Hasnain says:

How is this not bribery? Sigh.

“On a commercial flight back from Awakening, Thomas brought up the prospect of justices resigning to Stearns, the Republican lawmaker. Worried, Stearns wrote a letter to Thomas after the flight promising “to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of The Supreme Court.”

“As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted,” Stearns wrote. “We must have the proper incentives here, too.””

Hasnain says:

“I have spoken to many people in tech who are afraid that if they speak up, they’ll be unable to raise their next round, and lose 5-10 years of work on their venture, for their families and for their employees.

We must break the silence around the genocide in Gaza. I know this is a big ask. I know there are significant risks involved, and that's not your fault. But all the same, we cannot continue to be complicit in this genocide.”

Hasnain says:

“All of which is to say that something profound is happening in the world — a kind of metaphysical detachment of the west from the rest.

Where many people in the rest of the world once saw the west as the answer to their problems, they now realise that they will have to find their own way. But does this mean a total decoupling of the west and the rest is inevitable? Absolutely not. We still live in an interdependent world which faces many pressing common global challenges.

We have to talk to each other. But we must do so as equals. The condescension must end. The time has come for a dialogue based on mutual respect between the west and the rest.”

Hasnain says:

“Although Epic didn’t sue for damages, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney suggested Epic stood to make hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars if it doesn’t have to pay Google’s fee.”

Hasnain says:

“Update: In a social media post made after this article was published, Google DeepMind’s VP of Research Oriol Vinyals showed a bit more of how “Gemini was used to create” the video. “The video illustrates what the multimodal user experiences built with Gemini could look like. We made it to inspire developers.” (Emphasis mine.) Interestingly, it shows a pre-prompting sequence that lets Gemini answer the planets question without the sun hinting (though it does tell Gemini it’s an expert on planets and to consider the sequence of objects pictured).”

Hasnain says:

““Where are they supposed to go?” is indeed the question. The answer, clearly, is anywhere but Gaza. It would benefit the US media to start using this framework. Israel is forcibly transferring 2.2 million Gazans, in whole or in part, to either tiny tent cities, other countries, or both. There is little evidence of any campaign to go after those responsible for October 7 in any limited or targeted way. Indeed, Hamas, according to The Washington Post, remains “largely intact” after 15,000 Palestinians have been killed. We have mounds of evidence, increasing by the day, of a policy of collective punishment and collective guilt. Those calling the shots in US media should start updating their framing of this conflict accordingly. Israeli officials have hardly pretended otherwise.”

Hasnain says:

My heart broke when I saw the video a few days ago. Now that there’s been additional verification and information reported, it’s breaking again. I have no words for this.

[trigger warning: this story goes into some gruesome detail]

“He remains haunted by the event. He believes he needs psychiatric treatment.

Of what, he asks, were the babies guilty?

“Were they fighters?” he asked. “Were they holding weapons? Were they firing rockets?

“Why does the army hit the oxygen and electricity? Why did the army target them?””

Hasnain says:

From one of the Palestinian students shot in Vermont the other day. So heartbreaking.

“This is not about Hisham Awartani though. It was never about me. On November 15 I joined my fellow Brown students to write the names of thousands of Palestinians killed in the war on Gaza. They gave us a document issued by the Gaza Health Ministry, and out of curiosity the first thing I did was look up my name. There were 30 results. 13 people named Hisham and 17 with Hisham as a middle name. I didn’t know how to feel. My name was not a common one. The list was incomplete and only included around 6,500 names, while an estimated 11,000 had been killed by Israel or according to American media, “had died.” Had I been one of those Hishams in Gaza my picture would not have been on the BBC or CNN. Instead of being interviewed, my mother would be fleeing south or already killed, trapped under the rubble with me.

I am the Hisham you know. I lived. My story is being told. The 13 other Hishams were killed, their stories forever erased. They were human and they did not have to prove that to anyone. They knew no respite, no justice, no peace. “

Hasnain says:

We have the EA doomers trying to fight an imaginary genAI and ban GPUs while ignoring real harms from AI - from mass scams to murder bots. Sigh.

“According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.””

Hasnain says:

Most honest headline I’ve seen today.

“The infamy of Nixon's foreign-policy architect sits, eternally, beside that of history's worst mass murderers. A deeper shame attaches to the country that celebrates him”