nidan

imagining freedom, fairness and progress // bylines @theprintindia @thewire_in

rt=/=endorsements and opinions personal.

[nidan @nidanbleets]

jp morgan had an art history degree, you dont need an mba to cut it

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

The future for mothers who have to carry the domestic mental load is bright and filled with agents

[Samar Halarnkar @samar11]

I thought I had done everything required under Karnataka’s SIR

After online/offline detective work, helped by neighbours on WhatsApp, I tracked down 2002 voting details for myself & my mother Both our names appeared on the draft roll on 24 Aug

I heaved a sigh of relief
🧵 1/12

[nidan @nidanbleets]

the future is increasingly getting closer and closer to begging an llm

[Avi @avikrishna]

anna's archive has a very sweet message to LLMs who read its site :)

https://t.co/yWz63m1Nt1

[The George Bush Era @spymain123]

Bush on Al Gore in the 2000 election:

“He’s a good campaigner and he’s very confident, so confident he thinks he invented the internet. But if the guy was so smart, how come every internet address starts with W?

[nidan @nidanbleets]

*the* worst side effect of AI on finding jobs is now going to be companies expecting you to have all the skills of a junior worker without any of the certainty and support of being one while conveying that credibly in a sea of AI-generated applications

[Arvind Narayanan @random_walker]

This week I had the honor of speaking to Princeton’s entire incoming undergraduate class to address their AI anxieties. I had three messages for them — good news, bad news, and a note of optimism. Here’s a condensed version.

The good news
We have enough evidence now to conclude that the shrill predictions of rapid, massive job loss were misplaced. Even in a field like software engineering where AI has been rapidly adopted, its effect has been to shift, not replace the role of the human (see the “decide-execute-deliver” framework https://t.co/8ZofeCz8yS)

Similarly, the panic about what to major in is also misplaced. There will be enduring demand for computer science, philosophy, and just about everything else. (In fact, AI companies hiring philosophers has been a big recent trend.)

The bad news
AI seems to help senior people much more than juniors. I can use AI for coding because I spent 25 years learning how to code, which lets me supervise coding agents effectively. (See my post on the “growth cycle” vs the “dependence spiral” https://t.co/79icF9hSKY)

You are in a bind — you can’t offload your skill-building to AI, but you’ll graduate into a market where employers will expect you to get work done with AI. We never faced this dilemma. As a result we haven’t figured out how to revamp our classes to help you do both. You’ll have to help us figure it out. And you’ll need to somehow resist the constant temptation to turn to the shortcut machine.

The hope
My point is not that AI is bad for learning. It’s an incredibly flexible tool. Is the internet good or bad for learning? Depends — are you using it to find research papers or waste time scrolling? I use AI every day for learning. The key is to use it to increase, not decrease your cognitive load. To learn deeper, not faster. There is no learning without the cognitive sweat. I try to make sure I’m mentally exhausted at the end of the day. I do feel that AI lets me push myself harder than I ever could before, and I have a vision that as AI continues to advance it will enable human-AI “co-superintelligence“. (I talked about this at the end of my ICML keynote. https://t.co/ZA5TBDypfl)

[Andrew Piper @_akpiper]

I'll say it out loud: the fact that admissions officers now have to read heaps of AI slop is karma for inventing the worst genre ever and subjecting millions of kids to having to write in it.

[nidan @nidanbleets]

big talk from an institute whose alums are chetan bhagat and the doglapan guy

[ray🪄 @arrerayy]

long live student unity!

[Aroon Deep @AroonDeep]

US Embassy Chennai. Looks like CMRL has already seceded from the union

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

I can’t explain it, but the air literally gets heavier around 6pm on Sundays. You can feel the Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Excel energy approaching.

[nidan @nidanbleets]

@Enbyyreturns also a fair few of them would be happy to go to a t20/30 in the us but would take ashoka over a t100

[nidan @nidanbleets]

@Enbyyreturns full price for a us undergrad is like 3 to 4 crores, ashoka is like 10x cheaper + option of going to us for masters anyways

[Saket Gokhale @SaketGokhale]

VERY IMPORTANT:

Delhi Police has admitted in the SC that facial recognition technology was deployed during the Jantar Mantar protests.

Now for facial recognition to make a “match”, there needs to be an underlying database of photos+details of citizens. So where did Delhi Police get that database from?

In response to an RTI of mine in 2020, the Election Commission admitted that it had shared the entire voter list WITH PHOTOS with Delhi Police during the Delhi riots investigation.

Interestingly, ECI’s own rules PROHIBIT sharing of photo electoral roll with ANY agency. And yet, the ECI broke its own rules in 2020 & handed over the data to Delhi Police.

Therefore:

👉 Did ECI supply voter lists with photos to Delhi Police for their facial recognition database during Jantar Mantar protests?

👉 What other agencies (Aadhaar, IT Dept, Transport Dept etc) have shared their database with Delhi Police to be used for facial recognition?

👉 If no agency has provided any data, how is Delhi Police managing to conduct facial recognition on EVERYONE (not just those with a criminal record) during protests?

There’s a reason that the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act has NOT yet been fully notified despite being passed by Parliament in Aug 2023 (THREE YEARS AGO).

It’s 2 simple questions really:

👉 Will the Delhi Police disclose what database it is using for facial recognition?

👉 Will ECI & other bodies confirm whether they’re still providing photo databases to Delhi Police?

[nidan @nidanbleets]

@vadakkus we are talking about the party that ran volvo JNNURM buses from trivandrum to kozhikode - atleast they didn't run this from pathanapuram to mananthavady

[sanjoy ghose @advsanjoy]

Josy Joseph in his latest book “Birth of a Nation” claims that while Nehru and Patel were trying to unite India, Jinnah and Savarkar were trying to instigate Princely States like Travancore not to join the Indian Union. He says it was “one of histories ironies” that both Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League endorsed the rights of states to resist integration. 😬🙄

[nidan @nidanbleets]

why not just have a congestion tax chargable at the gates of every tech park? use company ID cards to levy charges from them

[Chandra R. Srikanth @chandrarsrikant]

Bengaluru's Outer Ring Road firms' body rejects WFH, seeks halt on Rs 450-cr road revamp till metro opens

In a letter dated August 14 to GBA Chief Commissioner M Maheshwar Rao, accessed by Moneycontrol, ORRCA expressed “deep disappointment and serious concern” over reports that civic authority plans to commence white-topping works on ORR from October 2026.

The association said ORR supports more than 500 companies and 1.3 million employees and is among Bengaluru's major economic and technology corridors.

By @ChristinMP_

https://t.co/FSZLZL1LQe

[Sumukh Rao @RaoSumukh]

First in my bloodline to see McDonald's selling upvaas ka khaana 😭

[Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) @internetfreedom]

Before you upload your selfie to Har Ghar Tiranga this Independence Day, know the risks.

Your photo goes into a public gallery, visible to anyone against your name, alongside a certificate. To upload it, you hand over your mobile number & OTP, on a site reportedly built by a private company and hosted on AWS, with a privacy policy that falls seriously short.

The state gets goodwill. You carry the risk of a breach. We're filing an RTI and writing to the Ministry of Culture. Share this so others know before they participate.

#HarGharTiranga #DigitalRights

[Vijaita Singh @vijaita]

Breaking: Caste to be enumerated for the first time in Independent India, MHA notifies. “Caste” added to question number 10 on SC/ST. It will be an open column, enumerators to record caste as declared by respondents.
40 questions notified to include COVID vaccine details, Aadhaar, Passport,mobile number, bank account details to be recorded in second phase of Census.
I ✍️

https://t.co/6V9yirqAw9