SundaraRaman

Floating in the Universe, gaping happily at shiny stones and twinkling gems.

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

@potatoslav This screenshot I just took captures about 50% of the vibe of my YouTube feed

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

As an Actually Indian person who writes all your AI answers, it's unacceptable that only 6% of people are giving me the credit for it 🙂‍↔️

[🍓🍓🍓 @iruletheworldmo]

you’ll never comprehend just how early you are chat. never.

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

Happy birthday to one of the biggest open source success stories! Even if it's less visible to the general public than things like Linux, VLC, or (recently) Blender, FFmpeg is without a doubt one of the central pillars of modern tech.

[FFmpeg @FFmpeg]

Today marks 25 years since the first commit to FFmpeg by Fabrice Bellard

FFmpeg was made to play DVDs, DivX and other video files for free, and continues to be developed by enthusiasts

FFmpeg changed the world, powering all online video

Happy 25th Birthday FFmpeg! 🎉🎁🎂

[@mikko @mikko]

How are apps still doing this? Companies: stop asking users to upload their address books. And everyone else: refuse to upload your address book to random apps and social media platforms.
The contacts in your phone are not your data. It’s other people’s data.

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

“To get a sense of how little electricity people use in sub-Saharan Africa, imagine each person there turning on a 50-watt light bulb. That alone would instantly double consumption. Nigeria, with 240m people, generates less electricity than Wyoming, with 0.6m”
—@TheEconomist

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

And Tamilnadu cities continue to be punished for actually taking into heart and following the Population Control programmes from the union for decades.

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

Low existing average speeds (aka traffic congestion) on roads is apparently a reason to NOT build a metro!

"Unrealistic" = projected ridership figure is higher than current Chennai ridership: when Chennai's has an extensive local train network to compete with, Cbe has none!

[Indian Infra Report @Indianinfoguide]

🚨Coimbatore and Madurai Metro proposals returned due to short distances & unrealistic ridership: Union govt. Informs parliament

[AgentSaffron @AgentSaffron]

Meanwhile vegetables in TAMIL cuisine

Poriyal - stir fry
Aviyal - Boil
Kadaiyal - Grind lentils with water
Masiyal - Mash of boiled roots and leafy greens
Thuvaiyal - Coarse Mash of stirfried vegetables
Varuval - Deep Fry
Vathakkal - Shallow Fry
Vatral - Sun dried

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

ChatGPT being a little passive-aggressive about the way I talk to it 😅

(Also: sure ChatGPT, let's go with "love" 🙄)

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

This post did make me worry about the kids, but only because someone like this is apparently a teacher.

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

> if he's saying he only knows how to read words that he's seen before, ... that's not reading, that's memorizing shapes

That's literally the only way reading can work in an anti-phonetic language like English. Also memorizing shapes n internalising them is exactly how we do it!

[Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform” @MrDanielBuck]

People are asking.....

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

Man, and it was just today I was seriously considering switching over to Claude for regular use. IPOs always ruin companies and turn them anti-consumer, even if they pinkie-promise (like Google's "We're not a conventional company" S-1 filing) that they won't.

[NIK @ns123abc]

ITS HAPPENING

>anthropic preparing for ipo as soon as 2026
>investors are enthusiastic
>anthropic can front-run openai by going public first
>dario in talks for a round at a $300–350B valuation
>will be one of the largest ipos ever

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

@KagiHQ My thought process on seeing this:
oh cool illustrative image, yes exactly 👍
"We're building tools to help you" oh no it's some corpo account using it to say "come inside our walls, our lock-in is the good kind" 😮‍💨
Oh wait it's Kagi, they probably actually mean it 🎉

[Nikhil Pahwa @nixxin]

More bad news for mobile phone users in India (after SIM binding): Our government is mandating a government app (sanchar saathi) on every new phone, permanently, Reuters reports.

Will be pushed to your phone via OTA. New smartphones need to have it. Users cannot delete it. This is a first. India has never before required an unremovable state app on every device. Russia does btw, with its MAX Messenger (started September 2025).

A few comments regarding this:
1. Sanchar Saathi is a lost phone tracker, but if it gets embedded with no possibility of removal, it becomes a government tracker on your device.

IF the government is allowed to get away with this, what’s next? A mandatory digital ID app? Digiyatra forcefully installed on each device? An app that disables VPNs or tracks your app and browser history? An app that sends copies of your messages to the government once a month?

Once the OS layer is opened to the state, it doesn’t close.

2. Legally, one can argue that your mobile phone is your personal space, and this is an invasion of your personal space.

It’s where we have our most private conversations. Exchange sensitive information with people we trust.

How do we know this app isn’t used to access files and messaging on our device, which is unencrypted on device? Or a future update won’t do that? This is clearly an invasion of our privacy.

3. Remember how the government exempt itself from much of the Data Protection Law. This explains why.

The Data Protection Law will make private companies more accountable and the Indian government less accountable.

4. Bloatware is already an issue with some phones (It’s why I don’t use Samsung). Now there’s more, and this time the government is forcing bloatware. I guess we’ll all have to root our phones now. When you buy a phone with bloatware, you're choosing to buy it with bloatware. This is different.

5. The way things work with India’s Department of Telecom, there was no public consultation, the order wasn’t disclosed. Just forced. This is dictatorial in nature. If they get away with this, more will follow.

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

@mullvadnet > people’s private lives will move from an AI detection to being examined by employees at a new EU center

Das Leben der Anderen 2026, the sequel where we realize we learnt no lessons. Coming soon to theatres near you!

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

@slimjimmy @dlwiest As someone who's been a cheap third world freelancer, fwiw, it makes me angry too.

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

@FFmpeg FFmpeg is not peak because it has to be lower down holding everything up

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

@tsoding This man knows ragebaiting like it's an art form 👌

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

@f3ew @gnurag Approximating 1.4 to 1.5 seems like such a weird decision even given that. Almost a parody of the "dumb Americans" stereotype, as if to say "numbers that end in 5s and 0s are non-scary, so let's go with one of those, even when there's already a decimal point".

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

Already happened once with a high end laptop that came with a broken seal - delivery guy tried to convince me it was no big deal at all! My parents might have believed it and then wondered why it was performing like crap, with who-knows-what components replaced inside.

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

Does @amazonIN have a raccoon problem with their warehouses or something? Not the first time a package has arrived looking like this, and with no seal to ensure the product is authentic either. Can't trust them with any big ticket purchases anymore. #trustthermocline

[SundaraRaman @digital_carver]

The one thing @amazon had going for it was support, and they've completely dropped the ball on that too. After spending thousands on them this year and with a Prime membership, today I learn that "Chat with us" = bot, "Talk to us" = bad IVR bot that doesn't even list my options.