Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

September 8, 2020

Should our ‘WHY’ change based on what we’re doing & where we are?

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:00 AM

I was watching this video shared to me by Manisha, where Simon Sinek is basically talking about how our ‘why’ doesn’t change based on what we are doing and where we are. As per him “You only have one why there is no such thing as a personal why and a professional why. You are who you are. And the reason your friends love you is the exact same reason your colleagues and your customers and your clients love you. It’s because of you. And if you’re acting differently in one of those two places than in one of those two places, you’re lying.”. The Full transcript of his video is below (transcribed by Otter.ai.).

You only have one why there is no such thing as a personal why and a professional, why you are who you are. And the reason your friends love you is the exact same reason your colleagues and your customers and your clients love you. It’s because of you. And if you’re acting differently in one of those two places than in one of those two places, you’re lying. There’s only one wine, the opportunities to bring your wife to life personally. Remember, it’s not about what you do. So my Y is to inspire people. So how do I show up as a friend, to inspire people? How do I show up as a, as a as a colleague, to inspire people I’m going to say different things. But ultimately, I have to bring my wife to life in different products, those products are friend, buy those products or leader those products or colleague, those products are brother and son and uncle and all of these places. These are different products. These are different things that I do that I have to bring my wife to life. So you only have one y and your y never changes your whole life. Regardless of The role you play, the opportunity your life affords you is is to bring your is is all the choices you can make to bring your wife to life. So the question is, is what you’re doing and why you’re doing it consistent? Because only when, why how and what are in perfect balance? Do we know who you are? People that people tell me all that for years people I forgot the who know I didn’t? Who is the sum total of why, how and what when you know what you believe? And you follow your values and what you do reflects what you believe in your values, then we know who you are, if those things are out of order, or they are you violate those things people say it’s like I don’t know who you are anymore. You have one why your why never changes just like a company, our personal why’s an origin story. It’s where we come from. It’s who we are. It’s how we were raised and the rest of our lives, opportunities to live in balance or not.

This transcript was generated by Otter.ai

I don’t agree 100% with Simon on this as how I behave and act is dependent on who I am with. Basically, when I go and meet friends, the persona I’m showing is a subset of my actual behavior/personality. For example, when I’m at work cracking inappropriate/risque jokes is something that is not advisable and what is called a bad idea. But when you are with close friends its a completely different story, you would crack jokes & make fun of each other and that’s completely accepable. Does that mean that I am not ‘true to my why’? Ofcourse not! Its a different part of my personality. However, as per Simon one of these behaviors is a lie because I am acting differently in both places.

Saying that you are not showing your true self because you’re only showing subsets of your personality is not really accurate, I call it being true in context. I’ll give another example. There are certain things/activities/actions that you will share with very close friends but would not share/do in front of casual acquaintances/co-workers. If you don’t believe me, look at how you behave with your school friends versus how you behave with your college friends versus coworkers. How your tone, your body language, your vocabulary use etc changes is based on who you are with. This is basic communication skills you learn as a kid where you are told to ‘know your audience‘. What you talk about & how you talk about it completely depends on the people you are communicating with.

All that being said, obviously your core personality and your core ethics etc will not (and should not) change depending on the circumstances but what subset of myself is shared is something that I decide based on the scenario and the audience.

What do you think?

– Suramya

September 7, 2020

Bigotry is not something kids are born with, they learn it from the people around them

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 5:41 PM

Some of you might have noticed that I didn’t post anything yesterday. (Or atleast I hope you did) As basically because I had a bunch of stuff I needed to take care of and it was a Sunday so I was too busy relaxing and didn’t feel like writing up a post. Which is unfortunate because I broke my 20+ day streak of posting new blog posts every day on the website. So to make up for it, you get to read two blog post’s today. 🙂

Below is a comic that I stumbled across while browsing the web earlier today by, ‘Sohmer & Lar‘. I love this comic because it clearly shows how bigotry or hate is not something kids are born with. It’s something they learn from the people around them.


Least I could Do: Beginnings

I don’t get why people believe that they have the right and the authority to tell others that ‘This love is correct’, but ‘that other one is an abomination and you’ll go to hell for it’. In my opinion, hate & being a bigot is the worst thing you can do. If you hate someone for loving someone then it really says a lot more about you than the other person. If you feel that you are morally obliged to dictate to me (or anyone else) who someone should be allowed to love and generally acting like a moral police then I don’t think I want to associate with you. It was not nice knowing you, please take a hike.

