Why Do Recipe Writers Lie About How Long It Takes To Caramelize Onions?
Browning onions is a matter of patience. My own patience ran out earlier this year while leafing through the New York Times food section. There, in the...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-31T08:57:54+0000
The Uncharity of College: The Big Business Nobody Understands
How Colleges Make More Money Than God By Giving It Away
Hasnain says:
This was a long and interesting perspective on why college has gotten so expensive.
I look forward to the rebuttals to see what the author missed
Posted on 2018-12-31T06:56:08+0000
All the science fiction and fantasy books we’re looking forward to in 2019
It’s going to be a good year for readers
Lawrence Roberts, Who Helped Design Internet’s Precursor, Dies at 81
Dr. Roberts worked with other engineers to create the underpinnings of the Arpanet, making many crucial decisions. But his work did not make him rich.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-30T23:11:55+0000
Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
We can admit our knowledge gaps without devaluing our expertise.
Hasnain says:
Read in full, nodding along all the way.
Then got to the end, realized who the author was, went "holy shit", and re read the whole thing while being more enlightened.
"First, there is often an unrealistic expectation that an experienced engineer knows every technology in their field. Have you seen a “learning roadmap” that consists of a hundred libraries and tools? It’s useful — but intimidating.
What’s more, no matter how experienced you get, you may still find yourself switching between feeling capable, inadequate (“Impostor syndrome”), and overconfident (“Dunning–Kruger effect”). It depends on your environment, job, personality, teammates, mental state, time of day, and so on."
Posted on 2018-12-29T06:13:13+0000
Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record
Teachers and other public education employees—such as community-college faculty, school psychologists and janitors—are quitting their jobs at the fastest rate on record, government data show.
Hasnain says:
"School districts have reported since at least 2015 having trouble finding enough qualified teachers to fill open slots, leading more states to open up temporary teaching jobs to people with no official training, according to the Learning Policy Institute, a nonpartisan education-policy research group. The rate at which qualified teachers are leaving the profession is likely to exacerbate that trend.
In the 12 months ended in October, one million workers quit public-education positions, according to the most recent Labor Department data. More than 10 million Americans work in the field."
Posted on 2018-12-29T02:09:08+0000
The Next Big Blue-Collar Job Is Coding
What if we regarded code not as a high-stakes, sexy affair, but the equivalent of skilled work at a Chrysler plant?
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-28T15:45:30+0000
Athletes Don’t Own Their Tattoos. That’s a Problem for Video Game Developers.
Sports video games strive for realism by closely replicating real-life players, but digitally reproducing their tattoos has led to court fights over ownership rights.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-27T16:01:45+0000
New Office Hours Aim for Well Rested, More Productive Workers
A growing number of businesses are encouraging their employees to work when their bodies are most awake.
Hasnain says:
“But while lots of corporations promise flexibility, veering from the traditional 9 to 5 work hours requires a cultural shift. A 2014 study led by Dr. Barnes found that many managers have an ingrained prejudice in favor of early birds, whom they perceived as more conscientious simply because they arrived at work early, a view that could dissuade some workers from using flextime.
But sticking to traditional hours can be counterproductive, leading to “presenteeism” — employees showing up and being only minimally functional. “Companies are wasting the potential of their people,” Dr. Volk said. “You have someone sitting there from 7 til 9 a.m. sipping coffee, being completely unproductive, and then you send them home at 4 when they actually start getting productive.””
Posted on 2018-12-26T06:12:03+0000
The ‘clean plate’ mentality drives us to overeat. To-go bags can help.
We’re more likely to overeat when we only have a little bit of food left over, and we justify it by convincing ourselves it’s not as unhealthy as it is, according to new research by marketing professor Kelly Haws.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-26T01:29:01+0000
New snake species discovered in another snake’s belly
The “mysterious dinner snake” has some odd habits, including a propensity to burrow.
Hasnain says:
““It's always interesting to find a species that is new to science, and even more so when it appears not to be particularly closely related to any currently known species.””
