Journey Into The Unknown

There has been a lot of discussion lately on whether AI is making many roles obsolete. Entry-level college graduates are facing the burning expectation of developing systems like a system architect who is at least ten years into the domain. My personal experience too: I've been leveraging AI for both my personal and professional work. Projects for which I earlier had ideas but not the technical bandwidth to complete, I am now able to take up and at least push to a working proof of concept. I'm trying out various tools, etc., and I read up and try to keep pace with the new technologies coming out. Recently, I came across an interesting article by the Warp Terminal co-founder, comparing us to factory engineers in software rather than product engineers. It's an interesting take indeed, and I agree with what he says. It relates to the Industrial Revolution, where automobile manufacturers, rather than having more humans develop cars, had humans develop better automation and fact...

The world is healing. There's background music being continuously played. I feel like dancing and singing my heart out.... Okay, enough of the melodramatic stuff. But hey, this is the stuff dreams are made of. India has won an ICC trophy after 11 years. A World Cup in any format after 13 years and a T20 World Cup after 17 years. I think I deserve a release after all those years of anguish. The last time I saw an Indian team lift a trophy was in the newspaper and highlights of the Champions Trophy. I couldn't see it live as it was already past midnight, and the match did not look like it would begin after the rain. The next day, the newspaper was filled with the team looking dashing in their white coats, highlights showing Dhoni jumping behind the stumps as Ashwin's ball spun away from that bald England spinner. The last time I watched an Indian team lift an ICC trophy live was the 2011 World Cup. It's the year I started watching cricket when my parents thought that at l...

Imagine a scenario in which your computer works like your brain. I mean, instead of operating on boring bits of 1's and 0's, which we all know, your computer functions on spikes much like our "neurons" in the brain. Don't worry these computers are not being built by pieces of our brains(probably a good plot for a post-apocalyptic movie) but instead modelled on the basic phenomena in which our brains work. If this all seems too sci-fi for you, be prepared to be amazed. Although this field may seem to be new, it has been in existence since the 80s. Fun fact, before the usage of digital logic in computer systems, there was significant research going into the development of analog computers. The key difference between analog and digital is that digital basically works on low and high levels, while analog works over a range of values. Anyway, the reason for mentioning this is that analog computing forms a significant part in neuromorphic computing. In fact, neuromorphi...

 Recently, I have been reading about bitcoin, and what caused my fascination was the idea of a decentralized currency. A decentralized currency, in simple terms, is a currency not regulated by a single authority such as the government. Everybody has the right to produce this currency and use it. It ensures that no one can take away your right to use the currency as you wish.  Before we delve further, let's understand the meaning of inflation. Let's say that today around 100 rupees are in circulation worldwide. You own 10 rupees, so effectively, you own about 1/10 of all the rupees in the world. The next day the money printing agency prints another 100 rupees and pushes it into circulation. This money is moved into circulation by various institutions. You still have 10 rupees, but now you own 1/20 of all the rupees in circulation worldwide. In essence, your net worth has decreased. This is, of course, a simplified version of what happens and explaining inflation would require m...

The Internet as we know it today is not truly decentralized. Most of the content on the Internet is held by powerful computers known as servers held by huge corporations. There is in fact a TV show(any Silicon Valley fans here) which deals with this very issue. So what exactly is meant by a Peer to Peer internet?  A peer-to-peer (P2P) network is a network of computers in which each computer acts both as a server as well as a client. Files are stored across the network across these multiple computers(also known as nodes). Any computer on this network can share and retrieve files with others in the network. One key aspect of this kind of network is that on the addition of a new node into the network it doesn't lose its efficiency or speed. This is different from the client-server architecture used mainly today is that servers tend to become slower when newer clients try to access its content. In a P2P network, the load is shared across all the nodes due to which the chances of such a...

 A key challenge for the Internet of Things(IoT) is security. There is a myriad of devices, each different from one another in an IoT ecosystem. This makes securing each device challenging as there is no one fits all approach. In recent years, IoT ecosystems have been overwhelmed by DDoS attacks. A distributed denial of service(DDoS) attack overwhelms the IoT networks with huge traffic. IoT ecosystems have hardware constraints due to which it becomes difficult to prevent such attacks. Added to that, since all the devices are connected, the attack spreads throughout the entire system leading to massive consequences.  Blockchain is basically a distributed ledger in which records of transactions are made by many nodes. It is a decentralized system in which no one can alter a particular transaction. If a wrong transaction is made, a new transaction must be created to reverse the error, and it is visible to all the network participants. You may have heard of blockchain related to c...

