Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

August 15, 2022

Wishing everyone a Happy 75th Independence Day!

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 8:37 PM

Today marks the 75th anniversary since India freed itself from the British rule. Things have not been perfect (and they can never be) but we have achieved so much in the past 75 years that it is awe inspiring. Looking at my memories over the past 40+ years below are some of the things that have improved/changed in that time:

  • It used to take ~2-3 years to get a new car (maruti 800) in the early 80’s, now you can get one within a couple of days if they have it in stock and they have hundreds of brands/models to choose from
  • Up until 1975, only seven Indian cities had television services with a single TV channel. Now every city in India has TV and as of 2021, over 900 permitted television channels
  • The first mobile phone call was made in 1995 and cost over 8 rs a min, now we have the cheapest calls in the world
  • We have gone from people having to move to US for good Tech jobs to a thriving Tech industry where we are ranked 19th in the world’s startup ecosystems globally
  • The inter-city and inter-state highways are getting better and better all the time. In my last road trip, I was consistently over 120-140 and in fact had to remind myself not to cross 160. (Yes there is a lot of scope for improvement)
  • ISRO has gone from a local joke to a powerhouse that is launching the majority of the world’s satellites into orbit. We also had the world record for max satellites launched in one launch (104) that was broken earlier this year (143). Efforts are underway to take back the title

The list can go on and on. There is a lot of effort put in by folks to make India a success and there is a lot more effort needed to ensure that we keep improving. The mindset of ‘but this is India, nothing can be done’ needs to be changed/eradicated from the thought process.

The top people in India are living a life of luxury that was not feasible/imaginable 75 years ago and we need to ensure that the bottom percentage of our population is uplifted as well. This requires effort not just from the government but from us as a people as well. We need to work with the government and each other to help and uplift people. I see a lot of efforts around us to achieve this, folks in Diamond District (where I stay) are sponsoring the education for multiple kids, other are working with NGO’s to teach them basic skills. Some of my friends volunteer in various organizations to help the poor, and not just by giving them money but helping them learn skills so that they can uplift themselves.

We need to improve the Tourism Industry in India and make people aware that India has more than Delhi, Agra and Jaipur to offer for tourists. We have temples, archeological sites, palaces and other locations etc going back thousands of years. In my travels across India I have seen some of the most beautiful sights that take your breath away but not many know about them so hardly anyone visits. We have to advertise these sites/locations more. We need to make it easier for tourists to come to India and safely see the sights. I love the new ASI mandated tour guides for the major historical places in India, they are cheap and highly knowledgeable plus they are registered and have identification. You should hire them when visiting any of the sites as they give a wholesome overview of the location and any notable highlights. There are so many things that you miss when just walking around on your own that it is worth it to hire these folks. They speak multiple languages including international languages.

We need to clamp down on the corruption and improve the infrastructure more. This includes reducing the bureaucracy and eliminating the Babu rule, where the government officials think it’s their right to demand money to do their job (which they are getting paid for).

Things are improving and have improved a lot but we have a long way to go. As Robert Frost put it ” The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep”. The following poem by हिमांशु (Himanshu) captures the sentiment quite beautifully as well:

जाना है अभी तो बहुत दूर,
सूरज चढ़ा क्षितिज पर,
चारों ओर रेत का ढेर,
तपन घोर, तपस घनघोर,
मृगतृष्णा पसरी चहुंओर,

चलते चलो, बढ़ते चलो,
कहानियां बुनते चलो,
खुद से खेलते चलो,
चलते चलो, चलते चलो।

लंबे बहुत हैं रास्ते,
आयेंगे बहुत से दो-रास्ते,
सही चुनना, नहीं गिनना,
आकाश को ही देखना,
अवकाश को हर भूलना,

गिर गए तो उठते चलो,
मौका पड़े तो उड़ते चलो,
चलते चलो, चलते चलो।

मत ढूंढना बरगद,
ना चाहना लंबा खजूर,

छांव दृश्य नहीं,
साथ सिर्फ छाया है,
सिकुड़ती, जलती, ढलती,
काया ही, अब सरमाया है,
जो देखा, जिया, आजमाया,
वही सच है, अशेष है,
बाकी सब माया है,

बस, बरबस,
अतृप्त, असंतृप्त,
अविदित, अविरल,
चलते चलो,
हर मील का
हर मील पर,
जश्न मनाते चलो,

शाम अभी दूर है,
चांद कुछ और दूर है,
चलते चलो, चलते चलो।।

~~~
~इति
~~~

हिमांशु “चहुंओर”

I was planning to post poems in other Indian languages as well but couldn’t decide on one as I can’t do justice to them (as I can’t read them). Planning on asking Jani for help to get some good collections to share here. Will update the post once I find a good one.

