Saudis’ Image Makers: A Troll Army and a Twitter Insider
The kingdom silences dissent online by sending operatives to swarm critics. It also recruited a Twitter employee suspected of spying on users, interviews show.
Hasnain says:
"Twitter executives first became aware of a possible plot to infiltrate user accounts at the end of 2015, when Western intelligence officials told them that the Saudis were grooming an employee, Ali Alzabarah, to spy on the accounts of dissidents and others, according to five people briefed on the matter. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly."
Posted on 2018-10-20T17:13:35+0000
Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Affirmative Action Trial
A lawsuit accusing one of the country’s most selective universities of discriminating against Asian-Americans is providing a glimpse into how admissions officers decide “yea” or “nay.”
Hasnain says:
Having to air out their secret sauce in public seems ... painful, but likely for the greater good here?
Posted on 2018-10-20T07:12:56+0000
I woke up unable to speak English
Hannah Jenkins survived a cycling accident - but woke up no longer being able to understand English.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-10-20T07:12:09+0000
Japan's Hometown Tax | Kalzumeus Software
Japan's Hometown Tax October 19, 2018 in japan This is outside of my normal software-focused beat, but I met some folks who were very interested in public policy recently. I found, to my surprise, that I probably understand one innovative Japanese tax policy better than very well-informed people who...
Hasnain says:
This was a fascinating tale of economic incentives, game theory, and tax system loopholes
Posted on 2018-10-20T06:48:27+0000
Gmail Creator and YC Partner Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer and Happiness
Paul Buchheit is an engineer and partner at Y Combinator. He was the 23rd employee at Google, where he built Gmail and the first prototype for Adsense. After leaving Google he co-founded Friendfeed, which was acquired by Facebook. Triplebyte co-founder and CEO, Harj Taggar, sat down with Paul to tal...
Graduate Student Solves Quantum Verification Problem | Quanta Magazine
Urmila Mahadev spent eight years in graduate school solving one of the most basic questions in quantum computation: How do you know whether a quantum computer
Hasnain says:
“Mahadev could have graduated on the strength of these results, but she was determined to keep working until she had solved the verification problem. “I was never thinking of graduation, because my goal was never graduation,” she said.”
Posted on 2018-10-15T05:17:13+0000
This Is The Real Reason We Haven’t Directly Detected Dark Matter
Finding the particle we assume is responsible for dark matter has always been a guessing game. We guessed wrong.
Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public
Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network, though it didn’t find evidence of misuse. The company opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny.
Hasnain says:
What a few week(s). Google+ is apparently shutting down as a result
Posted on 2018-10-08T17:28:27+0000
Key climate report urges deep rapid change
A new study urges rapid and fundamental changes "in all aspects of society" to limit climate warming.
Hasnain says:
“Scientists might want to write in capital letters, 'ACT NOW IDIOTS', but they need to say that with facts and numbers," said Kaisa Kosonen, from Greenpeace, who was an observer at the negotiations. "And they have."
The researchers have used these facts and numbers to paint a picture of the world with a dangerous fever, caused by humans. We used to think if we could keep warming below 2 degrees this century then the changes we would experience would be manageable.”
Writing system software: code comments. - <antirez>
antirez 22 hours ago. 32798 views. For quite some time I’ve wanted to record a new video talking about code comments for my "writing system software" series on YouTube. However, after giving it some thought, I realized that the topic was better suited for a blog post, so here we are. In this post ...