The Town That Turned Poverty Into a Prison Sentence
Most states shut down their debtors’ prisons more than 100 years ago; in 2005, Harpersville, Alabama, opened one back up.
Hasnain says:
"It was a system of extraction and coercion so flagrant that Alabama Circuit Court Judge Hub Harrington likened it to a modern-day “debtors’ prison.” In a July 2012 ruling in a civil action brought on behalf of Debra Ford and three others, Harrington wrote: “The court notes that [debtors’ prisons] generally fell into disfavor by the early 1800s, though the practice appears to have remained commonplace in Harpersville. From a fair reading of the defendants’ testimony one might ascertain that a more apt description of the Harpersville Municipal Court practices is that of a judicially sanctioned extortion racket…. Disgraceful.”
Then he seized control of the Harpersville Municipal Court."
Posted on 2014-03-31T17:57:02+0000
Ill-Considered Choices: Coffee and its Effects on Feature Creep
It's only feature creep if there isn't the time to implement (and doesn't mess with a clean interface). Otherwise, it's innovation of neat things (provided there is a customer request). :)
Hasnain says:
"And that's how I set out to simplify ordering Starbucks and created an internal banking system. "
Posted on 2014-03-31T17:51:01+0000
xg - skin
alteredqualia.com
The Surprisingly Large Cost of Telling Small Lies
A university study about lying did not investigate the number of lies told by entrepreneurs looking for investment capital, but I fear we would top the chart.
Hasnain says:
"It was obvious why our team wasn’t working: People didn’t trust each other. The result was a culture of obfuscation and backstabbing in which we achieved less than we were capable of achieving. Staff members and volunteers became disheartened and eventually left. The leader’s constant lies, no matter how insignificant they seemed to him, had caused a breakdown of integrity and trust in the organization, and without integrity and trust nothing worked."
Posted on 2014-03-31T17:02:40+0000
Hello World Open 2014
Hello World Open 2014, the first ever Coding World Championships, aims to bring together the toughest coders in the world. It is organized by two Finnish tech companies, Reaktor and Supercell.
Hasnain says:
This is a really interesting challenge for those looking to exercise their programming chops.
Posted on 2014-03-31T16:59:12+0000
You Got Your Web Browser in my Compiler!
I recently discovered that Microsoft’s VC++ compiler loads mshtml.dll – also known as Internet Explorer. The compiler does this whenever the /analyze option (requesting static code analysis) is use...
Darts, Dice, and Coins
Earlier this year, I asked a question on Stack Overflow about a data structure for loaded dice. Specifically, I was interested in answering this question:
Hasnain says:
"This writeup is my attempt to give a quick survey of various approaches for simulating a loaded die, ranging from simple techniques that are highly impractical to the very optimized and efficient alias method. My hope here is to capture different intuitions about the problem and how each highlights some new aspect of simulating loaded dice. For each approach, my goal is to explore the motivating idea, core algorithm, correctness proof, and runtime analysis (in terms of time, memory, and randomness required)."
This is a really interesting look into stats and randomness.
Posted on 2014-03-28T21:43:45+0000
Introducing Michael Abrash, Oculus Chief Scientist
The Path to the Metaverse I'm tremendously excited to join Oculus, and when I think back, it's astonishing how unlikely the path to this moment is. I've told most of the parts of this story before, but never all together, and the narrative, now spanning twenty years, just keeps getting more remarkab...
Hasnain says:
Abrash and Carmack working together again. This is huge.
Posted on 2014-03-28T20:51:40+0000
Under the Hood: warp, a fast C and C++ preprocessor
Meet the engineers who code Facebook
Hasnain says:
This is a really good blog post on speeding up the C/C++ preprocessor.
Posted on 2014-03-28T20:43:43+0000
This Little-Known iOS Feature Will Change the Way We Connect | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
A new iOS app called FireChat is blowing up in the App Store. But it's not the app itself that's causing such a stir; it's the underlying networking technology it taps into.
Hasnain says:
Sensationalist headline aside, it's cool that iOS supports mesh networking. I did not know this.
Posted on 2014-03-28T17:24:47+0000