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padiyar83

117 karma · joined December 4, 2013

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padiyar83··on 50 Years of Travel Tips
"People in other places are not saints. You might get cheated, swindled, or taken advantage of. Paradoxically, the best way to avoid that is to give strangers your trust and treat them well. Being good to them brings out their good. If you are on your best behavior, they will be on their best behavior. And vice versa. To stay safe, smile. Be humble and minimize your ego. I don’t know why that works everywhere in the world—even places with “bad” reputations—but it does."

This just got me! Its so true. That's been my experience too.

padiyar83··on Matt Mullenweg, Automattic's CEO, Seems Bound and Determined to Wreck WordPress
> How would you react if someone demanded you pay them 8% of your annual revenue? Yeah. Like that.

If I built my product on the labour of that "someone", I would pay it. Seems these days, doing what's honourable is not that simple.

padiyar83··on AI's $600B Question
I think we are applying the wrong model here. We should not try to force-fit an app store model. A more applicable model is that of a decentralized internet and intranet. As in the case of intra-net, even though there were no visible benefits to the end-user, it did help the business itself improve margins by making information broadly available. Then just like the internet I would see these AI optimisations to work with one another Ex: It's totally possible that a model from Amazon and DHL talk to each other to optimize package delivery given a constraint like a truck parked on a loading dock and unable to move.

#1 Just like the intranet there are a lot of productivity gains that firms like Tesla, Meta, Google and Amazon can gain internally by optimizing their own workflows. That in itself should justify the investment. Granted some of these optimisations will use their own chips instead of Nvidia, but Nvidia will get a lion-share of this.

#2. Then there are other verticals - pharma, oil and gas, logistics who can optimize their internal workflows to gain productivity. It just helps them improve their margins. No end user benefit may be realized and that’s fine.

#3. Nation states are buying GPUs too. Ex: Falcon2 was trained on a cluster owned by a middle eastern country. Nation states see something larger at stake here than just releasing an app. This does not have to even be a profitable endeavour.

padiyar83··on Each New Gen Finds It More Difficult to Surpass the Wealth of Their Parents
This I think is confined to 21st century western world. Asia (India + China largely) on the other hand is seeing a reverse phenomenon where the next generation frequently end up being more wealthy than their parents and grandparents.
padiyar83··on A digital payments revolution in India
Thank you for bringing this clarity. And as an Indian citizen I am glad we took this step towards building an independent payments infrastructure, given how critical a payments clearance system is to the functioning of a modern economy.

I don't want other governments to hold us hostage through Visa's and Mastercard's where we are just one sanction away from economic meltdown. Just like what happened recently in Russia.

As a country we should be looking at securing other such critical support systems - Power control systems, Telecom hardware etc. That's the only way IMO to be truly independent!

padiyar83··on Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory
> Which non-Western countries are competing on creativity?

As I see it, Asian economies like India, China, Japan, South Korea offer a reasonable competition to Western economies today.

1. Samsung is a very viable competitor to Apple in hand held + wearables creative space.

2. Indian fin-tech solutions IMO today are some of the best in the world. All I need is a phone to shop for things (from buying a car to paying for parking) and have not used a credit/debit card for a year now (I live in India). Same in Indian edu-tech space. A lot of kids have quit school and are learning at home. Full time. I have not seen this happen anywhere before.

3. Toyota's are way more reliable than BMW's, Audi's and Ford's.

4. TSMC vs Intel is another good example.

I foresee a lot of innovation happening in Asia right now to go global in this and next decade.

padiyar83··on The case against CS master’s degrees
I am someone who has a masters degree and I have taken Distributed systems, Computer Architecture and Advanced Algorithms at Bradfield. In my experience, I would rate Bradfield better than a master degree for these reasons -

1. Was more relevant and practical. It was taught by people who have worked building real things in the real world. 2. Better ROI on time spent learning. In about 8 weeks (roughly 2 hours every week) and some self study I had the confidence to apply the learnings and continue learning more. Time comes at premium to me as I am working full time and have a family to take care of 3. Cheaper than a university course. It costs 2k USD roughly for a course.

During the same time, I also tried OMSCS from GATECH. I felt I got way more from these Bradfield's courses by spending less time and money than OMSCS as well. That said, its just me and YMMV.

padiyar83··on Show HN: Just a Calendar: Simple Calendar to look at, no login, super light
Thank you for building it! This is super useful. I have always been frustrated with not having access to a clean calendar, given that I use mac os (for personal stuff) and windows (for work). Apple built-in calendar app and Outlook calendar for Windows are too clunky to use. cal -y is convenient if you have a terminal window open, which I often don't have . Most of the times when I need to do something with the dates I am on my browser and what you have built comes in handy.
padiyar83··on Review of Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go by Toshiro Kageyama (2011)
It took me 10 min to see that he is talking about the game and not the language. There is even a "Endgame Pointers" chapter in this book :).
padiyar83··on Caltech's CS interview prep course
+1. I was on H1B Visa for a decade (6 + 4). Worked at Amazon (AWS networking) for 5 of those years and changed jobs 4 times in those 10 years. I honestly loved working at Amazon, job was challenging, learnt so much because people around me were incredibly smart, and this job practically gave me a career. I moved back to India last year though and now given the cost of living here, I don't have to work if I don't want to for the rest of my life.
padiyar83··on The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started
I don't think that's a conspiracy. Motivations there, however misplaced they may be, are quite clear.
padiyar83··on Joe Rogan Experience #1309 – Naval Ravikant (2019) [video]
That's an interesting perspective. I have never found him arrogant. May be I have not watched the video clips or read tweets that you were exposed to. He does have a counter intuitive take on things, but don't think that come off as arrogance (to me). I have always appreciated the clarity of thinking he has on issues. The way he answers 5 "why"'s questions related to wealth and happiness amazes me. Have learnt so much from Naval's videos and tweets over the years.
padiyar83··on I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India
Thats right. Majority of the problems here are from re-zoning agricultural land into an industrial one. If you build your manufacturing unit in an existing industrial area you can skip a lot of this type of paperwork.
padiyar83··on Just Too Efficient
> If there's a constant small probability of injury per item packed, then of course doing twice as much work per work day, will lead to twice as many injuries per employee per work day

