Hasnain says:

"The Kelly Rowland/Nelly song Dilemma features an infamous scene amongst nerds where Kelly Rowland tries to send a message to Nelly using a Nokia 9210 Communicator (like this one that I just happen to have to hand)"

Hasnain says:

Great read on ideation and how inspiration for work comes about.

"We could view my investigations of Cookie Clicker’s mechanisms as ‘basic research’, i.e., research without an immediate application in mind. There is evidence that basic research in the sciences leads to productivity increases in manufacturing. Eloquent arguments have been made that forgoing basic research is costly, that “when academic research starts demonstrating industry relevance is when funding should be cut off, not augmented.”

Or, taking it down a peg, we could simply label what I was doing as gathering ‘useless knowledge’, which like basic research does not have an immediate application in mind, and additionally does not even seek to answer questions considered useful in some way. Here again, mine would not be the first story lending credence to the idea that useless knowledge is, ultimately, useful!

But perhaps the simplest way to view this episode was as a playful, recreational activity which through sheer dumb luck gave me the skills needed to solve an important problem in my work life. My colleague Titus Barik analysed how programmers talk about programming as play, involving ‘spontaneous and creative expression’, ‘experimentation’, and ‘purposeless, ludic activity’. He found that many programmers reflect on episodes of playful programming as joyful experiences that catalysed learning."

Hasnain says:

“In abstract terms, many Google-likes and Apple-likes and Amazon-likes are possible. i.e. if you hard-stopped one of those, odds are you can re-create things that behave like those. You are guaranteed to never get back exactly Google, or Apple, or Aamzon. But you can ground-up create verisimilar entities. They've happened, in fact (Yahoo, Nokia, Baidu, Yandex, Alibaba, Samsung, etc.)”

Hasnain says:

Read this in the morning while having breakfast and it's chock full of solid advice on running a company, hiring, selling, and the economy. Well worth a read!

"Planting the seed creates luck: writing or similar activities can help. Jean blogged both at MIT – where this blog helped new grads get into the school, and thus grow her network – as well as Akita – where her blog was how Postman’s CEO connected with Jean.

There is a good question of whether Akita would have sold to Postman had it not been for some of these side activities – like writing online – that helped create luck.

It takes hard work to make the most of your privilege and luck. Jean emphasized how she does not think much of her story is replicable for everybody, thanks to a lot of privilege she had as well as the luck in this story. But it still took a lot of hard work to make the most out of this situation, and a lot of grinding that followed.

You can also speed up building your network by doing more, or with more “grinding.” Yes, Jean had the privilege of going to MIT. However, it was her hard work and involvement with the community that built up a reputation, so that years later her former classmates would be enthusiastic to recommend her to their network.

Whatever group you are currently in – at work, at a professional organization, or at school – your actions and connections with others can help shape your reputation, and thus help build your network within that group."

Hasnain says:

“Two years ago, Braxton says he was the only volunteer firefighter in his department to respond to a tree fire near a Black person’s home in the town of 275 people. As Braxton, 57, actively worked to put out the fire, he says, one of his white colleagues tried to take the keys to his fire truck to keep him from using it.

In another incident, Braxton, who was off duty at the time, overheard an emergency dispatch call for a Black woman experiencing a heart attack. He drove to the fire station to retrieve the automated external defibrillator, or AED machine, but the locks were changed, so he couldn’t get into the facility.”

Hasnain says:

This data actually surprised me. Wow. I thought this was only a widely held opinion within my bubble and I’m glad to be proven wrong.

“Polls this year have shown that the gap between the American public and those elected to represent them is widening when it comes to U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly among Democrats. This year, for the first time, an annual Gallup survey found that Democrats’ sympathies lie more with Palestinians than Israelis by a margin of 49% to 38%. The survey found that sympathy toward Palestinians among U.S. adults is at a new high of 31%, while the proportion not favoring either side is at a new low of 15%. That’s a remarkable shift from only a decade ago, when sympathy toward Palestinians stood at just 12%. During that same period, sympathy toward Israelis has declined from 64% to 54%.”

Hasnain says:

I know this is also a thinly veiled press release but this gives black mirror vibes

“Saatchi acknowledged the release of this technology raises disturbing questions in the middle of the strikes by Hollywood writers and actors, and Saatchi said the threat of AI is real for Hollywood, and that writers need to gain clear assurances on the use of AI by Hollywood. In a disclaimer on the South Park episode, Fable noted that the celebrity voices are “generated poorly” and it’s for “research purposes only.””

Hasnain says:

This journalist is going places - very well deserved for his great reporting while still in college. (And yes he’s won awards already. Can’t wait to see what else comes out).

“Retracting a paper is a rare act, especially for a scientist of Tessier-Lavigne’s stature. A database of retractions shows that only four in every 10,000 papers are retracted. The move is saved for when there is “clear evidence that the findings are unreliable,” according to guidelines from the nonprofit Committee on Publication Ethics. Tessier-Lavigne had claimed repeatedly last autumn that the issues in his studies “do not affect the data, results or interpretation of the papers.”

For several papers worthy of retraction to have been principally authored by the same scientist represents “unusual frequency of manipulation of research data and/or substandard scientific practices,” the investigation concluded. Tessier-Lavigne is expected to retract or issue robust corrections to at least five papers in response to concerns he had not addressed for years, including a widely publicized study that he once claimed “turn[s] our current understanding of Alzheimer’s on its head.””

Hasnain says:

Yikes

“With the immediate threat thought to be over, Microsoft now faces scrutiny for its handling of the incident, thought to be the biggest breach of unclassified government data since the Russian espionage campaign that hacked SolarWinds in 2020.

As noted by Ars Technica’s Dan Goodin, Microsoft went to great lengths to do damage control in its blog post, avoiding terms like “zero-day,” referring to when a software maker has zero days notice to fix a vulnerability that has already been exploited. Whether or not the bug or its exploitation fits everyone’s definition of a zero-day, Microsoft went out of its way to avoid describing it as such, or even to call it a vulnerability.”

Hasnain says:

Come for the cool technical writeup, stay for the master class in how to be terrible at PR and treating a bug bounty report.

“Overall, this entire situation is very damaging to your reputation.

How would your users feel if they realise that actual real issues in your own product is met with abuse and ignorance? - you should know better, Josh, especially as you are the CEO of an Anticheat company - which requires the trust of your users to exist!”