tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82495031260669818152024-03-19T18:02:50.294+05:30Abhishek Rao's blogBlog about serious topics, non-fiction.Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-61038271477512476242024-02-20T05:10:00.009+05:302024-02-20T05:23:57.163+05:302 million $ to the person you love or 1$ anonymously to 200 million poor?<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Here is an ethics thought experiment that explores personal connection in altruism, similar to Peter Singer's thought experiments. Suppose you were given these two choices</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Choice A: You can give any single person you know (other than yourself) 2 million $ openly.</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Choice B: You can give 200 million of the poorest people on the earth 1 $ each, anonymously. </span></span></li></ul><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">If one were a sensing and feeling type of person, then the choice would be obviously A. You could give your loved one 2 million dollars and that would be enough to make them financially independent for the rest of their life (assuming they use the money judiciously). You would be interacting with them regularly, you know them well for a long time and will continue seeing them be happy for the rest of your life. This is similar to the ending in The Last of Us.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">If one were logical, intuitive and truly selfless then choice B is clearly the better choice. Poor people across the globe would benefit many orders of magnitude more than in choice A. 2$ would be more than a day's earnings for 200 million poor people (poverty line is about 2$ per day). But the problem here is you would not see or feel the effects of this choice. No one would thank you and your loved one might be poor. One would need to have the strongest conviction of one's belief that one is doing the right thing. From the chooser's perspective it is as good as giving up 2 million dollars since they do not see any benefit from this choice. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">This is in some ways the positive counterpart to the quote "The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. A hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!". People have this tendency of "Out of sight, out of mind" and many are moral only when others are watching. The choice also depends on what you consider is your circle of empathy. If it consists of only you and your loved one, then Choice A is preferred. If all of humanity is in it then clearly choice B is better. This is also related to the phrase "concentrated benefits and dispersed costs", similar to how a corrupt politician or a crony capitalist steals money from the public, they are clearly choosing a worse form of option A. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Think which one would you choose?</span></span></p><div><br /></div>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-82880247469908854372023-12-01T05:05:00.003+05:302023-12-01T05:05:28.641+05:30Autofunctions<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Autofunctions: Exploring Recursive Utility in Everyday Objects</span></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Introduction</span></h2><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In a world teeming with multifaceted objects and tools, a curious phenomenon often goes unnoticed: the ability of some objects to perform their primary function on others of their kind. I've coined a term for this fascinating concept: "Autofunctions." This blog post delves into the realm of autofunctions, exploring their presence in our daily lives and their implications in various fields.</span></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Defining Autofunctions</span></h2><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">An autofunction is when an object or tool applies its primary function to another of its kind. Think of a bag carrying other bags, a crane lifting another crane, or a software debugging tool debugging itself. This phenomenon transcends simple utility, reflecting a self-referential or recursive nature in the design and function of these objects.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Everyday Examples</span></h2><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">To truly grasp the concept of autofunctions, let's look at some commonplace examples:</span></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Containers Holding Containers: This includes boxes storing other boxes or bottles containing smaller bottles.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Software Tools: A debugger in computer programming can often be used to debug its operation.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Manufacturing: Robots involved in constructing other robots.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Education: Teachers educating future teachers.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Art: Paintings depicting other paintings.</span></li></ol><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">These examples show how autofunctions are not just abstract concepts but integral to many aspects of our lives. </span></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Relationship to recursive functions</span></h2><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Recursive functions in programming call themselves to solve sub-problems of a larger task, defined by self-calls and base cases. Autofunctions, broader in scope, refer to entities applying their primary function to others of the same kind, transcending programming to include various fields. The key distinction is that recursive functions can have any input types, while for autofunctions the input type is its own kind.</span></p>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-23026797509384379792022-08-16T19:55:00.000+05:302022-08-16T19:55:02.263+05:30Informative YouTube channels<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">YouTube (YT) can be a double edged sword for our long term well being. One the one hand it contains many informative, useful videos that improve our understanding of the world, on the other hand one could easily be sucked into mindlessly watching useless videos. Understanding how YT works will help us use it better. One thing we have to be wary about is YTs recommender system. This can hook us on and make us crave for more videos</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I would recommend extensions like <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distraction-free/mjdepdfccjgcndkmemponafgioodelna?hl=en">Distraction Free YT</a> to avoid seeing YT recommendations next to current video. Instead of recommendations we can choose based on channels.