Hasnain says:

"Day-by-day, month-by-month, the App Store will get a little less rich and vibrant as apps start being designated as outdated and get removed. Another consequence of this hostile policy is that indie and hobbyist developers may stop building mobile apps. After all, the web is fundamentally a more stable place for experimental software and “finished artworks”, since backwards-compatibility is the gold standard and apps can run indefinitely.

After 4 hours of work to re-compile my app and 44 hours waiting in the review queue, WorldAnimals is now updated to a new version. I am safe for at least another three years before getting automatically flagged for removal. Unless, that is, Apple decides there is a new threshold for “outdated” and change their policy once again."

Hasnain says:

"I’ll end with some advice to remember next year as the downturn ends and the upswing begins. The personal freedom to ignore downturns comes from financial stability, and the best path to financial stability is taking money off the table whenever you can until you’ve reached financial independence. A lot of financial advice out there is written from the perspective of very wealthy folks. If you’re already wealthy, your goal is to maximize the risk-adjusted expected return of endeavors, often by taking meaningful risk. For example, if you’re wealthy, it’s almost always the right decision to early exercise your equity. If you have millions of dollars, then it’s reasonable to risk $100k now for the potential of millions in reduced tax in six years. That’s not necessarily true when you’re not already wealthy."

Hasnain says:

“In light of all this, it's only natural that Providence would turn to McKinsey when they needed help committing crimes and destroying thousands of people's lives. McKinsey helped Providence craft a program to coerce poor people into paying for care they were entitled to get for free. They called it "Rev-Up."

Writing in the New York Times, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Katie Thomas reveal the full depravity of "Rev-Up." McKinsey advised Providence to train its staff to avoid truthfully answer poor patients' queries about whether they were eligible for free care.”

Hasnain says:

“It is so true. Organizations are so much better at adding things than they are at taking things away. We’re better at setting goals and talking about what we’re going to do than we are at talking about what we’re NOT going to do. It's easier to add process than it is to ask why we're still doing that thing that worked great two years ago but mostly isn't relevant anymore. We’re better at adding meetings than we are at removing them. “

Hasnain says:

This just seems straight up evil.

“Here's the idea behind why boosting the nation's unemployment could cool inflation. With an additional million or two people out of work, the newly unemployed and their families would sharply cut back on spending, while for most people who are still working, wage growth would flatline. When companies assume their labor costs are unlikely to rise, the theory goes, they will stop hiking prices. That, in turn, slows the growth in prices.

But some economists question whether crushing the job market is necessary to bring inflation to heel.

"The Fed clearly wants the labor market to weaken quite sharply. What's not clear to us is why," Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a report. He predicted that inflation is set to "plunge" next year as supply chains normalize.”

Hasnain says:

Ah, UB, the bane of every C++ programmer’s existence.

“With that out of the way, the next step was multiplayer determinism. One big goal was that I didn't want to cut multiplayer from the game. Furthermore, I wanted players on PC to play with players on Nintendo Switch. This is the first time we had to make sure the game is deterministic between ARM and x86. We should be fine, C++ is portable, right? Just don't use undefined behaviour. Turns out we use quite a lot of undefined behaviour, both in our main code and in the libraries. For example, when casting a double to an integer, if the value does not fit in the integer, it is considered undefined behaviour and the resulted value is different on ARM and x86 CPUs.”

Hasnain says:

Great read as always on career paths.

“At some point you have to learn to tune in to your own inner compass. What draws you in to your work? What fuels your growth and success?

Being an adult means not measuring yourself entirely on other people’s definition of success. Personal growth might come in the guise of a big promotion, but it also might look like a new job, a different role, a swing to management or back, becoming well-known as a subject matter expert, mentoring others, running an affinity group, picking up new skill sets, starting a company, trying your hand at consulting, speaking at conferences, taking a sabbatical, having a family, working part time, etc. No one gets to define that but you.

You have a thirty- or forty-year adult life and career in front of you. What the hell are you going to do with all that time and space??”

Hasnain says:

“But, in context, it’s quite clear that this is a joke, a quote from a funny movie.

The issue is that so much of content moderation involves context. This is something that critics of content moderation (both those who want more and those who want less) never seem to fully grasp. How does a content moderator (whether AI or human) have enough context to handle all sorts of issues like this? Do you need to train your AI on classic movies? Do you need to make sure that everyone you hire has seen every popular movie and knows them by heart and can recognize when someone is quoting them?

How do you deal with a situation where someone tries to hide behind the quote — but is actually threatening someone? (Not what Kel did here, but just noting, you can’t just say “okay, leave this line if it’s quoting a movie”).

The point is that it’s ridiculously complicated.”

Hasnain says:

This was a great read - that matched many of my management experiences as well.

“In my experience, the TLM role is **challenging but extremely rewarding**. You can be an Engineering Manager while still keeping your feet on the ground and solving challenging technical problems together with your team.

I’ve found that **people trusted me more to make the right decisions**. I knew how the technology stack _actually worked_ because I built a large part of it. It’s frustrating and demoralizing to report to a pure people manager who is unable to understand what people are building, and which problems they are facing, regardless of how much time you spend explaining it to them. Stepping into the TLM role is a good way to counter that, and reporting to a TLM is often deeply rewarding because they tend to care about people and technology in the right way to get amazing things done.”

Hasnain says:

“In the past, the deaths of Moore and Mungin might have gone unnoticed by anyone other than their loved ones, but the popularity of social media and smartphones has given millions a peek at the medical mistreatment some Black women receive.

Cynthia Adinig, an equity policy advocate based in Northern Virginia, used her cell phone to document about 20 of the visits she made to the ER to get help with mysterious symptoms, including an anaphylaxis-like reaction to ingesting food, that arose after a mild bout of covid in 2020. During one recorded visit, Adinig showed that even though she’d reported cardiac symptoms, there was no heart monitor in her room. In another visit, she was escorted out of the ER by a security guard after she was discharged. Wanting to understand her experiences better, she requested her medical records. She discovered that she had been tested for street drugs, without her knowledge, during a couple of her ER visits.

These cases of misdiagnosis and mistreatment suggest that even the best studies may underestimate long covid’s impact because racism and sexism within the medical system have left some people undiagnosed. “