Viswanathan K's Thoughts

We know that everything we share on social media is being “scrapped, sorted, and warehoused” by the usual suspects – Google and Facebook, writes Marc Goodman in Future Crimes . But data about you doesn’t just come from you: “Your friends and family are leaking data about you as well.” Like when they add your name to their phone’s contacts. Or when you are tagged on a Facebook post. Or when someone adds your birthday to Microsoft Outlook.   How can this be possible? Is it even legal, you wonder. Aha, remember those unreadably long Terms & Conditions that you approve when you install/sign up for those apps (many are longer than Shakespeare’s plays!)? Yes, those unreadable lines stop “just short of claiming rights to your immortal soul”…   Which brings us to the beloved smartphone. If you thought social media was the main source of info on you, you are so wrong because: “(Smartphones) are veritable snitches in our pockets, digital spies tracking our every move.” One c

Economic growth. For China to continue growing, consumption is key. But if consumptions slows, the next problems start – company closures and job losses. It can quickly spiral into a vicious spiral – fewer people with jobs lowers demand further, leading to yet more closures and job losses…   China is still extremely reliant on demand from outside – the West primarily. Which in turn means they are tied to Western economic cycles. Even more dangerous, the West seems to be stagnating, and its population is getting older. Both of those reasons will likely lead to lower Western consumption in turn translating to lowered demand for Chinese goods.   Surely with a population of a billion that is growing richer, China should be able to create domestic demand, right? Aha, but China’s one-child policy creates problems, writes Thomas Orlik in China: the Bubble that Never Pops . With fewer children, parent spend less (yes, most discretionary spending is wrt kids!). Added to that, China does

Every generation thinks that there’s nothing new left to do, that all the possible things have already been done, wrote Kevin Kelly in 2014. Looking back, everyone thinks that the best opportunities lay just a decade or two ago. Take the Internet, for example. Here’s how most people today think of the Internet “opportunity” in the 90’s: “The internet was a wide open frontier then. It was easy to be the first in category X. Consumers had few expectations, and the barriers were extremely low. Start a search engine! An online store! Serve up amateur videos!” But now? “Thirty years later the internet feels saturated, bloated, overstuffed with apps, platforms, devices, and more than enough content to demand our attention for the next million years. Even if you could manage to squeeze in another tiny innovation, who would notice it?”   Kelly points out that the abundance of today could not have possibly been foreseen by those who took the plunge in the 90’s: “We got: Instant con

My 10 yo daughter’s been going to school for a few weeks now. While the number of kids who come to school hasn’t changed, the folks who do send their kids have the same two reasons: The kid learns more in the classroom than online (I know, I know, that’s a relative term, but still…) They, er, put on weight sitting at home. The reasons above are not necessarily in order of importance. Take this kid in the class who periodically announces that he will stop coming from the next day because of the Omicron variant. The next day, he’s still there in the classroom. After this had happened a few times, I asked his parents whether they really planned to pull him out. His mother’s response? “No, he makes these ‘decisions’ by himself… In any case, if he stays at home, he will only put on weight.” The war against obesity is very important.   Kindness. Compassion. Caring. All alien concepts with kids at this age. Like the time my daughter got hurt and needed daily dressing changes. As

This blog is a take on the problems in China’s financial system, as described in Thomas Orlik’s China: the Bubble that Never Pops .   Those risks/problems today can be traced back to the (Western) financial crisis of 2008. As the West fell into a recession, demand for Chinese imports fell. China responded with a massive stimulus package (4 trillion yuan, approx. $400 billion) to keep its economy running. The central government only came up a quarter of that amount, though. The provinces (states) were told to come up with the rest. How could the provinces come up with such a huge amount?   For historical reasons, most land in China is owned by the government. Ergo, the provinces decided to sell some of their land to raise the money. Other perks were thrown to industrialists so that they’d buy the land. In turn, real estate companies started buying land close to these planned sites of industrial expansion. So far it looks good, right? Those new industries and construction activit

