Hasnain says:

I am really happy to see more unionization efforts succeed, despite some horrible anti union efforts from companies that are household names. The fact that the quote mentions some of these tactics as “traditional” is eye opening:

““We’re in a moment when we are questioning how effective traditional union-busting tactics are,” said Rebecca Givan, a labor studies professor at Rutgers. “Traditional union-busting tactics like scaring immigrants and dividing workers by race – how effective they are has been brought into question.” Givan said workers at Starbucks stores that have unionized speak with workers at other Starbucks to inoculate them against anti-union efforts by telling them what anti-union message and tactics to expect.”

Hasnain says:

I really don’t know what to make of this now. Faith in the system: reduced. At least we’re all confused by this!

(For the record I support the change and am happy this is happening).

“This system raises the question: If any senator can pass a bill on any day, why aren’t people trying this all the time? Why doesn’t Sen. Bernie Sanders slip into the Senate when no Republicans are around and use unanimous consent to pass the Green New Deal? Why doesn’t Sen. Ted Cruz wait until Democrats are eating lunch and then single-handedly repeal Obamacare? Why doesn't Sen. Chuck Schumer make Tide pods look less delicious?”

Hasnain says:

From 2007, so it somehow reads like a piece from a much older and simpler time. Great read and human interest story about a person who accidentally discovers his wife could be a world record holder (for the highest Tetris score) and the ensuing trip to demonstrate this for the record books. It covers some video game history and is really well written.

“What does it mean to be the best in the world at something? This is what runs through my mind as we lay in bed Sunday morning. We are both struggling to understand what Lori's mastery of a game that Day calls "the embodiment of comprehensive thinking" means in our lives.

As I go to pack the car, I realize that Lori has bought some things on the trip, and fitting them into our Jeep Cherokee is getting tricky. Then I look over at Lori, and it all makes sense. "From now on," I tell the new master of fitting shapes into tight spaces, "you pack the car."”

Hasnain says:

Great read that goes into a lot of systems and optimization knowledge. And a worthwhile reminder of just how fast hardware is these days.

“For simple operators, it's feasible to reason about your memory bandwidth directly. For example, an A100 has 1.5 terabytes/second of global memory bandwidth, and can perform 19.5 teraflops/second of compute. So, if you're using 32 bit floats (i.e. 4 bytes), you can load in 400 billion numbers in the same time that the GPU can perform 20 trillion operations. Moreover, to perform a simple unary operator (like multiplying a tensor by 2), we actually need to write the tensor back to global memory.”

Hasnain says:

Really cool experiment!

“But the study is probably most notable for the surprising way that it collected measurements. A small research team managed to put an antiproton in orbit around the nucleus of a helium atom that was part of some liquid helium chilled down to where it acted as a superfluid. The researchers then measured the light emitted by the antiproton's orbital transitions.”

Hasnain says:

“It is hard to think of another historian who applies such a scientific approach to ancient history, except perhaps the Stanford professor Josiah Ober, who has applied political theory and modern economic modelling to information garnered from classical sources to equally eye-opening effect. The terminology is not off-putting because Stephenson proves able to weave it succinctly and fluidly into his account of how the Late Empire functioned.”

Hasnain says:

Great read on a business model justification and free tier pricing.

“All this is to say: our costs are carefully managed. Like other SaaS companies, we don’t build physical infrastructure. We avoid touching your packets - for privacy, but also to reduce our costs. We fix bugs and docs instead of answering the same questions over and over. Our control plane is lightweight, and our DERP network is cost-controlled. This allows us to maintain healthy operating margins, so that a free tier isn’t competing for resources with our paying customers.”

Hasnain says:

“Koren alleges in her complaint that, within days of the November meeting, the company notified some of her colleagues she would no longer have a position on the team even though she hadn’t yet accepted or rejected the transfer to Brazil. According to the complaint, when she asked why this information was being shared, her manager stated: “You mean you actually would consider moving to Sao Paulo?”

“This is further indication to me that the ‘choice’ to move to Sao Paulo is not a choice at all,” Koren wrote in the complaint.”

Hasnain says:

Having had a lot of gripes with the way math is generally taught, this was quite refreshing to read.

“Creating this course, Mathematics for Life Scientists, wasn’t easy. The life sciences faculty involved, none of whom had a joint appointment with the math department, said they resorted to designing the course themselves after math faculty rebuffed their overture. The math faculty feared creating a ”watered-down” course with no textbook (though after the course was developed, one math instructor taught some sections of the class). Besides math, the life sciences faculty said they experienced “significant pushback” from the chemistry and physics departments over concerns that the course wouldn’t adequately prepare students for required courses in those disciplines.

But the UCLA course seems to be successful, and a textbook based on it now exists.

According to recently published research led by UCLA education researchers, students in the new classes ended up with “significantly higher grades” in subsequent physics, chemistry and life sciences courses than students in the traditional calculus course, even when controlling for factors such as demographics, prior preparation and math grades. Students’ interest in the subject doubled, according to surveys.”

Hasnain says:

This is why ethics in ML and AI is so important. The paper is really ominous.

“The reality is that this is not science fiction. We are but one very small company in a universe of many hundreds of companies using AI software for drug discovery and de novo design. How many of them have even considered repurposing, or misuse, possibilities? Most will work on small molecules, and many of the companies are very well funded and likely using the global chemistry network to make their AI-designed molecules. How many people have the know-how to find the pockets of chemical space that can be filled with molecules predicted to be orders of magnitude more toxic than VX? We do not currently have answers to these questions. There has not previously been significant discussion in the scientific community about this dual-use concern around the application of AI for de novo molecule design, at least not publicly. Discussion of societal impacts of AI has principally focused on aspects such as safety, privacy, discrimination and potential criminal misuse10, but not on national and international security. When we think of drug discovery, we normally do not consider technology misuse potential. We are not trained to consider it, and it is not even required for machine learning research, but we can now share our experience with other companies and individuals. AI generative machine learning tools are equally applicable to larger molecules (peptides, macrolactones, etc.) and to other industries, such as consumer products and agrochemicals, that also have interests in designing and making new molecules with specific physicochemical and biological properties. This greatly increases the breadth of the potential audience that should be paying attention to these concerns.”