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-406669f2-7fff-b6e7-694b-6fa575f1da7c"><h2 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Channel list</span></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Below I have shared a list of channels/playlist which I believe are more substance than style.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">General</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3Blue1Brown - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Maths visualizations.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/Asianometry" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Asianometry</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Semiconductors, history, general.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Crash Course World History</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This channel has multiple courses, but the original history one was really interesting.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYJOdNbiQCaZIOGTLcWHSmw" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Daniel Patton - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Book reviews.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/DWDocumentary" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">DW Documentary - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Documentaries.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/grandillusions" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Grand Illusions - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Toy workings explained.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/K%C3%A1rolyZsolnai" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two Minute Papers - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Academic papers summarized.</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Podcasts</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewHubermanLab" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Andrew Huberman - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Evidence based healthy living.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/lexfridman" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lex Fridman - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Tech, general.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/samharrisorg" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sam Harris - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> General.</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Technology</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/TechnologyConnections" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Technology Connections - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Everyday object's workings explained</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/engineerguyvideo" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">engineerguy - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Various technologies explained.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalFoundry" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Digital Foundry - YouTube</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Digital graphics, game technologies.</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Talks</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/talksatgoogle" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Talks at Google</span></a></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google TechTalks - YouTube</span></a></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any lecture videos</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">News</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfa0eRI2uIaR1iOJnq7tklxIJDLxTxI5y" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cut The Clutter with Shekhar Gupta</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Balanced news from India.</span></p></li></ul><br /><h2 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 16pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">General heuristics</span></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some characteristics that might help us in identifying a good channel:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The people are experts in their respective fields, who have spent decades working in the area they are talking about.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Creator optimizes for quality rather than quantity, not required to release video on a frequent, fixed schedule.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Longer videos are better as they can get deeper into the subject.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Be wary of tricks used by YouTubers to get more views. These include eye catching thumbnails, clickbait titles, courting controversy without regards to nuance and truth.</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Please comment below if you would like to share similar channels.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-33062031948103988272022-05-08T03:33:00.001+05:302022-05-08T03:33:11.629+05:30Media franchise lifecycle in a capitalistic world<p>One pattern I see in the western world is that if any media franchise/IP becomes popular, then it is milked till people stop liking it. e.g. Star wars, Game of Thrones TV series, Simpsons, Spongebob etc. Big corporations are hesitant to create new IPs, rather they try to play it safe by continuing with existing franchises or formulae. However if a new IP is created and it does become popular then it is extremely valuable as now the studios can start milking it till it dies. Thus a pattern we see is that every franchise will always end in a flop. Because in a capitalistic world otherwise it would be like leaving money on the table. </p><p>Only in cases where the franchise is owned by non-greedy entity who appreciates the art more than the money does the franchise not end in a flop. It takes generosity and respect for the creation for the owner to say "I know I can make some more money if I make a new movie from this, but I don't have any novel ideas, so I'm not going to make it.".