Hasnain says:

"A dollar today is better than a dollar tomorrow. It’s worth more. If I have a dollar today, I can invest it and make more by the time tomorrow comes around. I should prefer less than a dollar today to exactly a dollar tomorrow, less by a discount rate (which, spoiler alert, is hard to figure out and shouldn’t be modeled as a constant, but please keep reading).

If you accept this truth, then you do exactly the opposite of “spend more now to (maybe) make more later”. Those dollars you spend now are more expensive than the dollars you earn later."

Hasnain says:

This is pretty big news

Hasnain says:

A set of war stories on debugging code across many systems and machines.

“On a properly functioning computer this stress test should never fail, but surprisingly we discovered that on about 1% of the computers being used to play Guild Wars it did fail! One percent might not sound like a big deal, but when one million gamers play the game on any given day that means 10,000 would have at least one crash bug. Our programming team could spend weeks researching the bugs for just one day at that rate!”

Hasnain says:

“The same holds true for the isms. Our rejection of false positives, our refusal to push back on ambiguous isms, has directed all the damage at specific groups in our community, such as minorities and women. That is unfair at a huge scale. The shift we’re seeing now, being more sensitive to these isms when we see them, is a significant improvement, a way to shift some of the burden of those false negatives off of these historically targeted groups. It comes at a cost: those of us (like me) who have historically been untouchable *and* given the benefit of the doubt are suddenly being hit by false positives — -we didn’t mean it, but they’re coming after us anyway. But at least some amount of that cost is worth bearing. A system with no false positives, only false negatives, is not an optimally configured system. We have to balance out the impact of our imperfect assessments, making sure that everyone shoulders a part of the burden.”

Hasnain says:

I for one welcome the transition to remote work over the upcoming years.

"This highlights some of the conflicts many companies will face as they strive to remain competitive and retool themselves for a workforce that expects flexibility on where they work from. Making that transition will come with major challenges."

Hasnain says:

Bit dated, but a really interesting human interest story.

"The CTLA-4-blocking drug Ipilumimab, approved by the FDA in 2015, was the first of a new class of drugs called “checkpoint inhibitors” and the beginning of what researchers refer to as a tsunami of new cancer treatments. The pace of progress is staggering, such that we now recognize that what Allison discovered is not only the end of that 100-year scientific mystery, but also the the beginning of a new chapter in medicine. Already, new therapies such as CAR-T have essentially wiped out some forms of cancer; the newest checkpoint inhibitors have turned stage-four metastatic death sentences into full remission. This work has only just begun. And while it’s hopeful, it’s not hype."

Hasnain says:

Bookmarking for later re-reading.

"One of my earliest memories of computing is a maze generator running on my family’s Apple IIe. It filled the screen with a grid of green squares, then incrementally cut holes in the walls. Eventually, every square of the grid was connected and the screen was filled with a complete, perfect maze.

My little home computer could create something that had deep structure—every square of the maze could be reached from any other—and yet it seemed to be chaotic—it carved at random and every maze was different. This was enough to blow my ten-year-old mind. It still kind of does today."

Hasnain says:

:/

“At St. Elizabeth Community Hospital in Tehama County, fewer than half of the 700 hospital workers eligible for the vaccine were willing to take the shot when it was first offered. At Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, one in five frontline nurses and doctors have declined the shot. Roughly 20% to 40% of L.A. County’s frontline workers who were offered the vaccine did the same, according to county public health officials.

So many frontline workers in Riverside County have refused the vaccine — an estimated 50% — that hospital and public officials met to strategize how best to distribute the unused doses, Public Health Director Kim Saruwatari said.”

Hasnain says:

I don't even... we are letting the vaccine doses expire due to incompetence?!

"Presumably, the American pace will accelerate somewhat even before then. But on the current pace, by that point about 6 million Americans — perhaps 10 million — would have been vaccinated. And, depending on local bureaucracy and storage capacity, perhaps many million doses will be set to expire."

Hasnain says:

“This crisis makes clear that the current AI research ecosystem—constrained as it is by corporate influence and dominated by a privileged set of researchers—is not capable of asking and answering the questions most important to those who bear the harms of AI systems. Public-minded research and knowledge creation isn’t just important for its own sake, it provides essential information for those developing robust strategies for the democratic oversight and governance of AI, and for social movements that can push back on harmful tech and those who wield it. Supporting and protecting organized tech workers, expanding the field that examines AI, and nurturing well-resourced and inclusive research environments outside the shadow of corporate influence are essential steps in providing the space to address these urgent concerns.”