Vinay

Aiming to be above avg at one thing at a time

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

Self Reflection

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

Self Doubt

(Wrote something in Hindi after a very long time. I hope I do this more often)

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

@PayJ_93 Aah yes! Have already done it couple of times and look forward to explore more just by walking!

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

In Berlin for the next month 🇩🇪
open to recommendations or hidden gems!

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

Continuing the series of being God’s strongest soldier this year.

When travelling internationally, you generally get a 23-25 kg check-in baggage limit and a 7-12 kg hand/cabin baggage limit depending on the airline.

While the limits are strict for check-in baggage, they aren’t always strictly checked for hand baggage. This is becoming stricter now for both domestic and international flights, which is fair, but they almost never ask you to put your backpack together with your hand baggage to check the total weight. At least for me, it never happened on all three of my previous international trips. They checked the hand baggage and ignored the backpack.

Now, when I was travelling to Germany on 1st July on a 3:30 AM Qatar Airways flight, the unthinkable happened.

They asked me to put both the hand baggage and my backpack together on the weighing scale.

Voila.

It was 15 kg.

Qatar allows 7 kg for cabin baggage, and here I was with 8 kg extra.

I’ll keep it short, but the staff advised me to give some things to people who might be outside the airport. I told him I had no one and no other solution.

I asked how much I would have to pay, and he immediately stopped me and said,

“Sir, it would be too much and totally not worth it.”

I still asked.

$40 for every extra kg.

That came to $320.

I was genuinely shocked.

While I was disappointed with the situation, I wasn’t alone.

Apparently, Qatar Airlines surprised almost everyone. Around 90% of the passengers were told the exact same thing:

“Shuffle the weights and come back. Then join the same long queue again.”

I went to a corner of the airport and realised the situation might not be as bad as it seemed.

I’ve always been a huge fan of cargo pants with multiple big pockets, and fortunately I was also wearing a shirt with two pockets.

I removed all the heavy but small items from my backpack: my MacBook charger, power bank, electric toothbrush, protein bars, etc.

I filled every single pocket I had.

2 front pockets.
2 back pockets.
2 cargo pockets.
2 shirt pockets.
Even my sling bag.

At that point, I was just hoping that even if I could reduce the amount I had to pay by half, I’d be satisfied. Otherwise, the only option left was to throw away things that were worth less than what I’d have to pay.
Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about the money anymore.

I was more worried about somehow making it to my flight because after all this reshuffling, I had to join the check-in queue from the back again.

Somehow, I managed to reduce both my hand baggage and backpack to 8 kg, which they didn’t complain about the second time.

When I joined the queue again, there were around 15-20 people ahead of me, and all of them were there for the second time as well.

Unfortunately, my check-in baggage had now crossed 27 kg, while the limit was 25 kg, so I still had to pay $80 (2 × $40) to make it through.

So, the point of this rant is…

Avoid Qatar Airways if you absolutely don’t want to go through this situation, especially if you’re someone who travels with two cabin bags (a cabin bag and a backpack) that together exceed 7 kg. If this happened to me and almost everyone else on the same flight, it might happen to you too.

Or…

The simpler solution is to avoid travelling with two cabin bags and just keep everything within the allowed limits.

I still think it’s unfair to weigh the backpack as well because I personally haven’t experienced this before.

And finally…

Always wear cargo utility pants while travelling.

You never know when they’ll save you.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

By that point I was already more than 15 days into this exhausting process.

I had spent countless hours traveling, coordinating repairs, following up with service centers, and trying to stay productive while working on a backup machine.

At that stage, I didn’t want to spend any more time calculating costs, logistics, or savings.

I just wanted my life back.

So I approved the repair at Apple BKC.

Thankfully, the MacBook was repaired and ready for pickup within two days.

I brought it home, set everything up from scratch, which was a painful process and got back to work.

I thought that was the end of it.

It wasn’t.

About a month later, while traveling, I opened my MacBook for a video call and discovered that the camera had completely stopped working.

Again.

I ran diagnostics.

