Montreal Moving Day: what happens when a whole city moves house at once?
1 July is Canada Day. But in Quebec, which has twice had referendums on independence, it’s when tenancies traditionally end – leading to mayhem on the streets
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-30T23:31:32+0000
Netflix is moving television beyond time-slots and national markets
It may make screen-based entertainment a winner-takes-most business
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-30T19:59:15+0000
mikeash.com: Friday Q&A 2018-06-29: Debugging with C-Reduce
Debugging a complex problem is tough, and it can be especially difficult when it's not obvious which chunk of code is responsible. It's common to attempt to produce a reduced test case in order to narrow it down. It's tedious to do this manually, but it's also the sort of thing computers are really....
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-30T07:57:23+0000
Shifting Public Views on Legal Immigration Into the U.S.
Shifting Public Views on Legal Immigration Into the U.S.
Hasnain says:
I wonder what can be done to correct this perception.
“Fewer than half of Americans know that most immigrants in the U.S. are here legally. Just 45% of Americans say that most immigrants living in the U.S. are here legally; 35% say most immigrants are in the country illegally, while 6% volunteer that about half are here legally and half illegally and 13% say they don’t know. In 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, lawful immigrants accounted for about three-quarters of the foreign-born population in the United States.”
Posted on 2018-06-30T06:08:46+0000
How not to structure your database-backed web applications: a study of performance bugs in the wild
How not to structure your database-backed web applications: a study of performance bugs in the wild Yang et al., ICSE’18 This is a fascinating study of the problems people get into when using…
What I Learned Making My Own JIT Language
Early last year I started creating a little JIT language named Vaiven . It is a super minimal little language including objects, lists, con...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-28T05:57:12+0000
Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall With the Macbook Pro Keyboard
A titan of tech and industrial innovation has been laid low by a mere speck of dust. Last week, Apple quietly announced that they were extending the warranty on their flagship laptop’s keyboard by four years. As it turns out, the initial run of these keyboards, described by Jony Ive as thin, preci...
Hasnain says:
“This is design anorexia: making a product slimmer and slimmer at the cost of usefulness, functionality, serviceability, and the environment.
A repairable pro laptop is not an unreasonable ask. Apple has a history of great keyboards—they know how to make them. There are very successful laptop manufacturers who consistently earn 10/10 on our repairability scale. Apple fans are already making noise about the dearth of new Macs, especially upgradable options for professionals. Fortunately, Apple seems to be listening with their new warranty program.
Which brings us back to the point. Why did it take so long, and so many complaints, for the repair program to be put in place? Why do you need to send your MacBook Pro away for upwards of a week for a repair? That’s easy: because Apple made their product hard for them to repair, too. Apple’s new warranty program is going to cost them a lot of money.
Apple’s profit on every machine that they warranty under this new program has been decimated. There is a real business impact caused by unrepairable product design. Samsung recently had a similar experience with the Note7. Yes, the battery problem was a manufacturing defect. But if the battery had been easy to replace, they could have recalled just the batteries instead of the entire phone. It was a $5 billion design mistake.”
Posted on 2018-06-28T05:53:57+0000
He Sold Drugs for $225. Indiana Took His $42,000 Land Rover.
The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Constitution has anything to say about civil forfeiture laws that let states take property used in crimes.
Hasnain says:
I’m glad a civil forfeiture case is finally hitting the Supreme Court
Posted on 2018-06-26T05:43:03+0000
A lawsuit reveals how peculiar Harvard’s definition of merit is
The university’s reputation for fairness and impartiality emerges bruised
Hasnain says:
"Peter Arcidiacono, an economist at Duke University employed by the plaintiffs, built a statistical model of the effect of race on admissions. He estimates that a male, non-poor Asian-American applicant with the qualifications to have a 25% chance of admission to Harvard would have a 36% chance if he were white. If he were Hispanic, that would be 77%; if black, it would rise to 95%. Damningly for the defendants, an internal report by Harvard’s research arm, obtained during discovery, reached the same conclusions. Harvard officials claim that the report was incomplete and the analysis oversimplified.
Fighting statistics with statistics, Harvard’s lawyers hired David Card, a prominent labour economist at the University of California, Berkeley. His model includes factors like the quality of a candidate’s high school, parents’ occupations and the disputed personal rating. Under these controls, Mr Card claims that Asian-American applicants are not disadvantaged compared with whites. But given that these factors are themselves correlated with race, Mr Card’s argument is statistically rather like saying that once you correct for racial bias, Harvard is not racially biased."
