Hasnain says:

Why do people agree to be interviewed by this guy?

“My question started with Israel intentionally denying aid to civilians, which I think is pretty obviously going on. And you responded in part by saying that Israelis were offended that anyone could believe that they’re trying to target civilians. Without getting into a dispute about every bombing and whether it’s a war crime or not, the government was trying to keep civilians from getting humanitarian aid. How do you wrestle with that? And do you understand why that fact may make people skeptical of other things the Israeli government or military says?

I do. I do. In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, there were voices here, serious voices, that were calling for a total siege of Gaza. Those voices had quickly faded after a couple of days, and they realized that it was untenable. And here I’m very grateful, frankly, to the Biden Administration, which has behaved like a real friend to Israel, both in supporting us and also in setting limits, in setting red lines. I’m grateful for both expressions of support.

Why does Israel need to be told to allow food to starving people if this war is being fought on the up-and-up?

Because October 7th was—

Hasnain says:

Finished a non fiction audio book for a change - this one was definitely fun. Need to find a new one to keep me occupied during the commutes. Lots of eye opening insights into forensics and toxicology as well as US history. This bit from the review stood out:

“Please note: this book is not actually helpful if you were looking for tips on how to poison someone (unless you are the U.S. government, in which case there are notes scattered throughout on how to poison industrial alcohols).”

Hasnain says:

Powerful moral clarity. I can only hope to be as morally righteous as TNC.

“And to the extent that I’ve been bothered by this conversation, it’s because it has gone into a kind of meta-conversation about CBS News, ethics, who is woke and who is not, and tough interviews. And that’s bullshit.

The topic is apartheid. Apartheid is the topic. And people who don’t want to talk about apartheid, because it’s uncomfortable, much like they did with the protests last year at colleges, try to turn this into a conversation about manners.

It is amazing to me that the debate is not: “Ta-Nehisi said Israel is perpetrating apartheid, and that is not true and here’s why.” Or “Ta-Nehisi said Israel is not a democracy. It is a democracy and here’s why.” Or “Ta-Nehisi said half the population that Israel rules are second-class citizens or worse. That is not true. Here’s why.” I didn’t even get challenged in that interview. And the reason why I’m not challenged is that these are facts. There is a mountain of citations to back up those conclusions.

People don’t want to straightforwardly say: “I am defending apartheid because … ” Or “I think the apartheid is appropriate because … ” Or “I think a dictatorship over a group of people that began, conservatively, more than 50 years ago is appropriate because … ” Instead, you get this conversation about manners, man.”

Hasnain says:

I love the verge. Especially when they call out hypocritical behavior (CEO of intuit dodging the question on whether they lobby against free filing)

“We don’t do that here at The Verge. As many of our listeners and readers know, we have a very explicit and very strict ethics policy. The most important thing to note is that we never allow anyone to preview or approve interview questions, and we certainly do not allow anyone to review or alter the work that we publish. I told this to Rick, and he came back and asked that we “delete that which takes away from the conversation,” which he defined as “raised voices” or us “speaking over each other,” so that “listeners understand your question and the answer Sasan gave.”

I have to be honest with you — that’s one of the weirdest requests I’ve ever gotten. So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to run that whole part of the interview first, unedited, so you can tell me. It’s about five minutes long, and you can decide for yourself. Then we’ll come out of it, and we’ll run the rest of the interview, which, like I said, is an otherwise fascinating episode of Decoder. Okay, here’s that bit:”

Hasnain says:

A must read. It was hard, triggering, and rage inducing to read this. But that is not even an iota of the pain the people in Gaza are suffering. I’m sparing the genocidal quotes and I’ll just leave with the conclusion of the piece:

“The destruction inflicted by the Israeli military not only wipes out the current livelihood of the Palestinian people—it also erases their entire future. As soldiers have shared on social media, their goal is not just demolishing buildings; it is to crush the dreams, hopes, and symbols of those who live there.

While many speak of the “day after,” what we see from these soldiers forces us to ask: What will be left of Gaza when that day comes?”

Hasnain says:

“This change from sorted linked lists to optionally-sorted vectors made Ion compilation of this Wasm module about 20 times faster, down to 14 seconds.”

Hasnain says:

“It became apparent to Hardy and his colleagues that Ramanujan could sense mathematical truths — could access entire worlds — that others simply could not. (Hardy, a mathematical giant in his own right, is said to have quipped that his greatest contribution to mathematics was the discovery of Ramanujan.) Before Ramanujan died in 1920 at the age of 32, he came up with thousands of elegant and surprising results, often without proof. He was fond of saying that his equations had been bestowed on him by the gods.
More than 100 years later, mathematicians are still trying to catch up to Ramanujan’s divine genius, as his visions appear again and again in disparate corners of the world of mathematics.”

Hasnain says:

“My prediction is that we’re in the beginning of an era in which critical properties like security, compliance, availability, durability, and safety can be proved automatically for large-scale cloud architectures. From preventing potential issues with AI hallucinations to analyzing hypervisors, cryptography, and distributed systems, having sound mathematical reasoning at our foundations and continuously analyzing what we build sets Amazon apart.”

Hasnain says:

This was a fun little hack.

“So the trick here is that the Python dependency resolver (now lightning fast thanks to uv) reads those dependencies and rules out every package version that represents a number in an invalid position. The resulting version numbers represent the cell numbers for the solution.”

Hasnain says:

Clear incitement to ethnic cleansing

“"We will encourage voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens. We will offer them the opportunity to move to other countries because that land belongs to us," Ben-Gvir added.

Sima Hasson, who represents the right wing group "The Mothers' Parade," addressed the crowd: "I'm going to say something that not everyone here is prepared to say, but I am, and I know a lot of you are: conquer, kick out, resettle."”