Update 8/17/2020: Issue resolved. The problem was caused because I had a missing single quote in the previous post. Once I added the quote to the post things went back to normal.
There seems to be an issue with WordPress where some of my posts have gone MIA on the main page even though the direct links work. Also some of the posts are being merged together for some reason.
I am looking into it, so please be patient.
– Suramya
A few days ago a post popped up in my twitter feed where this person was complaining about how they had sent their kid (‘Chris’) to a friends place (‘Neil’) and Neil’s parents fed Chris Indian food without asking for permission from the parents. Neil’s parents are both Doctors of Indian origin and settled in the US. This guy was complaining about how they should have asked him for permission because kids tummies are sensitive etc etc and wanted to know if it was ok to tell Neil’s parents that they would only allow Chris and Neil to play at their house going forward. This was sent to a online help personality “Dear Prudence” and they posted it online. When I first saw the headline (“Help! I can’t believe my Son’s friend fed him Indian food without calling me first”) I thought it was a joke so I clicked to get more details which are in the screenshot below:
This is incredibly controlling behavior from Chris’s parents and I think there is a race aspect to the whole thing as well which is evident from the comment near the end about how further conversations on the topic would be racial in nature. There is no mention anywhere about any Allergies or diet restrictions that Chris might have, and if that was the case I understand the parents panicking when the kid is fed something that could be actively dangerous to them or if they were vegetarians and the kid was fed meat. But panicking just because they were fed spicy food is a bit too much.
As a kid I couldn’t handle any Spices and my food was made with minimal levels of spice, then I was visiting relatives who fed me Radish with salt, lemon & chilly powder and I loved it. I felt that my tongue was about to fall off but I loved it and slowly started increasing my spice tolerance. As a kid and even now I eat at my friends place all the time. Some of the food are things that I had never eaten before and it was an experience trying out new cuisines and food. We had a south-Indian family living next to us when Dad was posted in Delhi and we (me & Surabhi) were at their house every other day eating whatever they had cooked, which was my first experience of South Indian food that I remember. Surabhi fell in love with the Dosa’s & Idli’s etc at the time and till date its her favorite food. When they would come to our place we fed them classic north Indian dishes and they loved it as well…
Variety is the spice of life and food from other parts of the world is amazing. Chris’s parents should be happy that he is getting to experience other cultures and traditions at such a young age. When we travel we always explore the local food and try to each as much of it as possible. Which is why as times I do feel sad that I am a vegetarian because of which I can’t try the authentic local cuisine at a lot of places but I still make the effort to try the veg options. When I was in the US we had a whole semester where we went out every weekend to try a new cuisine and it was awesome. There were times that I hated the dish I ordered but that’s still part and parcel of exploring. I fell in love with Mexican food because I ate it in the US, if I had stuck to Indian food as a few of my friends did then I wouldn’t have found out about this amazing cuisine.
In my opinion there is no food that is inappropriate, there could be food that you can’t eat due to restrictions, medical issues or whatever but that’s it. In this case Chris’s parents are teaching their kid that ‘foreign’ food is something bad/dangerous and needs to be avoided. We are in a global world now, I can guarantee that Chris will end up with Indian friends/co-workers (or folks from other nationalities) down the line and have to eat the food. Its better that he tries the food now and gets used to it than have issues later in life.
What do you think?
Source: Twitter
– Suramya
Over the past few months I have been infrequently seeing the following warning message in the Terminal and had been ignoring it because apparently the fix was to update the BIOS and I didn’t have the patience/time to do the upgrade at that point in time:
WARNING: CPU random generator seem to be failing, disable hardware random number generation
WARNING: RDRND generated: 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0xffffffff
WARNING: CPU random generator seem to be failing, disable hardware random number generation
WARNING: RDRND generated: 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0xffffffff
Today I thought that I should fix the error, a bit of Google searching confirmed that I needed to update the BIOS because apparently there was a bug in the AMD Ryzen 3000 series processor that causes the onboard random number generator to always return 0xffffffff when asked to generate a Random number. Obviously getting the same number every time is not optimal even though Dilbert feels otherwise.
