Journal entries year 2019
From raju
2019-01-07
Github is now offering free private repos with up to three collaborators - https://blog.github.com/2019-01-07-new-year-new-github/
2019-01-31
The federal government is now setting up fake universities to catch illegal recruitment into US universities - https://www.murthy.com/2019/01/31/faqs-for-students-of-the-university-of-farmington/
2019-02-01
- xkcd on technical analysis - https://xkcd.com/2101/
2019-02-07
- https://ourworldindata.org/ - very nice website with interesting charts/analysis/data on a broad range of topics.
- Here is a cool project I came across. The idea is to change
# import pandas as pd import modin.pandas as pd
and then all pandas related calls are evaluated in parallel. Even calls like pd.read_csv are parallelized!
Project: https://github.com/modin-project/modin Works only in: Linux, Mac OS. Does not work in Windows yet.
2019-02-08
- Watched Antariksham movie. It was Meh!
2019-02-09
- Watched KGF Chapter 1 movie. It was superb!
2019-02-12
- https://toddwschneider.com/posts/nyc-motor-vehicle-collisions-map/ - very nice analysis on accidents in New York City. Some takeaways:Time Square accounts for the most pedestrian injuries. The fatality rate is highest at 4 AM, which is "last call for alcohol" at NYC bars.
2019-02-15
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEfHFsfGXjs - This guy (3Blue1Brown) makes one of the best educational videos. If you have half an hour to kill and are into math/physics do take a look!
2019-02-16
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s7h2MHQtxc - Talks about Hilbert curve. Pretty cool idea to map 2d grid to 1d grid.
2019-02-19
- https://www.whatruns.com/website/<website> gives the technologies used by a website. For example, https://www.whatruns.com/website/python.org shows the technology stack of python.org.
- http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html - very insightful; tells what and how hackernews does things differently compared to other sites such as reddit, digg or even facebook.
2019-02-23
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA - Jeff Bezos presenting on AWS at YC Startup School in 2008. The analogy of comparing AWS to an electricity generator 100 years ago is very insightful. Access to the electric grid helps produce the beer more efficiently. But it does not improve its taste. In the same way, AWS helps companies externalize various infrastructure related issues and produce the product more efficiently but it will be the same product whether AWS is used or not.
2019-04-26
- https://www.usclimatedata.com/ - contains U.S. climate data by state and city. For example, the corresponding link for New York City is https://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/new-york/new-york/united-states/usny0996
2019-04-27
- Linus Torvalds interview with Linux Journal - https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/25-years-later-interview-linus-torvalds
2019-05-11
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxPdPpi5W4o - Why are there 96M black balls in LA reservoir?
2019-05-18
Interesting videos
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPZzrlFCD_I - A giant Jello pool built over 6 months.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcUos5ueOhY - "The Prisoners Dilemma - The Most Famous Problem in Game Theory" by MindYourDecisions.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K7q20VzwVs - 19,200 lbs block moved by a single person (Wally Wallington).
2019-05-22
- https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18171441/foldimate-laundry-folding-robot-ces-2019 - Foldimate’s Laundry-Folding Machine
2019-05-30
- https://www.businessinsider.my/mapr-jobcuts-close-silicon-valley-hq-strategic-transaction-2019-5/ - MapR may cut 122 jobs and close Silicon Valley headquarters.
2019-05-31
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iverson_bracket - a notation that generalises the Kronecker delta
2019-06-06
- DS-160 form now requests for social media usernames. https://www.murthy.com/2019/06/04/ds-160-ds-230-now-require-social-media-information/
2019-06-07
- Books collected and given away for free - https://bookthing.org/
2019-06-10
- Salesforce is acquiring Tableau for $15.7 billion - https://investors.tableau.com/news-and-events/news-details/2019/Salesforce-Signs-Definitive-Agreement-to-Acquire-Tableau/default.aspx
I used tableau briefly and it is a great product if you can afford it. It is like excel on steroids. I have not seen anything similar in open source. It is very easy for business users to point to a database and build reports, get insights etc., Here is a Gartner's magic quadrant https://www.qlik.com/us/-/media/B0DCF50C816448EEAC8981B0238781B1.ashx that shows how Tableau compares with peers.
2019-06-13
- https://goodreads.com - useful to track books you and your friends are currently reading.
2019-06-19
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcatter - A wildcatter is one that drills wells in the hope of finding oil in territory not known to be an oil field.
2019-06-23
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Al-Naimi . What an impressive journey! He started out as a shepherd in a nomadic tribe, worked as an office boy in Aramco, studied in Stanford, Columbia and Harvard, eventually became the company's CEO and then Saudi Arabia's oil minister. Alan Greenspan once called him the most powerful man you never heard of.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxj_FGsnVP0 - shows how to fix a vegetable steamer basket by crimping the missing petal.
2019-07-02
- To get around WSJ's paywall, append ?mod=rsswn to the URL. For example, https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-braces-for-mass-protests-on-anniversary-of-return-to-chinese-rule-11561946128?mod=rsswn
2019-07-03
- https://doisinkidney.com/posts/2019-06-04-solving-puzzles-without-your-brain.html - Solving Programming Puzzles without using your Brain . Compact, informative and has many things to learn.
