Hasnain says:

Glad the more mainstream media is waking up here. But it is too little too late, and I half wonder if it’s not for reputation laundering so folks can say “we were always against this.”

Now if only world leaders would listen.

“Words matter because they determine action. When we avoid naming a genocide for what it is, we become complicit in allowing it to continue. Terms like “humanitarian crisis” or even “war crimes” can function as euphemisms that fall short of triggering the moral and legal imperatives that genocide demands. The power of naming isn’t some academic exercise; it’s practical. It determines whether the international community mobilizes to stop atrocities or simply manages their aftermath.
There was a time when I would have cautioned against using a word like “genocide” too freely, worried about diluting its meaning. But we are well past that now. Shielding people from uncomfortable truths is self-defeating. Words have meaning, and they should be used when they describe reality. Otherwise, we’re in denial, and atrocities at this scale shouldn’t be denied.
Israel’s brutalization of the Palestinian population in Gaza has gone on too long. These are unspeakable — and, more important, indefensible — crimes. We cannot be complicit in minimizing them or pretending that they are not happening. Because they are. Enough.”

Hasnain says:

“So much of life and work is drudgery such that when you see something positive, someone taking initiative, someone with talent or potential doing something with their skills, how can you not feel an overwhelming urge to cheer them on and hope to see more of it? Hope to see it develop?

What's more, I want to be around people who are trying new things and improving themselves. I want to be around people who celebrate. So I in turn try new things and work to improve myself and I celebrate the people around me.

This energy is infectious. And I genuinely think even a single person in a group celebrating publicly changes the group dynamic.”

Hasnain says:

“Harper Reed, another longtime programmer and blogger who was the chief technology officer of former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, agreed that career advancement for engineers could be an issue in an A.I. world. But he cautioned against being overly precious about the value of deeply understanding one’s code, which is no longer necessary to ensure that it works.”

Hasnain says:

This resonated a lot with me and is also why I don’t use AI for writing. I think, therefore I am. Can’t give that up.

“Rule of thumb: use AI on repetitive tasks or where the answer is absolute. If you’re thinking hard in the realm of ambiguity and human behavior, that’s learning how to manage, and you can’t afford to offload it.”

Hasnain says:

“All a developer has to do is realize what made old games last forever; and maybe he’ll end up the next Notch. After all, Minecraft wasn’t an AAA game, it was literally the biggest indie success story of all time. If Minecraft didn’t have its extensive mod community or player-hosted servers, it probably would have never been successful.

The problem is; with few exceptions (Nintendo, Bethesda, etc.) the mainstream video game industry does not want to make games that last. They only want to make mere slop with an expiration date to sell as many copies as possible before it piles up at GameStop for $3 a copy. They don’t care, because they assume you’ll be plopping down an $80 preorder to get next year’s game.”

Hasnain says:

“But while we can't safely conclude that beautiful writing is true, it's usually safe to conclude the converse: something that seems clumsily written will usually have gotten the ideas wrong too.

Indeed, the two senses of good writing are more like two ends of the same thing. The connection between them is not a rigid one; the goodness of good writing is not a rod but a rope, with multiple overlapping connections running through it. But it's hard to move one end without moving the other. It's hard to be right without sounding right.”

Hasnain says:

Sage advice. It’s the best way to learn.

“I observed you can move very quickly by running little experiments. Especially in software engineering, building small prototypes is cheap and quick. Solve your own problem, start small, keep it simple, iterate.

So, with all of the above, here’s my advice:

Reinvent for insight. Reuse for impact.”

Hasnain says:

So many really good quotes in here. Picking 2:

"The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college—it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've been trained to believe something that’s not true: that all of life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want, but really today is the last stop.

This fact is so terrifying that a lot of people try to remain in denial about it. (I certainly did.) But it's also exciting. You can go in any direction now."

"Now I have some good news: I'm almost done. I hate long speeches and I bet you do too. And frankly, if you can remember what I've told you so far, that will be enough. So let me remind you what I've told you: you've been able to go through life so far without steering much. If you want to, you can become more ambitious now, but to do that you have to start steering. You can't just drift. There’re a huge number of options, and you have to actively figure out which is the best for you. And the best way to do that is people. Find the interesting people. "

Hasnain says:

I wanted to quote the whole thing. Horrifying.

“It is too late for real justice in Gaza now. We can never bring back the dead children. We can’t erase what has happened. But it is not too late for accountability. The atrocities must be documented. The dead in Gaza must be properly counted so we know how many people have been murdered. The media must stop parroting the official death figure of more than 55,000 people being dead without putting this into context and noting that when you account for indirect deaths from starvation, disease, or cold, the real number of deaths is probably enormously higher.

If you have stayed quiet until now, telling yourself that all this is just far too complicated for you to speak up about, it is not too late to raise your voice. What is happening in Gaza is different from the horrors happening in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo because, if you are in the west, it is happening in your name. It is happening with your tax money and with the help of your leaders. If you are in the US, your elected representatives have delivered a standing ovation for this genocide. We are all complicit. Although some of us are far more complicit than others.

So, again, think about what you want to say to future generations when they ask what you did at this very moment. Silence is not neutrality. And your silence will not be forgotten. As Martin Luther King Jr said: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.””

Hasnain says:

I’ve always seen eg those articles on Buzzfeed and elsewhere that are basically of the form “someone posted X on the internet, and others responded Y and Z”

Did not realize there was a tech equivalent and that I’d get quoted for a random LinkedIn comment posted at midnight

… I do wish they had posted the (imo) more interesting parts of my comment though.

“Databricks software engineer Hasnain Lakhani wondered what he’d do when people simply lied about whether they’d used AI. (“Seems like an arms race,” he suggested, with projects needing tools to screen for AI.)”