Journey Into The Unknown

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...