Faisal’s Web Site
Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Still booting after all these years: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers
Thomas Germain, BBC: “(Microsoft declined to comment for this article.)”
Thursday, 15 May 2025
Approximation
Mike Hoye: “… carefully curated training data will be a key differentiator, operationally the proverbial moat. Librarians are way, way more important than anyone realizes, and a great dataset librarian will be the bedrock under every great engineering organization.”
Sunday, 11 May 2025
USENIX ATC ANNOUNCEMENT
USENIX: “And in the spirit of our ever-evolving community, field, and industry, we announce the bittersweet conclusion of our longest-running event, the USENIX Annual Technical Conference in July 2025, following USENIX ATC ‘25.”
Tuesday, 22 April 2025
MAHA and “soft eugenics” revisited: The “autism tsunami,” Dr. Oz, and your “patriotic duty” to stay healthy
David Gorski, Science-Based Medicine: “If a condition is underdiagnosed, for example, its observed prevalence could easily increase with increased awareness, better screening, and decreased stigma in the case of conditions for which there was formerly a stigma.”
Monday, 21 April 2025
REPOST: Hacking The Papal Election
April 14, 2005 – Bruce Schneier: “when an election process is left to develop over the course of a couple thousand years, you end up with something surprisingly good.”
Saturday, 19 April 2025
April 18, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson: “What Newman and Pulling did was simply to honor their friendships and their principles and to do the next right thing, even if it risked their lives, even if no one ever knew.”
Wednesday, 16 April 2025
We have no bros and no oligarchs
Ulrich Ladurner and Bernd Ulrich: “This and more are all values that must be defended, and which show that Europe is more than a union. Europe is our home.”
Saturday, 12 April 2025
This is called “capital flight”
Noah Smith: “ If the dollar weakens, America will be able to afford fewer imports, and U.S. exports will be cheaper. […] If we balance our trade by making ourselves poorer, that’s not a good thing.”
Also: Treasuries Suddenly Trade Like Risky Assets in Warning to Trump: “An auction of 30-year bonds on Thursday also saw investors snap up $22 billion of the debt, supporting the argument that Treasuries continue to be attractive even during the selloff.”
Thursday, 10 April 2025
Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being
Noah Castelo, Kostadin Kushlev, Adrian F Ward, Michael Esterman, Peter B Reiner: “Humans evolved in a world where information, entertainment, and social contact were relatively hard to come by”
Wednesday, 9 April 2025
Manufacturing is a war now
Noah Smith: “If it comes to pass, it will mean that China is basically free to start any conventional conflict it wants, without worrying that it will be ganged up on — because there will be no possible gang big enough to beat it. The only thing they’ll have to fear is nuclear weapons.”