roystonvassey

While it will benefit travelers, it’s likely to be used by a large number of people as an economic necessity - travel for work, study , selling and buying goods and services. The combined net economic impact is what I assume the govt hopes will offset the inflation burden to some extent. Covid transmission on the other hand is essentially endemic at this time and we have to manage it, rather than try to prevent it, especially in such a globalised world as ours

Given how notoriously unreliable even the IC and ICEs have gotten over the last few years ( i rarely travel but the three times I tried, the train was either substantially delayed or worse, canceled) , this is really a good deal.

AKA - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Yeah if birth rates stay low ( which they have now for a few decades esp in Western countries but true elsewhere), you’ll need either large scale immigration or lots of cash to service the social care system, which now has to service the growing number of the geriatric and chronically il

Even visiting the place as a tourist left a bad taste - everything is made up, the service industry is mostly unfriendly (our sightseeing bus left us stranded somewhere and then later on the desert trip, the car broke down middle of nowhere and the driver had no other help so we had to help him fix it), no public transport to speak of, fanciest cars on one side and hapless labourers trudging in the heat alongside. Apart from the choice/variety of food, I cannot think of any redeeming feature about Dubai.

I (re-) developed a strong fascination for Physics last year after chancing upon Feynman's QED lectures. It was such mind-boggling stuff and I realized that that was just one level at which nature behaved in utterly magical ways (think - cosmological scales, the question of gravity, unified theory etc).

After trying to scour and even reading many books in this area, most that are either highly abstracted for the 'pop-sci' reader (like me, with no training in physics) or were all-out textbooks, I chanced upon Susskind's lectures and the Theoretical Minimum series. I started off right from the basics and IMHO, it has the right balance between introducing concepts and making sure you internalize them by having you actually work on problems (highly recommend that you don't skip these). I am nowhere near close to understanding any of this yet but it gave me at least an orientation for what to expect and how to prepare. Once I get a bit of time and the interest back again, I expect to go back to the other books in the series.

Yep, was out most of the day (until 7 pm I think). Airtel is my ISP as well.

I've seen this news shared through various forums at least 5-6 times and not once did I think it's an actual dinosaur embryo! Sure, science reporting, especially the headlines in mainstream media, can be much better but I'm not sure that's the case here

Google is up to so many sneaky things, it's stopped surprising me to find out how they're always one step ahead to make their products even more intrusive.

A new one I found out is their supposedly open-source initiative called 'Cloud Information Model' [1]. Along with others such as Salesforce, Genesys and AWS (companies that I personally don't trust), they promise 'you can create seamless and tailored personal experiences across cloud-native applications'. It's all a bit vague and fancy and sufficiently "tech-y" to impress the marketing folks but colour me suspicious.

EDIT: forgot the link,

1: https://cloudinformationmodel.org/faq/

Even if it’s a decision that I don’t agree with, if we all agree democracy is the best form of representative government, the decision taken by the lawmakers has to be respected. It’s not optimal, it’s slow to effect changes but I still believe it’s the best form of government we have.

Not sure about morality but yes it’s unethical and borderline illegal. If an elected body is planning legislations, actively blocking it means you’re suppressing the voice of the public and the voters.

Not sure if it's just me but I got my Airpods last March and I've been using it fairly regularly for the work calls. I got an ear infection in August that was pretty severe and after consulting with an ENT specialist, I was told to not wear these for long use or constantly since it prevents the ears from naturally clearing out (which normally happens when one chews and has nothing blocking the ear canal).

So now I use them only when I absolutely need to (e.g. in noisy places, taking calls on the move) and avoid them all other times.

Yes. I meant private bank as in "not a government owned bank".

Long back when I worked in my first job at a large private bank, I remember being in a meeting where they spoke about overdraft fees + late fees + interest on these + god knows what else and the lady, our systems counterpart, looked at all of us and said 'We better plan a trip to Ganges to atone for all this and we might need to go ever year' (it's a common saying in India, as Ganges is supposed to wash away one's sins)

It's been 16 years since I worked there but I still remember this vividly. Modern banking has to be one of the biggest scams legally running and once you go below the prime segments, it's basically just exploiting the poorest and weakest to make some of the easiest money you can.

