Asim Ihsan

Introductory article to D which delta's it against C++, functional programming languages, etc. - Asim Ihsan

“Their lives were too human for science, too beautiful for numbers, too sad for diagnosis and too immortal for bound journals.” The Grant Study, started at Harvard University and championed for most of its duration by George Vaillant, is one of the longest running longitudinal psychological studies. Although, at many times, hard abstracted lessons have tried to be drawn, as the members of the study begin to die the philosophical, poetic depth of what Vaillant brings is a real constant. - Asim Ihsan

"Varian, of course, knows that his employer's success is not the result of inspired craziness but of an early recognition that the Internet rewards fanatical focus on scale, speed, data analysis, and customer satisfaction. (A bit of auction theory doesn't hurt, either.) Today we have a name for those rules: Googlenomics. Learn them, or pay the price." - Asim Ihsan

"A report by [Human Rights Watch] focused on the $27bn development of Saadiyat Island, claiming that thousands of south Asian labourers working on the project endured a “cycle of abuse that leaves migrant workers deeply indebted, badly paid and unable to stand up for their rights or even quit their jobs”." - Asim Ihsan

"In several studies, Dr. Colwell and Dr. Hiscock-Anisman have reported one consistent difference: People telling the truth tend to add 20 to 30 percent more external detail than do those who are lying. “This is how memory works, by association,” Dr. Hiscock-Anisman said. “If you’re telling the truth, this mental reinstatement of contexts triggers more and more external details.”" - Asim Ihsan

Finally clear, at least to me, what a unicode object in Python is. - Asim Ihsan

"I am now convinced that a leading cause of muscle soreness and slow-healing injuries is lack of vitamin D." - Asim Ihsan

I want to feel clean. - Asim Ihsan

"From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever." - Asim Ihsan

Self-study learning strategies for German. - Asim Ihsan

"I've been reading a bunch of papers about distributed systems recently, in order to help systematize for myself the thing that we built over the last year. Many of them were originally passed to me by Toby DiPasquale. Here is an annotated list so everyone can benefit." - Asim Ihsan

"I am suspicious, then, about those cultural diagnosticians who pretend to know the error of our ways. My sense is that thought is hard these days because thought is merely hard, is always brute work that bears late fruit. Or, as Emerson says it better, “the oracle comes, because we had previously laid siege to the shrine.” I write today in praise of the siege mentality." - Asim Ihsan

"GiantURL is a trademark of trentland. trentland and trentland-Energia are wholly owned subsidiaries of Hindustan Motors, Uttarpara, West Bengal." hahah. - Asim Ihsan

At 4AM this morning I received an email inviting me to an IRC chatroom where someone would explain to me exactly how the Time.com 100 Poll was precision hacked. Naturally, I was a bit suspicious. Anyone could claim to be responsible for the hack - but I ventured onto the IRC channel (feeling a bit like a Woodward or Bernstein meeting Deep Throat in a parking garage). After talking to ‘Zombocom’ (not his real nick) for a few minutes, it was clear that Zombocom was a key player in the hack. He explained how it all works. - Asim Ihsan

"I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. "How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets..." He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: "I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings." - Asim Ihsan

With the introduction of Adobe Flash Player 9,0,124,0, Flash Player will not make a socket connection directly to a server without first obtaining explicit permission from that server. This will require some systems and networks to open up ports or run new services in order to support granting permission. - Asim Ihsan