Arka Prava Basu

Android Dev @UltrahumanHQ | Ex - @Zomato, @ixigo

I am rude on Slack but less so in person.

[Arka Prava Basu @arkaprava94]

@championswimmer Twitter android didn't even handle playing twitter spaces over a foreground service . So you are kicked out of the space as soon as you put the app in background 😂😂😂😂😂

[Arnav Gupta @championswimmer]

Every piece of software I use which used to be originally produced with a lot of care has gotten shitty. Just to make a list from top of my head...

1. Starting with this site. I used to give an example of how the Twitter mobile app was epitome of saving list scroll state across app lifecycle and even app death, all the way back in 2016 when teaching mobile development to my students. Today, most tweets > 2 day old if I open, the replies do not load, I don't get notifications for DMs, and random parts of it don't work at random times.

2. MacOS which was once more polished than Windows on the UI and as hackable as Linux from inside out - now randomly freezes, has kernel panics, needs disabling needless safety features all they way from safe mode to get basics working or toning down the horrible glass UIs.

3. Spotify used to be one of my favourite products, having great offline-first experiences, seamless sync across devices, handover of songs midway between phone, desktop, car, etc. Now the app can't even load offline downloaded playlists properly when internet is down, sync almost never works, UI glitches, watch app can't figure out how to play on headphone, or when to sync from phone to watch.

4. Whatsapp - one of the most performant apps, with solid delivery rates even with as slow as 2G/EDGE internet, now actually has dead-end UI flows (when sending photos, trying to edit it can lead to an unknown state), message deliveries often don't work even on solid internet, and media uploads frequently need retries.

5. Microsoft's entire office suite which used to be a workhorse product - something so reliable, that non-tech people would never touch Google Sheets with a 10-foot pole and threaten to resign if they didn't have a proper desktop app license of MS Office. Now they push you towards the cloud versions which work way worse than Google Workspace, and have add tons of React UI elements in the Desktop apps that makes then visibly slow and janky and large Excel sheets even crash sometimes.

Most of these were on the trajectory of enshittification before wide-scale agentic coding or Claude-driven development was even all that common.

The entire industry is in a phase where everyone is just building things because it is their job, and the era of care, and sincere craftsmanship of products has mostly come to an end.

[Arka Prava Basu @arkaprava94]

@joreilly So cool

[Arka Prava Basu @arkaprava94]

@championswimmer Which laptop is giving the best out of the box linux experience? I switched out of linux some 5yrs back but do miss it.

[Cytrus 🍋 @cytrusf1]

I genuinely think this Dacia could ratio you

[Vatsal Singhal @vatsalsinghal]

Ultrahuman Performance Centre now LIVE!!!!

[Apurva Hendi @apurvahendi]

Some field notes from building Cycle & Ovulation tracking on @UltrahumanHQ

[The Hacker News @TheHackersNews]

🚨 Threat actors used AI to create the first known zero-day 2FA bypass on a popular open-source admin tool.

Google spotted it in a planned mass exploitation campaign and helped fix it before widespread use.

Full report: https://t.co/lIVuCTZ4WJ

[Arka Prava Basu @arkaprava94]

@cybersahu Congratulations 👏👏👏

[Beee Beees @BeeeBeees]

@jagograhakjago Hello I have purchased from bigbasket a bottle of Hajmola manufactured by Dabur, inside bottle I found multiple pieces of broken glass and thankfully I detected it earliest and not consumed, as I am 70+ I don't what would have happened

[Arka Prava Basu @arkaprava94]

https://t.co/8NXKbOXEq8

[Aditya Shrivastava @aditshri_]

“we got gta bangalore before…”

[sahu @cybersahu]

on the left is a picture from 2 years ago, building the first prototype in my bedroom.

on the right is from yesterday — our first production run at the factory.

a lot happened in between 🧵

[Ishani @ishani_s]

Looking for a 2BHK in Central Bengaluru (Indiranagar / Koramangala also works).
Pet-friendly 🐶, good ventilation & natural light are must-haves.
Move-in: ASAP.
Any leads appreciated!

