Hasnain says:

This was such a heart breaking and heart warming human interest story. If only the whole internet could be like this.

“Michael’s end was unjust and tragic, but the heroic kindness of a video game community filled his last week of life with unexpected happiness. On behalf of Michael and his family, I want to offer my eternal gratitude to everyone who contributed, from the players who stood ready to meet Michael online or took the time to send him an “o7” salute, to the Frontier staff and associates who gave so much of their time, compassion and creative energy. You make the world – and the internet – a better place.”

Hasnain says:

This is an interesting take into some mathematical and optical history, with a side view into a human interest story and contemporary lens pricing.

“After months of working on solving the problem, Rafael González recalls, “I remember one morning I was making myself a slice of bread with Nutella, when suddenly, I said out loud: Mothers! It is there!”

(Note: “Madres” is a Spanish word that means, of course, many moms. But in this context it is equivalent to the expression “Holy sh*t!” in English, or, to a lesser extent, “Eureka!” in Greek.)

He then ran to his computer and started programming the idea. When he executed the solution and saw that it worked, he says he jumped all over the place. It is unclear whether he finished eating the Nutella bread.”

Hasnain says:

The hype and excitement is real.

"We just want people to play Age of Empires and be involved with the series. If people want to stay on HD, and that’s what they want to play, we’re not going to take it off Steam, it’s still gonna be there. We’re not going to actively support it though – our support is going to shift to the new one. For us, we just want you playing our games. If you want to play it on Steam that’s fine. If you want to play it on the Microsoft store, that’s cool. If you want to play the old version, great"

Hasnain says:

This is a sad but much needed look at the state of HR and why it's been so ineffective at preventing sexual harassment in most (all?) companies in the US.

""If employers judged HR departments by their ability to prevent sexual harassment, most would have gotten a failing grade long ago. What HR is actually responsible for—one of the central ways the department “adds value” to a company—is serving as the first line of defense against a sexual-harassment lawsuit. ""

Hasnain says:

Human interest story on someone growing up, finally having some money to take a vacation, and how they felt being able to do that while their family never could.

Worth reading to recognize our privilege and how we're all so different.

"I’ve attained some privilege. I don’t punch a clock like my dad; I work in my pajamas some days and get paid to read, write, think, and teach. I can afford a cappuccino once in a while."

Hasnain says:

I don’t understand the need for non-competes for interns. Can someone please enlighten me?

““The idea of noncompetes for interns is ludicrous,” said Terri Gerstein, a Harvard University academic who previously served in the New York attorney general’s office. “Internships are supposed to be for educational and professional development, and are about expanding—not limiting—job opportunities.” She said it is unlikely intern noncompete agreements would be upheld in court in most states.”

Hasnain says:

Discusses classic security versus privacy tradeoffs in the context of the new recaptcha mechanism.

Oh and also usability! Since "legitimate" users often have to do less here.

"Google encouraging site admins to put reCaptcha all over their sites, and then sharing the resulting risk scores with those admins is great for security, Perona thinks, because he says it “gives site owners more control and visibility over what’s going on” with potential scammer and bot attacks, and the system will give admins more accurate scores than if reCaptcha is only using data from a single webpage to analyze user behavior. But there’s the trade-off. “It makes sense and makes it more user-friendly, but it also gives Google more data,” he says. Google would not clarify what it does with the data it captures about user behavior via reCaptcha, only that it is used for improving reCaptcha and general security purposes."

Hasnain says:

This was an ad / marketing piece for a company cleverly disguised as an article about AI. I'm usually against that stuff but if you skip the ad (at the end!) the author has made some good points about the AI hype, how we got there, and how we can fix it.

"In this way, Dynamic Yield is part of a generation of companies whose core technology, while extremely useful, is powered by artificial intelligence that is roughly as good as a 24-year-old analyst at Goldman Sachs with a big dataset and a few lines of Adderall. For the last few years, startups have shamelessly re-branded rudimentary machine-learning algorithms as the dawn of the singularity, aided by investors and analysts who have a vested interest in building up the hype. Welcome to the artificial intelligence bullshit-industrial complex."

Hasnain says:

Interesting read on the internet outage yesterday - full of technical details and a really accessible explanation of what happened. It also contains good explanations for preventative measures ISPs can take.

Also full of Cloudflare throwing *lots* of shade on Verizon. I'm impressed that this came out in ~8 hours, that legal signed off, and that Verizon haven't pushed back yet.

"IRR filtering would not have increased Verizon's costs or limited their service in any way. Again, the only explanation we can conceive of why it wasn't in place is sloppiness or laziness."

"All of the above suggestions are nicely condensed into MANRS (Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security)"

Hasnain says:

Really good checklist for filtering product ideas.

“I use this list both to develop ideas and filter them. If you adopt it, be careful about using it as a filter. Remember that in the early stages, good ideas are very easy to kill.”