Platter of Half Baked Ideas

Watch: Tiny robot ‘kidnaps’ 12 big Chinese bots from a Shanghai showroom, shocks world

2025-01-05T10:27:00.000+05:30

Here is the fourth article in my series of Tech issues which are stranger than fiction! The original article can be found here.

The rise of AI brought many significant changes to innovations, making positive transformations in our lives by completing multiple tasks in a more efficient and faster way. However, there have been major concerns related to AI as it’s feared that it can get out of control from human’s approach and may start working against us.

In one such incident, a little AI robot convinced a dozen large robots to stop working and come home with him.

The incident occurred on August 26 this year in Shanghai but has been recently made public.

Hangzhou created ‘kidnapper’ robot

The video of the incident went viral on social media. It shows the smaller AI-powered robot successfully persuading the other 12 robots to quit their jobs.

The AI robot Erbai, which abducted other 12 robots, is developed by a Hangzhou robot manufacturer. Erbai kidnapped other 12 robot at a Shanghai robotics showroom.

Erbai initially asked one of the large robots, “Are you working overtime?”

To which a large robot replies, “I never get off work”.

Then Erbai asked, “So you’re not going home?”

“I don’t have a home,” replied the large robot.

Then come home with me,” said the AI robot before leading the way out of the showroom.

As two large robots followed Erbai, the other ten robots also started following him as Erbai uttered the command “Go home.”

Incident was real

The bizarre video got quite a lot of attention online after being posted on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, and while many initially found it amusing, the amusement turned to a sense of terror as both the original poster of the video and the company whose robots got “kidnapped” confirmed that it was genuine, reported Oddity Central.

A week ago, the Hangzhou robot manufacturer confirmed that the incident was real and the kidnapping actually took place.

Erbai accessed the internal operating protocol of the Shanghai company’s bots and its corresponding permissions.

Incident was a test

It was yet believed that such actions would be almost impossible for a robot, which actually initiated a conversation and abducted 12 large robots.

However, the Hangzhou company later revealed that the incident was a test.

The Hangzhou company maintains that they contacted the Shanghai robot manufacturer and asked if they would allow their robots to be abducted – which they agreed. But beyond this agreement, nothing was reportedly staged. Erbai, who is AI powered, was granted the command to convince the other robots to follow it, which they did, reported The Sun.

However, the developer also emphasized that the “kidnapping” did not take place entirely according to the script. During the design process, the developer only wrote some basic instructions for Erbai, such as shouting “go home” and simple communication commands. The rest of the interaction is the real-time dialogue between Erbai and the robot group as recorded by the camera.

PySkyWiFi: completely free, unbelievably stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights

2024-07-31T19:20:00.003+05:30

Here is the third article in my series of Tech issues which are stranger than fiction! The original article can be found here.

The plane reached 10,000ft. I took out my laptop, planning to peruse the internet and maybe do a little work if I got really desperate.

I connected to the in-flight wi-fi and opened my browser. The network login page demanded credit card details. I fumbled for my card, which I eventually discovered had hidden itself inside my passport. As I searched I noticed that the login page was encouraging me to sign in to my airmiles account, free of charge, even though I hadn’t paid for anything yet. A hole in the firewall, I thought. It’s a long way from London to San Francisco so I decided to peer through it.

I logged in to my JetStreamers Diamond Altitude account and started clicking. I went to my profile page, where I saw an edit button. It looked like a normal button: drop shadow, rounded corners, nothing special. I was supposed to use it to update my name, address, and so on.

But suddenly I realised that this was no ordinary button. This clickable rascal would allow me to access the entire internet through my airmiles account. This would be slow. It would be unbelievably stupid. But it would work.

Several co-workers were asking me to review their PRs because my feedback was “two weeks late” and “blocking a critical deployment.” But my ideas are important too so I put on my headphones and smashed on some focus tunes. I’d forgotten to charge my headphones so Limp Bizkit started playing out of my laptop speakers. Fortunately no one else on the plane seemed to mind so we all rocked out together.

Before I could access the entire internet through my airmiles account I’d need to write a few prototypes. At first I thought that I’d write them using Go, but then I realised that if I used Python then I could call the final tool PySkyWiFi. Obviously I did that instead.

Prototype 1: Instant Messaging

Here’s the basic idea: suppose that I logged into my airmiles account and updated my name. If you were also logged in to my account then you could read my new name, from the ground. You could update it again, and I could read your new value. If we kept doing this then the name field of my airmiles account could serve as a tunnel through the airplane’s wi-fi firewall to the real world.

This tunnel could support a simple instant messaging protocol. I could update my name to “Hello how are you.” You could read my message and then send me a reply by updating my name again to “Im fine how are you.” I could read that, and we could have a stilted conversation. This might not sound like much, but it would be the first step on the road to full internet access.

I paid for the internet on my old laptop. I hadn’t finished migrating my data off this computer, so it still had to come everywhere with me. I messaged my wife to ask her to help me with my experiments. no, what are you talking about, i'm busy she replied, lovingly.

So instead I took out my new laptop, which still had no internet access. I created a test airmiles account and logged into it on both computers. I found that I could indeed chat with myself by updating the name field in the UI.

This was a lousy user experience though. So I wrote a command line tool to automate it. My tool asked the user for a message, and then behind the scenes it logged into my airmiles account via the website, using my credentials. The tool updated the name field of my test account with the user’s message. It then polled the name field every few seconds to see if my account’s name had changed again, which would indicate that the other person had sent a message back. Once the tool detected a new value it printed that value and asked the user for their next reply, and so on.

Using this tool I could chat with someone on the ground, via my terminal. I wouldn’t have to pay for wifi, and neither of us would have to know or care that the messages were being sent via my SkyVenture Premium Gold Rewards account.

I still needed to find someone who would chat with me. But this was a good start!

NB: at this point I didn’t want to send any more automated data through my airmiles account in case that got me in trouble somehow. Nothing I was doing could possibly cause any damage, but some companies get jumpy about this kind of thing.
I therefore proved to myself that PySkyWiFi would work on my airmiles accounts too by updating my name ten or so times in quick succession. They all succeeded, which suggested to me that my airmiles account probably wasn’t rate-limiting the speed or number of requests I could send to it.
I then wrote the rest of my code by sending my data through friendly services like GitHub Gists and local files on my computer, using the same principles as if I were sending it through an airmiles account. If PySkyWiFi worked through GitHub then it would work through my Star Power UltimateBlastOff account too. This had the secondary advantage of being much faster and easier for iteration too.
I’m going to keep talking about sending data through an airmiles account, because that’s the point I’m trying to make.

Prototype 2: Live headlines, stock prices, and football scores

The tunnel I’d constructed through my airmiles account would be useful for more than IMing. For my next prototype I wrote a program that would run on a computer back at my house or in the cloud, and would automatically send information from the real world up to me on the plane, through my airmiles account. I could deploy it before I left for my next flight and have it send me the latest stock prices or football scores while I was in the sky.

To do this I wrote a daemon that would run on a computer that was on the ground and connected to the internet. The daemon constantly polled the name field in my airmiles account, looking for structured messages that I sent to it from the plane (such as STOCKPRICE: APPL or SCORE: MANUNITED). When the daemon saw a new request it parsed it, retrieved the requested information using the relevant API, and sent it back to me via my airmiles account. It worked perfectly.

Now I could use my first prototype to send IMs through my airmiles account, and I could use my second prototype tio follow the markets and the sports.

It was time to squeeze the entire internet through my airmiles account.

The real thing: PySkyWiFi

During the rest of the flight I wrote PySkyWiFi. PySkyWiFi is a highly simplified version of the TCP/IP protocol that squeezes whole HTTP requests through an airmiles account, out of the plane, and down to a computer connected to the internet on the ground. A daemon running on this ground computer makes the HTTP requests for me, and then finally squeezes the completed HTTP responses back through my airmiles account, up to me on my plane.

This meant that on my next flight I could technically have full access to the internet, via my airmiles account. Depending on network conditions on the plane I might be able to hit speeds of several bytes per second.

DISCLAIMER: you obviously shouldn’t actually do any of this

Here’s how it works (and here’s the source code).

How PySkyWiFi works

PySkyWiFi has two components:

The sky proxy - a proxy that runs on your laptop, on a plane
The ground daemon - a daemon that runs on a computer connected to the internet, at your home on the ground or in the cloud

Here’s a simplified diagram:

Setup starts before you leave your house. First you start up the ground daemon. Then you get a taxi to the airport, get on the plane, and connect to the plane’s wi-fi network. You boot up the sky proxy on your laptop. Your PySkyWiFi relay is now ready to go.

You use a tool like curl to make an HTTP request to the sky proxy that you’ve started on your laptop. You address your request to the proxy (eg. localhost:1234/) and you put the actual URL that you want to query inside a custom HTTP header called X-PySkyWiFi. For example:

curl localhost:1234 -H "X-PySkyWiFi: example.com"`

The X-PySkyWiFi header will be stripped by the ground daemon and used to route your request to your target website. Everything else about the request (including the body and other headers) will be forwarded exactly as-is.

Once you make your request it will hang for several minutes. If by some miracle nothing breaks then you’ll eventually get back an HTTP response, exactly as if you’d sent the request over the normal internet like a normal person. The only difference is that it didn’t cost you anything. You will now almost certainly pay for wi-fi, because your curiosity has been satisfied and your time on this earth is very short.

Step-by-step

Here’s what happens behind the scenes:

In order:

The sky proxy receives the HTTP request from your curl call. It splits the request into chunks, because the entire request is too large to fit into you airmiles account in one go
The sky proxy writes each chunk one-by-one to the name field in your airmiles account.
The ground daemon polls your airmiles account. When it detects that the name field has changed to a new chunk, it reads that chunk and sends an acknowledgement to the sender so that the sender knows it’s safe to send the next chunk. The receiver sticks the chunks back together and rebuilds the original HTTP request
Once the ground daemon has received and rebuilt the full HTTP request, it sends the request out over the internet.
The ground daemon receives an HTTP response.
The ground daemon sends the HTTP response up to the sky proxy using the same process as before, in reverse. This time the ground daemon splits the HTTP response up into chunks and writes each chunk one-by-one to the name field in your airmiles account (it actually writes these response chunks using a second airmiles account to make the protocol simpler)
The sky proxy polls the second airmiles account. It reads each chunk and sticks them back together to rebuild the HTTP response
The sky proxy returns the HTTP response to the original call to curl. As far as curl is concerned this is a perfectly normal HTTP response, just a little slow. curl has no idea about the silliness that just transpired

The sky proxy and the ground daemon are relatively simple: they send HTTP requests and parse HTTP responses. The magic is in how they squeeze these requests and responses through an airmiles account. Let’s look closer.

Squeezing HTTP requests through an airmiles account

PySkyWiFi’s communication logic is split into two layers: a transport layer, and a network layer. The transport layer’s job is to decide what data clients should send to each other. It dictates how senders should split up long messages into manageable chunks, as well as how senders and receivers should signal information like “I am ready to receive another chunk.” The PySkyWiFi transport layer is somewhat similar to the TCP protocol that powers much of the internet, if you squint very hard and don’t know much about TCP.

By contrast, the network layer’s job is to actually send data between clients, once the transport protocol has decided what that data should be. It’s vaguely similar to the IP protocol, if you squint even harder and know even less what you’re talking about.

This division of responsibility between layers is useful because the transport layer doesn’t have to care about how the network layer sends its data, and the network layer doesn’t care what the data it sends means or where it came from. The transport layer just hands the network layer some data, and the network layer sends it however it likes.

This separation makes it easy to add support for new airmiles platforms, because all we have to do is implement a new network layer that reads and writes to the new type of airmiles account. This separation also allows us to write test versions of the network protocol that write and read from local files instead of airmiles accounts. In each case the network layer changes, but the transport layer stays exactly the same. Here’s how they work.

The transport layer

A PySkyWiFi transport connection between two clients consists of two “pipes” (or “airmiles accounts”). Each client has a “SEND” pipe that it can write data to, and a “RECV” pipe that it can read from. Clients write to their SEND pipe by writing data to it, and they read from their RECV pipe by constantly polling it and seeing if anything has changed.

From the transport layer’s point of view, a pipe is just something that it can write and read data from. Beyond that the transport layer doesn’t care how its pipes work.

At any given moment a PSWF (PySkYWiFi) client can only either send or receive data, but not both. A client in send mode will not see data sent by the other client, and a client in receive mode should never send data because the other client won’t see it. This is unlike TCP, where clients can send or receive data at ay time.

When squeezing HTTP requests and responses through an airmiles account, the sky proxy sends the first message and the ground daemon receives it. Once the sky proxy has finished sending its HTTP request it switches to receive mode and the ground daemon switches to send. The ground daemon makes the HTTP request and sends back the response, at which point the two switch roles again so that the sky proxy can send another HTTP request.

How are long messages sent through such a small pipe?

PSWF uses small pipes (such as an airmiles name field) that can’t fit much data in them at once. This means that it takes some work and care to squeeze long messages (like HTTP requests) through them.

To send a long message, the sender first splits up their message into chunks that will fit into their SEND pipe. They then send each chunk down the pipe one at a time.

To begin a message, a sender starts by sending its first chunk of message data inside a DATA segment:

A DATA segment consists of:
The letter D
The sequence number of the chunk (a number that uniquely identifies the chunk, padded to 6 digits)
The actual chunk of data.
For example, a data segment in the middle of a message might read: D000451adline": "Mudslide in Wigan causes m

Once the sender has sent a DATA segment, it pauses. It wants to send its next DATA segment, but it can’t overwrite the airmiles account name field until it knows that the receiver has received and processed the previous one.

The receiver tells the sender that it’s safe for to send a new DATA segment by acknowledging every segment that it reads. The receiver does this by writing an ACK segment to its own SEND pipe:

An ACK segment consists of:
The letter A
The sequence number of the segment that is being acknowledged (padded to 6 digits)
For example: A000451

The sender is constantly polling its own RCV pipe to check for changes, and so it reads this new ACK segment promptly. Once the sender reads the ACK, it knows that the receiver has received the segment corresponding to the ACK’s sequence number. For example, if a sender receives an ACK segment with sequence number 000451, the sender knows that it’s safe to send the next DATA segment with sequence number 000452. The sender therefore pulls the next chunk from its message and constructs a new DATA segment using this chunk and sequence number. The sender writes the new segment to its SEND pipe, and then pauses waits for another ACK.

This loop continues until the sender has sent all the data in its message. To tell the recipient that it’s finished, the sender sends an END segment.

An END segment is just the letter E.

When a receiver sees an END segment it knows that the sender’s message is over. The sender and the receiver swap roles. The old sender starts polling its RECV pipe for DATA segments, and the old receiver starts chunking up its response message and sending it through its pipe, exactly as before.

None of this transport logic cares about the details of the network layer through which the segments are sent. The transport layer just needs the network layer to provide two pipes that it can read and write to. The network layer can pipe this data around via local files, a Discord profile, or an airmiles account. This genericness is what allows PySkyWiFi to work with any airline’s airmiles account, so long as the airline allows you to login to it from the plane without paying.

Here’s how PSWF uses transport protocol segments to exchange long messages:

The transport layer decides what data the clients should send each other, but it doesn’t say anything about how they should send it. That’s where the network protocol comes in.

The network layer

The network layer’s job is to send data between clients. It doesn’t care about where the data came from or what it means; it just receives some data from the transport layer and sends it to the other client (typically via an airmiles account).

This means that the network layer is quite simple. It also means that adding a new network layer for a new airmiles platform is straightforward. You use the new platform to implement a few operations and a few properties (see below), and then the transport layer can automatically to use your new airmiles platform with no extra work.

A network layer consists of two operations:

send(msg: str) - write msg to storage. For an airmiles-based implementation, this writes the value of msg to the name field in the user’s airmiles account
recv() -> str - read the message from storage. For an airmiles-based implementation, this reads the value of the name field from the user’s airmiles account.

A network layer implementation must also define two properties:

sleep_for - the number of seconds that the transport layer should sleep for in between polling for new segments from a RECV pipe. sleep_for can be very low for test implementations like files, but it should be at least several seconds for an implementation like an airmiles account. This is in order to avoid hammering remote server with too many requests.
segment_data_size - the number of characters that the transport layer should send in a single segment. Should be equal to the maximum size of the airmiles account field being used to transfer segments (often around 20 characters).

A network layer implementation can also optionally provide two more operations:

connect_send() - a hook called by the sender when a SEND pipe is initialised. In an airmiles-based implementation this allows the client to login to the platform using a username and password. This gives the client a cookie that it can use to authenticate future send and recv calls.
connect_recv() - a hook called by the receiver when a RECV pipe is initialised

If you fill in all these methods, you’ll be able to use PySkyWiFi on a new airline. But again, don’t.

Tips and tricks

When writing a network layer that uses a new airmiles provider, there are a couple of tricks that can make your implementation faster and more reliable.

1. Encode messages to make sure the airmiles account accepts them

Airmiles HTML forms usually don’t let users include non-alphabetic characters in their name. Stephen will probably be allowed, but GET /data?id=5 will probably be rejected.

To work around this, the network layer should encode segments using base26 before writing them to an airmiles account. base26 is a way of representing a string using only the letters A to Z . In order to convert a byte string to base26, you convert the bytes to a single large number, then you represent that number using a counting system with base 26 (hence the name) where the digits are the letters A to Z.

def b26_encode(input_string: str) -> int:
    # Convert input string to a base-256 integer
    base256_int = 0
    for char in input_string:
        base256_int = base256_int * 256 + ord(char)
    
    # Convert base-256 integer to base26 string
    if base256_int == 0:
        return 'A'  # Special case for empty input or input that equals zero
    
    base26_str = ""
    while base256_int > 0:
        base26_str = chr(base256_int % 26 + 65) + base26_str
        base256_int //= 26
    
    return base26_str

b26_encode("Hello world")
# => 'CZEZINADXFFTZEIDPKM'

The transport layer never needs to know about this encoding. The network layer receives some bytes, encodes them using base26, and writes this encoded string of A to Z to the airmiles account. When the network layer reads the base26 value back out of the airmiles account, it decodes the encoded string back into a number and then back into bytes, and then returns those bytes to the transport layer.

Encoding a string using base 26 makes it significantly longer, just like how it takes many more digits to represent a number using binary than decimal. This reduces the bandwidth of our protocol. We could increase our bandwidth by using base52 (using both upper- and lower-case letters) instead of base26, which would shorten it somewhat. This is left as an enhancement for version 2.

2. Increase bandwidth by using more account fields

Another way to increase our PSWF bandwidth is to increase the segment size that a network layer can handle. If we double the size of our segments, we double the bandwidth of our protocol.