The hardware appeared to be present, but macOS simply wasn’t recognizing the camera properly.

At this point, I genuinely started wondering whether God had put me on his strongest soldiers list this year because I couldn’t think of any other explanation for why I was going through this torture.

I also started questioning whether software might have been responsible for more of these issues than I had originally assumed.

Anyway, I took the MacBook back to Apple BKC and explained the problem.

Their solution was simple: format the MacBook and hope it fixes the issue.

I thought I would cry.

After everything I had already gone through, the thought of setting up my entire development environment, applications, settings, and workflows all over again was incredibly frustrating.

But I had no other option.

So they formatted it.

And to their credit, it fixed the camera issue.

Then I asked a simple question.

“What if a future software update causes the same issue again? Or breaks something else?”

The response genuinely shocked me.

“I’ve already installed the latest version. Please don’t install any more updates for now.”

Seriously?

Did anyone ever imagine hearing that from a technician working for a company worth over $4 trillion?

A company that built its reputation on software and hardware working seamlessly together?

When I started searching online, I realized I wasn’t alone.

There are countless reports from users experiencing serious issues after software updates, including devices getting stuck in boot loops, becoming unusable, or developing strange hardware-related behavior.

The whole reason I’m sharing this story is because of how pathetic Apple’s software has become.

There are so many bugs and issues that I have to work around on a daily basis across Apple devices. I never imagined Apple would become the company that people associate with unstable software experiences.

Years ago, I would’ve laughed if someone told me Apple would be competing with Microsoft for the title of Most Annoying Software Mankind Has Ever Written.”

Spoiler: Microsoft is still winning for now.

Anyway, here are my learnings from this experience:

• Always, and I mean always, buy extended warranty for products worth over ₹1 lakh.

I had a panel issue with my Sony TV worth over ₹1 lakh, and thanks to the extended warranty, it was fixed free of cost. Otherwise, I would’ve probably considered buying a new TV instead of paying for the repair.

Yes, I really do think I’m on God’s strongest soldiers list this year.

• Especially for Apple products, buy AppleCare+ for your MacBook. No exceptions.

A single repair bill can cost tens of thousands of rupees.

• Have a decent backup laptop or system available.

Most people use company-issued laptops, so if their personal machine dies, life goes on. But if you’re someone like me who works primarily on a personal laptop, having a backup machine can save you from a lot of stress, lost productivity, and frustration.

That’s it.

I’m still using the same MacBook today, but that’s entirely because of the hardware, not the software.

I might join the dark side (Linux) if things don’t improve in the future.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

I would like to share an incident that happened with my MacBook in April. I want to share it as a learning for others when purchasing a high-ticket item, especially Apple products.

For context, I bought my MacBook Pro M3 Max in June 2024 for around ₹3 lakh.

I had never faced any issues with any of my other Apple products until one fine day in April this year when I sat down at my desk to start work and my MacBook refused to wake up.

At first, I thought the battery might have died. When I opened the laptop, I saw the Apple logo showing up, so I plugged in the charger and waited for the login screen to appear as usual.

To my surprise, the login screen never showed up.

The MacBook would turn on, show the Apple logo, turn off, turn on again, show the logo, and repeat the same cycle endlessly.

I started worrying that this might be a software issue. I tried diagnosing it in every way possible, but nothing helped. I couldn’t even get Safe Mode to work.

I then called Apple Support, and the executive asked me to try a series of troubleshooting steps. Nothing worked.

She advised me to visit the nearest Apple service center so they could determine whether it was a software issue or a hardware issue.

She also told me that since the MacBook wasn’t very old and the warranty had only recently expired, she would try to get it repaired without any cost and that I wouldn’t have to pay anything other than the diagnostic charges.

My nearest center was Unicorn Services, an Apple Authorized Service Provider.

To perform the diagnostic test, they charged ₹3,000, which was non-refundable. They asked me to leave the laptop with them and told me they would get back to me in 3-4 working days with the root cause and a repair quote.

Thankfully, I had a backup ASUS ROG laptop with a Ryzen 5 processor and 24GB RAM, so I thought I would be able to manage my work while my MacBook was at the service center.