</p><p>In such an environment new ideas usually come from Indie studios as they can take more risk and have less to lose compared to big studios. If we want more creativity we should make it easy for indie studios to flourish.</p>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-70756128948056364252021-01-20T01:04:00.005+05:302023-05-01T00:11:54.051+05:30Social Networks, Truth and Trust<p>Originally posted in https://ideafair.bearblog.dev/social-network-and-trust/</p><p><br /></p><p>One of the main issues with the current social networks is the issue of favoring appeal over truth. Posts that appear good get likes, regardless of whether they are actually true or not. Thus they are susceptible to people's biases. This leads to the problem of false news travelling faster than true news. Our current recommender systems promote posts that get a higher number of likes from people and thus this gets amplified. Instead we need to change our recommender systems to value truth over likings. Perhaps we can associate each user with a truth score based on how true their past predictions were and then promote posts from truthful people. This is similar to the ideas in the book "Signal and Noise" by Nate Silver. We can have a system where people can make testable predictions, something like https://longbets.org/ and develop a truth score for each user. Then the social network should promote posts of people who have high truth scores, rather than vocal bullshiters. Because many times truth is uncomfortable for us, but ultimately good in the long run. This is what leads to science.</p>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-66274160017621116712021-01-11T01:09:00.003+05:302023-05-01T00:12:10.796+05:30Why we enjoy music<p>Originally published in https://ideafair.bearblog.dev/why-we-enjoy-music/</p><p><br /></p><h1 style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Why we enjoy music</span></h1><h3 style="color: #dddddd; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"><i style="background-color: white;">10 Jan, 2021</i></h3><p><span style="background-color: white;"><content style="color: #dddddd; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.6;"></content></span></p><div><h2 id="music-and-ml" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);"><span style="background-color: white;">M</span>usic and ML</h2><p>I think the reason why we enjoy music can be explained in terms of Machine Learning (ML). Music can be seen as an audio signal that has multiple levels of patterns in it. When we listen to music our brain is trying to learn and predict this pattern. We enjoy music when the brain is finally successful at this task. There must be some innate reward function for being able to learn and predict patterns successfully in our brain.</p><h2 id="confidence-and-accuracy" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Confidence and Accuracy</h2><p>To go bit deeper into when exactly we enjoy music the most, we can look at our brain's confidence & accuracy of the music prediction. At first both the confidence and accuracy are low, but after listening to the tune several times our accuracy increases. At this point we are able to predict with higher accuracy, but the confidence is still low. This is my guess when the enjoyment is highest as we are building confidence by being able to predict accurately. After sometime though the confidence is fully built up, so listening to the tune too many times is not enjoyable.</p><h2 id="levels-of-complexity" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Levels of complexity</h2><p>When we listen to the same music multiple times, we can start appreciating the finer details. Thus music or any other data source that has multiple levels of complexity is more interesting. One can read about this further in the (Godel Escher Bach book)[https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567]. Thus it is not enough to have a regular pattern, the patterns should slowly increase in complexity. Creating new combinations from existing patterns adds more flavor to the music.</p><h2 id="ultimate-music" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Ultimate music</h2><p>Based on this we can imagine how one could create music that would give us the greatest enjoyment. One day perhaps someone could use ML to create an algorithm that would create a personalized music that keeps increasing in complexity. The music would start simple and whenever we start feeling it is repetitive it adds new complexity by mixing older tunes. This can be seen as a form of<span> </span><em>Curriculum learning</em>. This concept need not be limited to music, we can apply the same principle to visual arts, games etc. Humans are pattern seeking machine and we enjoy learning new patterns.</p></div>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-48214196577408291632021-01-02T01:01:00.001+05:302023-05-01T00:03:40.543+05:30ML system design interview<p> This was originally posted on https://ideafair.bearblog.dev/ml-system-design/ on 1 Jan 2021</p><p><br /></p><h1 style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">ML System design interview</span></h1><p style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #444444;">01 Jan, 2021</span></i></p><p><span style="color: #444444;"><content style="background-color: #01242e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.6;"></content></span></p><div><p>This post details how a typical Machine Learning (ML) system design interview is conducted. It is quite similar to a software engineering system design interview, but there are many differences which I will list here. The candidate is given a problem and asked how they would go about designing the solution for the problem. Some example problems are: plagiarism detector for a class, YouTube video recommender, grammar correction service etc. The interviewer then expects the candidate to lead most of the discussion, occasionally bringing in what-ifs, asking clarifying questions, digging down on the details etc.</p><p>My approach for solving ML design is to divide it to following sections.</p><h2 id="sections-of-interview" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Sections of interview</h2><h3 id="problem-clarification" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Problem clarification</h3><p>It is good to ask as many questions as possible, state out all of your assumptions clearly. Not doing any one of the above and jumping right into solving the wrong problem is a clear fail.