Map of India outlined by trees with an Indian flag in the center
जय हिन्द! জয় হিন্দ ജയ്_ഹിന്ദ് જય_હિંદ ಜೈ_ಹಿಂದ್ ਜੈ ਹਿੰਦ జై హింద్ ஜெய்_ஹிந்த்

Will post more later.

– Suramya

August 8, 2022

Using Behavioral Biometrics for User Authentication as added security measures – Advantages and Disadvantages

Filed under: Article Releases,Computer Security,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

In this paper we explore how users can be uniquely identified using biometrics other than fingerprints, facial recognition, iris recognition etc on a continuous basis. We explore the use to techniques such as typing style, computer use style to see if we can create a model to uniquely identify a user based on the way they type and use the computer. As this method allows a system to constantly reauthenticate a user based on characteristics that are almost impossible to fake we look at the complexity of how this can be integrated as a security measure for secure systems. We also look at the pros and cons of implementing this authentication mechanism and explore potential problems this system generates for the user and administrators. Specifically, we look at how the system would deal with users who are sick, under medication or stress that could change their usage patterns and is it worth the expense and privacy issues to implement such a system.

Introduction and background

User authentication is the process of verifying the identify of a user or process trying to access a system, online service, connected device, infrastructure resources etc. Traditionally authentication is done by having the user provide one or more of the following:

  • Something they know
  • Something they have
  • Something they are

Let’s look at each of these one by one. The oldest way of authentication to computer systems is using usernames and passwords. The first password protection system was implemented in 1961 by Fernando J. Corbató at MIT (Workos, 2020). This allowed the system to identify users based on a secret password that only they knew. The first set of passwords were stored in plain text, but then password encryption was implemented so that users could not read the passwords for other users.

However, passwords can be leaked or guessed. In the past few years there have been major leaks of authentication data which have been decrypted and sophisticated password crackers have been created that can crack passwords based on dictionary attacks and brute force attacks. To safeguard against this attack vector another authentication mechanism was created that authenticates users based on something they have with them. This can include hardware keys, smartcards etc and these hardware devices would contain an embedded certificate that can be used to uniquely identify the holder.

The final method of authentication is something you are, which is provided by Biometric authentication. Some of the biometric methods that can be used are fingerprints, hand geometry, retinal or iris scans, face scans, and voice analysis. Fingerprints, Face Scans and iris scans are the most widely used biometric method in use today.

Multifactor Authentication
When a system uses a combination of one or more of the authentication methods described in the previous section the system is said to be using Multi-factor Authentication (MFA). The key point to remember is that a system is only considered to be using MFA if the authentication factors are in at least two of the categories. So if the authentication mechanism uses a password and a second pin to authenticate, it won’t count as MFA because both are things that you know.

Weaknesses in the current User Authentication methods

The current user authentication methods have several weaknesses that make it easy for attackers to compromise and bypass the checks. Complex passwords are harder to crack or guess than simple passwords, but they are harder for users to remember. So, users tend to use the same passwords across multiple sites or use passwords that are simple to remember. Unfortunately, passwords that are simple to remember are also easy to guess.
Another risk is that an attacker can compromise a site or server using vulnerabilities in the OS, services or applications running on it. Once they have access, they can gain access to the stored passwords for all users and depending on the encryption scheme used the passwords for user accounts can be guessed quickly. This is an attack vector that has been seen frequently over the past few years with password lists for major sites such as LinkedIn (Morris, 2021) and Yahoo (Goel & Perlroth, 2016) etc being compromised and leaked.

Hardware tokens or smart cards can be cloned, copied or stolen. If the card is not deactivated when it is lost or stolen an attacker can use it to gain access to restricted resources. Tools to create copies of smartcards are available easily in the market (Benchoff, 2016) using which an attacker can clone the cards quickly.

Biometrics was touted as an authentication mechanism that is almost impossible to bypass but unfortunately the hype didn’t match reality. Fingerprint authentication systems have been compromised using copies of fingerprints lifted from glasses, door knobs etc transferred to jello, Glycerin and gelatin. (Barral & Tria, 2009)

Facial recognition systems have been fooled by photographs and cosmetics. Researchers have also used the StyleGAN Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to create master faces that can be used to impersonate 40% of the population. (Shmelkin et al., 2021)

Voice authentication systems have been bypassed using voice recordings and AI based ‘deep fake’ technologies. Amazon recently showcased technology that allows Alexa to impersonate the voices of people based on a few minutes long voice recording of the person being impersonated.