AMD was notified about it last year and they released a BIOS update to fix the issue, however each Motherboard company had to validate and release the new BIOS which took time. The fix was to upgrade the BIOS and I really wasn’t looking forward to it as the last time I upgraded the BIOS it was a painful exercise involving floppy disks and cursing etc.
I looked up my BIOS version using the dmidecode command but that didn’t give me enough information to find the new BIOS version for my motherboard (‘ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING’). So I rebooted the computer and found the built in BIOS upgrade section under Tools. I decided to give it a try and see what options are available so I clicked on the Upgrade option and it gave me the option of connecting to the Internet and automatically downloading the latest version of the BIOS or installing it from a USB/Disk Drive. I selected the Network Install option and the system happily downloaded the latest version of the BIOS from the Internet and then gave me the option to Install the new version. I selected ‘Yes’ and the BIOS was upgraded.
The system had to reboot a few times for the upgrade to complete and there was a boot where the system played a bunch of beeps without anything coming up on the display which scared the life out of me but then it immediately rebooted and the display came back. After the upgrade completed I got a screen with a bunch of messages about BIOS settings needing to be reinitialized but when I went into the BIOS the settings were all there. So I rebooted and now all looks good and I don’t see any more weird error messages in the Console or the logs.
I am happy to see that the process to upgrade the BIOS is now so simple and I will be upgrading the BIOS more frequently going forward.
– Suramya
If we go back in time to 1957 and tell people that in future Satellites are going to be powerful enough to detect Penguin Poop from space they would look at you as if you were insane. However now due to improvements in the Satellite-mapping technology we now have the capacity to detect & identify Penguin poop from space. At first this might sound ridiculous and you might be asking why would we spend the time and effort to be able to identify poop from space. Basically the problem we are trying to solve is to locate penguin nesting sites to get an idea of how many penguins are there in the wild and how endangered they are currently.
Traditional methods involve going across Antarctica and other places where they nest to find their nesting places. This is very time consuming, expensive and at times dangerous. The first survey folks used sledges etc to travel across, then we moved on to using planes to view the area from the air now we can do it remotely without leaving the comfort of our homes thanks to the advances in technologies. The scientists used images from Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission and were able to identify Eleven new Colonies of the Emperor penguin.
Satellite-mapping technology that detects stains on the ice from penguin droppings has revealed there are nearly 20% more Emperor colonies than previously identified in fast-warming Antarctica.
“This is an exciting discovery,” said lead author and geographer Peter Fretwell in a statement. “Whilst this is good news, the colonies are small and so only take the overall population count up by 5-10%, to just over half a million penguins.””
The discovery will be used by scientists who are monitoring the birds and raising concerns because they’re particularly vulnerable to sea ice melting from climate change… Scientists warned that most of the newly found colonies are in locations likely to be lost as the climate warms and large sections of seasonal ice — where penguins mate — risk disappearing. “Birds in these sites are therefore probably the ‘canaries in the coal mine’,” said Phil Trathan, head of conservation biology at BAS.
While its great that there are more Emperor Penguins than we thought they are still at risk of extinction due to Global Warming/Climate Change. We need to seriously spend more effort to combat Climate change and the time to make the changes is running out faster than we thought.
Source: Slashdot.org
– Suramya
The Cyber Security industry has seen a massive boost during the current pandemic, with users working remotely for the first time and permissions granted on the fly the Security teams in the enterprise have been working round the clock to ensure critical data and systems are secure. But due to the general chaos of Covid combined with the need to keep businesses running there are systems that have been less than optimally configured.
All this gives us the impression that the Cybercrime world must be thriving in the current environment. But apparently that is not always the case, the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre has released a series of reports on how the Pandemic has impacted cybercrime. The reports are a fascinating read as they show how even the criminals are facing hardships due to the pandemic. For example, below is an extract from the report on the impact on International drug trade due to the shipping disruptions caused by lockdowns.
“The initial wave of COVID lockdowns in China caused substantial disruption to international shipping,compounded by the subsequent lockdowns in the rest of the world. Despite their ‘online’ character, drugscryptomarkets (online markets for legal and illegal drugs which are accessed securely through anonymitynetworks such as Tor) are reliant on the postal and shipping services for the delivery of drugs and precursorsto suppliers and end users. We have observed, in our scraped datasets of illicit online forums and discussionboards, evidence of significant disruption of these pathways, and a range of effects on these illicit markets.At the initial peak of lockdown measures, shipping times (especially in international routes which passedthrough China) were being routinely delayed by up to three months (as reported in cryptomarket discussions).This caused significant friction to international orders for postal drug delivery, with many dealers reportingthat they were switching to orders within the same nation only, and others struggling to source supply.”
