Hasnain says:

Bookmarking for later reading.

Hasnain says:

Really interesting application of reverse engineering on obfuscated JavaScript.

“This article does not delve into the specifics of how these strings are utilized or how TikTok interprets the rest of the bytecode through its custom virtual machine and various opcodes. If that is something you are interested in, keep an eye out for the second part of this series :)”

Hasnain says:

““Our proof is constructive, so everything is explicit and computable,” Greenfeld said. “But because it’s very, very far from being optimal, we just didn’t check it.”

Indeed, the mathematicians think they can find aperiodic tiles in much lower dimensions. That’s because some of the more technical parts of their construction involved working in special spaces that are conceptually “very close to being two-dimensional,” Greenfeld said. She doesn’t think they’ll find a three-dimensional tile, but she says it’s feasible that a 4D one could exist.

And so, Iosevich said, they didn’t just disprove the periodic tiling conjecture: “They did this in the most humiliating fashion possible.””

Hasnain says:

Great high level summary and analysis of Elon Musk’s reign at Twitter so far.

“The Twitter CEO was on a live audio chat Tuesday night with software engineers when one user started quizzing him about the internal workings of the company’s systems. Musk, who hours earlier said he would keep control of Twitter’s software systems even though he plans to relinquish the CEO role, said the company’s code needed a complete rewrite. One of the participants asked what he meant — pushing for him to explain it from top to bottom.

“Amazing, wow,” Musk said after hesitations and pauses. “You’re a jackass. … What a moron.””

Hasnain says:

“Basically, an automated machine-learning tool won’t pick up on what’s bad about the email if it hasn’t been trained to pick up on the code that comes after the hash. “It’s a little Rube Goldberg, but this is what we’re seeing attackers of all stripes using,” Kalember says. “They’re hiding what we call ‘the payload’ behind something that a human can find very easily in an email but a detection technique finds impossibly hard.” It also doesn’t help that spammers and cybercriminals no longer need to set up their own janky phishing sites. In some cases they’ll use architecture provided by the big cloud companies, like Amazon and Google—which sends the signal to anti-fraud tools that their operation is “legitimate.” “

Hasnain says:

I still mostly follow traditional media so this shift is something where I need to get with the times. Do folks have recommendations for people to follow to get good news?

“We are at an inflection point, and traditional media beginning to crumble provides a huge opportunity. We finally have the chance to build a more diverse and inclusive system that amplifies independent voices who are truly interested in holding power to account. To do that, we need to not only hold the platforms that incentivize outrage, harassment, and disinformation accountable, but we must also be sure not to replicate the flaws of traditional media in a new setting.

We cannot allow rich and powerful creators to disguise themselves as grassroots or to seize power online in order to promote extremist ideology. We must also encourage traditional media, which can still provide a crucial check on power, to learn, grow, and adapt to serve a broader, younger, more diverse audience.”

Hasnain says:

It’s sad that mental health is still not taken as seriously as physical health by the public at large. So many people would do better with a little more support, understanding, and resources - if only we acknowledged that it’s something that’s real rather than something to be swept under the rug.

“But I have mental health disabilities of my own, and I work with college students. I see the rising pressures they face and their consequences in the classroom. Given what I see and hear every day and what I’ve experienced firsthand, I fear that these higher-profile stories from Stanford and Yale are just the tip of the iceberg, a tiny visible sliver of an immense problem across higher education. Essentially, though both institutions have denied this characterization, schools like Yale are using fear of an incident like the suicide at Stanford as a reason to push mentally disabled students off campus as quickly as possible.

It’s driven by stigma, and likely a fear of liability. And until we treat mental health as a disability – which is to say a protected category with specific civil rights protections – rather than reacting from stigma, it’s not going to get better. Meanwhile, every indicator we have is that the mental health pressures on young people have only gotten worse thanks to the pandemic, rising violence, the climate crisis and more. We have to do everything possible to support people in crisis.”

Hasnain says:

“With universities offering better compensation either as concession or a preemptive strategy to address graduate student demands, momentum for the unionization of academic workers is almost sure to pick up steam. While the full implications of the University of California strike are still unfolding, we may be seeing the beginning of a new period of campus activism with labor organizing as a prominent feature.”

Hasnain says:

“America has always been that guy.

I’m a professor.

I know most students hate groupwork, especially the high-achievers. They’re the ones who get stuck with all the responsibility.

A lot of us remember how groupwork used to go back in high school and college. One or two of us did everything. On presentation day, the guy who did nothing talked over us and tried to take credit. He was the “facilitator.”

We would wind up getting a B.

He would complain.

That’s how western countries have acted during this pandemic. China, Japan, South Korea, they all stepped up and did the work. Meanwhile, almost half of Americans ignored precautions and then lied about it.

The pandemic is a group project.

America is that guy.”

Hasnain says:

It always disappoints me that white collar crime like this (and wage theft) receives so much less coverage than other types of crime (like say shoplifting) even though the monetary damages are not even within a couple of orders of magnitude. I pray for the day when reporting and consciousness around crime is a little more informed and a little less emotional.

Also why does this make the share price rise?!

“The bank agreed to a consent order with the CFPB without admitting to the agency’s allegations.

Wells Fargo said it expects a pretax operating loss of about $3.5 billion in the fourth quarter, which includes the CFPB civil penalty and remediation, as well as other litigation expenses.

Shares of the company rose 0.7% to $42.11 at 9:57 a.m. in New York.”