Similar bypasses have been found for all authentication mechanisms in use currently and thus researchers have been exploring new authentication mechanisms which would be harder to bypass and fool. One such field being explored in behavioral biometrics and we will explore the field, it’s implications, the pros and cons of the tech in this paper.

Introduction to Behavioral Biometrics

Behavioral biometrics is the study and use of uniquely identifying and measurable patterns in human activities that can include keystroke dynamics, gait analysis, mouse use characteristics, signature analysis etc. The field postulates that a user can be identified based on these characteristics just as uniquely as they can be using physical biometrics.

Another advantage of using Behavioral Biometrics over physical biometrics is that it doesn’t require specialized equipment to collect the data. Data can be collected using existing hardware and only requires software analysis and processing which makes it cheaper to implement to a certain extent and we will look at this in more detail later in the paper.

Behavioral Biometrics can include the following:

Keystroke Dynamics:

According to the studies, if a group of users is asked to type the paragraph of text, each of them will type the text slightly differently with different delays between each character being typed, and different rhythms for the text. This allows a system to identify the user based on how they type including criteria such as:

  • The user’s typing speed
  • Time elapsed between each consecutive keystroke
  • The time that each key is held down
  • The frequency with which the number pad keys are used
  • The timing and sequence of the keys used to type a capital letter
  • The Error Rate in typing, such as using the Backspace keys and words repeatedly mistyped by the user.

As each person would type the password slightly differently the system can use it to identify the authorized user and block attackers who might have gained the password for a given user.

Cursor Movement:

This uses the tracking speed, clicks and path taken by the mouse cursor movement during use to create a profile for the active user. This would be useful if the user uses the same set of applications frequently, if they are using a varied set of applications that keep changing then this would not be accurate.

Finger pressure on keypad:

This analyses the pressure on the keyboard to create a user profile. This is a lot more relevant for mobile devices and other devices with a touchscreen interface as the allow us to capture pressure details easily without extra hardware.

Posture:
Every person has a different way of standing and a sufficiently trained system can look for differences in how the person sits in front of the computer and their posture while using the system.

Gait:

Gait analysis attempts to identify a person based on their walking style, which includes movements such as stride length, posture, and speed of travel etc.

Each of the methods we listed above can potentially be used to continuously re-validate a logged in user.

Historical use of Behavioral Biometrics for authentication

Historically, behavioral biometrics have been in use since the 1860s when experienced telegraph operators were able to identify individual operators by the way they would send the signals. In World war II allied officers used it to validate the authenticity of messages they received based on how they were sent. (Das, 2020) Similarly, other organizations used this ability as well as an extra validation layer when communicating instructions over telegraph.

The Military has also used gait recognition to identify imposters in their base who are trying to impersonate authorized personnel to gain access to sensitive information.

Current state & the Future for Behavioral Biometrics

The behavioral biometrics market revenue totaled ~US$ 1.1 Bn in 2020, according to Future Market Insights (FMI). The overall market is expected to reach ~US$ 11.2 Bn by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 23.6% for 2021 – 31. (Future Market Insights, 2021)

As we can see, an increasing number of institutes, financial companies, website owners are using behavioral biometrics in their systems to detect fraudulent usage. The Royal Bank of Scotland uses it to monitor visitors to their websites and apps, others use it in their applications to monitor and authenticate users as an extra verification layer. (PYMNTS.com, 2018)

With the increase in processing capacity, sensor sensitivity and processing algorithms systems can make more accurate identifications of individual users. This allows systems to detect bots, password sharing/compromise.

Ecommerce sites have increasingly started incorporating this technology into their setup to prevent fraud. It can also potentially allow systems to make an educated judgment about the visitor’s gender and age to show appropriate products.

Considering the advantages and minimal hardware investment we will only see an increase in the use of Behavioral Biometrics for authentication in the future.

Advantages of using Behavioral Biometrics for authentication

Behavioral Biometrics have the following advantages that make them attractive for companies and institutes to implement:

  • Flexibility: The data being analyzed is not limited to currently identified sets that we have discussed so far. Since most of the processing being done is on the software side the organization can easily add additional behavioral data to be analyzed and processed.
  • Convenience: This a major plus point for the technology is that it is a passive layer of security. This allows it to work without interfering with the user workflows. This removes a major obstacle in incorporating security into the system as the traditional security setups decrease the usability of the system.
  • Efficiency: They can be applied in real-time to detect fraudulent use and the system can be run against historic data as well to detect improper use after fact.
  • Security: Behavioral characteristics are hard to replicate and thus incorporating this additional layer of security improves the security of the system.