Brian Kerbs from Kerbs on Security wrote a comprehensive article on How Cybercriminals are Weathering COVID-19 and its worth a read as well.
But apparently a number of criminal reshipping services are reporting difficulties due to the increased wait time when calling FedEx or UPS (to divert carded goods that merchants end up shipping to the cardholder’s address instead of to the mule’s). In response, these operations are raising their prices and warning of longer shipping times, which in turn could hamper the activities of other actors who depend on those services.
That’s according to Intel 471, a cyber intelligence company that closely monitors hundreds of online crime forums. In a report published today, the company said since late March 2020 it has observed several crooks complaining about COVID-19 interfering with the daily activities of their various money mules (people hired to help launder the proceeds of cybercrime).
The same is happening for real world crime also, Jani was telling me about this article on Goa where the local drug dealers are out of job because no tourists are visiting so they all are now selling fish to survive.
Well this is all for now. Will write more later.
– Suramya
I am not the most fervent fan of emojis in the world and for the most part I have gone through the last 20+ years with about 3-4 emojis that I use on a regular basis. But I know people who communicate wholly using them and while I am ok with folks using them in personal communications I dislike them immensely in professional communications (except for the occasional smiley face). However not everyone agrees with me and there have been books published in the past using just Emoji’s and now there is a programming language that is written entirely in emoji.
Emojicode, which first appeared as a Github project back in 2016 has been around for a while now and has a fairly strong following in the tech world. I realize that I sound like one of the old men screaming ‘Get off my lawn’ but I really don’t understand why anyone would want to code in a language that uses emoji’s to define text as a serious programming language. As a joke it would be fun to learn but I can’t really imagine coming in to work one day and writing code using Emojocode for a work project.
Here’s an example of the “Hello World” program written using Emojicode.
If you want to learn coding in Emojicode, you can check out their impressive documentation or do a Code Academy course on the language. Emojicode is open-source, so you can also contribute to the development via their GitHub repository.
Yes, learning new programming languages is cool, but I don’t think I will be spending the effort to learn Emojicode anytime in the near future.
– Suramya
Depression is brutal, it can range from feelings of sadness, loss, or anger that interfere with a person’s everyday activities to suicidal tendencies. In the past few months there have been multiple cases of famous people committing suicide because they were depressed and unable to cope with the feelings of isolation and stress brought about by the current pandemic. Unfortunately depression is not an easy thing to diagnose and there isn’t a single test to diagnose it. Doctors can diagnose it based on your symptoms and a psychological evaluation which in most cases includes questions about your:
But all of this requires a person to be open about their thoughts and that can be difficult at times due to the stigma associated with mental health issues. In all of the cases I was referring to earlier the common theme from the friends & acquaintances have been about how they wish they had known that xyz was depressed and if they had then maybe they could have helped.
The problem is that people don’t always come out and say that they are depressed and sometime the signals are very faint. So its very interesting to see the various efforts that are underway to identify these symptoms earlier and get the people the help they need faster so that they don’t have to face it alone. As part of this effort scientists at Canada’s University of Alberta have created a machine learning model that uses linguistic clues to indicate signs of depression in text communications like twitter messages and have published a paper on it (Augmenting Semantic Representation of Depressive Language: From Forums to Microblogs) in the ‘European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Database’.
We discuss and analyze the process of creating word embedding feature representations specifically designed for a learning task when annotated data is scarce, like depressive language detection from Tweets. We start from rich word embedding pre-trained from a general dataset, then enhance it with embedding learned from a domain specific but relatively much smaller dataset. Our strengthened representation portrays better the domain of depression we are interested in as it combines the semantics learned from the specific domain and word coverage from the general language. We present a comparative analyses of our word embedding representations with a simple bag-of-words model, a well known sentiment lexicon, a psycholinguistic lexicon, and a general pre-trained word embedding, based on their efficacy in accurately identifying depressive Tweets. We show that our representations achieve a significantly better F1 score than the others when applied to a high quality dataset.
