Wealth destruction is worse than taxes

An economic activity has one more of the following impacts Wealth creation - for example, processes like extraction of oil, capturing solar energy and even repairing a broken device. Wealth transfer - for example, processes like selling a good, taxes and bribery/theft, though the last one is usually illegal. Wealth destruction - for example, processes like hurricanes, wars and riots. Most developing/underdeveloped countries usually lack sufficient wealth creation, but it does not stop there. They suffer a lot from man-made wealth destruction as well. Sometimes, they are obvious, as in the case of wars and riots. Sometimes, they are more subtle. For example, India loses 24% of electricity to transmission and distribution, as oppose to 6% in the USA. Or, for example, 30% of fruits and vegetable harvest is lost in India due to lack of proper storage. Tax, in principle, is a transfer of money to the government. Even if the government uses money inefficiently, it is still being used. While in the case of wealth destruction, the resources are simply lost leaving an overall poorer society. ...

Indian Passport

Traveling on Indian passport

An interactive map of where all one can easily travel an Indian passport. I have added separate layers for those of you who have a Schengen, a UK, or a USA visa. Short link: bitly.com/visa-indians Data Sources: Wikipedia Another sheet

October 16, 2015 Â· 1 min      Travel
Mac OS logo

Mac OS X Primer (Part 3) - Window Management

Default window management scheme in Mac OS X is not well-polished. For example, till Mac OS 14.6, there is no way to make an application occupy left half of the screen or to make an application always stay on top. To improve on that, my personal setup includes following applications. Better Touch Tool - At the most basic level, it provides “Window snapping” feature, drag the window to top-left and it expands to full screen. It allows full control of gestures and keyboard shortcuts. My personal setup includes “cmd + option + Tab” to switch between active windows of the same application. It is available via homebrew cask. ...

Learnings from IIT Global Leaders Conference (IITGLC) 2015

Day 1 Great leaders are great because they handle challenges and setbacks well - John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Real education is like building a house - you set a good foundation first and then you build the house, floor by floor. Traditional education forces everyone to move at the same uniform speed and does not do justice to learning - Sal Khan, Khan Academy It is important to have a growth mindset (anything can be learned) as opposed to a fixed mindset (eg. I am good at X and Y but not A and B) - Sal Khan, Khan Academy Choice of narrative always triumphs over the choice of selection in the long run - Amit Agrawal, Head, Amazon India Hard things like entrepreneurship should not be tried half-heartedly since anything less than a full-fledged effort is going to go nowhere - entrepreneurship panel Keeping emotional highs and lows in check is critical to success - entrepreneurship panel Good mentorship is valuable, relationships are more important than results and an idea without data backing it up is not worth talking about- Patrick Gelsinger, CEO, VMWare Both Andy Grove and Larry Ellison are amazing but ruthless people to work with - my observation based on talks (and in-person conversations) of (with) a few people who worked with them. Day 2 You start a company not to compete with others but for a mission to make the world better - Elizabeth Holmes, CEO, Theranos. Don’t just think about what you are doing, also, consciously think about what you won’t be doing, there is always an opportunity cost of doing something. Most people don’t like risk, therefore, most won’t do anything interesting. Tech is my religion. Normal jobs will be gone in 50 years. Experience is another word for bias, systems with too much of experience are frozen, therefore, innovation happens at the edges. Have an internal compass, spend time following it, not reacting to what’s expected out of you. Steam engine challenged humans in muscle power, machine learning will challenge them in mind power. In face of driverless cars, rigid public transport like railroads is a bad idea. Spend more time doing things which can not only make a difference but makes you happy as well. - Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures Lessons in Product Development from Deep Nishar, MD, SoftBank Know thy user User’s use LinkedIn on iPad differently (more at night) compared to LinkedIn (on the desktop), therefore, the iPad app is designed differently than desktop (focuses more on leisure content). Focus on simplicity An average human cannot hold more than 7 things in their head at a time. 80% of request for new features which Microsoft gets are already in one of the 35 toolbars but users cannot find them. Embrace constraints How nutella was invented Data is your guide but don’t fall off the cliff while following it Innovation is not instant Multiple lead bullets lead to one silver bullet. There were productive phones, beautiful phones, easy-to-use phones before the iPhone, except iPhone combined everything into one. Adapt to changes Or someone else will win in changing environments. Expect success Believe that you will succeed and engineer systems accordingly. Work and entrepreneurship are a means to an end goal of having a more satisfied life and not end in themselves - Mallika Sarabhai