When it comes to China, few can be rational. After all, China’s data is manipulated (Though by how much, and at what times, is unknown). Its policy makers are notoriously non-transparent. Ideological beliefs muddy the waters: how can communism work? Plus, there is envy. And lastly, fear.   One thing though. China-is-doomed theories aren’t new. Such theories have abounded since 1978, when Deng Xiaoping moved China from the Mao’ist (i.e., ideologist) track to the only-results-matter track (“Practice is the sole criteria for truth”). This is famously captured in Deng’s line: “It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.”   No wonder then that Thomas Orlik’s take on China’s current problems and its track record dealing with its earlier problems going back to 1978 is titled, China: the Bubble that Never Pops . As Orlik says: “To read the history of modern China (i.e., 1978 onwards) is to read the history of China collapse theories” Poverty

The rules of grammar. A torturous and pointless exercise we all go through at school. But, as David Graeber wrote in The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy , grammar never starts off that way: “People do not invent languages by writing grammars, they write grammars—at least, the first grammars to be written for any given language—by observing the tacit, largely unconscious rules that people seem to be employing when they speak.”   The transformation to an oppressive and meaningless relic happens later, over decades and centuries: “Yet once a book exists, and especially once it is employed in schoolrooms, people feel that the rules are not just descriptions of how people do talk, but prescriptions for how they should talk.”   Shane Parrish reiterates that point: “descriptive” means “it tells us what the world is currently like”. Whereas “prescriptive” means “it tells us how the world should be”. Grammar (and dictionaries) were crea

Kids these days don’t appreciate the value of money. You may be saying that’s been true throughout history, but there are reasons this generation is worse. Unlike most of us, they never see cash change hands and have genuinely no clue of the cost of anything – after all, if everything is paid for via credit cards, the phone, or (even more invisibly) online, how can they possibly have the faintest clue as to what anything costs?   William Guppy’s post on the topic very amusing. And eerily close to where our kids are probably headed. This guy is like the future of our kids – the generation that grew up well off, but didn’t take any steps to stay that way. With Wodehouse-style humour, he starts off by saying: “Two days ago I had the misfortune of finding out that an old friend of mine, who I hadn't seen in some years, has done very well for himself. The fact was related to me over dinner, and in such a way that I was expected to congratulate him.” And adds: “His is an old C

In the age of the Internet, it’s the easiest thing in the world to make very jazzy graphics of data. The term for it is “infographics”. Attractive while it may be, Tim Harford points out their danger in How to Make the World Add Up : “Many of us who are dazzled by infographic don’t suspect a thing (about the data or the conclusions being drawn).” Often, the aim of the infographic is even worse: “The goal of the graphics is not to convey information but to stir feelings.”   Of course, not all infographics are wrong or misleading as I’d written a while back about Florence Nightingale and her charts . The problem is knowing which ones are valid and which ones are “persuasive art pretending to be a piece of statistical analysis”.   One tends to think that the purpose of charts is always about “inviting people to draw certain conclusions”. While that is indeed the most common use, charts can also be “exploratory” at times. Huh? “If you’re handling a complex dataset, you’ll l

Can one become a billionaire through crooked means, lies, and deceit? The key word is “become”: that excludes those who inherited the money. And no, I did not use “billionaire” as a synonym for stinking rich; I mean literally a billionaire, i.e., not a dollar less (it can be a lot of dollars more beyond the first billion). Plenty of people can and do become millionaires by exploitation. But billionaires?   I think the answer to that varies with the level of government control involved. The more tightly the government controls all economic aspects, the more likely that the billionaires in those countries got there via crooked means – bribes, kickbacks, using influence to scuttle rivals, even the use of force etc. Think of Russia, or even India before the reforms.   But nowadays, in a country where governments control less aspects, I am wondering if Paul Graham is right in his assessment that nobody becomes a billionaire by “exploiting people”. In fact, most self-made billiona

Simon Winchester describes the rules for the volunteers for Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in The Professor and the Madman . They had to pick one from the list of the pre-defined periods (decided by the Oxford team); then read books from that period; make a list of every single word they ran into; and capture the title/ edition/ page and exact sentence in which the word was found.   Not surprisingly, the estimated project completion time was wrong by decades ! Some volunteers were slow; others misunderstood the instructions; many forgot even the simple word had to be captured. On the other side, the curators at Oxford found themselves drowning in the volume of inputs coming in.   One of those volunteers was the “madman”, Dr W.C. Minor. He was an American surgeon. He enlisted in the army during the American Civil War. Not only did he see gruesome things, he was also part of at least one horrific act. Since men often deserted the army, examples had to be made. A common punishmen