- https://usesthis.com/ - A collection of nerdy interviews asking people from all walks of life what they use to get the job done. See also
2019-07-09
- https://hackaday.com/2019/06/11/a-field-guide-to-transmission-lines/ - A field guide to transmission lines. Well written, learned something new.
2019-07-18
“The Nature of the Firm” (1937), is an article by Ronald Coase. It offered an economic explanation of why individuals choose to form partnerships, companies and other business entities rather than trading bilaterally through contracts on a market. The author won a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991, thanks to this paper.
- https://blog.pythonanywhere.com/169/ - to make a python function into a web application
2019-07-31
- A laser that can identify people from 200 meters away based on
each individual's unique cardiac signature was developed for the Pentagon.
2019-08-09
- Researchers came up with a bandage that is 17 times stickier. It was inspired by the superfast wound closing process in human embryos. They use a Jell-O–like wound dressing that can contract in response to the skin’s heat, drawing the edges of wounds together for quicker, safer healing. So far, they have tested it only in mice.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/embryo-inspired-bandage-17-times-stickier-band-aid
2019-08-13
https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/sound.html - Everything You Should Know About Sound (2016). Informative, well written, learned something new.
2019-08-16
The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as you want to be treated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
2019-08-17
- Enjoyed Watching the movie Brochevaruevarura on Amazon Prime. The story is gripping and the screenplay is good.
2019-08-22
- Write checklists as a "do-nothing" script and then automate it over time.
2019-09-11
- It seems docker registry is only good if you plan to use it in append-only mode. If you want to remove data, it is not good.
- The awscli package is released on a daily basis - https://pypi.org/project/awscli/#history
2019-09-13
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spearman%27s_rank_correlation_coefficient - Pearson correlation coefficient between the rank variables.
While Pearson correlation coefficient measures the linear relationship between two variables, Sparman's correlation coefficient measures the montonocity between the two.
2019-09-18
You can have one folder in outlook that shows all the unread emails.
Outlook -> Folder -> New Search Folder -> Reading Mail: Unread mail -> OK
will create an "Unread mail" folder under the Search Folders.
2019-09-20
Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them? - https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html
2019-09-22
- curl https://wttr.in/ - gives weather report in a console friendly way
source code - https://github.com/chubin/wttr.in
- The rc in .bashrc stands for 'run commands'.
Ref:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_commands
2019-09-25
- M.I.T. Media Lab concealed its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
written by Ronan Farrow
2019-10-04
- You can add voting buttons to emails in Outlook.
2019-10-05
- Enlightening read!
https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/enlightenment-kids.html
2019-10-07
- Be humble. I always believed the higher a monkey climbs in the tree, the more people below can see his ass. You don’t have to be that monkey.
- Stay fit. You don’t want to get old and feel bad. You’ll also get a lot more accomplished and feel better about yourself if you stay fit.
- from T. Boone Pickens Farewell Letter - https://boonepickens.com/?p=2343
2019-10-13
- This is a good book to read if you are busy but curious about topics like fracking, finance, geopolitics, oil and gas industry. It is short, full of information, straight to the point, and easy to read.
Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World by Bethany McLean<br> https://www.amazon.com/Saudi-America-Truth-Fracking-Changing/dp/0999745441/
2019-10-14
- Why free speech matters!
https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/mute-button.html
2019-10-15
- Understanding disk usage in Linux - https://ownyourbits.com/2018/05/02/understanding-disk-usage-in-linux/
Well written. Covers lot of interesting stuff - difference between ext2 and ext3, role of journal in ext3, tail packing in BTRFS and ReiserFS, sparse files, COW or copy-on-write features in ZFS and BTRFS. Easy to read and understand.
2019-10-18
- Dell Precision 5540 is highly recommended by Wes McKinney
https://wesmckinney.com/blog/linux-laptop-experience/
2019-10-31
- 2019 Nobel prize in Chemistry was awarded to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries.
2019-11-06
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect - A social psychological claim that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present; the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that one of them will help.
2019-11-14
- Problem: Tripped breaker wont reset
Solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Oh7gbtiK4 shows how to reset it.
2019-11-15
- https://ciechanow.ski/earth-and-sun/ - Earth and Sun.
2019-11-18
Q: Why is UTC used as the acronym for Coordinated Universal Time instead of CUT?
A: The English acronym would have been CUT, and in French it would have been TUC ("temps universel coordonné"), so they picked UTC to avoid favoring either one.
Ref:- https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/nist-time-frequently-asked-questions-faq#cut
2019-11-22
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet - Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm, first uncovered in 2010, thought to have been in development since at least 2005. Stuxnet targets SCADA systems and is believed to be responsible for causing substantial damage to Iran's nuclear program. Although neither country has openly admitted responsibility, the worm is widely understood to be a jointly built American/Israeli cyberweapon.
2019-12-10
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.06709.pdf - A Simple Proof of the Quadratic Formula
- https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13238920200-5fcd64b8 - the online advertising bubble!
2019-12-12
- http://paulgraham.com/genius.html - The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius
2019-12-16
- Today Costco sent me a letter with a cash card of $10. It says they negotiated a better price for the fitbit that I already bought (and paid for) during thanksgiving and they wanted to pass on the savings.
- It is a remarkable company!
2019-12-20
- https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/vikram-lander-found - Crash site of Vikram lander and debris identified in NASA satellite images.
2019-12-29
- Blue Zones – regions where people live longer