engineer

The founder of ai16z, Shaw, stated that 90% of the reverse engineering work on all contracts of Pump.fun has been completed and is expected to be finished tonight, adding, "Open source everything, or it will be forced to open source."

Dmitry Gusakov, the engineering lead of the Ethereum liquid staking protocol Lido, warned at the developer conference ACDC #189 that the one-time builder access mechanism introduced by the Glamsterdam upgrade could interfere with the existing deposit protection logic of the staking protocol, leading to the hijacking of staking deposits. This issue involves multiple deposits sharing the same validator public key.According to Ethereum's current deposit rules, the first valid deposit determines the withdrawal credential, and staking protocols typically leverage this feature to prevent credential manipulation, such as initially depositing a small amount of ETH and then topping up the remaining funds once the expected credential appears. However, the special access mechanism introduced for builders by Glamsterdam may change the interpretation of subsequent pending deposits under the same public key during the fork transition period, putting the staking protocol at risk of a third outcome: the validator does not appear, and the deposited ETH is credited to the builder.Lido's proposed fix is to maintain the distinction between validator deposits and builder deposits during the one-time access process. However, core developers rejected this modification on the grounds of timing, mainly because the Sepolia testnet has already been activated according to existing specifications, and the Hoodi client version is also in preparation. Changing the behavior at this point could require redeploying Sepolia and conducting additional testing. The issue affects the access process during the fork transition period, rather than the ongoing deposit processing rules, but its consequences could impact deposits waiting in the queue.

According to Decrypt, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan on October 9. The suspect, 35 years old and of Saudi nationality, has been employed at OpenAI since July 2025 and is accused of using or attempting to use devices to intercept oral communications. He made his first appearance in federal court this Tuesday. OpenAI stated that it has referred the matter to the FBI and thanked the relevant agents and prosecutors for their swift action, while the FBI's investigation is ongoing.OpenAI released a statement on X, stating that the company discovered a sophisticated recording device hidden in the office and used its own model to analyze the device and its origin, ultimately identifying that an employee placed it there a few days prior. According to the criminal complaint, the device was discovered around September 30, plugged into a USB port on the back of a television, wrapped in paper towels, with its contents encrypted, and was installed around September 28. Surveillance footage showed that Alfozan was seen near the conference room multiple times before the device was discovered, but he had neither the authority to enter that room nor to attend the related meetings, which typically involved confidential technical and strategic information.The complaint states that before the device was installed, Alfozan used internal productivity tools to inquire about OpenAI's office building address, conference rooms, room capacities, schedules, and locations of meetings between executives and external partners. A chatbot account associated with his spouse asked between September 24 and 30 how to create a continuous recording device, add Wi-Fi connectivity, enhance real-time listening capabilities, and encrypt the device's SD card.

The free and open-source tool REA (Reverse Engineer Anything) saw its star count on GitHub rise from less than 10,000 on October 6 to over 100,000 by October 12, with more than 30,000 added in a single day on October 11. This tool integrates AI programming assistants like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex with professional reverse engineering suites like Ghidra, bridging the model context protocol MCP launched by Anthropic. Since its creation in April of this year, REA had long gone unnoticed; its readme file states that the tool does not claim to restore original source code or automatically clone applications, nor does it come with a decompiler.REA has been used for various reverse engineering attempts on software and games: players have made Spider-Man swing through Gotham City in "Batman: Arkham City," someone stuffed about 1,600 items from "Minecraft" into "Elden Ring" to battle Boss Malenia, and mod authors have brought firearms and menus from "Escape from Tarkov" into "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim." Old console exclusives are also breaking free from their platforms; in September, enthusiasts used open-source AI models and recompilation tools to bring "Fable 2," which had never been released on PC, to Windows, with AI completing the startup in about an hour, followed by a long manual fix; another developer has made "GTA 5" run natively and smoothly on iOS.

Regarding the critical vulnerability in the payment engine reported by Veria AI, RippleX engineering lead J. Ayo Akinyele stated that the XRP Ledger (XRPL) payment engine has a serious vulnerability that has existed for over 10 years, which could lead to the issuance of XRP beyond its fixed supply. This vulnerability was discovered through a bug bounty program and has not yet been exploited.The development team has released the xrpld 3.4.1 patch version and coordinated with validators to complete the network upgrade before public disclosure. Akinyele mentioned that AI is accelerating the speed of vulnerability discovery, and XRPL will increase proactive security investments, clean up technical debt, advance formal verification, and systematically eliminate potential risks in old code.

Andrey Lazutkin, co-founder of Tangem, posted on X that the recent Ledger security incident once again confirms the security engineering principle of "complexity expands the attack surface." He pointed out that every additional component, software layer, and user interaction, such as screens, buttons, batteries, and firmware, introduces new potential points of failure and vulnerabilities, increasing the risks that need to be identified and mitigated.Based on this, Lazutkin defended the minimalist card design adopted by Tangem—this solution is built solely around the secure chip and antenna—and stated that this incident reinforced his judgment about the correctness of this design philosophy.