Posted on 2018-12-25T08:26:19+0000
Rich Whitehouse - DOOMBA
Noesis now includes a Roomba script. It will track your Roomba, store tracking data, allow you to visualize that data in a variety of ways, and, of course, turn that data into a randomized DOOM map. ...
Solving murder with Prolog
In our company we usually have a fun quiz every sunday and this was one of them
Rising Instagram Stars Are Posting Fake Sponsored Content
“It’s street cred—the more sponsors you have, the more credibility you have.”
Hasnain says:
“Vingan Klein said she can’t blame the young fashion influencers she sees coming up today for their hustle. “Trying to get sponsored is your way out of this rat race,” she said. Teens today realize that “you don’t have to go up this hierarchy; you can skip the middleman,” she added. “Besides, what do the followers know?”
Posted on 2018-12-24T05:50:12+0000
Deep Reinforcement Learning: Pong from Pixels
Musings of a Computer Scientist.
Researchers Show Parachutes Don't Work, But There's A Catch
A study found parachutes were no more effective than backpacks in preventing harm to people jumping from aircraft. The researchers' tongue-in-cheek experiment makes a deeper point about science.
Hasnain says:
“But something like this happens in everyday medical research. It's far too easy for scientists who have already anticipated the outcome of their research to cherry-pick patients and circumstances to achieve the results they expect to see. This research paper carried that idea to the ridiculous extreme.”
Posted on 2018-12-23T08:48:21+0000
The Wavefunction Collapse Algorithm explained very clearly | Robert Heaton
The Wavefunction Collapse Algorithm teaches your computer how to riff. The algorithm takes in an archetypical input, and produces procedurally-generated outputs that look like it.
The war over supercooled water
<p>How a hidden coding error fueled a seven-year dispute between two of condensed matter’s top theorists.</p>
Hasnain says:
“Over the next seven years, the perplexing discrepancy would ignite a bitter conflict, with junior scientists caught in the crossfire. At stake were not only the reputations of the two groups but also a peculiar theory that sought to explain some of water’s deepest and most enduring mysteries. Earlier this year, the dispute was finally settled. And as it turns out, the entire ordeal was the result of botched code.”
Posted on 2018-12-23T04:47:28+0000
The Der Spiegel journalist who messed with the wrong small town | Spectator USA
How we unpicked a Der Spiegel reporter’s demonstrably false story about Fergus Falls, Minn. It’s staggering just how much he made up
Hasnain says:
“This week, the star reporter of the German magazine Der Spiegel was fired after it was revealed that he had been fabricating stories for several years. Here, Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn expose the many inaccuracies in his article about their town, Fergus Falls, Minn.”
Posted on 2018-12-23T04:25:01+0000
Big Tongues and Extra Vertebrae: The Unintended Consequences of Animal Gene Editing
Scientists around the world are editing the genes of livestock to create meatier pigs, cashmere goats with longer hair and cold-weather cows that can thrive in the tropics. But amid some successes, disturbing outcomes are surfacing.
Hasnain says:
“But there was another effect on the pigs: One in five offspring who inherited the edited genes had an extra spinal bone known as thoracic vertebrae, Dr. Li found. He doesn’t know why, though he postulates that the MSTN gene somehow contributes to skeletal formation.”
Posted on 2018-12-22T20:26:33+0000
Opinion | Test Your Knowledge of American Incarceration
The First Step Act, signed on Friday by President Trump, will shorten sentences for federal prisoners. It is a bright moment in a highly partisan time.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-22T19:03:00+0000
Zstandard: How Facebook increased compression speed - Facebook Code
Zstandard, our open source data compression solution, improved compression at scale. How to implement new advanced capabilities for similar benefits.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-22T09:23:21+0000
Bye bye Mongo, Hello Postgres | Digital blog
In April the Guardian switched off the Mongo DB cluster used to store our content after completing a migration to PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS. This post covers why and how
Searching statically-linked vulnerable library functions in executable code
Helping researchers find 0ld days Posted by Thomas Dullien, Project Zero Executive summary Software supply chains are increasingly ...
