Just another blog!

On Monday and Tuesday, we graduate students at Cornell will be voting on whether or not we want to unionise. Actually, scratch that, only graduate students who hold a TA, RA, or GRA appointment can unionise. This is a shitty arrangement, and I will be voting against it. For those of you who are not aware of how graduate school works at Cornell, you could be on one of many appointments. Fellowship A graduate student on a fellowship gets a stipend and tuition paid without associated teaching or research opportunities. Graduate students on a fellowship typically work towards their own theses, but will be excluded from the union Graduate research assistantships A GRA gives a graduate student stipend and tuition without teaching responsibilities. However, this money comes out of a specific project grant, and the students typically work on their own theses. Students on GRAs magically qualify to join the union, whereas there is virtually no difference between a GRA and a fellowship fo...

I’m on a process to break away from the distractions of social media, primarily Facebook, and spend the time to pursue other interests. This is an interesting experiment, and it has required significant dedication and effort on my part. At the end, though, I’m not certain if I’ll be successful. I realised that I had a problem when Facebook became the most visited sites in my browser. I should have been working, not scrolling through Facebook like a, well, you know what Jerry Seinfeld has to say. I further noticed that I would tend to log on to Facebook every time I was stuck at work, so that my capacity to tackle problems was reduced to only those that involved cracking a walnut shell. Anything more complex, and I would procrastinate and end up on Facebook. What I needed was a swift kick in the arse to get off Facebook and into the real world. It came through the means of my latest project which required all my attention. At this time, I logged out of Facebook from m...

I turned 25 last year, which in the highly mathematical and calculating eyes of the US insurance industry meant that I had suddenly matured into a much more responsible driver than I was at 24 years and 364 days of age. As a result, I expected my insurance rates to go down. Imagine my surprise when my insurance renewal notice from GEICO actually quoted a $50 increase in my insurance rates. To me, this was a clear signal that it was time to switch companies. Typically, I score really high on brand loyalty. I tend to stick with a brand for as long as possible, unless they really mess up. This qualified as a major mess up. As a result, I started shopping for insurance quotes. Two companies that quoted me significantly lower rates (30%–40% lower) were Progressive and Allstate. Both had an optional programme that could give me further discounts based on my consenting to the companies tracking my driving habits. Now, I am a careful driver – I hardly ever accelerate hard. I hate...

I’ve been reading Harper Lee’s book ‘Go Set a Watchman’, and I’ve only recently put it down. I’ve been really conflicted about this book, and even as I write this post, I’m not sure if I like it or not. The trouble with Watchman is that it uses the same characters as Lee’s earlier work, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, and while the characters are more-or-less the same, the narrator has changed, from the child Scout to the adult Jean-Louise. This issue is further exacerbated by people wanting to look at Watchman as a sequel to Mockingbird. However, looking at Watchman as a sequel introduces some retcon issues. Watchman has a total of four paragraphs that narrate approximately the story in Mockingbird. However, in Watchman, the accused is a relation to Calpurnia, and Atticus successfully acquits him; which is very different from the Mockingbird version of Tom, who ends up being convicted, and ultimately killed. Because of this retco...

According to this article on the Verge , the FBI basically wants Apple to create a system that allows them to make an unlimited number of guesses, at speeds of 80 ms per guess. On a 4-digit passcode, this means that the pass-code is cracked in just under 14 minutes. With a 6-digit pass-code, it will be cracked in just about 22 hours. However, if Apple allowed creation of pass-codes of unlimited length, and someone chose a 10-digit pass-code (if you think that is hard to remember, keep in mind that most people memorise multiple 10-digit phone numbers), then the time required to crack it is around 25 years. However, the FBI or anyone cracking the pass-code also needs to know the length, so they will have to try all the way from 1-digit pass-codes to 10-digit pass-codes. 9-digit pass-codes will take around two and a half years, while 8-digit pass-codes will take 3 months. So while I do appreciate and support Apple's resistance to the FBI, I think that they will be much better off ...

