The 2 hour, engineered marathon.

After being lost in international trade wars, and ongoing wars on borders, a different kind of news was trending this week. And that is a good thing. On October 12, a marathon runner from Kenya, Eliud Kipchoge, completed the marathon distance in under 2 hours.

At first, I didn't understand what the fuss was about. 2 hours seems like a lot of time to do some running. What is so big about finishing the distance; my being out of touch with most sports failed to inform me that it was considered impossible to complete a full marathon in that much time. Kipchoge achieved something impossible, he is the first person on the planet to have run a distance of more than 26 kms in under this 2 hour time limit. One hour and 59 minutes is fast in a way that’s difficult to comprehend. Despite the formidable distance, Kipchoge ripped through each mile of his run in about four and a half minutes.

Truly commendable. One for the record books.

Not quite. Mind blowing as it is, Kipchoge did not break the record for the fastest marathon completed. Because he did not run in a marathon. He ran in an marathon specially engineered for him. And the more you read about the actual race condition and its orchestration, the more it surprises.

Everything about this race was controlled, right down to the weather, and the pacing. This race was designed more to showcase how technology can (and has) help modern athletes achieve the impossible.

The planning that went into the event was a fantasy of perfectionism. The organizers scouted out a six-mile circuit along the Danube River in Vienna that was flat, straight, and close to sea level. Parts of the road were marked with the fastest possible route, and an electric car guided the runners by projecting its own disco-like laser in front of them to show the correct pace. The pacesetters, a murderers’ row of Olympians and other distance stars, ran seven-at-a-time in a wind-blocking formation devised by an expert of aerodynamics. There were 7 pacers at any point of time, and a total of 41 pacers ! Kipchoge himself came equipped with an updated, still-unreleased version of Nike’s controversial Vaporfly shoes, which, research appears to confirm, lower marathoners’ times. He had unfettered access to his favorite carbohydrate-rich drink, courtesy of a cyclist who rode alongside the group. The bottle was measured to ensure Kipchoge was under the right hydration. And the event’s start time was scheduled within an eight-day window to ensure the best possible weather. The whole thing was as close as you can get to a mobile marathon spa treatment.

But with great optimization comes great controversy. Looked at one way, the INEOS 1:59 Challenge is a straightforward testament to how money can buy anything, including a branded sub-two-hour marathon. And yet, and yet—the most compelling counterpoint to a cynical view of the performance is Eliud Kipchoge himself. Among a pack of mostly Kenyan runners who have recently pushed marathoning into a golden age, Kipchoge stands head and shoulders above the rest. He is the distance’s Michael Jordan, an era-defining and Kelly Clarkson–loving talent whose credentials—which include an Olympic gold medal and multiple big-city-marathon titles, on top of the official marathon world record—were secure.

After all the engineering, it still takes a human to do the impossible.

Calling it 95%

Trending news this weekend: the apparent failure of ISRO's moon lander. Surprising: almost every media outlet, and majority of mansplainers on social media are calling it a success. 99% success.

When the Vikram lander’s autonomous descent manoeuvre didn’t go as planned, scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) looked surprised and dejected at once in the mission control room in Bengaluru. There was the gentle, thoughtful reminder at the back of everyone’s minds, ready to prance at the first outward sign of sorrow, that the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter was still functional and whose scientific payload could still salvage the mission’s dignity.

Sending a spacecraft to another planet/moon, inserting it into orbit, and landing a rover…these are all  the extremities of research and engineering. To be able to just take off from the earth is feat in itself. Success should be celebrated, rightly so. But nationalism bubbling over means people are not able to call a spade a spade.

A private Israeli mission named Beresheet attempted and failed to soft-land on the Moon in April this year.The Americans and Russians have together tried around 20 soft-landings and succeeded 16 times. On the flip side, these two countries pioneered the technologies required to achieve this feat at an accelerated pace during the Cold War space race, so perhaps an adjustment must be made for the failure rate.

The lander failed, plain and simple. There will be ways to study the moon remotely, from an orbitter, but the lander was crucial to gather data from the physical surface.

And as we do in our field, go back to the drawing board. Learn what went wrong,  and try and fix it the next time.