Posted on 2018-06-25T17:27:50+0000
Car Break-Ins Are Up in San Francisco. What's Being Done?
The city saw more than 30,000 car break-ins last year -- nearly three times that of 2010.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-24T18:14:54+0000
When a cold case is solved, why can’t internet sleuths move on?
Redditors and forum users invest time trying to solve incidents involving total strangers, only to be left hanging when their research pays off.
Hasnain says:
“Amanda Park, Washington is a very small town. You could pretty accurately describe it as the middle of nowhere, and maybe that was the point. Without any leads or the resources to mount a full-on manhunt, the case of Lyle Stevik quickly went cold. But nearly 20 years later, after a corner of the internet took the case upon itself, the identity of Lyle Stevik has become the center of a fractious debate over privacy, ethics, and Reddit true-crime sleuths. “
Posted on 2018-06-24T06:44:57+0000
Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital
Archaeologists uncover the remains of a giant rack of skulls beneath downtown Mexico City
Hasnain says:
“Some conquistadors wrote about the tzompantli and its towers, estimating that the rack alone contained 130,000 skulls. But historians and archaeologists knew the conquistadors were prone to exaggerating the horrors of human sacrifice to demonize the Mexica culture. As the centuries passed, scholars began to wonder whether the tzompantli had ever existed.
Archaeologists at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) here can now say with certainty that it did.”
Posted on 2018-06-24T03:09:51+0000
Twitter ‘smytes’ customers
Twitter today announced it was acquiring the “trust and safety as a service” startup Smyte to help it better address issues related to online abuse, harassment, spam, and security on it…
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-22T07:39:11+0000
My Teenage Video Game Obsession Wasn't 'Gaming Disorder'
I was a gay teen in the 1980s, hiding from a terrifying world in an arcade. The WHO's push to uniquely pathologize gaming won't help people like me.
Hasnain says:
Can confirm and relate as someone who spent most of his childhood and adolescent life buried in video games
Posted on 2018-06-21T06:02:06+0000
Bay Area subway and rail costs: Why are they among the highest in the world?
The process of designing, bidding, and building mega-projects is a costly one, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-20T05:00:44+0000
Accelerate large-scale applications with BOLT
We are open-sourcing BOLT, a binary optimization and layout tool. BOLT optimizes placement of instructions in memory, thereby reducing CPU execution time by as much as 15%.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-20T04:58:12+0000
Instagram’s Wannabe-Stars Are Driving Luxury Hotels Crazy
Hotels are being forced to figure out how to work with a new class of brand-peddling marketers.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-18T06:28:53+0000
Messi Walks Better Than Most Players Run
The Argentinian star doesn’t run as much as his peers, but he still manages to tactically position himself.
Diana's sister vouches for attacker
Princess Diana's eldest sister supported a hunt worker who violently assaulted charity workers.
Hasnain says:
I don't know how the judge can honestly rule this as a case of a "heat in the moment" thing when the perpetrator literally waited for his son to bring back 4 masked people to beat the victims up
Posted on 2018-06-17T18:03:37+0000
The outrageous racism that 'graced' Arab TV screens in Ramadan
Like in the past, this year's Ramadan series featured scenes of vulgar racism against Afro/black Arabs.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-17T17:13:35+0000
Perspective | Why I let Domino’s fill my city’s potholes
What does it say about American infrastructure that a pizza chain is paying for our repairs? I don't know, but I'll take it.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-17T08:14:15+0000
Perfect Pulled Pork with React Native, Expo, and Express
react • react-native • expo • express • cooking Perfect Pulled Pork with React Native, Expo, and Express By Dave Ceddia June 07, 2018 Comment Follow @dceddia Or: Taking a Picture Every 30 Seconds and Sending It To A Server. I was planning to make pulled pork the next day. That evenin...
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Posted on 2018-06-15T05:28:19+0000
INTEL-SA-00145
INTEL-SA-00145
High School Valedictorian's Mic Cut When She Talks About Campus Sexual Assault
Lulabel Seitz was giving the commencement address at her high school graduation when school officials cut off her microphone after she began talking about sexual assault allegations.
Man sentenced for stabbing law student Khadija Siddiqui acquitted by Lahore High Court
Khadija says she will file an appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court.
Hasnain says:
This is so infuriating I don’t even know where to begin.
