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Mexican woman dies at age 117 just hours after receiving birth certificate

Trinidad Alvarez Lira had been waiting for years to obtain proof that she had been born in 1898 so she could claim government old age benefits

Click to view the original at www.theguardian.com

Hasnain says:

She died without getting a single check from the government because she couldn't prove she was old enough.

Now why anyone didn't just look at her and agree that she's over 60 is beyond me...

Posted on 2016-07-01T11:27:10+0000

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The dying breed of craftsmen behind the tools that make scientific research possible

Hunkered down in the sub-basement of the Norman W. Church Laboratory for Chemical Biology, underneath a campus humming with quantum teleportation devices, gravity wave detectors and neural prosthetics, Rick Gerhart chipped away at a broken flask.

Click to view the original at latimes.com

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Remarks at the SASE Panel On The Moral Economy of Tech

This is the text version of remarks I gave on June 26, 2016, at a panel on the Moral Economy of Tech at the SASE conference in Berkeley. The other panel participants were Kieran Healy, Stuart Russell and AnnaLee Saxenian.

Click to view the original at idlewords.com

Hasnain says:

"We should not listen to people who promise to make Mars safe for human habitation, until we have seen them make Oakland safe for human habitation. We should be skeptical of promises to revolutionize transportation from people who can't fix BART, or have never taken BART. And if Google offers to make us immortal, we should check first to make sure we'll have someplace to live."

Posted on 2016-06-30T02:25:24+0000

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Prime Real Estate: Amazon Has Swallowed Downtown Seattle

Having colonized the South Lake Union neighborhood, Seattle's largest private employer is building three giant spheres filled with trees—the better to connect employees with nature.

Click to view the original at bloomberg.com

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Today’s Renters Really Are Worse Off Than Their Parents

Sharp increases in rents along with stagnant incomes over the past five years have helped create a dire situation for many of the country's renters. A new report shows how those trends have actually been playing out for more than five decades.

Click to view the original at blogs.wsj.com

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Exercise Releases Brain-Healthy Protein

We all know that exercise is important for a strong and healthy body. Less appreciated is that exercise seems also to be important for a strong and healthy mind, boosting memory and learning, while…

Click to view the original at directorsblog.nih.gov

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Why Google Stores Billions of Lines of Code in a Single Repository

Google's monolithic repository provides a common source of truth for tens of thousands of developers around the world.

Click to view the original at m.cacm.acm.org

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When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

Since the 2008 financial crisis, private equity firms have increasingly taken over public services like emergency care and firefighting, often with dire effects.

Click to view the original at mobile.nytimes.com

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If There’s Only One Woman in Your Candidate Pool, There’s Statistically No Chance She’ll Be Hired

But if there are two, her odds go way up.

Click to view the original at hbr.org

Hasnain says:

" But the data does support one idea: When it is apparent that an individual is female or nonwhite, they are rated worse than when their sex or race is obscured."

Posted on 2016-06-26T11:21:30+0000

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