The vulnerability reports got too painful to read

Every morning a table arrives listing the vulnerabilities published that day that concern us — one of the jobs we have our own AI server, miraiGen.™Cube, do before we start work. Compared with watching the servers myself, I am glad to have it.

But it had started to feel like a chore to read. Roughly the same quantity every day, and I had started looking at it without taking any of it in. Has the world really got that much worse, I wondered — and then one morning I stopped.

Isn't the same thing on here every day?

The same two, for eight days

Counting back, the same two items had been there eight days running.

I asked the AI: it keeps no memory of what it has already reported. So I had been reading the same information for eight days straight, with nothing new in it.

What I asked for

Leave out anything already reported unless its situation has changed, and report only what is new.

It changed from the next morning. Six genuinely new items on day one. The table got shorter, and I started reading it again.

In summary

• A daily report stops being read from the day the same items start repeating. Complete coverage counts for nothing if nobody opens it
• Watching for duplication belongs to the sender, not the reader. Anything relying on the reader's memory stops the day the reader gives up

When a report becomes painful to read, ask first whether the volume grew or the same things are simply repeating.

← Back to Thoughts　All posts