Hasnain says:

This was a great read on perseverance and on making games.

“The games industry is a very competitive space and there's a high likelihood you won't even make minimum wage for the time you put into it on your first game. I certainly haven't yet. Try to find what your passion is for making games and what you want to accomplish. If you're just in it for the money, there are easier ways to make money for your time. I'd advise seeing how far you can get doing game development as a side project to make sure you love doing it and can stick with it before pursuing it as a full time job. “

Hasnain says:

Loving the new FTC.

““Technological advances and novel business models are no license to commit unfair, deceptive, or anticompetitive practices,” said Elizabeth Wilkins, Director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning. “We will use all our tools to protect gig workers and promote fair and competitive market practices in the gig economy.”

The statement highlights studies showing that gig work accounts for hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity each year. According to a Federal Reserve report cited in the statement, 16 percent of Americans report earning money through a gig company, and another report shows that more than half of gig workers say the money they earn is essential or important for meeting their needs. Additionally, as noted in the Commission’s recent Serving Communities of Color report, many gig workers come from communities of color. The statement makes clear that, while gig companies may seem novel, traditional principles of consumer protection and competition still apply to them. “

Hasnain says:

“But redistributing the gains more evenly would have a far more transformative impact on quality of life for millions. The growth spurt boosted incomes of the bottom decile of US households by roughly an extra 10 per cent. But transpose Norway’s inequality gradient on to the US, and the poorest decile of Americans would be a further 40 per cent better off while the top decile would remain richer than the top of almost every other country on the planet.

Our leaders are of course right to target economic growth, but to wave away concerns about the distribution of a decent standard of living — which is what income inequality essentially measures — is to be disinterested in the lives of millions. Until those gradients are made less steep, the UK and US will remain poor societies with pockets of rich people.
“

Hasnain says:

“However, remember, back in May when Texas initially reinstated the law, it said it would come out with its full ruling later. Over the last few months I’ve occasionally pondered (sometimes on Twitter) whether the 5th Circuit would ever get around to actually releasing an opinion. And that’s what it just did. And, as 1st Amendment lawyer Ken White notes, it’s “the most angrily incoherent First Amendment decision I think I’ve ever read.”

It is difficult to state how completely disconnected from reality this ruling is, and how dangerously incoherent it is. It effectively says that companies no longer have a 1st Amendment right to their own editorial policies. Under this ruling, any state in the 5th Circuit could, in theory, mandate that news organizations must cover certain politicians or certain other content. It could, in theory, allow a state to mandate that any news organization must publish opinion pieces by politicians.

It completely flies in the face of the 1st Amendment’s association rights and the right to editorial discretion.
There’s going to be plenty to say about this ruling, which will go down in the annals of history as a complete embarrassment to the judiciary, but let’s hit the lowest points.”

Hasnain says:

Insurance companies: not the heroes we expected, but ones we will cheer on nonetheless in this case.

“John Chasnoff, a local activist who fought for years to get St. Ann to retool its chase policy, said he is dismayed that the catalyst for change was money — not the injuries to people including Cox.

“It’s an indictment on St. Ann police and their priorities that the voice of their insurers spoke louder than human lives,” Chasnoff said.”

Hasnain says:

“Sometimes it's a function of gentrification as capitalists drool over profits to be squeezed from tenants and businesses. Other times, it's a function of latent anxieties (e.g. racism) that views residents yet to be pushed out as dangerous mobs ruled by violence, drug use, and general chaos. But all of it ultimately traces back to the same thing: a housing crisis, a dearth of social programs supporting mental health and addiction, and a refusal to abandon carceral logic that says social problems should be hidden away in jail cells—not supported by systems funded with as much cash as our prisons and police departments.

In the meantime, we will have to suffer these outrage cycles as conservatives and liberals alike—frothing right-wing pundits, Silicon Valley tech executives, and Manhattan landlords—all try to convince us that they are trying to help, not sabotage, our society.”

Hasnain says:

This was a really interesting debugging story.

“This investigation reinforced the breadth of interestingly (for some values of “interesting”) configured clients that Tailscale (or any other service) has to deal with. While this was not the gnarliest bug ever, it was satisfying to keep accumulating breadcrumbs that explained more and more behaviors (e.g. the 5 minute timeout in the autocert library). And by closing it out, we were able to continue on our quest to make things just work.”

Hasnain says:

I’ve always admired how Patagonia has taken a stand on various issues - but this one is just next level. They have earned my business.

“Rather than selling the company or taking it public, Mr. Chouinard, his wife and two adult children have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed set of trusts and nonprofit organizations. They were created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe.

The unusual move comes at a moment of growing scrutiny for billionaires and corporations, whose rhetoric about making the world a better place is often overshadowed by their contributions to the very problems they claim to want to solve.

At the same time, Mr. Chouinard’s relinquishment of the family fortune is in keeping with his longstanding disregard for business norms, and his lifelong love for the environment.”

Hasnain says:

What I find infuriating is that most reporting is just talking about the supply chain disruption and not the core issue at hand: workers are looking to strike so they can get **unpaid** sick leave (not even paid!). America never fails to disappoint when it comes to cruel healthcare and employment situations.

““The average American would not know that we get fired for going to the doctor. This one thing has our members most enraged. We have guys who were punished for taking time off for a heart attack and covid. It’s inhumane.””

Hasnain says:

“The upshot: There may be no correlation between the severity of your COVID case and the lasting effect on your brain. You thought COVID felt like having a cold? Great, but you still may not know what the virus has done, or is doing, to your body. “Acute COVID-19 is a respiratory disease,” Koralnik says. “But long COVID is mostly about the brain.”

And plenty of people are developing it. Long COVID is now the country’s third leading neurological disorder, the American Academy of Neurology declared in July. As of the end of May, there were 82.5 million COVID survivors in the United States, and 30 percent of them — about 24.8 million — were considered “long-haulers.” A recent study of Northwestern’s Neuro COVID-19 Clinic patients showed that most neurological symptoms persist for an average of nearly 15 months after the disease’s onset.”