Hasnain says:

This was a great read, chronicling the origin and growth of Facebook marketplace behind the scenes. I learnt a bunch of stuff about product growth and insights.

"Immediately upon launch, we also noticed that search numbers were incredibly low. Our Research team showed buyers two test phones: one with Marketplace and one with a different local classifieds service. They then asked them to “find an iPhone to buy.” On Facebook, ‌users immediately started to scroll, whereas on other apps, they searched. This led us to realize that people on Facebook had learned never to use the search bar except when searching for people. We addressed this by putting a large search button next to the search bar, which our designers grudgingly allowed. This changed the trajectory of the search participation rate, and even when we removed the button, searches remained at the new, higher level."

Hasnain says:

This is a very damning expose. I knew of the corruption allegations involving Ginni Thomas (especially how she funded the Jan 6 insurrection) but the level of detail in here is something else.

“For Dinielli, the idea that a Justice’s spouse belonged to a group that had urged its members to repeatedly attack his organization was “counter to everything you’d expect if you want to get a fair shake” before the Court. He explained, “These activities aren’t just political. They’re aimed at raising up or denigrating actors specifically in front of the Supreme Court. She’s one step away from holding up a sign in front of her husband saying ‘This person is a pedophile.’ ”

Dinielli went on, “The Justices sit literally above where the lawyers are. For these people to do the job they were tasked with, they have to maintain that level. But this degrades it, mocks it, and threatens it.” He warned, “Since the Court doesn’t have an army, it relies on how it behaves to command respect. Once the veneer cracks, it’s very hard to get it back.” “

Hasnain says:

This story is so infuriating and scary. So many terrible examples in here, and of course the accused failed up and was promoted.

What I found really jarring:

1) HR acknowledged the person was given feedback but no policies were violated. This doesn’t make sense given the quote below, but also with multiple googlers calling this out as something brought up in annual training
2) multiple googlers on twitter (will link the thread) back up similar feelings, and go on to say many others have done similar things.

Sigh.

“Especially jarring, according to these employees, was Aubert’s treatment of Shari McHenry, who at the time handled budgeting and made sure there were enough machines in place to run each digital service. Aubert gave many of her responsibilities to a newly recruited male manager, who wasn’t ready or able to take on the duty for months. In an interview, McHenry said Aubert began saying to people on the team, “Can’t Shari retire? She should have enough money.” Almost 60 at the time, McHenry said she had no plans to leave.”

Hasnain says:

Great read on bug finding and exploitation.

"Still, my largest concern in this assessment was the lack of ASLR in the Zoom MMR server. ASLR is arguably the most important mitigation in preventing exploitation of memory corruption, and most other mitigations rely on it on some level to be effective. There is no good reason for it to be disabled in the vast majority of software. There has recently been a push to reduce the susceptibility of software to memory corruption vulnerabilities by moving to memory-safe languages and implementing enhanced memory mitigations, but this relies on vendors using the security measures provided by the platforms they write software for. All software written for platforms that support ASLR should have it (and other basic memory mitigations) enabled."

Hasnain says:

This was a really well written postmortem. It covers a lot of ground on issues that pop up when running distributed systems. From the low-level (NUMA cache coherency) to the high level (latency, replication, rolling restarts, circular dependencies), it really has it all.

Worth reading for anyone trying to learn about systems at scale.

"Roblox’s core infrastructure runs in Roblox data centers. We deploy and manage our own hardware, as well as our own compute, storage, and networking systems on top of that hardware. The scale of our deployment is significant, with over 18,000 servers and 170,000 containers."

Hasnain says:

Does this meet the definition of a war crime?

Either way, the engineers that ran in to prevent a catastrophe are heroes.

“The Islamic State, the Syrian government and Russia blamed the United States, but the dam was on the U.S. military’s “no-strike list” of protected civilian sites and the commander of the U.S. offensive at the time, then-Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, said allegations of U.S. involvement were based on “crazy reporting.”

“The Tabqa Dam is not a coalition target,” he declared emphatically two days after the blasts.

In fact, members of a top secret U.S. Special Operations unit called Task Force 9 had struck the dam using some of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal, including at least one BLU-109 bunker-buster bomb designed to destroy thick concrete structures, according to two former senior officials. And they had done it despite a military report warning not to bomb the dam, because the damage could cause a flood that might kill tens of thousands of civilians.”

Hasnain says:

This is just blatant corruption - turned the place into a town that’s owned by the police department and with the sole purpose of generating revenue. Half the budget comes from tickets?!

“Jones — again as Mayor Bryan nodded — said the goal of the department is only to help people.

“It’s not about making a dollar,” Jones said.

Yet the town with no traffic lights collected $487 in fines and forfeitures in 2020 for every man, woman and child, though many of those fined were merely passing by on I-22.

Total town income more than doubled from 2018 to 2020 – from $582,000 to more than $1.2 million – as fines and forfeitures rose 640%.”

Hasnain says:

This story has it all: a married undercover cop lying about himself to get into relationships with women so he could sabotage the climate movements; police denials, cross-border espionage. Where do I even begin?

I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of this before, and sadly curious how much long lasting damage will have been done due to this setback.

“The court decision this fall, which was major news across much of Europe but barely noticed in the U.S. and Canada, was the result of a 10-year legal battle by Wilson. “In terms of emotional closure, it’s all quite complicated,” she said. “In the end, the judgment was a much bigger victory than I expected it to be.”

The ruling was a vindication for dozens of other women who have come forward across the UK saying they also were deceived into sexual relationships with undercover officers. The tribunal will now be deciding what damages Wilson should receive. “

Hasnain says:

I’ve been trying to read more science/math content lately and this is hands down the best thing I’ve read in a year. I had known the basics of GPS and how it works, but this breaks it down so well, with amazing interactive visualizations so you can understand the material. The content itself also starts with some basic geometry, then expands into math, physics (including some relativity), and then even into signal processing. Lots of gems here, highly recommend reading this one.

One of these days I hope to be able to write educational material this well. Will have to go over more stuff on this blog!

“It’s hard not get inspired by the relentless drive of people who kept pushing science and technology forward. All of their work made GPS an indispensable tool in our everyday life.”

Hasnain says:

Felt myself nodding along throughout. This was an excellent read just like all the other content on his blog.

“Technical skills combined with writing skills are a superpower in a world that is increasingly writing-heavy. Writing skill takes time to build and the best time to start doing so is now. Good luck on your writing journey!”