Hasnain says:

Great technical analysis and insight here.

“So after all this work, what did we learn?

Turning on -Ofast will end up turning on -ffast-math, and that can cause all sorts of problems for any program unlucky enough to load them.

Even if you explicitly ask for no fast math, you will still get fast math as long as -Ofast is enabled.

It is surprisingly feasible (though perhaps not wise) for a single individual with a good internet connection to download 4 TB of Python packages and scan 11 TB of shared libraries in a single day.

It is definitely not wise to try to run pip download or pip install --dry-run on every package listed in PyPI, at least not without some good sandboxing, because it will execute tons of random code from setup.py files and leave you with a giant mess to clean up.

Because of highly connected nature of the modern software supply chain, even though a mere 49 packages were actually built with -ffast-math, thousands of other packages, with a total of at least 9.7 million downloads over the past 30 days, are affected.”

Hasnain says:

This is super exciting and makes me want to try fly.io even more.

"And we'll keep saying this: the reason we think LiteFS and full-stack SQLite is a good bet is that the design is simple. You can read a summary of the LiteFS design and understand what each of these components is doing. SQLite is one of of the most trusted libraries in the world; most of our job is just letting SQLite be SQLite. Your app doesn't even need to know LiteFS is there."

Hasnain says:

Great read on documentation and developer tooling.

“I hope I have both piqued your interest in API documentation browsers and demystified the creation of your own documentation sets. My goal is to turbocharge programmers who – like me – are overwhelmed by all the packages they have to keep in mind while getting stuff done.”

Hasnain says:

This whole story has been so bizarre, dehumanizing, and humiliating - I don’t even know where to begin.

“There seems to be a legitimate argument that what happened broke federal laws because the individuals were induced to get on a plane and travel across state lines based on false information. What should interest us more than the specific laws is that this clearly was not a state action. It looks much more like Project Veritas-type stunt. I’m not saying Veritas was behind it. I don’t think they are. But that kind of group: right-wing pranksters. In some way, DeSantis was either coordinating with them or funding them. It’s very much worth finding out which it is. You cannot look at any of this and think it was the work of government workers. Just not how those people operate. This is not to mention the fact that it still hasn’t been explained how or why the state of Florida had people prowling around a refugee center in Texas looking for people who could be coaxed to get on a plane which would fly surreptitiously to Martha’s Vineyard.”

Hasnain says:

“I just want to publish software that I think is neat so that other hobbyists can use and learn from it, and I otherwise want to be left the hell alone. I should be allowed to decide if something I wrote is “done”. The focus on securing the “software supply chain” has made it even more likely that releasing software for others to use will just mean more work for me that I don’t benefit from. I reject the idea that a concept so tenuous can be secured in the first place.”

Hasnain says:

“I graduated from San Leandro High School, a mere 30 miles away from the heart of Silicon Valley. In a school of 2500+ students, most of whom were Black and Latino, my high school only had 60 seats for AP computer science when I was in 11th grade. Because there were more interested students than there were seats, these seats were assigned by lottery. Students who did not get chosen would have to wait until the next academic year to sign up again. If you were in 11th grade like I was, this was your last chance to get a computer science class on your transcript before applying to college. I did not get a seat, and this affected my ability to be competitive for college admissions as a declared CS major.

I learned that schools a few miles away, where the majority of students were white, had entire CS departments. Cities like Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Berkeley, and Fremont offer their students a wide range of CS courses. I remember wondering how I could be competitive for college when I was up against kids who had been coding for years. This led me down a rabbit hole of findings where I learned of the severe lack of diversity in tech and the call for more women and people of color in the field. I knew I wanted to learn to code, but now also wanted to help more people who looked like me to have access to quality computer science education.”

Hasnain says:

With justice Roberts complaining about people thinking the court is now illegitimate, I wonder if he’ll take a look at this (I doubt he will).

““He was not terminated,” Bevers said. The head coach at the time had moved on, as did most of the coaching staff.

This did not stop Kennedy’s lawyers from telling the Supreme Court repeatedly that he was fired.

“The record is clear that Coach Kennedy was fired for that midfield prayer,” lawyer Paul Clement told the nine justices in the first 15 seconds of the oral arguments of the case in April. The words “fired,” “fire” or “firing” were used 16 times in the hour and a half session.

It wasn’t true though. The district’s lawyers tried to correct the record, to no avail.”

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.
“