On Software Development, Technology and Public Policy, Personal Finance and everything else under the sun.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that I'll be giving up to 5% of my annual salary to Free and Open Source Software , and one of the projects that I'm donating to is the Python Software Foundation (PSF) . I joined PSF at the Supportimg Member - Sliding Scale tier at 25 USD membership dues + additional contribution of 25 USD per Annum - roughly 5000 INR. This was prompted by the recent decision by the…
Last week, I wrote that I'll be giving up to 5% of my annual salary to Free and Open Source Software , and one of the projects that I'm donating to is the TeX Users Group (TUG). I joined TUG at the "special individual membership" tier at 50 USD - roughly 5000 INR - per annum. The right thing to do now is to check what they're doing with my money or what they've done with funds/donations in the…
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has a sustainability problem. For those of you who are a part of the FOSS ecosystem, or are fairly familiar with it, Duh. But here's a short intro for the uninitiated - you are relying on Free and Open Source software when you read this blog post. Most commercial software applications are made up primarily of FOSS. Our digital lives are powered by FOSS. Yet, a…
I put the "reviews" in quotes because it's less review-y and more comment-y. Writing is my "theme" for Q1 2025 and I'm pretty happy about the fact that I've started a new blog about the childrens' books that our lives revolve around thanks to Luffy - rahulandluffyread.blogspot.com . I've written 20 posts this month - some of the books came into our lives this month and others have been in our…
In an earlier post , I talked about wanting to create more than I consumed. I've already been writing more than I ever have publicly - but all of it has been limited to the FOSS United discourse forum . A couple of things that I am particularly proud of are the Papers We Love (FOSS edition) and the Absurd Software Patent of the Week threads which I started. The thing i'm most proud of though is…
So far, I've submitted talk proposals for three FOSS conferences. See the list of conferences and my proposals below. I'm expecting to submit a couple of more proposals for PyConf Hyderabad - a talk proposal on the GIL-ectomy (that I presented internally for a client), a talk proposal about the fossunited.org platform that we have been building at FOSS United, and a workshop proposal on the Frappe…
I watched the Groundhog Day movie a couple of weeks back with my mother. It is one of my favorite movies and I was trying to get her to appreciate time-travel movies. We had watched the Edge of Tomorrow movie a week earlier and she had come to not hate it at the end. Groundhog day is one of my favorite movies but I don't think I've watched it since I watched it in college, more than a decade ago.…
I started college in 2009, when I was 17 years old. Thanks to a good enough laptop, free college internet, and an intranet that was chock full of pop culture, I consumed information like there was no tomorrow. And I'm trying to pull myself out of that mindset after 15 years. That's not to say that I haven't created anything. I started this blog when I was in college. I used to organize sessions on…
I am putting together a talk on FOSS Policy in India. I started DuckDuckGo-ing today morning for the relevant information and I came across a blogpost by the Open Source Observatory on the Indian Government and Open Source . Within that post, I came across the Open Source Software Country Intelligence Report on India published by the EU in 2021. I have been going through the links highlighted in…
I started my professional career at Enthought , at the Pune office in India, on Feb 29, 2016. Over the course of eight long years, I spent time at the Austin office in the US, the Cambridge office in the UK, and I worked remotely from India. I was let go on March 27, 2024 . I had an unbelievably great time. I had three amazing mentors - Pankaj Pandey, Senganal Thirunavukkarasu, and Mark Dickinson.…
The Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India published a draft policy to support and nurtue the unique requirements of Deep Tech startups in India. I just finished reading it and put together a few comments in a FOSS United forum thread . I will probably read it again a week or so later and try to update my comments on the thread with any new insights/thoughts I have.