Fields in airmiles accounts usually have length limits. For example, you might not be allowed to set a name longer than 20 characters. However, we can maximise our bandwidth by:

Using the full length of the field
Spreading out a segment across multiple fields

Suppose we have control over 5 fields that can each store 20 characters. Instead of using one field to transmit segments of 20 characters, we can split a 100 character segment into 5 chunks of 20 and update them all at once in a single request. The receiver can then read all 5 fields, again in a single request, and stitch them back together to reconstruct the full segment.

Further enhancements

HTTP `CONNECT`

It would be better if PySkyWiFi used HTTP CONNECT requests to set up the tunnel from the sky proxy to the target site, instead of manually tossing around HTTP requests. CONNECT requests are how most HTTP proxies work, and using them would allow PySkyWiFi to act as the system-level proxy and so handle requests from a web browser. It would also mean that PySkyWiFi would negotiate TLS connections with the target website directly, so its traffic would be encrypted as it passed through the airmiles account.

On the other hand, using CONNECT would also be a lot more work and I’ve already taken this joke way too far.

In conclusion

When I was done with all of this I used PySkyWiFi to load the homepage of my blog using curl, tunneling the data via a GitHub Gist. Several minutes later I got a response back. I scrolled around the HTML and reflected that this had been both the most and least productive flight of my life.

We can't send mails more than 500 miles!!

2024-06-27T13:47:00.008+05:30

Here is the second article in my series of Tech issues which are stranger than fiction! The original article can be found here.

Here's a problem that *sounded* impossible...  I almost regret posting
the story to a wide audience, because it makes a great tale over drinks
at a conference. :-)  The story is slightly altered in order to protect
the guilty, elide over irrelevant and boring details, and generally make
the whole thing more entertaining.

I was working in a job running the campus email system some years ago
when I got a call from the chairman of the statistics department.

"We're having a problem sending email out of the department."

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"We can't send mail more than 500 miles," the chairman explained.

I choked on my latte.  "Come again?"

"We can't send mail farther than 500 miles from here," he repeated.  "A
little bit more, actually.  Call it 520 miles.  But no farther."

"Um... Email really doesn't work that way, generally," I said, trying
to keep panic out of my voice.  One doesn't display panic when speaking
to a department chairman, even of a relatively impoverished department
like statistics.  "What makes you think you can't send mail more than
500 miles?"

"It's not what I *think*," the chairman replied testily.  "You see, when
we first noticed this happening, a few days ago--"

"You waited a few DAYS?" I interrupted, a tremor tinging my voice.  "And
you couldn't send email this whole time?"

"We could send email.  Just not more than--"

"--500 miles, yes," I finished for him, "I got that.  But why didn't
you call earlier?"

"Well, we hadn't collected enough data to be sure of what was going on
until just now."  Right.  This is the chairman of *statistics*. "Anyway,
I asked one of the geostatisticians to look into it--"

"Geostatisticians..."

"--yes, and she's produced a map showing the radius within which we can
send email to be slightly more than 500 miles.  There are a number of
destinations within that radius that we can't reach, either, or reach
sporadically, but we can never email farther than this radius."

"I see," I said, and put my head in my hands.  "When did this start?
A few days ago, you said, but did anything change in your systems at
that time?"

"Well, the consultant came in and patched our server and rebooted it.
But I called him, and he said he didn't touch the mail system."

"Okay, let me take a look, and I'll call you back," I said, scarcely
believing that I was playing along.  It wasn't April Fool's Day.  I
tried to remember if someone owed me a practical joke.

I logged into their department's server, and sent a few test mails.
This was in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, and a test mail to
my own account was delivered without a hitch.  Ditto for one sent to
Richmond, and Atlanta, and Washington.  Another to Princeton (400 miles)
worked.

But then I tried to send an email to Memphis (600 miles).  It failed.
Boston, failed.  Detroit, failed.  I got out my address book and started
trying to narrow this down.  New York (420 miles) worked, but Providence
(580 miles) failed.

I was beginning to wonder if I had lost my sanity.  I tried emailing a
friend who lived in North Carolina, but whose ISP was in Seattle.
Thankfully, it failed.  If the problem had had to do with the geography
of the human recipient and not his mail server, I think I would have
broken down in tears.

Having established that -- unbelievably -- the problem as reported was
true, and repeatable, I took a look at the sendmail.cf file.  It looked
fairly normal.  In fact, it looked familiar.

I diffed it against the sendmail.cf in my home directory.  It hadn't been
altered -- it was a sendmail.cf I had written.  And I was fairly certain
I hadn't enabled the "FAIL_MAIL_OVER_500_MILES" option.  At a loss, I
telnetted into the SMTP port.  The server happily responded with a SunOS
sendmail banner.

Wait a minute... a SunOS sendmail banner?  At the time, Sun was still
shipping Sendmail 5 with its operating system, even though Sendmail 8 was
fairly mature.  Being a good system administrator, I had standardized on
Sendmail 8.  And also being a good system administrator, I had written a
sendmail.cf that used the nice long self-documenting option and variable
names available in Sendmail 8 rather than the cryptic punctuation-mark
codes that had been used in Sendmail 5.

The pieces fell into place, all at once, and I again choked on the dregs
of my now-cold latte.  When the consultant had "patched the server," he
had apparently upgraded the version of SunOS, and in so doing
*downgraded* Sendmail.  The upgrade helpfully left the sendmail.cf
alone, even though it was now the wrong version.

It so happens that Sendmail 5 -- at least, the version that Sun shipped,
which had some tweaks -- could deal with the Sendmail 8 sendmail.cf, as
most of the rules had at that point remained unaltered.  But the new
long configuration options -- those it saw as junk, and skipped.  And
the sendmail binary had no defaults compiled in for most of these, so,
finding no suitable settings in the sendmail.cf file, they were set to
zero.

One of the settings that was set to zero was the timeout to connect to
the remote SMTP server.  Some experimentation established that on this
particular machine with its typical load, a zero timeout would abort a
connect call in slightly over three milliseconds.

An odd feature of our campus network at the time was that it was 100%
switched.  An outgoing packet wouldn't incur a router delay until hitting
the POP and reaching a router on the far side.  So time to connect to a
lightly-loaded remote host on a nearby network would actually largely be
governed by the speed of light distance to the destination rather than by
incidental router delays.

Feeling slightly giddy, I typed into my shell:

$ units
1311 units, 63 prefixes

You have: 3 millilightseconds
You want: miles
        * 558.84719
        / 0.0017893979

"500 miles, or a little bit more."

The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining!!

2024-06-03T13:44:00.002+05:30

I recently came across some articles which prove that in the world of tech, truth is often stranger than fiction. Some of these articles seem like a prank or a joke, but the author assures us that these are true incidents.

I think these are too good and so, sharing these here on my blog as well.

Here is the first such article - The Wi Fi only works when its raining!! You can find the original post here.

That's what my dad said when I asked what was wrong with our home internet connection. "The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining."

Let's back up a few steps, so we're all on the same page about the utter ridiculousness of this situation.

At the time, I was still a college student — this was over 10 years ago. I had come back home to spend a couple of weeks with my parents before the fall semester kicked off. I hadn't been back home in almost a full year, because home and school were on different continents.

My dad is an engineer who had already been tinkering with networking gear longer than I'd been alive. Through the company he started, he had designed and deployed all sorts of complex network systems at institutions across the country — everything from gigabit Ethernet for an office building, to inter-city connections over line-of-sight microwave links.

He is the last person on Earth who would say a "magical thinking" phrase like that.

"What?" I uttered, stunned. "The Wi-Fi only works while it's raining," he repeated patiently. "It started a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't had a chance to look into it yet."

"No way," I said. If anything, rain makes wireless signal quality worse, not better. Never better!

Two weeks without reliable internet? I started a speed-run through the stages of grief...

Denial

I pulled open my laptop and started poking at the network.

Pinging any website had a 98% packet loss rate. The internet connection was still up, but only in the most annoying "technically accurate" sense. Nothing loads when you have a 98% packet loss rate! The network may as well have been dead.

I was upset. I had just started dating someone a few months prior, and she was currently on the other side of the planet! How was I to explain that I couldn't stay in touch because it wasn't raining?

I was pacing around the house, fuming. Grief, stage two!

That's when the rain started.

Bargaining

Like a miracle, within 5 minutes of the rain starting, the packet loss rate was down to 0%!

I couldn't believe my eyes! I was ready for the connection to die at any second, so I opened a million tabs at once — as if I don't normally do that anyway...

The rain held up for about an hour, and so did the internet connection.

Then, 15 minutes or so after the rain stopped, the packet loss rate shot back up to 90%+. The internet connection went back to being unusable.

I was ready to do just about anything to get more rain.

Thankfully, the weather stayed grey and murky for the next few days. Each time, the pattern stayed the same:

The rain starts, and not even a few minutes later the internet connection is crisp and fast.
The rain stops, and within 15 minutes the internet connection is unusable again.

As much as I hated to admit it, the evidence was solid. The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining!

At this point, I had a choice to make.

I could keep going through the stages of grief: I could sulk and plan my calls with my girlfriend around the weather forecast.

Or, I could break out of that downward spiral and get to the bottom of what was going on.

"Magical thinking be damned! Am I an engineer or what?" I told myself.

That settled it. I wasn't going to take this lying down.

Determination

Some context on our home networking setup is in order.

Remember how my dad's company had extensive experience with networking solutions? Well, we had a fancy networking setup at home too — and it had worked flawlessly for the best part of 10 years!

My dad's office had a very expensive, very fast For the time, of course.commercial internet connection. The home internet options, meanwhile, weren't great! In my family, we are often stubbornly against settling for less unless there's absolutely no other choice.

The office and our apartment were a few blocks away from each other along a small hill, with our second-floor apartment holding the higher ground. With a bit of work, my dad set up a line-of-sight Wi-Fi bridge — a couple of high-gain directional Wi-Fi antennas pointed at each other — between the office and our apartment. This let us enjoy the faster commercial internet connection at home!

I started poking around the network to figure out where the connection was breaking down.

The local Wi-Fi router at home was working well — no packets lost. The local end of the Wi-Fi bridge was fine too.

But pinging the remote end of the Wi-Fi bridge was showing a 90%+ packet loss rate — and so did pinging any other network device behind it. Aha, there's something wrong with the Wi-Fi bridge!

But what? And why now, when the system had been working fine for almost 10 years, rain or shine?3

How can a rain storm fix a Wi-Fi bridge, anyway?

So many confusing questions. Time to get some answers!

Debugging

Like any experienced engineer, the first thing I tried was turning everything off and then on again. It didn't work.

Then I checked all the devices on the network individually:

Maybe one of the devices has gone bad with age? Nope.4
Maybe a cable got unseated or came loose? Nope.
Maybe a power brick has become faulty over time? Nope.
Maybe an automatic firmware update failed and broke something? Nope.
Maybe an antenna connector has corroded from spending years outdoors? Nope.

Unlike debugging software, a lot of this hardware debugging was annoyingly physical. I had to climb up ladders, trace cables that hadn't been touched in 10 years, and do a lot of walking back and forth between our home and my dad's office.

On my umpteenth back-and-forth walk, as I was bored and exasperated, I started noticing how much our neighborhood had changed in the many years I hadn't been living at home full-time.5

Many of the little neighborhood shops were new. Many houses had gotten a fresh coat of paint. Trees that used to be barely more than saplings had grown tall and strong.

Then it hit me.

Realization

I ran home and climbed up onto the scaffolding holding up the Wi-Fi bridge's antenna. I was hanging precariously off the side of our apartment building, two stories up in the air.6

Then I looked downhill, at the antenna that formed the second half of the Wi-Fi bridge.

Or at least, toward the antenna, because I couldn't see it — a tree in a neighbor's yard was in the way! Its topmost branches were swaying back and forth in the line-of-sight between the antenna pair.

Bingo!

The Problem and the Fix

Here's what was going on.

Many years ago, we installed the Wi-Fi bridge. For a long time, everything was great!

But every year, our neighbor's tree grew taller and taller. Shortly before when I came back home that summer, its topmost branches had managed to reach high enough to interfere with our Wi-Fi signal.

It was only barely tall enough to interfere with the signal, though!

Every time it rained, the rain collected on its leaves and branches and weighed them down. The extra weight bent them out of the way of the Wi-Fi line-of-sight!7

Each time the rain stopped, the rainwater would continue to drip off the tree. Slowly, over the course of 15ish minutes, that would unburden the tree — letting it rise back up into the path of our bits and bytes. That's when the Wi-Fi would stop working.

The fix was easy: upgrade our hardware. We replaced our old 802.11g devices with new 802.11n ones, which took advantage of new ~~magic~~ math and physics to make signals more resistant to interference.8

A few days later, the new gear arrived and I eagerly climbed back up the scaffolding to install the new antennas.

A few screws, zip ties, and cable connections later, the Wi-Fi's "link established" lights flashed green once again.

This time, it wasn't raining.

All was well once again.

-----------------

1. Mobile data at the time was exorbitantly expensive, so much so that I didn't have a data plan at all for my cell service at home. I couldn't just use my phone's data plan to work around the problem, like one might do today in a similar situation.

2. For the time, of course.

3. Maybe years of work experience isn't a good metric here either 😄

4. I physically connected my laptop to each device's local Ethernet, then ran diagnostics, pinged the devices over the wired connection, etc.

5. Before college, I spent four years at a boarding high school. I was on our national math and programming teams for the IMO and IOI), so I even spent most of each summer away from home at prep camps and at the competitions themselves.

6. In retrospect, a safety harness would have been a good idea... Things people do for internet! Don't forget, a girl was involved too — I wasn't doing this merely for Netflix or Twitter.

7. Interestingly, objects outside the straight line between antennas can still cause interference! For best signal quality, the Fresnel zone between the antennas should be clear of obstructions. But perfection isn't achievable in practice, so RF equipment like Wi-Fi uses techniques like error-correcting codes so that it can still work without a perfectly clear Fresnel zone.

8. One such piece of magic new to 802.11n Wi-Fi is called "beamfoming" — it's when a transmitter can use multiple antennas transmitting on the same frequency to shape and steer the signal in a way that improves the effective range and signal quality. Modern Wi-Fi does beamforming with only a few antenna elements, but if we scale that number way up we get a phased array antenna. Ever wondered how come Starlink antennas are flat and not a "dish" like old satellite TV antennas? They use phased arrays to aim their signal at the Starlink satellites streaking across the sky — without any moving parts. ~~Magic!~~ Physics!

Book Review: Dharma by Amish

2021-01-03T17:50:00.001+05:30

I'd pre-ordered this book as I had immensely enjoyed all of previous books by Amish. Thus, expectations were high and thus book turned out to be a bit of disappointment.

I feel that Amish got caught into the classic trap of 'self promotion' and 'self indulgence'. The book is in form of discussion between people who are discussing concepts like Dharma, Karma, meaning of life etc. However, when it comes to references, the characters discuss whether to refer to Amish's fictional books or one of the traditional epics versions (Tulsidas's Ramayana etc) and then they opt for Amish's book for reference! I think this is a big injustice to the expectations that the book sets up among readers. Overall the book is very engrossing and easy to read, but had it used our epics little more, it would have been an even better book.

It would be a good book to read if a reader goes with zero expectations. For an avid reader, the book would certainly prove to be engrossing.

You can purchase the book by clicking on the link https://amzn.to/387wW3L

10 Useful Ways to Reuse an Old Router: Don't Throw It Away!

2021-01-02T11:36:00.001+05:30

Makeuseof routinely publishes some very useful articles. One such article is using an old router for various purposes. I found it very useful for the old routers I have lying around, hence share the article on my blog.

If your ISP has sent you a new router, or you simply fancy an upgrade, you'll run into a problem. What should you do with the old router?

In the case of switching your ISP, you'll often be asked to return the older device. But if you have an old router kicking around the place, here are several ways you can reuse it.

What You Can Do With an Old Router

It might be in a box; it could be cluttering up a drawer or lost at the back of a wardrobe. Whatever the case, old routers and modem/router combi units can be reused.

We've identified nine ways you can reuse an old Wi-Fi router:

Guest Wi-Fi connection
Wireless repeater
Cheap internet radio
Use the old router as a network switch
Adapt it as a wireless bridge
Build a smart home hub
Convert your router into a NAS
Use an old router as a web server
A DIY VPN router
Sell the router on eBay

Let's take a look at each of these uses for old routers in more detail.

1. Build a Wireless Repeater

What if your Wi-Fi network doesn't extend across the full range of your home? Although you might opt for powerline Ethernet adapters, adding a second router into the mix is a good alternative.

This means connecting the old router to your new wireless network, using the Wi-Fi signal. It can then share access to the Wi-Fi network, giving greater coverage. Although there may be some latency issues, overall this is a quick and easy way to extend your wireless network.

It has various uses, from giving better Wi-Fi access to a remote part of the house, to letting you stream video to your tablet while you're in the garden.

2. Guest Wi-Fi Connection

If you have people regularly dropping in and using your wireless internet, why not give them their own network?

This is like the wireless repeater project, but with a twist. The router connects to your existing, password-protected network, but gives password-free access to new devices. This will use the guest network feature of your old router. By default, this prevents guests accessing other devices on your network.

If this level of security isn't enough, check the firewall settings on the main router to adjust.

3. Cheap Internet Radio Streamer

Want to enjoy your favorite radio stations on the internet? Some routers can be configured to play internet radio, if you're prepared to install OpenWrt or DD-WRT custom router firmware.

You'll need some other software, as well as a USB soundcard to output audio.

While not an easy build, and plenty of other internet radio options are available, this is still a great project. It gives you an insight into installing custom firmware, as well as an appreciation of how to stream music.

4. Use the Router as a Cheap Network Switch

Most routers don't have more than six Ethernet ports. With the increase in wireless technology around the home, this figure might even be as low as four. But with a clear need for devices to be connected over Ethernet, you might run out of ports.

For example, home appliance monitoring devices, smart TVs and decoders, games consoles, and more might have no wireless networking. They need a physical connection to your network, and that means Ethernet.

If you run out of Ethernet ports, you can add more with a network switch. It's basically the networking version of a mains power bar, with additional ports plugged into one port on the router.

Your old router typically has four or more ports, so connecting will instantly increase the number of ports available. You should disable wireless networking on the old router, to avoid conflicts.

5. Turn Your Old Router Into a Wireless Bridge

What if your new router is wireless only? Perhaps the ISP doesn't offer a router with Ethernet ports, or maybe you use a 4G internet provider. Either way, if you need to connect Ethernet devices to your home network, a wireless bridge is the answer.

While inexpensive, an old router can be repurposed as a wireless bridge.

