All about Android Marshmallow

A neat overview of all the features in Android Marshmallow, by ArsTechnica.

Humans: Days of Future Past

Won't it be interesting, if we traveled to the past and see how humans predicted their future? Here is how the year 2000 would look like - as predicted in 1900.

What you do before bed, determines your productivity of the next day

Its not just your early morning habits determine the productivity of the day, but what you do before bed determines too. And no price for guessing that "browsing FB and Twitter timelines" is not one of them :-)


A nice one by Michael Hyatt.

Women dupe men to send money, but probably that is good for the country!

Three women duped many men to send money to them by creating fake Social Media profiles. Police found that out, but because of public outage, they are planning to drop the charges. Why? because the men are ISIS guys! An interesting read.

Discovering two Space Shuttles in an abandoned hanger

A photographer found an abandoned hangar and breaks into it only to see two Space Shuttles!

The Camera Behind the New Pluto Photos

What is the work required to send a camera to few billions miles away and take a picture in absolute darkness, so that you can get the pictures of that tiny planet in few hours?

By Atlantic.

How an Indian eCommerce ran out of cash

IndiaPlaza.com started eCommerce in India in 1999. It survived even the dot com bubble. But it couldn't stay float. Here is a detailed story.

Inside an Elephant Capture

Another amazing piece by Kalyan Varma for the Peepli

The days of world domniation by Skynet is near

Astonishing Time-Lapse Captures the Development of Baby Honeybees

The result is justs a minute long video, but imagine the weeks long effort would have gone into it

Hacking Starbucks for unlimited coffee

What an effort!
On the other hand, me too wanted unlimited coffee, but I simply switched from WFH to a regular IT office. Serves the purpose ;-)

Firefox’s optional Tracking Protection reduces load time for top news sites by 44%

Monica @ Mozilla explains that if we opt in for Tracking Protection in FireFox, many of the sites load lot faster. Documentation for opting in: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-firefox

40 Key Computer Science Concepts Explained In Layman’s Terms

Nice explanations of Computer Science Concepts. Eg: "For online shopping, the number of purchased item (input) doesn’t affect the delivery time. The output is constant. We call this O(1).
For online downloading, the download time is directly proportional to the movie file sizes (input). We call this O(n)."

Building beastly machines for 'Mad Max: Fury Road'

George Miller comes back with his classic Mad Max series, revived to the current movie standards. Here is how they built those "cars" and "trucks"

Next level of Selfie

What do you get when you put a camera on a drone that flies along with a tracker? A Lily Camera. An excellent way to take selfies while you are on the move.

Test driving a Petrol Car

When you are from future and look back whats happening now, this is how it looks like:

"We were surprised to hear the brakes are completely mechanical"

"... that it is not possible to refuel gasoline cars at home, and there are no free gas stations"

Living in office for 500 days

I can't spend more than 10 hours at office. But not everyone feels the same. Here is a guy who lived in office for 500 days!

The best part, in the performance appraisal, his manager said: “Good? It’s been great. I don’t have a single criticism. You seem happier lately, too.” When was the last time your manager said something like that to you? May be its time for you to stay back at office :-)

The selfies from the space

Just the same old selfies, but at a "higher" level. Of course, the images are by NASA. The latest one being taken by Mars Rover.

How to make money when you are drunk?

How to make money when you are drunk? Simple, start testing websites! This will be a good test for a UX designer's skills and to me, it seems to be a brilliant idea.

If Programming Languages were Harry Potter Characters

An interesting piece.

Spoiler alert. "C" is the one who shall not be named and "Python" is the hero.

When the fines are not just based on the crime, but also on your income?

Elsewhere, the fines are only based on the crime, but not in the Scandinavian countries. The income you make and your daily expense, are also key factors in deciding on the fine. So if you are a millionaire, then a speeding ticket might cost you as much as $100k!

Great, this means for me, the fines will be lot cheaper :-)

The days of Skynet are not far ...

“Kitty couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. Her nerves were strained as two tight strings, and even a glass of hot wine, that Vronsky made her drink, did not help her. Lying in bed she kept going over and over that monstrous scene at the meadow.”

The above lines are from a Russian Novel written by an algorithm.

Take this quiz and see whether you can detect the text is written by a human/computer. While computers are getting smarter everyday, as someone said, humans still can't figure out how to play video in their Linux system.

Why is Indian food delicious?

The IIT guys have figured out why Indian food is tasty. In short it is all about overlapping of flavors of the ingredients. More details are available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/03/a-scientific-explanation-of-what-makes-indian-food-so-delicious/?hpid=z4

Earth has a second moon

Interesting! all these years they told that moon is the only natural satellite to our planet. But now it seems another satellite. It orbits sun once a year, but it revolves earth once in 800 years. Although its small, just 5 kms length, if it hits earth, it will be end of all life forms.