When William Shakespeare was writing his plays, there was no such thing as an English dictionary, writes Simon Winchester in The Professor and the Madman : “It (English language) was like the air – it was taken for granted.”   In 1604, Robert Cawdrey created a 120 page listing of 2,500 words and their meanings “for the benefit of Ladies, gentlewomen or any other unskilled persons”. The idea wasn’t to list all words; it was only to list the “hard words” – uncommon words, and other “pretentious and flowery inventions”.   Future attempts in the 17 th century increased the word count significantly – all the way to 38,000 words. But even then, two points were ignored: (1) Nobody tried to list all the words, including the easy ones, and (2) There were no clear rules on how/who decided what was a “valid” word.   A key driver to creating a dictionary that contained all words was Britain’s growing dominance of the world. That meant its language would have be needed in more and m

Simon Winchester’s book on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is quite interesting. Since the topic of the book doesn’t exactly sound like riveting material, Winchester decided to narrate it with emphasis on one particular aspect, the one with the most masala in it.   The editor of the OED, Dr. James Murray was keen to meet one of the prolific volunteer contributors to the effort, one Dr W.C. Minor. While they’d corresponded over 20 years of effort, the two had never met! If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed would go to the mountain. And so Dr. Murray got on a train from Oxford, got off at Crowthorne Station, and took a carriage to the address, a mental asylum. He met the governor and requested a meeting with one of the doctors who worked there, his contributor.   The governor’s answer stunned Murray: “Dr. Minor is most certainly here. But he is an inmate. He has been a patient here for more than twenty years. He is our longest-serving res

The weekend basketball class for kids in our apartment soared in popularity during COVID-19. Initially it was because it became the one venue where enough kids would turn up – back then, not too many kids would come down to play in the evening. But the bigger reason was that it provided some exercise – parents could see their always-at-home kids were ballooning up by endlessly munching and watching TV/streaming channels all day. Kids as young as 5-6, who can barely toss the ball a few feet above their heads, are being sent to the class! The coach has smartly adapted these classes to try and ensure the kids move around, exert themselves, and last and definitely least, even learn to throw the ball in the general direction of the target. The first thing he has them do in class is to take do a lap of the complex – no, the aim isn’t to warm up; rather, it is to ensure the kids tire themselves a bit. He tried incentivizing things by offering chocolates to the first few to cross the line. Of

As reigning world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen, is getting ready for his title defence, San Ingle mentions something very interesting he said: “The biggest advantage is that I am the better chess player… Having said that… there’s a famous quote: It’s not enough to be a good chess player. You also have to play well.”   Since Carlsen has an excellent record in tiebreaks (if the main series of games ends in a tie, they play rapid games), Ingle asked whether he intended to aim for “a thumping victory, or is he prepared to win ugly?”. Carlsen’s answer: “I am happy to win in any way possible. I’m somebody who puts more emphasis on the sporting aspects of chess than the artistic. And even more so during world championship matches. It’s about getting results.”   Carlsen’s focus on winning, with artistry relegated as a good-to-have, not a must-have, reminded me of something I read in the autobiography of tennis great Andre Agassi titled Open . Agassi, of course, was an artist – s

In his terrific book on the impact of software on the world, Coders , Clive Thompson points out that: “In recent years, a welter of computer languages aimed at children – like MIT’s popular Scratch language – and initiatives like Hour of Code and robotics competitions (have sprung up).”   In the US, privacy concerns have hit even such for-kids options. In Chicago, for example, public schools suddenly found the plug pulled on many such popular options because, hey, they violated some students online protection laws. “Among the software products that violate the law, CPS (Chicago Public Schools) now says, are programs like Code.org, which is widely used in computer science classes, and Adobe applications used for artistic design and newspaper page layouts. That left has many high school newspapers unable to produce their print editions. Also off limits is Scratch, software to create interactive stores, animations and games.” Most for-kids languages these days work online, the