This is not the first study on the topic and it won’t be the last. The paper is fairly technical and from what I can understand they can identify potential signs of depression based on words used and phrasing. But am not sure how they are taking into account sarcasm and contextual clues. For example without the appropriate context things being said can be taken in many different ways and identifying the correct emotion behind the words can be tricky. When we interact in person or over phone things like body language or verbal cues give us additional context about how a person is feeling, unfortunately that is not the case with text and there is a huge potential for things to be taken out of context or in the wrong way. Another issue is how to differentiate between feelings of sadness and depression as the symptoms might be very similar.
We need human interactions, connections etc to address this issue and not another technology claiming to be a silver bullet as not everything can be solved by AI/ML and the low accuracy level on such solutions can only cause trouble down the line. Imagine such a system being implemented at workplaces, during interviews or on dating sites. If a system flagged you as a depressive then it could cost you your job, or your relationship.
What do you think?
– Suramya
Today is World Book Day and it’s the perfect time to post this. As you know due to Covid-19, the entire world has been turned Topsy-turvey and has impacted people worldwide, this includes book authors as well since they are unable to go out and promote their books so the season’s biggest books are not getting their time in the spotlight. In addition to the lack of limelight a lot of people are also cutting down on their book purchases so that they can focus on surviving this pandemic.
In India because of the lockdown all shops are closed and Amazon can’t deliver books as they are not considered “Essential Items”, since a lot of the authors I like are international ones who are not available in India but are only available via Amazon or Flipkart I can’t get any new books. Yes, I know I can buy e-books but I prefer paper books and don’t want to spend twice on the same book. So I reached out on Twitter to John Scalzy & Mary Robinette Kowal, who is the president of the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) to ask them following question on how I could support Authors during this time:
“Hi @scalzi , @MaryRobinette Is there an official list of patreon’s for various authors? I tried searching but couldn’t find any. if not can we start a list?
Can’t order books right now due to Corona as both local stores & Amazon are closed. But still wanted to support.”
I followed the tweet with links to the Pateron links that I could find and the whole thing just exploded, I got a huge no of comments and views with links to various Patreon’s. Since Twitter is a bad medium to keep something meant for a long term, I am consolidating the list here on my Blog and will keep updating it as and when I find new links for Patreons.
The list is strongly leaning towards Science Fiction & Fantasy since that’s what I mostly read but am open to listing other genres author’s as well. Please note that while I did basic due-deligence on the links I expect you to verify the links as authentic before you start sending them money. Please let me know if there are any changes or issues in the list. I am not responsible if you send money to the wrong person :).
So without further ado here’s the list of Author Patreon’s that I found or were shared with me. Clicking on the name will take you to the author’s Page on Fantastic Fiction and the Pateron link will take you to their Pateron (duh). For the author’s who have no FF page, these are author’s who’s books I have read & bought so I have included them, there were a few that were submitted to me but since I can’t vouch for them if they are not on FF I didn’t add them to the list below.
So some quick Q&A before I close the post:
Q. Are you getting a commission on this from referels?
A. No. This is just so that I can have a central list where all author Paterons are listed and folks can use this to support their favorite authors.
Q. Aren’t there other people in the world and in India who are going hungry like migrant workers who can better use the money?
A. Yes, there are too many people living on the edge and barely surviving. Unfortunately I can’t do something for all of them, though I have donated to various organizations that are supporting them. This is something for authors who have kept me sane and centered through my life.
Q. Will you be updating the list? Can I submit additions?
A. Yes & Yes. You can either tweet the additions to me, post them as comments to the blog post or email them to me.
Well this is all for now. Will post more later.
– Suramya
These past few months have been a bit scary. Since Jan we have been watching Corona virus cases spike in China, get ignored and then massive effort to contain the virus. The same was done in Singapore, South Korea etc. India was relatively untouched with minimal cases in the first few months of the disease. Then we had a spike due to people returning from US/Europe etc and infecting others.
