Coding is boring, unless… — Enki Blog
As a developer, I never managed to stick to the same job for more than two years.
The Universe of Discourse : The envelope paradox
The envelope paradox This is on my mind because someone asked about it in IRC yesterday and I was surprised at how coherently I was able to explain it on the spur of the moment. There are several versions of this paradox. My favorite version goes like this: you're going to play a game with an advers…
Hasnain says:
This is what W.V.O. Quine calls a "veridical paradox": it's something that seems impossible, but is nevertheless true.
Posted on 2015-11-30T13:16:15+0000
The Beggar CEO and Sucker Culture - DaedTech
Enough is enough. We've gone from labor being an equitable contract to the beggar CEO asking for more and more labor for nothing. Time to stop it.
Hasnain says:
"We wear our unpaid, uncompensated overtime as a badge of honor. We sleep less, brag about our caffeine intake, and are available for calls and emails 18 hours per day. We measure our importance by how many half hour slots during the day are double or triple booked, and we perversely consider it honorable to do this for free."
Posted on 2015-11-30T13:07:48+0000
The Yale Problem Begins in High School | HeterodoxAcademy.org
The Yale Problem Begins in High School by Jonathan Haidt | Nov 24, 2015 | campus turmoil, free speech | 7 comments A month before the Yale Halloween meltdown, I had a bizarre and illuminating experience at an elite private high school on the West Coast. I’ll call it Centerville High. I gave a versio…
Hasnain says:
"The Yale problem refers to an unfortunate feedback loop: Once you allow victimhood culture to spread on your campus, you can expect ever more anger from students representing victim groups, coupled with demands for a deeper institutional commitment to victimhood culture, which leads inexorably to more anger, more demands, and more commitment. But the Yale problem didn’t start at Yale. It started in high school. As long as many of our elite prep schools are turning out students who have only known eggshells and anger, whose social cognition is limited to a single dimension of victims and victimizers, and who demand safe spaces and trigger warnings, it’s hard to imagine how any university can open students’ minds and prepare them to converse respectfully with people who don’t share their values. Especially when there are no adults around who don’t share their values.:
Posted on 2015-11-27T14:18:58+0000
‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem | Quanta Magazine
Three computer scientists have solved a problem central to a dozen far-flung mathematical fields.
Hasnain says:
"Mathematicians in these disciplines greeted the news with a combination of delight and hand-wringing. The solution, which Casazza and Tremain called “a major achievement of our time,” defied expectations about how the problem would be solved and seemed bafflingly foreign. Over the past two years, the experts in the Kadison-Singer problem have had to work hard to assimilate the ideas of the proof. Spielman, Marcus and Srivastava “brought a bunch of tools into this problem that none of us had ever heard of,” Casazza said. “A lot of us loved this problem and were dying to see it solved, and we had a lot of trouble understanding how they solved it.”"
Posted on 2015-11-27T14:14:19+0000
Scurvy Is a Serious Public Health Problem, Even for People Who Aren’t 18th-Century Pirates
In the winter of 2009, Eric Churchill was called to a patient’s bedside at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, to help out with a medica
Hasnain says:
"This is exactly Churchill’s point: Something that is this easy to treat should be among the first solutions doctors seek, not the last."
Posted on 2015-11-22T03:05:54+0000
My white neighbor thought I was breaking into my own apartment. Nineteen cops showed up.
The place I call home no longer feels safe.
Hasnain says:
19 cops for a break in with no reported violence? Wow
Posted on 2015-11-20T06:53:19+0000
The story of one latency spike
A customer reported an unusual problem with our CloudFlare CDN: our servers were responding to some HTTP requests slowly. Extremely slowly. 30 seconds slowly. This happened very rarely and wasn't easily reproducible. To make things worse all our usual monitoring...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-11-20T06:34:43+0000
How Islamic Is the Islamic State? Not at All.
What The Atlantic magazine got wrong about ISIS.
Hasnain says:
From March this year, but a great read.
"Three years earlier, in 2008, a classified briefing note on radicalisation, prepared by MI5’s behavioural science unit, was obtained by the Guardian. It revealed: “Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could . . . be regarded as religious novices.” The MI5 analysts noted the disproportionate number of converts and the high propensity for “drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes”. The newspaper claimed they concluded, “A well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.”"
Posted on 2015-11-19T15:21:14+0000
Gaming the H-1B system (for good)
A recent article in the NY Times exposed how flawed the H-1B lottery process is. A handful of giant outsourcing companies flood the system with applications, making it near impossible for startups...
Kalobios Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:KBIO) - Martin Shkreli Makes 1,080% On Penny Stock Days After...
KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: KBIO) is a monoclonal antibody therapeutics company that traded as a penny stock as recently as this Monday. The company now trades above the...
Hasnain says:
"According to a Form 4 filing with the SEC, Shkreli bought 500,169 shares at $0.61 apiece, with the remaining stakes purchased between $1.43 and $2.43"
Given that the stock is now trading at $19, that's a nice tidy profit
Posted on 2015-11-19T04:19:21+0000
Google And ASUS Launch The $85 Chromebit, A Chrome OS Desktop On An HDMI Stick
Earlier this year, Google and ASUS announced the Chromebit -- a full Chrome OS-based computer on an HDMI stick. Today, the two companies are officially..
Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS
Imagine simultaneously devoting all your efforts to depicting ISIS as the Greatest and Most Evil Threat Ever, while knowing the vital role you played in its genesis and growth. That's the predicament in which former and current U.S. officials find themselves.