[Dy 🌸🌈 @evowizz]

Today I finally looked into size formatting.

Maybe I'm the last to fully understand this but:
1 GB (decimal) is not the same as 1 GB (memory).

It means that 16 GB of file download is 1000 MB x 16, and 16 GB of RAM is 1024 MB x 16.

Here's the thing. You may think that 256GB of storage means 1024 MB x 256. But it actually means 1000 MB x 256. It's funny, because it means you actually have 238 GB in binary.

So to differentiate these, in 1998 the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) created new names for binary units. When talking about memory, instead of writing 16 GB of RAM, we should write 16 GiB of RAM. GiB stands for "Gibibyte".

The thing is, very few systems and people are using Mebibytes, Gibibytes, Tebibytes, etc. But the majority of people don't know that 1 GB can represent 2 distinct values depending on which unit is used.

So essentially we're stuck with GB meaning two different things, and a fix almost nobody adopted.

[Arka Prava Basu @arkaprava94]

Well the cars sound awful 💩 #AusGP

[Arka Prava Basu @arkaprava94]

@JorgeCastilloPr Certain apps are much better in light theme even though I prefer dark theme on my devices. Quite a useful toggle to have.

[Mishaal Rahman @MishaalRahman]

Choosing the best ✨ AI model for your task can feel overwhelming when there’s so many options, which is why the industry looks to LLM benchmarks for guidance.

The problem for Android developers is that these benchmarks aren’t weighted to really evaluate the kinds of tasks that they commonly face … but that changes today.

Introducing Android Bench, a new leaderboard ranking LLMs on Android development! It’s a scorecard that ranks LLMs based on how well they handle real-world Android development tasks like Jetpack Compose migrations and UI layout optimizations.

For developers, this ranking offers clear guidance on the best AI tool to use for development. For model makers, it provides a clearer path to optimizing their models for Android development, elevating AI-assisted Android development for all.

[Arka Prava Basu @arkaprava94]

This + get an Ultrahuman M1 if you are an adult 😉

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

Yesterday was World Obesity Day. I hate to be the guy who complains, but the numbers are scary.

Here are some stats from the recent Economic Survey:

23-24% of Indians are already overweight or obese (in 2019); this number was ~10% twenty years back. I am guessing it must have gotten a lot worse in the last 6 years.

3.3 crore children were obese in 2020 → projected 8.3 crore by 2035. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are one of the leading causes. Their sales went from $0.9 billion (₹7,500 crore) to $38 billion (₹316,000 crore) between 2006 and 2019. Obesity nearly doubled in the same period.

UPF sales grew over 150% just between 2009 and 2023. The acceleration is getting faster, not slower.

Even children under 5 aren't spared. Excess weight prevalence jumped from 2.1% to 3.4% in just 5 years (2015-2021).

I don't know what else to say apart from restating the obvious:

Try to eat homemade food and get quality ingredients. The more meals you eat outside, the more garbage that goes into your body.

Question the source of food, be it your milk, pulses, or anything else. The quality matters.

If nothing else, at least walk 30 minutes every day. Build a fitness habit first, then start with strength training and so on.

Sleep 7-8 hours. Bad sleep makes you hungrier and lazier the next day.

Keep your kids away from packaged snacks as much as possible. Habits formed at 8 will follow them at 40.

Less screen time, more movement. Touch some grass, stare at the sky, and move!

On a different note, I just read that major Indian pharma companies are preparing to launch GLP-1 drugs in India after the patent expires this month. These are the same drugs behind the Ozempic craze globally. I'm wondering about what the first and second-order effects will be.

[Mohit Kumar @deeppurpled]

Introducing Ultrahuman Ring PRO with Jade: world's first real-time bio-intelligence AI.

With up to 15 days of battery life, it’s a fundamental engineering breakthrough.

Now available for Pre-order!