Hasnain says:

Great read. It’s a human interest story intertwined with ethical and technical discussions of how we must approach AI responsibly.

“The paper that Gebru and her colleagues wrote is now “essentially canon” in the field of responsible AI, according to Rumman Chowdhury, the director of Twitter’s machine-learning ethics, transparency and accountability team. She says it cuts to the core of the questions that ethical AI researchers are attempting to get Big Tech companies to reckon with: “What are we building? Why are we building it? And who is it impacting?”

But Google’s management was not happy.”

Hasnain says:

TIL

“The purpose of this discussion, though, is to focus on dealing with adult ADHD itself as a source of fatigue. I lifted the subtitle—twice as hard for half as much—from the late Steve Copps, a physician who specialized in adult ADHD before it was widely recognized. The phrase was the title of one of his presentations that he generously shared with me when we first met. Although there are many equally apt descriptions of adult ADHD, I’ve not yet come across a better one.”

Hasnain says:

“A few Trump supporters pleaded with the crowd to stop pushing and were quickly overruled. The throng began to push forward. A few in the crowd managed to wrestle away parts of the gate from police, and Trump supporters filed up the stairs. At the top, some draped the Capitol steps with an oversized flag that read, “Trump.”

The mob, the flag, the violence. Justin thought: It didn’t feel right.

“It got me,” he later said. “I was supposed to be a part of a movement, but did I just get duped?’””

Hasnain says:

This is some excellent journalism and brings about questions of morality re: ethics and our legal system.
Chase was ordered to stop the predatory and illegal practice of filing unsubstantiated lawsuits until 2020 (first question: why only order them to stop it for a limited time?) and they immediately went back to filing lawsuits right after that. Even if it doesn’t automatically result in a judgement of bad faith, it should lead to immediate investigation right? Or at least they should be required to get their new process certified before being allowed to do it again?

“Before the robo-signing scandal a decade ago, Chase recovered about a billion dollars a year with its credit card collections business, according to the CFPB. Why would Chase stop suing customers for years, forgoing billions of dollars, only to ramp up its suits once key provisions of the CFPB settlement had expired?

Craig Cowie thinks he has an answer. “Chase did not think it could make money if it had to sue customers and abide by the CFPB settlement,” said Cowie, who worked as an enforcement attorney at the CFPB during the Obama administration and now teaches at the University of Montana Law School. “That’s the only explanation that makes sense for why the bank would have held back.””

Hasnain says:

The examples quoted here are jarring.

“Because there are no federal COVID-specific protections for workers, individuals are at the mercy of their particular workplace protocols, which often means relying on the goodwill of bosses or managers. “It’s like we're at war right now,” Rachel says. “I'm scared to go back to work because it's so unsafe out there.””

Hasnain says:

Did not see this coming.

“Microsoft doesn’t detail exactly how it will approach solving these issues, and the company says Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard for now. It looks like Kotick won’t remain once the deal is fully closed and after the transition period to Microsoft, though. Spencer, formerly head of gaming at Microsoft, is now CEO of Microsoft Gaming, and the company says the Activision Blizzard business will report directly to Spencer.”

Hasnain says:

“Robust prosecution of these cases is vital. As I wrote earlier this month, between now and the 2024 election, the battle for democracy will be won or lost in the states. Nothing in either of the voting rights bills currently pending before Congress would inhibit partisan state officials, acting under color of law, from attempting to overturn popular elections in their states.

What would?

Criminal prosecutions.”

Hasnain says:

This was a great read on applying differential fuzzing to data structures to find correctness bugs. The underlying techniques used match work I've done and given a talk about in the past (with unexpectedly fun results) so I can confirm it works.

"A pessimist would grumble at the notion of relying on random chance to secure code. An optimist will highlight that stochastic processes are widely used in mathematical modeling to draw empirical conclusions. A realist knows the weakest link is the first to be compromised, and even the dumbest of fuzzers can find shallow bugs before an adversary does."

Hasnain says:

I feel like this will not end well.

"Meanwhile, Google pocketed the difference between what it told publishers and advertisers that an ad cost and used the pool of money to manipulate future auctions to expand its digital monopoly, the newly unredacted complaint alleges. The documents cite internal correspondence in which Google employees said some of these practices amounted to growing its business through “insider information.”"

Hasnain says:

This was a great read on productivity, efficiency, management, and mental health.

"Returning to Mark Takano’s Thirty-Two-Hour Workweek Act, it’s important to emphasize that knowledge workers are just one group among many that Takano has mentioned when describing his motivation. There are several economic sectors for which Slow Work-style solutions, such as a reduced standardized workweek, might prove effective, with the plight of exhausted health-care professionals and teachers standing out as particularly acute examples where immediate relief is needed. The issue I raise here is not whether a shorter workweek is an entirely bad idea but whether it will sufficiently solve the narrow-but-urgent problem of rising burnout among office workers. I don’t think it will. The autonomy that defines the professional lives of those who toil in front of computer screens has led us into a trap of excessive work volume. We cannot escape this trap by expanding the weekend. We must ultimately brace ourselves for the larger challenge of slowing down the pace of the workday itself."