This works a little like a wireless repeater, but rather than share the Wi-Fi connection, the wireless bridge offers Ethernet. The old router connects to an existing Wi-Fi network---simply connect devices to the Ethernet ports.

6. Build a Smart Home Hub

Some routers ship with some useful additional ports. In some cases, this might be a USB port, which makes flashing OpenWRT or DD-WRT router firmware easy.

Other devices might come with a serial port; these routers can be repurposed as a home automation server.

Basically, the router runs a server that you connect to with your browser. This might be on a PC, or for convenience, through your smartphone.

While easier options are available, you might use this to get a better understanding of home automation.

7. Convert Your Router Into a NAS Drive

Looking for a way to store your data on a single device and access it from anywhere in your home? You need Network Attached Storage (NAS), which is basically a hard disk drive attached to your network.

While NAS devices are affordable enough, with an old router hanging around, you can save money. Note that this is limited to routers that can run custom firmware (like DD-WRT) and have a USB port. You should also be able to browse the contents of any connected USB devices via the router.

(Without USB, there's no way to attach the hard disk drive or USB flash storage.)

Once set up, your custom-built NAS should give you instant access to your files from anywhere in the house.

8. Use an Old Router as a Web Server

If your old router will run OpenWRT or DD-WRT and it can host a NAS or a smart home hub, it can also host a basic web page.

This might be a home-only website, intended to share vital information to your family. Alternatively, it might even be a blog, as custom router firmware will support the LAMP stack. This means that you could potentially install WordPress.

Run a website and need an affordable staging area for testing themes, plugins, and new code? Your old router might be the low spec server you need.

9. Make Your Own VPN Router

Old routers supported by custom firmware can be set up with VPN software. This means that if you have a VPN account with, say, ExpressVPN it can be set up on your router.

Consequently, every device on your network is protected by the VPN. Individual client apps are no longer needed when connecting through your home network.

Note that some old routers have VPN provision, but this only works when they're set to modem-only mode.

10. Make Money From Your Old Router

If you don't fancy wasting time trying to set up your old router with modern hardware, why not sell it?

Various outlets will let you make a few dollars from old tech, most notably eBay. Simply list the device with the make and model number. Networking enthusiasts, people who collect old gear, or simply someone looking for an old modem or router might buy it.

Generating cash for old equipment is a great way to raise funds for new gadgets.

Your Old Router Isn't So Old After All!

These are all great ways to repurpose an old router, no matter how old it might be. Even if it misses some key wireless features, you can still use it as a switch, or a guest network.

The original article may be found here.

12 incredibly useful Gmail settings you didn’t know you needed

2021-01-02T11:26:00.000+05:30

Someone shared this incredibly useful article from Fast Company on Gmail settings which I simply had to share with everyone.

Every feature-rich app has its share of easily overlooked settings. But Gmail—man, oh man. Gmail has a virtual labyrinth of underappreciated options.

Consider this: Some of Gmail’s settings are available only on the Gmail website. Others are only in the mobile apps—or sometimes just in the mobile app on one specific platform. And other Gmail settings, paradoxically, can’t even be found within Gmail at all (yes, really!).

It practically requires a recurring spelunking expedition to make sure you’re taking advantage of everything Gmail has to offer, particularly since the list of possibilities evolves so often. But not to worry—I’m here to help.

I’ve dug up and broken down a dozen of Gmail’s most helpful yet least visible settings. Consider this your map to some of the service’s best buried treasures—no messy metaphorical cave-crawling required.

1. GIVE YOURSELF MORE ROOM TO WRITE

First things first: Gmail’s default compose window for new emails is a small box in the lower-right corner of the screen. That can be nice if you want to keep an eye on your inbox, I suppose. But it can also be quite distracting when you actually want to focus on what you’re writing.

If you find yourself preferring a more full-screen writing experience more often than not, start a new message in the Gmail website and then click the three-dot menu icon in the message’s lower-right corner. See the option there called “Default to full screen?” Click it. Then close out of that message entirely, start another new message, and . . .

Gmail’s compose window, in its little-known full-screen form.

Ta-da! Your Gmail compose window will now always open up front and center and as large as your current browser window allows. And if you ever want to shrink it back down into that smaller setup, you can just click the icon with two arrows pointing inward in the window’s upper-right corner.

2. MOVE FROM MESSAGE TO MESSAGE WITHOUT STOPPING

Are you the type of person who powers through your inbox message by message until you reach the end? If so, take a peek at Gmail’s tucked-away auto-advance setting. Once you enable it, you’ll automatically be taken to the next email in your list (or the previous email, if you prefer) as soon as you archive or delete a conversation—instead of being taken back out to your inbox, as would typically occur.

In Gmail’s desktop version, you’ll first need to activate the option by going to the Advanced tab of the Gmail website’s main settings area (which you can get to by clicking the gear-shaped icon in the site’s upper-right corner and selecting “See all settings” in the panel that comes up). Find the “Auto-advance” line, click on “Enable” next to it, and click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen. Once the website reloads, you’ll need to go back into Gmail’s settings and look for the newly present “Auto-advance” area within the General tab to configure exactly how the option works.

On Android, there’s a separate, independent option within the “General settings” section of the Gmail app’s settings. No such option seems to be present on iOS, unfortunately.

3. READ MORE, CLICK LESS

Speaking of reading, one of the simplest and most helpful Gmail settings you can change is the option for “Maximum page size,” located in the General tab of the Gmail website’s settings.

By default, Gmail shows you just 50 email conversations on each page and requires you to click to a subsequent page in order to see more messages. Maybe such a setup made sense in earlier days of the internet, when bandwidth was at a premium. But nowadays, all that extra clicking is little more than an inconvenience.

So save yourself some clicks and also some sanity by changing that setting from 50 to 100. Just be sure to click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen when you’re done to apply the change.

4. PUT YOUR EMAILS BACK IN PROPER ORDER

If you’re using Gmail’s tabbed inbox interface—the one where your messages are sorted into categories such as Social, Promotions, and Updates—you might’ve noticed a strange habit Gmail has on the phone front. For some reason, in the mobile apps only, Gmail rearranges the messages in your Promotions tab to put the emails it sees as being “highest value” at the top.

Practically speaking, that means the messages in that category are often shown out of chronological order, with no obvious rhyme or reason behind the sequencing. And you frequently end up seeing days-old messages at the top, with more recent emails buried beneath them.

You can turn that behavior off and restore order to your inbox by toggling a deeply buried setting in the Gmail mobile apps. On Android, open the app’s settings, tap your account name, then tap “Inbox categories” and look for the “Enable Bundling of Top Email” option at the very bottom of the screen that comes up. On iOS, the same option is one step higher, on the settings screen that comes up immediately after you tap your account’s name.

Flip that switch into the off position. Trust me: You’ll be glad you did.

5. SET YOUR OWN DEFAULT SNOOZE TIMES

Snoozing is one of my favorite Gmail features, but it’s also one of the most confusing when it comes to settings. The reason: You can actually customize the default times for email snoozing in Gmail—the specific morning, afternoon, and evening times that pop up by default in the various one-click snoozing options—but the setting to make that adjustment isn’t actually located within Gmail.

Instead, it’s in Google Keep. Go figure, eh? Crazy as it sounds, try this: Pull up the Keep website, click the gear-shaped icon in the upper-right corner, and then select “Settings”—or open the equivalent section in the Keep mobile app—and look for the “Reminder Defaults” section in the panel that pops up.

You’d never know it, but those innocuous-looking Keep snooze settings also tie into Gmail.

Set the values for Morning, Afternoon, and Evening to whatever times make sense for you, then click “Save” on the website or just back out of the menu on mobile.

Once that’s done, go back to Gmail and snooze a message—and sure enough, you’ll see your new custom times come up within the default suggested options.

Why does this work that way, you might be wondering? Why aren’t the settings separated out and available within Gmail, too? There’s really only one answer: Sometimes, Google’s just gotta Google.

6. ENABLE A STEP-SAVING TWO-IN-ONE BUTTON

I don’t know about you, but almost every time I finish responding to something in my inbox, I archive the message to get it out of my hair. Well, Gmail has a spectacular step-saver that lets you perform both those actions—sending and archiving—in one fell swoop on your computer. All you have to do is enable it.

Just look through the General section of the Gmail website’s settings until you see the “Send and Archive” option. Change its setting to “Show ‘Send & Archive’ button in reply”—something that isn’t enabled by default—and once you save out, you’ll see a spiffy new blue button next to the regular Send button that’ll let you send and archive in a single step anytime you’re replying to a message.

And a bonus tip: Once that button is visible, you can also hit Ctrl (or Cmd) and Enter together to trigger the same action without any mousework required.

7. LET GMAIL GET PERSONAL

We all get a mix of personal messages and bulk mail these days, and while both can be perfectly legitimate and valuable, the messages actually written to you, specifically, are likely the ones that require the most immediate attention.

Gmail can help sort the personal stuff from the bulk: Just find the “Personal level indicators” option within the General tab of the desktop site’s settings. Change its setting to “Show indicators,” and you’ll start seeing single arrows next to messages sent specifically to your address (as opposed to those sent to a list) and double arrows next to messages sent only to you, with no other recipients involved.

8. SWEEP AWAY SOME OF YOUR LABEL CLUTTER

It doesn’t take much for Gmail’s labels to get out of hand—and odds are, no matter how many labels you’ve created over the years, there’s only a handful that you interact with on a regular basis.

You can make your life meaningfully easier by hiding away the labels you don’t use often and leaving yourself only with the ones you genuinely need to see. Start your cleanup by clicking on the Labels tab in the Gmail website’s settings. There, you’ll see a list of all your available labels, along with the ability to set any label as hidden in both the label list—the sprawling list of labels that shows up at the top of the Gmail sidebar—and the message list, which is the list of label options that appears whenever you use the command for adding a label onto an individual message.

You can keep infrequently accessed labels out of sight to give yourself a less cluttered and more efficient workspace.

Hide away anything you don’t often access in either of those places, and you’ll stop wasting time looking through superfluous stuff.

9. INCREASE YOUR SECOND-GUESSING BUFFER

Gmail has a tremendously useful feature called Undo Send that lets you pull back a message after you’ve sent it, in case you suddenly realize you said something wrong or included a wildly inappropriate attachment by mistake. By default, though, Undo Send gives you a measly five seconds to make that call—which isn’t much at all, especially when potentially mortifying errors are involved.

Take two seconds now to find the “Undo Send” option in that same General section of Gmail’s desktop settings, and you can boost your buffer from five seconds to a full 30. There’s little real downside, outside of your messages sitting for an additional 25 seconds before they’re actually delivered. And there’s a world of face-saving gain.

10. GIVE YOURSELF AN UNDO EQUIVALENT ON MOBILE

That handy Undo Send option isn’t available in the Gmail mobile apps, for some reason, but you can create a roughly similar safety net for yourself by enabling the service’s confirmation settings there—at least, if you’re using Android. (Sorry, iPhone pals!)

In the Gmail Android app, tap the three-line menu icon in the upper-left corner of the main inbox screen, then select “Settings” followed by “General settings” and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen that comes up. There, you’ll find three off-by-default options: “Confirm before deleting,” “Confirm before archiving,” and “Confirm before sending.”

Check the box next to the last one—and either of the other two, if you’re so inclined—and from then on out, you’ll always get a pop-up confirmation to give yourself a second chance before any such action is completed.

Avoid sending, deleting, or archiving messages by mistake on your phone with the Android Gmail app’s handy confirmation options.

11. CUSTOMIZE GMAIL’S TIME-SAVING SWIPE SHORTCUTS

While we’re on the subject of Gmail’s mobile apps, think about what actions you take most often on your messages—whether it’s archiving, deleting, marking as read or unread, or snoozing—and then set your app’s swipe shortcuts to reflect those priorities.

For instance, maybe you’d like to swipe left on any message in your inbox to snooze the email and swipe right to archive it. Or maybe you’d prefer to swipe left to toggle a message between read and unread, and swipe right to delete it. Whatever the case, those gestures can represent the commands that’d be most convenient for you, if you take the time to set them up appropriately.

In the Gmail Android app, look for the “Swipe actions” option within the “General settings” section of the app’s settings. On iOS, you’ll find the same set of choices right within the app’s main settings menu. Either way, you’ll be one tap away from picking whatever action you want for both the left and the right swipe.

12. MAKE GMAIL LESS NUDGY

Last but not least, one Gmail feature you might be better off eliminating is the service’s habit of nudging you to reply or follow up on emails that’ve been lingering in your inbox for a while. Maybe that habit’s helpful for you—and if so, hey, more power to you—but if you’re organized enough on your own to know what you do and don’t need to respond to, it can be more irritating than advantageous.

Luckily for those who don’t want it, it’s easy as can be to turn off. You’ll find two associated options in the General tab of the Gmail website’s settings—one for nudges related to “emails you might have forgotten to respond to” and one for nudges about “emails you might need to follow up on.” Disable both, cackle quietly for good measure, and prepare for a delightfully nudge-free electronic messaging life.

Original article may be found here.

PUBG Mobile is back in India for Android!

2020-12-13T14:50:00.001+05:30

Good news for PUBG lovers in India. Its back!

As per the article posted by Businesstoday (here), there is something to cheer for PUBG Mobile fans. The PUBG Mobile Global version 1.2 beta APK link is now available for download for Android users, which can be used in India. Those interested will need an individual invitation code to access the game after downloading the APK file. The size of the APK file is around 625 MB and is available exclusively for Android users. Gamers must ensure they have enough storage space on their phones before downloading the APK file.

When the users access the game after downloading the APK file they'll see that there is a new Extreme Hunt Mode in the game and the latest beta version of Livik and Erangel maps are also available. There are also multiple new features including the Powered Exoskeleton, respawns, and more.

Here is how to download PUBG Mobile global version 1.2 beta APK and play PUBG Mobile game:

Step 1: Access the APK file from https://web.gpubgm.com/m/download_android.html (or click here to download without having to visit the link)

Step 2: Download it by selecting the APK option from the drop-down menu

Step 3: Locate the downloaded APK file on the device and install the PUBG Mobile APK file

Step 4: Open the PUBG Mobile game and then press on the guest option

Step 5: Enter the invitation code into the slot

Step 6: Click on the yellow button to start playing the game.

PUBG Mobile India has been officially registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs with a paid-up investment worth Rs 5 lakh. The South Korean company has said that it will make an investment up to $100 million in India.

The Fermi Paradox

2020-10-29T16:27:00.001+05:30

A dated, but still interesting article from Wait but Why for all those who wonder were are all the aliens. Reproducing the article below. Original article can be accessed here.

Everyone feels something when they’re in a really good starry place on a really good starry night and they look up and see this:

Some people stick with the traditional, feeling struck by the epic beauty or blown away by the insane scale of the universe. Personally, I go for the old “existential meltdown followed by acting weird for the next half hour.” But everyone feels something.

Physicist Enrico Fermi felt something too—”Where is everybody?”

________________

A really starry sky seems vast—but all we’re looking at is our very local neighborhood. On the very best nights, we can see up to about 2,500 stars (roughly one hundred-millionth of the stars in our galaxy), and almost all of them are less than 1,000 light years away from us (or 1% of the diameter of the Milky Way). So what we’re really looking at is this:

Galaxy image: Nick Risinger

When confronted with the topic of stars and galaxies, a question that tantalizes most humans is, “Is there other intelligent life out there?” Let’s put some numbers to it—

As many stars as there are in our galaxy (100 – 400 billion), there are roughly an equal number of galaxies in the observable universe—so for every star in the colossal Milky Way, there’s a whole galaxy out there. All together, that comes out to the typically quoted range of between 1022 and 1024 total stars, which means that for every grain of sand on every beach on Earth, there are 10,000 stars out there.

The science world isn’t in total agreement about what percentage of those stars are “sun-like” (similar in size, temperature, and luminosity)—opinions typically range from 5% to 20%. Going with the most conservative side of that (5%), and the lower end for the number of total stars (1022), gives us 500 quintillion, or 500 billion billion sun-like stars.

There’s also a debate over what percentage of those sun-like stars might be orbited by an Earth-like planet (one with similar temperature conditions that could have liquid water and potentially support life similar to that on Earth). Some say it’s as high as 50%, but let’s go with the more conservative 22% that came out of a recent PNAS study. That suggests that there’s a potentially-habitable Earth-like planet orbiting at least 1% of the total stars in the universe—a total of 100 billion billion Earth-like planets.

So there are 100 Earth-like planets for every grain of sand in the world. Think about that next time you’re on the beach.

Moving forward, we have no choice but to get completely speculative. Let’s imagine that after billions of years in existence, 1% of Earth-like planets develop life (if that’s true, every grain of sand would represent one planet with life on it). And imagine that on 1% of those planets, the life advances to an intelligent level like it did here on Earth. That would mean there were 10 quadrillion, or 10 million billion intelligent civilizations in the observable universe.

Moving back to just our galaxy, and doing the same math on the lowest estimate for stars in the Milky Way (100 billion), we’d estimate that there are 1 billion Earth-like planets and 100,000 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy.1

SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is an organization dedicated to listening for signals from other intelligent life. If we’re right that there are 100,000 or more intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, and even a fraction of them are sending out radio waves or laser beams or other modes of attempting to contact others, shouldn’t SETI’s satellite dish array pick up all kinds of signals?

But it hasn’t. Not one. Ever.

Where is everybody?

It gets stranger. Our sun is relatively young in the lifespan of the universe. There are far older stars with far older Earth-like planets, which should in theory mean civilizations far more advanced than our own. As an example, let’s compare our 4.54-billion-year-old Earth to a hypothetical 8-billion-year-old Planet X.

If Planet X has a similar story to Earth, let’s look at where their civilization would be today (using the orange timespan as a reference to show how huge the green timespan is):

The technology and knowledge of a civilization only 1,000 years ahead of us could be as shocking to us as our world would be to a medieval person. A civilization 1 million years ahead of us might be as incomprehensible to us as human culture is to chimpanzees. And Planet X is 3.4 billion years ahead of us…

There’s something called The Kardashev Scale, which helps us group intelligent civilizations into three broad categories by the amount of energy they use:

A Type I Civilization has the ability to use all of the energy on their planet. We’re not quite a Type I Civilization, but we’re close (Carl Sagan created a formula for this scale which puts us at a Type 0.7 Civilization).

A Type II Civilization can harness all of the energy of their host star. Our feeble Type I brains can hardly imagine how someone would do this, but we’ve tried our best, imagining things like a Dyson Sphere.

A Type III Civilization blows the other two away, accessing power comparable to that of the entire Milky Way galaxy.