“The judge who originally tried Hussain in his decision had noted that despite detailed cross-examination of eyewitnesses, nothing came out in favour of the accused. “
Posted on 2018-06-06T15:02:16+0000
Recall of Brock Turner judge succeeds: Voters oust Aaron Persky for sentence in sexual assault case
The judge whose ruling sparked national outrage is the first to be ousted in nearly a century.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-06T14:31:22+0000
San Francisco, please, get your priorities straight.
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Nearly half of Bay Area residents say they want to leave
“They couldn’t be more clear what the big problems are,” says an exec at the Bay Area Council, which commissioned the new poll.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-04T05:34:08+0000
How a Hacker Proved Cops Used a Secret Government Phone Tracker to Find Him
And how it might change what cops can do with our smartphones.
Hasnain says:
“What these judges have realized is that there is now a turning point with respect to smartphones: We carry them with us and they hold all of our secrets. No wonder the police find them valuable during an investigation. But should the police need to get a warrant to find our phones? And what other opportunities for high-tech, low-oversight surveillance might they offer in the future?”
Posted on 2018-06-03T21:24:38+0000
Tales from the far-flung Faroes
The people who live on remote rocks in the North Atlantic
Hasnain says:
Such an interesting human interest story, about small islands and how people are adapting as the newer generations move away
Posted on 2018-06-03T20:51:29+0000
Opinion | Nature Is Risky. That’s Why Students Need It.
Some hate the jungle, but most find hidden strength and unanticipated freedom.
Hasnain says:
“But it turns out that risk and potential go hand in hand. We need to let children, including college students, risk getting hurt. Protection from pain guarantees weakness, fragility and greater suffering in the future. The discomfort may be physical, emotional or intellectual — My ankle! My feelings! My worldview! — and all need to be experienced to learn and grow.”
Posted on 2018-06-03T20:31:01+0000
Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire Coding Site GitHub
Microsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire GitHub Inc., the code repository company popular with many software developers, and could announce the deal as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Largest Health Disparity We Don’t Talk About
Americans with serious mental illnesses die 15 to 30 years earlier than those without.
Hasnain says:
"In a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Brendan Reilly, a physician at Dartmouth, describes his late brother’s devastating story. Over the course of months, he wrote, countless physicians, hospitals and rehab facilities missed the spinal cord damage that left him quadriplegic — instead variously ascribing his inability to move to his mental illness, his medications or his will.
“Once they find out you have a mental illness,” Dr. Reilly quoted his brother as saying, “it’s like the lights go out.”"
Posted on 2018-06-03T17:02:03+0000
Asian Americans Are the Least Likely Group in the U.S. to Be Promoted to Management
It’s a problem in a number of sectors, from tech and finance to law and government.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-03T07:17:27+0000
Why Rich Kids Are So Good at the Marshmallow Test
Affluence—not willpower—seems to be what’s behind some kids' capacity to delay gratification.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-03T07:13:10+0000
Number One in Poverty, California Isn't Our Most Progressive State -- It's Our Most Racist One
California seems to be a progressive paradise, but it is number one in poverty and inequality in America. How can this be? And how does California maintain its reputation as a progressive leader given the reality on the ground?
Hasnain says:
Interesting read on the economic factors and political policies contributing to California’s current mess
Posted on 2018-06-03T07:09:54+0000
China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
Totalitarian determination and modern technology have produced a massive abuse of human rights
Hasnain says:
This was a scary read.
"Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, reckons the overall number detained may be 800,000. Timothy Grose, a professor at Rose-Hulman University in Indiana, puts the total between 500,000 and 1m, which would imply that something like a sixth to a third of young and middle-aged Uighur men are being detained, or have been at some point in the past year."
Posted on 2018-06-02T20:25:16+0000
A Brief History of America's Appetite for Macaroni and Cheese
Popularized by Thomas Jefferson, this versatile dish fulfills our nation's quest for the 'cheapest protein possible'
Hasnain says:
This was a really interesting read.
"I have a collection of quotes I post above my computer for writing inspiration and as a reminder to examine my own historical assumptions. One is from Miller from the Charlotte Observer on November 15, 2017: “They [older black people interviewed by Miller for his book] were convinced mac & cheese was something white people stole from us. I thought they were kidding, but they were like, ‘No, it’s like rock ‘n’ roll—we started that.’ They were serious.”"
Posted on 2018-06-02T18:05:13+0000
The Overprotected American Child
Why not let them walk to school alone? Parents and communities are figuring out ways to give their children more independence—and it just may help them to become less anxious, more self-reliant adults.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-06-02T17:04:34+0000