A couple of days later, I received an email.

The quote was ₹65,000.

Their proposed fix was to replace the main logic board and the Touch ID assembly.

Meanwhile, the Apple executive who had been assuring me throughout the process that I likely wouldn’t have to pay for the repair informed me that management had declined the request.

So now I had to pay.

To avoid spending such a huge amount, I started exploring other options.

I took my MacBook to a third-party repair shop to get a second opinion. I submitted the laptop in the hope that they could fix it without me having to pay the amount quoted by Unicorn.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have a technician readily available, so they told me someone would inspect it in a couple of business days and then provide a diagnosis.

While all of this was happening, I was trying to work from my Windows laptop.

To be fair, most of my frustration wasn’t because of Windows software itself but because of the overall hardware experience. Battery life, thermals, standby behavior, trackpad, speakers, and overall usability reminded me exactly why I had switched to a MacBook in the first place.

That said, the software was annoying as hell too.

I quickly remembered why I never wanted to go back to using Windows full-time.

The repair shop kept delaying the diagnosis, and eventually I got frustrated.

I decided to take the MacBook directly to Apple’s flagship store in BKC, assuming they would have the best technicians available.

They ran diagnostics again and arrived at exactly the same conclusion.

Replace the main logic board and Touch ID.

The diagnosis was the same. The bill wasn’t.

They quoted ₹73,000.

Yes, ₹8,000 more than Unicorn Services.

I honestly wasn’t expecting Apple’s own flagship store to charge more than an Apple Authorized Service Center.

Most people would have collected the MacBook and taken it back to Unicorn to save the money.

I didn’t.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

I genuinely thought this event was meant to be a title reveal for the movie, not a nonstop ad-fest by both the organizers and the streaming platform. I tried to sit through it, but I’m giving up now.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

I have been using transparent toiletry bags with zip for over 2 years now. I put all my electronic peripherals in it and i just remove it from the bag and lay it inside the box. The bags i use accommodate a lot of things actually compared to what i am seeing in the image. Maybe you can check them out on amazon.
Never had issues because of them. I sometimes have to take 2 such bags so I can’t go back to taking things out and putting it back while trying to catch a connecting flight.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

For me, it’s the keyboard. It always has been the keyboard. If I use Google Keyboard, the emojis aren’t the system ones and they look bad in chats. My typing speed and accuracy have been halved since I switched to iPhone.

Just to get that fast typing feeling back, I’m thinking of having a secondary Android phone which i will use for chatting. I’m too deep into the Apple ecosystem, and there are still some pros of the iPhone that I’d like to keep.

[Anushka @Kulfei]

every fuckingggg dayyy i regret switching from android to iphone.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

Since I updated all of my Apple devices to the latest OS 26, I’ve been experiencing numerous bugs across all of them. My MacBook has the fewest issues, but my iPhone and iPad are the most affected.

The random brightness dimming on the iPhone takes the cake, it lowers the brightness even when there’s no change in ambient light. It also feels like my maximum brightness has decreased since the update.

The iPad often gets stuck on the call screen whenever I receive a call, and it stays there, draining the battery unless I manually lock it and turn off the display.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

Update on this:
The printer finally got delivered after I called them every single day and even asked for a refund. Their response was always, “We’ll check with the logistics team and get back to you,” but they never actually did. The printer was never even delivered anywhere, yet the courier person had the audacity to mark it as delivered.

I had to email their grievance officer and even threaten to file a complaint with the National Consumer Helpline before they started taking it seriously. As a result, I received my doorstep delivery the very same day.

I genuinely hope they learn their lesson about partnering with such a pathetic courier service when there are far more reliable and established options available.

That said, I’m not going to let this single incident affect my opinion of Robu, since it was primarily an issue with their courier partner. I’ve already placed another order for filaments on Robu (had some points to use), and this time the delivery partner is Bluedart, so hopefully the experience will be much better.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

I cancelled my 3D printer order from Amazon and decided to buy it from Robu after reading all the positive reviews about their good service. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the worst experience I’ve ever had.

