What Kids Wish Their Teachers Knew
A teacher’s insights from asking students to finish the sentence, “I wish my teacher knew…”
Hasnain says:
"In her book, Ms. Schwartz writes about mistakes that might have been prevented if she had known her students better. She had a student named Chris who was obsessed with science. Ms. Schwartz thought she had done Chris a huge favor by securing a spot for him in a science-focused summer camp. But she was unaware of the family’s financial struggles and it turned out that his parents could not afford to take time off from work to get Chris to camp."
:(
Posted on 2016-08-31T20:02:06+0000
Google Takes on Uber With New Ride-Share Service
Google is moving onto Uber’s turf with its own ride-sharing service in San Francisco that would help commuters carpool at far cheaper rates, according to a person familiar with the matter, jumping into a booming but fiercely competitive market.
Paid $75,000 to Love a Brand on Instagram. But Is It an Ad?
Companies are spending big to have celebrities praise their products to millions of social media followers, raising questions about disclosure rules.
Hasnain says:
"Captiv8, a company that connects brands to influencers, says someone with three million to seven million followers can charge, on average, $187,500 for a post on YouTube, $75,000 for a post on Instagram or Snapchat and $30,000 for a post on Twitter. For influencers with 50,000 to 500,000 followers, the average is $2,500 for YouTube, $1,000 for Instagram or Snapchat and $400 for Twitter."
I clearly need to get an Instagram/Youtube account with lots of followers
Posted on 2016-08-30T16:50:28+0000
The world's oldest man has been found, but he just wants to die
The world’s oldest man has been named as Indonesian Mbah Gotho, who is 145 years old, with documentation that says he was born in 1870. Mr Gotho said he began preparing for his death in 1992, even having a gravestone made, but 24 years later he is still alive. He has now outlived all 10 of his si...
Hasnain says:
Wondering if they'll be able to verify this independently
Posted on 2016-08-30T05:28:44+0000
Are PhD Students Irrational? - Los Angeles Review of Books
Debunking the widespread idea that humanities PhD students are irrational for entering into an “oversupplied” degree in a tight job market.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-30T04:44:48+0000
I Got Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
Telling my story isn’t going to be easy. Oftentimes I feel embarrassed, enraged, and regretful when I have to relive it, but in the end it…
Hasnain says:
This is much worse than I imagined it would be from reading the title. Especially when it came to the photo shopped wire transfer confirmations...
Posted on 2016-08-29T05:01:21+0000
For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II
In 1978, Soviet geologists prospecting in the wilds of Siberia discovered a family of six, lost in the taiga
Five Principles for Programming Languages for Learners
Five considerations when choosing a programming language for schools
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-29T04:45:03+0000
The Million Dollar Dissident: NSO Group's iPhone Zero-Days used against a UAE Human Rights Defender - The Citizen Lab
Ahmed Mansoor was targeted by NSO Group, an Israel-based “cyber war” company that sells Pegasus, a government-exclusive “lawful intercept” spyware product.
Hasnain says:
Finally finished reading this. In case you've been wondering why everyone is hurdling to upgrade to iOS 9.3.5
Posted on 2016-08-28T20:05:39+0000
How technology is killing Lahore's historic red light district
'Oldest profession' in Heera Mandi under threat as e-commerce boom revolutionises the rules of the game.
Hasnain says:
Presented without comment, even the comment below (from the comments section):
"From the article: "Medical students and MBAs have the highest rates, they get a hundred thousand (rupees) for one night," she says.
Whoring is like military service…okay in the upper brackets, not so good lower down. - Robert A Heinlein (1907-1988)"
Posted on 2016-08-25T18:19:54+0000
Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field?
Research shows that class projects and internships reinforce a masculine culture.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-24T23:27:31+0000
Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star - Pale Red Dot campaign reveals Earth-mass world in orbit around Proxima Centauri
Astronomers using ESO telescopes and other facilities have found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its...
