-09-07
A software engineer reflects on how years of routine coding work and constant smartphone distractions have dulled their thinking and reading habits compared to their more intellectually demanding early career and university years. They describe attempting to counter this decline by deliberately unplugging and cutting back on short-form content, games, and other low-effort entertainment during a recent vacation.
devz.cl
· 2026-09-07
An instructor is launching a 12-week introductory course focused on quantum oracle engineering, teaching students how to build actual quantum circuits rather than relying on theoretical constructs. The course addresses a common gap in quantum computing education where oracles are often assumed to exist without demonstrating how to implement them.
shukla.io
· 2026-09-06
Thoughtworks' Europe CTO Giles described an internal experiment in Barcelona where 10 engineers used heavily agentic AI coding practices to build a simulated airline irregular-operations (IROps) system in just four days. Working in a single shared code repository, the team discovered that requiring agents to constantly commit and rebase against the main branch produced unexpected coordination effects, effectively turning the codebase into a shared communication point between agents.
martinfowler.com
· 2026-09-05
A blogger with an engineering background details how they spent about a month reverse-engineering an ASIC chip design as part of a public puzzle set by trading firm Jane Street. The challenge involved analyzing a GDS chip-layout file to determine the chip's function, first through an easier warmup version with more design information, then a harder unaided version. The author has published their code on GitHub and plans follow-up posts explaining each technical step in more depth.
jestoph.com
· 2026-09-04
A data team encountered CronosPro database files (CroBank.dat, CroIndex.dat, CroStru.dat) that existing tools, including the open-source Cronodump converter, could not properly parse. Using OpenAI's Codex to analyze the binary structure, they identified parser bugs and an obfuscated schema, then patched the Cronodump codebase to correctly extract records for their data lake.
blog.glazer.ee
· 2026-09-04
A former controls designer who built a fully automated U.S. nuclear plant system recalls deliberately preserving manual steps so operators wouldn't lose hands-on competence. He now applies that lesson to AI's spread through engineering, citing Harvard and Stanford research showing junior-level employment shrinking in AI-adopting firms while senior roles keep growing.
spectrum.ieee.org
· 2026-09-03
Software engineer Rodrigo Rosenfeld Rosas observes that teams increasingly avoid rewriting or restructuring messy codebases now that AI agents handle day-to-day coding tasks. He argues this isn't about the quality of agent-generated code, but about engineers losing the reflex to recognize when a system has become unmanageable and needs structural intervention.
rosenfeld.page
· 2026-09-02
A recent IEEE Spectrum careers newsletter, produced with Parsity, argues that engineers can gain mentorship benefits without ever formally asking someone to be a mentor. The author describes learning by observing and copying admired colleagues' habits, and by asking small, targeted questions about how others solve problems or approach their work.
spectrum.ieee.org
· 2026-09-02
A new Practical Engineering video explains why railroad crossings need extensive automated warning systems: trains can take up to a mile to stop, far exceeding an engineer's sight distance, so safety depends entirely on detection equipment rather than driver reaction. The video, part of a broader series on railroads, walks through how these systems sense an approaching train and alert motorists in time to clear the tracks.
practical.engineering
· 2026-09-02
GoKawiil