Opinions on tech and other stuff!
I find it striking how the world often swings between two extremes. Look at American politics. It is hard to believe that only a few years ago the CEO of Twitter had to apologize for buying a sandwich from Chick-fil-A . That being replaced by a political regime that is openly racist, corrupt, is an insane extreme no one could've predicted. I see the same thing in the way we talk about population.…
"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the…
[Satire] Don’t EVEN ask the question. The answer is YES. Cybersecurity? Models will detect, exploit, patch, and write the postmortem for the zero-days that haven't been discovered yet. Food delivery? That burrito will be assembled, priced, routed, and reviewed by models negotiating with other models. And who will delivery the food? Of course, AI self-driven vehicles. The only human in the loop…
Wingsuit BASE jumping is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. Studies indicate that it has a fatality rate of nearly 1 in 500 jumps. This means that every active participant faces alarmingly high odds of meeting with a fatal accident. I always wondered why did these jumpers took such enormous risks for tiny amount of thrill? Couldn't they see statistics? To me, the answer was obvious:…
Meditation is great — most of us can agree on that. But like exercise, it’s been overcomplicated. There are just so many forms of it: guided, silent, body scans, vipassana, kriyas. There are apps, videos, retreats, books, and self-proclaimed gurus. Everyone’s selling their version of meditation. I also think its benefits have been oversold. Only a few years back, I was convinced that it was a path…
The idea that Bangalore’s water causes hair loss—a modern myth—began around a few years back, and today, it's treated as an unquestionable fact. Like many such myths, it thrives on casual observations: someone notices their or their friends' receding hairline and quickly concludes that something in the water must be to blame. And from there, the story spreads. In India, we lack the scientific or…
In 2012, I asked a question on Server Fault : How do servers handle thousands of connections per second when a regular home internet connection would be too slow for that? I had just set up Apache on my home IP and was genuinely curious about large-scale servers. This was the response I got : Hm, I hate to say it, but it’s not a very SMART question. It’s like asking, “I have a car, but when I want…
Why do people complicate WiFi passwords to the point where they either have to look it up themselves or recite them like instructions—'Capital A, everything small,' or 'At the rate, 54321, dollar sign'?" It's a password that you have to share often and input frequently, so it seems foolish to make it complex. Your WiFi is not a bank account. There's little incentive for anyone to hack into yours…
There's an interesting story behind making DDLJ ( Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge ).For those who don’t know, it’s one of the most successful Bollywood films ever, with the longest theatrical run in history. I always considered it to be a run-of-the-mill crowd-pleaser movie. I am not being harsh here. Aditya Chopra, the director himself, admits: My film is not different. I’m making the most…
Time and again, I encounter posts, people, who believe that they are sick of programming and can't wait to retire to do something worthwhile (farming, traveling, for eg). Maybe they are and programming was just an ill-suited career, but higher chance that they're not actually sick of programming, but fed up with: Bureaucratical bullshit to get simple things done Lack of product vision where…