Hasnain says:

““This is a moment where the U.S. government is violating its own laws and policy,” said a Department of Justice staffer who signed the letter and was granted anonymity to speak candidly to not risk their job. “The administration may be seeing silence or only a handful of resignations, but they are really not aware of the magnitude of discontent and dissent among the rank and file.””

Hasnain says:

“*Amos Goldberg is a Holocaust and genocide researcher at the Hebrew University, whose book VeZcharta — And Thou Shalt Remember: Five Critical Readings in Israeli Holocaust Remembrance will be published by Resling in the coming weeks.
Yes, it is genocide. It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but despite all that, and despite all our efforts to think otherwise, after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the mark of Cain for the “most horrible of crimes,” which cannot be erased from its forehead. As such, this is the way it will be viewed in history’s judgment for generations to come.”

Hasnain says:

First case I’ve seen in a while where the detectives themselves were held liable ($3m each) instead of the taxpayers paying for misconduct. I only wish that they were on the hook for all of it because this is egregious.

“It was later determined that detectives and prosecutors involved with the case had buried key evidence that, if presented to a jury, might have persuaded the panel to find Dennis not guilty, said Messing.

There was evidence that a critical eyewitness — the only person who said he was sure that he could identify the killer if he saw him again — told police after being shown Dennis’ photo that he was “definitely not the killer,” Messing said. But that was not turned over to Dennis and his lawyers.

Among the other evidence withheld was a document that corroborated Dennis’ alibi that he was on a bus around the time of the murder, police reports that impeached the credibility of an eyewitness, and additional relevant documents, Messing said.”

Hasnain says:

And yet Miller continues to say there are no concerns.

“A joint submission from four bureaus - Democracy Human Rights & Labor; Population, Refugees and Migration; Global Criminal Justice and International Organization Affairs – raised "serious concern over non-compliance" with international humanitarian law during Israel's prosecution of the Gaza war.

The assessment from the four bureaus said Israel's assurances were "neither credible nor reliable." It cited eight examples of Israeli military actions that the officials said raise "serious questions" about potential violations of international humanitarian law.”

Hasnain says:

Powerful stuff from the faculty and students here (and at universities across the country as they stand up and get arrested). Was even more jarring for me to learn MLK is a morehouse alum and they still chose to disgrace his legacy by inviting Biden (read the article to learn more about MLK’s stance here)

“Morehouse College has announced that President Joe Biden will be the school’s commencement speaker this year. This announcement comes seven months into Israel’s genocidal siege on Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children. More than 77,000 have been injured. Every hospital and university in Gaza has been destroyed. None of this would have been possible without the support and sponsorship of the Biden Administration. Any college or university that gives its commencement stage to President Biden in this moment is endorsing genocide.

As faculty members at academic institutions in and around Atlanta—including Morehouse, Spelman, and Clark Atlanta—we did not see this coming. This is not the Morehouse College that history has known and that we have come to treasure. Over the years, Morehouse commencement speakers have amplified the school’s powerful moral legacy, often doing so by quoting the school’s former president, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays: “it will not be sufficient for Morehouse College, for any college, for that matter, to produce clever graduates,” but rather honest graduates “who are sensitive to the wrongs, the sufferings, and the injustices of society and who are willing to accept responsibility for correcting the ills.” President Biden has not demonstrated sensitivity to wrongs, sufferings, and injustices. And as the one person on the planet who has the power to stop an active genocide, he has not accepted responsibility for correcting the ills.”

Hasnain says:

““But what they have seen, beyond even this bill, is Congress’ failure to enact meaningful consumer protections on big tech, and may cynically view this as a diversion, or worse, a concession to U.S. social media platforms,” Warner continued. “

Hasnain says:

“"We heard from employees who, because of noncompetes, were stuck in abusive workplaces," she said. "One person noted when an employer merged with an organization whose religious principles conflicted with their own, a noncompete kept the worker locked in place and unable to freely switch to a job that didn't conflict with their religious practices."

These accounts, she said, "pointed to the basic reality of how robbing people of their economic liberty also robs them of all sorts of other freedoms."”

Hasnain says:

“Alex Eisler, a sophomore at Brown University who studies applied math and computer science, regularly uses fake phone numbers and e-mail addresses to make reservations. When he calls Polo Bar, he told me, “Sometimes they recognize my voice, so I have to do different accents. I have to act like a girl sometimes.” He switched into a bad falsetto: “I’m, like, ‘Hiiii, is it possible to book a reservation?’ I have a few Resy accounts that have female names.” His recent sales on Appointment Trader, where his screen name is GloriousSeed75, include a lunch table at Maison Close, which he sold for eight hundred and fifty-five dollars, and a reservation at Carbone, the Village red-sauce place frequented by the Rolex-and-Hermès crowd, which fetched a thousand and fifty dollars. Last year, he made seventy thousand dollars reselling reservations.”