</p><h3 id="data" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Data</h3><p>Finding out the right data for your ML problem is crucial. Understand how much data is needed, what is the quality of the data, how to obtain it, whether to go supervised or unsupervised, whether to label the data or use existing private/public data etc. It is worth spending time understanding what data already exists, analyzing it, figuring out how to clean and process it.</p><h3 id="metrics" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Metrics</h3><p>Good data scientists know how to arrive at a proper set of metrics given a problem scenario and the target quality. e.g. if you are designing a spam classifier and you want to ensure no important mails are lost then focus on precision over recall. Understand statistical significance, lower limit, upper limit of your metrics etc.</p><h3 id="model" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Model</h3><p>List out types of models that can be used to solve this problem, what are the tradeoffs, whether to use pre-trained or start from scratch, what features to use etc. Designing all the features requires understanding both the model and data. Don't always try to use the latest fancy model, some older models might be suited for specific scenarios. e.g. if we are designing spam filters for low end mobiles then logistic regression with word n-grams maybe better than BERT. Thus model choice also depends on the platform of deployment.</p><h3 id="deployment" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Deployment</h3><p>Once training is done, you have to figure out how to use that model in production for inference. You have to estimate the input queries per second, understand whether compute, memory or network will be the bottleneck. In ML system, there will be one kind of bottleneck for training and another kind for inference.</p><h3 id="iterations-safety-security" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Iterations, Safety & Security</h3><p>Discuss about potential risks, biases, vulnerabilities this model may have and what would be the safeguards against it. e.g. If you are deploying a text generation model you may need to have a sensitive text classifier in front to prevent your model running on inappropriate inputs. Plan on what can be improved in future versions of the model.</p><p>In each section the interviewer may ask to go deeper. Make sure to list various different options, what are their tradeoffs etc.</p><h2 id="preparation" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Preparation</h2><p>The best way to prepare is to work on some ML project end to end just as you would in a real company. If you are already in a workplace that uses ML, try to understand all the components of it. e.g. Create a website that has a translation service. Spend some time thinking how would you design some popular ML projects like Netflix Recommender system, Self driving car etc. for fun. Being curious minded is the best way to prepare.</p><h1 id="links" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">Links</h1><p>Some links that helped me.</p><h2 id="general-software-system-design" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">General software system design</h2><ul><li><a href="https://youtu.be/ZgdS0EUmn70" style="color: var(--link-color); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Video by Jackson Gabbard</a></li><li>My favorite book -Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann</li></ul><h2 id="nlp" style="color: var(--heading-color); font-family: var(--font-main);">NLP</h2><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rXD5-xhemo&list=PLoROMvodv4rOhcuXMZkNm7j3fVwBBY42z" style="color: var(--link-color); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Stanford Deep learning NLP</a></p></div>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-11722083218803285312017-02-26T08:13:00.004+05:302017-03-27T08:12:52.249+05:30Lessons from Software Engineering<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have been a software Engineer in Microsoft for a year and half and I would like to share how I have learned the craft so far in hopes that it may help others.<br />
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<b>Theory</b><br />
I like reading books as I believe this gives much deeper understanding of a subject. After some research online and asking people for suggestion I found some candidates. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52084.Programming_Pearls" target="_blank">Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley</a> is small book so I figured I could finish it fast. One important take away I got from this book is that a good Software Engineer thinks a lot before jumping to code. The second book I read is <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4845.Code_Complete" target="_blank">Code Complete 2</a>. This is old and you might want to skip some parts (Gotos, pointers etc) which are not applicable today. This book took many months to finish but it was worth it. I especially liked the parts about construction at different levels (requirement, architecture, OO classes), guide for naming, refactoring functions.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/515iO%2B-PRUL._SX408_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/515iO%2B-PRUL._SX408_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="262" /></a></div>
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Find all the learning resources your company provides and make good use of them. If you don't have access to these I'm sure you can find similar materials for free. I got subscription to <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/" target="_blank">pluralsight</a> and I watched ton of videos. There were tracks for different subjects. I completed C# (Lingua Franca in MS) and Python. One subject that really helped me for the rest of my career is unit testing. Today even for hobby projects I start out with unit tests. I also watched some videos on git, Haskell, etc. Microsoft also gives free access to <a href="https://www.safaribooksonline.com/" target="_blank">Safari</a> which is pretty useful.<br />
<br />
<b>Practice</b><br />
Working in a big company you get lot of resources, but one downside is you work on very small part of a big system. Building something of your own gives you experience from all sides. So it is good to work on few projects on your own in free time, where you can propose, design and build your own software. I worked in my free time to create <a href="http://kaiimap.org/" target="_blank">KaiiMaps</a>. In this project I learned how to modify html, css, learn javascript to modify OpenSeadragon library, create a web service using Flask, deploy it to cloud using Azure, use cloud storage services from Amazon S3, create a python pip package called graphmap. It was lot of work but it was fun :)<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Useful Links</b>:<br />
