Hasnain says:

I, uh.... This is both creatively smart and objectively terrible at the same time since it takes away aid from more deserving students. Some cherry-picked quotes:

"Today, her daughter attends a private college on the West Coast which costs $65,000 in annual tuition, she said. The daughter received a $27,000 merit scholarship and an additional $20,000 in need-based aid, including a federal Pell grant, which she won’t have to pay back. The daughter is responsible for $18,000 a year, which her grandparents pay, the woman said."

"“The guardianship law was written very broadly,” Ms. Berlin said. “Judges were given an immense amount of discretion. The standard is, best interest of the child, and I think it’s hard to argue that this is not in the student’s best interest.”"

Hasnain says:

I know people sometimes say C++ is boring... But hey, this managed to keep my attention for about 15 minutes close to midnight.

"The above covers the basics of C++20 comparisons: how all the synthetic candidates work, how they’re found, a brief intro to three-way comparison and how to write one. There’s a few more interesting topics that are worth talking about, but I want to keep these posts at a manageable length, so stay tuned for followups."

I do have to agree with the people that say C++ is too complex and big a language though. If you need this long an explanation and you're still not done...

(This is still worth reading as it'll simplify a ton of code).

Hasnain says:

Please go ahead and do this. It took all of 2 seconds for the $125 and you are eligible for it if you have any credit monitoring at all (like Credit Karma).

If you also spent time checking your credit or doing other things afterwards, you can also claim additional stuff ($25/hr upto 20 hours, or upto 10 without supporting documents).

Hasnain says:

Heartwarming read about a person that suffered through a debilitating disease, and worked through creating a treatment for themselves and convincing doctors it was worthwhile.

"Eventually he recruited a surgeon from the University of Alabama-Birmingham. In September 2010 Lindsday went to the university hospital, where the doctor successfully extracted one of his adrenal medullas.

Three weeks after the procedure, Lindsay could sit upright for three hours. By Christmas Eve, he had the strength to walk a mile to church.

As he stood in the back of the church during midnight Mass, it finally felt like hope was winning.

But progress was slow. In 2012, he underwent a second surgery at Washington University in St. Louis to remove the medulla from his remaining adrenal gland.

A year later, he was well enough to fly with friends to the Bahamas. It was the first time in his life the Midwesterner had seen the ocean.

By early 2014, he was coming off some of his meds.
Coghlan, his champion, lived just long enough to see Lindsay's remarkable recovery. He died in 2015."

Hasnain says:

Harrowing read into airplane design, regulatory oversight, and how they can fail when there's a lot of lobbying and revolving doors involved.

"F.A.A. managers conceded that the Max “does not meet” agency guidelines “for protecting flight controls,” according to an agency document. But in another document, they added that they had to consider whether any requested changes would interfere with Boeing’s timeline. The managers wrote that it would be “impractical at this late point in the program,” for the company to resolve the issue. Mr. Duven at the F.A.A. also said the decision was based on the safety record of the plane."

Hasnain says:

Been a while since I’ve been able to nerd out on something. This was surprisingly interesting and accessible take on a new mathematical discovery defining a surprisingly simple problem.

“Paul Erdös famously spoke of a book, maintained by God, in which was written the simplest, most beautiful proof of each theorem. The highest compliment Erdös could give a proof was that it “came straight from the book.” In this case, I find it hard to imagine that even God knows how to prove the Sensitivity Conjecture in any simpler way than this.”

Additional accessible article in the comments.

Hasnain says:

Shameless plug: I am really excited to finally be able to share some more around some of the groundbreaking work we've been doing in static analysis.

This is seriously impressive work by Francesco, Manuel and co.

"To industry professionals we say: advanced static analyses, like those found in the research literature, can be deployed at scale and deliver value for general code. And to academics we say: from an industrial point of view the subject appears to have many unexplored avenues, and this provides research opportunities to inform future tools."

Hasnain says:

Bookmarking this for future-Hasnain: Collection of source code for games.

"This is a collection of computer game source code. The majority of these titles were originally released as commercial products and the source code was made available to the public at a later time. "

Hasnain says:

This was such a heartbreaking set of human stories - people suffering due to a system that doesn’t provide affordable care to those in need.

