tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-273327762024-03-13T08:05:58.971-07:00kbKaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-63219192935968241372022-03-20T21:04:00.000-07:002022-03-20T21:04:02.898-07:00Doing what you love - doing nothing edition<p> Shoji Morimoto taking the adage to whole new level, and succeeding at it:</p><p> "....“I was often told that I wasn’t doing enough, or that I wasn’t doing
anything, so this became a complex for me. I decided to take advantage
of this and make it into a business,” he said...." <br /></p><p>https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/19/japan-loneliness-rent/</p><p><br /></p><p>After having read some of the use cases, I think I would have subscribed to his services at more than one occasion in my life if they were available. <br /></p>Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-66535856904492512972019-03-25T12:27:00.000-07:002019-03-25T12:27:06.635-07:00UBI announcement by INC <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today INC announced plan for their version of UBI. Regardless of my personal opinion on such things, I was pleasantly surprised to read <a href="https://caravanmagazine.in/economics/abhijit-banerjee-ubi-minimum-income-cash-transfer-congress" target="_blank">this</a> interview in Caravan which gives some background to the announcement. It is an interview with Abhijeet Banerjee and suggests that there was some discussion with people who have been involved with such thing earlier. Now that such an announcement has been made, it will be interesting to see how things shape and if this proposal sees light of the day. <div>
Long time back, I used to wish there was some scheme/entrance test where you will get some pre defined small amount which is not sufficient to make you rich but let you not worry much about day to day life so that you can focus on doing things you enjoy. My thinking has <strike>evolved</strike> changed - not sure for better or worse - and no longer wish for such option but when I think about it, I think I was thinking about something similar to UBI. Interesting times ahead. </div>
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Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-3328603399038624752017-06-20T00:27:00.000-07:002017-06-20T00:27:33.725-07:00Cedric Villani in French Parliament<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
From MR, I went to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-macron-lawmakers-fact-idUSKBN19910S" target="_blank">this page</a> where some of the newly elected French parliamentarians are listed. I was able to recognize Cedric Villani, whose book (also mentioned in the article) I read some years back. Book was engaging and provided a view into the way mathematicians work and collaborate. Here is wishing a successful legislative career to Cedric. </div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-36839458171229309862017-05-15T02:28:00.005-07:002017-05-15T02:39:35.081-07:00Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Started Reading<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I decided to continue my reading this month with spy fiction and zeroed on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I have seen the movie but luckily I forgot who was the mole. I remember the actor who played the mole but I don't remember name of his character. So it is still a mystery novel to me. But more than plain spy fiction, I have so far really enjoyed the novel for its detailing of back office process. While the reading is still progressing, I came across <a href="http://lithub.com/john-le-carres-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-and-the-anti-james-bond/" target="_blank">this</a> review in my rss feeds of LitHub. As if universe was conspiring for me to read this (and if it was, couldn't it find a worthier aim to conspire for !!).</div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-36060186734671969202017-05-05T00:52:00.000-07:002017-05-05T00:52:31.827-07:00Goodluck Longreads<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Story or information is not everything. its presentation matters a lot. A well written piece can make an otherwise mundane news read worthy whereas a badly written piece can convert an interesting news into trash. I first noticed in Readers Digest many years back the style of giving all the background information, projecting the personality of main characters, and other such quirks which would bring alive the story being depicted in front of reader. I have had the god fortune of reading many more such stories in past few years and they are a joy to read. lately, one source of such stories has been weekly newsletter I receive from Longreads and therefore I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they are also into funding original pieces. More can be read <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/05/amid-the-wreckage-of-fallen-startups-longreads-is-increasing-the-original-reporting-it-funds/" target="_blank">here</a>. I really liked the idea that readers contribute but they do not decide what gets funded. I fully support this. Not just because, as the article reports, that it is not yet known how the report will turn out to be. Rather, I have come to see division of labor as a very important and useful idea and therefore in today's world of information overload, we should let professional editors take decisions about what gets funded and what gets curated. </div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-7224582308243170012017-01-18T21:56:00.003-08:002017-01-18T21:56:34.999-08:00Very impressive<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2017/jan/11/ultra-low-cost-hand-powered-centrifuge-is-inspired-by-whirligig-toy" target="_blank">This</a> is sweet.</div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-66768266687210915732017-01-15T05:49:00.001-08:002017-01-15T05:49:28.520-08:00Week two of 2017: In Cold Blood<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My reading in second week of 2017 was of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Blood-Truman-Capote/dp/0679745580" target="_blank"><i>In Cold Blood</i></a> by <i>Truman Capote</i>. It is reporting of a crime incident which took place in Kansas in late 1950s. I am currently incompetent to comment on writing and content. I liked the book and enjoyed reading the description of scenes and events. </div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-38385484970477207792016-12-21T21:50:00.001-08:002016-12-21T21:50:57.394-08:00Book Review: Beyond the lines by Kuldeep Nayyar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><review in="" progress=""> </review></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Kuldeep Nayyar (KN henceforth) was an information officer with Government of India and a journalist/columnist who had a front row seats to many important events in independent India. He wrote many books and columns in his life time. I am currently reading his autobiographical memoir titled: '<a href="http://www.amazon.in/Beyond-Lines-Autobiography-K-Nayar/dp/8174369104" target="_blank">Beyond the lines: An Autobiography</a>'. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Book starts with brief description of his days in Sialkot in Pakistan where his father was a physician and describe the changes in environment as partition day approaches. After the partition, KN had a chance to meet and work closely with many people who were responsible to take many decisions concerning partition and he very skilfully explains the situation as he observed and then justification which people gave at some later day behind their decision which led to those situations. This reflects badly on my lack of knowledge but I was not aware that there were many variables and possibilities considered before partition and although I don't have any deeper understanding of Kashmir issue, at least now I know that I don't know much about Kashmir issue.</span><br />
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Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-10751892748875392902016-12-20T09:35:00.000-08:002016-12-20T09:35:39.850-08:00Google Translator and Deep learning<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I was in Santiago, capital of Chile, in November 2016. It was the first time when I had difficulty in communicating with people because not many speak or understand English. Once I wanted to order pizza and for that I first typed things into my google translator and converted it into spanish and then the nice guy at reception ordered the pizza for me. I like to think of myself as quite technologically literate -- I can design neural nets and what not -- but this was the first time when I realized its power in helping people get through with their day to day work !!! </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">NYT has an in depth article covering the introduction of deep learning to google translator with lots of background. It can be accessed <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html?_r=1" target="_blank">here</a>. While I knew almost all the technical information provided in the article, actual implementation in Google was new to me. I am looking forward to many more improvements in future. Good luck to all the people working out there in this field. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">P.S.: I found that comments on blogs on my website are not yet functional. I have therefore decided to switch back to blogger for now.</span></span> </div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-50563598650643824532016-06-17T03:24:00.001-07:002016-06-17T03:24:23.934-07:00Blog alt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It has been long time since I posted anything. Not that I have been not writing. But what I am writing is not relevant to blog. Not that what I have posted yet is relevant to anyone. Yet it feels good to post something. I don't know why. Anyway, I happened to chance upon a tweet which linked to an article and article was interesting and part of it discussed origin of blogger and I felt like sudden urge to come here and type these words and post it. So here I am. Link to the article is <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/ev-williams-is-the-forrest-gump-of-the-internet/486899/" target="_blank">this</a>. I am immensely grateful to countless people who posted one thing or other on the net through their blogs. Of course I have come across many useless sited too. But for me experience has been net positive. Apparently people are moving to other mediums of expression. Sited dedicated exclusively to photo sharing, sites where you can pin things etc. I have a personal domain and I also toyed with the idea of moving all my posts their but somehow could not do it. May be it was laziness. Most probably it was laziness. So here I am still posting the post from my blogger account. </div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-56467801408097304032015-08-17T10:34:00.001-07:002015-08-17T10:34:03.210-07:00Intelligent Octopus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nature.com/news/octopus-genome-holds-clues-to-uncanny-intelligence-1.18177" target="_blank">Article in nature.</a> No wonder. They did invent deodorant. </span></div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-86242666670107401692015-03-10T01:40:00.004-07:002015-03-10T01:40:46.840-07:00FORTRAN founding team<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Someone posted the 2007 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/business/20backus.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1425734682-SMi4QEMnUXhNrLsiQj29Cg" target="_blank">obituary of John W. Backus </a>on reddit recently. I was introduced to Fortran in 2009 spring semester, almost two years after. One bit I found interesting was the team which created FORTRAN. As per the article, it consisted of:<br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15.210000038147px; line-height: 22.8150005340576px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15.210000038147px; line-height: 22.8150005340576px;">...included a crystallographer, a cryptographer, a chess wizard, an employee on loan from United Aircraft, a researcher from the </span><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/massachusetts_institute_of_technology/index.html?inline=nyt-org" style="background-color: white; color: #666699; font-size: 15.210000038147px; line-height: 22.8150005340576px;" title="More articles about Massachusetts Institute of Technology">Massachusetts Institute of Technology</a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15.210000038147px; line-height: 22.8150005340576px;"> and a young woman who joined the project straight out of </span><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/v/vassar_college/index.html?inline=nyt-org" style="background-color: white; color: #666699; font-size: 15.210000038147px; line-height: 22.8150005340576px;" title="More articles about Vassar College">Vassar College</a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15.210000038147px; line-height: 22.8150005340576px;">...</span></span><br />
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Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-21740488918996484602015-01-08T04:35:00.000-08:002015-01-08T04:35:25.948-08:00PK highly overrated<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
