Idle Words
The piece claims that “users searching for a common chemical compound used in food production are offered the ingredients to produce explosive black powder” on Amazon’s website, and that “steel ball bearings often used as shrapnel” are also promoted on the page, in some cases as items that other cus...
Hasnain says:
"There is no real penalty for making mistakes, but there is enormous pressure to frame stories in whatever way maximizes page views. Once those stories get picked up by rival news outlets, they become ineradicable. The sheer weight of copycat coverage creates the impression of legitimacy. As the old adage has it, a lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is pulling its boots on."
Posted on 2017-09-30T18:14:46+0000
It’s time to give Firefox another chance
If you're like me, you switched your default browser over to Chrome years ago and never looked back. Chances are, before you made the switch, you used Firefox..
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-30T05:59:03+0000
Housing Bill Package Passes Legislature, Goes to Gov. Brown
Measures to fund affordable housing and ease local developments passed the Assembly in a late-night vote Thursday. The state Senate passed them Friday afternoon.
Hasnain says:
"The bills earmark billions of dollars for home construction, and enact rules making it harder for local governments to block new developments, with the overarching goal of increasing housing stock in the state."
YES
Posted on 2017-09-29T18:21:20+0000
Ikea has bought TaskRabbit
The Swedish home goods giant is looking for some digital help from the contract labor marketplace.
Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
Adjunct professors in America face low pay and long hours without the security of full-time faculty. Some, on the brink of homelessness, take desperate measures
Hasnain says:
This makes me sad: college is so expensive in the US making students struggle to pay, and yet, the people teaching them are also struggling to keep a roof over their heads.
Posted on 2017-09-29T05:15:51+0000
blog.ycombinator.com
blog.ycombinator.com
Hasnain says:
"Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee"
Posted on 2017-09-29T05:05:42+0000
Ford Made the Perfect Ad in Response to Saudi Arabia Lifting Its Ban on Women Drivers
‘Welcome to the driver’s seat’
Hasnain says:
This is an amazing ad, with an idea stolen from an indie artist :/
Posted on 2017-09-29T04:51:22+0000
Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet?
Now we have the "Russia-hacked-the-voting-systems-of-21-states" to add to this trash heap of debunked official claims. Is this a healthy climate?
Hasnain says:
"Regardless of your views on Russia, Trump and the rest, nobody can possibly regard this climate as healthy. Just look at how many major, incredibly inflammatory stories, from major media outlets, have collapsed. Is it not clear that there is something very wrong with how we are discussing and reporting on relations between these two nuclear-armed powers?"
Posted on 2017-09-29T04:19:54+0000
We’re sending our daughters into a workplace designed for our dads
In January 1949, Fortune magazine advertised a survey of its readership. The ad announced: “We have just completed a statistical portrait of men, like
Stream VByte: breaking new speed records for integer compression
Related Posts: Innovation as a Fringe Activity Setting up a “robust” Minecraft server… Science and Technology links (March 17, 2017)
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-28T06:59:01+0000
YC’s Essential Startup Advice
A lot of the advice we give startups is tactical; meant to be helpful on a day to day or week to week basis. But some advice is more fundamental. We’ve collected here what we at YC consider the most important, most transformative advice for startups. Whether common sense or counter-intuitive, the gu
CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
Who placed the JavaScript code on two primetime dot-coms? So far, it's a mystery
This Startup Is Luring Top Talent With $3 Million Salary Packages
China may have a reputation for low wages and sprawling factories. But in a sign of changing times, one startup founder has embraced a strategy of paying top employees the highest salaries in the market -- and so far it's working.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-25T02:34:53+0000
Given One Year To Live, Facebook Engineer Chooses To Share His Gift With Others
Rising from intern to management, 32-year-old Eric Sun has had a great career at Facebook. Ask him what's most important to him, however, and he'll not only say something else but spend the rest of his life proving it. Garvin Thomas reports.
Opinion | Pakistan, Let’s Talk About Sex
The country’s population is exploding because the state is too coy about family planning.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-24T06:15:15+0000
Opinion | How to Win a War on Drugs
Portugal treats addiction as a disease, not a crime.
