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This set of articles are for Internationals who have recently relocated to California for a job. I am listing a few things which I wish I knew when I first arrived here for a full-time job. Hunting for apartment Use craigslist.org, padmapper.com (this also provides average renting prices of the area) and housingmaps.com. Use crimereports.com to check the crime statistics of the area as well. Good apartments are booked really fast, sometimes, as quickly as the same day. Leases are usually a year long. Get SSN (Social Security Number) By visiting the nearest SSA office. A waiting period of 10 days is recommended after entering the USA. It’s a single number which will uniquely identify you in the USA. Its needed for credit cards, bank accounts and pretty much everything else. Most banks at their discretion will open a bank account without an SSN though. First phone USA has both CDMA and GSM networks. Phone numbers in the US are portable and that too for no fee. So, moving from one carrier to another is easy. The US has a weird contract phone system where people pay 200$ upfront and then buy a two-year contract to get a free phone locked to that carrier. If you are planning to go for a contract phone, go for either AT&T, which is GSM or Verizon, which is CDMA. They have the best coverage but they are expensive. T-Mobile, a GSM carrier and Sprint, a CDMA carrier, are less expensive but have limited coverage. If you go for a contract-less phone, you will pay more upfront but still much less over the two year period. In that case, go for either a good Nexus phone from Google Play or go for an unlocked iPhone from Walmart. And use that with an MVNO, mobile virtual network operators like Cricket wireless or StraightTalk. For the curious, a long list of MVNOs is available on Wikipedia. First Bank account I would recommend getting a primary checking account at a big bank like Chase, BofA or WellsFargo. Checking account is also known as current account in some countries. Open a checking account and not a savings account. Most savings account practically offer 0% at big banks and you cannot withdraw money more than thrice a month from them. Also, don’t pay a maintenance fee for your account. Usually, the accounts have a no maintenance fee clause if you meet certain conditions. Clauses like your employer making a direct deposit or you maintain a minimum balance ~ 1000$ dollars. If there is no such clause just tell the banker you will walk away and they will most likely fix it for you on the spot. Do check if any promotions are going on nearby. Also, ask your friends for a referral. In most cases, their banks/Credit Unions are happy to give you and them a referral bonus for a new customer. Credit unions don’t have shareholders to distribute the profit (unlike banks). So, in some cases, they can offer better service but usually, their small sizes interfere in that. First credit card Credit cards have better credit protection, in case they are stolen, and better rewards than Debit cards in the US. It takes time to build credit history and is useful for negotiating loans for big purchases like buying a home. So, even if you feel you don’t need one, just get one, use it and pay it in full before the due date. Say your card’s billing cycle started on Jan 1, then the billing cycle will end on Jan 31. Depending on the card, you will have time to make payment till Feb 15 or Feb 31. Don’t make the minimum payment, if you can just pay it fully. Credit card interest rates are ridiculous ~13%-17%. just pay in full. Don’t go for a secured credit card. Don’t go for a card with an annual fee. Preferably, go for a card which provides no foreign transaction fee, capital one cards are my favorite for that. Usually, big banks are reluctant to give credit cards to people with no credit history in the US. All transactions from credit cards as well as any mortgage/loans in the US contributes to an individual’s credit history. If no big bank is ready to give you a normal (not secured) no-fee card then go for credit unions. I got my first card from SFCU. Six months later, my credit history was sufficient to get a normal no-fee credit card from Bank of America for which they denied earlier. Also, to avoid getting junk credit card offers in your mailbox, opt out. Driving license Your country’s driving license will work in California for only the first 10 days. I would recommend not to drive in California alone unless you are coming from a country which has similar traffic laws. Getting a driving license involves two steps - a written test, which is easy. Prepare for it by reading CA driving handbook and then book an appointment. The second step which is a driving test is more involved. Most of my friends failed at least once and in some cases twice. I would recommend looking for driving instructor on craigslist. Continue to Part 2 (buying cars, car insurance, tax filings…) ...

A year back I decided to try peer to peer(P2P) lending (out of curiosity) will a small sum of money. My net conclusion is that peer to peer lending is not a sensible form of investing. My money is still stuck (and that’s not the only reason why I would recommend people to stay away from it). How it works A lender with say 1000$ will go to a site like lendingclub.com or prosper.com and will loan money directly to people in units of say, 25$ notes. The loan (with interest) will be paid back in fixed period of time (36 or 60 months). ...