This is a question that is on almost everyone’s mind following the horrific attacks on Paris last weekend. It’s a question that most people can’t answer, and neither can I. I will, however, try to make the best sense of what happened. Some gunmen attacked Paris, and left over 150 dead and over 300 wounded. I remember the sense of horror and confusion that I felt at the time of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Yet, during the time of the attacks, I was over two hundred kilometres away from Mumbai, safe in the city of Nashik. With any terrorist attack, there is always the spectacle , the theatrics that are the scariest. Ten people with guns caught an entire country off-guard for three days. Three days of not knowing how many people were responsible, or why we were attacked. And so, I can empathise with the people in Paris. I may be speaking from a position of privilege here, and I really don’t know how it feels to be a person who has lost a loved one to a senseless...

Supporting a cause on Facebook is the way to go, unless of course, the cause is endorsed by the Prime Minister of India, in which case, either you are an angel or a devil, depending on your political leanings. Recently, the Prime Minister met Mark Zuckerberg, and asked people to change their profile pictures to be overlaid with a tricolour and a network representing digital connectivity. As you can probably tell from my Facebook profile page , I changed my picture. Then stuff hit the fan. Apparently, buried in the code was a reference to , a contentious business venture by Facebook to provide ‘free’ internet to poor people in India. Apparently, what Facebook wants to do is provide Facebook for free, which allows Facebook to tap into a demographic that has since eluded it, and which will also prevent competitors from opening up shop in India – we won't have our own Renren . Now, I support net neutrality, but I don't think that internet.org is about net neutrality. A big co...

Ever since the Snowden leaks – and even before them – we've been hearing the word ‘Orwellian’ to describe the state of surveillance we're living under. But what exactly does the word ‘Orwellian’ mean? What was George Orwell so afraid of and that he cautioned us against? Reading two of his definitive books – ‘Nineteen Eighty-four’ and ‘Animal Farm’ – I cannot believe that Orwell was afraid of increasing surveillance. I believe that Orwell was afraid of something more. In the world described in ‘Nineteen Eighty-four’, constant, never-ending surveillance is only tiny part – a means to an end. The end what is scarier. Moreover, I refuse to believe that the word ‘Orwellian’ should be used to describe just one tiny component of one novel written. No, I believe that the description should apply to a broader concept. I believe that to understand the term ‘Orwellian’, one must look to the earlier story – ‘Animal Farm’. Indeed, I think that ‘Animal Farm’ really sets the stage for t...

At some point, we stopped telling the stories we used to tell. We used to tell stories that evoked a sense of wonder, a sense of the infinite possibilities out there, both for us as persons and for mankind. Now, we tell stories of mundane people involved in everyday tasks. I've been watching a lot of ‘Star Trek’ recently. I started watching the original series two years ago, then switched to ‘The Next Generation’, and now back to the original series. The contrast is stark. While the original series really spoke of the endless possibilities once we reached space, and interstellar travel; TNG really dealt with socio-political issues of the day. In a sense, TNG was really the story of the world in the 1990s, set in the twenty-fourth century. Maybe my wistful longing for the 60s can be attributed to the allure of nostalgia so poignantly described in ‘Midnight in Paris’; however I think this is unlikely. To my mind, the 60s were the epitome of an optimistic thinking that hasn...

Ever since William Deresiewicz appeared on The Colbert Report, I've wanted to read his book "Excellent Sheep: The miseducation of America's elite and the path to a meaningful life". I finally managed to get my hands on the book (thanks to Cornell's excellent library system, which includes BorrowDirect). Having got my hands on the book, I had to read it, and found myself agreeing with everything Deresiewicz said in the first 10 pages or so. After that, my reaction was rather of the WTF type. Deresiewicz does a good job explaining how the Ivy leagues got to this current level of snobbery that they stand at right now. He explains how the admissions procedure was constantly tweaked to make them an old boys' club. How the SATs were implemented as a method to bring some sanity to the admissions procedure. How admissions committees mercilessly demand higher and higher (and frankly unrealistic) levels of excellence from students, and how the rich boys' club ha...