“He added that he is supposed to use a new needle tip for his insulin pen each time, but limits himself to one per day because it got “crazy expensive.” He estimated that he doses himself between five and eight times a day, with each dose becoming more painful. Before he switched to pens, he would reuse syringes and needles to inject himself with insulin. He shared a photo with BuzzFeed News of a used needle that bent and broke off inside his body during a regular injection.”

Hasnain says:

In which the authors profile and interview hermits, exploring more about the human condition and how people tick.

“"If I say I want to sail a small boat all the way around the world and it will take me two years, everyone says, 'Oh how exciting!' If I say I want to go and sit in my house and not talk to anyone for two years, they say 'Have you got mental health issues?' or 'Why are you so selfish?'"”

Hasnain says:

Very interesting collection of human interest stories. I also finally now know where spelling bees originated from!

“It was a rare instance of 72-year-old Feldman flexing his orthographic knowledge. The only other time he taps into his rare talent is when he’s doing word puzzles online with his wife. She spells some wrong, but he tries not to act like an expert. And for good reason: When it comes to spelling, he says, “I’ve had nothing to prove since I was 13.””

Hasnain says:

This took me a while to read and digest. I normally feel a bit weird sharing things by my employer but this was technically interesting and taught me a lot about AI and modeling games.

It's worth a detailed read.

"Nevertheless, many real-world interactions – including ones involving fraud prevention, cybersecurity, and taking action on harmful content – can potentially be modeled as scenarios involving hidden information and/or multiple agents with limited communication and collusion among participants"

Hasnain says:

This is so heartbreaking. Makes me wonder when we'll have the promised future with UBI so this does not have to be a problem, and the robots can serve our every whim.

"So the executives resolved to make life so unbearable that the workers would leave, prosecutors say. Instead, at least 35 employees — workers’ advocates say nearly double that number — committed suicide, feeling trapped, betrayed and despairing of ever finding new work in France’s immobile labor market."

Hasnain says:

Interesting analysis of Saudi influence in the US via university - and other - funding, MBS approach to things, university funding in general, and general politics.

““Lester talked about what a tiny fraction of the overall budget the Saudi money is,” says Jonathan King, the editorial board chairman of M.I.T.’s faculty newsletter. “He could have decided that we don’t have to be in bed with murderers and a government that imprisons its women activists. But he insisted on keeping the relationship. I don’t get it. Why would M.I.T. want to sully its national and international reputation for chump change?””

Hasnain says:

This was such a heart breaking and heart warming human interest story. If only the whole internet could be like this.

“Michael’s end was unjust and tragic, but the heroic kindness of a video game community filled his last week of life with unexpected happiness. On behalf of Michael and his family, I want to offer my eternal gratitude to everyone who contributed, from the players who stood ready to meet Michael online or took the time to send him an “o7” salute, to the Frontier staff and associates who gave so much of their time, compassion and creative energy. You make the world – and the internet – a better place.”

Hasnain says:

This is an interesting take into some mathematical and optical history, with a side view into a human interest story and contemporary lens pricing.

“After months of working on solving the problem, Rafael González recalls, “I remember one morning I was making myself a slice of bread with Nutella, when suddenly, I said out loud: Mothers! It is there!”

(Note: “Madres” is a Spanish word that means, of course, many moms. But in this context it is equivalent to the expression “Holy sh*t!” in English, or, to a lesser extent, “Eureka!” in Greek.)

He then ran to his computer and started programming the idea. When he executed the solution and saw that it worked, he says he jumped all over the place. It is unclear whether he finished eating the Nutella bread.”

Hasnain says:

The hype and excitement is real.

"We just want people to play Age of Empires and be involved with the series. If people want to stay on HD, and that’s what they want to play, we’re not going to take it off Steam, it’s still gonna be there. We’re not going to actively support it though – our support is going to shift to the new one. For us, we just want you playing our games. If you want to play it on Steam that’s fine. If you want to play it on the Microsoft store, that’s cool. If you want to play the old version, great"

Hasnain says:

This is a sad but much needed look at the state of HR and why it's been so ineffective at preventing sexual harassment in most (all?) companies in the US.

""If employers judged HR departments by their ability to prevent sexual harassment, most would have gotten a failing grade long ago. What HR is actually responsible for—one of the central ways the department “adds value” to a company—is serving as the first line of defense against a sexual-harassment lawsuit. ""