Heartbeats on the moon

What wonderful times we live in. Around the world, media houses are covering the 50th anniversary of America's mankind's moon landing, and all sorts of wonderful articles are being published, detailing otherwise un-heard of stories and anecdotes of that historic week. One such article is regarding how mission control at Houston tracked and observed the hearbeats and life stats of the three men onboard. Fascinating read  !

Also, the journal of the entire mission is online, in public domain, for anyone to peruse and research forever. They are sometimes too technical, but are sprinkled with jokes and light ribbing between the crew and Mission Control, even in the midst of stressful moments.

Armstrong later said he wasn’t worried about the fuel. They were close enough then that if the engine cut off, the moon’s gentle gravity, one-sixth that of Earth’s, would let them coast safely down. But the descent must have been some adrenaline rush to push the lunar commander’s heart rate to 150. Armstrong’s pulse began to climb after he turned off the autopilot and took the controls in his gloved grip. The fate of the mission was, quite literally, in his hands. Tens of thousands of engineers had helped get him here, but this last bit was up to him. That kind of responsibility would quicken anyone’s pulse.

Open Live Writer: Google photos issue fixed

For the last one month, Open Live Writer has had issues posting posts with images to blogger. Posts with only texts are fine, but any images inserted would cause the post/upload step to fail with this error:

Expert users where quick to point out that the issue is not in the blogger API, but in the API used by OLW to upload images. You see, OLW uploads any post images into google photos in a separate album, then use the generated URL to embed the images in the HTML code of the post being uploaded. Sometime in December 2018, google silently changed something in their API , which caused all subsequent image uploads to fail from OLW.

Well thanks to the code being open source, developers patched the current version and have released a beta version with this issue fixed. The new version is now called 0.6.3

So I tried downloading and installing this new beta version, and it is fixed now !

Download the new beta version from here :

And running the installer updates the version. There is minor glitch though. OLW opens multiple windows of the new editor, for some odd reason.

But there is an easy fix. Go down to the folder where OLW is installed, and delete the update.exe file from there. Running Live Writer after that does not open up multiple instances.

Cheerio ! Go Open source !

What was before USB ?

 

 

I recently had to upgrade to USB Type C. Due to a new phone. Which got me thinking, we are already at type C ? I feel it was only yesterday that computer users started adopting USB standard in the first place. So what was before  USB ?

 

Well, someone already made a video about it.

 

Excited about ‘First Man’

 

I love space. And after that, I love space movies. Apollo 13 is my second favourite movie, right after the dinos. I was always surprised that they made a movie about the  'successful failure' mission, but not the 'successful success' of Apollo 11. Of course, many other movies have touched upon Apollo 11, eg: The Right Stuff, and it is also the subject of numerous documentaries, no one ventured to give the story a full hollywood treatment. My personal guess is that the subject matter is equally political as it was inspiring, given that it occurred during the height of the cold war during the 60s. There is no way a studio could give it a unbiased treatment without declaring it as an American achievement.

So imagine my surprise, when someone did put a foot forward to address and tell the story of this historic moon landing. And that was the most unlikely person one would expect. Damien Chazelle, who has so far made movies in music and dance subjects, is going to take this giant leap. I hope nobody decides to break into dance on the moon, you know, with lower gravity. A few more days wait till it hits the theatre.

But already, the film has ruffled a few feathers. Some american politicians have found problem with how the film does not show the actual scene where the astronauts hoist the american flag on the moon. The creators have addressed the controversy diplomatically, saying the giant leap was for entire mankind, and not just for USA. Its hilarous reading these king of news articles even before the movie has fully released. But not surprising. Because we Indians have been seeing these kind of complaints against movies for decades.

So you see, this is a deeply political subject. Possibly precisely the reason other directors have been reluctant to tell this story on the big screen.

But although that mission was a success, it could very well have gone down in history as a great failure as well. Nobody had ever done it. And on a limited technology and the deadlines of those days, there was a very small chance of success. For all we know, Neil Armstrong and crew were on their very last mission. They could have very well crashed into the moon. Or the Apollo 11 could have been stranded on the moon, if they could not launch back into space. They could have failed to get back into orbit. They could have burnt up on re-entry. There were thousands of tiny reasons why the mission could have ended in a disaster. The pressure of expectations on the team was huge.