 A question always arises what the end goal of AI is? With greater computational resources, we have built deeper neural networks which seem to predict almost everything? But the fact remains that we are yet to see a truly generalized AI that can make decisions like humans.   For this, let's dive into the decision-making center of our body, aka the brain. The brain works magically if we truly observe it. From controlling our internal body processes to making conscious decisions and storing them as memories, it is truly wonderful. What makes it so adept at doing these tasks seamlessly?  The brain is a vast collection of neurons that seem to be connected with each other. Not only this, it makes new connections depending on your experiences as well as what your body requires. Another factor which we must account for is that it does so using a minimal amount of energy. Simulating the brain as an artificial neural network takes about 10 billion times more energy than our b...

Mobile phones is probably the invention to have impacted modern times. The idea of having such a powerful device in our hands was unbelievable a few decades ago.  However, in recent times it feels as if the industry is reaching a plateau. There have been new features but currently the only question is whether we require it? In recent years the smartphones have gone from becoming so thin that they slip out of your hands to again becoming slightly thicker so that you can hold them. There have been a number of sensors which have been added to smartphones over the years expanding its functionality , humongous battery lives and a smoother touchscreen experience.   So you may ask if there are so many new features being added year by year how is the industry stagnating? My answer is perception by the customer. Around 5-6 years ago there was a marked difference between lower end smartphones and the high end ones. There used to be a difference in how the smartphone responded to to...

There has been a debate about whether electric vehicles have been effective in reducing pollution. Research does show that direct emissions from EVs are zero and that the fuel burnt for producing electricity is lower than that of conventional vehicles. The concern is whether it's enough to stop climate change or continue enhancing renewable energy.   One thing is for sure EVs are probably the best way to deal with vehicular air pollution. As they progress through various generations of technology and become more affordable for most of the world, it will help combat climate change. But building technology for renewable energy should still remain our number one priority. Moreover, there is also a concern about how EVs' old batteries will be handled. Most EV batteries last 10 years, and it will be interesting to see how we handle their disposal once these vehicles become mainstream. Electronic waste has become a problem, and old batteries not being disposed of will further aggrav...

 A major disruptor in technology is quantum computing. It can actually turn out to be a bigger game changer than other technologies such as AI, blockchain, etc. The reason the others at the fundamental hardware level are nothing more than a string of 0's and 1's. Quantum computing changes the very fundamental way of how a computer works.  For example imagine you toss a coin. If you let the coin fall and observe it, it will either be either heads or tails. Now imagine if you spin the coin on the table. It is difficult to tell whether the coin is heads or tails. In a way you can say it is both. The reason why quantum computers are powerful is because of this one property(although not limited to it). A computer has a bit which can be either 0 or 1. 0 implies turned off and 1 implies turned on. A quantum computer has qubits which can be 00 ,01, 10 and 11. These might not seem significant when you have very few qubits compared to bits but when increased they have a massive increase...

The time travel scenario possess a serious question. If time travel is indeed possible in our so called future why haven't we met them already. Although there are reports of time travel but none of them are verified to be true.  In this case consider an interesting proposition. Since the effects of causality imply that if time travel is ever possible it opens up the scenario of an effect being its own cause thereby creating a closed loop commonly known as a paradox. There have been many alternate theories suggesting such as the parallel universe in which if you do travel back in time it would mean travelling in a universe different to that of your own.  This brings us to the title of the blog : Dark Energy. Dark energy in today's times is relatively unknown. We don't have the expertise needed to understand it. Thus, I put forward an idea which maybe true or completely useless. Dark energy is nothing but the various simulations of our own universe. What if the decisions tha...

The movie Interstellar does indeed offer an interesting insight about the existence of higher beings than ourselves. Inside the tesseract Cooper tells TARS that the higher beings who are helping them are none other than their future generations.  It indeed is quite possible that in fact there are no other organisms existing on different planets but instead they are our future selves. We may only know this for sure when we solve the problem of quantum gravity. It also comes from the fact that time is just another dimension like the current 3 dimensional world which we are currently viewing. As we make progress through our evolution it is possible to experience higher dimensions which require much more than our basic senses.  Consider an example. Every memory which you live or dream of your so called past is basically time travel. There is a concept known as mental time travel which encompasses this beautifully. Maybe the reason why no one has come to visit us is because they ca...

What if time travel doesn’t necessarily mean travelling back or forward in time but instead viewing a particular point in the universe from two different points at the same time. For example, if there is a star at a distance of 70 million light years from the earth any observation from that star means we are looking at 70 million years into the past i.e. time travel. So instead of moving back in time, we are essentially travelling to another point of reference instead.    The question   remains why haven’t we received any time travelers from the future. Maybe its possible for future time travelers not to be present on the reference point which it is observing at that exact moment as basically that would mean seeing its present. It can only observe the past as its existence is not possible in that time frame.   In a particular relative time its not possible for an individual to be present at two points simultaneously.   However than the question arises...