Hasnain says:
"[4] The actual suitability of this kind of planet to support water and Earth-like life is a matter of intense but mostly theoretical debate. Major concerns that count against the presence of life are related to the closeness of the star. For example gravitational forces probably lock the same side of the planet in perpetual daylight, while the other side is in perpetual night. The planet's atmosphere might also slowly be evaporating or have more complex chemistry than Earth’s due to stronger ultraviolet and X-ray radiation, especially during the first billion years of the star’s life. However, none of the arguments has been proven conclusively and they are unlikely to be settled without direct observational evidence and characterisation of the planet’s atmosphere. Similar factors apply to the planets recently found around TRAPPIST-1."
Posted on 2016-08-24T22:06:32+0000
Are they students? Or are they employees? NLRB rules that graduate students are employees.
Grad students who work as teaching and research assistants at private universities are school employees, the NLRB rules.
Soccer's Ultimate Con Man Was a Superstar Who Couldn't Play the Game
How does an athlete without athletic prowess maintain a 20-year career?
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-23T06:14:21+0000
Commentary: Evidence points to another Snowden at the NSA
By James Bamford In the summer of 1972, state-of-the-art campaign spying consisted of amateur burglars, armed with duct tape and microphones,
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-22T17:27:15+0000
Chase Sapphire Reserve Review - NerdWallet
Chase has confirmed the rumors that have been swirling all summer: It’s coming out with a new premium card — the Chase Sapphire Reserve℠. As the name implies, the new card…
The worlds most epic bank statement, 6 months later
As outlined in When the stupid stars align, My favorite day of the month is bank statement day at my company. There is a combination of two…
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-17T00:21:13+0000
How Can So Many Students Be Invisible? Large Percentages of American Students Perform Above Grade Level
America’s K-12 education systems place students in grade levels by age and set performance expectations accordingly, using historical, average grade-level performance rather than any specific content students are expected to master7. This should not surprise us. Nearly all aspects of America’s schoo...
Hasnain says:
"NAEP data provide evidence that, in 2013 alone, more than 400,000 Grade 4 students performed above the level of the lowest quarter of Grade 12 students in reading. Roughly 14.5 million Grade 4 students have scored at this level in reading in the years since 2002. Looking at NAEP mathematics scores, in 2015 alone more than a million Grade 4 students would have outscored the same number of Grade 8 students. In other words, in a single recent year, there were more students in the U.S. already working four years above grade level than the entire population of Rhode Island."
The data is really surprising. I'd love to see this cut by socioeconomic background though
Posted on 2016-08-16T20:10:22+0000
Forget Technical Debt — Here's How to Build Technical Wealth
Andrea Goulet runs a software SWAT Team — parachuting in to help companies fix bad code that's holding them back. Here's what she's learned on the job.
The Shame of Palo Alto: an Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing — Stanford Political Journal
This article is part of a series on housing politics and policy, particularly in the context of the Bay Area. Previous articles on housing…
Hasnain says:
"I would also add that housing and transportation are two things that have to go hand in hand, and we have to be building up our public transportation infrastructure, and there’s a lot that we can do in that direction. But when you ask me about whether it’s a deflection, I would say it is, because in my experience the people who say, ‘well, we can’t have housing because that will create transportation issues,’ they’re the very same people who show up to protest public transportation."
Posted on 2016-08-15T06:38:41+0000
This Daily Beast Grindr Stunt Is Sleazy, Dangerous, and Wildly Unethical
On Thursday morning, the Daily Beast published an exceedingly gross and bizarre article by a straight, married male writer who lured in gay Olympians t ...
Hasnain says:
"Shortly after Hines’ article published, openly gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy tweeted that the author “basically just outed a bunch of athletes in his quest to write a shitty [Daily Beast] article where he admitted to entrapment.”"
Posted on 2016-08-12T04:42:54+0000
Researchers orbit a muon around an atom, confirm physics is broken
The proton's charge radius shouldn't change, and yet it appears to.