Hasnain says:

“On February 2, 2019, just one day later, Thakur and Gomes shared their anxieties with Nick Fox, a Vice President of Search and Google Assistant, entering a multiple-day-long debate about Google’s sudden lust for growth. The thread is a dark window into the world of growth-focused tech, where Thakur listed the multiple points of disconnection between the ads and search teams, discussing how the search team wasn’t able to finely optimize engagement on Google without “hacking engagement,” a term that means effectively tricking users into spending more time on a site, and that doing so would lead them to “abandon work on efficient journeys.” In one email, Fox adds that there was a “pretty big disconnect between what finance and ads want” and what search was doing.”

Hasnain says:

This weekend another couple of mass graves were discovered at hospitals in Gaza. But that’s out of the news cycle because folks want to condemn people who are protesting against the murder of innocents. Sigh.

So glad the kids are alright though - more power to the students protesting all over the country.

Hasnain says:

“The Netanyahu government has managed to derail even our relations with the United States, as if we have an alternative source for arms and diplomatic backing. The younger generations in the United States, and around the world now see Israel as a racist and violent country that expels millions from their homes, starves entire populations, and kills many thousands of civilians for no better reason than revenge. The results will be felt not only in the coming days and months, but for decades into the future. Even during the worst moments of October 7, Hamas was nowhere near vanquishing Israel. But the ruinous policy of the Netanyahu government following October 7 has placed Israel in existential danger.”

Hasnain says:

“Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor. These firings were clearly retaliatory.

On the contrary, our bosses called the police on its own workers, the Nimbus Nine, who were arrested and taken into custody last night. “

Hasnain says:

Given past work I’ve done here I can say it sucks that things have gotten to this point

“To ensure that the world can trust WhatsApps claims of privacy and safety, Meta must answer the following questions:

Did Meta provide information (including inputs or training data) used by Lavender, Gospel, or Where's Daddy to the Israeli government?

How will Meta prevent private information being used by governments to kill WhatsApp users and their families?

Does Meta believe that Israel's actions towards civilians in Gaza and with Lavender comply Meta's Human Rights Policy?

If not, why has Meta not revoked all access to the Israeli government that may put civilians at risk?

Why has Meta not released their transparency report for the 2nd half of 2023?

What was the level of knowledge of WhatsApp metadata sharing with the Israeli government, including whether it was to be used for military purposes, among Meta leadership, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CISO Guy Rosen?

Will Meta immediately rescind access to any WhatsApp information from the Israeli government, army, and law enforcement?

Without answering these questions, it seems impossible to take seriously any claim that WhatsApp is a private messaging application.”

Hasnain says:

Hard agree with most of this article.

“You've heard it before, but let me repeat it — our greatest asset isn't the code we write. It's us. Our health, our minds, our ability to be present and enjoy life outside of the terminal window. Software Engineers and Tech co-founders, like us, are more prone to hitting the lows. Depression doesn't care about your GitHub stars or how scalable you managed to build your Kubernetes Cluster.

I've learned the hard way that not every problem at work is mine to solve. I used to take every customer issue personally, letting my stress levels hit the roof. But I've gotten better at recognizing what's within my control and what's not. Can't help a customer because of a time difference or because it's outside my expertise? That's okay. There's a team for that, and it's not all on me.

I’ve been burnt out and stressed out, and it took a toll on my work, my relationships, everything. Only after I finally started prioritizing my well-being did things change for the better. I won’t say it’s all rainbows and ponies now, but things have changed. I became a better engineer, a better leader, a better friend, and a happier person than I was.”

Hasnain says:

“A few days after the funeral, I walked to the marina to watch that pink-sky sunset. As the sun bled fuchsia through the sky and the Golden Gate Bridge reflected in the tide, I thought about Paul’s body buried in the ground in Northern Ireland while his belongings were just as he had left them in our apartment a few blocks away. I imagined a parallel existence where he had never stepped off the curb that night, where I would come home and find him studying his Russian notes in a kitchen that smelled like chipotle.

Weeks later, I finally summoned the will to clear out Paul’s room. As I carefully packed away the roommate who was gone almost as soon as he arrived, I came across a dresser drawer stuffed with crumpled, recently worn clothes. I pulled out a T-shirt. It read: “All we have is now.””

Hasnain says:

“"We are identical twins in almost every other way — laugh in the same way, cry in the same way, see the day in the same way, love the same way," Sam says. "He should absolutely have that ability to speak. He should have that. And him not having that is so unfair."

So for now, Sam plans to keep using his own words to help say what his brother can't.”

Hasnain says:

"Think back and write down times when you were wrong and real consequences of those. Usually you will realise there has never been a terrible consequence except some embarrassment that lingered for a day or two. (As an experiment I have asked people a few times if they remember that one time when I said something that was wrong - almost always they have no idea what I am talking about - they simply immediately forgot about it)."