Hasnain says:
"It’s not a miracle or perfect solution. But if the U.S. could achieve Portugal’s death rate from drugs, we would save one life every 10 minutes. We would save almost as many lives as are now lost to guns and car accidents combined"
Posted on 2017-09-23T07:20:32+0000
Facebook’s war on free will
The long read: How technology is making our minds redundant
Hasnain says:
Interesting read. This part stood out - and I disagree: I thought Americans were decidedly anti-intellectual?
"Without knowing it, Zuckerberg is the heir to a long political tradition. Over the last 200 years, the west has been unable to shake an abiding fantasy, a dream sequence in which we throw out the bum politicians and replace them with engineers – rule by slide rule. The French were the first to entertain this notion in the bloody, world-churning aftermath of their revolution. A coterie of the country’s most influential philosophers (notably, Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte) were genuinely torn about the course of the country. They hated all the old ancient bastions of parasitic power – the feudal lords, the priests and the warriors – but they also feared the chaos of the mob. To split the difference, they proposed a form of technocracy – engineers and assorted technicians would rule with beneficent disinterestedness. Engineers would strip the old order of its power, while governing in the spirit of science. They would impose rationality and order.
This dream has captivated intellectuals ever since, especially Americans. The great sociologist Thorstein Veblen was obsessed with installing engineers in power and, in 1921, wrote a book making his case. His vision briefly became a reality. In the aftermath of the first world war, American elites were aghast at all the irrational impulses unleashed by that conflict – the xenophobia, the racism, the urge to lynch and riot. And when the realities of economic life had grown so complicated, how could politicians possibly manage them? Americans of all persuasions began yearning for the salvific ascendance of the most famous engineer of his time: Herbert Hoover. In 1920, Franklin D Roosevelt – who would, of course, go on to replace him in 1932 – organised a movement to draft Hoover for the presidency."
Posted on 2017-09-19T20:27:32+0000
Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs and maybe go even further
The drug war isn't working, they say.
Hasnain says:
I wonder how it'll go down in the history books, seeing all the governments irrationally* "fight" drug "abuse" the wrong way.
" For instance, the last time the UN held a special session on drugs, in 1998, it set itself the goal of a "drug-free world" by 2008. The Hopkins-Lancet commissioners also fault UN drug regulators for failing to distinguish between drug use and drug abuse. "The idea that all drug use is dangerous and evil has led to enforcement-heavy policies and has made it difficult to see potentially dangerous drugs in the same light as potentially dangerous foods, tobacco and alcohol, for which the goal of social policy is to reduce potential harms," they write."
* I understand single actors might have a huge lobbying component to their choices..
Posted on 2017-09-19T07:21:03+0000
Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein In a Wild Web
Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein In a Wild Web查看简体中文版查看繁體中文版SHAREShare on FacebookPost on TwitterEmailLog in to SaveRead Laterhttps://nyti.ms/2jCGmwXShare on LinkedInShare on WhatsappShare on Google PlusShare on RedditShareCancelVideo Behind the scenes, Facebook is involved in high-stake...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-19T02:05:40+0000
japaric.github.io
This book is an "introductory course" on microcontroller-based "embeddedsystems" that uses Rust as the teaching language rather than the usual C/C++.
Hasnain says:
Bookmarking for future reading - microcontroller programming using Rust
Posted on 2017-09-18T16:05:45+0000
Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » My Big Numbers talk at Festivaletteratura
Last weekend, I gave a talk on big numbers, as well as a Q&A about quantum computing, at Festivaletteratura: one of the main European literary festivals, held every year in beautiful and historic Mantua, Italy. (For those who didn’t know, as I didn’t: this is the city where Virgil was born, and wher...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-17T17:46:43+0000
Mystery of sonic weapon attacks at US embassy in Cuba deepens
At least some of the incidents were confined to certain rooms with laser-like specificity, and some victims now have problems recalling specific words
Donald Trump wants to ‘cut off’ the internet after London terror attack
Donald Trump says that the internet must be "cut off" to stop further terror attacks. Responding to the terror incident at Parsons Green Tube station, he said that the internet was a terrorist "recruiting tool".
Hasnain says:
"“We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people.""