And that is why this story is so inspiring. And has to be told. People only the stories of successful expitions, without pausing to look at how narrow their chances were.

So , thats it. Supercharged for the movie. Ready to back in time and (hopefully) re-live mankind's first journey to somewhere else.

 

PS: Also Apollo 11 put the Futura font on the moon. And in space.

GMail’s confusing icons

 

For a long time now, I have hated GMail’s icons on the main toolbar. Specially on the app. It doesn’t make sense, and they are confusing. I wonder who are the numbnuts who came up with them, and on what basis.

Thankfully, others too have felt the problem. And somebody else wrote about it. Read on.

Theres now a car in space !!

 

Nowadays there is a crazy amount of non-sensical news out there, that sometimes the really awesome stuff gets skipped over.  Somebody might have dared Elon Musk way back in high school, and I think he did this just to get back. SpaceX, his private aerospace company, this week launched their heaviest rocket yet, in what is any company’s coolest PR stunt , ever. They actually launched a Tesla Roadster car in space ! Complete with a dummy driver, named Starman. How cool is that ?

But the real accomplishment of this event was how the two boosters of the rocket returned, and landed back on earth. Two of the boosters were recycled and programmed to return for a simultaneous touchdown at Cape Canaveral, while the third, brand new, set its sights on an ocean platform almost 500 kilometres offshore. This is the technology they are trying to advertise, the cost savings when re-usable engines are used. Its sticker price is $US90 million, less than one-tenth the estimated cost of NASA's Space Launch System megarocket in development for Moon and Mars expeditions.

The car could be traveling between Earth and Mars' neighbourhoods for a billion years, because it did miss its target of going to Mars.

Thank you, Mr Musk. This video of starman in space is ultimate food for Nerds !

Snapdeal’s failure

Interesting read. Saw this article condensing Snapdeal’s fall into failure.I’ve had bad experience with them. Turns out they never had any focus.

India’s 4G speeds a third of global average

How fast is 4G again ?

India ranks at 74 in a list of 75 countries ranked according to average 4G speed

Regardless of the flood of deep discounts and attractive data packages telecom operators have been offering in recent months to retain their subscriber base, 4G internet speed in India, a crucial parameter of user experience, continues to be dismal, a new survey has found.

At an average data speed of 5.14 Mbps, 4G speed in India ranks three time below the global average and just a notch above the average global 3G speed. Ranked at 74 among 75 countries surveyed, India’s 4G speed was found much slower compared to other countries, including Pakistan and Sri Lanka and faster than only Costa Rica which ranks at the bottom.

According to the Open Signal report, Pakistan recorded average data speeds of 11.71 Mbps. The countries on top of 4G internet speeds include Singapore and South Korea, with download speeds of about 40 Mbps.

In Costa Rica and India, the drop in average data speeds was attributed to the abrupt increase in number of 4G users in the country.

The report also ranks countries in order of 4G network availability in the world and India fared better in this particular list, making it to the 15th position, globally. Between September 2016 and March 2017, there has been an 82 percent surge in 4G internet availability, largely on the back of Reliance Jio's entry into the telecom sector last year.

India has some of the slowest LTE speeds in the world, the report said. In fact, the report goes on to underline a pattern of drop in 4G network speeds in the country, recording a fall of over one per cent over the past six months.

These findings come in stark contrast to the figures released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). The telecom regulator had earlier said that Reliance Jio topped the ch

art in 4G network speed for the month of April with an all-time high download speed of 19.12 megabit per second.

        

4G Speed Comparison

Aadhar is not progress

 

Read an impressive post on Mozilla’s Open policy  blog about why India’s Aadhaar is a step backward in citizen rights. The central problem in this context is clearly spelt out:

This is all possible because India currently does not have any comprehensive national law protecting personal security through privacy. India’s Attorney General has recently cast doubt on whether a right to privacy exists in arguments before the Supreme Court, and has not addressed how individual citizens can enjoy personal security without privacy.

The problem is compounded by the fact that is not that difficult to procure a fake Aadhaar card in the country, one of the most corrupted in the world.

So while honest citizens will be forced to provide proof of identity to receive government services, illegals and criminals will continue to feed off the system.

