Hasnain says:

““The pandemic helped level the playing field by creating working conditions that are the same for everyone and better controlled through the use of technology,” said Daniel Clayton, vice president of global security operations at Bitdefender Inc., a Romania-based company that makes hack prevention and response tools.

Supporting a neurodiverse workforce takes no more effort than having the empathy necessary to support all employees, Mr. Clayton said: “This is just understanding what somebody needs to be successful and then setting conditions for them to be successful.””

Hasnain says:

“To that end, we must hold the media—which helped create this crisis, which regularly passes over trans perspectives, which disseminates transphobic distortions—to account. Jesse Singal is both a propagator and a reflection of mounting public anxieties that have accompanied the increasing public visibility of trans people. Singal didn’t invent transphobia, and he’s far from the only transphobic contrarian in the discourse. But what the media says and does is enormously consequential. There are vicious bigots who are eager to seize upon any ideological rationale that might facilitate their campaigns of hatred. Media outlets must stop platforming ideologues who—whatever their excuse—are undermining the perspectives and concerns of trans people. Time and again, we have seen our legitimacy questioned, our identities derogated, and, in the end, our lives placed under genuine threat.”

Hasnain says:

“Even if Bhargava’s techniques don’t lead straight to the next number theory breakthrough, Thorne believes the paper will have a more intangible impact. “To read this paper, I think, is to realize that these results are out there to be proved,” he said. “[Bhargava] dared to believe it was possible, and he showed the world that he was right.””

Hasnain says:

Pondering this today.

“White Americans want an endlessly appreciating asset and the ability to police who their neighbors are and what they do. Housing segregation, suburban sprawl, and planned communities are how they won those things, and how they protect them. Automobile dependence is mainly a necessary side effect. Housing preferences have less to do with how people want to get around than they do with the level of control white Americans want to have over who can live near them, largely for the sake of property values.”

Hasnain says:

And the school leaders are saying they’d continue to do the same thing and don’t have regrets. Sigh.

“San Mateo High School held the party on April 9 at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, about 18 miles away. Following the event, however, 90 out of the nearly 600 students who attended tested positive for the virus.”

Hasnain says:

Oof.

“According to the report, the British tabloid MailOnline was pursuing a story based on allegations made by a former girlfriend of Kotick’s, and a temporary restraining order she had received against him. But Sandberg and Kotick worked together on two separate occasions, in 2016 and in 2019, to strategize on how to “persuade the Daily Mail not to report on the restraining order.”

The report states that Facebook and Activision staff were both directly involved in the effort, and that there was concern internally at Facebook that the story would “reflect negatively on her reputation as an advocate for women.””

Hasnain says:

Definitely need to read this book now.

“Making decisions is dangerous, and managers will avoid it when possible, even if this costs the organization in the long run. Jackall tells an anecdote about a large, old battery at a plant. The managers did not want to be on the hook for the decision to replace it, and so problems with it were patched up. Eventually, it failed completely, and the resulting cost to replace it and to deal with costs related to EPA violations and lawsuits was over $100M in 1979 dollars. And yet, this was still rational decision-making on behalf of the managers, because it was a risk for them in the short-term to make the decision to replace the battery.”

Hasnain says:

Great read on sorting algorithms and incrementally upgrading a massive codebase (and the adventures learnt during that process). I loved the bit on adding more safety/randomization in code in debug mode, to avoid hitting Hyrum's law - it's a pattern I've seen in the past too (and, in the context of sorting/hashtables, funnily enough!)

"Consider randomization for the APIs that can be relied on at least in testing/debug mode. Seeding the hash function differently for not relying on the order of iteration of hashtables. If the function requires to be only associative, try to accumulate results in different order, etc."

Hasnain says:

“A second mistake is emphasizing training for individuals, instead of overhauling systems and cultures. Again and again, I see women offered extra coaching to encourage them to take career risks, overcome ‘impostor syndrome’ and boost their skills in leadership and grant writing. But the evidence is clear: it is not women who need fixing, but entrenched systems of inequality.”

Hasnain says:

People are complex, interesting, and fascinating. And so is history.

“But the trailer for Stewart's film highlights the significant truth that is perhaps understated in other accounts of this story. The war didn't end in 1945 for Onoda; but it didn't end there for the Filipinos on Lubang, either. And the voice of the Filipino people needs to be heard, "so as to counter the image of Onoda as a hero, and to bring attention and justice for the victims and their families," she says.

Stewart encourages every person who comes across Harari's film or Herzog's book to seek out her documentary. And perhaps, with a story as complex, compelling and controversial as Onoda's, this simple conclusion is also the most logical. There are several sides to every story – the truth, however bizarre, or fantastic, or terrible we decide it to be, requires a consideration of all of them.”