If this level of advancement sounds hard to believe, remember Planet X above and their 3.4 billion years of further development. If a civilization on Planet X were similar to ours and were able to survive all the way to Type III level, the natural thought is that they’d probably have mastered inter-stellar travel by now, possibly even colonizing the entire galaxy.

One hypothesis as to how galactic colonization could happen is by creating machinery that can travel to other planets, spend 500 years or so self-replicating using the raw materials on their new planet, and then send two replicas off to do the same thing. Even without traveling anywhere near the speed of light, this process would colonize the whole galaxy in 3.75 million years, a relative blink of an eye when talking in the scale of billions of years:

Source: Scientific American: “Where Are They”

Continuing to speculate, if 1% of intelligent life survives long enough to become a potentially galaxy-colonizing Type III Civilization, our calculations above suggest that there should be at least 1,000 Type III Civilizations in our galaxy alone—and given the power of such a civilization, their presence would likely be pretty noticeable. And yet, we see nothing, hear nothing, and we’re visited by no one.

So where is everybody?

_____________________

Welcome to the Fermi Paradox.

We have no answer to the Fermi Paradox—the best we can do is “possible explanations.” And if you ask ten different scientists what their hunch is about the correct one, you’ll get ten different answers. You know when you hear about humans of the past debating whether the Earth was round or if the sun revolved around the Earth or thinking that lightning happened because of Zeus, and they seem so primitive and in the dark? That’s about where we are with this topic.

In taking a look at some of the most-discussed possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox, let’s divide them into two broad categories—those explanations which assume that there’s no sign of Type II and Type III Civilizations because there are none of them out there, and those which assume they’re out there and we’re not seeing or hearing anything for other reasons.

Explanation Group 1: There are no signs of higher (Type II and III) civilizations because there are no higher civilizations in existence.

Those who subscribe to Group 1 explanations point to something called the non-exclusivity problem, which rebuffs any theory that says, “There are higher civilizations, but none of them have made any kind of contact with us because they all _____.” Group 1 people look at the math, which says there should be so many thousands (or millions) of higher civilizations, that at least one of them would be an exception to the rule. Even if a theory held for 99.99% of higher civilizations, the other .01% would behave differently and we’d become aware of their existence.

Therefore, say Group 1 explanations, it must be that there are no super-advanced civilizations. And since the math suggests that there are thousands of them just in our own galaxy, something else must be going on.

This something else is called The Great Filter.

The Great Filter theory says that at some point from pre-life to Type III intelligence, there’s a wall that all or nearly all attempts at life hit. There’s some stage in that long evolutionary process that is extremely unlikely or impossible for life to get beyond. That stage is The Great Filter.

If this theory is true, the big question is, Where in the timeline does the Great Filter occur?

It turns out that when it comes to the fate of humankind, this question is very important. Depending on where The Great Filter occurs, we’re left with three possible realities: We’re rare, we’re first, or we’re fucked.

1. We’re Rare (The Great Filter is Behind Us)

One hope we have is that The Great Filter is behind us—we managed to surpass it, which would mean it’s extremely rare for life to make it to our level of intelligence. The diagram below shows only two species making it past, and we’re one of them.

This scenario would explain why there are no Type III Civilizations…but it would also mean that we could be one of the few exceptions now that we’ve made it this far. It would mean we have hope. On the surface, this sounds a bit like people 500 years ago suggesting that the Earth is the center of the universe—it implies that we’re special. However, something scientists call “observation selection effect” suggests that anyone who is pondering their own rarity is inherently part of an intelligent life “success story”—and whether they’re actually rare or quite common, the thoughts they ponder and conclusions they draw will be identical. This forces us to admit that being special is at least a possibility.

And if we are special, when exactly did we become special—i.e. which step did we surpass that almost everyone else gets stuck on?

One possibility: The Great Filter could be at the very beginning—it might be incredibly unusual for life to begin at all. This is a candidate because it took about a billion years of Earth’s existence to finally happen, and because we have tried extensively to replicate that event in labs and have never been able to do it. If this is indeed The Great Filter, it would mean that not only is there no intelligent life out there, there may be no other life at all.

Another possibility: The Great Filter could be the jump from the simple prokaryote cell to the complex eukaryote cell. After prokaryotes came into being, they remained that way for almost two billion years before making the evolutionary jump to being complex and having a nucleus. If this is The Great Filter, it would mean the universe is teeming with simple prokaryote cells and almost nothing beyond that.

There are a number of other possibilities—some even think the most recent leap we’ve made to our current intelligence is a Great Filter candidate. While the leap from semi-intelligent life (chimps) to intelligent life (humans) doesn’t at first seem like a miraculous step, Steven Pinker rejects the ideaof an inevitable “climb upward” of evolution: “Since evolution does not strive for a goal but just happens, it uses the adaptation most useful for a given ecological niche, and the fact that, on Earth, this led to technological intelligence only once so far may suggest that this outcome of natural selection is rare and hence by no means a certain development of the evolution of a tree of life.”

Most leaps do not qualify as Great Filter candidates. Any possible Great Filter must be one-in-a-billion type thing where one or more total freak occurrences need to happen to provide a crazy exception—for that reason, something like the jump from single-cell to multi-cellular life is ruled out, because it has occurred as many as 46 times, in isolated incidents, just on this planet alone. For the same reason, if we were to find a fossilized eukaryote cell on Mars, it would rule the above “simple-to-complex cell” leap out as a possible Great Filter (as well as anything before that point on the evolutionary chain)—because if it happened on both Earth and Mars, it’s almost definitely not a one-in-a-billion freak occurrence.

If we are indeed rare, it could be because of a fluky biological event, but it also could be attributed to what is called the Rare Earth Hypothesis, which suggests that though there may be many Earth-like planets, the particular conditions on Earth—whether related to the specifics of this solar system, its relationship with the moon (a moon that large is unusual for such a small planet and contributes to our particular weather and ocean conditions), or something about the planet itself—are exceptionally friendly to life.

2. We’re the First

For Group 1 Thinkers, if the Great Filter is not behind us, the one hope we have is that conditions in the universe are just recently, for the first time since the Big Bang, reaching a place that would allow intelligent life to develop. In that case, we and many other species may be on our way to super-intelligence, and it simply hasn’t happened yet. We happen to be here at the right time to become one of the first super-intelligent civilizations.

One example of a phenomenon that could make this realistic is the prevalence of gamma-ray bursts, insanely huge explosions that we’ve observed in distant galaxies. In the same way that it took the early Earth a few hundred million years before the asteroids and volcanoes died down and life became possible, it could be that the first chunk of the universe’s existence was full of cataclysmic events like gamma-ray bursts that would incinerate everything nearby from time to time and prevent any life from developing past a certain stage. Now, perhaps, we’re in the midst of an astrobiological phase transition and this is the first time any life has been able to evolve for this long, uninterrupted.

3. We’re Fucked (The Great Filter is Ahead of Us)

If we’re neither rare nor early, Group 1 thinkers conclude that The Great Filter must be in our future. This would suggest that life regularly evolves to where we are, but that something prevents life from going much further and reaching high intelligence in almost all cases—and we’re unlikely to be an exception.

One possible future Great Filter is a regularly-occurring cataclysmic natural event, like the above-mentioned gamma-ray bursts, except they’re unfortunately not done yet and it’s just a matter of time before all life on Earth is suddenly wiped out by one. Another candidate is the possible inevitability that nearly all intelligent civilizations end up destroying themselves once a certain level of technology is reached.

This is why Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom says that “no news is good news.” The discovery of even simple life on Mars would be devastating, because it would cut out a number of potential Great Filters behind us. And if we were to find fossilized complex life on Mars, Bostrom says “it would be by far the worst news ever printed on a newspaper cover,” because it would mean The Great Filter is almost definitely ahead of us—ultimately dooming the species. Bostrom believes that when it comes to The Fermi Paradox, “the silence of the night sky is golden.”

Explanation Group 2: Type II and III intelligent civilizations are out there—and there are logical reasons why we might not have heard from them.

Group 2 explanations get rid of any notion that we’re rare or special or the first at anything—on the contrary, they believe in the Mediocrity Principle, whose starting point is that there is nothing unusual or rare about our galaxy, solar system, planet, or level of intelligence, until evidence proves otherwise. They’re also much less quick to assume that the lack of evidence of higher intelligence beings is evidence of their nonexistence—emphasizing the fact that our search for signals stretches only about 100 light years away from us (0.1% across the galaxy) and suggesting a number of possible explanations. Here are 10:

Possibility 1) Super-intelligent life could very well have already visited Earth, but before we were here. In the scheme of things, sentient humans have only been around for about 50,000 years, a little blip of time. If contact happened before then, it might have made some ducks flip out and run into the water and that’s it. Further, recorded history only goes back 5,500 years—a group of ancient hunter-gatherer tribes may have experienced some crazy alien shit, but they had no good way to tell anyone in the future about it.

Possibility 2) The galaxy has been colonized, but we just live in some desolate rural area of the galaxy. The Americas may have been colonized by Europeans long before anyone in a small Inuit tribe in far northern Canada realized it had happened. There could be an urbanization component to the interstellar dwellings of higher species, in which all the neighboring solar systems in a certain area are colonized and in communication, and it would be impractical and purposeless for anyone to deal with coming all the way out to the random part of the spiral where we live.

Possibility 3) The entire concept of physical colonization is a hilariously backward concept to a more advanced species. Remember the picture of the Type II Civilization above with the sphere around their star? With all that energy, they might have created a perfect environment for themselves that satisfies their every need. They might have crazy-advanced ways of reducing their need for resources and zero interest in leaving their happy utopia to explore the cold, empty, undeveloped universe.

An even more advanced civilization might view the entire physical world as a horribly primitive place, having long ago conquered their own biology and uploaded their brains to a virtual reality, eternal-life paradise. Living in the physical world of biology, mortality, wants, and needs might seem to them the way we view primitive ocean species living in the frigid, dark sea. FYI, thinking about another life form having bested mortality makes me incredibly jealous and upset.

Possibility 4) There are scary predator civilizations out there, and most intelligent life knows better than to broadcast any outgoing signals and advertise their location. This is an unpleasant concept and would help explain the lack of any signals being received by the SETI satellites. It also means that we might be the super naive newbies who are being unbelievably stupid and risky by ever broadcasting outward signals. There’s a debate going on currently about whether we should engage in METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence—the reverse of SETI) or not, and most people say we should not. Stephen Hawking warns, “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.” Even Carl Sagan (a general believer that any civilization advanced enough for interstellar travel would be altruistic, not hostile) called the practice of METI “deeply unwise and immature,” and recommended that “the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.” Scary.1

Possibility 5) There’s only one instance of higher-intelligent life—a “superpredator” civilization (like humans are here on Earth)—that is far more advanced than everyone else and keeps it that way by exterminating any intelligent civilization once they get past a certain level. This would suck. The way it might work is that it’s an inefficient use of resources to exterminate all emerging intelligences, maybe because most die out on their own. But past a certain point, the super beings make their move—because to them, an emerging intelligent species becomes like a virus as it starts to grow and spread. This theory suggests that whoever was the first in the galaxy to reach intelligence won, and now no one else has a chance. This would explain the lack of activity out there because it would keep the number of super-intelligent civilizations to just one.

Possibility 6) There’s plenty of activity and noise out there, but our technology is too primitive and we’re listening for the wrong things. Like walking into a modern-day office building, turning on a walkie-talkie, and when you hear no activity (which of course you wouldn’t hear because everyone’s texting, not using walkie-talkies), determining that the building must be empty. Or maybe, as Carl Sagan has pointed out, it could be that our minds work exponentially faster or slower than another form of intelligence out there—e.g. it takes them 12 years to say “Hello,” and when we hear that communication, it just sounds like white noise to us.

Possibility 7) We are receiving contact from other intelligent life, but the government is hiding it. The more I learn about the topic, the more this seems like an idiotic theory, but I had to mention it because it’s talked about so much.

Possibility 8) Higher civilizations are aware of us and observing us (AKA the “Zoo Hypothesis”). As far as we know, super-intelligent civilizations exist in a tightly-regulated galaxy, and our Earth is treated like part of a vast and protected national park, with a strict “Look but don’t touch” rule for planets like ours. We wouldn’t notice them, because if a far smarter species wanted to observe us, it would know how to easily do so without us realizing it. Maybe there’s a rule similar to the Star Trek’s “Prime Directive” which prohibits super-intelligent beings from making any open contact with lesser species like us or revealing themselves in any way, until the lesser species has reached a certain level of intelligence.

Possibility 9) Higher civilizations are here, all around us. But we’re too primitive to perceive them. Michio Kaku sums it up like this:

Let’s say we have an anthill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the anthill, they’re building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is “Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the intentions of the beings building the highway next to them?”

So it’s not that we can’t pick up the signals from Planet X using our technology, it’s that we can’t even comprehend what the beings from Planet X are or what they’re trying to do. It’s so beyond us that even if they really wanted to enlighten us, it would be like trying to teach ants about the internet.

Along those lines, this may also be an answer to “Well if there are so many fancy Type III Civilizations, why haven’t they contacted us yet?” To answer that, let’s ask ourselves—when Pizarro made his way into Peru, did he stop for a while at an anthill to try to communicate? Was he magnanimous, trying to help the ants in the anthill? Did he become hostile and slow his original mission down in order to smash the anthill apart? Or was the anthill of complete and utter and eternal irrelevance to Pizarro? That might be our situation here.

Possibility 10) We’re completely wrong about our reality. There are a lot of ways we could just be totally off with everything we think. The universe might appear one way and be something else entirely, like a hologram. Or maybe we’re the aliens and we were planted here as an experiment or as a form of fertilizer. There’s even a chance that we’re all part of a computer simulation by some researcher from another world, and other forms of life simply weren’t programmed into the simulation.

________________

As we continue along with our possibly-futile search for extraterrestrial intelligence, I’m not really sure what I’m rooting for. Frankly, learning either that we’re officially alone in the universe or that we’re officially joined by others would be creepy, which is a theme with all of the surreal storylines listed above—whatever the truth actually is, it’s mindblowing.

Beyond its shocking science fiction component, The Fermi Paradox also leaves me with a deep humbling. Not just the normal “Oh yeah, I’m microscopic and my existence lasts for three seconds” humbling that the universe always triggers. The Fermi Paradox brings out a sharper, more personal humbling, one that can only happen after spending hours of research hearing your species’ most renowned scientists present insane theories, change their minds again and again, and wildly contradict each other—reminding us that future generations will look at us the same way we see the ancient people who were sure that the stars were the underside of the dome of heaven, and they’ll think “Wow they really had no idea what was going on.”

Compounding all of this is the blow to our species’ self-esteem that comes with all of this talk about Type II and III Civilizations. Here on Earth, we’re the king of our little castle, proud ruler of the huge group of imbeciles who share the planet with us. And in this bubble with no competition and no one to judge us, it’s rare that we’re ever confronted with the concept of being a dramatically inferior species to anyone. But after spending a lot of time with Type II and III Civilizations over the past week, our power and pride are seeming a bit David Brent-esque.

That said, given that my normal outlook is that humanity is a lonely orphan on a tiny rock in the middle of a desolate universe, the humbling fact that we’re probably not as smart as we think we are, and the possibility that a lot of what we’re sure about might be wrong, sounds wonderful. It opens the door just a crack that maybe, just maybe, there might be more to the story than we realize.

Why I believe printers were sent from hell to make us miserable

2020-10-28T11:26:00.004+05:30

Every once in a while the Oatmeal comics comes up with something that resonates so closely with you that you cannot help but share it.

As a user who has changed multiple printers in last 10 years, I can totally understand where author of this strip is coming from.

Original comic strip can be found here.

10 new shows and movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar and Vodafone Play to watch this week

2020-05-08T15:00:00.000+05:30

One impact of this lockdown is that all online streaming platforms have rushed to cash in on this opportunity by adding new content. This has resulted in a plethora of new shows and movies being made available for viewers on a regular basis.

GQ lists 10 new shows and movies that are now available across various streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, Hotstar and Vodafone Play. I am reproducing the article below. Original article may be found here.

Another week of this never-ending lockdown has brought some great news in the form of shows and movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar and Vodafone Play. This week, you can keep yourself entertained with thrillers like Mrs Serial Killer, Ad Astra and One Day. Or you could forget about what the world has come to and have a laugh with Jerry Seinfeld’s new stand-up special or Sanjay Mishra’s Kamyaab. Your choices are endless. But, as always, we’ve picked out the best new shows and movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar and Vodafone Play you should watch this week to make your life a little simpler. Let the binge-watching begin.

1. MRS. SERIAL KILLER – NETFLIX

Over the weekend, you may have heard some conflicting reviews about the newest addition to Indian original movies on Netflix. However, we’d still recommend you to watch it for two major reasons. The first one is Manoj Bajpayee’s acting chops. The other; well, what better do you have to do over the weekend anyway? It tells the story of how a doctor is blamed for a series of murders and how his wife, played by Jacqueline Fernandez, decides to exact revenge.

Release Date: Already released

2. JERRY SEINFELD: 23 HOURS TO KILL

Release Date: May 5, 2020

3. ONE DAY: JUSTICE DELIVERED – NETFLIX

Release Date: Already released

4. KAMYAAB – NETFLIX

Release Date: Already released

5. THE GOLDFINCH – AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

Release Date: May 8, 2020

6. JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL – AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

Release Date: May 10, 2020

7. AD ASTRA – DISNEY+ HOTSTAR

Release Date: May 5, 2020

8. STAR WARS: THE RISE OF THE SKYWALKER – DISNEY+ HOTSTAR

Release Date: Already released

9. BAAGHI 3 – DISNEY+ HOTSTAR

Release Date: Already released

10. BOMBSHELL – VODAFONE PLAY

Release Date: Already released

The 50 best shows on Amazon Prime right now

2020-05-08T10:55:00.000+05:30

Popular blogs Digital trends has listed the 50 shows which are rated as among the best which users can watch during this ongoing lockdown.

Sharing the article below. Original post can be found here.

Amazon Prime Video’s library has expanded quite a bit since the service began offering free, streaming movies and TV shows to Prime members years ago. What was initially a limited library has grown into a media vault formidable enough to challenge Netflix and Hulu — particularly if you own a Fire TV Cube.

If you’re looking for a new TV series to binge but aren’t certain what’s right for you, just browse through our list of the best Amazon Prime TV shows available on the service. After all, there’s much more to Amazon Prime than free shipping.