Oh, come on, do I have to state the obvious?

Hello, and welcome to this pilot episode of Dangerous Democracy with Arvind Kejriwal. In this series, I will attempt to expose (cue: dramatic tone) the dangerous ideas that are being propagated by those who seek to be elected. Let's start with the underdog here. The AAP, a nascent party, has suddenly sprung out of the wilderness as the most dangerous party in the world. It feeds on the peoples' fear of corruption and fools them into a false sense of security with its innocuous sounding name; which portrays it as something that is for the common person. However, behind the innocuous façade, and the X is worse than Y game lies a dangerous mind. The mind of Arvind Kejriwal, politician wannabe, and complete moron. For once, let's not go over the utter idiocies of the AAP's short term in Delhi, which ended in a temper tantrum that would put any five year old to shame. Let's go to the point before they were ever elected. To the book that should have warned us of the ...

I'm perfectly SERIOUS. This is NOT SATIRE. Do not, if you love this country, vote for the Aam Aadmi Party in the upcoming general elections. I did not support the AAP throughout its campaign. My reasons were simple. The AAP was and still is a party of agitators and idealists, filled with people who raved and ranted about how rotten the system was, yet decided to fearlessly enter the same arena with a promise to clean up; yet with absolutely no history of governance, and no experience running an office. To some extent, the AAP reminded me of the Indian National Congress, which agitated to give India independence, only to hand over power to Mountbatten immediately afterwards, because they found themselves woefully ill-equipped to govern a country, and the crises that followed independence. Now, given that the AAP has tasted power for around a month, I'm convinced more than ever that the AAP does not deserve another win. In fact, I'm convinced that the AAP would be the a...

Because I can publish shitty drawings, and even shittier text. And I have no obligation to be accurate.

The debate around surveillance, government overreach, NSA, Prism, XKeyScore has been split in two categories. Well, three actually. The first will be the government, which feels that all this is justified, because "think of the children." They justify the stripping away of the civil liberties of not just their own citizens, but those all across the world for the purpose of supposedly protecting their own. Cluck cluck. The other two camps are the people who are subject to this surveillance. One camp argues that they have "nothing to hide." The other camp argues for increased encryption, and these are camps that will create PGP keys, hold keysigning parties, encrypt everything lest the government gets their data. I think both camps miss the point. Privacy is not the same as secrecy. I know what you do in the toilet, that does not mean that you will leave the doors open, or let the toilet walls be made with glass. Humans have evolved to respect privacy, the confide...

Lately, I've seen a disturbing trend of increasing governmental control with a "think of the children" type justification. By "type", I mean any justification that appeals to irrational (though justified) that we may have, like fear for our children's safety. The British government is planning a nation-wide "porn firewall" that will restrict its citizens from accessing a number of websites, all in the noble cause of protecting children from the horrors of pornography. An admirable move, but think about the consequences. A number of companies selling porn filters will benefit via huge contracts, and citizens who are granted the right to freedom will have the right subtly snatched away from them. Now, you may think that I'm exaggerating when I say that citizens will lose freedom under such a censor-wall, after all, it's just pornography that they seek to block, right? No! If a government gets power to block websites, it can seek to suppre...

This post stems out of Google's prank today; when they announced that YouTube will be shut down until 2023. Of course, they meant it as a prank, but considering their disturbing trend of shutting down services... well, let's just say that I did not find it the most attractive prank. I've written earlier  (during the GMail account fiasco) about Google's model, and why users who don't pay any cash directly for services are useful to Google. In this post, I try and lay out some pitfalls of killing off young services. Google aims to build a moat around it's search and advertisement business. It tries to do so by ensuring that users always use Google for search; which increases revenues through advertisement. Good search results are ones that are personalised, so that the user gets what he wants without a lot of keyword-jugglery that was needed a decade ago. Indeed, a decade ago, I remember going as far as page 10 in search results to find the information I neede...