Anyway, just wanted to share this comic with you all.

– Suramya

Govt mulls mandating EV charging kiosks at all 69,000 petrol pumps in India

Filed under: Emerging Tech,My Thoughts,News/Articles — Suramya @ 12:36 PM

The Indian Government is doing an extensive push for promoting renewable energy and the increased push for Electric Vehicles are part of the effort. Earlier this month I talked about how they are trying to make EV’s cheaper by allowing consumers to purchase without a battery. Now they are looking at mandating the installation of EV Charging kiosks on all petrol pumps in India (~69,000). This move will resolve one of the biggest concerns (after cost) of operating an EV – namely how/where can we charge it during travel.

We had a similar problem when CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) was mandated for all Auto’s & buses (at least in Delhi). There was a lot of resistance to the move because there were only 2-3 CNG fuel pumps in Delhi at the time, then a lot of new pumps were built and existing pumps also added CNG option which made CNG an attractive & feasible solution. I am hoping that the same will be the case with EV Charging points once the new rule is implemented.

In a review meeting on EV charging infrastructure, Power Minister R K Singh suggested oil ministry top officials that “they may issue an order for their oil marketing companies (OMCs) under their administrative control for setting up charging kiosks at all COCO petrol pumps”, a source said.

Other franchisee petrol pump operators may also be advised to have at least one charging kiosk at their fuel stations, the source said adding this will help achieve “EV charging facility at all petrol pumps in the country”.

Under the new guidelines of the oil ministry, new petrol pumps must have an option of one alternative fuel.

“Most of the new petrol pumps are opting for electric vehicle charging facility under alternative fuel option. But it will make huge difference when the existing petrol pumps would also install EV charging kiosks,” the source said.

Source: Hindustan Times

– Suramya

September 5, 2020

Flowers from Jani’s garden

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 6:02 PM

Don’t feel much like writing today, so here are some flowers from Jani’s garden instead to brighten your day.


Rangoon Creeper


Rose


Flower arrangement from home grown flowers

– Suramya

September 4, 2020

A ‘genius’ on Quora wants to know if they can sue someone for removing them from a Whatsapp Group

Filed under: Humor,Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 11:50 PM

Every once in a while you will come across something that highlights the self entitlement of the poster. Today’s winner of entitled litigator (to-be) is a gentleman who posted the following question on Quora: “I want to file a case against a WhatsApp admin for removing me and my spouse from a group without a valid reason. Can it be done as it has affected us mentally?”. I don’t have words on how petty and entitled you have to be in order to think that someone removing you from a whatsapp group is a valid reason to sue the admin of the group.

The person doesn’t say where they are from but based on their eagerness to sue, I have a feeling that they are from the US as American’s are the most eager litigator’s that I know of. On one side its funny but on the other hand its scary how much people think is due to them and how far they are willing to go to get what they feel is due to them. Some of the cases filed would boggle your mind. We have had a kidnapper sue his victims for breach of contract when they escaped and another one sued for being misled that a sugary snack has a lot of sugar. In all a lot of bizarre lawsuits that have been filed till date, mostly in the US but there are a few gems from Europe as well. I was curious and searched for the most ridiculous law suites ever filed and boy did the Internet deliver. Below are some of my favorites from the search results:

Woman Says Jelly Belly Lied To Her

A California woman filed a mind-blowing lawsuit in 2017 when she felt misled by the fact that Jelly Belly candies contained sugar, Jessica Gomez filed a complaint against the jelly bean maker over its use of the term “evaporated cane juice” appearing on the packaging for Jelly Belly Sport Beans.

She said she thought it meant the candies were sugar-free and that they were a healthier snack option. The candy company called the suit “nonsense” and urged the courts to drop it because the product’s nutrition label clearly shows its sugar content.

The case was dismissed after the cart ruled that the plaintiffs failed to show facts specific to their purchase and reliance on advertising.

The next one just made me roll my eyes, the lady this guy sued had a lucky escape. Imagine living with someone so entitled!