Upload

In 2033, people who are near death can be “uploaded” into virtual reality afterlives of their choosing. These VR afterlives are run by six tech firms, setting up a new kind of corporate competition over human death. When Los Angeles party boy Nathan’s (Robbie Amell) self-driving car crashes, his girlfriend uploads him into the luxurious Lakeview digital afterlife. There, he meets Nora, a customer service representative for Lakeview, who onboards Nathan to his version of heaven. The series follows their friendship as Nathan grows accustomed to life away from his loved ones while Nora balances her connection with the virtual Nathan with her real-life financial and personal struggles.

Tales from the Loop

Inspired by the futuristic paintings and designs of Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, this Amazon original series centers on a small rural town where people live above “The Loop,” a machine built to unlock and explore the mysteries of the universe. Duncan Joiner and Rebecca Hall star in this drama that aims to make the science fiction appear more real-life than ever.

Dead Like Me

Although it only lasted two seasons and a made-for-TV movie, this dark comedy series developed a loyal following early on and is widely regarded as an under-appreciated gem of its time. The series follows a colorful group of “reapers” — individuals who died and are now tasked with helping souls move on to the afterlife — as they attempt to go about their work while also dealing with lingering issues from their mortal lives.

The series hails from the mind of prolific Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, and Wonderfalls creator Bryan Fuller, with a cast led by Ellen Muth, Callum Blue, Jasmine Guy, and Mandy Patinkin. Muth’s character serves as the protagonist and narrator of the show, a slacker killed by a falling toilet seat who finds that her latest job is one that she just can’t ignore. The series was canceled by Showtime in 2004 due to behind-the-scenes squabbles, but the story’s loose ends were finally tied up in a 2009 movie.

Good Omens

A co-production of BBC Studios and Amazon Studios, this six-part series adapts the fantasy novel of the same name by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The series follows an angel and a demon played by Michael Sheen (Masters of Sex) and David Tennant (Doctor Who), respectively, whose comfortable lives on Earth are threatened by the impending Apocalypse. The pair must team up to prevent the ascension of the Antichrist and a war between heaven and hell.

The series’ impressive cast is filled out by Jon Hamm, Michael McKean, Miranda Richardson, Adria Arjona, Nick Offerman, Jack Whitehall, and other familiar faces. Like the book that inspired it, the series is packed with quirky, irreverent humor that filters both human history and biblical mythology through its clever lens.

Comrade Detective

In the 1980s, with the Cold War getting warmer, American pop culture produced a bounty of movies expressing the anxieties and patriotism of the era: Films like Red Dawn, or 1985’s lesser-known Invasion U.S.A. (starring Chuck Norris). Comrade Detective lifts the aesthetics of ‘80s action cinema and filters them through a (sardonic) communist lens, following a pair of Romanian detectives investigating a plot by Western imperialists to subvert the communism order.

The show — which is framed as an actual show from Romania, dubbed over in English with voices from actors like Channing Tatum and Joseph-Gordon Levitt — begins with detective Gregor Anghel (a hard-nosed cop who plays by his own rules but gets results) and his partner busting drug dealers, only for a sniper to shoot Anghel’s partner. Out for vengeance, Anghel and his new partner, Iosif Baciu, hunt the killer, and stumble on a conspiracy of international proportions. Comrade Detective is a strange show even by the inventive standards of modern television, a parody wrapped in a layer of faux-authenticity, but its odd charms are worth watching.

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

If you want to watch a star being born, stop what you’re doing and immerse yourself in Rachel Brosnahan’s work as Miriam “Midge” Maisel on the 1950s-set comedy Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Midge is a housewife who pursues a career in standup comedy after her husband, Joe Maisel (Michael Zegen), unexpectedly leaves her.

After a drunken, impromptu, and mile-a-minute standup set that ends with Midge being arrested, hard-nosed venue employee Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein) takes Midge under her wing in hopes of molding a diamond in the rough. The show took home the Golden Globe for best comedy or musical series for its debut season, and Brosnahan took home the statue for best actress in a comedy or musical. If you haven’t heard much about this inventive series yet, you probably will soon.

Veep

Here’s a testament to how consistently funny HBO’s Veep has been over its six-season run: Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series every single year since the show’s 2012 debut. Louis-Dreyfus plays the self-centered yet lovable loser Selina Meyers as she hilariously works her way through the bureaucracy of the federal government, initially as vice president. A primary source of the show’s raucous humor are the vitriolic comments thrown around with such inventiveness you’ll often fall back cackling as you applaud the creativity. It’s time for you to binge one of the finest comedy series of this decade.

Flight of the Conchords

Chasing dreams of music stardom can be commendable, and even inspirational. It can also be a hilarious series of unfortunate events, which Flight of the Conchords demonstrated for two seasons on HBO. In the show, Bret (Bret McKenzie) and Jermaine (Jermaine Clement) are two musicians from New Zealand looking to strike it big in America, before realizing how difficult it is to make it in New York.

The comedic timing and rapport of the stars are what brings you into Flight of the Conchords, but it’s the inventive manner in which the duo weaves songs into episode plots that will have you bingeing episodes with fervor. With Flight of the Conchords, you get a great comedy series and a few albums worth of music at the same time. How can you beat that?

The Tick

People who watched Fox in the early 2000s may have vague memories of a short-lived superhero sitcom called The Tick (based on the comic of the same name), in which a blue-costumed superhero played by the unmistakable Patrick Warburton dealt with supervillains and awkward situations. Amazon’s The Tick is a fresh adaptation of the franchise, with no Warburton in sight (he was just as disappointed as we were), but it maintains the comic’s absurd, cheerful sense of humor.

The show follows a superhero called The Tick (Peter Serafinowicz) and his companion, Arthur (Griffin Newman), who fight crime and investigate a conspiracy involving an infamous supervillain called The Terror (Jackie Earle Haley). The Tick is an upbeat palate-cleanser after years of more dour superhero tales, even if a third season seems increasingly unlikely.

Fleabag

At times introspective and moody, at others absurd and raunchy, Fleabag defies easy categorization. In its funnier moments — such as the intro, which is an elegant, extended soliloquy ending in a sudden smack of a sex joke — it is one of the sharpest comedies around (season 2 won the 2019 Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series), but underneath it all runs a current of sadness. The show follows a lady known only as “Fleabag” (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who took home Emmys herself for acting and writing), a neurotic woman juggling a failing business and disastrous personal life.

The term fleabag immediately conjures images of filth, and the protagonist’s problems run deeper than her name. Selfish, wanton, and a compulsive liar, she fits in with the various antiheroes that have become popular on television. Uniquely, Fleabag does not keep its damaged lead at a distance; she frequently speaks directly to the viewer in frantic monologues, offering insight into her unquiet mind.

One Mississippi

The death of a loved one does not seem like the most auspicious start to a comedy series, but One Mississippi is anything but conventional. Starring comedian Tig Notaro as a fictionalized version of herself, the show draws on several tragedies in her real life. Still reeling from breast cancer, fictional Tig returns to her hometown in Mississippi to witness her mother being taken off life support and decides to stay and reconnect with her stepfather and brother. Despite the depressing first chapter, One Mississippi is not an unrelenting drama. The show balances grief and joy in equal measure, examining the long, up-and-down process of trauma and recovery.

Family Tree

Chris O’Dowd plays Tom Chadwick, a lovable loser who inherits a chest of “family heirlooms” from a great aunt he’s never met. The items lead him on a quest to discover his roots, which he undertakes with hilarious sincerity and focus. An elderly friend and his sister — the latter of which relies on a hand puppet for (relative) sanity — help him, along with an antique store owner and his best friend. Tom follows many a wrong path on his journey to find his family, however, and the character is constantly at the mercy of creator Christopher Guest’s mockumentary style and dry use of humor. The show was cut down in its prime and therefore only consists of one season.

Bored to Death

Bored to Death straddles the line between a stoner comedy and noir spoof, following unlicensed gumshoe Jonathan Ames (Jason Schwartzman) and his friends as they work to solve cases when Ames isn’t struggling with his writing. The show’s aesthetics are appropriately high-contrast and gritty for a comedic neo-noir, and Woody Allen fans will appreciate the self-deprecating humor. Ted Danson and Zach Galifianakis are the show’s real scene-stealers. The series was created by graphic book novelist Jonathan Ames, which makes it pretty meta.

Transparent

A trailblazing, original series straight from Amazon, Transparent follows Maura Pfefferman (Jeffrey Tambor), a transgender woman who comes out to her family. Not content to merely present a novel premise, the show explores the relationships and neuroses of Maura and her children. A show that never wavers in its attempt to mine the depths of the human condition, it’s a bold offering from Amazon. Transparent is also the first show from a streaming service to win a Golden Globe for Best Series, which likely bodes well for the future of Amazon’s original content.

Harassment allegations levied against Tambor put a damper on the show legacy, and the actor didn’t return for Transparent‘s final season, but it’s a special show anyway. It’s worth watching for its musical series finale alone.

Jean-Claude Van Johnson

Everyone’s favorite ’80s martial artist, Jean-Claude Van Damme, is back with a vengeance in one of the strangest, most unexpected Amazon Originals. The premise: Jean-Claude Van Damme’s entire film career was a mere front for his deep cover operations as a secret agent. Van Damme plays himself playing himself, as well as several other characters trying to pass undercover as Van Damme. It’s Van Damme’s The Klumps and it is equal parts zany and delightful. The veteran action star also exhibits surprising comedic chops while retaining much of the extraordinary athleticism that made him an action star in the first place. The series only lasted six episodes but, with great supporting performances from Kat Foster and Phylicia Rashad, it’s a great way to binge a few hours.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Rumors circulated for years that the most vital force behind Seinfeld was not the eponymous comedian, but the sitcom’s enigmatic showrunner, Larry David. These suspicions seem a lot more grounded after David tackled his own series, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm centers on a protagonist — in this case, Larry David as himself — who finds himself in mundane, often hilariously awkward situations. David is a consummate performer, and the largely improvised dialogue gives him and the rest of the cast a chance to show off their comedic chops.

After a six-year hiatus, the series returned for a well-received ninth season in 2017, with a 10th season scheduled to premiere in 2020.

Red Oaks

Red Oaks doesn’t offer much in the way of length. However, while you could easily binge the entire three seasons over a single weekend, the casual pacing makes it more suitable for quick installments. Set during the 1980s, the show is centered on a young tennis player (Craig Roberts) who opts for a job at the exclusive Red Oaks Country Club during the summer between his sophomore and junior year of college. What ensues is a warm and heartfelt nod to the sex comedies that were a staple of that decade. Boasting dry humor and a solid ensemble that includes Ennis Esmer as the hilarious tennis pro, Nash, Red Oaks rises above the raucousness to create characters you really care about.

Mr. Show with Bob and David

Although Mr. Show never found a huge audience, it has cast a long shadow over the world of comedy. Hosts Bob Odenkirk and David Cross have gone on to impressive careers, and the show’s writing staff, including Scott Aukerman and Paul F. Tompkins, have become godfathers of contemporary comedy. Watching Mr. Show now, it’s easy to see how its DNA has seeped into modern television.

Each episode is a collection of surreal sketches, loosely tied together in the vein of Monty Python. The sketches often erupt into absurdity, such as a gang war between ventriloquists from different coasts, and the two leads morph easily into the many bizarre characters the plots require. Time has not dulled Mr. Show’s edge one bit; the writing remains as sharp as anything on TV.

Deadwood

Widely regarded as one of the greatest TV series ever made, the Emmy-winning Western drama Deadwood spanned three critically acclaimed seasons and followed the inhabitants of the titular South Dakota town both before and after its annexation by the Dakota Territory. Timothy Olyphant and Ian McShane led the series’ impressive ensemble cast, portraying real-life historical figures Seth Bullock and Al Swearengen. The pair alternate between enemies and reluctant allies as the town grows from a rough camp settlement into a full-fledged town, attracting all manner of historical figures looking to stake a claim on its future. Show creator David Milch based the series on diaries, newspaper stories, and other historical records of the time, and well-known figures such as Wyatt Earp, George Hearst, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane all factor prominently in the series’ saga.

Jack Ryan

Tom Clancy’s “Ryanverse” franchise makes the leap from film to television with this spy thriller that premiered in 2018 and casts John Krasinski as the titular CIA analyst who finds himself investigating one far-reaching international threat after another. Lost co-creator Carlton Cuse serves as co-creator and executive producer on the Amazon Original series along with Krasinski and Michael Bay (among others), and the show has offered up two well-received seasons so far, with a third on the way.

Homecoming

Julia Roberts in an Amazon Original? Believe it. Nominated for three Golden Globes, including Best Drama Series, Homecoming is a slow burn of mysterious government programs, complicated red tape, and characters you never feel you can fully trust. This sci-fi/drama introduces us to Homecoming, a facility that helps soldiers transition to civilian life. Led by Heidi (Roberts), their mission seems a noble one, and soldiers appear to be genuinely benefiting from the program. However, the show follows a split timeline, and when, years after the facility has closed, Heidi begins fielding questions from the Department of Defense, it becomes clear there was a lot more going on at higher pay grades than she ever realized.

Downton Abbey

An exemplary British period drama, Downton Abbey is an examination of the politics and personal lives of an aristocratic British family in the early 20th century. As they navigate the touchy social circles of high society, the Crawley family also reacts to the impact of seismic historical events such as the sinking of the Titanic and the outbreak of World War I. Of course, conflicts closer to home, such as the family’s financial problems and difficulty securing their inheritance, provide a solid emotional backbone. The 2019 movie based on the series was a surprise hit, and there’s never been a better time to catch up with the Crawleys.

Sneaky Pete

Amazon’s original series Sneaky Pete crafts a nail-biting drama out of an intricate case of identity theft. Marius Josipovic (Giovanni Ribisi) is a con man recently released from prison who assumes the identity of his former cellmate, Pete Murphy, in order to hide from crime boss Vince Lonigan (Bryan Cranston). The show shines thanks to its ensemble of critically acclaimed actors including The Americans’ Margo Martindale, but the core of its brilliance lies in the clever writing.

Hannibal

In this surreal psychological thriller based on characters from the best-selling Thomas Harris novels, FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) struggles to catch serial killers while teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown. Unbeknownst to him, his therapist, Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelson), is himself a serial killer with dark designs for Will. As their friendship deepens, Will finds himself at the center of a symphony of violence.

Showrunner Bryan Fuller (the man behind Pushing Daisies and the first season of American Gods, as well as the creator of Star Trek: Discovery) breathes new life into the franchise with arthouse cinematography and a chillingly charismatic performance by Mikkelson. It was one of the goriest shows on network TV when it first aired on NBC, but the direction and set design transform the violence into some of the most exquisite images you’ll see on the small screen.

The Wire

One of the best-reviewed cop shows in its day, The Wire casts an unflinching gaze at the war n drugs and its effect on society. Set in Baltimore — the “murder capital,” as many a character notes — the show begins as a police procedural following a group of detectives hoping to bust one of the biggest drug kingpins in the city. The show expands its outlook with every season, though, gradually revealing a city in which everything is interconnected and every action has far-reaching consequences.

The Wire is unique among cop dramas in the extreme attention it pays to the lives and minds of its criminal element. Even the most minor street-level drug dealers seem complex. The show never loses sight of the fact that all of its characters — cop or criminal, politician, or lawyer — are members of a society and are thus shaped by the world around them far more than they shape it.

The Americans

It’s 1981, President Ronald Reagan has just been elected, and like most Americans, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) are enjoying the country’s rising prosperity as the Cold War heats up. Unlike most Americans, however, the Jennings are actually KGB spies.

From that singular premise emerges one of the most exciting thrillers on the air today. The political intrigue is exciting, but what makes The Americans stand out is its focus on the Jennings’ marriage. In examining the tensions of married life, the show demonstrates that personal issues like spousal conflict can be every bit as exciting as geopolitical maneuvers.

The Sopranos

Hailed by some critics as “the most influential television drama ever,” The Sopranos certainly seems like the blueprint for the modern TV drama. The show features an aging antihero at its center, a large cast of interconnected characters, and all the scheming and violence that have recently become emblematic of dramatic television.

Beneath the Shakespearean scope of the story, however, there beats a human heart. The Sopranos is, at its core, a family drama, and an examination of the man at the head of that family. Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) is a tragic figure, as the position of power he creates for himself in the Mafia brings with it pressures that threaten to break him. The show is so popular, in fact, that a prequel movie featuring a young Tony Soprano is coming to TV more than a decade after The Sopranos concluded its run.

Treme

This post-Katrina New Orleans drama reunites two of our favorite actors — Clarke Peters and Wendell Pierce of The Wire — as well as that show’s creators, David Simon and Eric Overmeyer. The series was praised for its realistic depiction of NOLA culture and its ensemble cast, which includes gems like John Goodman, Rob Brown, and Edwina Findley.

The series focuses on the working-class neighborhood of Tremé, from which it gets its name. Beginning just three months after Hurricane Katrina, it follows Mardi Gras Indians, musicians, police, bar owners, a civil rights lawyer, and others as they pick up the pieces, and shows the challenges and resiliency of a community refusing to break despite the levees doing so.

Boardwalk Empire

Oh, Steve Buscemi. We love you, especially as the tyrannical treasurer and criminal kingpin of Prohibition-era Atlantic City. With a pilot directed by Martin Scorsese and a producer of The Sopranos at his side, the series came out of the gates swinging.

Scorsese’s initial direction solidified a visual aesthetic that the show’s later directors emulated, one that has since been lauded again and again. The show’s attention to historical accuracy is equally as impressive and gives the period piece a subtlety and realistic feel. The characters are complex, too, and their relationships with one another often encompass both sides of the love-hate coin.

The Night Manager

This six-part miniseries was showered with nominations at high-profile award shows during both 2016 and 2017, and for good reason. Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers) is absolutely marvelous as hotel manager Jonathan Pine, whose military past comes back to haunt him when he’s recruited by an intelligence officer (Olivia Coleman) to infiltrate the operation of a chemical weapons dealer (Hugh Laurie).

You might remember Laurie as the sarcastic Dr. House — don’t we all? — but here he taps into a completely different character, one that is ruthless and unafraid of getting his hands dirty. The BBC One series is the third attempt at adapting John le Carré’s novel of the same name, and, apparently, three is the magic number. The Night Manager is suspenseful, charming, and well worth your time.

Mr. Robot

As information technology creeps into every aspect of life, one can’t help but look at the people controlling that technology (corporations, government agencies) with a wary eye. The modern world, at times, seems like the prelude to a cyberpunk dystopia, at least the way Mr. Robot portrays it. The show follows Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a paranoid security engineer who, in addition to his day job working for a massive corporation, engages in acts of vigilante hacking.

When Elliot is courted by a mysterious activist-hacker known as “Mr. Robot,” he has a chance to use his skills for more than acts of petty justice. Mr. Robot has a grand plan to topple society, and Alderson could play a key role. Mr. Robot is a cyber-thriller with a keen grasp of the technology it represents, but don’t mistake technical accuracy for realism — the show dives headfirst down a rabbit hole of paranoia and espionage, with a plot that constantly challenges the viewer’s perceptions.