Discover Magazine: The Second Moon

Let there be light

An Italian company called Coelux has created a natural light that very much resembles sun light. And the applications in interior design are endless.

Switching to a Standing Desk

They say "every minute you spend sitting shaves several years off your life". If its true then I would be dead in the few years ago ;-)

Still a good read: I Switched to a Standing Desk

Why rob people, when you can rob ATMs

Seems to be lucrative job. The robbers have stolen 73 ATMs, and each time, they have stole cash in the range of 1,300 to $12,000. They were brave enough to grab to attach an ATM near police station or even in the broad day light. And no one is caught yet.

The greatest hack in the history

Remember Stuxnet? The highly sophisticated hack that took down Iran's nuclear program? We were thinking that it was a technically advanced program. Now Kaspersky reveals that "Equation Group"created a malware and giving out "bread crumbs" to other teams like Stuxnet. Scary!

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/

Power Split Drive of Toyoto Priyus

An wonderful explanation of PSD in Toyotos: http://eahart.com/prius/psd/

Cars Jony Ive

The not-so-small list of cars owned by Jony Ive. Note: "Ironically, the car crash alerted Apple to how important Jony is to the company and they gave him a big pay raise".

Thought for the day: If you crash your car, will your company give you a raise?

The Enchanted Island of Centenarians

Moraitis was diagnosed with Lung Cancer. The doctors gave him nine months to live. He had to choose between his current house in Boyton Beach in Florida or to his ancestral property in Ikaria, a Greek Island. He choose to die in his ancestral place. He didn't go thru any therapy, yet the normal way of living in the island, made him stronger.

25 years later, the cancer seems to have gone without any medication. He has outlived the nine months that the doctors gave him. He went to America to see the doctors to get an explanation. All of his doctors were dead!

A very long interesting read from NY Times. Summary: drink herbal tea, drink wine, sleep well, eat vegetables that you grow in your garden, socialize.

Why is the Dollar sign has the letter 'S'

Why is the Dollar sign has the letter 'S'? That is an interesting question, isn't it? Here is the answer.

Bonus link: A tale of two zippers

100 years of National Geographic maps

Kids these days grow up with Google Maps or Apple/Bing Maps. 100 years ago, maps were completely different. Here is an evolution of the maps by National Geographic.

How two data analysts beat all the HedgeFunds with 1,819% in the returns

In an interesting story, two data analysts from a Credit Card company did an extensive research and bought simple Call/Put options and came out with 1,819% of returns in just three years (yes, there is no dot missing in %, its a four digit number!) So sad, that SEC decided that the guys "research" is insider trading.

Facebook Lite for low-powered and 2G data users

Are you still one of those guys who prefer the Facebook in your mobile browser than the app? The app is bloated and very heavy on data usage. Luckily for us, Facebook has released a Lite version of its mobile app. Check the Play Store for more details.

Do you love your car sound? Its probably fake ...

If you decide on the performance of your car with the revving sound of its engine, then you are wrong. Most American cars can run quieter than their "normal" sound that you love, but the car makers decided to boost the sound to trick you.Some even boost the sound using speakers!

Read more from Washington Post

Unclassified UFO files now online

Project BlueBook now has probably the largest online collection of unclassified details about UFO sightings

What do Google engineers do in their 20% off the time?

Google engineers embed a game in the Chrome browser, so that you are not bored when you are not connected to internet. Available in both Android and Desktop versions, just tap/hit space bar to play this game. via Labnol

One of the best product comparison sites I've seen

It still compares the items based on the specs, price etc. But the UI simply blows off. Check Product Chart.

5200 days in space

A long detailed story of living in space.

A real world Ocean's Eleven story - a diamond heist worth of $100 million

The vault had every security feature you can imagine: combination dial, seismic sensor, magnetic sensor, security camera, etc. But they still managed to steal $100 million worth of diamonds. A very long and interesting read about how its was done and how they got caught

The evolution of writing

Well, all of the desk items have been digitized.

Its a building, no its a town

A town will have a church, a school, a hospital, a police station, etc. But there is a town where everything is hosted in a single building. In fact the entire town is in the same building!

Dozen things learnt from Steve Jobs

Lets start off the new year with a nice compilation of the items learnt from Steve Jobs.

"The difference between the best worker on computer hardware and the average may be 2 to 1, if you’re lucky. With automobiles, maybe 2 to 1. But in software, it’s at least 25 to 1. The difference between the average programmer and a great one is at least that. The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world. And when you’re in a field where the dynamic range is 25 to 1, boy, does it pay off."