The ‘First Date From Hell’

A Texas man made international news and became a poster boy for pettiness when he sued a woman after what he called the “first date from hell.”

Brandon Vezmar, 37, went on a date with a woman he met on Bumble in 2017 and was angered when she apparently spent the whole night on her phone. Vezmar sued the woman, hoping to get back the $17.31 he spent taking her to the movies.

The woman eventually just gave him the money back, so he’d drop the whole thing and leave her alone.

Here’s another Gem, Apparently this genius didn’t know that things in the sun get hot (especially if they are painted black). I learnt that lesson in kindergarten… But why use your brain when you can sue.

Fan’s Burned Butt Means Lawsuit For Dallas Cowboys

In 2012, a Dallas Cowboys fan sued her favorite football team after she claimed she suffered severe burns after sitting on a hot bench at a game. Jennelle Carrillo, herself a Texan, got lawyers involved after attending a team scrimmage in August 2010 and unwittingly sitting on a very hot seat.

The temperatures that day were more than 100 degrees and the bench itself was black, but Carrillo claimed she had no way of knowing that the seat would be so hot because the team didn’t have signs posted warning fans.

The lawsuit disappeared after initial media mentions.

The next one just makes me think, what the hell was this guy thinking?

Dangerous breasts

A man visits a nude bar. We’re not sure how the joke normally goes, but in this instance it ends up in court. In 1996 a a man named Paul Shimkonis sued his local topless bar claiming a dancer’s breasts had given him whiplash. Shimkonis described the breasts as ‘cement blocks’ which had caused him physical and mental anguish. His request fro $15,000 in damages was denied by the judge. We find ourselves wondering what sort of dance move can cause that level of momentum.

If you have some free time and need to laugh you can check out the list of ridiculous lawsuits here and here.

The really scary part is that sometimes these idiots win and then we get warning labels telling us that the Hot Coffee we ordered is actually Hot.

– Suramya

Codespell (WebMage 03) by Kelly McCullough

Filed under: Reviews-Urban Fantasy — Suramya @ 11:48 PM


Codespell (WebMage 03)
by Kelly Mccullough

Description:

The universe needs a reboot in this WebMage novel from Kelly McCullough.

In the twenty-first century, magic has advanced with the times and gone digital, and Ravirn, a direct descendant of one of the three Fates, is a talented sorcerer—and computer hacker extraordinaire. Now that Ravirn has come into his own as a minor chaos power, he’s partying with Zeus, playing hard-to-get with a gorgeous Fury…and trying to stay one step ahead of Nemesis, the unstoppable goddess of vengeance.

But now Necessity—the sentient computer that runs the universe—has caught a virus that crashes most of the magical internet, and Ravirn is tasked with fixing it. And Ravirn hasn’t missed the fact that whoever repairs Necessity will, for that moment, run the universe, able to remake the worlds (and everything else) to their liking.

Unfortunately for Ravirn, some very dangerous beings have figured that out, too…

Buy From:

Rating: (4/5)

Review:

This review will have minor spoilers about events from the previous books in the series because it build on top of them. If you haven’t yet read the first two books, stop reading.

Codespell picks up a few months or so after the finale of the previous book and Ravirn or Raven as he is now known managed to save the soul of his Girlfriend’s Webgoblin but in the process accidentally released a Virus in Necessity (Computer that runs the multiverse) causing massive damage. Now multiple parties are after Raven to get him to fix the problems he has created or just punish them for it.

In this installment Ravirn is finally starting to understand the Raven side of his nature. I especially liked how we cover the fact that the ‘Powers’ are being forced to act in a certain way even though they might not want to at that time, for example Raven’s trickster nature is pushing Ravirn to act more recklessly/chaotically than he would prefer.
We finally get introduced to a lot more of the Greek pantheon with Zeus, Athena and many others making appearance some with minor roles others with more active ones, I liked most of the characters in the book however the way ‘Cerice’ behaved felt a bit contrived and not natural, but it did help move the narrative forward so there is that…

In addition to regular computing that we have been dealing with so far we now have Quantum Computing also coming into the mix which makes things even more fun and interesting for the characters.

The Ending was interesting but I can’t talk about it here as Spoilers 😉 but I will talk about it in the review of the next book in the Series: MythOS.

Final Review: I liked the book a lot, a Fun & light read.

