placeholder

Rebuilding Prime Video UI with Rust and WebAssembly

Alexandru Ene features details of a new UI SDK in Rust for Prime Video that targets living room devices.

Click to view the original at infoq.com

Hasnain says:

"The reason why I think this is true is because we did a lot of work in developer experience with those macros that maybe look a bit shocking if you don't know UI programming, but actually they felt very familiar to UI engineers. They could work with it right off the bat, they don't have to deal with much complexity in the borrow checker. Usually, in the UI code, you can clone things if necessary, or even use a Rc and things like that. You all know, this is not super optimal. Yes, we came from JavaScript, so this is fine, I promise. The gnarly bits are down in the engine, and there we take a lot of care about data management and memory and so on. In the UI code, we can afford it easy. Even on the lowest level hardware, I have some slides that you'll see the impact of this."

Posted on 2025-04-13T03:37:30+0000

placeholder

‘Paraparticles’ Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle | Quanta Magazine

A new proposal makes the case that paraparticles — a new category of quantum particle — could be created in exotic materials.

Click to view the original at quantamagazine.org

Hasnain says:

“If paraparticles exist, they’ll most likely be emergent particles, called quasiparticles, that show up as energetic vibrations in certain quantum materials.

“We might get new models of exotic phases, which were difficult to understand before, that you can now solve easily using paraparticles,” said Meng Cheng (opens a new tab), a physicist at Yale University who was not involved in the research.”

Posted on 2025-04-13T00:55:51+0000

placeholder

There’s a Nuclear Option to Fight Trump’s War Against Colleges. You Aren’t Going to Like It.

Like watching NCAA basketball? What if you couldn’t, because schools went on strike?

Click to view the original at slate.com

Hasnain says:

“But the American higher-education sector is much more than a supplicant kneeling at the foot of the federal government. For better or for worse, it is absolutely central to the nation’s economy and society. And a big part of that centrality—one that some of us in academia try hard to ignore—is the spectacle of college sports. College and university sports teams are proudly represented on bumper stickers, billboards, hoodies, and barroom TVs in every city and every state.

All that a small group of university presidents has to do is hit pause on that spectacle for one season. In doing so, they’ll save millions of dollars and also broadcast to the nation that a cherished and essential American institution is under attack from its own government.”

Posted on 2025-04-06T04:48:33+0000

placeholder

Hasnain says:

“This was just one protest in one place—albeit one very large protest in one very big place. Perhaps the vibes were different in Marshfield, Mass. or Salt Lake City or Bolivia, N.C. (Hopefully the weather was.) Ultimately the big story is not what the signs said, but the deep groundswell of anger and unrest that brought so many people in so many places out into the streets and other public spaces of their communities. The message is: crowd large. A lot of politicians and administrators and business leaders, in bowing to Trump, have drawn confidence and comfort from the perceived vibe shift. Events like this puncture that delusion. They are an unavoidable illustration of outrage. Trump may have gotten a lot undone in the last three months, but the opposition never went away, and it may finally be emboldened.

On Saturday, it showed that it is everywhere.”

Posted on 2025-04-06T01:29:42+0000

placeholder

Hasnain says:

“"None of this is in any way normal," Matthew Green, a professor specializing in cryptography at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Mastodon. He continued: "Has anyone been in contact? I hear he’s been missing for two weeks and his students can’t reach him. How does this not get noticed for two weeks???"

In the same thread, Matt Blaze, a McDevitt professor of computer science and law at Georgetown University, said: "It's hard to imagine what reason there could be for the university to scrub its website as if he never worked there. And while there's a process for removing tenured faculty, it takes more than an afternoon to do it”

Posted on 2025-03-31T07:03:07+0000

placeholder

Opinion | The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes

A.I. is just what we need in the post-fact era: less research and more predicting what we want to hear.

Click to view the original at nytimes.com

Hasnain says:

It was hard to pick just one favorite quote from this so you get two this time. Started with a banger and kept going strong.

“Behold the decade of mid tech!

That is what I want to say every time someone asks me, “What about A.I.?” with the breathless anticipation of a boy who thinks this is the summer he finally gets to touch a boob. I’m far from a Luddite. It is precisely because I use new technology that I know mid when I see it.

Of course, A.I., if applied properly, can save lives. It has been useful for producing medical protocols and spotting patterns in radiology scans. But crucially, that kind of A.I. requires people who know how to use it. Speeding up interpretations of radiology scans helps only people who have a medical doctor who can act on them. More efficient analysis of experimental data increases productivity for experts who know how to use the A.I. analysis and, more important, how to verify its quality. A.I.’s most revolutionary potential is helping experts apply their expertise better and faster. But for that to work, there has to be experts.”

Posted on 2025-03-29T23:59:18+0000

placeholder

How Karachi’s women got into power: the female electricians lighting up homes in Pakistan

Two hundred women, known as the Light Sisters, have been trained as electricians in Karachi, challenging gender stereotypes and providing opportunities in the male-dominated energy sector

Click to view the original at theguardian.com

Hasnain says:

“Seher, who wishes there were “more than 24 hours in my day”, reads about 200 electric meters a day with a handheld device that transmits data online. “It’s a lot of work, but I love it,” she says.

At home, her husband, a textile worker, now does more of the domestic chores and helps look after their three children. “A few years ago, brewing tea and sweeping floors felt impossible,” he says. “Today, I chop the vegetables ready for her to make dinner.””

Posted on 2025-03-29T19:25:21+0000

placeholder

Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities in Ingress NGINX | Wiz Blog

Wiz Research uncovered RCE vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-1097, 1098, 24514, 1974) in Ingress NGINX for Kubernetes allowing cluster-wide secret access.

Click to view the original at wiz.io

Hasnain says:

I’ve been trying to learn more exploit dev, and I thought I was getting slowly better, then I look up the exploit chain of things like this and I’m like uhhhh

“We are only scratching the surface in reviewing the security of admission controllers. Initially, we were surprised to see that such a large code base is used behind the scenes. In our view, this attack surface should be restricted in a much better way: removing access from pods within the cluster, and never exposing this publicly. We were also surprised by the lack of least-privilege design, as the exploit ended up with privileges to take control of the cluster. During this research, we found other vulnerabilities in Ingress NGINX Controller, and we expect to find more in other admission controllers. “

Posted on 2025-03-26T05:45:50+0000

placeholder

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

Click to view the original at theatlantic.com

Hasnain says:

"The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining."

Posted on 2025-03-24T19:13:50+0000

placeholder

Career Development: What It Really Means to be a Manager, Director, or VP

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of big-company HR practices. I’m more of the First Break all the Rules type. Despite my general skepticism of many standard practices, we still do annual performance reviews at my company, though … Continue reading →

Click to view the original at kellblog.com

Hasnain says:

“Footnotes:

[1] Since big companies throw around the VP title pretty casually, this post is arguing that many of those VPs are actually directors in thinking and accountability. This may be one reason why big company VPs have trouble adapting to the e-staff of startups.”

Posted on 2025-03-24T01:17:42+0000