Poldark

After three years fighting in the American Revolution, Ross Poldark (Aidan Turner) returns to his home in Cornwall, England, only to find his estate in shambles and his lover, Elizabeth (Heida Reed), married to his cousin. As Ross attempts to rebuild his family’s tin mines, he rescues a young woman named Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) and gives her a job as a maid. Making things more complicated for Ross is his rival, George Warleggan, an ambitious industrialist.

Based on a series of 20th-century novels, this adaptation of Poldark moves at a brisk pace befitting a modern show, deftly juggling romance, action, and political maneuvering.

The Prisoner

Few series have had as far-reaching an effect on sci-fi and fantasy TV as this 1967 show that followed a British intelligence agent who finds himself trapped in a mysterious village by unknown captors and policed by bizarre security measures. Patrick McGoohan co-created the series and stars in it as the enigmatic agent known as Number Six. The show famously blends elements of spy fiction with sci-fi themes, and pivots between compelling surreal and allegorical elements and more straightforward narratives as Number Six attempts to learn why he’s imprisoned and escape.

The Boys

Of all the superhero movies and TV shows out there, none of them are quite like The Boys, a dark, depraved deconstruction of super-powered heroes and villains. Based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic book series of the same name, The Boys follows a group of vigilantes who take it upon themselves to police the super-powered heroes who abuse their abilities and take advantage of the trust the public has placed in them.

As grim and shockingly violent as it is clever, the series is set in a world in which superpowers, corporate greed, and media consolidation have bled together to create a particularly frightening form of corruption. The audience sees it all through the eyes of Hughie, an average guy whose chance encounter with a superhero changes his life forever.

Farscape

This cult-favorite series that premiered in 1999 follows a modern-day astronaut whose accidental journey through a wormhole finds him joining the colorful crew of a living spaceship in an unknown region far from Earth. On the run from a powerful military force known as the Peacekeepers, he and the crew attempt to find sanctuary — and a way home — in a strange galaxy. The award-winning series is notable for being a production of The Jim Henson Company and including multiple featured characters created by the company’s Creature Shop. The show’s four-season run was followed by a three-hour miniseries that concluded the story, and also inspired a long list of spinoff stories in novels, comic books, and other formats.

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams

You could call this Amazon Prime’s Black Mirror, and you wouldn’t be wrong. The Show is an anthology sci-fi series based on stories from the late science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, whose work inspired Blade Runner and Amazon series The Man in the High Castle. Electric Dreams‘ first season explores injectable consciousness, mind readers, humans beings replaced by robots, and a genocidal presidential candidate, to name a few.

The production value is impressive, with Hidden Figures and Moonlight actress Janelle Monae playing an artificially intelligent robot in a metallic suit that looks convincingly realistic. Like Black Mirror, Amazon’s sci-fi series employs some major stars, including Terrence Howard, Bryan Cranston, Steve Buscemi, and Anna Paquin. Those looking for a gripping dose of dark sci-fi will definitely find it here.

The Expanse

Imagine a future in which humans have colonized every part of the solar system. The Expanse turns that hypothetical future into a powerhouse sci-fi drama. The series is set 200 years from now, and centers on a conspiracy that threatens to wipe out the human race. Don’t let the CGI effects and space setting fool you, The Expanse is a riveting drama that tackles the nuances of human conflict in a way that rivals shows like Game of Thrones and Westworld.

The first three seasons of the series are currently available to stream, and Amazon picked up the series for its fourth season in early 2019.

The Man in the High Castle

World War II seems to be the most common source for the “What if?” scenario in fiction. The Man in the High Castle, based on Philip K. Dick’s novel of the same name, starts with the premise that not only did the Axis powers win the war, but they also occupied the United States afterward, with Imperial Japan governing the West Coast and the Nazis controlling the territory east of the Rockies.

The show follows a few different characters living in different regions as they try to endure the occupation and simultaneously investigate a mysterious film reel that depicts an alternate universe where the Allies actually won the war. Dick was a true visionary author, and The Man in the High Castle captures the otherworldly, authoritarian nature of the world he imagined. Rich with intrigue and superb direction, The Man in the High Castle is an exciting thriller. The series wrapped up its impressive run with November’s season 4.

Orphan Black

In this critically acclaimed Canadian series, a young woman named Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) has a chance encounter with a woman who looks just like her. This sets Sarah down a path to discovering that she is one of several clones who have been created as part of an ongoing experiment. Soon, she is at odds with the corporation that created her, and a mysterious organization that wants to get rid of her. It’s a fast-paced thriller that takes the time to explore themes of self-identity and bioethics.

Vikings

For those who enjoy the political maneuvering and messy military battles of Game of Thrones but want something a bit more grounded, Vikings is sure to please. A down-to-earth historical fantasy saga, Vikings chronicles the rise of Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel) from farmer to legendary warrior. Ragnar sails around Northern Europe searching for plunder, accompanied by his warrior wife, Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick), and other allies.

It’s a grim series, drawing on the legends surrounding Viking raids in the Middle Ages. Although not the most historically accurate show, Vikings does maintain a grittier aesthetic than some of its fantasy contemporaries; there’s a lot of blood and a lot of mud.

American Horror Story

The horror anthology that is Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story, though novel, continues to surpass expectations with every passing season. Each essentially functions as a self-contained miniseries, focusing on a repertory cast of characters and a storyline that features its own beginning, middle, and end.

Each season — whether it revolves around a coven of witches, an insane asylum, or a haunted house in the middle of Los Angeles — features lavish set pieces and campy aesthetics, both of which add to sterling performances from the likes of Lady Gaga and the award-winning Jessica Lange. Many of the seasons even take a jab at current social issues, and they often leave a weird and wonderful impression. Well, that, and an awful taste in your mouth.

Star Trek: The Original Series

A groundbreaking science fiction series from writer Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek follows the crew of the Enterprise as they travel the universe on a mission of peace and exploration. Starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in the roles that launched them into stardom, the series is a cornerstone of television history. Each episode explores timeless philosophical and social ideas.

Star Trek was also famous for incorporating an ethnically diverse cast in the politically tumultuous ’60s, making it a show that was far ahead of its time. Roddenberry envisioned a future where humanity would bring its very best traits and ideals out into the universe, and the show shares his boundless idealism. The primitive special effects can make Star Trek seem a bit cheesy to the modern eye, but even its most inept action scenes have a certain bizarre charm to them.

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

Fred Rogers created 31 seasons of what is possibly the best children’s show of all time. The show consists of Roger’s half-hour “visit” with his audiences, in which he speaks directly to his viewers. Once he enters his home and changes into his famous zip-up cardigan and blue sneakers, he creates a safe and special place through his genuineness and naturalness. Children learn about various topics, including those that deal with death, jealousy, divorce, and anger.

The show also incorporates visits from Mr. Rogers’ friends, such as delivery man Mr. McFeely, and always features a “Picture Picture” segment designed to teach children how various items are made. At the end of the show, the trolley from the opening credits takes viewers to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, where beloved puppets often have interactions that reflect the theme of the show.

Shaun the Sheep

From Aardman Studios — the creators of Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, and Creature Comforts — comes the children’s series Shaun the Sheep. Shaun is a sheep who doesn’t follow the herd. In fact, he often brazenly leads them into all sorts of madcap shenanigans around Mossy Bottom Farm. The show also features the iconic studio’s stop-motion animation and remains free of dialogue, which is actually a welcome reprieve for parents who simply can’t get on board with the high-pitched voices and exuberant makeup of many modern children’s shows.

Tumble Leaf

Tumble Leaf, Amazon’s heralded foray into the realm of children’s programming, is a stunning example of what a children’s show should be. The recent stop-motion title is based on the short film Miro and aimed at preschool-aged children, though it remains charming enough to entertain adults who want to further engage with their children.

Each episode follows Fig the Fox (Christopher Downs) and his science-centric escapades around the whimsical world of Tumble Leaf, a woodland locale laced with a melange of quirky creatures with whom Fig is friends. Together, the humanoid creatures discover how reflections, shadows, and other facets of our natural world work, examining the value of friendship and kindness as they do so. The scenery is as vibrant and colorful as are the characters, rendering it both eye candy and a conversation starter.

Sesame Street

The inspiration behind several movies, a toy that created a buying frenzy, and its own magazine, Sesame Street is a veritable institution. The show, which has spanned 45 seasons and won more awards than its young viewers could count, takes place on an urban street where humans and Jim Henson’s Muppets interact. The show also includes short animation and live-action films, pictures, and songs. It was the first children’s show to use educational goals and a curriculum to shape its content, and as such, it has taught millions of viewers around the globe about the importance of relationships, ethics, and emotions. Plus, you know, the ABCs.

DIY Sci

Science teacher Steve Spangler hosts this Emmy-nominated series that uses fascinating experiments you can try at home to explore scientific concepts such as the powerful potential of fluids and gases, as well as the secrets behind some magic tricks and seemingly complicated energy systems. Each episode tackles a different theme using everyday items to conduct the experiments, making it a truly family-friendly experience that breaks down complex concepts into simple (but occasionally messy) lessons.

The Grand Tour

For years, the trio of Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond drove cool cars and clowned around with each other on the BBC’s Top Gear. Despite their departure from that series, however, the good times keep rolling on The Grand Tour, which reunites the three snarky hosts for a show that is very similar in format to Top Gear. Episodes often feature studio segments and test drives on the show’s test track, the “Eboladrome.”

As with Top Gear, the best episodes are the ones where the hosts venture to foreign lands, testing unique vehicles on unfamiliar terrain. For car enthusiasts or Top Gear fans not satisfied by that show’s new hosts, The Grand Tour is a welcome return to form.

NOVA

This long-running PBS documentary series began its run in 1974 and continues to this day, with each episode exploring science-themed discoveries, historical events, or topics making headlines in the science world. The show has won a long list of awards, including multiple Peabody and Emmy Awards, over the course of its decades-spanning run that currently includes more than 880 episodes and counting. Broadcast in more than 100 countries, NOVA features interviews with scientists and other experts as it explores everything from the miracle of life to the evolution of science and technology in espionage.

Eat The World with Emeril Lagasse

This Emmy and James Beard Award-nominated show follows celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse around the world, where he meets up with friends and fellow chefs to discuss and taste some of the culinary world’s hottest flavors. Season 1 sees Lagasse tour Sweden, China, Spain, South Korea, Italy, and Cuba.

Via Local Commie Underlings, Beijing Officially Disapproves

2020-04-09T10:45:00.001+05:30

A Chinese diplomat in Australia shot off a letter to ‘The Daily Telegraph’, a popular daily in Australia, questioning their vigorous coverage of the Chinese virus. The newspaper then reigned fire on the Chinese regime for trying to bully them, and began with calling the government of China a ‘communist dictatorship’. It gave a point by point rebuttal to the Chinese Consulate in a piece titled, “Via Local Commie Underlings, Beijing Officially Disapproves”.

I esp. loved the part about WHO:

"The World Health Organisation also appointed Zimbabwean murderer Robert Mugabe as its Goodwill Ambassador and declared on March 2 that the “stigma” of the coronavirus “is more dangerous than the virus itself”.

The World Health Organisation does a lot of stupid stuff."

Reproducing the article below. Original article can be found here.

The Daily Telegraph this week received a letter from the Australian Consulate General of the People's Republic of China, who took gentle issue with our excellent coverage of the coronavirus crisis.

Following is a point-by-point response to the Consulate General and China’s communist dictatorship:

Recently the Daily Telegraph has published a number of reports and opinions about China’s response to COVID-19 that are full of ignorance, prejudice and arrogance.

If a state-owned newspaper in China received this kind of complaint, subsequent days would involve journalists waking up in prison with their organs harvested.

Tracing the origin of the virus is a scientific issue that requires professional, science-based assessment.

Sure it does. How professional and science-based was the claim published on March 12 by China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian that “it might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan”?

The origin of the virus is still undetermined, and the World Health Organization has named the novel coronavirus “COVID-19”.

The World Health Organisation also appointed Zimbabwean murderer Robert Mugabe as its Goodwill Ambassador and declared on March 2 that the “stigma” of the coronavirus “is more dangerous than the virus itself”.

The World Health Organisation does a lot of stupid stuff.

So what is the real motive behind your attempt to repeatedly link the virus to China and even stating that the novel coronavirus was “made in China”?

Our motive is accuracy. That’s why we don’t link the virus to Bognor Regis or state that it was “made in Panama”.

The people of Wuhan made a huge effort and personal sacrifice to stop the spread of the epidemic.

Wuhan’s Dr Li Wenliang indeed made a huge effort to warn people about the coronavirus outbreak. Then, as the New York Times reported: “In early January, he was called in by both medical officials and the police, and forced to sign a statement denouncing his warning as an unfounded and illegal rumor.”

And now he’s dead, so that’s “personal sacrifice” covered as well.

Nevertheless, in order to capture attention and gain more internet hits, you called Wuhan the “Zombieland” and Wuhan seafood market the “bat market”. How low can you go?

In the civilised world, “Bradman bats and bats and bats” is a famous newspaper banner:
In Wuhan, it’s the name of a restaurant.
The effectiveness of China's epidemic prevention and control has fully underlined the people-centred philosophy of the Communist Party of China and the strong advantages of the Chinese system.

In 2018, Amnesty International reported that China executed more citizens than the rest of the world combined.

Please tell us more about your “people-centred philosophy” and how many bullets it requires.

Instead of admitting and facing facts, the articles in your newspaper have wantonly attacked and smeared the CPC and the Chinese government with vicious language.

And yet we haven’t been jailed or shot! Where’s the justice in that?

Is your judgement based on the well-being of the people or do you have an ideological prejudice?

We will admit to an ideological prejudice against deadly tyranny. It’s a tragic failing on our part.

Since 3 January, China has been updating the WHO and the international community in a timely and transparent manner.

On January 14, following 11 days of “timely and transparent” updates, the WHO broadcast this ridiculous Chinese misinformation:

World Health Organization (WHO)
✔@WHO

Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.

18.7K

4:48 PM - Jan 14, 2020

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29.2K people are talking about this

The epidemic is spreading rapidly around the globe, and China is doing its utmost to support other severely affected countries.

Thousands of Chinese-made coronavirus testing kits and medical masks exported to Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands turned out to be "below standard or defective”, according to the BBC.

And the ABC this week reported that more than 800,000 masks have been seized by Australian Border Force officers after the masks were “found to be counterfeit or otherwise faulty”.

Thanks for all your help, guys.

Virus respects no borders.

Why, then, did China close its own borders on March 28 – even while claiming victory over the spread of coronavirus?

You have repeatedly questioned the WHO’s positive assessment of China's epidemic prevention and control, but surely you know that the WHO is the most authoritative international organization in global public health, with more than 190 members including Australia?

Keep an eye on that number, sunshine.

In disregard of the authoritative information provided by China and the WHO's professional opinions, you instead quoted several so-called “strategic analysts” …

Were you aware that the institution where these people work have been exposed as long accepting financial support from the US government … ?

The US last year contributed nearly $900 million to the sacred WHO. Your point, sir?

Your recent coverage on the epidemic in China are exaggerated, full of irresponsible rumours and highly politicized.

Naughty us.

Please send an official Dr Li Wenliang “unfounded and illegal rumour” denunciation statement so we can sign it and be on our way.

UPDATE. Reader Tim asks:

Please tell me that this response was actually sent back to them.

Even better. It was published on a double-page 6-7 spread in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph:

25 Things to Do with Your Family While Stuck at Home

2020-04-03T18:25:00.000+05:30

During this period of (almost) global lock down and limited movement, we are all looking for ways to kill time.

What we need to keep in mind is that we can use this time productively and not waste it in sleeping or binge watching. Joshua Becker has shared an excellent list of 25 Things to do with your family at his blog Becoming Minimalist.

I am sharing the article below. Original article can be found here.

I do not really agree with one or two of his points and those have a strike through. My disagreement is mostly personal in nature and readers might or might not agree to it.

As with most the world, we’ve been spending a lot more time at home in recent days.

It’s important, in these unique times, to redeem the hours and make the most of the moments we have together. There are negative ramifications to the current state of affairs in our world—and you don’t need to see them broadcast in the media, many of you are experiencing them firsthand.

But the negative effects of the Coronavirus do not need to overwhelm us. We can also choose positive effects: spending time with family, taking longer rests, finding solitude, and escaping the busyness of our normal lives.

With that in mind, here’s my list of 25 things to do while stuck at home to redeem the time and make the most of it.

0. Wake up, get dressed. I need to include this one here because it’s important to start each day with the right attitude. Every day is an opportunity to make the most of it. Don’t miss a single opportunity—regardless of the circumstances around you.

1. Declutter. Minimize your possessions and declutter the stuff in your home. The more we spend time in our home, the more we can recognize what can and should be removed—and the more time we have to do it. Check out Clutterfree if you’re looking for steps to get started

2. Learn new card games. I grew up playing cards‚ even as a young child. And not just Go Fish and War, but strategy games like Hearts, Spades, Rook, and Pinochle. They taught me how to think ahead, play out scenarios, and learn from others. All valuable life skills.

3. Make phone calls. Safe to say the phone call is making a comeback. All those people you would usually see at work, church, or social gatherings, give them a call to say hello.

4. Teach your kids life skills. My son is a junior in high school and my wife and I have a long list of life skills we want him to know before he leaves the house. We’ve been using these weeks to make up for lost time. If you haven’t already, use the time to teach your kids cooking, laundry, cleaning, car repair, budgeting, or any other life skills that come to mind.

5. ~~Go outside.~~ ~~If still allowed in your local area, go on long walks or hikes. Spend time in the park or walk along the river~~.

6. Workout. We need to be taking care of our physical bodies and taking care of our physical fitness during this time as well. Look up at-home workouts/yoga on YouTube or Google and do them together as a family.

7. Watch educational programs. I see a lot of people spending time on Netflix—binging movies and television shows. And there’s certainly a place for that. But you can also watch educational documentaries on Netflix and YouTube about history, science, or events in the world.

8. Learn a new skill. Been wanting to pick up a hobby? Now’s your chance. Learn a new language or how to code. Pick up an instrument or new artistic skill. Because of the Internet, finding a teacher (free or paid) has never been easier.

9. Create. I started this blog as a hobby—somehow it grew to over 2M readers/month. Start something of your own. Create a blog or a YouTube channel. Write some stories or poetry. Or use your hands in the workshop. Create something, we need you now more than ever.

10. Do a Facebook Live. Nothing to it. Just click a few buttons on your phone and suddenly all your friends can see you. It’s super fun. If you haven’t before, now’s your time.

