Kevin

Bounded rationalist who enjoys mathematics, walks and the occasional penmanship.

[Kevin @kevindave__]

@gtviraj Let me be the breaker of some guardedly good news, the process of learning forever is going to remain incomplete. There’s so much to do! :)

[Kevin @kevindave__]

@TheReal_Manas tu sais.

[Kevin @kevindave__]

@yash87845 2, 10.

[Neoliberal Akiho ✨🇺🇳🇨🇦 @NeoliberalAkiho]

I do not understand why communists think infinite growth is impossible. We can totally do near infinite growth. There’s literally nothing stopping us.

[Enemy Slayer @EnemySlayer24_7]

Dharmendra Pradhan has single-handedly sabotaged the BJP's prospect among first-time voters in the upcoming general elections. This generation has no memory of Congress's misrule and will vote on contemporary issues

PM selective silence on these issues was further disllusioning

[Kevin @kevindave__]

@Gauri_the_great

[Kevin @kevindave__]

@PSG_Hausen @thefateofmd @wohwki Fair, but Doué isn’t half the player Lamine is. With all due respect to Doué

[jss @jsensarma]

somewhat different take on CBSE drama - core problem is Modiji's preference to do big bold things ("Go Big or Go Home" style) that sometimes backfires spectacularly.

why so?

because other issues - incompetence, crony-ism, corruption - are endemic. there's no silver bullet. the primary mitigation at scale is to go slow and avoid major disasters like this.

let's look at public's favorite culprits:

1. the firm (Coempt) was fly-by-night: well not really. its a 25 yr old firm. it has 170 employees and you can check their profiles on LI. it is not a shady successor to Globarena. these are sibling firms of same age. it's Directors are legit (two of them run a decades old reputed Medical Diagnostic firm, Prof Sadagopan is the new one).

2. corruption/cronyism is unique in this case: lol. how else do we think Govt. business is acquired without a healthy side of crony-ism or bribes? why are no VC funded startups chasing Govt. edu business?

Coempt hired Prof. Sadagopan as Director. Why might that be. Well he was deep in GoI - involved in many high profile digitization initiatives. Of course - he was bought on-board to acquire more Govt. business via contacts. Wouldn't you do that if you were running the business?

(hell - even our most highly valued desi AI startup has a Govt. insider at the top (no ding on him - he's a legend). this is how the world works)

3. it was a process problem and blacklisting would have solved the issue. sorry - Coeempt and Globarena are legally different firms. how would you do this do this legally?

4. the company is uniquely incompetent: with due respect - i would invite everyone to check out their developer profiles on LI. this is the garden variety tier-3 Indian software firm run at low cost and competence. the kind of firm the now famous 19-yr old hacker (full credit to him) will not touch with a long-pole when he grows up.

incompetence is the norm in such firms and peer firms would be no different.

5. the minister is uniquely incompetent: well he certainly seems like a strong no-hire - but can i ask what NIC, Cert-IN etc were doing? does anyone even work here? if the responsibility of checking security of prominent Govt. sites is not with these departments - then whose is it?

ie. - the circle of incompetence is all pervasive in Babudom. CBSE, this minister - are just par for the course.

6. hiring TCS would have fixed the issue: dear brother and sisters - have you forgotten the new IT Tax portal and the fiasco that was unleashed by Infosys a few years back?

fact: there is no company or state in India that has rolled out OSM at this scale. Ask chatGPT. other rollouts have been much smaller. so any company one hired would not have seen the problem at this scale. (also see below)

7. this is a simple problem, if only for incompetence and corruption.

cyber-security goofup is certainly a self-inflicted wound. but scanning 2 million exam booklets in a short burst is not easy or cheap. you need a lot of machines at once. you need a lot of reasonably competent people administering that process at once. then you have no use for most of them for next 11 months.

this is the equivalent of Christmas or Diwali shopping traffic for Amazon and Flipkart. scale makes problems hard. sudden bursts makes them much harder.

-----

which brings me back to the initial point - a major root cause of the problem here is an operational one. one simply should not rollout stuff at this scale at once.

roll it out in one state. roll it out for one exam paper only. learn, fix, repeat. (chatgpt indicated states like Punjab had done that). slow velocity mitigates blast-radius of rank incompetence.

you cannot fix all the tier-3 software firms in the country suddenly. you cannot change how Govt. business is acquired through a central diktat. but you can, much more easily, ask officials to go slow. (hell - your Babus love to go slow).

while I can certainly see that commission-maxxing also may have led to a sudden large contract and rollout - a more obvious big big reason is that Mudiji just loves to go BIG. (not something that needs elaboration).

culture percolates down. every Minister would be answering Mudiji what BIG initiatives his ministry has done. And this was probably Pradhan-jis. Blew up big time.

so I dunno if he's gonna ask Pradhan to resign - when Pradhan was Go-Big-or-Go-Home-maxxing just like the PM loves. after all - is the PM going to fire himself now for Demonet or botched GST rollout or .. ?

[Kevin @kevindave__]

Alors, on peut mtn être rassuré parce que le vrai foot a un retour 🤗

[FCB World @forcabarca_ar]

🚨 لامين حاضر في تدريبات المنتخب الإسباني 🇪🇸

[Syel @syel_11]

Fini de faire semblant de s’intéresser au foot sans Yamal

[Kevin @kevindave__]

@av_bagged I really wanted Arsenal to win.

[Kevin @kevindave__]

@av_bagged It’s unfair how Dembele is going to get another Balon D’Or because of this.

[Kevin @kevindave__]

@yash87845 Same. PSG is an artificial team.

[Kevin @kevindave__]

every student’s first time reaction after solving polya’s urn 😅

[Historianunkil @SudsG5]

Solid expose on a textbook DMK / UPA style scam.

The GoI is still burying it's head in the sand, Modiji is gyaan phelaoing on hot weather but except Pradhan saying that this is a mistake and will be fixed, no action.

This is also UPA level hubris

[Kevin @kevindave__]

You still think Modi was being unscrupulous when he anointed himself the maha-maanav?

[Sidhant Sibal @sidhant]

Delhi

[Kevin @kevindave__]

@iiiniioluwa @deuzexmachinna Exactly your point you utter imbecile.

[Kevin @kevindave__]

@kukreja_abhinav Por que no los dos?