Posted on 2017-09-15T13:53:32+0000
Google 'segregates' women into lower-paying jobs, stifling careers, lawsuit says
Exclusive: Women say Google denied them promotions, telling the Guardian they were forced into less prestigious jobs despite qualifications
Motel 6 Admits Arizona Sites Were Reporting Guests To ICE Without Chain's Approval | HuffPost
POLITICS 09/14/2017 12:56 am ET Motel 6 Admits Arizona Sites Were Reporting Guests To ICE Without Chain's Approval Motel employees were handing ICE agents their guest lists on a regular basis, the Phoenix New Times reports. By Carla Herreria, Matt Ferner Google Maps ICE agents arrested a man at this...
Hasnain says:
So it turns out the desire to have "illegal" immigrants kicked out is more important than the desire to not have Big Brother spy on everyone.
"“We send a report every morning to ICE — all the names of everybody that comes in,” an unidentified front-desk clerk explained to the New Times. “Every morning at about 5 o’clock, we do the audit and we push a button and it sends it to ICE.”"
Posted on 2017-09-14T14:06:50+0000
‘It Was a Frat House’: Inside the Sex Scandal That Toppled SoFi’s C.E.O.
‘It Was a Frat House’: Inside the Sex Scandal That Toppled SoFi’s C.E.O.SHAREShare on FacebookPost on TwitterEmailLog in to SaveRead Laterhttps://nyti.ms/2eUz42IShare on LinkedInShare on WhatsappShare on Google PlusShare on RedditShareCancel“It was a frat house,” Yulia Zamora, a former SoFi employee...
Hasnain says:
"That created another problem: SoFi did not have enough money to fund all the loans it was giving out. Mr. Cagney told employees that because of the funding shortfall, it could take as long as 30 days for some new customers to get the money they borrowed. But the employees who dealt with the customers were told by a supervisor to say that people would still get the money within 72 hours as promised."
Posted on 2017-09-14T04:51:18+0000
What Science Says To Do If Your Loved One Has An Opioid Addiction
When a family member, spouse or other loved one develops an opioid addiction — whether to pain relievers like Vicodin or to heroin — few people know what to d…
Hasnain says:
"When opioid addiction occurs, it is rarely someone’s only mental health problem."
Posted on 2017-09-13T22:49:41+0000
Ford disguised a man as a car seat to research self-driving
Yes, you read that correctly: Ford put a man in a car seat disguise so that a Ford Transit could masquerade as a true self-driving vehicle. Why? To evaluate..
Ayuda! (Help!) Equifax Has My Data! — Krebs on Security
Equifax last week disclosed a historic breach involving Social Security numbers and other sensitive data on as many as 143 million Americans. The company said the breach also impacted an undisclosed number of people in Canada and the United Kingdom. But the official list of victim countries may not…
Hasnain says:
"Once inside the portal, the researchers found they could view the names of more than 100 Equifax employees in Argentina, as well as their employee ID and email address. The “list of users” page also featured a clickable button that anyone authenticated with the “admin/admin” username and password could use to add, modify or delete user accounts on the system. A search on “Equifax Veraz” at Linkedin indicates the unit currently has approximately 111 employees in Argentina."
Also gets worse: "view source" showed their passwords
Posted on 2017-09-13T03:49:52+0000
Seven Days of Heroin
The Enquirer sent 60 journalists to cover an ordinary week in this extraordinary time. This is what an epidemic looks like.
Hasnain says:
This was a really depressing read, but one that everyone should read to understand the toll of the opioid epidemic.
From Friday morning, halfway through the week:
"“This has been a crazy light week for ODs.” – Andrea Hatten, chief administrator for the Hamilton County coroner’s office, in an email to law enforcement and the media. So far this week, there have been at least 96 overdoses and 10 deaths in Greater Cincinnati."
Posted on 2017-09-12T03:56:10+0000
Opinion | The Contradictions of Hajj, Through the Lens of a Smartphone
Contributing Op-Ed WriterThe Contradictions of Hajj, Through the Lens of a SmartphoneSHAREShare on FacebookPost on TwitterEmailLog in to SaveRead Laterhttps://nyti.ms/2xWj2N3Share on LinkedInShare on WhatsappShare on Google PlusShare on RedditShareCancelThe author in a selfie with his Hajj companion...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-12T03:28:52+0000
At Google, Employee-Led Effort Finds Men Are Paid More Than Women
A spreadsheet created by employees to share salary information shows pay for women is falling short of what men make at various levels.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-11T18:44:00+0000
A Weird MIT Dorm Dies, and a Crisis Blooms at Colleges
MIT’s Senior House was a haven for creative outsiders. Adminstrators said it was dangerous and shut it down.
