Vietnam to require social media users to verify identity

According to this latest Reuters report, Vietnam will soon make identity verification mandatory for social media users of all platforms including foreign and local. The official narrative of the state media is that they are doing it to "rein in online scams".

Breaking: SBF may have donated as much money to Republicans too but "under the table"

Popular Youtuber CoffeeZilla has just made some remarkable revelations! Apparently, in an audio interview he did with Sam Bankman Fried earlier on 16th November, SBF candidly shares that he had donated as much money to Republicans as he did to Democrats, just not through the usual route but "under the table".

Should civil servants flaunt credentials on twitter and instagram? My views on Abhishek Singh's dismissal as Gujarat Elections Observer

A few days ago, IAS officer, public servant and actor Abhishek Singh made this tweet and apparently a few other instagram posts which seem to have caused ECI to remove him as Gujarat Elections Observer.

Malavika Hegde: Success Story of a Woman CEO who Single Handedly Brought Down CCD's Debt by ₹5000 crores

Today I came across this truly inspiring story of a woman entrepreneur named Malavika Hegde, and I'd like to share it with you. Malavika is, in fact, the CEO of CCD (Cafe Coffee Day), a very popular coffee and restaurant brand in India with 1700+ outlets across the country. You can see several Engineers in Bangalore CCD outlets deeply engrossed on their laptops while sipping a cup of coffee every now and then!

Canada couldn't protect her, the slaying of political dissidents will continue if people don't raise their voices

She wasn't even a dissident as it is typically imagined of this word, she was just a glorified blogger and youtuber for all practical purposes. Unfortunately, she wasn't someone famous like Snowden or Assange though, she was just a commoner like you and me. We were all involved in some kind of "activism" or other in our lives, weren't we? Me writing this blog post is also a kind of activism.

Reddit's business model is unholy and toxic

So this is what happened on Reddit today. A guy made a post on /r/WebDev subreddit about his troublesome experience with Firebase and Cloud Run cloud computing platforms, the post titled "We Burnt $72K testing Firebase + Cloud Run and almost went Bankrupt" was about how close they came to losing a fortune by merely participating in a product's free trial. The post attracted a lot of attention and instantly gained the top spot with 500+ upvotes.

Farmers protesting against reforms in India are shooting on their own feet

The agricultural reforms ongoing in India presently are very important and beneficial to farmers generally and in the long run. Privatization and free markets always win in a competitive world (which Indian food market definitely is).

The Ups, Downs and Upheavals caused by the 2020 US Elections

Many in the US are already celebrating Joe Biden's victory and have taken for granted that he is going to become the next POTUS. But what's apparent to the eye isn't always necessarily true. Remember Al Gore's early victory celebrations in 2000 Presidential Elections? My gut feeling is that US Politics might end up in a similar situation this time.

To tackle China, India must REALLY start supporting the startup ecosystem, not just give slogans like "Make in India"

Unlike Pakistan which our government can write off as an extremist or jihadist country, China is a whole different kind of beast. You can't just ignore China by repeating the nationalist rhetoric or making populist acts like banning Chinese apps in the Google Play Store. The great economist Chanakya once said that there is no shame in learning stuff even from our enemies.

Only voters can end corruption in India by rejecting the dirty campaign money

I was discussing some general things with my uncle today and the topic came about corruption in India. After some pondering on this topic, I realized that this seemingly vague and "impossible to solve" problem can actually be solved very easily if the average voter is determined.

Where Jio Mart shines (and Big Basket fails) is when it comes to showing the right choices to Vegetarian users

Big Basket is an established player in the Indian groceries e-commerce market whereas Jio Mart is a new but formidable competitor. Of course, Jio Mart still has a lot of catching up to do with its elder bro in terms of app workflow, payment methods, offers and discounts, etc. but it has one major ace in the game which I think will create a huge difference.

Paytm and ICICI are the top choices when it comes to Fastag

When it comes to solutions which I don't understand too deeply or a choice is quite difficult to make, I just go by the popular vote on the assumption that the popular choice will certainly not be too crappy. Granted, it may not be the best choice but it won't be the worst either and it'll most likely be much above average.

Afterlife, the gravity of human suffering and a magic called hope

Suffering is the very nature of this world. That's not only the first noble truth proclaimed by Buddha but also an indisputable fact of life. Even the richest dude on this planet cannot escape suffering. Death, disease and aging are always guaranteed even assuming that financial and other difficulties didn't knock your doors first. All pleasure is like flicker, it vanishes in mere seconds. Pain, on the other hand, is everlasting and chronic which once again proves that human life is more optimized for miseries and sufferings, not pleasures and happiness.

Avoid the "feedback loops from hell", you don't deserve to be anymore depressed than you already are

Yesterday, I started reading The Subtle Art of not giving a f___ by Mark Mason, and came across the concept of feedback loops from hell, it was like a eureka moment for me when I suddenly realized what was the number one factor causing me depression. It was as if my eternally painful and constantly suffering subconscious mind realized it too because soon after reading those first few paragraphs of the book about the feedback loops, I dozed off into a deeply sound sleep, the likes of which I don't remember having since ages!

When madness of crowds affects the election results, the wins and losses are meaningless

We live in a world where everyone is digitally connected and social media influencing is at an all time high and to top it, the IQ of the average voter is less than a few cents. All of this doesn't sound like the right combination, especially for a political system like democracy where largest head count determines who the winner is.

Its high time that social media companies start compensating content creators with some revenue

Its no hidden fact that users on any social media platform are typically both consumers and publishers of content. The content which the user wearing "consumer" shoes relishes to read or watch is exactly what another user wearing the "publisher" shoes has put online. Consequently, the "publisher" user automatically deserves a fair amount of income generated out of all content activity on a given platform.

"Open Source" feels like a slap on freedom's face when it comes to projects like Android

The word itself should have made it clear but we still didn't listen. The lax licensing of Android to Apache-2.0 should have given us a hint, but we still chose to ignore it. Of course, not everyone ignored it, there were people like Richard Stallman who kept talking about it and warned us about it back in 2011:

Susan Svrluga is one brave and independent journalist whom Stallman fans should follow on twitter

Yeah Yeah, we all know that twitter is a non-free platform which RMS himself refuses to use but that doesn't mean his fans should do the same too, especially when the recently appointed President of FSF himself is on twitter - the guy who is supposed to be the RMS replacement!

Stop donating to "foundations", donate directly to developers if you want to help open source

The problem with foundations (and many similar tribalism constructs) is that they are highly prone to politics and turf wars over non-issues. The top brass in these organizations hardly care about the core issues their "foundation" was meant to solve such as advocacy of free software (in case of FSF), they are more interested in things like national politics and general social issues which may not be related to software (or their core activism) at all.

What is a "GPL condom" and why NVidia's latest updates to Linux kernel has become such a big controversy

The biggest drama unfolding on Linux subreddit yesterday was this below post about some updates to the linux kernel source which seems to have irritated some people.