Disadvantages of using Behavioral Biometrics for authentication

As with all systems there are some disadvantages of using a Behavioral Biometric system for authentication as well. If we are using the Keystroke analysis then the text being entered has to be long enough for the system to generate a profile and match it so if we are only using it as an additional validation step during password entry and the user’s password is too short, then the system might not be able to create and match a profile.

Another problem is that a user’s behavior can change drastically due to various valid reasons and that can cause access issues when the algorithm is unable to account for the changes. Some of the reasons can include:

  • Illness or Injury: If a person is injured or unwell then their usage patternswill change
  • Stress
  • Pregnancy
  • Sleep deficiency
  • Caffeine deficiency or overindulgence
  • Tiredness: If a user logs back in after a session in the gym their usage patterns are going to differ from the pattern before their gym session
  • Time of day: Some people are more active during certain times of day so their usage patterns will vary based on the time of the day.
  • Distractions: If the user is distracted while working , or example, if they are on a call and working at the same time. Their behavior patterns will be different.
  • Location: If the person logs in from a different location and are working with a different setup their metrics are going to be different. For example the profile when using an egronomic keyboard in office vs using a laptop keyboard while working remotely will be drasticly different and the system will have a hard time creating a consolidated profile for such users.

Another major issue with this technology is the Privacy implications. If we are implementing a system that monitors every keystroke and mouse movement and logs it for analysis then that has a serious privacy implication as sensitive data that shouldn’t be logged such as medical information, personal account passwords, other sensitive information etc can get logged as well. Once the data is logged there is a possibility of data leaks or a breach of the security system which would expose the collected information to an attacker.

Depending on the user’s location collection of this kind of data can be illegal due to rules such as the GDPR (Krausová, 2018), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and other such rules. They will also limit the information that can be transmitted across state & country boundaries which can be a concern for multinational companies.

Finally incorporating the processing required for behavior analysis on the local system can be resource intensive which might make the setup infeasible for older machines. If the processing of the data is consolidated at a central location then the usage data would need to be transmitted to the location over the network that can potentially max out the bandwidth and depending on network congestion cause unacceptable delays in the processing and access.

Results and Recommendations

Based on our review of the current state of Behavioral Biometrics in the industry and the technological state of the system/algorithms we find that the technology does help increase the security of the system by adding an additional layer of security to the system. However, it is not yet mature enough to deploy for general commercial implementation and should only be used for securing highly sensitive systems and infrastructure where the security considerations outweigh the limitations identified earlier in the paper.
Once the technology is more mature and the issues identified earlier have been mitigated it can slowly be incorporated in the general computing world as an optional additional layer of security. At no point should this be used as the only layer of security for any system.

Conclusion

Behavioral Biometrics as a security measure is a technology still in its early stages of use and implementation and while it does add an additional layer of security the current limitations do not justify a general release and implementation in general use computing. The system should only be implemented in systems such as classified military systems, critical corporate servers containing highly sensitive information etc where the benefits or security concerns outweigh the disadvantages of using a technology that still needs to mature more.
 
References

Alzubaidi, A., & Kalita, J. (2016). Authentication of smartphone users using behavioral biometrics. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 18(3), 1998–2026. https://doi.org/10.1109/comst.2016.2537748

Araujo, L. C. F., Sucupira, L. H. R., Lizarraga, M. G., Ling, L. L., & Yabu-Uti, J. B. T. (2005). User authentication through typing biometrics features. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 53(2), 851–855. https://doi.org/10.1109/tsp.2004.839903

Banerjee, S. P., & Woodard, D. (2012). Biometric authentication and identification using Keystroke Dynamics: A survey. Journal of Pattern Recognition Research, 7(1), 116–139. https://doi.org/10.13176/11.427

Barral, C., & Tria, A. (2009). Fake fingers in fingerprint recognition: Glycerin supersedes gelatin. Formal to Practical Security, 57–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02002-5_4

Benchoff, B. (2016, January 18). Emulating and cloning smart cards. Hackaday. Retrieved June 27, 2022, from https://hackaday.com/2016/01/18/emulating-and-cloning-smart-cards/

Bo, C., Zhang, L., Li, X.-Y., Huang, Q., & Wang, Y. (2013). Silentsense. Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing & Networking – MobiCom ’13. https://doi.org/10.1145/2500423.2504572