This assumes injury-risk is a linear function of number of items packed. That's not true. Fatigue increases injury-risk - that is how tired you and your entire team is while performing the task. If the person sorting the packages up the line is tired and making mistakes, the person binning it is more prone to mistakes, leading to an injury. In summary, there is a "fatigue-threshold" after which injury-risk increases non-linearly (say exponentially) with every item packed.

padiyar83··on Trump May Attempt to Force Long-Time H-1B Visa Holders Out of U.S.
This will also incentivize firms to consider running teams from countries like Ireland, Canada (less restricted on immigration) and India (labor rich). It's also a shot in the arm for remote "work from anywhere".

Higher the wage in US, greater the incentive for a firm to do these things.

padiyar83··on Circle of Competence: Avoid Ambiguity Traps
Book - Range by David Epstein - covers this topic really well. The book shows how expanding into neighboring areas increases your performance in your chosen field itself.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PHLNR28/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

padiyar83··on Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation
I agree that is a concern with a US centric team. Imagine a globally distributed team - 3 engineers are in Asia pacific region, 2 in Europe and 2 in US. Everyone in the team is equally affected by timing constraints and language barriers, so it becomes more palatable. And in such a world even the notion of coming to US and working on an H1B visa does not exist.
padiyar83··on Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation
This will fuel the "remote anywhere" trend that's already underway. If a H1b engineer in US suppresses wage growth, wait until the same engineer can do the work for 1/3rd the cost from his own country, especially when everyone in the team is remote.
padiyar83··on I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)
This article feels like a vindication of sorts, for my own speed reading experience. Years ago, I read a book on speed reading, and just as we think everything that is in a book must be written by an expert, starting adopting the techniques without second guessing it. Blamed myself for not being smart enough for loosing comprehension when these techniques have obviously worked for everyone else. Reading this is somewhat liberating.
padiyar83··on Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease [pdf]
Lack of sleep increases insulin resistance[1]. Insulin resistance can negatively influence weight loss AFAIK.

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100505091632.h...

padiyar83··on France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra
I will show this comment to my grand kids one day - Do whatever you can, think whatever you like - By the end of this decade, we will have at least half a dozen such currencies with a couple of them in active circulation. Whether Facebook succeeds or fails - they have covered so much ground in pushing existing establishment on value of an universal currency, offered by firms that provide services directly to customers - that it now becomes hard to ignore.

Crypto currencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin will ride on the coat tails of these currencies to be truly first class citizens of the banking world.

padiyar83··on Microsoft finds privilege escalation vulnerability in Huawei driver
Hanlon's razor - Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
padiyar83··on FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
Yeah. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity ~Hanlon's razor
padiyar83··on Show HN: Algojammer – an experimental Python code editor inspired by Bret Victor
Good work man ! Really love this, will try it out. This looks really fun. Thanks for sharing.
padiyar83··on ChuChu TV is responsible for widely-viewed toddler content on YouTube
>> .. and guys like chuchu know how to game the recomendation algorithms to keep the kids within their content.

Just curious, what stops other competitors like Disney, Sesame Street and Nickelodeon from doing the same thing?

padiyar83··on Time Magazine Sold to Marc Benioff for $190M
.. yet.
padiyar83··on Portable Cloud Programming with Go Cloud
+1
padiyar83··on Possible BGP hijack of 1.1.1.1
Usually upstream ISP providing transit accepts only a valid set of prefixes that they have agreed to advertise on the public internet from an ISP customer, they enforce a policy on the ingress to make this happen. Idea being, if the customer ISP ends up advertising an incorrect prefix, then the impact is only localised to his ISP and not to the whole world. But some ISPs don't follow this and implicitly trust the customer ISPs and of course there is no cover if the tier1 ISP itself typo's a prefix. There are tools such as BGP RPKI available, but its not widely deployed.
padiyar83··on Jeff Bezos Pledges to Expand His Space Ventures
Nice! Just the sheer amount of engineering challenges a permanent moon base would bring in gets me excited. Humanity would learn so much from this experience one way or the other.
padiyar83··on Ex-Google exec: Sun may be setting on Silicon Valley
Sure, but a smart Chinese researcher can move to Vancouver or Toronto very easily, so does a researcher from Bangalore or Buenos Aires or St. Petersburg, but its harder for a firm or a research lab based out of say, Shanghai or SV even, to have access to the same type of global talent. Remember China is not Asia, China only has access to 20% of population, and also isn't that migrant friendly from what I have read (could be wrong here), so I assume the rest of the world put together would have better chance of success in competing with any Chinese city or even SV. Again I base this on the premise that access to information is freely available for everyone across the world. For example a person living in, say, Argentina, has the same access to ML coursework as someone who lives just across the street from Stanford. I think its an increasingly safe assumption to make, given the direction the world is moving towards, with MOOC and OMSCS type of degrees etc.

I sincerely feel other things considered equal, access to human capital becomes a tie breaker.

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