Hasnain says:

“Ms. Mishra, the Purdue graduate, did not get the burrito-making gig at Chipotle. But her side hustle as a beauty influencer on TikTok, she said, helped her realize that she was more enthusiastic about tech marketing and sales than software engineering.”

Hasnain says:

“But documents suggest that Microsoft engineers understood the data stored in Azure would include raw intelligence, including audio files, while some Israel-based Microsoft staff, including alumni of Unit 8200, appear to have known about what the unit hoped the joint project would achieve.

“You don’t have to be a genius to figure it out,” one source said. “You tell [Microsoft] we don’t have any more space on the servers, that it’s audio files. It’s pretty clear what it is.”

Microsoft’s spokesperson said: “We are not aware of Azure being used for the storage of such data.” They said Unit 8200 was simply a customer of its cloud services and Microsoft “did not build or consult with Unit 8200” on a cloud-based surveillance system.”

Hasnain says:

I got a 5/5 but one of these was a wild guess. I’m getting off my game here.

“5 out of 5

Congratulations, you have ascended to Artificial General Intelligence. Now carry on building that LLM, laying claim to Blackwells and have your A.I. agent get you a membership at Shack15. We know you know what we mean. (Just ask ChatGPT if you don’t.)”

Hasnain says:

This is super cool!

“By rethinking JSON.stringify from the ground up, from its high-level logic down to its core memory and character-handling operations, we've delivered a more than 2x performance improvement measured on the JetStream2 json-stringify-inspector benchmark. See the figure below for results on different platforms. These optimizations are available in V8 starting with version 13.8 (Chrome 138).”

Hasnain says:

“Jin-su is still working in IT now he's defected. He says the skills he honed working for the regime have helped him settle into his new life.
Because he isn't working multiple jobs with fake IDs, he earns less than when he worked for the North Korean regime. But because he can keep more of his earnings, overall, he has more money in his own pocket.
"I had got used to making money by doing illegal things. But now I work hard and earn the money I deserve."”

Hasnain says:

“Through the Fulbright Program, we all got to meet someone we would not have met otherwise. Through the Fulbright Program, we created connections that would not have happened otherwise. Through the Fulbright Program, we have all been intellectually enriched. I hope that the politicians responsible for these programs see them for what they are, i.e., a unique opportunity to foster change, innovation, and mutual understanding across cultural barriers. I, for one, would love to support such a program. Let us not sell tomorrow in a feeble attempt to save money today.”

Hasnain says:

I ramble a lot so I support this message

(Shoutout to all the folks in hashtag yelling at work)

“We started experimenting with ramblings at Obsidian two years ago, and they’ve been surprisingly sticky. We have no scheduled meetings, so ramblings are our equivalent of water cooler talk. We want as much deep focus time as possible, so ramblings help us stay connected while minimizing interruptions.

Because they are so free and loose, some of our best ideas emerge from ramblings. They’re often the source of feature ideas, small prototypes, and creative solutions to long-standing problems.”

Hasnain says:

“He and others in the harmonic analysis community will also have to reckon with a changed landscape. In harmonic analysis, there’s a constellation of questions about how the energy of a wave concentrates. If a conjecture known as Stein’s conjecture were true, it would cement connections between some of the most important questions in that broader constellation. But Cairo’s work shows that Stein’s conjecture is false. It eliminates one of the most promising links mathematicians had hoped to establish between different parts of harmonic analysis.
The math world is also adjusting to the fact of Cairo herself. After completing the proof, she decided to apply straight to graduate school, skipping college (and a high school diploma) altogether. As she saw it, she was already living the life of a graduate student. Cairo applied to 10 graduate programs. Six rejected her because she didn’t have a college degree. Two admitted her, but then higher-ups in those universities’ administrations overrode those decisions.
Only the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University were willing to welcome her straight into a doctoral program. She’ll start at Maryland in the fall. When she finishes, it will be her first degree.”

Hasnain says:

“A.I. companions should be available to those who need them most. Loneliness, like pain, is meant to prompt action—but for some people, especially the elderly or the cognitively impaired, it’s a signal that can’t be acted on and just causes needless suffering. For these people, offering comfort is simply humane.
As for the rest of us? I’m not a catastrophist. Nobody is going to be forced into an A.I. friendship or romance; plenty of people will abstain. Even in a world brimming with easy distractions—TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku—people still manage to meet for drinks, work out at the gym, go on dates, muddle through real life. And those who do turn to A.I. companions can tinker with the settings, asking for less flattery, more pushback, even the occasional note of tough love.
But I do worry that many will find the prospect of a world without loneliness irresistible—and that something essential could be lost, especially for the young. When we numb ourselves to loneliness, we give up the hard work of making ourselves understood, of striving for true connection, of forging relationships built on mutual effort. In muting the signal, we risk losing part of what makes us human”

Hasnain says:

As a parent to a 3.5yo (or just a human), there are things you read that sometimes just fuck you up. I had read the preview first and was dreading reading it. But we must bear witness.

“The first time my three-and-a-half-year-old son, Rafik, asked me “Are we going to die today?” was in December of 2023, roughly two months after the war began. We were lying in a recovery bed, still shaking from the blast that had buried us beneath the concrete roof of our house, in Gaza City. My entire family had passed out before we were found bleeding. Rafik was curled up on the ground, close enough that I could see him, but too far for me to reach out and hold him. After we were pulled from the rubble, I remember thinking, This is the moment that rewires a child forever. I’ve been watching that shift occur in front of me ever since.

Nour Jarada, a mental-health manager in Gaza, sees this rewiring on a daily basis. She works inside of medical tents that have no sound insulation, each one containing folding beds that separate trauma from trauma. The patients arrive on foot—some having walked for miles, many led in by family members who didn’t know what else to do. “Some don’t speak,” she told me. “They stare, sometimes scream. Most cry for hours, unblinkingly.” Children have asked Jarada if they could go back to school, as if normal were still hiding somewhere nearby.”