Hasnain says:
"One way they get through it is by depending on their dorm families. “I can’t tell you how many times I heard that Senior House saved a student’s life,” Feldmeier says. He points out that despite MIT’s high suicide rates—12.6 per 100,000 students in the years between 2010 and 2015 (the national collegiate average is 7.5)—Senior House hasn’t had a suicide in more than 20 years."
Posted on 2017-09-11T15:23:53+0000
The React license for founders and CTOs – James Ide – Medium
A startup founder and ex-Facebook engineer’s story of the BSD+Patents license. Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, nor is this legal advice.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-11T03:50:30+0000
The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis
It's time to rethink the Social Security number's ubiquity.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-10T18:03:16+0000
Equifax Lobbied To Kill Rule Protecting Victims Of Data Breaches
The credit reporting company that exposed 143 million people's private data to hackers has lobbied for the right to block consumers from suing.
The Doctor Is In. Co-Pay? $40,000.
The Doctor Is In. Co-Pay? $40,000.For five-figure annual fees, boutique medical services offer the wealthiest Americans the chance to cut the line and receive the best treatment.By NELSON D. SCHWARTZJune 3, 2017Chris B. MurrayThe Velvet Rope EconomyThe Doctor Is In. Co-Pay? $40,000.SHAREShare on Fac...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-10T00:58:19+0000
‘A disaster in the making’: Pakistan’s population surges to 207.7 million
Poverty, illiteracy and religious beliefs have hampered birth-control efforts.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-09T20:19:27+0000
Games aren’t always fair, the magic lies in making you think they are
Behind the scenes with the neuroscience of game design
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-09T17:08:13+0000
Equifax's dox of America: Sign up for "free" monitoring, get billed forever
Equifax dumped dox on 143 million Americans (as well as lucky Britons and Canadians!), sat on the news for five weeks, let its execs sell millions in stock, and then unveiled an unpatched, insecure…
Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You | Kalzumeus Software
Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You September 09, 2017 in life-advice , offtopic This is outside my usual brief, but one of my hobbies is that I used to ghostwrite letters to credit reporting agencies and banks. It is suddenly relevant after the Equifax breach, so I’m writing down what I know to...
Hasnain says:
Best article on the whole Equifax matter and what to do.
"Mean words cannot hurt a bank. Threats cannot hurt a bank. Paper trails, though, are terrifying to regulated institutions. Your bank’s customer support representatives are taught to evaluate whether someone looks like they’re competent and collecting a paper trail. If they are, the CS rep is supposed to stop touching the case immediately and instead escalate them to a supervisor or to the legal department."
Posted on 2017-09-09T16:31:42+0000
Opinion | What the Rich Won’t Tell You
“There’s nobody who knows how much we spend. You’re the only person I ever said those numbers to out loud.”
Hasnain says:
Really interesting and engrossing read.
"When I used the word “affluent” in an email to a stay-at-home mom with a $2.5 million household income, a house in the Hamptons and a child in private school, she almost canceled the interview, she told me later. Real affluence, she said, belonged to her friends who traveled on a private plane."
Posted on 2017-09-09T00:31:08+0000
Mortgage Magnitude
A simple look at home values and income. How dreamy is the American Dream?
Everything is Changing; So Should Antitrust
WPP is dealing with not only a changing advertising industry but a changing world, thanks to the Internet. Antitrust needs to change as well.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-08T14:08:17+0000
Three Equifax Managers Sold Stock Before Cyber Hack Revealed
Three Equifax Inc. senior executives sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered a security breach that may have compromised information on about 143 million U.S. consumers.
Hasnain says:
There's no way these people aren't going to jail for insider trading, right?
Posted on 2017-09-08T05:25:30+0000
Credit reporting firm Equifax says data breach could potentially affect 143 million US consumers
Equifax said on Thursday that it suffered a major cybersecurity incident that might affect 143 million consumers in the United States.