September 3, 2020

Electric Vehicles can now be sold without Batteries in India

Filed under: Emerging Tech,My Thoughts,News/Articles — Suramya @ 11:51 PM

One of the biggest constraints for buying an Electric Vehicle (EV) is cost as even with all the subsidies etc the cost of an EV is fairly high and upto 40% of the EV cost is the cost of the batteries. In a move to reduce the cost of EV’s in India, Indian government is now allowing dealers to sell EV’s without batteries and the customer will then have the option to retrofit an electric battery as per their requirements.

When I first read the news I thought they were kidding and what use an Electric car was without a battery. Then I thought about it a bit more, and realized that you could think of it as a dealer not selling a car with a pre-filled fuel tank. We normally get a liter or two of petrol/diesel in the car when we buy it and then top it up with fuel later. Now think of doing something similar with the EV, you get a small battery pack with the car by default (enough to let you drive for a few Kilometers) and you have the option to replace it with the battery pack of your choice. This will allow a person to budget their expense by choosing to but a low power/capacity battery initially if they are not planning on driving outside the city and then later upgrading to a pack with more capacity.

However some of the EV manufacturers are concerned about the safety aspects of retrofitting of batteries and possibilities of warranty-related confusion. Plus they also have questions about the how the subsidies under the Centre’s EV adoption policy would be determined for vehicles without batteries. Basically they feel that they should have been consulted in more detail before this major change was announced so as to avoid confusion after the launch.

The policy was announced mid August and I think time only will tell how well the policy works in the market.

More Details on the change: Sale of EVs without batteries: Ather, Hero Electric, etc. laud policy but Mahindra has doubts

– Suramya

Cybermancy (WebMage 02) by Kelly McCullough

Filed under: Reviews-Urban Fantasy — Suramya @ 4:05 PM


Cybermancy (WebMage 02)
by Kelly McCullough

Description:
Hades has a hell of a firewall in this WebMage novel from Kelly McCullough.

Not just any computer geek can hack into Hades. But Ravirn, a direct descendant of one of the three Fates, is no ordinary hacker. Magic has gone digital in the twenty-first century, and Ravirn is a sorcerer with a laptop—otherwise known as his shape-changing best friend.

These days, Ravirn’s crashing at his girlfriend’s place while she works on her doctorate in computer science. Only one problem: all of her research is in her webgoblin’s memory, which is now in Hades along with its soul. To save Cerice’s webgoblin (and her PhD), Ravirn must brave Hell itself. But can he do it without corrupting the mweb—the magical internet—and without facing down the Lord of the Dead himself?

Buy From:

Rating: (4/5)

Review:

This review will have minor spoilers about the first book because what events from the first book have significant bearing on the second book as it build on top of them. If you haven’t yet read the first book, stop reading.

At the end of the First book free will is saved, Ravirn is still alive but renamed as Raven and no longer part of the Fate’s family. Throughout this book he is still trying to come to terms with the changes in his life and pretend that the Raven side of him doesn’t exist. The book starts off with an awesome sentence “Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks ? The eyes of Cerberus glared down at me, six balls of black fire. There was no dog older or more dangerous. But here I was standing practically in his mouths, trick in hand.” and then takes off from there.

Ravirn is trying to retrieve the soul of his girlfriend’s webgoblin from Hades and in doing so unleashes a massive problem for the whole of reality. He is frantically trying to fix the issue while the major powers of the universe are out baying for his head making life a lot more interesting for him. Over the course of the novel he starts accepting his Raven side more as well.

The book is a fun read and I loved the way it covers the story of Persephone. According to mythology, Hades, god of the Underworld, fell in love with beautiful Persephone when he saw her picking flowers one day in a meadow. The god then carried her off in his chariot to live with him in the dark Underworld. Her mother Demeter created a great drought to convince the other gods to release Persephone from Hades. Finally after lots of people died Zeus finally sent Hermes to persuade Hades to release his ill-gotten bride. But Hades had tricked Persephone into eating pomegranate seed so had to spend three months of the year in Hades. Its a very stark tale but most books/tales gloss over how it must be for Persephone to live with Hades for 3 months every year after he had kidnapped and raped her. Persephone’s anger & despair are covered beautifully and with compassion in the book, it really highlights what victims of sexual violence have to deal with throughout their life.