In the first few years of college, I was heavily involved in organising student communities. I helped organize the Astronomy Club at IIT Madras for the first four years of my college life, among other communities that I was a part of. But I stopped after my fourth year. After graduating, I got interested in being a part of software communities in the cities I was working out of but I never helped…
I read Bea Wolf yesterday. It is written by Zach Weinersmith, the creator of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereals internet comic and drawn by Boulet . I've been a fan of their work for over a decade now, since I was in college. From the Bea Wolf book website - A modern middle-grade graphic novel retelling of Beowulf, featuring a gang of troublemaking kids who must defend their tree house from a…
From todays edition of Matt Levines' Bloomberg Opinion column Congress passed legislation intended to make life better for people allergic to sesame seeds. Instead, it made things worse. The bill, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Biden in 2021, requires manufacturers to label sesame on their products starting this year. In response, some companies began…
I wouldn't be where I am today if not for Astronomy and Astrophysics. I failed my Computer Science 101 course in my first year of college because I could not comprehend how the variables, conditionals and loops could ever help me with my Physics degree. I stayed as far away from programming as possible until the summer of my fourth year. I had an internship where I was tasked with processing…
https://spacetraders.io/ popped up on Hacker News a while back. It is marketed as a "A unique multiplayer game built on a free Web API" I recently started working on a project that uses web technologies at work and we're still trying to figure out the lay of the land. One of the things that I started looking into this week is what the best practices for REST API design are and when discussing this…
For most of my life, I've lived in small towns or cities. Over the past year, I've spent most of my time in Anantapur, Chandigarh and Solan, all of which are mostly small towns. Chandigarh is the biggest of them all but I could still drive from the northern end to the southern end within 30 minutes. At most of these places, I could get groceries within a 10 minute drive, good places to eat within…
In December 2022, I was on the All Things Policy podcast to talk about An Open Tech Strategy for India with Bharath. Bharath is the Programme Manager of the Graduate Certificate in Public Policy (GCPP), Technology and Policy programme at Takshashila. at the Takshashila Institution. You can listen to the podcast at the link above. I was a nervous wreck before the podcast but it was a lot of fun. We…
On Friday, Arun and I talked mostly about two things - documentation and processes. Arun is working on documentation and he was wondering whether or not he should document the failure modes of an external tool that is used as part of a process. This gave way to a broader discussion on what should be documented and when. In this particular instance, I talked about how documenting the failures of an…
After an unscripted talk on the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022 at the Jan 2023 meetup of Bengaluru FOSS , I decided to refine it. I ended up presenting the same talk, sort of, at the MumbaiFOSS meetup in March 2023 . I just realized today that I have been speaking publicly on and off since 2009 but this is the first time one of my talks was recorded. As far as I can know. In college, I…
On a bet with my wife, I tried to read 12 books between February 6, 2023 and March 10, 2023. I ended up reading 14 . For most books, I linked earlier blogposts where I wrote about them. Open Circuits by Eric Schlaepfer, Windell H. Oskay (Highly recommended for kids) Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow Free Voice by Ravish Kumar…
I read The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant by Jean M. Twenge PhD and Pregnancy Notes by Rujuta Diwekar this week. Pregnancy Notes, by "India's top health expert", is a book that talks about before, during and after pregnancy. Mostly, the book deals with diet before pregnancy, during each of the trimesters and after delivery. One of the recurring themes in the book is the need unearth…
Words aren't always enough. I was trying to digest the Keycloak documentation on securing applications and after spending eight hours on that page, I finally realized that I was trying to construct diagrams in my head using the words. I was trying to construct the control flow in my head using the words on that page. And that is almost always a lossy transmission of information. I believe that a…
There's a lot to unpack in the title. Let's start with FOSS United . FOSS United is an Indian non-profit "dedicated to the cause of building Free and Open Source (FOSS) projects and communities in India". As part of building FOSS communities in India, they host a monthly meetup in Bengaluru which I started attending in December 2022. In the January 2023 meetup, I gave a talk on the Digital…
There has been a lot of interest in audio books but I had never listened to one. Not until Saturday that is. I needed to drive to and from Banglore this weekend and it takes 4+ hours each way, not taking into account potential traffic within the city itself. Usually, i'm on the phone or i'm listening to podcasts. But, given the bet I have with Preeti this month, I thought listening to audio books…