Notes from Burton Malkiel’s talk to Google in 2010. Lesson #1: Buy-and-hold is still the best strategy Not only timing the market is tough but people who are trying to time the market loose more often than not. Lesson #2: Dollar-cost Averaging Since it is impossible to guess whether the market is going to go bull or a bear, it is better to invest over a period rather than in one-shot. ...

For the past one month or so, I am looking around for a good personal laptop running GNU/Linux. I was looking for something similar to my current Mac Book Pro My constraints were following Intel processor - 2.4 GHz or better 16 GB or more RAM 15-16" screen since 14" screen does not work for the software development Sleek body - ~1" or less in thickness Good build quality At least 1080p - 1920x1080 resolution the chiclet keyboard and preferably without the useless numeric keypad Preferably running GNU/Linux - porting GNU/Linux to a laptop can end up being painful) Preferably 16:10 or lesser - I gave up on this constraint since it seems all laptops come only in 16:9 nowadays, except Macs and Chromebook Pixel After spending several days looking for the same, following were my conclusions ...

The book contains pragmatic advice for dealing with the clutter and noise of the everyday world, which disguises itself in the form of work. The book has two parts. First one focuses on the principles and the second one provides concrete practical advice based on the same.

A lot of work is happening in academia and industry on tools to perform dynamic analysis, static analysis, and reverse engineering of android apps. A list of those tools can be seen at https://github.com/ashishb/android-security-awesome.

The book tries to reflect on an individual’s professional growth in the contemporary era of fickle employment guarantees. The best part about the book is that it tries to offer pragmatic, as opposed to principled advice, regarding career development and branding.

(Opinions expressed here are my understanding of Vivek Wadhwa’s opinion) “The next Trillion Dollar Opportunities” (in this decade) China’s manufacturing and India’s call center business are saturated. The PC industry is dead, Laptop is flat, and mobile is going up. Next trillion-dollar opportunities Proactive health care Preventive care is much cheaper. Expect sensors everywhere (in the toothbrush, toilet, mirror, etc.) to give info based on spotted symptoms. IBM Watson is being trained on medical data. Soon, nanobots will go inside the body for drug release/monitoring. Manufacturing Robotics taking over ( Baxter - 22K robot - will cost 1-2 $ per hour of work after that). Manufacturing coming back to the USA. America is being automated. 3D Printing Current 3D printers 200 (low end) -1500$ (high end). Expect prices.to go down to 200$ for high-end in 5 years => household goods can be printed at home. Finance Square-like mobile payments exploding Bitcoin carries a negative image, expect government-backed digital currency soon. mPaisa in Kenya - 60% of transactions via sms now (25% of Kenya’s GDP). Transportation Robotic drones going to take over for deliveries Self-driving cars are imminent. Computing Big data Internet-enabled devices augmented by high-speed internet (Google Fiber) New UIs - touch-based interfaces, augmented reality (Google Glass) Synthetic Biology We are taking exponential (and not linear) steps in technology and humans are not good at predicting the impact of exponential changes. ...

Let’s start with a small exercise. Trying searching for the list of Sept 2011 victims or for the list of London Bombing victims. In each case, more than half of the results on the first page lead to a list of names along with the photos and life stories of those people. Now, trying searching for the list of Hyderabad blast 2013 victims, you would get a few results like this which lists the names of the people but where are their photos and life stories? ...

After the Delhi gang-rape case, there has been a sudden upsurge in traditional as well as social media over rape in India. As usual in such cases, the initial reaction is to find someone to blame. And in this case, the onus of the blame has been put on Patriarchal Indian Society - without realizing that more rapes happen in the not-so-patriarchal USA Indian masculinity - “who feel threatened by women asserting their identity” without realizing that rapes happen even with infants, senior citizens, visually challenged, mentally challenged and homely women in conservative villages of Haryana to Kerala. Indian Police - as if police officials are omniscient and should be present before the crime happens Honey Singh - I am expecting a petition against Vatsyayana next This blog post is a collection of thoughts about the same. ...