July 25, 2015 Â· 3 min #Iit      Misc

American vs Indian doctor

Indian doctor After having continuous hiccups for ~24 hours, I walked to a nearby doctor’s clinic. " Uncle kaafi der se hitchkiyaan aa rahi hai, iska…" (I am having hiccups for a long while, can something…) [interrupted] He replies in a loud voice, " Beta, hitchkiyoon ka koi ilaaj nahi hota, kai baar mujhe aati hai" (Son, there is no cure for hiccups, sometimes, I have them for days) The tone was part patronizing and part condescending. Total Bill: 0 ₹ Embarrassment quotient: 10/10 ...

Ownership vs Control

Ownership is an innate human desire, except, we make the mistake of confusing it with control. In the name of ownership, we end controlling things, and then we end up wasting disproportionate time reasserting our control. How to differentiate between ownership and control? A simple rule of thumb is that control can be taken away (or lost) much more easily than ownership. As an example, since books can easily be lost or stolen, possessing books is a matter of control, while possessing knowledge is a matter of ownership. Possessing money is a matter of control, while possessing skills to earn money is a matter of ownership. Along the same lines, jewellery is about control while beauty is about ownership, car is about control while travel experiences are about ownership. ...

June 16, 2015 Â· 1 min      Misc

The clash of cultural expectations

“I need the address.”, the immigration official shouted at her, as she, a septuagenarian Indian woman, with her limited English, repeatedly, pointed to the paper containing the phone number of her daughter.

Mt. Whitney

Hiking Mt. Whitney in winters

Day 1 - Reach the Outpost Camp (3.8 miles, 10.4K ft) Day 2 - Started at 8 AM Reached consultation lake at noon Reached trail crest at 2:20 PM Reached summit at 6 PM Returned to Outpost Camp by 11:35 PM Day 3 - Head back to Whitney Portal Conditions It was all snow covered - knee-deep snow in some places. 99 switchbacks are not possible under such conditions, so, we climbed up the chute. The trail is dangerous beyond trail crest, don’t go alone. Do ...

Thoughts on Tizen

Users won’t buy a phone till they know that their basic set of apps is available on the device. That pretty much rules out players like BlackBerry 10, Jolla, Ubuntu OS, and Firefox OS. Even Microsoft is still struggling. OEMs like Samsung, HTC, LG, and Sony have been hit hard by the commoditization of Android. Google makes money from Google Play, cheaper phones imply more users. So, the commoditization of Android OEMs is good for Google. These OEMs have to customize Android as per Google’s requirements which have increased over time. They cannot manufacture a competing version of Android (like Amazon’s Fire Phone) either. This leaves us with iOS and Google-experience Android duopoly. The only way to break that duopoly is Samsung, which is big enough that it can convince major developers to develop apps for its devices and throw money at marketing to reach out to end users. It can make money from selling devices as well as selling apps (via the app store). A completely open-source OS can pull open-source developers from GNU/Linux and Android to develop it. A completely open-source OS can convince other OEMs to use it and in lieu, they can partner with Samsung on app store revenue sharing. It remains to see what Tizen’s delayed launch eventually leads to, but it’s a matter of survival for Samsung. ...

The science of happily ever after by T Y Tashiro

Book summary: The science of happily ever after by T Y Tashiro

The book is an interesting take on what it takes to attain a happy marriage and why only ~30% of us end up in happy marriages. The book is divided into three sections - what is love, why we fail in the game of love and what can we do differently to succeed at it.