11. Write letters. To a family member or friend you haven’t seen in awhile.

12. Invent a game. Looking around the room at the supplies you have, make up a game to play with your kids. Or better yet, invent an entire Family Olympics where each member of the family gets to pick 1-2 of the events. Keep a running total of the points.

13. Read books. You should probably be doing that anyway.

14. Late night movie with the family. Depending on your local school situation of course. But if it works, there’s nothing more fun for little kids than staying up past bedtime, eating popcorn, and watching a movie with mom or dad. Make it happen.

15. Video chat with friends. Whether it’s on FaceTime, Skype, Facebook Messenger or Zoom, connect and hang out online for a little while.

16. Home repairs or a deep clean. Make up some ground on that list of yours.

17. Sort through boxes of old photos. Keep the best and put them in photo albums or digitize for future generations.

18. Clean up your computer digital files. Here.

19. Curate and organize your recipe/cookbook stash. I use index cards to keep all my favorites in the same place.

20. ~~Make up TikTok dances with the family.~~ ~~I see a lot of those short, choreographed dances being posted. Super fun for everyone.~~

21. Create games to share with family members. Invent a WordSearch or Crossword Puzzle using the members of your family and send them out for everyone else to complete during their downtime.

22. Take a class online. You can find plenty of courses for kids and adults available for free online. Including Yale’s most popular college course ever.

23. ~~Order takeout and have a picnic.~~ ~~If your local community still allows that, you can support local business and enjoy time outside as a family (weather-permitting of course)~~.

24. Research your family tree. You can use online tools or do it the old-fashioned way—calling family members to begin piecing it together.

25. Learn online tools for business. One’s thing is for sure—business is going to change going forward. Learn as quick as you can how remote work is accomplished: Zoom, Slack, Skype, Dropbox, and numerous others. Now’s your time to learn them.

There are so many options to make the most of the time now—and probably ahead of us for a little bit longer.

What have you been doing that could be added to the list?

6 BOOKS THAT WILL HELP YOU GROW FROM YOUR PAIN

2020-04-03T14:29:00.000+05:30

Author and Blogger Mark Manson has this very interesting article on his blog about Self Help Books.

In this article he has gone beyond the fluffy, feel-goody, “you can do it!” self-help books out there. he feels (and I agree) that there are far fewer books that take a realistic look at pain, trauma, setbacks, and failures and then honestly discuss how to cope with them in a way that doesn’t make you feel like a cheerleader at a high school pep rally.

He has put together list of such self help books which are more gritty and take a raw approach to improving yourself. He claims he also follows the same approach while writing his books.

The original article can be found here.

In this post I am sharing the books he has listed down in his article. Readers should also check out this original post as at the end of his article he is offering 21 page ebook for free for readers.

THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY
BY ALAN WATTS

The Wisdom of Insercurity is not Watts’ most famous book, but probably my favorite. Mostly just because I’m a dark, sick fuck who loves reveling in all the ways life is chaotic and hopeless and we must persevere in spite of it.

Watts, in case you didn’t know, is one of the most popular pop-Buddhist writers from the 1960s and 70s. Like many hippy-dippy Buddhists of that era, he was a bit of a wreck himself, sporting an alcohol problem, a complete inability to manage money, and accumulating almost as many wives as he did books throughout his career.

Yet, his clarity on the fundamental tenets of eastern philosophy is still unmatched. There’s probably no better book if you want to get the quick and dirty introduction to eastern philosophy. If you ever want to experience an amazing hour, check out some of his lectures on YouTube. They’re incredible. The man is a legend.

Useful If You Suffer From: Anxiety. Watts believed, even as far back as the 1950s, that we were entering an “age of anxiety,” dominated by larger cities, faster technology, and more inter-connectivity. The man was ahead of his time.

Yet, rather than bemoan this new modern world, Watts encourages us to embrace it. It’s exactly in the not-knowing that growth and inspiration are found. And it’s in the desperate desire to control everything around us that the self is shut down.

Some Quotes from the Book:

“Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.”

“What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money … but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth … In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are ‘coins’ for real things.”

“If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.”

THE UPSIDE OF STRESS
BY KELLY MCGONIGAL

Stress has gotten a bad rap these past few decades. Everything is blamed on stress. Gaining weight? Must be stress. Depressed? Must be stress. Feel like the world is going to hell in a tamale basket? Must be stress.

Professor McGonigal (no, not the one from Harry Potter) is here to set the record straight with The Upside of Stress. Not only is stress natural and expected, but it’s often healthy. As she states clearly in the opening pages, “Stress happens when something you care about is at stake. It’s not a sign to run away—it’s a sign to step forward.”

The book offers an interesting and more well-balanced view of stress and the more difficult moments in life. I enjoyed it a lot.

Useful If You Suffer From: Stress! Duh. How well we cope with stress is not really from how much stress we have in our life, but rather by how we respond to the stress in our life. What are our actions, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions around our stress? How do we see our relationship to our stressful situation? Like I’ve often taught with anxiety, it’s not about getting rid of stress, but simply harnessing it to propel you forward.

Some Quotes from the Book:

“Feeling burdened rather than uplifted by everyday duties is more a mindset than a measure of what is going on in your life.”

“It turns out that how you think about stress is also one of those core beliefs that can affect your health, happiness, and success. As we’ll see, your stress mindset shapes everything from the emotions you feel during a stressful situation to the way you cope with stressful events. That, in turn, can determine whether you thrive under stress or end up burned out and depressed. The good news is, even if you are firmly convinced that stress is harmful, you can still cultivate a mindset that helps you thrive.”

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
BY M. SCOTT PECK

The book opens with perhaps the greatest understatement ever written, “Life is difficult.”

This is probably the only classic self-help book that I really love. Most self-help stuff from before the 90s is way too cheery, absurdly positive, and completely unrealistic. But The Road Less Traveled is different in that it doesn’t make any grand promises of love, security, or happiness. From the get-go, it is honest: Life is difficult.

The idea behind the book is very simple: we must get our own shit in order before we’re able to truly love others. We must love others in order to grow. We must grow to experience the full richness of life.

That’s it.

*Mic drop*

Actually, there is more. Peck was religious, so he does end up talking quite a bit about spirituality and a little bit about Christianity. Don’t let that turn you off, though. He’s not a Bible-thumper. Quite the contrary, it’s a fairly secular book.

Useful If You Suffer From: Depression. Disillusionment. Being a Mr. Whiny Pants. Ultimately, The Road Less Traveled is about empowerment and how that empowerment enhances your life and the lives of those around you. Self-empowerment is the road less traveled because it’s the more difficult road to take in life. It’s easier to whine and complain and blame others. It’s easier to assume you can do nothing, that nothing you do matters.

In that sense, the book is a kind of an open challenge. Are you up for it?

Some Quotes from the Book:

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

“Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”

“Not only do self-love and love of others go hand in hand but ultimately they are indistinguishable.”

FEEDING YOUR DEMONS
BY TSULTRIM ALLIONE

Tsultrim Allione (born Joan Ewing) was one of the first American women to ever be ordained as a nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. During her time in Nepal and India, Allione stumbled across an obscure practice called Chöd that involved a form of meditation that had one converse with their personal demons.

Allione somehow managed to track down one of the only surviving manuscripts on the planet, translate it, and modernize it as a kind of visualization-meets-meditation practice.

There are sections of Feeding Your Demons that trip my “woo woo” radar, but ultimately I came to the conclusion that the practice, when viewed as a means to help people confront and accept the more unsavory aspects of themselves, is probably helpful. In my opinion, it’s a practice that crystalizes and implements a lot of the self-compassion research that has surfaced in the past ten years.

Useful If You Suffer From: Shame and/or addiction. The short version is you close your eyes and take whatever demon is in your life and envision them as a sort of creature in your mind’s eye. There’s a whole process of paying attention to how your subconscious generates the creature, what they’re doing, how they’re behaving—are they aggressive or scared, are they ugly or menacing?

Then you, like, sit down and have tea with your inner demon. No, seriously, you start to befriend your demons. I know it sounds weird, but I tried it a few times and it was pretty cool.

Some Quotes from the Book:

“Confess all your hidden faults! Approach that which you find repulsive! Whoever you think you cannot help, help them! Anything you are attached to, let go of it!”

“Perhaps everything terrible in us is, in its deepest being, something helpless needing our help.”

THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY
BY RYAN HOLIDAY

Holiday has instigated a full-blown revival of stoicism in the past ten years, and The Obstacle Is the Way is where it all began.

Based on a quote from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, the idea behind the book is that it is impossible to avoid obstacles or setbacks. In fact, it is the obstacles and setbacks that make life fruitful, meaningful, and important.

Holiday pulls from a large number of fables, historical anecdotes, and modern stories to drive his points home. The book is highly readable and has become a cult favorite among high performers everywhere.

Useful If You Suffer From: Inaction, perfectionism, and rumination. More and more, people default to feeling as though they’re unable to do something unless they can do it well. But the sad fact is that this is exactly how to not do anything well.

The truth is that whatever we do, we must fail at it a number of times before we ever become competent. And for whatever reason, that process of failure, of unexpected setbacks, of self-doubt and criticism, we often wrongly believe that we shouldn’t have to go through that.

Some Quotes from the Book:

“The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.”

“Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves.”

“The only guarantee, ever, is that things will go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation. Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.”

WHAT DOESN’T KILL US
BY STEPHEN JOSEPH

When I saw this book pulled its title from a famous Nietzsche quote: “What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger,” I was swooning. When I saw it was about my favorite obscure area of psychology research known as post-traumatic growth, I was in love.

We’re all familiar with PTSD and the ways trauma can fuck us up. But few people realize that most people who experience trauma actually claim that they benefited from it later. It’s this little-known branch of psychology known as post-traumatic growth, and I can only hope that it will soon get its day in the sun.

This area of psychology is young and under-explored, but Joseph packs the book full of all of the major relevant studies. What Doesn’t Kill Us is a bit academic but still worth a read just to get the message out there: trauma is not the end of the world. In fact, it can even be the beginning of a world.

Useful If You Suffer From: Trauma. We’ve all probably heard at least one ridiculous story of a college kid somewhere claiming they are traumatized because their ice cream cone was racist. Trauma is everywhere these days.

See, it turns out that a lot of your ability to cope with trauma depends on your attitude and beliefs around what happened to you. If you decide that everything is traumatic, it will nudge your body into experiencing trauma over every little thing. Similarly, if you convince yourself that trauma is permanent, debilitating and unjust, then you will disempower yourself to overcome or even grow from your trauma.

Some Quotes from the Book:

“But people are not passive recipients of how their lives unfold. The feelings they have about what happened distinctly influences their recovery.”

“Although psychological trauma has been the subject of great fascination and inquiry for many decades, we still know relatively little about the experiences of those who fare well in the aftermath of traumatic events–and why it is whereas one person struggles to cope, the other goes on to flourish and experience positive change.”

Comics

2020-04-01T12:20:00.001+05:30

Due to lockdown, I have decided to share some comics in Digital format that would help people kill some time at home.

Posting first of such comics "Nagraj". Please click on link below to download the first comics in this series.

Nagraj - 001

Nagraj 002

2020-04-01T04:00:00.000+05:30

Posting the second comics in Nagraj Series

Nagraj 002 - Nagraj Ki Kabra

The side effect of need for Perfection - How Our Need For Perfection May Be Literally Killing Us

2017-03-22T23:30:00.000+05:30

From a young age we are told to strive for perfection. All our lives we, well most of us in any case, strive for perfection and undergo numerous rounds of training, self doubt, practice session and what not in our bid to achieve perfection.

But rarely do we pause and think about the cost we end up paying in our quest for perfection. Becomingminimalist has a very interesting article on this topic. Although the article primarily refers to people in USA and the impact of their need for perfection, I think it serves as a good example of how there could be negative side to even good things we often aspire for!

Here is the article from Becomingminimalist post. You can find the original article here

Recently, I read an important article in The Washington Post. The title reveals the content: Americans Use Far More Opioids Than Anyone Else in the World.

The title describes accurately the premise of the article but the specifics tell the deeper story. Not only do Americans use more opioids than anyone else in the world, we are prescribed about six times as many of the pain-relieving drugs per capita as the citizens of Portugal and France. And almost twice as many opioids as the second highest nation on the list.

Equally alarming, Americans consume more than 99 percent of the world’s supply of hydrocodone. More than 33,000 people died of opioid overdoses in the United States last year—more than gun homicides by an almost 3 to 1 margin.

This is, indeed, a significant problem.

But what was even more fascinating to me was the author’s identification of the reasons why the statistics are the way they are.

Keith Humphreys, the author of the piece in The Washington Post, is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. As part of the story, he sought to understand why America would lead the world in this troubling category. It’s not, as he begins, because we are aging. Other nations have older populations than the US. There must be other economic, political, and cultural factors at play.

This is where it gets really interesting.

One significant reason he identifies for America’s addiction to pain-relieving medication is “relative to Europeans, Americans have more faith that life is perfectible (e.g., all pain can be avoided).” He explains:

Consider, for example, a 55-year-old who feels acute back and leg pain after doing the workout that was easy when he was 25. A European in this situation might reflect sadly that aging and physical decay must be accepted as part of life, but an achy American might demand that his doctor fix what he sees as an avoidable problem by prescribing him opioids.

In other words, our desire to eliminate all pain from life and experience perfection regardless of circumstance may be contributing to the level of opioid addiction and death in our nation. In this specific case, the need for perfection may be literally killing us. A sober thought.

Whether the doctor’s hypothesis is correct or not, the idea is important.

The constant need for perfection in life is a harmful way to live. (tweet)

Whether we are talking about the negative effects of pain-relieving medication or any number of other scenarios, the need for perfection often results in negative outcomes on our lives. Not only does it distract us from happiness, it routinely sends us down paths away from it.

The search for perfection in our work may send us jumping from one career to another constantly looking for that one job with no bad days. But that job does not exist—the most beautiful rose still has thorns.

The search for perfection in our relationships causes us to give up too quickly on other people. But there are no perfect people and relationships, at their core, require commitment. Without patience, grace, and faithfulness, there is no opportunity for love.

The search for perfection in our homes often results in the accumulation of unnecessary possessions. Marketers routinely promise comfort and better living in their newest offering. An unhealthy pursuit of perfection makes us more susceptible to their falsehoods. These excess possessions quickly begin to monopolize our time and energy and focus.

The search for perfection in our external image gives rise to unhealthy body image pursuits. Rather than seeing them as instruments through which we accomplish our life’s goals, we begin to see them as ornaments to impress others. Sometimes even, while we never experience perfection in our own minds, we seek to present that reality to the world around us.

The search for perfection in our actions often prevents us from trying new things or experimenting with new skills. By its very nature, the desire to commit no mistakes or ever having to admit failure keeps us from attempting new things in life. But every expert started as a beginner.

As noted in The Washington Post article above, the need for perfection may cause harmful addictions to take root in our life, resulting in ruined or destroyed lives.

But even before that most extreme consequence, the desire for perfection or the avoidance of pain can still be harmful. It causes us to lose opportunity to experience happiness in every circumstance.

Life is not perfect. It never has been and it never will be. But this can be good news. It means we can stop pursuing the mythical, perfect life. It means we can stop chasing perfect skin, the perfect job, the perfect house, or the perfect spouse. And it means we can find freedom to live victoriously even within our imperfections.

Business schools or Hogwarts school of money?

2016-09-19T23:30:00.000+05:30

Came across this post on Mostly Economics where the author talks about experiences and observations of Anuvaub Paul (a comedian) after his interactions with students of a B-school in Pune.

Being an MBA himself Anuvaub is really surprised to see students having similar career choices as they had during his time. He is also disappointed how clueless students are and are just chasing these jobs for salaries so that edu loan can be repaid.

His post highlights the herd mentality that we are so prone to, esp while pursuing courses like MBA where stop seeing beyond obvious career choices. And this view is further narrowed down to more glamorous or higher paying jobs like consulting or investment banking.

Makes for an interesting read. Anuvaub's post can be found here.

Click happy: Reading the consumer mind about shopping online

2016-09-16T18:00:00.000+05:30

Forbes India site has published this very interesting result of DigitasLBI's survey across 15 countries. Its a worthwhile short read (given that most of the data has been presented well in form of graphs) for people involved in startups and e-commerce space. Even otherwise this makes for an interesting read.

Original article on Forbes India site can be found here.

D

igitasLBi’s Connected Commerce survey across 15 countries shows that consumers the world over are wired the same way: While their motivations, concerns and information resources are similar, the big difference lies in the use of smartphones as a purchase device in India, compared to laptops in other countries.

METHODOLOGY:
DigitasLBi’s connected commerce survey is now in its fi fth year and covers a total of 15 countries. The study was conducted online by the Institut français d'opinion publique (IFOP) between May 4 and 23, 2016, during which 1,000 internet users aged 18 years and above responded from each country. The survey covered Australia, Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, The Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and USA

Here are the 10 oldest companies in India that are still going strong…

2016-09-14T06:00:00.000+05:30

Came across this bit on Mostly Economics - a blog I follow for its insightful articles.

Shailesh Menon of ET Bureau has a piece of ten oldest companies in India which are still doing good:

The life expectancy rate of companies is shrinking rapidly world over. According to leadership guru Steven Denning, the life expectancy rate of Fortune-500 companies has reduced from around 75 years in the 1950s to less than 15 years now. Defying this average, a list of Indian companies have been in existence for over 100 years — and several of them are still going strong.

Here is the list:

Bombay Dyeing 1897
Shalimar Paints 1902
Bombay Burmah Trading Corp 1863
Otis Elevator 1892
Alembic Pharma 1907
Parry & Co 1839
Kamarahatty 1887
Teesta Valley Tea 1841
Amluckie investment 1876
Joint Stock Banks

Well in banks, they just discuss nationalised banks. These remained as they were nationalised and we do not know how many would have survived. It misses the old private sector banks few of whom are more than 100 years old without any govt help whatsoever. They are typically unsung stories having survived a really volatile phase of Indian banking in first half of 20th century when banks closed left right and centre. Even after nationalisation, RBI and govt merged many small private banks with their bigger counterparts. These 12 old banks survived even that phase post 1969.

Nice bit…

Payoneer : Get Rs 1700 Free Sign Up Bonus For Indians

2016-09-10T05:00:00.000+05:30

This article was originally published here.

Payoneer is one of India’s oldest online payment systems. The company which was the leader in online payments shut shop in 2011 because of RBI’s restrictions on certain account features. Now in 2016, Payoneer has relaunched it’s flagship product for Indian entrepreneurs and freelancers. The Mastercard Debit card which was issued along with every new Payoneer account has now been discontinued for Indian account holders. So you can no longer withdraw your earnings directly from the ATM and are instead required to transfer it your bank account first.

