Hasnain says:

The coronavirus vaccine, explained using analogies to computer security and programming. Very well written and worth a read.

“We are now reaping the benefits of fundamental scientific research performed in the past. The discoverers of this Ψ technique had to fight to get their work funded and then accepted. We should all be very grateful, and I am sure the Nobel prizes will arrive in due course.”

Hasnain says:

This seems to be a pretty messed up case of government incompetence with some (implicit) corruption. Sigh.

"They said the agency chief misled the public by asserting that as much as $200 million was missing from accounts intended to fund programs for the state’s blind, deaf and poor. At a hearing in August, Commission President Marybel Batjer said that Stebbins had discredited the CPUC."

...

"But an investigation by the Bay City News Foundation and ProPublica has found that Stebbins was right about the missing money."

Hasnain says:

“Karikó has been at the helm of BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine development. In 2013, she accepted an offer to become Senior Vice President at BioNTech after UPenn refused to reinstate her to the faculty position she had been demoted from in 1995. “They told me that they’d had a meeting and concluded that I was not of faculty quality,” she said. ”When I told them I was leaving, they laughed at me and said, ‘BioNTech doesn’t even have a website.’”

Now, BioNTech is a household name, following reports last month that the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine it has co-developed with Pfizer works with more than 95 per cent efficacy. Along with Moderna, it is set to supply billions of doses around the globe by the end of 2021.”

Hasnain says:

Interesting technical read.

“Today, Alki serves roughly 350 TB worth of user data (pre-replication and not counting indexes), at about 1/6 the cost of Edgestore per GB per year. This was made possible by leveraging the inexpensive storage costs of cold blob storage.”

Hasnain says:

So glad I already canceled the other day. Oof.

“Privately, Barbaro repeatedly pressed at least four journalists Friday to temper their critiques of The Times and how they framed what happened. I know, because I was one of them.

So was NPR host and former Middle East correspondent Lulu Garcia-Navarro, whom he admonished to demonstrate restraint and warned was hurting the feelings of people at the newspaper.

Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple also received multiple direct messages from Barbaro, especially about his use of the word "retract" on Twitter to describe what happened.”

Hasnain says:

Pretty sage advice here that summarizes a lot of the usual advice I give out.

"Reviews drastically improve when both participants trust each other. Your reviewer puts in more effort when they can count on you to take their feedback seriously. Viewing your reviewer as an obstacle you have to overcome limits the value they offer you."

Hasnain says:

This is insane

“Police responded to reports of gunshots around 5:30 a.m., and encountered what they believed was a suspicious vehicle, according to Don Aaron, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. Officers called in a hazardous devices unit, or bomb squad, which was en route when the vehicle exploded. They had also been knocking on the doors of nearby apartments on Second Avenue to evacuate residents before the explosion.”

Hasnain says:

Uh...

“The chairman of China’s Yoozoo Group Lin Qi, an executive producer on Netflix’s upcoming high-profile sci-fi adaption “The Three-Body Problem,” is currently hospitalized in Shanghai after what a police report indicated Wednesday may be a deliberate poisoning carried out by a colleague involved in managing that IP.”

Hasnain says:

“The Google paper for which authors were told to strike a positive tone discusses recommendation AI, which services like YouTube employ to personalize users' content feeds. A draft reviewed by Reuters included "concerns" that this technology can promote "disinformation, discriminatory or otherwise unfair results" and "insufficient diversity of content," as well as lead to "political polarization."

The final publication instead says the systems can promote "accurate information, fairness, and diversity of content." The published version, entitled "What are you optimizing for? Aligning Recommender Systems with Human Values," omitted credit to Google researchers. Reuters could not determine why.”

Hasnain says:

“If we have learned anything from COVID-19 it is that dealing with major societal challenges requires collective action. The U.S., with its tradition of "rugged individualism" and under meager federal leadership, is handling the pandemic quite poorly. But enabling collective action is exactly why we have established professional societies. They must lead the way.

It is a cliché that everyone wants change, but no one wants to change. Let us collectively agree to change. We deserve a publication system that meets the needs of science, of scientists, and of society.”