Click to view the original at googleprojectzero.blogspot.com
Wall Street Rule for the #MeToo Era: Avoid Women at All Cost
No more dinners with female colleagues. Don’t sit next to them on flights. Book hotel rooms on different floors. Avoid one-on-one meetings.
Hasnain says:
"On Wall Street as elsewhere, reactions to #MeToo can smack of paranoia, particularly given the industry’s history of protecting its biggest revenue generators.
“Some men have voiced concerns to me that a false accusation is what they fear,” said Zweig, the lawyer. “These men fear what they cannot control.”
There are as many or more men who are responding in quite different ways. One, an investment adviser who manages about 100 employees, said he briefly reconsidered having one-on-one meetings with junior women. He thought about leaving his office door open, or inviting a third person into the room.
Finally, he landed on the solution: “Just try not to be an asshole.”"
Posted on 2018-12-16T18:09:58+0000
The untold story of how India's sex workers prevented an Aids epidemic
Beating Aids is India’s greatest public health achievement. A new book says it wouldn’t have happened without women
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-16T08:09:46+0000
Should a self-driving car kill the baby or the grandma? Depends on where you’re from.
The infamous “trolley problem” was put to millions of people in a global study, revealing how much ethics diverge across cultures.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-16T03:00:51+0000
PG&E falsified gas pipeline records for years after deadly explosion, regulators say
Already facing massive liabilities in connection with the Camp fire, PG&E was found to have violated safety rules requiring utilities to mark natural gas pipelines in the years after one of its pipelines exploded in 2010, killing eight people.
Hasnain says:
“The California Public Utilities Commission said Friday that a staff investigation found PG&E had violated rules requiring utilities to locate and mark natural gas pipelines to make sure other companies or people don’t accidentally damage them during construction and other projects that involve digging. The commission’s investigation found that PG&E didn’t have enough employees dedicated to that work and that PG&E supervisors, facing pressure from their bosses, falsified data “so requests for pipeline locating and marking would not appear as late.””
Posted on 2018-12-16T02:46:03+0000
Behind CBS’s Secret $9.5 Million Settlement With the Actress Eliza Dushku
Ms. Dushku told investigators she was written off the hit series ‘Bull’ after enduring sexual harassment on the set. Lawyers scolded CBS for its ‘antiquated’ views.
Hasnain says:
“Mr. Engstrom handed over outtakes from “Bull” in the belief that they would help the company’s cause, because they showed Ms. Dushku cursing on the set, investigators wrote in the draft of their report.
The strategy backfired. The outtakes were a “gold mine” for Ms. Dushku, the lawyers wrote, because they “actually captured some of the harassment on film.”
Although the investigators praised Mr. Engstrom for his “tremendous institutional knowledge” and described him as a “smart and very capable lawyer,” they said the company’s failure to recognize the instances of harassment caught on tape was a symptom of larger problems at CBS, according to the draft of their report. Mr. Engstrom declined to comment.”
Posted on 2018-12-15T17:23:57+0000
Magellan - Tencent Blade Team
Magellan is a remote code execution vulnerability that exists in SQLite. As a well-known database, SQLite is widely used in all modern mainstream operating systems and software, so this vulnerability has a wide range of influence. After testing Chromium was also affected by this vulnerability, Googl...
Virgin Galactic test flight reaches space, taking a step closer to flying tourists there
After setbacks, rocket launch opens new era in human spaceflight.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-14T05:32:23+0000
Opinion | I Was Kicked Off Stage by College Students. Did I Deserve It?
Columbia students didn’t like my joke and they had the right to cut my mic. But we all should have gotten the chance to stick it out.
Hasnain says:
"I was grateful. They helped me see that when older people call students today oversensitive, we do the same thing that we accuse the college students of doing — jumping to a predetermined conclusion based on the action of a small group. I’ve been talking about this onstage since the night it happened, and I’ve realized that this generalization about college students is not unlike racists thinking every brown person is a terrorist, or people thinking that every orange-faced, yellow-haired person is a lying idiot. Most brown people have yet to blow anything up, and most orange-faced yellow-haired people are decent Floridians."
