Common Citizen

Seeking truth, spreading kindness. Inspired by Gandhi’s nonviolence, Ambedkar’s justice, Bhagat Singh’s rationalism, and Nehru’s vision of scientific temper.

[The Scientific Lens @LensScientific]

Zoom in far enough and the familiar world starts to disappear.

At the deepest level described by the Standard Model, quarks and leptons make up matter, while bosons include the particles responsible for interactions, alongside the Higgs boson.

[Jasveer Singh @jasveer10]

If you are poor, your chances of doing anything truly innovative are probably very low.

Not because they are less intelligent. Because poverty doesn't leave much room for innovation.

Creativity is a baseline for any innovation, and creativity's first principle is that your brain needs less chaos and more stability. That comes from being financially stable.

Poor people are always in that state. Their brain is always in chaos.

Think about someone from the middle class or lower middle class - Their brain is occupied with tomorrow's work, food, rent, children's fees, a medical emergency, and whether there will be enough money at the end of the month.

Now take someone financially secure - Their basic problems are already solved. They have the luxury of sitting somewhere and thinking about problems that don't need to be solved today.

What can I build? Why does this work this way? What will exist ten years from now? What can I spend three years working on even if it fails?

Both people may have exactly the same creative ability. But one has far more cognitive bandwidth to use it.

The same applies at the level of families, companies and entire countries. Poor countries rarely produce breakthrough innovation either.

A struggling company thinks about next month's payroll. A profitable company can spend millions experimenting with something that may never work.

A poor country spends its energy solving basic infrastructure, employment, food and housing. A rich country can spend billions on semiconductor research, new drugs, AI, space exploration and technologies with no immediate payoff.

This may be one reason why so much breakthrough innovation comes from rich countries like the US. And of course, exceptions are always there.

It's not that rich people are inherently smarter. Poverty makes failure expensive. Innovation requires the freedom to fail.

[blue @bluewmist]

People who spend long periods of time at home and slowly lose the desire to go outside often think they're just resting. But psychologically, many of them are experiencing something called mental rumination. It's a state where the brain starts slowing down while the number of thoughts inside keeps increasing and the motivation to do anything slowly disappears. The mind gets stuck in the past, worries about the future and burns itself out. This isn't laziness, it's a nervous system stuck in survival mode. And the longer it lasts, the more distant normal life begins to feel. And the difficult part is that you usually can't escape it through one massive burst of motivation. And sometimes,recovery starts with just one small step.

[Zyphor @Zyphorrl]

The Fourier transform runs inside every MRI machine, every audio compressor, every signal processor on earth. JPMorgan pays $350K to engineers who can derive it from scratch. There is one professor alive who explains it the way nobody else can.

His name is Gilbert Strang. MIT. The most brilliant mathematical mind of his generation. His textbook sits in over 10 million homes. No other person on earth holds this combination of depth and clarity in one head.

He opens with one confession.

The Fourier transform is unreasonably effective. It solves problems it was never designed for. The goal is not to compute it. The goal is to understand why it works at all.

Then the core idea. A periodic signal breaks into pure sine waves. Each with a frequency, amplitude, and phase. The transform finds all three simultaneously. A complicated signal in time becomes a simple picture in frequency.

Then 1807. Fourier invented the transform not for sound but for heat. How does warmth spread through a metal rod? In time the equation is a partial differential equation - hard. In frequency space it becomes ordinary - easy. Transform in, solve it, transform back.

Then convolution. Convolution in time equals multiplication in frequency. Filtering a signal, removing noise, compressing audio - all multiplication in frequency space. Without the transform: thousands of computations. With it: a few multiplications.

Then the delta function. Zero everywhere except one point where it is infinite. Integral equals one. Every mathematician in 1900 said it was not a function. Dirac used it anyway. It took 40 years to justify what engineers had been doing the whole time.

Watch the moment Strang shows that the Fourier transform of a delta function is a constant - every frequency in equal measure. The more concentrated in time, the more spread in frequency. This is the uncertainty principle. Not quantum physics. A theorem about any signal at all.

A signal processing engineer I know rewatched this before their first project at Apple. Said it was the first time the Fourier transform felt like a change of coordinates rather than a formula to memorize.

Free on YouTube, MIT OpenCourseWare.

bookmark this and watch later - after this lecture every sound, every image, and every signal will feel like a sum of sine waves waiting to be separated

[goma @soigomaa]

History is written by those who had power, not by those who were good. Winston Churchill deliberately starved millions of people because he believed them to be less than human. He let Bengalis die while stocking their grain. When Australia offered wheat and Canada offered grain as a free gift requiring no purchase, just shipping, he still blocked it. He sat in documented meetings and expressed no intention of letting millions of dying people interfere with his operations. Three million people died.
That man was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Not despite what he did, but while he was still doing it.
A man who died with the blood of millions on his hands, with a soul so rotten that whatever hell he ended up in probably still lingers with that stench, is remembered in statues, school curriculums, and Western nostalgia. His character is treated as a matter of perspective. It is not. It is a matter of truth

[Deep Psychology @DeepPsycho_HQ]

There will be an illiterate generation with zero attention span in the next 10 years. People will become more informed about everything but lack any depth of knowledge they won’t even have surface-level knowledge. With zero attention spans, it becomes very hard to explain things. Thanks to social media. The next pandemic is Brainrot.