Here are some links to pages/videos that I found very useful. Please let me know in comments if you have any suggestions to add.<br />
<br />
1. Google Tech Talks: There are some amazing videos here. The ones I liked are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw" target="_blank">API Design</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEhu57pih5w" target="_blank">Designing testable code</a>. More here in <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-must-see-Google-Tech-Talks" target="_blank">Quora</a><br />
2. <a href="http://www.ybrikman.com/writing/2014/05/29/must-see-tech-talks-for-every-programmer/" target="_blank">Must see tech talks for programmers</a> I watched some of these.<br />
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The only requirement is a zeal to learn. Software Engineering is a wonderful field and allows you to create, build unique things.</div>
Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-11750518779567435692015-08-04T03:38:00.001+05:302023-05-01T00:09:23.545+05:30History ManiaFor some time I have become interested in history. I never liked that subject in school because I couldn't connect it with anything else but now things are making more sense. I can fit various facts into places, make sense of this world, so history now makes sense. I guess there is a basic urge to make sense of things. Questions like how did we end up here? Where are we going etc. This is especially soothing when I see the stark difference between India and USA and ask myself why is India so poor? Well a bit of history makes it abundantly clear. India has been free for only 50 years so we need some time. Looting by the British had taken it's toll.<br /><br />It all started with this video series made by John Greene called Crash Course World History <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9" target="_blank">Youtube Playlist link</a>. It was interesting and fun to watch. I also like this show because it shows the future of content creation, where individuals not big companies create content. I liked it so much that recently after couple of years when I had money I donated a small amount through <a href="https://www.patreon.com/crashcourse?ty=h" target="_blank">Patreon</a>.<br /><br />In Spring 2014 I started reading this famous book "India after Gandhi" by R. Guha. This really helped me put current political situation in India into perspective. I found out that Kashmir, North East were all old issues, the rise of BJP was relatively fast etc. This is a must read for any Indian.<br /><br />I've been living in USA for a couple of years now and travelling around North East. I got to see lot of historical places like Gettysburg, DC, Philly etc. Monticello in Virginia was a real treat. To get a better understanding of USA I wanted to read a single best book for history of USA. Through recommendation from Reddit top 200 reading list and a friend Marc McCann I started reading this book called "People's History of United States" by Zinn in Spring 2015. I'm still reading it.<br /><br />That takes care of India and USA, but what about the rest of the universe? After Bill Gates recommending this Big History (<a href="https://www.bighistoryproject.com/">https://www.bighistoryproject.com</a>) course so much, I watched all of its videos to get a overall sense of this universe. I found out an interesting fact that for majority of time Life was single celled. Due to the huge scale of difference I wanted to see the timeline of the universe in log scale. Found a nice graph in this page <a href="http://matryoshka.org/2015/01/12/logarithmic-history">http://matryoshka.org/2015/01/12/logarithmic-history</a>.<br /><br />Now after reading all this it feels good to know where we came from, how we got here and where we may be headed.<br /><p> </p>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-5313326865306643362015-07-30T20:11:00.003+05:302015-08-04T03:39:35.938+05:30History mania<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For some time I have become interested in history. I never liked that subject in school because I couldn't connect it with anything else but now things are making more sense. I can fit various facts into places, make sense of this world, so history now makes sense. I guess there is a basic urge to make sense of things. Questions like how did we end up here? Where are we going etc. This is especially soothing when I see the stark difference between India and USA and ask myself why is India so poor? Well a bit of history makes it abundantly clear. India has been free for only 50 years so we need some time. Looting by the British had taken it's toll.<br />
<br />
It all started with this video series made by John Greene called Crash Course World History <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9" target="_blank">Youtube Playlist link</a>. It was interesting and fun to watch. I also like this show because it shows the future of content creation, where individuals not big companies create content. I liked it so much that recently after couple of years when I had money I donated a small amount through <a href="https://www.patreon.com/crashcourse?ty=h" target="_blank">Patreon</a>.<br />
<br />
In Spring 2014 I started reading this famous book "India after Gandhi" by R. Guha. This really helped me put current political situation in India into perspective. I found out that Kashmir, North East were all old issues, the rise of BJP was relatively fast etc. This is a must read for any Indian.<br />
<br />
I've been living in USA for a couple of years now and travelling around North East. I got to see lot of historical places like Gettysburg, DC, Philly etc. Monticello in Virginia was a real treat. To get a better understanding of USA I wanted to read a single best book for history of USA. Through recommendation from Reddit top 200 reading list and a friend Marc McCann I started reading this book called "People's History of United States" by Zinn in Spring 2015. I'm still reading it.<br />
<br />