The Great Productivity Puzzle - The New Yorker
Whatever is driving the slowdown in productivity growth in the U.S. appears to be affecting the advanced world as a whole. What is it?
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-11T16:51:24+0000
Secure Boot snafu: Microsoft leaks backdoor key, firmware flung wide open
Microsoft quiet as researchers spot debug mode flaw that bypasses OS checks.
Zero-cost futures in Rust · Aaron Turon
Zero-cost futures in Rust 11 Aug 2016One of the key gaps in Rust’s ecosystem has been a strong story for fast and productive asynchronous I/O. We have solid foundations, like the mio library, but they’re very low level: you have to wire up state machines and juggle callbacks directly. We’ve wanted s...
No Prison For Colorado Student Who Raped 'Helpless' Freshman
Austin Wilkerson had faced years behind bars for attacking a half-conscious woman.
Generating fantasy maps
These are some notes on how I generate the maps for my Twitter bot @unchartedatlas, which is based on a generator I originally produced during NaNoGenMo 2015. There's JavaScript code for the generator on Github here, and the original messy Python generator code can be seen here.
Prosecutors in PG&E case abruptly reduce potential fines
Abruptly and without explanation, federal prosecutors slashed potential criminal penalties for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. from $562 million to $6 million Tuesday while a jury was considering whether the company violated safety laws both before and after the lethal 2010 gas pipeline explosion in Sa...
We just got even weirder results about the 'alien megastructure' star
Last year , the world freaked out over the discovery of a star that was dimming and flickering so erratically, it couldn't be explained by any known natural phenomenon - prompting one scientist to actually go there and suggest it could be evidence...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-10T05:35:15+0000
An entire generation of a city’s lawyers was killed in Pakistan
The attack on Monday leaves Baluchistan lawless in more ways than one.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-10T00:31:54+0000
The most deadly Isis attack in weeks is the one the world probably cares about least
Both Isis and a faction of the Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a hospital in Quetta which killed at least 70 people and wounded more than 100.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-09T15:12:14+0000
Why do CPUs have multiple cache levels?
This is a reader question from “jlforrest” that seems worth answering in more detail than just a single sentence: I understand the need for a cache but I don’t understand why there are …
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-09T04:57:13+0000
Why bad ideas refuse to die | Steven Poole
The Long Read: They may have been disproved by science or dismissed as ridiculous, but some foolish beliefs endure. In theory they should wither away – but it’s not that simple
Hasnain says:
Such a good read on bad ideas, anti intellectualism, research, science, conspiracies, and human thought processes.
"The resurgence of flat-Earth theory has also spawned many web pages that employ mathematics, science, and everyday experience to explain why the world actually is round. This is a boon for public education. And we should not give in to the temptation to conclude that belief in a conspiracy is prima facie evidence of stupidity. Evidently, conspiracies really happen. Members of al-Qaida really did conspire in secret to fly planes into the World Trade Center. And, as Edward Snowden revealed, the American and British intelligence services really did conspire in secret to intercept the electronic communications of millions of ordinary citizens. Perhaps the most colourful official conspiracy that we now know of happened in China. When the half-millennium-old Tiananmen Gate was found to be falling down in the 1960s, it was secretly replaced, bit by bit, with an exact replica, in a successful conspiracy that involved nearly 3,000 people who managed to keep it a secret for years."
Posted on 2016-08-08T00:17:53+0000
FTC to Crack Down on Paid Celebrity Posts That Aren’t Clear Ads
The agency says brands and the social media stars who promote their products need to be more transparent about sponsored content
Notes on concurrency bugs
Do concurrency bugs matter? From the literature, we know that most reported bugs in distributed systems have really simple causes and can be caught by trivial tests, even when we only look at bugs that cause really bad failures, like loss of a cluster or data corruption. The filesystem literature ec...