In the long term, automation will kill more jobs

 

All the Indian IT companies are now focussing on automation, too much actually. More and more companies are quietly reducing their workforce - especially the lower rung - as many of the processes are getting automated.

For companies, the move is welcome as it saves them cost, while boosting efficiency at the same time. The automation of course has hit entry-level workforce the hardest, but it is not as if senior and middle rung employees are spared either. This is where senior employees take the hit. Many employees post 40 find themselves unemployable and have to be extremely good or equipped with a specific skill set to get a job. Otherwise, companies find it easier to hire three freshers for one tenth of the senior’s salary and willing to work 16 hours a day.

And the worst way countries have found to this problem is basic income. The cybernation revolution has been brought about by the combination of the computer and the automated self-regulating machine. This results in a system of almost unlimited productive capacity which requires progressively less human labor.

Alreay, 80% of engineers passing out of Indian colleges are unemployable. And IT has always been  the largest absobers of all those graduates.  Future engineers , and eveyone by extension, are going to hav to fight robots to keep their jobs. For once I feel mankind took a wrong turn on the ‘disruptive’ road, and future generations are going to pay the price.

 

 

Online Shopping ? Stay smart.

 

Online shopping is a rage nowadays, I see people looking up prices of watches to motorcycles on computers and smartphones. Everyone is searching for that elusive deal. Its the online version of window shopping. You know, when you are just comparing prices, but not really buying anything.

Turns out , there are apps which will help you do this window shopping , compare prices, and even alert you to other price drops in the category. In India, the extension called Buyhatke is the leader and the best. They have chrome extensions, which will turn active if you are at a shopping site, and show you price trends from the past. It works on Flipkart, Amazon, eBay  and many other sites too.

The extension automatically adds a price trend graph in a simple line graph on the page. Also tries to predict if it is a good decision to buy the product today.

Its amazing being able to see how they fluctuate the price of the same product over time. Here is a graph alerting me that the product on sale is actually  priced higher today than yesterday.

 

Here is how crazily the price fluctuates on some products. Its almost as if there was an earthquake a few days ago.

Also works on Amazon.

But the best feature is that it alerts you if the same product is available at a lower price somewhere else.

Now thats cool. It only calculates base price, and there might be an additional shipping charge.

Another extension you can use the Flipkart Advantage detector.  Flipkart does not metion on the grid view if the product has express shipping. This extension detects that and puts an icon on the product page if it can be delivered on the same day or next day. Here is has placed a red star on the first product.

 

Things have not been good for shopping sites in India. With the festival season coming up, there will surely be many deals for the customers coming in.

Be smart. And happy shopping !

Electric vehicles in India

 

Last months’ terrible traffic jam and worsening climate got me thinking about greener modes of transport. What are the non-fossil fuels based transport avaiable to us Indians ? Turns out, not very much. Whatever options are available today are way more expensive and cumbersome than the simple petrol/diesel engine based vehicles. But still, there are quite a lot of options, the general public is not aware of them.

For instance, take electric bicycles. These are the standard pedal cycles, but with an additional electric motor which can be used to further the distance that can be covered. The only company currently seen selling such bikes is Hullikal, and the bikes are priced way high.

Around Rs 30,000/-. For this price, one can easily buy a second hand petrol engine bike. And this pricing is the biggest problem which will hamper early adoption of this novel new technology.

For the same price, or slightly more, one can buy a full fledged two wheeler, which looks like any one of those million scooters on the road. And it says it can travel double the distance.

The company every e-bike enthusiast is watching right now is Ather. They have promised to deliver a futuristic looking smart bike, with full integration to smartphones and gps. But this bike will be priced > Rs 75,000/-

But those few who can afford these vehicles , and their monthly electricity bills, and care for the planet, are surely buying and using them. In Bangalore, I see a lot of electric cars from Mahindra on the road. It was initially priced at ~7 lakhs, but now the price is down to  ~5 lakhs.

I didn’t know this, but it seems one can buy an electric sedan too.

 

Going green is definitely expensive. That and the non-availability of charging stations around town is going to slow down this even more.

History of the Internet

 

Yes. We have finally reached there. The internet is now that old, that it’s history now has to be documented. Generation Z today take the internet and all its services for granted, that they have no idea how it began and how far it has come since the dial-up days.

