Hasnain says:

Days since last big breach: 0.

Important lesson here on ensuring the third parties you contract out to are also following security best practices.

“A US Customs and Border Protection subcontractor suffered a data breach that exposed the photos of tens of thousands of travelers coming in and out of the United States, the agency revealed Monday, in what it described as a "malicious cyber-attack."

The database of identifying traveler photos and license plate images had been transferred to a CBP subcontractor's network without the federal agency's authorization or knowledge, CBP explained. The subcontractor's network was then hacked, though CBP said its own systems had not been compromised.”

Hasnain says:

This was such a page turner - a human interest story that goes into American history, the prison system and a bit of slavery. Packaged with modern DNA testing.

"Hiram’s family secret was more dramatic than most. But DNA tests are unearthing all kinds of long-buried truths. Studies suggest that roughly 2% of people don’t know the true identity of their biological father — a “non-paternity event” in genealogy jargon."

Hasnain says:

Interesting foray into the psychology of social connectedness and how it differs across the genders.

I can relate to a decent chunk of it where the friendships that were made through gaming at least in my network seem to be deeper and more long lasting.

“What is clear is that video games aren’t just entertainment—they’re communication technologies. When Eddie Gill wants to “open a beer and sit down to play games and talk over the Xbox headset,” he’s not just sitting down to play Apex. He’s keeping his friendships alive.”

Hasnain says:

This covers prohibition and was a great read on unintended consequences. Come for the history, stay for overly righteous folks getting frustrated.

“For the libertines of New York City, Zacks writes, the second half of 1896 was “too good to be true, a drunken daydream.” The hotel carve-out allowed drinks to flow at all hours. There was no obligatory last call, and the city’s liveliest drinking spots now offered cheap beds mere steps away. For Raines and the law’s other architects, this was the most alarming unintended consequence: their efforts to make New Yorkers virtuous had caused a spike in casual sex and prostitution.”

Hasnain says:

This was a very interesting technical read on the design challenges behind a large scale distributed system. Covers an insane amount of consistency and scaling challenges.

“Perhaps an even more important issue here is that the engineers making this decision owned not just the file system but also the applications intended to run on the file system. According to Gobioff, "The thing is that we controlled both the horizontal and the vertical—the file system and the application. So we could be sure our applications would know what to expect from the file system. And we just decided to push some of the complexity out to the applications to let them deal with it."”

Hasnain says:

This is from 1999, but an engrossing tale about how food is actually made behind the scenes in kitchens. There's been a bunch of change since (or so I'd hope).

Oh and this is by Anthony Bourdain

"A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumors of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books."

Hasnain says:

Some pretty exciting research into AI, with code for learning how football games are also implemented!

Hasnain says:

So much truth in everything here. I agree about having to unlearn so many the things as one grows their skill set.

It’s also unavoidable at times though - you learn the core technical skills and focus on that, then have to unlearn the bad habits - which can only happen when you truly internalize the harm of them.

This quote is a gem: “Not all experience is created equal. My experience coding in my bedroom, working as a student, working in CS research, and working at a growing startup are all valuable kinds of experience. But they aren’t all the same. Early in your career, you can learn 10x more in a supportive team in 1 year, than coding on your own (or with minimal feedback) for 5 years. If your code is never reviewed by other developers, you will not learn as fast as you can – by an enormous factor.”

Hasnain says:

This was an interesting technical read on how WebAssembly is implemented and how you can use it closer to “bare metal”

Hasnain says:

Gates always has a solid set of recommendations