Hasnain says:

“In conclusion, I find it quite surprising how naturally and elegantly handles solve many problems I encountered in the past with the traditional ‘pointers to objects on the heap’ model, and how little I miss this model now (and the parts of C++ that are built around it).”

Hasnain says:

"We've covered what a hash function is, some ways to measure how good it is, what happens when it's not good, and some of the ways they can be broken by bad actors.

The universe of hash functions is a large one, and we've really only scratched the surface in this post. We haven't spoken about cryptographic vs non-cryptographic hashing, we've touched on only 1 of the thousands of use-cases for hash functions, and we haven't talked about how exactly modern hash functions actually work."

Hasnain says:

"You’re not a failure by being a dayjobber, Billy, you’re an artist, just like the rest of us. So what if you aren’t some rich kid from the Upper East Side who had the privilege of being stuck in a practice room since Kindergarten? Sure that kid can shred, but do you really want to be that person? You’re playing shows, making records, and selling merch online, all without daddy’s money to hold you down. You’re making it happen without the head start that Richy Rich got the second he was born. Be proud of that! Knowing that the game is rigged is liberating! Just because the music industry lacks meritocracy doesn’t mean you can’t blow these assholes out of the water through your craft. Your experiences outside their bubble will only foster more creativity as a result.

So what if it takes a bit longer because you can only dedicate an occasional evening or weekend to work on your new record? So long as you dedicate yourself to that time, as little as it may be, so long as you allow the public to hear what you’ve been up to, whenever or wherever that may be, Billy, then you’ll never be a failure. You’re still alive, aren’t you? Then you can make the time, but no rush."

Hasnain says:

Hoping this doesn’t escalate into ww3 and fulfill Netanyahu’s goals (headline is out of date, pentagon is confirming the attack happened)

Hasnain says:

“Deleting in batch and without sending anything over the wire might sound obvious, but in my industry experience, it’s not.”

Hasnain says:

Love SQLite. I’ll have to take some of these things into account when tuning my apps.

Also love that the author documented these - I think I stumbled upon a few of these best practices by accident, it’s hard to find good material out there.

“But what if I told you that by tuning a few knobs, you can configure SQLite to reach ~8,300 writes / s and ~168,000 read / s concurrently, with 0 errors, on a ~40€ / m commodity virtual server with 4 vCPUs (details and code in the appendix).

Let's say that your server application is making in average 8 database read queries per request, you could, in theory, handle ~21,000 requests per seconds, or ~1,814,300,000 requests per day, for ~40€ per month, bandwidth included, not bad! (In practice you may not be able to do that: the server's bandwidth will be the limiting factor)

And this is before talking about tuning the garbage collector, caching and CDNs.”

Hasnain says:

This quote is the least horrifying part of the article I could find (yes, even with all the implications this quote alone has). My opinion here would probably get me banned from this site for a while if I shared it sadly.

““We were asked not to use our names,” the medical source told CNN, adding that the Gazan prisoners were identified by serial numbers, rather than their names.”

Hasnain says:

“The USAID officials paint a bleak picture of the prospects for Palestinians trapped in Gaza amid a siege by Israel and fellow U.S. ally Egypt.

They cite outside analysts projecting that between mid-March and late May, dozens of children younger than 5 years old will die each day “due to starvation, malnutrition and disease,” and write in their concluding comment that “many of the coping strategies employed by people in Gaza will have long-term effects on the nutritional status and future livelihoods of those who survive the crisis.””

Hasnain says:

Today’s news started off depressing, got more frustrating, and then back to depressing. I don’t even know where to begin. Reading about the US government statements in response to the first incident (didn’t even have time for the other 2 big ones!) leaves me even more disillusioned. I wish this would all stop.

“Australian, Polish, UK and Palestinian aid workers were reportedly among the five killed in an Israeli attack following the delivery of food relief in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, the Gaza government media office reports. US-based aid group World Central Kitchen said “several” staff were killed in an Israeli air strike and called on Israel to stop “this indiscriminate killing” in Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders (also known by its initials, MSF) has said Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital is “in ruins”, a day after Israeli troops withdrew from the complex following a two-week raid.”

Hasnain says:

Great read.

“Some of you might be surprised that I didn't write my kernels in assembly like BLIS does, especially given my history of projects like blink, SectorLISP and SectorLAMBDA. The truth is I've been coding in assembly this whole time. I configured Emacs so I can push a button, and the disassembly for the C++ code I'm working on will pop up on the screen in a few milliseconds. I know anyone whose codebase has slow build times doesn't possess this advantage, which has made me famous. Once I figure out how to do that for .cu files, I'll be unstoppable.”