The good folks at Internet History Podcast have put up podcasts detailing the birth and evolution of the internet to it’s current state. Its all there, everything from the creation of Netscape (remember Netscape ?) and AOL to the first search engines (Yahoo.) to all its numeous media sites. I specially found the episode on Yahoo interesting, given their current state of turmoil.

Its turning me nostalgic again. You will have to spend hours through this site to get the full picture. Happy browsing.

Hi-Tech Begging

 

Today I read about Abe Hagenston, a homeless man in America, who has taken begging to new heights. He is happy to receive money via credit cards, and offers up his machined so donators can swipe their cards on them. Guess this was bound to happen.

Hagenston, who calls himself “Honest Abe,” was panhandling near the 8 Mile overpass on I-75 when the TV news folks caught up with him.

Abe proudly noted that he has helped organize some of the panhandlers in his area into a union of sorts. He says they’ve worked out a schedule to panhandle in shifts to avoid stepping on each other’s territory.

Disappointed that Detroit hasn’t seen much snow to shovel for extra cash, “Honest Abe” said his intake hasn’t been as good as it could be. But the new credit card swiper is helping.

“I take VISA, MasterCard, American Express,” Abe said. “I’m the only homeless guy in America who can take a credit card. It’s all done safely and securely through square.com.”

Anyone who has been to a large city will be familiar with being asked if they can 'spare some change' by homeless men on the streets.

However, that call could become a thing of the past now that one rough sleeper in Detroit has started accepting card payments via a reader attached to his smartphone.

Abe Hagenston, who calls himself 'Honest Abe', told CBS Detroit that he began accepting the payments while trying to save up cash for a new pair of prescription glasses.

Hagenston told reporters that he has been on the streets for seven years, and lives underneath the 8 Mile overpass where it crosses Interstate 75.

While he would usually have spent the winter shoveling snow to make extra cash, Hagenston said this year's mild weather has left him with nothing to do.

So instead of going to work, Hagenston said he and several other vagrants from around the city have organized 'like a union'.

Now they take it in turns to panhandle across certain zones of the city before splitting the money they make between themselves.

As part of the team's efforts to rake in more cash, 'Honest Abe' acquired a mobile card reader from tech company Square.

Hagenston also appears to have a Facebook page with a Myspace account linked to it that goes under the name of 'Honest Abe'.

According to information on those profiles he graduated from LaBelle High School in Idaho in 1992 and studied at Edison State College in Florida.

He also claims 'consultant' as his occupation, but gives no details on whether he is still employed or what company he works for. 

In March last year Hagenston (pictured) founded the new-defunct Spanging.com where he offered to complete odd jobs such as window washing and yard cleaning in return for money

An image uploaded to the Facebook profile appears to show a young boy leaning on his chest, thought Hagenston's face is not visible. 

This is also not the first time that Hagenston has attempted to use technology to make money, having previously founded website Spanging.com, according to another CBS story.

The site, named after a slang word for begging, was designed to attract offers of work from concerned passersby, with services on offer including yard work, painting, and window washing.

Square is a tech firm founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and provides businesses with payment methods based around smartphone and tablet technology.

The smallest credit card readers, which plug into Apple or Android smartphones, are usually free to acquire with Square making its money by charging a 2.75 per cent fee on each transaction.

The owner of the reader is then paid all their earnings the following day by direct debit into a bank account.

The readers, which can be upgraded to include a contactless sensor or a tablet attached to a swivel-stand, were designed for start-up stores or businesses with no fixed location - such as market stands or food carts.

Abe claims to be the first homeless person in America to make use of the technology.

He added: 'I take VISA, MasterCard, American Express. I’m the only homeless guy in America who can take a credit card. It’s all done safely and securely through Square.com.' 

Hagenston now says he is accepting donations via card payment thanks to a Square reader attached to his smartphone (file image) which he says will be used to buy new prescription glasses

Throwback: Magazine CD Days

 

I was back in my home town some time back, and was going through some old ‘garbage’. You know, the stuff you are sure are useless, but you keep around anyway. And I ran into some old magazine CDs I had purchased more than 10 years ago.