Hasnain says:
"One key premise here seems to be that prior to the Snowden reporting, The Terrorists helpfully and stupidly used telephones and unencrypted emails to plot, so Western governments were able to track their plotting and disrupt at least large-scale attacks. That would come as a massive surprise to the victims of the attacks of 2002 in Bali, 2004 in Madrid, 2005 in London, 2008 in Mumbai, and April 2013 at the Boston Marathon. How did the multiple perpetrators of those well-coordinated attacks — all of which were carried out prior to Snowden’s June 2013 revelations — hide their communications from detection?"
Posted on 2015-11-17T16:15:52+0000
41 Percent Of Fliers Think You’re Rude If You Recline Your Seat
The past couple of weeks have seen a spate of confrontations among air travelers over reclining seats. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, as flying has become a somewhat stressful under…
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-11-17T06:58:07+0000
Twenty-four hours after an attack by Da'esh (the organization formerly known as…
Twenty-four hours after an attack by Da'esh (the organization formerly known as ISIS [1]) on Paris left 129 dead and 352 wounded, the Internet and the… - Yonatan Zunger - Google+
Hasnain says:
A wonderful read. I can't cherry pick any quote; the whole thing needs to be read.
Posted on 2015-11-16T00:44:40+0000
Stop-and-Seize Turns Police Into Self-Funding Gangs
Another reason for people to lose trust in law enforcement.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-11-14T07:52:36+0000
justgetflux.com
In Xcode 7, you can install apps directly to your iOS device with a free account from Apple. So we decided to make a beta version of f.lux for people to try.
Hasnain says:
I love using a similar app on android. This sucks for iOS users
Posted on 2015-11-13T07:18:28+0000
Large Companies Game H-1B Visa Program, Costing the U.S. Jobs
Critics say a program meant to help American firms hire foreigners with special skills is instead being dominated by outsourcing companies that move jobs offshore.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-11-11T06:05:20+0000
Why Getting Rid of Free Office Snacks Doesn't Come Cheap
A small perk that can be trouble to take away.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-11-11T05:05:13+0000
The New Intolerance of Student Activism
A fight over Halloween costumes at Yale devolves into an effort to censor dissenting views.
Hasnain says:
If this is what's happening in colleges nowadays (Yale in this case); is there any point having hope in the future?
"“In your position as master,” one student says, “it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students who live in Silliman. You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?!”
“No,” he said, “I don’t agree with that.”
The student explodes, “Then why the fuck did you accept the position?! Who the fuck hired you?! You should step down! If that is what you think about being a master you should step down! It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here. You are not doing that!”"
Posted on 2015-11-10T06:40:52+0000
The Strange, True Story of How a Chairman at McKinsey Made Millions of Dollars off His Maid
Manju Das stood over a pot in her nephew’s food stall, which spilled onto the pavement of a busy, dust-choked thoroughfare in interior West Bengal. She poured in some oil, and when it was smoking hot, threw in a handful of dried chilies and mustard seeds.
tensorflow.org
tensorflow.org
Hasnain says:
This is huge, Google open sourcing their machine learning computational framework
Posted on 2015-11-09T16:23:28+0000
GoFundMe Gone Wild
How raising money for personal causes has spun out of control.
Hasnain says:
"Here’s the question I can’t stop asking myself: Has social media made our craving for attention and validation overwhelm all other considerations? There is nothing new about asking your friends for help (remember rent parties?), but that help was confined to a small group of people you actually knew."
Posted on 2015-11-07T23:07:58+0000
CodePush
CodePush Blog
RECONSIDER
About 12 years ago, I co-founded a startup called Basecamp: A simple project collaboration tool that helps people make p…
Hasnain says:
"The web is the greatest entrepreneurial platform ever invented. Lowest barriers of entry, greatest human reach ever. I love the web. Permission-less, grand reach, diversity of implementation. Don’t believe this imaginary wall of access of money. It isn’t there.
Examine and interrogate your motivations, reject the money if you dare, and startup something useful. A dent in the universe is plenty.
Curb your ambition.
Live happily ever after."
Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away? | George Monbiot
A great tract of Earth is on fire and threatened species are being driven out of their habitats. This is a crime against humanity and nature
Hasnain says:
"Governments ignore issues when the media ignores them. And the media ignores them because … well, there’s a question with a thousand answers, many of which involve power. But one reason is the complete failure of perspective in a de-skilled industry dominated by corporate press releases, photo ops and fashion shoots, where everyone seems to be waiting for everyone else to take a lead. The media makes a collective non-decision to treat this catastrophe as a non-issue, and we all carry on as if it’s not happening."
Posted on 2015-11-03T15:29:32+0000
GTA V - Graphics Study - Adrian Courrèges
The Grand Theft Auto series has come a long way since the first opus came out back in 1997. About 2 years ago, Rockstar released GTA V. The …
E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in a Porsche
The Environmental Protection Agency also said it found the software, designed to cheat on emissions tests, on more Volkswagen and Audi diesel cars than previously disclosed.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-11-03T05:45:10+0000
Activision to Buy King Digital in $5.9 Billion Games Merger
Activision Bizzard Inc. agreed to buy King Digital Entertainment Plc for $5.9 billion, unifying major console games like Call of Duty with the leading mobile title Candy Crush Saga.
How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service
Powered by radios in trees, homegrown network serves 50 houses on Orcas Island.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-11-02T07:06:10+0000
A Way to Detect Bias
www.paulgraham.com
The two faces of Airbnb
Steven Hill writes how Airbnb is used by professional landlords to evade rules meant to regulate the hotel industry, and how Airbnb could stop them.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-11-02T01:50:19+0000