PK is highly overrated. A very nice subjected dealt tritely. Does not deserve all the praise. Almost everything, be it acting or direction or locations or story, appears to be thought of in one sitting. It is as if people sat and implemented first thought which came to them. Will add. </div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-89179445346778511082014-12-05T02:20:00.001-08:002014-12-05T02:20:06.096-08:00Reading with writing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
NYR Blog has a very nice essay about how to read and recommends always having a pen or some marking <i>weapon</i> while reading. I have also found this approach very useful but most of my marks were '?', 'why', and so on. Not like the image posted on the blog. I fully agree though that reading should always be done with writing. Here is the link: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/03/weapon-for-readers/ </div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-40528028747270628282014-11-11T20:59:00.001-08:002014-11-11T20:59:52.180-08:00(1/4) Intro/History: Introducing a 100-year-old mechanical computer<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NAsM30MAHLg" width="480"></iframe>Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-54430081774178889892014-10-27T11:20:00.002-07:002014-10-27T11:23:12.194-07:00Happy New Year <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I watched Happy New Year on the day of its release. It was all that I expected minus long overly emotional scenes. My expectations were based on previous Farah Khan movies such as Main Hoon Naa and Om Shanti Om. While these movies were high on entertainment value, they also had some scenes which seemed stretched. This was, thankfully, absent from Happy New Year. There was an attempt to provide emotional underpinning to overall heist plan and also loose patriotism at the end but it did not affect the pace of the movie. Actors were good. Or rather they fit their characters very nicely. There were more than its fair share of songs and dances. Story was normal but then one should not expect original story. There were some loose ends but then again one should judge a movie based on what is expected of it. Bullet points summarizing my experience:</span><br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't regret watching it paying full price </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't regret spending 3 hrs of my time watching it</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></li>
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Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-50957873466800334792014-10-27T05:52:00.001-07:002014-10-27T05:52:15.096-07:00On assembly results of Aurangabad<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
2014 Assembly elections in Maharashtra has resulted in MIM opening its account in state. One of the seats it won is Aurangabad. Supriya Sharma has a nice write up on the candidate and relevant history. Article can be found <a href="http://scroll.in/article/685327/Behind-the-victory-of-a-Muslim-party-in-Maharashtra,-the-gamble-of-a-journalist" target="_blank">here</a>. Many interesting points: (1) Lack of reasonable alternatives for minorities when it comes to elections (2) Lack of reasonable alternatives for people who want to contest election (3) Compulsion of electoral politics in India. All in all a good and timely post. </div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-17192888406910849922014-10-21T08:43:00.001-07:002014-10-21T08:43:49.809-07:00Google Scholar at 10<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Google Scholar, that beautiful service from Google especially helpful for out-of-organized-research-community people like me completes 10 years in 2014. Medium has an article on it at <a href="https://medium.com/backchannel/the-gentleman-who-made-scholar-d71289d9a82d" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></div>
Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-21031136995016526852014-10-17T14:10:00.005-07:002014-10-17T14:16:22.734-07:00Document management <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="Publishwithline">
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<div style="border-bottom: solid #4F81BD 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 2.0pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: large;">I have been
using Calibre for managing my ebooks. Recently I started using it to manage all
my reading documents, particularly journal article. While it has good enough
functionaliy, I find it liitle slow for my taste. May be about time I should
write some document manager for my local machine. Fact that caliber was written
and even today mostly maintained by an individual assures me that I can try to
muild a rudimentary, local running, optimized for a single machine document
manager. Till then, calibre is more than sufficient.</span></div>
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Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-75049498973303410222014-09-25T14:50:00.001-07:002014-09-25T14:50:02.900-07:00Sentences I would be happy to use - 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">'...it would be rude to blame individuals for the collective depravity of their genre...'</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">From <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/peter-thiel-zero-to-one-review/380738/" target="_blank">this</a> article in Atlantic. </span><br />
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Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-44394742115022165872014-07-11T23:35:00.001-07:002014-07-11T23:35:13.065-07:00Unusual Job Description<span xmlns=''><p>Arrived in my mail box today, a recruiter's mail. Usual stuff, except when it was not. Company is in the field of assistive healthcare technology. Beside usual words like rockstar programmer, following line stood out:<br /></p><p><span style='color:black; font-family:Arial; font-size:9pt'><em>"..Make products that win awards from the President of India and MIT and are subjects of TED talks..."<br /></em></span></p><p>These are great things for publicity, but how do you predict which product has potential to win these kind of things or quantify it. Did someone run any analysis on list of Presidential award winners or TED talks? <br /></p></span>Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-27781462319281273912014-05-31T07:22:00.001-07:002014-05-31T07:59:59.452-07:00Google unveils plan for voterless democracy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span xmlns=""></span><br />