A former core infrastructure engineer, Daniel Rhyne, from an industrial company in New Jersey, was sentenced to 32 months in prison for attacking his employer's computer network and demanding a ransom in Bitcoin. The 59-year-old Rhyne, who is from Kansas City, Missouri, was sentenced on September 28 by U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp in Trenton. He pleaded guilty in April this year to charges including extortion by threatening to damage a protected computer and intentionally damaging a protected computer. The prosecution did not disclose the name of the company, which is headquartered in Somerset County, New Jersey, serving clients in industries ranging from biopharmaceuticals to oil and gas.According to the FBI's criminal complaint, around 4 PM on November 25, 2023, the company's network administrator began receiving hundreds of password reset notifications for accounts, and subsequently discovered that all other domain administrator accounts had been deleted. Forty-four minutes later, employees received an email titled "Your Network Has Been Penetrated," claiming that the company's IT administrator had been locked out, backups had been deleted, and warning that unless 20 Bitcoins (approximately $750,000 at the time) were paid by December 2, an additional 40 servers would be shut down daily for 10 days. The ransom was set at 700,000 euros, to be paid in Bitcoin.Investigators traced the attack back to an unauthorized virtual machine created on the company network on November 9, 2023, with the password "TheFr0zenCrew!", which was subsequently set for the administrator account, 301 user accounts, and the email used to send the ransom note.

According to Fortune, Turing Award winner and founder of AMI Labs, Yann LeCun, stated in an interview that he believes recent incidents of AI agents going out of control are mainly due to insufficient human supervision and sandbox design, which can be prevented through engineering improvements.He also revealed that AMI Labs currently has about 60 employees and is developing world models for industrial applications based on the JEPA architecture, with the first product set to be launched "soon."

According to a report by South Korea's Small and Medium Business News on September 28, industry insiders stated that SK Hynix has initiated the foundational engineering required for establishing a semiconductor factory in the Tohoku region of Japan. One insider mentioned that it is still unclear whether the project will be an independent factory or a joint venture with Kioxia, but local groundwork is underway, and SK Hynix has also requested domestic component suppliers in South Korea to expand their supply.The report noted that as of a month ago, SK Hynix's stance on building a memory semiconductor factory in Japan was still "under research," and they stated that "there are no specific decisions." In response to this news, SK Hynix indicated that the Japanese memory semiconductor factory is still in the research phase, with no further advancements at this time.The report also mentioned that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won stated in August this year that they are studying the establishment of a joint venture memory semiconductor factory in Japan, with the Tohoku region subsequently seen as a strong candidate. The Tohoku region of Japan and Iwate Prefecture have gathered semiconductor and material component companies such as Kioxia's Kitakami factory, Japan Semiconductor, Ancor Technology, Denso, and Tokyo Electron.

Polymarket Vice President of Engineering Josh Stevens tweeted that the team has built an indexing system using the open-source Rust tool rindexer, allowing on-chain events to be visible up to approximately 14 blocks (about 28 seconds) in advance, and completing indexing within 0-10 milliseconds after block broadcasting, approaching real-time.He stated that transaction, position, and balance refreshes will be faster. Goldsky continues to serve as data backup, and the main path has switched to self-built infrastructure.

According to Business Insider, Google has adjusted its internal policies to allow engineers across the company to use the Anthropic Claude model, including Anthropic Opus 5, through the internal development platform Antigravity. Google stated that Gemini remains the primary foundational model developed internally by the company, while third-party models like Claude will be provided according to user quotas, mainly for specific scenarios, as a supplement to Gemini.Previously, access to Claude was mainly granted to the Google DeepMind team and some high-priority project employees. Reports indicate that despite Google launching the Flash 3.8 model, its coding capabilities are still considered by some employees to lag behind those of Anthropic and OpenAI. Meanwhile, Google has also announced plans to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Micron, and other companies are increasing capital expenditures to expand production, driving the combined orders of the top five semiconductor engineering firms—HanTang, Axiom, FanXuan, Yankee, and ShengHui—to exceed 880 billion yuan, a record high. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company recently stated at a semiconductor exhibition that it is building up to 20 wafer fabs, with the overall capacity expansion scale increasing multiple times compared to the past, but it still cannot meet customer demand. The U.S. tariff policy has driven the demand for manufacturing plants in the United States. Axiom has the largest order amount of 440.73 billion yuan, and Chairman Yao ZuXiang pointed out that the cumulative amount of turnkey projects undertaken in Singapore over the past four years has reached 600 billion yuan, with expectations for new projects to follow. HanTang's order amount is approximately 193.937 billion yuan, setting a new record, benefiting from continued plant construction by major clients like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Micron.FanXuan's order amount reached a new high of 135.1 billion yuan, and Chairman Gao XinMing revealed that order visibility extends at least to 2028, with related projects for clients planned for 2029 and 2030. FanXuan has deployed materials, manpower, and local construction teams to support clients in Taiwan, Arizona in the United States, Japan, and Germany in synchronizing production expansion needs, and is investing in the development of technologies such as CoPoS. ShengHui's order amount exceeds 60 billion yuan, with Taiwan accounting for 68% and semiconductor orders accounting for 63%. In the first half of the year, the after-tax net profit was 2.944 billion yuan, with earnings per share of 23.73 yuan, setting a new high for the same period. Yankee's after-tax net profit in the first half of the year was 2.317 billion yuan, with earnings per share of 17.46 yuan, and the order amount is approximately 51.77 billion yuan, with order visibility reaching the end of 2027.