The consequences of the events of this book are explored in the next few books so I ended up rereading the 3rd book immediately after I finished this one.

September 2, 2020

Happy 20th Birthday Nokia 3310!

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 8:51 PM

The Nokia 3310 was launched on 1st Sept 2000 and is a legendary phone. Known for being nearly indestructible it helped accelerate the Mobile phone trend, with around 120 million devices sold during its lifespan. Both me and Surabhi had this phone and I have personal experience of its near indestructibility, Surabhi once took the phone on a roller coaster and midway through the phone fell out from her pocket (don’t ask me why she had the phone in the pocket as I don’t know). We assumed that the phone was a total loss and that we would have to get a new one. When the ride ended, we searched for the phone pieces and reassembled them. To all of our surprise the phone immediately booted up without any problems. There was a small crack on the battery panel but the phone worked without issues for another couple of years. Compare this to my S8 which had a cracked rear panel after falling from the bed.


The legendary Nokia 3310

“The Nokia 3310 is a true icon in the mobile phone world. Having sold over 120 million units its ubiquity meant that it is a device that many people owned, often as their first mobile phone. This means it generates a real sense of nostalgia which further underlines its status as one of the most important mobile phones of all time.

“The robust design made it almost indestructible in daily use and its ease of use meant that it became a firm favourite with customers. It is little surprise the design was rebooted in 2017 by HMD Global, the company that now licenses the Nokia brand for phones.”

The most recent 3310 version apes the aesthetic of the original well, although ditches some of its simplicity for a bevy of modern accoutrements, including a colour display and a 2MP rear camera.

I love my Samsung S10 but really miss the durability of the old cellphones.

– Suramya

September 1, 2020

Background radiation causes Integrity issues in Quantum Computers

Filed under: Computer Related,My Thoughts,Quantum Computing,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:16 PM

As if Quantum Computing didn’t have enough issues preventing it from being a workable solution already, new research at MIT has found that ionizing radiation from environmental radioactive materials and cosmic rays can and does interfere with the integrity of quantum computers. The research has been published in Nature: Impact of ionizing radiation on superconducting qubit coherence.

Quantum computers are super powerful because their basic building blocks qubit (quantum bit) is able to simultaneously exist as 0 or 1 (Yes, it makes no sense which is why Eisenstein called it ‘spooky action at a distance’) allowing it process a magnitude more operations in parallel than the regular computing systems. Unfortunately it appears that these qubits are highly sensitive to their environment and even minor levels of radiation emitted by trace elements in concrete walls and cosmic rays can cause them to loose coherence corrupting the calculation/data, this is called decoherence. The longer we can avoid decoherence the more powerful/capable the quantum computer. We have made significant improvements in this over the past two decades, from maintaining it for less than one nanosecond in 1999 to around 200 microseconds today for the best-performing devices.

As per the study, the effect is serious enough to limit the performance to just a few milliseconds which is something we are expected to achieve in the next few years. The only way currently known to avoid this issue is to shield the computer which means putting these computers underground and surrounding it with a 2 ton wall of lead. Another possibility is to use something like a counter-wave of radiation to cancel the incoming radiation similar to how we do noise-canceling. But that is something which doesn’t exist today and will require significant technological breakthrough before it is feasible.

“Cosmic ray radiation is hard to get rid of,” Formaggio says. “It’s very penetrating, and goes right through everything like a jet stream. If you go underground, that gets less and less. It’s probably not necessary to build quantum computers deep underground, like neutrino experiments, but maybe deep basement facilities could probably get qubits operating at improved levels.”

…

“If we want to build an industry, we’d likely prefer to mitigate the effects of radiation above ground,” Oliver says. “We can think about designing qubits in a way that makes them ‘rad-hard,’ and less sensitive to quasiparticles, or design traps for quasiparticles so that even if they’re constantly being generated by radiation, they can flow away from the qubit. So it’s definitely not game-over, it’s just the next layer of the onion we need to address.”

Quantum Computing is a fascinating field but it really messes with your mind. So I am happy there are folks out there spending time trying to figure out how to get this amazing invention working and reliable enough to replace our existing Bit based computers.

Source: Cosmic rays can destabilize quantum computers, MIT study warns

– Suramya

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