Hasnain says:

““Some of the most infamous cyber events in history – the Morris worm of 1988, the Slammer worm of 2003, the Heartbleed vulnerability in 2014, the Trident exploit of 2016, the Blastpass exploit of 2023 – were headline-grabbing cyberattacks that caused real-world damage to the systems that society relies on every day. Underlying all of them is a common root cause: memory safety vulnerabilities. For thirty-five years, memory safety vulnerabilities have plagued the digital ecosystem, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” says Anjana Rajan, Assistant National Cyber Director for Technology Security. “This report was created for engineers by engineers because we know they can make the architecture and design decisions about the building blocks they consume – and this will have a tremendous effect on our ability to reduce the threat surface, protect the digital ecosystem and ultimately, the Nation.””

Hasnain says:

I had heard of some of the anecdotes behind this but never the actual principle. This is interesting.

“When deciding how and whether to use your understanding of the Shirky principle in practice, it can help to assess relevant factors pertaining to your situation, such as what’s causing someone to act in accordance with this principle, and what outcomes their behavior leads to. For example, you will likely respond differently to a government agency that’s perpetuating a problem due to inefficient bureaucracy, than to a private company that’s perpetuating a problem out of greed, or to an individual who’s acting out of desperate self-preservation.”

Hasnain says:

The number of acronyms is way too high.

“That's why I'm proposing a new acronym to go along with DINKs, DINKWADS (DINKS With A Dog), and HENRYs (High Income, Not Rich Yet”

Hasnain says:

“Not to toot my own horn, but I am very good at making things uglier.

To work with my natural skillset, I focused on aesthetic downgrades over aesthetic upgrades. I call this “frugly pricing”, AKA “cosmetic crippleware“.”

Hasnain says:

“The motion, moved by the Civic Engagement Group Senators Frances Black, Lynne Ruane, Alice Mary Higgins and Eileen Flynn, is comprehensive and calls on the Irish government to, among other things: impose sanctions on Israel; enact the Occupied Territories Bill and the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill; to actively ensure no US weapons are being sent to Israel through Irish airspace; and to push for an international arms embargo on Israel. It can be read in full here.”

Hasnain says:

The reason I’m sharing this one and not the other dozen media reports is that this is the only one so far which is repeating his reasoning for doing so. It was shameful how one previously reputable outlet even said “it is unclear what motivated this action” - he clearly said it!

Also still waiting for even one outlet to acknowledge this is the second time in recent months that someone in the US has self immolated in protest at Israel’s actions - the first was mostly just ignored.

“Onlookers described the man, dressed in military fatigues, walked in front of the embassy's gates and announced his armed forces affiliation before saying he "could no longer be complicit in genocide" and "Free Palestine" before setting himself ablaze.”

Hasnain says:

“Look, I get that Trump is the easier target. He’s the perfect poster boy for the misogyny and filth that animate conservative rulings against reproductive rights. And I get that in our low-information, attention-deficient, celebrity-obsessed society, pretending that a president can single-handedly “restore Roe” is perhaps a necessary fiction. But abortion rights and access to lifesaving reproductive care will never again be allowed in the United States as long as conservative justices are allowed to control the Supreme Court.

And conservative justices will control the court, for the rest of my life and yours, as long as the Democrats refuse to commit to a platform of court expansion. There are simply no other options. The electoral binary is not “Biden” or “Trump”; it’s “expand the court” or “let pregnant people die.””

Hasnain says:

“The FTC said Avast collected customers’ online browsing habits for years, including their web searches and which websites they visited, using Avast’s own browser extensions, which the antivirus giant claimed would “shield your privacy” by blocking online tracking cookies.

But the FTC alleged that Avast sold consumers’ browsing data through its now-shuttered subsidiary, Jumpshot, to more than a hundred other companies, making Avast tens of millions of dollars in revenue.”

Hasnain says:

Kinda crazy to own so much to be called out here alongside big company investors

“Reddit has raised about $1.3 billion in funding and has a post valuation of $10 billion, according to deal-tracking service PitchBook. Publishing giant Condé Nast bought Reddit in 2006. Reddit spun out of Conde Nast’s parent company, Advance Magazine Publishers, in 2011.

Advance now owns 34% of voting power. Other notable shareholders include Tencent and Sam Altman, CEO of startup OpenAI.”

Hasnain says:

“These questions and issues don’t just matter in the current moment (though this is when they matter the most), but also for the legacy of Canadian journalism — for how the public here and abroad, scholars, legal figures, government officials, and future journalists look back at what the Canadian media did during what there is a chance may be ruled a genocide.

History is not going to look fondly on Canadian media. The mass slaughter should have prompted change far before it was ruled that it may plausibly be genocide. But with the ruling, there’s even less of an excuse. Unfortunately, it seems too many journalists are content to wait around for what may be a years-long ICJ trial to conclude. And when that happens, and Israel is perhaps found guilty of genocide, they will have acted like they were always against it and did what they could. “