I am surprisingly impressed with how Indian Government has reacted to this issue, with both state and national governments taking strong steps to contain. I was especially surprised by how quickly government of Karnataka reacted because honestly I feel that they are mostly useless. They quickly shutdown all schools when the cases in KA were still at 4, and once we had the first death due to the virus in the state they immediately stopped all public gatherings as well as malls, pubs etc.
Now we are going to a total lockdown on Bangalore and some of the other infected areas. Section 144 is being imposed in parts of the country where idiots are refusing to adhere to the social distancing. To emphasise, social distancing the main method to reduce the speed of the spread of the virus. Here’s what the government is doing to help: (this is for the idiots who keep asking what the government is doing. More on this later in the post):
Karnataka to close borders, postpone SSLC exams, and elections
The Karnataka government will close all borders with its neighbouring states to tackle theCOVID-19pandemic. An executive order to that effect detailing the duration of the lockdown is expected soon.
Coronavirus: Mizoram announces statewide shutdown till March 29
The Mizoram government on Saturday ordered a “partial lockdown” across all districts of the state till March 29 in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a notification.
Punjab orders lockdown:
Ordered statewide lock down till 31st March to check spread of COVID-19 All essential Govt services will continue & shops selling essential items such as milk, food items, medicines, etc will be open. All DCs & SSPs have been directed to implement the restrictions immediately. – Amarinder Singh
Coronavirus: Indian Railways suspends all passenger services from March 22 midnight to March 31 midnight
In an unprecedented move, the railways on Sunday announced suspension of all its passenger services from March 22 midnight to March 31 midnight and said only goods trains will run during the said period.
Govt announces lockdown in 75 districts
Government announces lockdown in 75 districts that have reported COVID-19 cases and casualties. Only essential services will operate in these 75 districts. Restrictions on non-essential passenger transport, including inter-state bus services remains till March 31. The decision has been taken after a meeting Cabinet Secretary held with Chief Secretaries of States and principal Secretary to Prime Minister.
Section 144 in Bengaluru from 9 pm to 12 am
Section 144 imposed from 9 pm to 12 am (midnight) in commissionerate limits to ensure people do not come out of their home once the Janta Curfew ends: Bhaskar Rao, Commissioner of police, Bangalore city. (ANI)
Section 144 imposed in Delhi
In wake of the coronavirus outbreak, Section 144 of CrPC to be imposed in Delhi with effect from 9 pm on March 22 to 12 midnight of March 31. (ANI)
This is just an small list of the actions that are being taken to stop the spread. Yes, there were mistakes made and are being made but the focus is to resolve them quickly and move forward. For example a decision was taken to allow the Ayodhya celebration to happen but then the permission was revoked after a large no of people protested and the medical community advised against it as well.
On Friday, PM Modi adressed the nation and asked for a self curfew to be done on Sunday all day to help curb the spread. This was a voluntary curfew to enforce social distancing. No where did he say that the virus is going to be dead in 12-14 hours and then we can go back to normal on Monday. He asked for everyone to coorporate in social distancing for the next few weeks. You can read the complete text of his address here. Below is an extract from the address:
Hence, it is imperative to keep two key factors in mind in order to combat this global pandemic – Determination and Patience. Today, all 130 crore fellow citizens of Indians will have to further strengthen our resolve to overcome this global crisis, fulfilling all our duties as citizens, and abiding by the directions given by the Central and State governments. Today, we must all resolve to not get infected ourselves, and prevent others as well from getting infected.
Friends, during such a pandemic, only one mantra can take us through – ‘Hum Swasth, toh Jag Swasth’, that is the world will be healthy, if we stay healthy. In a situation like this, where there is no known cure for the disease, it is imperative that we stay healthy. Patience is an essential virtue to avoid this disease, and keep oneself healthy. And how does one practice patience? By staying away from crowds and gatherings, avoiding leaving your homes. This is called ‘Social Distancing’ nowadays, and is critical in these times of the global corona pandemic.
Our determination and patience will play a crucial role in containing the impact of this global pandemic. It is wrong if you believe that you are okay and nothing can happen to you, and you can continue roaming around in markets and streets as usual and remain unaffected. By doing this, you will not only be unjust to yourself but also to your family.
Keeping this is mind, I appeal to you all that for the next few weeks, step-out of your homes only when absolutely necessary. As far as possible, try and do your work, whether related to business or job, from home.