<span xmlns=""><br /> </span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span xmlns=""><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;"><em>It may seem true, but is a work of fiction. </em></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span xmlns=""><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Mountain View Company, best known for making sure internet is working and for coming up with relevant Wikipedia pages for engineering course projects, has now started working on voter less democracy. Google has a history of venturing into innovative and potentially disruptive products. It has previously developed a userless social network (an internal memo accessed by this reported found that 'r' was a typo which stuck, nonetheless both name would have been true) and recently launched a driverless cars where no drivers are installed thereby eliminating need for automatic rebooting. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span xmlns=""><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Google has been facing stiff competition from Facebook, another silicon valley based company which allows user to stalk other users. Internal study conducted by Google revealed increased user enthusiasm on Facebook during recently held Indian general election. With many states in India going to election in coming time, and many times after that, founders at Google have taken a long term view by working on voter less democracy. On condition of anonymity, a Google executive involved in this project confirmed and said they are getting full support from Indian political parties, particularly AAP whose leader who was shocked to find that 'Desh ki janta Modi ke sath mili hui hai'. INC has supported the idea on condition of Rahul Baba and his speeches on women, their empowerment, and state of mind being first search result whenever anyone searches something in form of a question. On being asked for a comment on this plan, congress spokesperson said that Party has always maintained that voting is nothing but just a state of mind. BJP, still unable to figure out where did they fucked up to land up with so many seats and now have no idea what excuses to make when they fail to fulfill their election manifesto given that they have no coalition pressure excuse to rely on, do not want to take a second chance. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO did not seem much perturbed though. 'Indian democracy has never been a voter driven democracy. It is family, caste, money, liquor, anything but voter driven. We have known this before and whole purpose of Facebook was to make people believe what they always wanted to believe that they have a say in Indian election by providing them a virtual wall where they can paint their political belief, just like Indian political parties paint real wall with hollow slogans', said Mark, sitting next to Teja. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span xmlns=""><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">While plan is out, there is still not much information how Google will pursue this. It can substitute real voters with its robots from Boston Dynamics or use algorithms developed at Deep Mind to figure out who should be in the new council of ministers. A notable development, after this announcement, was investment of an undisclosed amount by private equity firm into Radia's company which has previous experience in ministry formation without involvement of voters. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span xmlns=""><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">Constitutional expert were unanimous in their view, after searching in Google, that there are no hindrance in this approach which a small constitutional amendment can't take care of. 'It will still be for the people, just little off and bye to people' said one of the expert. Amazon, not to be left behind, has started working on adding a 'buy' to the democracy. Jeff Bezos said they have been working on a same day, drone delivered democracy. They have tested this in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Western Pakistan. Flipkart, with no idea how to respond to this, has raised another round of USD 376 Million. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-26646351076948093822014-04-16T05:35:00.001-07:002014-04-16T05:35:19.654-07:00Review of Four weddings and a funeral at Atlantic<span xmlns=''><p>I think it was Love Actually which first prompted me to go for all the Richard Curtis movies and I was not disappointed. Four weddings and a funeral was one of them. Since then, I think it is the second movie of Curtis which I have watched more than once, other being Love Actually. A nice review of movie at Atlantic appeared <a href='http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/the-subversive-awkwardness-of-em-four-weddings-and-a-funeral-em/360703/'>here</a>. </p></span>Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-55786550079427645712014-04-16T00:36:00.001-07:002014-04-16T00:36:24.168-07:00Atlantic on EVM in India<span xmlns=''><p>Atlantic has an article on use of electronic voting machine in Indian election. It reports operational difficulties and past cases of reported technical problems. I was amused to read this:<br /></p><p><span style='color:#333333; font-size:10pt; background-color:white'><em>During last year's regional assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, for instance, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) filed a formal complaint after an Indian National Congress party elder allegedly told tribal voters that <a target='_blank' href='http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/specials/assembly-elections-2013/chhattisgarh-assembly-elections/You-will-suffer-electric-shock-if-you-press-non-Congress-buttons-on-EVMs-Ajit-Jogi-warns-voters/articleshow/25830108.cms'><strong>the EVMs would electrocute them</strong></a> if they voted for non-Congress candidates. The BJP won the election, but the Election Commission's FAQ now <a target='_blank' href='http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/evm.aspx'><strong>reassures<span style='color:blue'> </span></strong></a>prospective voters that there is no chance of electrocution from "short-circuitry or [any] other reason."<br /></em></span></p><p>Full article can be read <a href='http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/indias-briefcase-sized-voting-machines/360554/'>here</a>.</p></span>Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27332776.post-40105013613747742182014-04-15T07:25:00.001-07:002014-04-15T07:25:24.197-07:00Trial<span xmlns=''><p>Test</p></span>Kaustubhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08022813805996019862noreply@blogger.com0