Das, R. (2020, October 14). A behavioral biometric – keystroke recognition. A Behavioral Biometric – Keystroke Recognition. https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/topic/a-behavioral-biometric-keystroke-recognition/
Future Market Insights. (2021, October). Behavioral biometrics market. Future Market Insights. https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/behavioral-biometrics-market

Goel, V., & Perlroth, N. (2016, December 14). Yahoo says 1 billion user accounts were hacked. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/technology/yahoo-hack.html

Krausová, A. (2018). Online behavior recognition: Can we consider it biometric data under GDPR? Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology, 12(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.5817/mujlt2018-2-3

Morris, C. (2021, June 30). LinkedIn data theft exposes personal information of 700 million people. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2021/06/30/linkedin-data-theft-700-million-users-personal-information-cybersecurity/

PYMNTS.com. (2018, August 15). What’s behind the rise of behavioral biometrics? PYMNTS.com. Retrieved June 27, 2022, from https://www.pymnts.com/fraud-prevention/2018/behavioral-biometrics-uk-banks-authentication-security-privacy/

Shmelkin, R., Friedlander, T., & Wolf, L. (2021). Generating master faces for dictionary attacks with a network-assisted Latent Space evolution. 2021 16th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2021). https://doi.org/10.1109/fg52635.2021.9666968

Workos. (2020, September 5). A developer’s history of authentication – WorkOS. A Developer’s History of Authentication. https://workos.com/blog/a-developers-history-of-authentication

Note: This was originally written as a paper for one of my classes at EC-Council University in Q2 2022.

– Suramya

August 7, 2022

Winamp is back in action (!) after 9 years of no releases

Filed under: Computer Software,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

Anyone who was using computers in the late 90’s and 2000’s knows that the best MP3 player of all time was Winamp, it really whips the llama’s ass. First released back in 1997, it spread like wildfire. I used it as my primary music player till I switched to Linux and even then I used a player that was skinned to look and work like Winamp.

Development for the player was paused back in 2013 and then resumed in 2018. It took 4 years of hard work and the Winamp 5.9 Release Candidate 1 is now available for download. Most of the changes in this version as in the backend as the code was migrated from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2019. This modernizes the whole setup and the next release will focus on new features.

The only downside of this is that it is not available for Linux so I still have to use some other software rather than the original. I wonder if it would work over Wine/Crossover? If so then that would be awesome. Let me go try that out and see if that works (I will update this post if it actually works).

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

Update (8/8/2022): It Works on Linux! I downloaded and installed the latest RC on Linux using Crossover and it works flawlessly. (Although the preset names are in Chinese for some reason)

– Suramya

August 4, 2022

Microsoft needs to fix their Windows registration/Activation system as it doesn’t work

Filed under: My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

A lot of people claim that Windows is easier to use than Linux and I think that is because they never had to install windows on their system as it is almost always preinstalled. Based on my experience it feels like Microsoft is almost trying to make sure that people pirate their software because their systems suck, especially their license activation process. Over the past few months I have spent almost 48+ hours trying to get my installation of Windows to accept my Windows Pro license key that is part of my MS account and yesterday I spent 6.3 hours on call with their support with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Some background, I purchased a license for Windows 10 Pro back in 2020 so that I have a fully functional windows system that I can use for my Testing and research. This was the second license key that I purchased for Windows 10 because the previous one I had that I got from Amazon was locked to my old computer and as per the support there was no way to migrate to a new system as it was not purchased from MS directly (Which is very strange and doesn’t make sense at all). So, they told me that I needed to get the license from their online store so that it would be associated with my MS account and that way it could be moved to a new computer without issues. (Yeah right!)

I got the license, used it on my old system for a bit and then switched to a new laptop. I unregistered the key from the old laptop and tried registering it on the new laptop. It absolutely refused to work. Even though it was connected to my MS Account and the license was being validated using the digital license it was still working as a Windows Home Single user.

Spoke to the support and while they were super nice they couldn’t solve the issue. We tried reinstalling, upgrading, other license keys but nothing worked. Got escalated to senior folks but same issue. I had just about given up and was actually considering just downloading a pirated copy as that would be easier to install when I thought I should give it one last try. So I reinstalled Windows again and then didn’t connect it to my online account, instead I tried changing the product key using the key given to me by the support team to upgrade and that finally worked. My copy of Windows finally was upgraded to Windows Pro. After that the system upgraded to the latest version that took forever and a ton of reboots.