They are from a computer magazine called CHIP, which they later renamed to DIGIT. The came out in monthly issues, and each issue had two CDs, one with business/work software, and the other had fun/games/videos stuff like that. During the mid nineties these magazines where very popular and sought after by computer enthusiasts. Because the internet had just hit India, but the usage rates were awefully high. Downloading a CD worth of content from the internet would take hours ,and it cost about 60 rupees per hour. So getting two CDs of downloaded stuff for 100 rupees was like a good deal, all the content was nicely documented and arranged in a searachable menu. And the CDs still work till this day !

 

 

 

The 2nd fun CD usually came with trial/shareware versions of computer games, and most of us got to play US titles in this way, without having to download them ourselves. I als digged the computer/programmer softwares they used to ship. The CDs I have are dated July 2001, and November 2002.

 

 

Digit still gives out discs, though now they consist of DVDs.Today of course the internet has become a lot more affordable, so one can stay online all day without having to empty one’s pockets for all those downloads. But its fun to think how far we have gone since then.

Microsoft Open Sources and Forks Windows Live Writer into Open Live

Yeaah !!! This is probably the best news I have head from Microsoft this year.Microsoft Open Sources and Forks Windows Live Writer into Open Live Writer.  The latest binary installable can be downloaded now and the project is now on GitHub.

But unfortunately, Google too this update news to turn off legacy support of its authentication  APIs. So now, the new as well as older versions of Live Writer, cannot connect to Blogger. :-(

The product that became Live Writer was originally created by a small, super-talented team of engineers including JJ Allaire, Joe Cheng, Charles Teague, and Spike Washburn. The team was acquired by Microsoft in 2006 and organized with the Spaces team. Becky Pezely joined the team and over time, the team grew and shipped many popular releases of Windows Live Writer.

As Microsoft was planning for the version of Windows Live that would coincide with Windows 8 operating system release, the teams that built the Windows Live client apps for Windows were encouraged to focus on building a smaller set of Windows 8 apps designed to work well with both traditional PC input mechanisms and touch. With the rise of micro-blogging platforms and other forms of sharing, eventually this team decided to conclude their work on Windows Live Writer with Windows Live Writer 2012.

Even though there was no active development, Windows Live Writer continued to be a favorite tool of a passionate community of Windows PC users for authoring, editing, and publishing blog posts. Data from WordPress.com at the time suggested that Open Live Writer (even two years after active development ended) was the #1 app for authoring a blog post to WordPress.com from a Windows PC.

A few employees at Microsoft took an interest in reviving Live Writer as an open source project in their spare time. By January 2015, a group of about a half-dozen engineers interested in spending some of their volunteer time to help release an updated version of Live Writer had found each other and began work on getting this open source fork of Live Writer formed and ready to ship. In December 2015 Microsoft donated the code to the .NET Foundation and this passionate group of volunteer engineers rapidly assembled the first open source version.

Dropbox Paper feature turns off your Public folder

 

If you started using Dropbox before 2012, you know of its awesome Public folders features. Basically, anything you put there can be shared as if it were on a public webserver, the public link enables others to download or see your file without any authentication. It is a great way to make files available for direct linking or downloads.

Recently, dropbox announced its Paper feature, providing a way for groups of users to share notes and files. But if you turn this feature on, dropbox turns off the public folders feature. There is no easy way to revert it either. It does not delete any files, but all your public links will stop working and require a basic authentication.

 

To get your public folders back, you need to turn of the Paper or Teams feature. Follow the steps here.

 

Score -1 to dropbox. Hope they get these bugs fixed soon.

Skype Adds new emoticons & Skype - Outlook Integration

 

Skype is getting more fun to use. They still have their boring old user interface in blue, but they are adding more new emoticons just for the fun of it. First they added the characters of the Pixar movie 'Inside Out' when the movie came out.

But now they have gone ahead and added a tonne of Indian themed emoticons along with Halloween charachters.

There's the dancing punjabi  bangara, 80's style disco dancer, and even chicken tandoori and chai !  They don't convey any emotions, just for fun.

Oh, did you know that skype can integrate to your outlook connection ? Just add your official email address to your skype profile, and skype will start showing you all the profiles of your official contacts.

So you will start seeing green squares next to your outlook contacts, showing their availability on skype !