That takes care of India and USA, but what about the rest of the universe? After Bill Gates recommending this Big History (<a href="https://www.bighistoryproject.com/">https://www.bighistoryproject.com</a>) course so much, I watched all of its videos to get a overall sense of this universe. I found out an interesting fact that for majority of time Life was single celled. Due to the huge scale of difference I wanted to see the timeline of the universe in log scale. Found a nice graph in this page <a href="http://matryoshka.org/2015/01/12/logarithmic-history">http://matryoshka.org/2015/01/12/logarithmic-history</a>.<br />
<br />
Now after reading all this it feels good to know where we came from, how we got here and where we may be headed.<br />
<br />
<b>Update</b>: Everything moved to my other blog http://blog.abhishekrao.org/2015/08/history-mania.html previously known as rhymeisnotcrime.blogspot.com</div>
Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-52052737589714608682015-07-29T20:19:00.001+05:302023-05-01T00:00:41.982+05:30Fiction blog.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Check my other blog <a href="http://rhymeisnotcrime.blogspot.com/">rhymeisnotcrime.blogspot.com</a> where I post fiction.<br />
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Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0State College, PA, USA40.7933949 -77.860001240.745305900000005 -77.9406822 40.8414839 -77.7793202tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-80848515271934984572013-10-11T00:20:00.000+05:302023-05-01T00:21:16.452+05:30Wages<p> I guess one useful way to measure wealth of a nation is the time into labor versus the amount of utility you get (Related to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index" target="_blank">Big Mac Index</a>). From my experience of living in India and US here are few observations. Lets compare a software engineer paid about Rs 50k per month as software engineer in Bangalore to someone doing blue collar job like Subway worker in US getting 10$/hour. For the software Engineer working on 40hrs/week x 4 weeks gives 160Hrs. Therefore 50k/160Hrs = 312 Rs/hr. Converting that into $ gives 5.2$/Hr, roughly half of US worker. The minimum wage according to Wikipedia is around 0.4$. Now this might sound less, but the cost of living is way less in India. It's strange that some things are cheap in India, and other things are actually cheaper in US. We can compare some stuff.</p><br /><b>Food: </b><br />A Subway sandwich costs about 6$ in US while in India it may cost 2$. So a subway worker has to work 36mins to earn a sandwich while the Indian Software Engineer has to work 23mins. Eating out is generally costlier in US.<br /><br /><b>Bread:</b><br />3$ in US, 40Rs in India<br /><br /><ol><li>US Worker: 20mins work in US</li><li>Indian SW Engineer: 12mins of coding in India</li><li>Indian Minimum wage worker (MWW): 130mins working.</li></ol><br /><br /><b>Smartphone</b>:<br />Electronic items usually cost same in both the places.<br />600$ in US and India<br /><br /><ul><li>US Worker: 60Hrs of work ~ 11days</li><li>SW Engineer: 120Hrs of work ~ 22days</li><li>Indian MWW: 1500Hrs of work ~ 9 months </li></ul><br />Here we see the stark difference in how poor India is. The minimum wage worker just can't afford to buy a 600$ smartphone. Which is why they usually buy the 100$ smartphone. These days even the blue collar workers have smartphone.<br /><br />From my experience in US, Petrol, Electricity and any manufactured items are really cheap to its citizens. Anything that requires manual labor is costly. In India the opposite is true. Cheap housemaids are some of the few advantages of India, while plenty cheap stuff in WalMart is USAs advantage.<br />These are some of the interesting ways to compare the amount of work needed in different countries. Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-75453287898339248662011-06-05T17:46:00.005+05:302011-06-05T17:58:55.478+05:30Prevent sleep when downloading - CoffeeI don't want my computer to sleep when I'm downloading a large file. But I have kept my power options so that it sleeps automatically when not in use for 10 minutes. Some download managers (e.g. utorrent) do have an option that prevents the computer from going to sleep when downloading. Some don't (e.g. Flashget). Some downloads wont even resume after waking up from sleep. One way for the computer to sleep intelligently is Coffee.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://sourceforge.net/dbimage.php?id=304003"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 293px; height: 192px;" src="http://sourceforge.net/dbimage.php?id=304003" alt="" border="0" /></a></div><br />Coffee is a freeware that prevents computer from going to standby when the network adapter is busy. The user can set the threshold above which computer won't sleep.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/coffee-sc/">Download</a> [Sourceforge.net]Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-37942803126669737232011-04-02T10:16:00.012+05:302011-04-12T21:43:58.358+05:30Mobile Display Resolutions Compared<table style="width: 432px; height: 669px;"><tbody><tr><td><span style="font-size:85%;">Here's a visual comparison of different mobile resolution. This is specifically for mobile displays. For general displays check <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution">Wikipedia</a><br /><br />click on the image for actual size</span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3WbPEvrcRLW30_8jSQ30dh9RgaDAZX5ZSdEiZPDwhj-etyugXfCuEx3uUR9OWdgOs2wfx6xww_iJFt55glhx1RhxBFQM5GcYJQbIuJg95ikqDtZoELpyei9YD3va4PzD6gWRdG3IqIQT8/s800/MobileResolutioncrop.png"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3WbPEvrcRLW30_8jSQ30dh9RgaDAZX5ZSdEiZPDwhj-etyugXfCuEx3uUR9OWdgOs2wfx6xww_iJFt55glhx1RhxBFQM5GcYJQbIuJg95ikqDtZoELpyei9YD3va4PzD6gWRdG3IqIQT8/s640/MobileResolutioncrop.png" height="640" width="426" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style=" text-align:right;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Mobile Display Resolutions</span><br /><br /><table border="1"><tbody><tr><th>Name</th><th>Resolution</th><th>Example Devices</th></tr><tr><td>QVGA </td><td> 240x320</td><td> HTC Wildfire, Samsung Galaxy Mini, SE Xperia X10 mini</td></tr><tr><td>HVGA </td><td> 320x480</td><td> LG Optimus One, Apple iPhone 3GS, Blackberry Bold Series</td></tr><tr><td>nHD </td><td>360x640</td><td> Nokia N8, Nokia E7, Nokia 5230</td></tr><tr><td>WVGA </td><td> 480x800 </td><td> Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Desire, SE Xperia X10</td></tr><tr><td>FWVGA </td><td>480x854 </td><td> Motorola Milestone, SE Xperia Arc</td></tr><tr><td>qHD </td><td> 540x960</td><td>Motorola Atrix, HTC Thunderbolt</td></tr><tr><td>DVGA </td><td> 640x960</td><td> Apple iPhone 4, Sharp IS03</td></tr></tbody></table>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-32369958792481877882010-09-12T11:43:00.000+05:302010-09-12T12:00:56.638+05:30Freemake video converter<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><a href="http://www.freemake.com/free_video_converter/">Freemake video converter</a> is a simple, free, video conversion software which can take most of the formats and convert it into popular formats like mp4, wmv, avi etc. <div><br /></div><div>You can also add images, music to the video and edit videos like windows movie maker.