The same issue is there in their other software, MS Teams refuses to open when you click on a meeting link in Firefox on your mobile, but when I copy the same like to Chrome it works. Why do I have to use Chrome when all it is doing is launching a native application when I click on the link. Other applications like Zoom, GotoMeeting etc manage to do this without issues, but MS with their super smart team of people have hard coded it to work only with Chrome/Edge. LinkedIn is another major mess and I will post about it in a different post as that is a long story as well.

You need to make it easy for users to install/register licensed software else if using pirated software is easier/faster then people will just use that. I mostly use open source products along with a few Linux licensed software but they are so much easier to use/register.

In any case I now have a licensed version of Windows Pro running after wasting days of my life trying to get it to work. Ask any end use to do registration and then they will feel differently about how easy Windows is to use.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

June 24, 2022

I don’t have words…

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:44 PM

What can I even post? Half my friends in the US were just told that they don’t matter enough to have control over their own bodies. They can no longer decide if and when to have kids. Just because a minority of extremists think it is their right to impose their beliefs on others. Isn’t that what we have been criticizing the Taliban about the last few decades? How is this different?

I wish I could do more but… Just know that I will be there will you all every step of the way. You matter. You have the right and authority to decide what happens to your body and decide if you want to have a child or not.

Update (25th June 2022): I know that not a lot of people will be able to take advantage of it, but if you can and want to then we will be more than happy to host you in India where abortions are legal since 1970’s and permitted up to 24 weeks (6 months) of pregnancy as of 2017 (before that it was up to 20 weeks). We stay near multiple large hospitals and will be more than happy to help you get visa’s, coordinate your visits and have you stay with us for the duration. You can email me at suramya -at- suramya -dot-com.
– Suramya

June 23, 2022

Being interested in getting paid well doesn’t mean that you don’t have a genuine interest in Tech

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 10:33 PM

There is this group of people who constantly portray that you don’t have a ‘genuine’ interest in tech (or other fields) if you are interested in being paid well, which for the record is a bad take. The latest example of this is the following tweet which showed up in my feed recently though the original is from back in 2021.

Did you choose tech because it pays well, or because you have a genuine interest?

People want to pretend that getting paid for your work is not something you should do. Sorry my dear, that is not how things work. You can be passionate about tech and still get paid well for it. I am someone who is a hardcore techie, I love technology and creating new things on computers. This doesn’t mean that I don’t want to get paid. As Jani put it, you can’t take your cool program (or your title) to the grocery store and use that to pick up groceries, you still need to pay for things. This means that we need to be paid for the work we are doing. This popular image of starving artists is just that an image. When you are starving you don’t code better or write better poetry or paint better pictures, it is actually the opposite. What it does mean is that while the creators are worried about food or making sure they have a roof over their head the companies are exploiting them by using their programs to make billions.

I am not saying that every developer should be paid millions but they should be paid a living wage and not have to worry about basic necessities of life. (I am using tech as an example, but the same applies across every field.

Also, so what if someone is here for the money? Are you willing to work for free? No, right? So what gives you the moral standing / authority to look down on people who want to be paid for their work? Please get off your high horse. I personally believe that if my job pays me to do something that I love doing then it is a win-win. Being miserable in life is not a good thing. I don’t think I have ever had the Monday blues or hated going in to office. Sure there have been days where I didn’t want to go in to work because I didn’t feel like it but not that I hated my life and job. This normalization of the statement that people should hate their jobs is not something that is healthy.

What do you think?

– Suramya

June 6, 2022

Diablo: Immortal – Its unplayable as it insists on showing every single player online on my screen in real time

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 9:29 AM

I posted about the new Diablo game earlier this week and how much I loved it, 3 days later I need to change my opinion. Lets start off with the good points first, the gameplay is fantastic and the controls are pretty smooth and intuitive. The skills, monsters etc are also pretty interesting and not too boring. The main issue I have with the game is that it insists on showing all the other players in the game on my screen. Here I am happily killing monsters suddenly a bunch of random strangers are all over my screen attacking the same monsters. I have never seen that in any of the MMORG games.

There are online collaborative play options to the other games but when I play in single player mode, it is just me and the monsters so that I can explore and play on my own. Diablo: Immortal doesn’t let you do that. It insists on showing you every single player who happens to be on the same section of the game as you and at times the screen gets so crowded that I couldn’t even see the monsters. It would be bad on a full monitor but it is worse on a 7 inch phone screen. To top things off there seems to be no way to turn this off and that basically makes the game unplayable for me. 🙁

I am going to keep it on my phone for a bit just in case they decide to release a patch to fix this but I am not hopeful so lets see. It that doesn’t happen then I will uninstall and go back to reading books on my phone when I have some free time.

