Hasnain says:

Been a while since Yegge has blogged - always an instant read for me. This is warming me up more and more to LLM, given his usual skepticism I’m inclined to trust this more. So hard to pick a single quote to go with, so I’ll leave with this one cause it made me laugh:

“One of the craziest damned things I hear devs say about LLM-based coding help is that they can’t “trust” the code that it writes, because it “might have bugs in it”.

Ah me, these crazy crazy devs.

Can you trust code you yeeted over from Stack Overflow? NO!

Can you trust code you copied from somewhere else in your code base? NO!

Can you trust code you just now wrote carefully by hand, yourself? NOOOO!

All you crazy MFs are completely overlooking the fact that software engineering exists as a discipline because you cannot EVER under any circumstances TRUST CODE. That’s why we have reviewers. And linters. And debuggers. And unit tests. And integration tests. And staging environments. And runbooks. And all of goddamned Operational Excellence. And security checkers, and compliance scanners, and on, and on and on!

So the next one of you to complain that “you can’t trust LLM code” gets a little badge that says “Welcome to engineering motherfucker”. You’ve finally learned the secret of the trade: Don’t. Trust. Anything!”

Hasnain says:

This was a great read - learnt a bit more about recommendation algorithms!

“Recommender systems are extremely well studied in computer science, and relatively simple to understand, but public comprehension of how they work is poor. That has led to these algorithms being viewed as magic, demonized, or mythologized. (I hope to play a small role in changing this through my ongoing project on algorithmic amplification and society.) TikTok’s recommender system is not its secret: rather, it’s the design, which, of course, isn’t secret at all. More generally, in AI applications, the sophistication of the algorithm is rarely the limiting factor. The quality of the design, the data, and the people that make up the system all tend to matter more.

Despite TikTok’s design innovations being well known, other apps have trouble copying them because they were originally designed for a very different experience, and they are locked into it due to their users’ and creators’ preferences. This is a classic example of the innovator’s dilemma: Clay Christensen’s argument that incumbents tend to be held back by their own success—a lesson that’s been largely forgotten as “disruption” turned into a buzzword. As changes in technology make new user experiences possible, TikTok may one day be the struggling incumbent.”

Hasnain says:

This is…. Not great. I don’t have high hopes in our public health systems nowadays but I hope action is finally taken at some point before it’s too late.

“Taken together, the investigators write, these findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infection damages the CD8+ T cell response, an effect akin to that observed in earlier studies showing long-term damage to the immune system after infection with viruses such as hepatitis C or HIV. The new findings highlight the need to develop vaccination strategies to specifically boost antiviral CD8+ T cell responses in people previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, the researchers conclude. “

Hasnain says:

This… doesn’t seem great. Hiring managers prioritizing their own time over countless other people’s.

“Hiring managers acknowledge as much. In a survey of more than 1,000 hiring managers last summer, 27% reported having job postings up for more than four months. Among those who said they advertised job postings that they weren’t actively trying to fill, close to half said they kept the ads up to give the impression the company was growing, according to Clarify Capital, a small-business-loan provider behind the study. One-third of the managers who said they advertised jobs they weren’t trying to fill said they kept the listings up to placate overworked employees.”

Hasnain says:

Don’t know how to feel about this one.

“A University of Washington-led study has found that for Asian Americans, those who appear heavier not only are perceived to be more “American,” but also may be subject to less prejudice directed at foreigners than Asian Americans who are thin.

Researchers believe this effect relates to common stereotypes that Asians are thin and Americans are heavy — so if someone of Asian heritage is heavy, then they appear to be more “American.””

Hasnain says:

This was really interesting! I wonder what the causal factor here is, given that they controlled for a lot of things.

"Last year, Marieka Klawitter, professor of public policy at the University of Washington, examined 29 studies across the Western Hemisphere on wages and sexual orientation and found a 9 percent earnings premium for lesbians over heterosexual women. (Gay men, meanwhile, faced an 11 percent penalty, compared to straight men.)

She controlled for parenthood and concluded lesbians simply had more education and work experience than the general female population.

But another study from the University of Nevada, which used national data from the year 2000, adds a stunning asterisk to Klawitter's findings: Lesbians who had previously lived with male partners made 9.5 percent less than those who’d never cohabitated with a husband figure.

Were men actually the drags on women’s earnings?"

Hasnain says:

“What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.”

Hasnain says:

"I am not saying that Las Vegas hotels look beautiful. This type of architecture is made for casinos and nearby hotels, so I'd expect it to be kitschy.

But I think this kind of visual trick could find application in high-rise residential buildings to make façades look nicer and gentler. "

Hasnain says:

“This is when, according to Eden’s note, it all came out: Her parents admitted that Bader, Pocalyko, and Cole were hired to get Eden back to Saudi Arabia; they also berated her and called her a “freak.”

The day after Eden posted her note, her family’s Twitter and Telegram channels posted that she had died. Eden’s father did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Saudi embassy in Washington.”

Hasnain says:

This is yet another step in Florida’s full on slide into fascism it seems.

““She started immediately by asking if I could confirm that I sent that email and I did immediately confirm it,” he continued. “She then sounded like she was reading from a script and she said … ‘Your reputation has been irreparably tarnished in the Tampa Bay area and, because of that, we have to terminate you.’””