</div><div>It has an upload to youtube feature that automatically converts, splits videos and uploads multiple videos to youtube. You can also convert videos into mp3 or DVD format.</div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkL2TYe4-R9hsHvq1M8VwzjpZcQQgvVYNO2nRttuUx21nwrJbsxl1q69_PI5DvUYr0p7by3VcS9mGgwnSAPbfkJjnfV9XcJXt4J0tVqhnDLKfGumKWqqV1CKaEri7SoGvbz_uCsrzKRnr0/s400/freemake.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 264px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515908802927017650" /></div><div><br /></div><div>The conversion options are minimal, you cannot change the bitrate, which is set to very high quality, high file size setting. I use it to compact videos I shoot from my mobile phone. It converts the 720p videos from 12Mbps to about 4Mbps which brings the file size down to 1/3rd without any perceptible loss. </div><div><br /></div><div>The UI is stylish and simple just like the software. I would have liked few more options, but the software should satisfy most of the people with its clean, simple and elegant features.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Download</b>: <a href="http://www.freemake.com/free_video_converter/">http://www.freemake.com/free_video_converter/</a></div>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-26316866169421856192010-09-12T10:18:00.001+05:302010-09-12T10:22:34.744+05:30VCDGear<p> </p> <p>Vcdgear is useful for extracting videos from VCD. I used it to convert the DAT file in the VCD to mpg format. It even fixed many errors in the scratched VCD.</p> <img src="http://www.vcdgear.com/images/logo.jpg" style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 70px; height: 43px;" border="0" alt="" /><p>site:<a href="http://www.vcdgear.com/what_is_vcdgear.html">http://www.vcdgear.com/what_is_vcdgear.html</a></p> <p><br /></p><p>download</p> <p><a href="http://www.vcdgear.com/download.html">http://www.vcdgear.com/download.html</a></p>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-91790247073161286062010-07-08T23:03:00.001+05:302010-09-04T08:48:45.224+05:30Cliqset<p>Cliqset.com is nice social media aggregator that collects your postings from all the websites like blogger, twitter, reddit etc in one place.</p> <p>Pretty useful. The site is bit slow to update your post.</p> <p><a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_Fm5Nr86o894/TDYMAdDo59I/AAAAAAAAATk/1IHjLytC2FA/s1600-h/Clipboard01%5B6%5D.jpg"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="Clipboard01" border="0" alt="Clipboard01" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_Fm5Nr86o894/TDYMBiqY-kI/AAAAAAAAATo/7KT19l-bJ7Y/Clipboard01_thumb%5B4%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="477" height="290" /></a></p>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-85776134298888738742010-07-05T13:17:00.001+05:302010-07-05T13:21:30.860+05:30Best windows search tool<p align="left">Everything search engine is a free software that locates files and folders instantly as you type. It indexes all the files and folders in your hard disk. The speed is phenomenal , much better than windows built in search. I use it everyday to open my files instead of explorer. You just have to remember part of the name, type it and instantly you can locate it. </p> <p><a href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Fm5Nr86o894/TDGOBDBQqXI/AAAAAAAAASk/8-nNAwAI0n8/s1600-h/evertything%5B14%5D.jpg"><img style="border-width: 0px; display: inline; width: 503px; height: 336px;" title="evertything" alt="evertything" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Fm5Nr86o894/TDGOC7PlILI/AAAAAAAAASo/TmCVRwVkXUs/evertything_thumb%5B12%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" border="0" /></a> </p> <p>No more crawling through complex directory structures. You just have to name your files in informative way.It monitors change real-time by using the NTFS USN Change Journal, so any new file gets added instantly to the index. It takes only about 5-20 MB of RAM so no performance hit.</p> <p>A good review can be found at <a href="http://www.freewaregenius.com/2008/11/01/everything-small-lightning-fast-desktop-search-program-for-ntfs-drives/" target="_blank">freewaregenius.com</a></p> <p>Download here : <a href="http://www.voidtools.com/" target="_blank">voidtools.com</a></p>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-75732321006557640142010-03-06T20:40:00.000+05:302010-03-06T21:12:12.655+05:30Windirstat and Send ToWinDirStat is a disk usage viewer that graphically displays your disk usage.<br />Very useful if you want to maintain disk space.<br /><br />You can use the windows right click menu option "send to" to see the disk usage of any folder you want. Just place the windirstat shortcut in your "send to" folder (default location %username%\SendTo ). Now if you right click on any folder you can use sendTo option to check the disk usage of that folder.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxhRZBUL3ixQgeV63nAHs5qT5hTU5-58Wfx-mRDYEnQdgpjfB-D_ABXpHHMAsZtjWAIMLlyKYLU1CA0Qivk4Wn1J_cOgi2yt0sVcWK7jGKp66YBjK8pBJVBBq7IznQ_zUrHHPlQb2kXmqh/s1600-h/sendto.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 222px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxhRZBUL3ixQgeV63nAHs5qT5hTU5-58Wfx-mRDYEnQdgpjfB-D_ABXpHHMAsZtjWAIMLlyKYLU1CA0Qivk4Wn1J_cOgi2yt0sVcWK7jGKp66YBjK8pBJVBBq7IznQ_zUrHHPlQb2kXmqh/s320/sendto.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5445543050110067122" border="0" /></a>You can download here<br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/WinDirStat%20is%20a%20disk%20usage%20statistics%20viewer%20and%20cleanup%20tool%20for%20Microsoft%20Windows">WinDirStat</a> [download.com]Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-12072745115435083532010-03-02T16:58:00.001+05:302010-03-02T16:58:01.587+05:30using ping.fm on mobileAbhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-59609360867483827462010-01-24T10:14:00.000+05:302010-03-06T21:04:25.096+05:30Useful software Jan 10<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.manictime.com/images/Day-View-Activity-t.jpg"><br /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;" >1)Wakoopa</span><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/wakoopa.com">Wakoopa</a> useful web based monitoring tool. You can see what applications you have used how long.You can analyze your computer usage.