While it is essential that those who are in government services, healthcare services, people’s representatives, media personnel remain active. Everybody else must however, isolate themselves from the rest of society.
Global research and experts have been talking non-stop that the main way to stop the spread of Convid-19 is to practive social distancing. That’s what the goverment is asking us to do. Plus this is not all there are multiple other steps being taken to reduce the impact and economic packages to help the poor and impacted are in progress. Yes, we could move faster on this but some things take time.
In addition Modi asked for one more item in his speech.
Friends, in the midst of all these efforts of the people’s curfew on 22nd March, I would also like to seek your support on one more matter on that day. For the past 2 months, lakhs of our people have been working day and night in our Hospitals and Airports.
From doctors to nurses, hospital staff, sanitation workers, airlines employees, government staff, police personnel, media people, people associated with train-bus-auto rickshaw services, and home delivery agents; all have been selflessly serving others, without caring about themselves.
In the current circumstances, these services cannot be considered to be ordinary. Today, these people run the risk of getting infected themselves. Yet, they continue to fulfil their duties, serving others. As defenders of the nation, they stand firmly between us and the corona pandemic. The nation is grateful to them all.
I wish that on Sunday, 22nd March, we express our gratitude to all such people. On Sunday at exactly 5 pm, we all stand at the doors, balconies, windows of our homes, and give them all a 5-minute standing ovation. We clap our hands, beat our plates, ring our bells to boost their morale, salute their service.
To inform people about this, I request local authorities across the country to ring a siren at 5 pm on 22nd March.
We must with full sincerity, express our feelings towards all such fellow citizens who have lived by our value-system of ‘Seva Parmo Dharma’, that is Service being the highest Duty.
Note that he did not claim that this will kill Corona virus due to astrology, veda’s, sound therapy or whatever. This is just to show our appreciation for the people putting their life at risk for us to be able to continue with life. Remember the meal you ordered on Swiggy that was delivered by a person? The sweepers who are cleaning the floor or buildings? The train/bus drivers taking people around? They are risking infection so that we can continue. This is a tribute to them. Why is it ok to celebrate our cricket team’s win in a stupid game by yelling & screaming and being out on the street but suddenly its too much if you are asked to applaud for people risking their lives and the lives of their loved ones to serve you.
Worldwide people are doing this, a 30 second search gave me: Israel, Spain & Italy (who are doing it daily BTW), Germany , UK and so many more.
People need hope when things are grim. This is giving them hope. Remember Pandora’s box? The last thing remaining in the box after all the evils escaped was hope to give us the strength to battle evil & tough times. Jews sang during the War, soldiers sing at the front, this is not because it magically solves the problem but because it gives us the strength to say: I can do this. We will get through this together.
Now, lets look at what the so called ‘intellectuals’ & some of the educated people are doing shall we? Anti-CAA protests are continuing because apparently if you don’t support CAA you are immune to Coronavirus. People are absconding from home to roam the city and attend functions while they are supposed to be in quarantine. 4 morons took a train from Mumbai after being told to isolate and were only caught because they were stamped with a quarantine order and someone on the train noticed it and called the cops. Apparently we have a lot of alcoholics in the country because people are still going to Bars at night because it’s too much of a bother to stay home. This behavior is mostly in the educated class and the so called intellectuals. My maid and driver are talking about self-isolation and how they are working to ensure the spread is contained. Our building guards are enforcing hand-wash discipline for all visitors but we the educated class can’t be bothered because its too much effort. The virus doesn’t care about how much money you have and what position you are at. Do you know who I am? will not work on the virus. Washing your hands and self-isolation will.
All the morons who are going out when known COVID-19 positive or asked to self isolate should be charged with murder if any death that can be traced back to them *knowingly* being out in public after being told not to. If no death then they should be jailed for public endangerment. There is a EU country that is charging such folks with murder and I think we should do the same.
Please listen to medical professionals, reputed sources (this doesn’t include your whatsapp forwards from your 2nd cousin’s friend who heard it from his friend). Follow basic common sense rules and you will be ok.
Well this is all for now. Will write more later. Stay safe you all, and above all stay at home.
– Suramya
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