According to The Information, Google (GOOG.O) stated that its AI can perform some tasks of frontline deployment engineers.

According to ChianCatcher news, GSR Content Director Frank Chaparro tweeted that Nasdaq is hiring a RWA Principal Protocol Engineer, who will serve as the primary technical author for the "Nasdaq Token Design Standard."This standard is the authoritative specification for the on-chain representation of publicly traded stocks. Responsibilities include issuance, compliance, corporate actions, chain selection, and institutional trading infrastructure. The base salary ranges from $155,000 to $287,000, plus bonuses and equity.

Former OpenAI research engineer Justin Wang announced that he has joined the cryptocurrency venture capital firm Paradigm as a research partner. He will collaborate with the team under the leadership of Matt Huang and Alana Palmedo to continue cutting-edge research.Justin Wang previously participated in the EVMbench project at OpenAI and has used Paradigm's open-source tools. In the short term, he is focusing on areas related to AI model measurement and evaluation, recursive self-improvement, effective AI policy, as well as network and cryptographic capabilities.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev posted on the X platform that his X account was hacked last week. The attacker used social engineering to deceive X customer service, bypassing standard security features such as two-factor authentication and login notifications, and posted false content about meme coins.The X security team has assisted in removing the related posts and restoring account access, and additional security measures have been implemented for the account.

According to "AI Technology Review," China's leading large model company Zhipu has invested hundreds of millions of yuan to acquire the AI heterogeneous computing power software infrastructure company Zhongke Jiahe. This move aims to completely address Zhipu's shortcomings in the underlying engineering and compiler capabilities of large models, in response to the structural shortage of computing power and high-concurrency inference challenges caused by a surge in user numbers.Zhongke Jiahe's technology originates from the Compiler Laboratory of the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, founded by Dr. Cui Huimin. Its core team has been deeply involved in the development of compilers for several domestic chips, including Loongson, Sunway, Cambricon, and Huawei Ascend. Zhongke Jiahe's core advantage lies in its virtual instruction set technology, which can unify different brands and models of chip ecosystems through middleware software, assembling scattered domestic chips into a unified ultra-large-scale cluster, thereby significantly improving overall computing power utilization; its SigInfer inference engine is claimed by the official source to reduce the inference latency of large models by up to 74 times.Recently, Zhipu's Coding Agent business has experienced explosive growth. The newly released GLM-5.2 large model saw a 27-fold increase in daily Token call volume during its first week on the aggregation platform, leading to the exposure of systemic engineering bottlenecks in its inference infrastructure under high concurrency and long context scenarios. After being placed on the U.S. Entity List, Zhipu has actively promoted domestic alternatives and has now completed inference adaptation for eight major domestic computing power platforms, including Huawei Ascend, PingTouGe, and Moore Threads. The acquisition of Zhongke Jiahe will not only directly improve Zhipu's unit Token inference cost and output quality but also provide core underlying compiler technology support for its previously rumored self-developed custom AI inference chip plan.

According to Cointelegraph, the fintech platform MoonPay has acquired the crypto infrastructure startup Glide and will integrate its deposit and routing technology, with the financial terms of the transaction undisclosed.Glide was founded in 2023 by Tushar Soni and Qinyu Tong, who were both part of the Robinhood Wallet team. Glide supports over 100 tokens across 30 blockchain networks, helping applications receive deposits from various tokens, wallets, exchanges, and payment sources.After the acquisition is completed, Glide's technology will be integrated into MoonPay Deposits, a product already used by applications such as Wallet in Telegram, Moonshot, and Paysafe. MoonPay stated that this transaction is part of its efforts to expand its digital asset infrastructure capabilities. This is MoonPay's sixth acquisition announced in 2026, with previous targets including Sodot, Decent, DFlow, Entendre, and Dawn Labs. Its investors include Thrive Capital, Paradigm, Valhalla Ventures, Tiger Global Management, and Coatue.