Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Hacker Kevin Mitnick, in his book, Ghost in the Wires , describes the time when he asked an operator in the company he was hacking into to type the following command: spawn /nowait/nolog/nonotify/input=ttg4:/output=ttg4 Did the operator key in the command? “Because she wasn’t keying in usernames or passwords, she didn’t think anything about what I was asking her.” Little did she know what the command was doing for the hacker… Over time, we’ve moved from such cryptic commands that were grammar Nazis (only exact syntax was accepted) to GUI/mouse to touch and now voice based interactions with computers. In voice, which is better? There are only two contenders, Alexa and Google Assistant (I base that on the extremely unscientific criteria of who has ads for such products). I thought kids didn’t care about this mortal combat between Google and Amazon, until I had this conversation with my 7 yo daughter after she saw the Google Home ad: She : “Alexa is better.” Me : “H...

I remember this article by Jon Dick a year back whose theme is captured in these lines:  “Imagine a person who’s underwhelmed by everything you tell him. You ran the mile in five minutes? Big deal. He doesn’t raise an eyebrow for anything over four. You scored a scholarship to Yale? Meh. Was Harvard full? You designed a new car that gets 100 miles to the gallon? Cool, but does it fly?             …. That’s how Apple must feel when it takes the stage to show off a new product. If that gadget does anything less than carve out a new niche, or at least revolutionize an existing one, and simultaneously cure cancer, the company’s criticized by throngs of media and consumers who can’t believe they wasted their time on such uninspired crap.” And now, a few days back, when Samsung launched its flagship smartphone, the S4, the response was pretty much the same: people were underwhelmed! I guess that is yet another sign t...

Ever notice how people assume that people who did well till college are necessarily the smartest people around for the rest of their lives? Like look at how people talk about IIT’ians (I don’t refer to the IIT’ians who brag, rather I refer to the rest who talk about that guy’s IIT pedigree as a guaranteed sign of greatness in everything he does for all time)? Or the same thing, except replace “IIT’ian” with “IAS topper” in the previous line? Or “law school topper”? I mean, sure, all those guys worked very hard at a certain point of their life . But how do you extrapolate from the fact that they slogged when they were 17 or 22 (or whenever) that they’re necessarily the smartest guys around till they die? Do people seriously believe that our academic system teaches people skills that are relevant to real life or the workplace? If not, doesn’t it follow that those guys may not do well through the rest of their lives unless they learn new skills and adapt? And where does it say that those ...