Babu Srinivasan's blog

lastpass is even better with 2-factor authentication — Google Authenticator

Babu Srinivasan — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 09:38:09 +0000

If you are not using lastpass to manage your passwords, you should. I had written some blog articles on lastpass. Now lastpass has added support for using Google Authenticator as the second factor in multi-factor authentication. The first factor in the 2-factor authentication is “what you know” which is a password — the ... read more

dirty and dark like her commander-in-chief?

Babu Srinivasan — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:20:42 +0000

US Vice-Consul Maureen Chao, going down the memory lane two decades ago when she was a student:

I was on a 24-hour train trip from Delhi to Orissa. But, after 72 hours, the train still did not reach the destination… and my skin became dirty and dark like the Tamilians

This speech was given at ... read more

Lastpass — encrypted database may have been stolen

Babu Srinivasan — Fri, 06 May 2011 05:35:23 +0000

About a year ago, I had sung praises of lastpass in my blog article. Yesterday, lastpass said that based on some traffic anomalies, they suspect that part of the encrypted database may have been retrieved by the bad guys. You may know about this as lastpass is asking every user to a) validate their ... read more

Why was Osama killed instead of being captured? It doesn’t make sense

Babu Srinivasan — Tue, 03 May 2011 15:40:51 +0000

Osama was on the top of the 10 most wanted list. Wanted dead or alive — preferably alive. US prefers to capture wanted criminals alive — if required via the extraordinary rendition — treat them as enemy combatants, interrogate, try and convict them. For e.g., US pulled Saddam Hussein from the hole he was hiding, ... read more

Happy B’day Sachin. Great job entertaining millions. But please retire now

Babu Srinivasan — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 12:54:50 +0000

Happy Birthday Sachin Tendulkar. You have done a fantastic job entertaining millions over past 2 decades. But please retire now from all forms of the game — except IPL. When it came to retirement of players like Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid it was an easier decision as their performance went down significantly from their ... read more

A different kind of VIP

Babu Srinivasan — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:30:04 +0000

A few years back I had gone to the end-of-the-year function at my kids’ school. Some performances — singing, dancing, skits — were scheduled. There was a delay in the start of the program. A VIP was supposed to make a speech and as usual he was fashionably late. We were told that it was ... read more

Need green to go green in India

Babu Srinivasan — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 12:08:58 +0000

You don’t use Chevy and Car of the Year in the same sentence. But the Motor Trend 2011 Car of the Year is the Chevy Volt. Unlike the Toyota Prius, the Volt can be used like a plugin-hybrid if you charge the batteries overnight and drive no more than 40 miles (64 km) per day. ... read more

Experience ragas (melodies) in Indian classical music with my webapp

Babu Srinivasan — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 04:30:00 +0000

Indian classical music is based on ragas (melodies). The classical music that originated in South India is called Carnatic music. I have written a web application that can be used to listen to about 100 ragas. You can choose to play a raga that is randomly chosen; or you can select the starting letter of ... read more

Haskell for teaching algorithms

Babu Srinivasan — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 00:23:04 +0000

Note 1: This article is executable code. You can copy and paste this article in a file with extension .lhs (say crypto.lhs), load it in a haskell interpreter and run the examples! You can get started by installing the haskell platform on Windows, Linux or Mac. You can learn Haskell by reading the excellent tutorial ... read more

Back to the future — Carnatic music on FM Radio

Babu Srinivasan — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:06:23 +0000

If you live in Bangalore and love Carnatic music, have long commutes in horrible traffic, there is something to keep your stress levels down. On FM 100.1 Mhz, you get several hours of great music everyday. It is 9:30 pm now and I am listening to Sanjay Subrahmanyan — first Poorvi Kalyani and now Mukhari. ... read more