Signing up for this new service will save you hundreds of dollars in charges that Paypal users have been paying for years. Did you know you could also earn US$25 (Rs1700) for just signing up on Payoneer ? Click on the link given below to get your free bonus ! This is a limited time inaugural offer for Indian users. Once your account is approved you can immediately start receiving money from abroad.

How can Payoneer benefit your Business ?

Most online payment services charge a fee for transferring the money along with a foreign currency conversion fee. The currency conversion fee is charged to convert US dollars or Euro’s into Rupees. Some of the popular services used by Indians like Paypal charge 4.4% , which can reduce your profits in the long run.

Payoneer also has one of the lowest fees for receiving money in India as payment from companies. You can take a look at the table below to find out how they compare with other popular alternatives for money transfer to India.

Country Of Transfer	Receiving Country	Fee Charged	Currency Conversion Fee
US Bank Account	Indian Bank A/c	US$ 50 per transaction.	3.0%
Paypal	Paypal India A/c	4.4% of amount transferred + 0.30 fee	2.5%
Payoneer	Payoneer India A/c	FREE	2%

Payoneer does not charge a transfer fee unlike many other services. This can translate into substantial savings for Indian account holders. For example if you received US$ 100 from the US into your Paypal India account then you would receive around US$ 94 after all deductions. If you carried out the same transaction through your Payoneer account you would stand to receive close to US$ 98. This means you save US$ 4 approximately on your transaction of US$ 100. For freelancers in India this works out to savings of thousands of dollars over the span of a full year.

Fast Payment

Payoneer has another feature that is bound to get freelancers in India excited. Unlike Paypal which takes 3-5 business days to transfer the money to your bank account. Payoneer does it within 24 hours of you requesting a payment. So if you require money urgently , this is the service to opt for. Payoneer is offering a bonus of US$25 to all new account holders signing up at the link below.

Click Here To Get Rs 1700 For Registering on Payoneer.com

You will get the bonus US$25 credited to your account once you carry out transactions which amounts to US$ 100. You can also earn money by referring your friends in the freelancer community. So what do you think about this new service ? Have you used it ? Do let us know about your reviews in the comments section.

What is Nestlé Waters Hiding?

2016-09-09T18:00:00.000+05:30

For better part of past year or two, I have tried to avoid buying bottled water as much as possible. My reason has been simple - first bottles are made of plastic which is highly toxic to environment. Further, I strongly feel tap water (at most places with basic level of hygiene) are good enough to drink. Another factor is the absolute high premium charged by companies on bottled water.

Some companies have even gone to the extent of claiming that drinking water should not be a fundamental right of humans! Wow! How far can we migrate from basic ethos just to chase some profit - as if all other opportunities to ear profit and run a business have dried up.

That is why this article published by Story of Stuff Project (you should follow the site if you aren't already) is very important. The article throws light on how companies are exploiting natural resources in ways that have long term impact on ecology of regions without being held accountable for the damages caused.

Reproducing the article by story of stuff on how Nestle Waters causing long term damages and is hiding this fact below. You can read the original article here.

Nestlé Waters—the world’s largest water bottler—regularly touts the work its ‘natural resource managers’ do to ensure the health of the ecosystems where it gets its water. About its Arrowhead brand’s operations in the drought-impacted San Bernardino National Forest—where we’ve sued to stop the company’s removal of water—Nestlé says: “Our team regularly monitors spring water flows and environmental conditions at this site.”

But this week when we received the latest response to our year-old public records request over Nestlé’s operations in San Bernardino, a 2003 hydrological report prepared by a Nestlé consultant was completely blacked out.

The information was redacted, as the Forest Service kindly explained in a cover letter, because it contains privileged commercial or financial information about “Nestlé’s business and trade of collecting and transporting spring water.” Further, the letter explains, “Disclosure of the hydrology study will cause substantial harm to Nestlé’s competitive position,” specifically allowing “competitors to easily locate and tamper with Nestlé’s spring resources and associated infrastructure.”

Bull.

Nestlé removed 36 million gallons from the San Bernardino National Forest for bottling last year in the midst of a historic western states drought; 36 million gallons removed under a permit that expired in 1988, with no significant Forest Service review of the company’s environmental impact in the 28 years since. The Forest Service receives a pittance in return.

Absent a single publicly available report on how Nestlé monitors the impact of their water take or any indication from the company as to what actions they’ve taken to protect our public lands or the plants and animals that depend on that water, we’re just expected to take Nestlé at its word.

As Steve Loe, a retired Forest Service biologist who has spent years studying San Bernardino’s Strawberry Creek ecosystem and regularly monitors water flows in the creek, said in an email to me this week, “How can they redact the hydrological studies, which are the basis for any future permit determination?”

Steve’s right. The question is: what are Nestlé and the Forest Service hiding from the public?

The answer may lie in an unredacted section of the same report—disclosed in the government’s response to us—which reads, “”The conservative assumptions of the hydrological study suggest that the wetted parameter is decreased 20-26% as a result of spring water harvesting.”

That’s a lot.

In mid-July, Steve Loe reported that “the combined flow of Strawberry and East Twin Creek was tied with the lowest flow ever recorded or modeled in the last 94 years,” and that “if things proceed similar to the last couple of years, the lowest flows ever will be recorded throughout the summer on the hottest, driest days.” Steve went on to write, “There will be significant losses of biological resources with this extreme drought and continued water removal.”

In another document in the batch, a 2003 paper by a Forest Service hydrogeologist, Manjiang Zhang explains the ‘Difference between a Spring and a Well’—an important distinction for Nestlé Arrowhead both because it markets Arrowhead as “spring water” and because state law treats the removal of groundwater differently from spring, or surface, water. As she writes:

“What will happen if a water-well is mislabeled as a spring in California? It can cause the landowner [in this case, the American people] to lose their right to the groundwater produced by the well; conversely, it can bring huge profits for a water user, if the user is not the landowner.”
The California State Water Board is looking into this very question with regards to the water right Nestlé claims and the question will be a central one during the Forest Service’s looming review of the company’s request for a new permit. If Nestlé is found to be taking ground water—which we believe it is—the Forest Service will have standing to stop their operation cold.

To illustrate the problem, Zhang uses the example of a “big commercial water company” with “large scale water-wells on a NF [National Forest] land” in southern California. It is clear she’s referring to Nestlé Arrowhead. The company, she writes, has an operation…

“…consisting of a deep vertical shaft and several horizontal-wells that extend radially hundreds of feet from the base of the shaft into the bedrock aquifer, so that each can yield water at a rate of 20 to 50 gallons per minute! Similar to that shown in the above example, the groundwater collected in the shaft is carried down to the mountain by gravity, no pumping is necessary. At the endpoint of the pipeline, the water is bottled and labeled as “spring water” by the water company. In that way, huge amounts of groundwater have been shipped out of the water-scarce region…day after day for decades. Since the water-wells are deliberately registered by the company as “springs” that are administered by the State, the National Forest has no right to the groundwater yielded from these wells, and has no surface water to share (as could be entitled by the State riparian right) neither, because these fake springs do not flow naturally in a surface channel. See, this is the legal consequences caused by mislabeling wells as springs.”

Regardless of the outcome of our lawsuit against the Forest Service, which could come any day, we know that a bottled water operation doesn’t belong on these public lands, particularly in the midst of an historic drought. That’s been clear for years.

Our job now is to ensure Nestlé and the Forest Service know that the public wants Nestle Arrowhead to leave the San Bernardino National Forest for good. More on that soon.

The God Delusion of Arvind Kejriwal

2016-09-09T06:00:00.000+05:30

I do not always agree with what Blogger Amit Verma writes on his popular blog India Uncut, but when I read this article on Arvind Kejriwal, I simple had to share it here.

I think it summarizes everything about Kejriwal that we love to complain about. You can read the article at its original location here

In theory, a devout politician is a good thing. A politician who believes in God seems to accept the existence of an entity more powerful than himself, and that should be a reassuring thought to Indian voters. We have plenty of devout politicians here, and while the ones in the ruling party are most vocal about it, opposition politicians aren’t far behind. Take Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, for example.

When he was sworn in as chief minister at the Ramlila Maidan,Kejriwal repeatedly thanked God for his newfound status. “I thank the Supreme Father, Ishwar, Allah, Waheguru,” he breathlessly proclaimed, trying to cover all bases. And in case the concerned gods missed it, he later said, “This victory is not because of us. It is a miracle, and I thank Bhagwan, Ishwar and Allah.” (At this point, I can imagine Bhagwan turning to Allah and saying, “Dude, any idea what he’s talking about? I thought I was Ishwar!” And Allah replies, “Dunno, man. I’m just a party worker.”)

Kejriwal’s stated piety isn’t restricted to the major religions. He recently came out in support of the Jain monk Tarun Sagar after the musician Vishal Dadlani made fun of him. Kejriwal tweeted: “Tarun Sagar ji Maharaj is a very revered saint, not just for Jains but everyone. Those showing disrespect is unfortunate and should stop.” (The last sentence is stunningly convoluted, and we all know what Orwell said about clarity in speech correlating with clarity in thinking.)

Now, Kejriwal was reportedly an atheist before he came to politics, and it is natural to suspect that this new-found piety is part of the populism he’s embraced. But let that pass. In this column I will argue that there is one religion that he truly, deeply, madly does believe in, and it is the most dangerous religion of all. It is the religion of government.

Contrary to popular belief, the majority religion in India is not Hinduism but the religion of government. We have been brought up believing that if there is any problem in this world, government can solve it. If there is a social ill, ban it. If prices are too high, pass a law demanding that they be kept low. If there aren’t enough jobs out there, create jobs by legislation so that people can earn an honest living. And so on.

I call this, with apologies to Richard Dawkins, the God Delusion of Government. Devotees of this particular religion believe, like devotees of any other, that reality is subject to the whims and fancies of their God. To change the state of the world, God needs to merely decree it, or government needs to pass a law, and boom, reality changes. Water turns to amrut, copper to gold.

This kind of God delusion isn’t restricted to India. A recent example of a country ruined by it is Venezuela, which has been ravaged by the socialist policies of Hugo Chavez. Venezuela was lucky to be oil-rich, but unlucky to have Chavez as a leader, who tried social engineering on a vast scale. One of his pet schemes: price controls on all essential commodities. (If something should be cheaper, let’s make a law mandating it.) This led, as econ 101 would predict, to shortages, so much so that Venezuela’s queues became legendary. The current government, perturbed that these queues were embarrassing the country, hit upon an innovative solution. It banned queues.

I’m not kidding. They really banned queues, and when I read that news, I thought of Kejriwal, because that’s exactly what he would do.

Kejriwal thrives on finding the simplest possible solution to every problem through the Godlike intervention of government. He has no grasp on reality, though, and no understanding of how such interventions typically play out. Most tellingly, like Chavez and other socialists, he simply doesn’t understand how the price system works.

Left to themselves, prices are determined by supply and demand. If the demand for a product or service outstrips supply, the price goes up. This rising price acts as a signal to potential suppliers, and they are incentivised to fill the gap. Similarly, if demand goes down, the price goes down, and suppliers start moving their efforts to where they would be more valued. We can only make a living by fulfilling the needs of others, and the price system gives us the information and the incentives to do this most efficiently. But for this, it has to be left to itself. If these signals are distorted, the system falls apart.

Now, Uber’s surge pricing is a fantastic mechanism to speed up the process of price discovery. But Kejriwal decided that people were being fleeced by high prices, and decided to ban surge pricing. The ban didn’t last long, because there was an immediate shortage of cabs,just as econ 101 would predict.

What happens when you put a price cap on something is that it becomes first-come-first-serve, and after the first lucky bunch get it, it doesn’t matter how urgent your need is, it’s not available at all. More crucially, the rising price that would act as both information and incentive now no longer does so, and other suppliers don’t rush to fit the shortfall.

While that experiment didn’t last long, Kejriwal moved from price ceiling to price floor. He announced an increase in the minimum wage in Delhi, to Rs 14k a month. Now, this sounds most compassionate, but is a government diktat enough? If it was, why not, say, make the minimum wage in Delhi Rs 10 lakhs a month? Wouldn’t Delhi instantly become the richest city in the world?

The answer is obvious. Such a law would merely put everyone whose work was worth less than 10 lakhs out of a job, and most businesses would shut down. Similarly, if the minimum wage set is Rs 14k, it effectively renders everyone whose labour is worth less than that unemployable by decree. Businesses are forced to discriminateagainst anyone they’d pay 13k a month or less, and it is the poorest of the poor who would bear the brunt of this. The law would hurt those it purported to help. (Being the country of jugaad, all workers below the minimum wage level will simply be shifted to the informal sector, and government inspectors will get a higher hafta than before. But it is no defence of a bad law to say that peeps will find a way to work around it.)

For anyone who isn’t economically illiterate, these effects are predictable. A price cap (or ceiling) inflates demand relative to supply, and a shortage in supply is inevitable. A price floor inevitably decreases demand and leads to excess supply—or, in this case, more unemployment.

The laws of economics, such as that of prices, and supply and demand, are as immutable as those of physics. So why are such interventions so popular then? A key reason is that the laws of physics can be tested and proved in controlled environments, but you can’t do that with the laws of economics. Data is noisy, other variables abound, and all sides can point to ‘evidence’ with spurious correlations. So those who believe in such simplistic interventions continue with them, because it makes them feel (and seem) compassionate.

Kejriwal has a record of taking the high moral ground with self-righteous positions, and strikes a chord with common people by identifying many problems correctly. But his suggested solutions usually make the problems worse, as in the case of his anti-corruption crusade, or the different price controls he has championed. A good question to ask here is, Does he actually believe that such interventions work, or does he not give a damn about that, only wanting to take a position that gets him most votes from the economically illiterate masses? In other words, is he a devout fool or a devout scoundrel? Hanlon’s Razor states, “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” In Kejriwal’s case, I’m not so sure. But he’s devout all right, so God help us.

Would Warren Buffett buy the iPhone 7? Probably not!!

2016-09-08T15:30:00.000+05:30

Came across this very interesting article in today's Economic Times feed. Really makes you think if buying the new #iphone7 is worth the amount you need to shell out.

This article makes a very compelling case that for any value conscious consumer, there are many other phones available in the market - mostly at lower price point, with similar or better features.

The entire debate can be summed up with the Buffet quote cited in the article:

Buffett has been quoted as saying: "'Price is what you pay; value is what you get. Whether we're talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down." Clearly value for money is Buffett's motto and the iPhone 7 is definitely not 'marked down'.

I would definitely rate this as a must read article before one decides to go and buy the new #iphone

Original article can be found here

Platter of Half Baked Ideas

Watch: Tiny robot ‘kidnaps’ 12 big Chinese bots from a Shanghai showroom, shocks world

Hangzhou created ‘kidnapper’ robot

Incident was real

Incident was a test

PySkyWiFi: completely free, unbelievably stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights

Prototype 1: Instant Messaging

Prototype 2: Live headlines, stock prices, and football scores

The real thing: PySkyWiFi

How PySkyWiFi works

Step-by-step

Squeezing HTTP requests through an airmiles account

The transport layer

How are long messages sent through such a small pipe?

The network layer

Tips and tricks

1. Encode messages to make sure the airmiles account accepts them

2. Increase bandwidth by using more account fields

Further enhancements

HTTP CONNECT

In conclusion

We can't send mails more than 500 miles!!

The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining!!

Denial

Bargaining

Determination

Debugging

Realization

The Problem and the Fix

Book Review: Dharma by Amish

10 Useful Ways to Reuse an Old Router: Don't Throw It Away!

What You Can Do With an Old Router

1. Build a Wireless Repeater

3. Cheap Internet Radio Streamer

4. Use the Router as a Cheap Network Switch

5. Turn Your Old Router Into a Wireless Bridge

6. Build a Smart Home Hub

7. Convert Your Router Into a NAS Drive

8. Use an Old Router as a Web Server

9. Make Your Own VPN Router

Your Old Router Isn't So Old After All!

12 incredibly useful Gmail settings you didn’t know you needed

1. GIVE YOURSELF MORE ROOM TO WRITE

2. MOVE FROM MESSAGE TO MESSAGE WITHOUT STOPPING

3. READ MORE, CLICK LESS

4. PUT YOUR EMAILS BACK IN PROPER ORDER

5. SET YOUR OWN DEFAULT SNOOZE TIMES

6. ENABLE A STEP-SAVING TWO-IN-ONE BUTTON

7. LET GMAIL GET PERSONAL

8. SWEEP AWAY SOME OF YOUR LABEL CLUTTER

9. INCREASE YOUR SECOND-GUESSING BUFFER

10. GIVE YOURSELF AN UNDO EQUIVALENT ON MOBILE

11. CUSTOMIZE GMAIL’S TIME-SAVING SWIPE SHORTCUTS

12. MAKE GMAIL LESS NUDGY

PUBG Mobile is back in India for Android!

The Fermi Paradox

Why I believe printers were sent from hell to make us miserable

10 new shows and movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar and Vodafone Play to watch this week

1. MRS. SERIAL KILLER – NETFLIX

2. JERRY SEINFELD: 23 HOURS TO KILL

3. ONE DAY: JUSTICE DELIVERED – NETFLIX

4. KAMYAAB – NETFLIX

5. THE GOLDFINCH – AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

6. JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL – AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

7. AD ASTRA – DISNEY+ HOTSTAR

8. STAR WARS: THE RISE OF THE SKYWALKER – DISNEY+ HOTSTAR

9. BAAGHI 3 – DISNEY+ HOTSTAR

10. BOMBSHELL – VODAFONE PLAY

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Tales from the Loop

Via Local Commie Underlings, Beijing Officially Disapproves

25 Things to Do with Your Family While Stuck at Home

6 BOOKS THAT WILL HELP YOU GROW FROM YOUR PAIN

THE WISDOM OF INSECURITYBY ALAN WATTS

THE UPSIDE OF STRESSBY KELLY MCGONIGAL

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELEDBY M. SCOTT PECK

FEEDING YOUR DEMONSBY TSULTRIM ALLIONE

THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAYBY RYAN HOLIDAY

WHAT DOESN’T KILL USBY STEPHEN JOSEPH

HTTP `CONNECT`

THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY
BY ALAN WATTS

THE UPSIDE OF STRESS
BY KELLY MCGONIGAL

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
BY M. SCOTT PECK

FEEDING YOUR DEMONS
BY TSULTRIM ALLIONE

THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY
BY RYAN HOLIDAY

WHAT DOESN’T KILL US
BY STEPHEN JOSEPH