Links of the day

Guts of Elon

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 17:32:00 +0000

I loved his master plan and master plan part deux. It shows his guts on his vision. Similar to them is his memo to his employees:

Our car needs to be designed and built with such accuracy and precision that, if an owner measures dimensions, panel gaps and flushness, and their measurements don’t match the Model 3 specs, it just means that their measuring tape is wrong.

Read it here.

All about Android Marshmallow

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 05:50:00 +0000

A neat overview of all the features in Android Marshmallow, by ArsTechnica.

Humans: Days of Future Past

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 04:42:00 +0000

Won't it be interesting, if we traveled to the past and see how humans predicted their future? Here is how the year 2000 would look like - as predicted in 1900.

What you do before bed, determines your productivity of the next day

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 07:38:00 +0000

Its not just your early morning habits determine the productivity of the day, but what you do before bed determines too. And no price for guessing that "browsing FB and Twitter timelines" is not one of them :-)

A nice one by Michael Hyatt.

Women dupe men to send money, but probably that is good for the country!

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 04:31:00 +0000

Three women duped many men to send money to them by creating fake Social Media profiles. Police found that out, but because of public outage, they are planning to drop the charges. Why? because the men are ISIS guys! An interesting read.

Discovering two Space Shuttles in an abandoned hanger

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 06:15:00 +0000

A photographer found an abandoned hangar and breaks into it only to see two Space Shuttles!

The Camera Behind the New Pluto Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 09:00:00 +0000

What is the work required to send a camera to few billions miles away and take a picture in absolute darkness, so that you can get the pictures of that tiny planet in few hours?

By Atlantic.

How an Indian eCommerce ran out of cash

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Fri, 03 Jul 2015 05:45:00 +0000

IndiaPlaza.com started eCommerce in India in 1999. It survived even the dot com bubble. But it couldn't stay float. Here is a detailed story.

Inside an Elephant Capture

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 04:37:00 +0000

Another amazing piece by Kalyan Varma for the Peepli

The days of world domniation by Skynet is near

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 08:54:00 +0000

Astonishing Time-Lapse Captures the Development of Baby Honeybees

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 05:27:00 +0000

The result is justs a minute long video, but imagine the weeks long effort would have gone into it

Hacking Starbucks for unlimited coffee

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 08:19:00 +0000

What an effort!
On the other hand, me too wanted unlimited coffee, but I simply switched from WFH to a regular IT office. Serves the purpose ;-)

Firefox’s optional Tracking Protection reduces load time for top news sites by 44%

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Tue, 26 May 2015 04:10:00 +0000

Monica @ Mozilla explains that if we opt in for Tracking Protection in FireFox, many of the sites load lot faster. Documentation for opting in: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-firefox

40 Key Computer Science Concepts Explained In Layman’s Terms

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Thu, 21 May 2015 10:04:00 +0000

Nice explanations of Computer Science Concepts. Eg: "For online shopping, the number of purchased item (input) doesn’t affect the delivery time. The output is constant. We call this O(1).
For online downloading, the download time is directly proportional to the movie file sizes (input). We call this O(n)."

Building beastly machines for 'Mad Max: Fury Road'

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Tue, 19 May 2015 04:34:00 +0000

George Miller comes back with his classic Mad Max series, revived to the current movie standards. Here is how they built those "cars" and "trucks"

Next level of Selfie

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Thu, 14 May 2015 09:07:00 +0000

What do you get when you put a camera on a drone that flies along with a tracker? A Lily Camera. An excellent way to take selfies while you are on the move.

Test driving a Petrol Car

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Tue, 05 May 2015 11:17:00 +0000

When you are from future and look back whats happening now, this is how it looks like:

"We were surprised to hear the brakes are completely mechanical"

"... that it is not possible to refuel gasoline cars at home, and there are no free gas stations"

Living in office for 500 days

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Mon, 04 May 2015 04:40:00 +0000

I can't spend more than 10 hours at office. But not everyone feels the same. Here is a guy who lived in office for 500 days!

The best part, in the performance appraisal, his manager said: “Good? It’s been great. I don’t have a single criticism. You seem happier lately, too.” When was the last time your manager said something like that to you? May be its time for you to stay back at office :-)

The selfies from the space

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 07:42:00 +0000

Just the same old selfies, but at a "higher" level. Of course, the images are by NASA. The latest one being taken by Mars Rover.

How to make money when you are drunk?

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 10:01:00 +0000

How to make money when you are drunk? Simple, start testing websites! This will be a good test for a UX designer's skills and to me, it seems to be a brilliant idea.

If Programming Languages were Harry Potter Characters

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 08:49:00 +0000

An interesting piece.

Spoiler alert. "C" is the one who shall not be named and "Python" is the hero.

When the fines are not just based on the crime, but also on your income?

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 06:43:00 +0000

Elsewhere, the fines are only based on the crime, but not in the Scandinavian countries. The income you make and your daily expense, are also key factors in deciding on the fine. So if you are a millionaire, then a speeding ticket might cost you as much as $100k!

Great, this means for me, the fines will be lot cheaper :-)

The days of Skynet are not far ...

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 09:18:00 +0000

“Kitty couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. Her nerves were strained as two tight strings, and even a glass of hot wine, that Vronsky made her drink, did not help her. Lying in bed she kept going over and over that monstrous scene at the meadow.”

The above lines are from a Russian Novel written by an algorithm.

Take this quiz and see whether you can detect the text is written by a human/computer. While computers are getting smarter everyday, as someone said, humans still can't figure out how to play video in their Linux system.

Why is Indian food delicious?

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 07:35:00 +0000

The IIT guys have figured out why Indian food is tasty. In short it is all about overlapping of flavors of the ingredients. More details are available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/03/a-scientific-explanation-of-what-makes-indian-food-so-delicious/?hpid=z4

Earth has a second moon

noreply@blogger.com (Prakash G.R.) — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 17:07:00 +0000

Interesting! all these years they told that moon is the only natural satellite to our planet. But now it seems another satellite. It orbits sun once a year, but it revolves earth once in 800 years. Although its small, just 5 kms length, if it hits earth, it will be end of all life forms.

Discover Magazine: The Second Moon