– Suramya

June 4, 2022

Are these good reasons to cancel a wedding or to get a divorce?

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 3:17 AM

Maybe it’s just me but in the past few weeks I have been getting these news snippets in my feed that show some of the reasons for which people have called off their wedding or gotten a divorce that are quite ridiculous.

Let me be clear that there are times when you can and should get out of a marriage but these are not it. For example there is this one case where the Bride refuses to marry the Groom because they didn’t arrange a photographer for the wedding


Bride refuses to marry without a Photographer

In another case, the bride refused to marry because the groom’s hand touched her neck during the exchange of garlands… I don’t even have words for this one, what did she think he was going to do after the wedding at the Honeymoon?

Apparently “When the garland was put around the bride’s neck, she suddenly threw it away and walked out of the wedding hall. She said that the groom’s hand had touched her neck. The groom’s side felt insulted by such behaviour and called the wedding off. ” I think the groom’s side took the correct decision here because with this kind of behavior who knows what she would have created a ruckus about after the marriage.


Upset that the groom had touched her neck the bride walks out of wedding

It’s not just the ladies, this guy decided to divorce his wife because she only knew how to cook Maggie and gave him Maggie for all three meals. Yes, it can get tiring to eat Maggie for all meals but they could have worked together to learn new dishes, get a cook or just order from outside. But the guy decided to file for divorce and it was granted…

Then we have this gem where the bride got angry at the Groom for dancing too long and getting drunk at the Baarat and decided to marry someone else.

Thankfully this wasn’t the case when our friends were getting married. The first friend’s wedding we attended we danced for so long and refused to let the groom go inside that the girl’s uncle came out and asked us to let the groom in because the muhurat (auspicious time) for the wedding was about to get over.

Weddings are supposed to be fun and games but some people take it to seriously and then you have problems like these… But, all this being said if you see red flags anytime before or after marriage and need to get out then you should do so. Please don’t fall for the Indian ‘solution’ for all problems in married life which is to have kids as that makes things worse and also makes it harder to separate later on if things don’t improve.

– Suramya

June 3, 2022

Diablo: Immortal Launched. Love the latest iteration of the franchise

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 6:18 PM

Diablo: Immortal released yesterday for the PC and Mobile simultaneously and almost immediately became #1 downloaded game in the Playstore. I have been a fan of Diablo since 2000/2001. Diablo II was the first game I bought and I have spend too many hours playing it. Then Diablo III came out and I bought it shortly after it launched and had to reinstall Windows on my laptop so that I could play it. Due to this Immortal was in my watch for queue (on twitter) and I downloaded it immediately after I saw the launch message.

Diablo: Immortal is set between Diablo II & III and from what I could tell in the little time that I played it the gameplay is almost similar to the original games. There are some new classes and changes to the spells & capabilities etc. Before getting the game I did wonder how the game would work on the phone with a fully touch interface but once I started playing it I found the controls to be pretty intuitive.

The game requires a lot of data in order to work so you need to ensure your device has plenty of free storage space available before you start playing. It has downloaded almost 2GB of data so far and a lot files more are queued in the system so that number is going to only go up.

Interestingly you can install it on your PC and phone both and seamlessly switch between the two. As long as you have connected your account to your Battle.net ID. I have been having some issues with that since the system keeps complaining that the two are in different regions but didn’t have the energy to troubleshoot. Since I can still play the game on the phone there is not much rush to fix this small issue.

Initial experience with the game is quite positive, hopefully it will stay that way. 🙂

– Suramya

June 2, 2022

On fandoms and why I have never been part of one

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 3:51 AM

Earlier today I realized that I have never been part of any fandom organizations, websites, mailing lists etc ever and this was a bit of a revelation because as those who know me can attest, I am quite passionate about a bunch of topics, comics, TV series, Books, Movies etc. So I spent some time trying to figure out why that was the case and it hit me that the reason I am not part of any of the fandom sites/mailing lists/organizations is that they are too passionate about this stuff, to the point that they make it a central part of their being.

Another problem is that they all assume that if you are part of one fandom then you would not be part of another, famous example being: Are you a Star Trek Fan or a Star Wars fan? I would get asked this question lots of times in college and I would get a very confused look back when I replied that I liked both of them. Most people do that, being a Star Trek fan (or a Star Wars fan) is not mutually exclusive and I don’t have to dislike one in order to enjoy the other. Being a fan of one series vs the other is not the core part of my identity. I have more interesting things to obsess about.