Posted on 2018-12-09T17:41:28+0000
Older Americans Are Flocking to Medical Marijuana
Oils, tinctures and salves — and sometimes old-fashioned buds — are increasingly common in seniors’ homes. Doctors warn that popularity has outstripped scientific evidence.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-09T03:01:43+0000
Facial recognition: It’s time for action - Microsoft on the Issues
In July, we shared our views about the need for government regulation and responsible industry measures to address advancing facial recognition technology. As we discussed, this technology brings important and even exciting societal benefits but also the potential for abuse. We noted the need for br...
Hasnain says:
I’m so glad to see Microsoft taking a solid stand here. This is great
Posted on 2018-12-08T07:50:48+0000
Police Forced Bronx Woman to Give Birth While Handcuffed, Lawsuit Says
The woman said the police handcuffed her to a bed during her labor and delivery in violation of state law. She had been arrested for a minor crime.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-08T02:54:00+0000
Standard Ranges – Eric Niebler
Standard Ranges Posted on December 5, 2018 by Eric Niebler — 4 Comments ↓ As you may have heard by now, Ranges got merged and will be part of C++20. This is huge news and represents probably the biggest shift the Standard Library has seen since it was first standardized way back in 1998. This ha...
Analysis | The man at the center of fraud probe in North Carolina may have been doing this for eight years
Why did it keep happening?
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-06T01:28:55+0000
Mr Wu | Pallavi Aiyar | Granta
‘A middle-aged woman in teddy bear-spangled pajamas came hurtling down on a flatbed tricycle.’ Pallavi Aiyar returns to China.
Hasnain says:
This was a great human interest story.
"On our last dinner together in early 2008, Mr Wu’s insistence on paying had involved some spectacular theatrics. Only a few minutes into the meal he claimed to have swallowed a morsel of frog the wrong way down and went into frightening convulsions. His wife pummeled his back, but he continued to choke and finally dashed to the washroom. We discovered later that it had been an elaborate ruse to preempt us from taking care of the bill. Instead of heading to the loo, he’d gone straight to the cashier."
Posted on 2018-12-06T01:12:10+0000
Bowel movement: the push to change the way you poo
The long read: Are you sitting comfortably? Many people are not – and they insist that the way we’ve been going to the toilet is all wrong
Hasnain says:
"At the same time, social media has had other, more humanising effects. In the 1970s, Alexander Kira of Cornell University diagnosed Americans with a psychological and cultural aversion to squatting, as well as to talking openly about our basest bodily functions. Today, after little more than a generation, people are opening up about defecation in a way that was presaged by early, faeces-focused social media sites such as poopreport.com and ratemypoo.com. These sites were often anonymous and almost completely free from the cultural censors that ran traditional media. By contrast, today people happily put their names to stories about their bowel movements, and you can read about anal fissures in the pages of the New York Times."
Posted on 2018-12-06T00:05:21+0000
Canada arrests Huawei’s global chief financial officer in Vancouver
Wanzhou Meng is facing extradition to the United States on suspicion she violated U.S. trade sanctions against Iran.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-05T23:27:06+0000
Stripe Atlas: Guide to scaling engineering organizations
Lessons learned from scaling Stripe's engineering team.
The seven-year-old making $22m on YouTube
An American boy who reviews toys is this year's highest-earning YouTube star, according to Forbes.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-04T08:40:55+0000
How I Wrote a Modern C++ Library in Rust
Since version 56, Firefox has had a new character encoding conversion library called encoding_rs. It is written in Rust and replaced the old C++ character encoding conversion library called uconv that dated from early 1999. Initially, all the callers of the character encoding conversion library were...
An Ingenious Data Hack Is More Dangerous Than Anyone Feared
Researchers have discovered that the so-called Rowhammer technique works on "error-correcting code" memory, in what amounts to a serious escalation.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-12-03T07:26:38+0000
A Business With No End
Where does this strange empire start or stop?
XS-Searching Google’s bug tracker to find out vulnerable source code
Or how side-channel timing attacks aren’t that impractical