‘It’s never too late to say we’re sorry’: Seattle leaders respond to Amazon plans to establish second HQ outside its hometown
Amazon announced plans early Thursday morning to open a second headquarters “fully equal” to its Seattle home, calling on local governments across North America to submit proposals. The news…
Hasnain says:
Seattle: "We hate all the traffic, all the Amazon employees coming here ..."
Amazon: "Okay, we'll try and move elsewhere"
Seattle: "uh ... please don't"
Optimizing web servers for high throughput and low latency
This is an expanded version of my talk at NginxConf 2017 on September 6, 2017. As an SRE on the Dropbox Traffic Team, I'm responsible for our Edge network: its reliability, performance, and efficiency.
Hasnain says:
"In this post we’ll be discussing lots of ways to tune web servers and proxies. Please do not cargo-cult them. For the sake of the scientific method, apply them one-by-one, measure their effect, and decide whether they are indeed useful in your environment."
Posted on 2017-09-06T21:45:03+0000
Delta flight goes where no others will — in and out of Hurricane Irma
Self-described aviation geek Jason Rabinowitz (@AirlineFlyer) was keeping tabs on commercial flights near Hurricane Irma when he noticed on Delta flight headed for Puerto Rico was headed right into the arms storm. Here's how it looked on flight radar.
Finding inter-procedural bugs at scale with Infer static analyzer
Inter-procedural analysis can be deployed to large and rapidly changing codebases that consist of millions of lines of code and undergo thousands of modifications per day.
The College That Produces Founders at 5 Times the Rate of Stanford
Every few months someone writes an article reconfirming Stanford as the world’s largest producer of venture-backed startups by volume. The…
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-06T16:20:59+0000
Get Off The Couch Baby Boomers, Or You May Not Be Able To Later
If you sit too much during middle age — at work and at home — your ability to exercise or even walk in late decades is at risk, a study hints. And, of course, your risk of heart disease climbs, too.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-06T02:04:54+0000
The Personal Blog of Zack Kanter – You Are Not ‘Behind’
Have you ever felt like you were behind? I used to feel that way. I would read articles about a 26-year-old entrepreneur with a billion-dollar company or a
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-04T00:09:15+0000
To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now
To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and NowFocusing on core competence and outsourcing the rest has made U.S. companies lean, nimble and productive. It has also left lots of people worse off.SHAREShare on FacebookPost on TwitterEmailLog in to SaveRead La...
Hasnain says:
Great read on how all the companies are now relying on outsourced and contract labor
"Less than a decade later, Ms. Evans was chief technology officer of the whole company, and she has had a long career since as a senior executive at other top companies. Ms. Ramos sees the only advancement possibility as becoming a team leader keeping tabs on a few other janitors, which pays an extra 50 cents an hour."
Posted on 2017-09-03T23:53:51+0000
Opinion | Don’t Suspend Students. Empathize.
Contributing Op-Ed WriterDon’t Suspend Students. Empathize.SHAREShare on FacebookPost on TwitterEmailLog in to SaveRead Laterhttps://nyti.ms/2xGcz9AShare on LinkedInShare on WhatsappShare on Google PlusShare on RedditShareCancelAidan KochSeptember 2, 2017David L. KirpTo his teachers at Ridgeway High...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-03T23:53:05+0000
Wealth: redistribution and interest rates
The most interesting scientific projects are those that surprise, when the mathematics, or the code, tells us something we didn’t expect. In our study of US wealth dynamics that’s what …
Rental Camera Gear Destroyed by the Solar Eclipse of 2017
We recently had quite a spectacle in the United States, with a Solar Eclipse reaching totality throughout a large portion of the United States. Being that this was the first solar eclipse passing through the Continental US since 1979, excitement ran wild on capturing this natural event using the bes...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2017-09-03T04:48:13+0000
U.S. Employers Struggle To Match Workers With Open Jobs
Many employers complain about not being able to find workers with the right skills, but experts says some of these employers aren't trying very hard.
Hasnain says:
""They're just asking for the moon, and not expecting to pay very much for it," Cappelli says. "And as a result they [can't] find those people. Now that [doesn't] mean there was nobody to do the job; it just [means] that there was nobody at the price they were willing to pay.""
Posted on 2017-09-02T03:42:50+0000