I do get annoyed when a TV series/movie/Comic I like makes changes to the core aspect of the story. For example, below is my take on Spiderman 3 and how they handled Uncle Ben’s Death:

The first major issue I have with the movie was how they made the Sandman responsible for Uncle Ben’s death. This is completely against how the comic’s and books look at that event. His death was a major point in Peter Parker’s life because he felt responsible for his death as he had let the crook that killed him get away because “It wasn’t his problem”. This guilt made him realize that “With great power comes great responsibility”. So when they made Sandman the killer they changed a basic fact of Spiderman history. I know. I know. Its just a movie, but still its jarring/annoying to those who follow the comics.

I saw the movie, disliked the changes, posted about it and then went on with my life. Compare this to the reaction of “Fan’s” who reacted badly to the recent changes in the Star Wars movie, or the Ghostbusters Reboot or Doctor Who casting/Story changes etc etc etc etc. For some people it seems to be a life or death decision that the story being shown is just as how they remember it as a child. I mean how sad is that? Yeah, I have a lot of childhood memories about watching cartoons or movies and they give me great joy, but there were other great parts about my childhood and if a story is changed a bit then it doesn’t really “ruin my childhood” because guess what; your childhood is over. You are an adult and if the only thing that gives you joy is watching the same stuff that you saw as a kid then let me introduce you to this fascinating thing called recordings, which will allow you to watch the same things again an again without any changes. 🙂 Stories change over the years and stuff that was acceptable a few years ago is not acceptable now due to change in the social/political climate. Or do you still think that we need to worry about Romans and Barbarians? It is good to read / watch stories that take you outside your comfort-zone, as they will teach you new things.

This is not to diss the people who love the stories, dress up as characters in the story or write fan-fic in the same world. I know for a majority of fans it is a way to celebrate the story and share their joy with others and I love that. I do on the other hand, have a problem with the people who act like jerks online, send death threats to actors in the stories, pedantically butt in all over the place trying to gate keep by insisting that you can’t be a ‘fan’ unless you can name the gobdly-goop of the blahdy-blah correctly while standing on one foot. There are so many cases where people are harassed in conventions and asked to constantly prove ‘their worth’ by reciting useless facts about something that has no connection to real life, especially by men trying to exclude women.

This obsession that people demand as a requirement for being a fan is not something I like, so I sub-consciously didn’t join any of these fandom’s. There are so many things to read and so many things to watch why would I want to keep re-reading/rewatching the same thing when there are some many new stories to consume? (That isn’t to say that I don’t love rewatching/rereading my favorites once in a while but still…)

A few weeks ago, Will Wheaton had a guest appearance in Star Trek: Picard. It was a surprising cameo and meant as a laugh/shout out to fans became another reason for ‘fans’ to be really abusive to Will. In Star Trek: Next Generation, his character was not much liked as it came across as a know-it-all annoying brat. However, that was the character in the show, it doesn’t reflect who the actor was/is and the actor playing a character doesn’t have the same personality as the character. I would think that this is common sense but it is not and the amount of verbal/written abuse Will has suffered through the years for his role is not right.

The fandom has now become so toxic that it is expected for actors & directors to receive vitriol, death threats if the ‘fans’ disagree with the casting or the story choices. The most recent example is the casting of Moses Ingram in Obi-Wan Kenobi which has aired just 2 episodes so far but the hate has gotten to the point that ‘Star Wars’ actor Ewan McGregor had to record a message defending his co-star Moses Ingram from racist trolls. The same nonsense is happening over at the Dr Who fandom, Marvel Fandom etc etc. It is like if anyone not white and not male is given any meaningful role in the industry the white fans loose their minds and go nuts. Guess what, the same series that you think have now become woke, have always been that way and even if they didn’t, there is more to the world than the ‘White Man as savior’ stories. Most of the world gets along fine without the white man interfering.

The writers of a show/book/whatever don’t owe you anything. No one can create something that will be a universal hit, someone will always dislike even the most popular things. If you don’t like something, stop watching it. Anne Wheaton put it best while commenting on the discussion about the TV show:

https://twitter.com/AnneWheaton/status/1523702684682833922

It is fine that you like something, but it doesn’t mean that nothing different should be done with the story just because you like it. Or that things should only be done a particular way or have only show one aspect of society or one way of telling stories. Remember as the Vulcan belief states: “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” (The Vulcan belief that beauty, growth, progress — all result from the union of the unlike). I have been reading books by authors who are not traditional white, male authors from the western world and their stories are some of the best I have read in a while.

There is a whole world out there, don’t be so scared that you are unable to enjoy it.

– Suramya

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