Got it! Thanks and best wishes!

Ah right, thanks!

Cool stuff.

Just curious- how does it stack against Metabase (https://www.metabase.com/product/) for example? I used Metabase a few years back and was really blown away with the ease of use.

Yep - I am now seriously considering buying an electric scooter because Uber is plain unreliable now.

If there was any time to be skeptical of Uber's longevity, it is now (at least for me).

My experience is anecdotal but I visit my home country every year for a few months and I can clearly notice the declining quality of Uber's services:

1. Vehicles, on average, take at least 10-15 mins longer to get

2. Even if you find a vehicle, 60% of these rides are canceled (either by the driver because they call me and find out they don't want to go that way or they just don't move at all and I'm forced to cancel)

3. After all this, if I am lucky to get into a commute, every driver has complaints about Uber (complaints include intransparent pricing, delays in payments). Most of these drivers are completely dependent on Uber or similar services and have heavy debts that they are now unable to service.

4. Uber's app itself appears to get bloated by the day and while they do appear to make an effort collect my feedback when rides get canceled, not once have I got an impression that the feedback matters at all. Additionally, payment options are numerous but they require me to complete multiple steps to finish which puts me off using it (not Uber's fault I suppose but is part of the riding experience).

Given that they are competing against flag-down autos and rides, not to mention public transport and private vehicles (as electric bikes and cars get more popular), I think their model is not sustainable anymore and I expect them to struggle further as riders withdraw and once the demand-supply gap grows further, it's a downward spiral.

I think mostly due to labour/tax overheads

I think the right stat to measure is - of all the Tesla cars out there, how many had crashes, and compare this against the average for other car brands/models.

"What we are angry about tends to be a reflection of ourselves more than the current state of affairs."

Absolutely. It is definitely hard to cut through all the fluff when we are emotional but this realization has helped me so many times and, this applies not just at work. Just as we are going through these states and the self-awareness is important, it helps to also realize that others are transiting too through these different states.

I'm reminded of an another thought that was shared here a while back that I try to remember often:

“Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.”

― Adam Lindsay Gordon

Right - but why would they assume I want to watch the "top" show? I've already paid for it and they benefit by having me browse and allowing myself to find that I like right? And what I like is not necessarily what they think others might me like - what one watches is highly variable (can change day to day, even time of the day) and influenced by so many factors that are personal.

Interesting insights.

Online Analytics is now really nuanced - you need to know what metrics are important for * your * business, not just use boilerplate kpis.

For instance, an e-commerce website is clearly looking to lead the user to a lot purchase and the more they purchase, it’s good for the business so kpis around sales conversion help and recommenders help your business increase sales.

For Netflix though, the users have already paid for the service after which they land on the website. Most users I imagine then expect to be provided all that Netflix has to offer in an easy way. So if I was a Netflix product owner, I’d be more interested in Kpis around search-ability, having an anti algorithm that “suggests” completely random obscure shows, “switchability” of users - how less of a time do users spend on a movie or show.

I imagine they’re doing this but as a user I don’t see this at least - they show the same old stale recommendations for me, I’m always trying to hack their search to find what I want and they continue to invest in content that’s mostly miss than hit. I wish they at least had a directory for me to browse through (at least I’ll be driving their engagement metrics to help them drive their valuations)

Thanks! This is exactly the summary I came looking for for in the comments.( thanks to my ADHD riddled monkey brain)

That fear of a huge bill is real and much more common than you think.

In fact, there's a separate series just on Cosmology by Susskind that could be relevant for OP.

Sure! Here you go - https://erikbern.com/2021/07/07/the-data-team-a-short-story....

All of the data and stats in Hans Rosling's Factfulness.

It essentially changed the way I look at data, and more importantly, how to carefully draw the right conclusions. Especially with those reported by regular media.

data science. Or, what's essentially a catch-all term these days for everything from sql queries to Artificial intelligence. The tools, applications have of course tremendously evolved but at its core, if you develop a good eye for working with data (read recent blog by the ex-Spotify guy), you'll find yourself in surprising career moves and growth.

- source: data point of one, my own anecdotal account of being in data for the last 16 years