By definition, any statistical analysis is based on data. Setting aside genuine errors (wrong sample size, unrepresentative sample set, wrong questions asked), Tim Harford talks at length about the problem of data used by governments, in his book, How to Make the World Add Up .   As we know all too well, data can be misleading, even without malice. With governments though, the danger of such wrong data is enormous: “It’s one thing to be wrong… (but) because the state is powerful, its misperceptions of the world often take physical form, producing well-meaning but clumsy and oppressive schemes.”   But of course, with governments, the problem is worse. They often pressurize agencies to come up with data that suits them. I’ll avoid such examples from India since that just becomes a political discussion in no time.   Independent agencies are not a magic bullet that solves the problem: “(Independent) official agencies often get them wrong… (just that) they don’t make politic

The Modi government caved in and announced the repeal of the farm laws, “a game in farmland corporatisation”, as Jagdish Rattanani termed it. Some were happy for the reason Pratap Bhanu Mehta mentions : “The movement has forced the government to, uncharacteristically, eat humble pie.” Is this a sign of the tide (finally?) turning, wonders Mehta: “It emboldens civil society and social movements. This government has pretty much had a free run in containing or suppressing social movements.”   Or one could wonder if the BJP is just making a strategic retreat based on its bigger picture calculations (staying in power), points out Rattanani: “The action comes close to key state elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab… New allies are waiting but won’t shake hands till the hated laws are out of the way.”   Or should we not be extrapolating this one topic, as Ashok Gulati says . Should this be looked at as one issue only – farming reforms? Perhaps there is merit to both sides, h

Yet another wave of COVID-19 is slamming into Europe. “The spread of the more infectious Delta variant, an increase in communal activity, a return to the workplace and a sluggish rollout of booster vaccines, which are recommended six months after the second jab, have been blamed for the increase in infections.” No wonder then that patience among the vaccinated majority wrt the unvaccinated “holdouts” has begun to run thin.   In Austria , for example, 65% are vaccinated. Until recently, the unvaccinated weren’t allowed into restaurants and cinemas. Now they won’t be allowed to step out of their homes. Except to go to work or buying food. Huh? Won’t every unvaccinated person who gets “caught” outside claim he was going for one of those activities?! In any case, protestors say such moves are unconstitutional, and there are placards saying, “Our bodies, our freedom to decide”.   Germany ’s vaccination rate is practically the same as Austria, at 67%. As cases spike, their sit

The bar code. There on almost every product. Here’s a sample for what follows: Officially, it’s called the Universal Product Code (UPC), writes Charles Petzold in Code : “In its most common form, the UPC is a collection of 30 vertical black bars of various widths, divided by gaps of various widths, along with some digits.”   If it’s just a series of bits (1’s and 0’s), why is it so large then? “To give the checkout person something to aim the scanner at.” Each line is read as a 1. A thicker line conveys multiple 1’s, proportional to the thickness of the line. Each white gap is a 0, and a thicker gap conveys multiple o’s, again proportional to the thickness of the gap.   The left-most and right-most are always 101, and called the guard patterns: “It allows the computer-scanning device to get oriented.” Those guard patterns also tell the scanning device how thick a 1-line is, and how thick a 0-gap is: “Otherwise, the UPC would have to be a specific size on all packa

IPO’s are big news these days. The Nykaa IPO just made Falguni Nayar India’s richest self-made woman billionaire, at $6-7 billion. Even a loss-making delivery app like Zomato listed on the stock exchange at a price that made it more valuable than the entire hospitality sector ! The Policy Bazaar and PayTM IPO’s are other mega-valuations in the pipeline for loss-making companies.   On that point of loss-making companies with huge valuations (Nykaa is an exception on that front), Santosh Desai had written that Zomato made some wonder if the market “had lost all touch with and indeed interest in, reality”. It feels surreal: “ The apparently breezy efforts of some young kids out of college who not only are able to raise funds of a scale that boggle the imagination, lose money extravagantly and still generate staggering valuations, all in the blink of an eye. It does seem unfair.” Or is this a sign that many believe that such companies, while loss making today, will make a lot of m