<br />Wakoopa tracks what kind of software or games you use, and lets you create your own software profile.It also suggests other apps, but I haven't found this feature useful.You can also meet other people who are similar to you.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2)Manic Time<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.manictime.com/images/Day-View-Activity-t.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 188px;" src="http://www.manictime.com/images/Day-View-Activity-t.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span id="descr_short"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/manictime.com/">ManicTime</a> is a time tracking software which automatically collects data on your computer usage. It records active and away time, as well as which applications you used and for how long you used them. Using collected data you are able to accurately track how you spend your time .</span><br />It draws graphs of your usage ,exports it into useful spreadsheet format.<br />The software is quite buggy and more work needs to be done, but nevertheless i find it very useful.<br />-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Both are useful freeware.Manic time is offline software whereas wakoopa is online.Manic time is more detailed ,it stores every second of your computer history.Wakoopa is more general keeping track of total usage time.<br />On the downside both are privacy risk,especially with wakoopa as its online.Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-2635270075202763822009-07-30T20:27:00.000+05:302010-09-06T18:19:05.430+05:30Bsnl modem reset filesIn BSNL night unlimited plans if you don't reset your modem at the start and end, you will be charged extra.<br />Use this program (reboot.bat) to reset the bsnl modem UT300R2U.<br />You can set windows Task scheduler to automatically do this.No need to wake up and turn the modem on/off.<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Note: I have assumed default password for modem admin. You can change it in </span><span style="font-style:italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">reset.txt</span></span><br /><div><br /></div><div><b>Instructions</b>: Just run the reboot.bat file after extracting the contents of this zip file</div><div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Download file</span><br /><iframe title="Preview" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" style="width:98px;height:115px;padding:0;background-color:#fcfcfc;" src="http://cid-d215a0e8f303e42c.office.live.com/embedicon.aspx/.Public"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Mirror </span><br />http://www.easy-share.com/1912170996/RouterSwitch2.zip</div>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-79571723297002283882009-07-20T13:16:00.003+05:302011-07-20T19:10:29.114+05:30Favourite Software<meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" 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4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;">List of my favorite software</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>Here's a list of my favorite software.All are freeware .Mostly for windows
<br /></o:p></p>
<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">The KMPlayer -has so many features ,very useful</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Media Player Classic </span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">VLC</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Izarc</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">7zip</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Irfanview -Image view,edit</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> </span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Mozilla Firefox </span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Opera</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Mozilla Thunderbird</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Pidgin</span>
<br /><o:p style="font-family: lucida grande;">Miro - video download software
<br />µTorrent
<br />Flashget 1.96 - download manager with scheduler
<br /></o:p>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Notepad++ - - very good replacement for notepad </span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Open Office </span>
<br /><o:p style="font-family: lucida grande;"> Autoit , Autohotkey -windows management scripting tools ,automate many tasks</o:p>
<br /><o:p style="font-family: lucida grande;">Manictime -keeps track of your activities
<br />Audacity -edit audio files
<br /></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> Ccleaner -keeps widows clean</span></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /><o:p></o:p></p><u>Update 19 Jul 2011 </u>
<br /><ol><li>Ninite - install multiple apps at once
<br /></li><li>Instead of OpenOffice , better option is Libre Office as OpenOffice was taken over.</li><li>Keepass to store password</li><li>Truecrypt to encrypt hard disk</li><li>SugarSync to backup files to cloud</li><li>Ditto - clipboard manager</li><li>Hard Link Shell Extension - Windows files and folders advanced linking features</li><li>Windirstat - visually display disk space usage</li><li>Everything - instant file search</li><li><a href="http://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wizmouse-makes-your-mouse-wheel-work-on-the-window-under-the-mouse/">WizMouse</a>
<br /></li></ol>
<br />Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249503126066981815.post-22405522836800738412009-06-08T12:52:00.001+05:302009-06-08T12:53:55.994+05:30Java Script to get saved password from Browsersjavascript:<br />(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = ""; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j<f.length;><br />{ f = F[j]; for (i=0; i<f.length;><br />{ if (f[i].type.toLowerCase() == "password") s += f[i].value + "\n"; } }<br />if (s) alert("Passwords in forms on this page:\n\n" + s);<br />else alert("There are no passwords in forms on this page.");<br />})();<br /></f.length;></f.length;>Abhishek Raohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06537183585624361984noreply@blogger.com0