Hasnain says:

“Thanks to these efforts, hotel toiletries that otherwise would’ve ended up in landfills have been given a second use case.

Seipler has seen mothers cry with joy when they’re given soap. The small, commonplace things we often take for granted, he said, can make a world of difference when reallocated.

“I know it sounds funny,” he said, “but that little bar of soap on the counter in your hotel room — that thing can literally save a life.””

Hasnain says:

… and 75% of kids. Whoa.

“The blood test data suggests 189 million Americans had covid-19 by end of February, well over double the 80 million cases shown by The Washington Post case tracker, which is based on state data of confirmed infections. Clarke said that’s because the blood tests captures asymptomatic cases and others that were never confirmed on coronavirus tests.”

Hasnain says:

Really interesting read on the origins of Rooh Afza and how it’s been developed over the years.

“Hakim Majeed could not have known on that summer day in 1907 that in 40 years, India as he knew it would cease to exist, as the subcontinent was cleaved in two and his own family was split between India and the new country of Pakistan. He could not have guessed that his work would survive the bloodshed of partition. That in the decades to come, Rooh Afza would travel far beyond the lanes of Old Delhi to 37 countries. That in the alchemy of his simple ingredients was the beginnings of a scarlet empire.”

Hasnain says:

It’s motivating to read about an open problem being solved in a week (with effectively the bulk of it being one night) by a pair of grad students.

“When the mathematicians Jeff Kahn and Gil Kalai first posed their “expectation threshold” conjecture in 2006, they didn’t believe it themselves. Their claim — a broad assertion about mathematical objects called random graphs — seemed too strong, too all-encompassing, too bold to possibly be true. It felt more like wishful thinking than a reflection of mathematical truth. Even so, no one could prove it false, and it quickly became one of the most important open problems in the field.

Now, more than 15 years later, a pair of young mathematicians at Stanford University have done what Kahn and Kalai thought borderline impossible: In a surprisingly short preprint posted online just a few weeks ago, Jinyoung Park and Huy Tuan Pham have provided a complete proof of the conjecture.”

Hasnain says:

"Today, Gohil is at the forefront of the demand for a ban on the unethical practice. In that, he is not just fighting for a ban but is also battling decades of regressive mentality, ignorance, and judgment. "It's important for people like me who have a certain reputation in society to continue the advocacy. We can't just stop because the country repealed Section 377," he said, explaining that a law being passed in India doesn't always mean that people will immediately start accepting or following it.

"Now we have to fight for issues like same-sex marriage, right to inheritance, right to adoption. It's a never-ending cycle. I have to keep fighting.""

Hasnain says:

Worth pondering and thinking about. Great read as always from Cindy.

“TLDR:

- innovation is hard without the right support structure and context
- execution is hard without being well-versed in the culture
- culture often has a steep learning curve”

Hasnain says:

This was an inspirational read. Goes into a lot of scientific tidbits, with a sprinkling of various human interest nuggets.

“What was your first encounter with scientific reasoning?

When I was in second grade we lived in Calcutta, India, and would go shopping for vegetables on the weekend. We would pass these booksellers with stalls built into the walls of buildings. I treasured the books I was able to get my hands on. My dad made a little bookshelf out of packing crates from local shops, and I would line up my handful of books and count them. My ambition in life was to someday own 100 books.

One day I picked up a book called The How and Why Wonder Book of Famous Scientists. In particular I remember Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. He didn’t have a degree. He didn’t work in a fancy place. He was a lens grinder. But he was an intelligent and curious guy, and so he used his lenses to assemble the first microscope and discovered the entire world of microscopic life. I remember reading this and realizing that science was a thing you could do. It wasn’t received wisdom from ages past. From then on, I knew what I was going to do in life.”

Hasnain says:

Severance was such a good show, and very refreshingly different when compared to most recent stuff out there. It gave me lots to ponder about how we all perceive work and life.

“Severance is the extreme version of the consideration of how we derive the meaning of our lives from work, and the unhealthy attachments we form with our subordinates and managers. In the world of the severed, Lumon acts as their parents, their teachers and their government. Outside of their workmates and Mr. Milichick, the severed rarely if ever meet another person.”

Hasnain says:

This piece is a bit more optimistic than I am, but it was refreshing to read nonetheless.

“As for the NIMBYs themselves, whether they self-identify as such or are de facto fellow travelers, we can only hope that they think carefully about how they want to wield what little power they have left. They can, of course, keep filing lawsuits, badgering planners, and spinning conspiracy theories at Livable California meetings if they want to. (Everyone needs a hobby.) Alternatively, they could accept that the state’s tastes, needs, and demographic composition have changed. they could help ensure that cities change accordingly and for the better, by participating in consensus-building discussions that acknowledge the realities of growth, equity, sustainability, and--yes--livability. California will still need dissenting voices, varying opinions, and civic watchdogs, of course. Many NIMBY advocates could ably and usefully serve those functions without resorting to extremism or antagonism. And they can still enjoy themselves and be thankful for their windfall wealth and tax subsidies.

I could be wrong. You never know what the next lawsuit will bring or what odd alliance is going to emerge. But, just as any sensible household needs to plan for retirement, so should the NIMBY movement. It's about time.”

Hasnain says:

Great read on cryptography. It takes a simple question: “do there exist cryptographic schemes which are secure under the random oracle model but are insecure when implemented with a concrete hash function?”, and answers it while explaining a bunch of the theory from the ground up.

“At this point, one question should be: can proofs in the random oracle model be trusted? I think I want to say yes to this question. Obviously, we shouldn’t take the random oracle model as a trivial assumption, and if a proof can avoid relying on it, that’s all for the better. On the other hand, there are now many proofs relying on this model, and the only major flaw I know of resulting from the use of this model is perhaps the presence of Length Extension Attacks, and other similar issues with message concatenation.

There are assumptions that we have to rely on in Cryptography, like the hardness of certain problems, and maybe the random oracle model is just one of the assumptions we’ll have to concede.”