Hasnain says:
"For example, the idea inside clang’s TSan, using “happens-before” to find data races, goes back ages. There’s a 2003 paper that discusses “combining two previously known race detection techniques – lockset-based detection and happens-before-based detection – to obtain fewer false positives than lockset-based detection alone”. That’s actually what TSan v1 did, but with TSan v2 they realized the tool would be more impactful if they only used happens-before because that avoids false positives, which means that people will actually use the tool. That’s not something that’s likely to turn into a paper that gets cited zillions of times, though. For anyone who’s looked at how afl works, this story should sound familiar. AFL is emintently practical and has had a very large impact in the real world, mostly by eschewing fancy techniques from the recent literature."
Posted on 2016-08-07T05:53:37+0000
Minds turned to ash
Is burnout simply the result of working too hard? Josh Cohen argues that the root of the problem lies deeper than that
Hasnain says:
Pretty good essay on burnout
"“You know”, he said to me one day, “it’s not like I want to be this pathetic loser. I want to get up tomorrow, get back in the gym, find a new job, see people again. But it’s like even as I say I’m gonna do all this, some voice in me says, ‘no I’m not, no way am I doing that.’ And then I can’t work out if I feel depressed or relieved, and the confusion sends me crazy.”"
Posted on 2016-08-07T05:39:28+0000
Concurrency Freaks: Throughput vs Latency and Lock-Free vs Wait-Free
concurrencyfreaks.blogspot.com
Click to view the original at concurrencyfreaks.blogspot.com
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-07T05:31:04+0000
A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’
Zzzzz.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-06T01:14:24+0000
Chicago's 'Skullcap Crew': band of police accused of brutality evade discipline
Dogged by allegations of abuse, members of the group have been named in more than 20 federal lawsuits – yet have won repeated praise from department
Hasnain says:
"The members of this crew – Edwin Utreras, Robert Stegmiller, Christ Savickas, Andrew Schoeff and Joe Seinitz – have together faced at least 128 known official allegations from more than 60 citizen-filed complaints over almost a decade and a half. They have also been named in more than 20 federal lawsuits."
...
"Citizens have repeatedly accused these men of acts of brutality, intimidation and harassment – costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal settlements. Yet over the course of their careers, these officers have received little discipline – a two-day suspension, a five-day suspension, a reprimand – according to city data. Instead, they have won praise from the department, accruing more than 180 commendations."
Posted on 2016-08-06T01:01:13+0000
She Swam to Escape Syria. Now She’ll Swim in Rio.
Yusra Mardini, a swimmer who fled Syria, has become the face of a new team of refugees who will compete in Rio under the Olympic flag.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-06T00:22:57+0000
Missouri's Governor Wouldn't Fund Public Defenders—So He's Been Ordered to Serve as One Himself
The state's top public defender invoked a seldom-used provision to compel his political foe to come to the aid of an indigent defendant.
Hasnain says:
Sickest burn in quite a while, in response to Gov. Nixon slashing the public defender budgets.
"Therefore, pursuant to Section 600.042.5 and as Director of the Missouri State Public Defender System tasked with carrying out the State’s obligation to ensure that poor people who face incarceration are afforded competent counsel in their defense, I hereby appoint you, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon, Bar No. 29603, to enter your appearance as counsel of record in the attached case."
Posted on 2016-08-04T15:37:47+0000
Dentists forgot to study flossing for a century, recommended it anyway
Federal health experts dropped it from health guidelines due to lack of research.
Illegal in Massachusetts: Asking Your Salary in a Job Interview
A law taking effect in 2018 requires employers to offer a compensation figure upfront in an effort to end the wage gap between men and women.
When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All — Backchannel
Uber was only the latest victim of a syndrome making it tough for US firms
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-08-03T21:31:43+0000
Better Exception Messages · Writing an OS in Rust
Better Exception Messages Aug 3, 2016 In this post, we explore exceptions in more detail. Our goal is to print additional information when an exception occurs, for example the values of the instruction and stack pointer. In the course of this, we will explore inline assembly and naked functions. We…