[Bhavya @Bhavyaztwt]

> born in Finland
> studied at University of Helsinki
> created the Linux kernel at 21
> built Git because no existing tool was good enough
> accidentally became the backbone of servers, Android, cloud, supercomputers
> never chased fame, money, titles or hype
> stayed private, consistent, and brutally honest for decades
> still reviews code, still improves Linux, still avoids drama

Is Linus Torvalds the most underappreciated legend of the tech industry?

[asparagoid @asparagoid]

One of my strongest convictions is that the world is a giant machine constructed to humiliate you for not taking action. 3 quick examples:

- You're thinking of starting a business

The most stupid, 80 IQ, visionless, incompetent people are currently running businesses making millions of dollars. This applies to every domain of business. As you get more business experience, you see it more and more and more. Reality specifically installed these people to make it clear you have zero excuses

- You start running or lifting

Start running and you'll encounter much older, much fatter individuals passing you at great speed. Start lifting and you'll encounter absolute genetic disasters lifting twice what you can and looking infinitely better. Reality specifically installed these people to point out that you can go infinitely further if you put in even a fraction of the effort they did

- You want a girlfriend but are insecure

You walk the street and look closely at couples. The ugliest, balding, short, high-pitched voice, poor and otherwise "low status" infidels are walking around with girls who are in love with them. Reality specifically installed these people to point out that your fears and inaction has no logical basis in reality

---

This same thing applies everywhere, in all of life

Look carefully anywhere and you will see the same thing

Reality has been constructed carefully by a benevolent trickster God specifically to humiliate you for not taking action

The worst sin of all is inaction and lack of courage

Out of love, he finds every possible way to point out that even a tiny quantity of action can outperform almost everything. And makes that clear by showing that the most incompetent and ugly freaks succeed far beyond you when they keep taking basic steps forward

So you have no excuse at all

[Fathers Diary @Fathers_Diary]

As a man,

You're in the best time in history.

A time you can get rich doing what you love.

Here's what to do;

Study why selling to a woman is easier.

Study why big companies hire men with kids and in debt.

Study why the rich donate money to their local churches.

Study why celebrities are glorified and worshipped.

You'll understand how money moves, and you can;

1. Sell women Beauty

2. Sell men Lust

3. Sell parents Peace

4. Sell kids Dreams

5. Sell the rich Safety

6. Sell the broke Hope

7. Sell the old Youth

8. Sell the young Status

9. Sell the lonely Belonging

10. Sell the sick Miracles

11. Sell the healthy Fear

12. Sell the smart Shortcuts

13. Sell the dumb Validation

14. Sell the faithful Certainty

15. Sell the faithless Rebellion

16. Sell everyone Time

You can make so much money. Try either. You can’t go wrong.

Choose where money is.

[Dhanian 🗯️ @e_opore]

Linux is free
Ubuntu is free
Git is free
GitHub is free
GitHub Actions is free
GitLab is free
Docker is free
Kubernetes is free
Docker Compose is free
Podman is free
Helm is free
Minikube is free
Terraform is free
Ansible is free
Jenkins is free
Argo CD is free
NGINX is free
HAProxy is free
Traefik is free
Prometheus is free
Grafana is free
Loki is free
OpenTelemetry is free
Python is free
Go is free
Node.js is free

PostgreSQL is free
MySQL is free
MongoDB is free
Redis is free
AWS is free tier
GCP is free tier
Azure is free tier
VS Code is free
Postman is free
ChatGPT is free
Claude is free
Gemini is free
Perplexity is free
We are in the AI era.
What’s stopping you from becoming a DevOps engineer?

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

Underrated career advice: Choose to work in a place with high talent density early in your career.

You tend to rise or fall to the level of the people around you. When you work with exceptional people, you absorb their standards, pace, frameworks, and instincts almost through osmosis.

High-talent environments compress learning cycles and force you to grow faster than you would on your own. They change your opportunity set and rewire your brain. The compounding effect of a few years in that environment can change the trajectory of your life.

Early in your career, there’s probably nothing more valuable than choosing the room with the highest talent per square foot.

[Varun Guru @iamvarunguru]

This Indian startup just made history.

A tiny team of 8 from Bhubaneswar just proved to the world that they can manufacture pharmaceuticals in near space.

And they did all of this in just 6 months.

But why they are doing it is the huge part.

Take the example of Keytruda, which is one of the world's biggest cancer drugs.

Patients need hundreds of milligrams of it.

But squeezing that much medicine into a tiny injection is extremely difficult.

Because at high concentrations these giant protein molecules can clump together and the liquid becomes thick.

Kinda like adding too much protein powder to a tiny glass of milk.

But in microgravity, something magical happens.

Those same molecules can form much more uniform crystals - potentially allowing scientists to pack the same amount of medicine into a much smaller volume.

And the insane part is - you don't need to send the drugs into space every time you need to create a new batch.

In fact, Serendipity has proved that you can create like a tiny "mother batch" in space.

And use that same batch to create much larger batches on Earth.

They've already tested their autonomous pharma factory during their near space mission - while safely recovering the samples.

And the fact that Serendipity did all of this with a team of 8 people out of Bhubaneshwar with a tiny budget is kinda crazy.

Next step: Manufacturing in Space

[Ajai Chowdhry @AjaiChowdhry]

We quit our jobs.

There were six of us — Shiv Nadar, Arjun Malhotra, Yogesh Vaidya, Subhash Arora, D.S. Puri and me.

It was 1976. Startups were not really a thing in India. Venture capital did not exist. Banks were not exactly lining up to lend money to six young men with an idea and no collateral.

And computers? Most people had barely heard of them.

But we believed the microprocessor was going to change the world.

So we took the plunge.

Between the six of us, we managed to put together ₹1.87 lakh. We borrowed, pooled our savings and, in one case, even sold a car.

Our first office was a small barsati in Golf Links, Delhi.

We called ourselves Microcomp. We wanted to build an Indian computer.

There was just one problem.

We didn’t have a manufacturing licence.

That eventually led us to UP Electronics Corporation. They had the licence. We had the technology. And that partnership gave birth to Hindustan Computers Limited — HCL.

But perhaps the most audacious part of the story was what happened next.

We started selling a computer that was still being designed.

We had a brochure and a mock-up of the machine. That was it.

Our sales teams went across India, knocking on doors and convincing businesses to buy into a technology they had never used before.

The first orders came from IIT Kharagpur and IIT Madras.

Then came the harder part — convincing businesses.

In Coimbatore, we were up against DCM DP, a much bigger and more established name. I still remember sitting in the reception area of Premier Mills while the DCM team made its pitch.

We went in second.

And we won.

That one order gave us five more. Then ten.

That was HCL in those early years: not having the biggest balance sheet, the biggest brand or the easiest path — but finding a way.

We were restless.

We looked for gaps. We hired people who had what we called a “cowboy” spirit. We believed that technology had to be made useful and accessible, not intimidating.

And we kept moving.

From building India’s early indigenous computers to taking our business to Singapore when HCL was just four years old. From a small room in Delhi to a global technology company.

When I look back at 50 years, I think about six people sitting together in 1976, wondering if this crazy idea could actually work.

I think about a barsati.

A brochure for a computer that did not yet exist.

And the courage to knock on the next door.

That, to me, is the real HCL story.

50 years later, the technology has changed beyond anything we could have imagined.

But the spirit remains the same:

Dream big. Take the risk. And above all, Just Aspire.

Happy 50th, HCL.

What a journey it has been.

#AjaiChowdhry #JustAspire #HCL #50yearsofHCL #Nostalgic #Founders

[Wolf @WolfprwX]

Those who cling to things like fools get what they deserve 😂

[Sanjay Ghemawat @Sanjay_Ghemawat]

I am excited to announce that I, along with my long-time colleagues (@JeffDean, @OriolVinyalsML, @quocleix), are founding Discovery Loop (@DiscoLoopAI), a public benefit corporation. We aim to automate the process of discovery and progress in machine learning, science, and engineering. The four of us have helped build some of the world’s most used products and infrastructure. We’re now excited to turn our attention to this ambitious endeavor. ♾

[Bilgehan Avser @bavser]

Introducing Applied Electrodynamics.

What would the world look like if we could see beyond visible light, across the entire electromagnetic spectrum?

The way waves interact with matter, at every wavelength, encodes far more than just shape and color. It reveals internal structure, temperature, chemical composition, and more: a whole layer of the physical world that's invisible to us today.

That's what we're building at Applied Electrodynamics: the infrastructure to fully perceive the physical world.

WaveSight is the first piece of the puzzle. It brings radio frequencies into human perception, revealing the internal structure of objects behind opaque layers. Designed for construction crews, industrial inspectors, and security personnel.

See through walls: https://t.co/Fae9wad4oW

[🍂 @Lovandfear]

Keep your problems smaller than your life. A flat tire is a flat tire. A bad meeting is a bad meeting. A canceled flight is just an extra two hours. These things become catastrophes when you let them. But they stay manageable when you remember the depth of your real life- the people you love, the work you care about, the beautiful years still ahead. Zoom out. Fit your reaction to the size of the problem.
— Unknown

[Eva Ai @Eva200699]

表达能力差，正在拖你的后腿

2019年MIT教授帕特里克·温斯顿有一场1小时的《如何说话》讲座

播放量超过1900万，很多观点现在依然很实用

[Common Citizen @Human0169]

@arya_Arunlodhi @ajitanjum Bsdk sabse pahle tere jaise ki honi chahiye, tere jaisi ki Sankhya badhne se desh me bhayankar akal agya hai!

[aether @bluewdrift]

What you do in private always shows in public. Reading shows in conversations. Your workouts show in your physique. Your diet shows in your energy. Your discipline shows in your confidence. Your focus shows in your results. You are what you cultivate when no one is watching.