I placed the order and soon received a notification from their logistics partner, Shree Anjani Courier Services (never heard of them). The delivery guy called me and asked me to come downstairs to collect the package myself because the driver had a broken arm. He told me to “just get on with it” since the driver couldn’t deliver it to my doorstep. I politely asked him to deliver it upstairs, but he said it might take 2–3 days to assign another person. I told him I was fine with the delay, but he seemed annoyed.

I raised a complaint with the Robu team, and they assured me that they would make sure the order was delivered to my doorstep.

Cut to five days later, I received a message from Robu saying that the order had been delivered and that I should check with my neighbours or security guard. The whole point of raising a complaint was to avoid exactly this situation, and yet it still happened. The craziest part? My security guard confirmed there is no delivery in my name.

Now I’m stuck in an awkward position where I have to request a refund, not knowing how this will turn out. If this were Amazon, I would’ve been able to either cancel the order before the delay or get a quick refund for a non-delivered package.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

Might be, but I’d rather avoid companies that work with unheard logistics partners and don’t have proper customer support. Robu does have one, though, so I’ll wait for them to resolve it.

As for settling fast, the delivery guys themselves offered the option to reassign it and deliver later. 3D printers aren’t lightweight items (this one weighs around 20–25 kg) so it’s not something just anyone can lift easily. I was also out of town at the time, so I didn’t want my dad to go down and handle it.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

I cancelled my 3D printer order from Amazon and decided to buy it from Robu after reading all the positive reviews about their good service. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the worst experience I’ve ever had.

I placed the order and soon received a notification from their logistics partner, Shree Anjani Courier Services (never heard of them). The delivery guy called me and asked me to come downstairs to collect the package myself because the driver had a broken arm. He told me to “just get on with it” since the driver couldn’t deliver it to my doorstep. I politely asked him to deliver it upstairs, but he said it might take 2–3 days to assign another person. I told him I was fine with the delay, but he seemed annoyed.

I raised a complaint with the Robu team, and they assured me that they would make sure the order was delivered to my doorstep.

Cut to five days later, I received a message from Robu saying that the order had been delivered and that I should check with my neighbours or security guard. The whole point of raising a complaint was to avoid exactly this situation, and yet it still happened. The craziest part? My security guard confirmed there is no delivery in my name.

Now I’m stuck in an awkward position where I have to request a refund, not knowing how this will turn out. If this were Amazon, I would’ve been able to either cancel the order before the delay or get a quick refund for a non-delivered package.

[Shantanu Goel @shantanugoel]

If you've been thinking of getting into 3d Printing, now is a good time. Just saw Robu has a good sale.

Bambulab A1 mini for 16.5k and A1 for 25k are awesome entry points into 3d printing.

P1S combo at 62k is the best value for money.

PS: I don't have any affiliation to robu
PPS: I dont know if this is a real sale or because bambu asked them to follow their guided pricing, but still good pricing none the less.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

At this point, I feel WhatsApp is competing with Microsoft Teams to see who can earn the most hate from me.

MS Teams has already been annoying me in my professional life with impactful bugs like being unable to send an image in chat (one of many) and now WhatsApp is frustrating me in my personal life, where even a simple message with a link fails to send properly. It removes the message and sends only the link instead.

WhatsApp once had a really great product, but it seems to be drifting away from that notion. I don’t know how common or specific this issue is, but in my decade of using WhatsApp, I’ve never been this annoyed.

[Shantanu Goel @shantanugoel]

This reminds me of something I tell a lot of my engineers.

Always write down things first, and then call to discuss if needed.

Writing down that idea, or the thought, or what you want to ask, many times gives you that clarity yourself without even needing to reach out to someone.

And if you still need to, it helps you articulate it better where the other person will be able to understand and contribute meaningfully as well.

A lot of the times I hear "I had this idea that I told people about, and nobody listened. Now this is a big billion $ thing being built". Well, you should have written it down and people would have paid heed to it.

Recently we had the "voice-centric" app Airchat by Naval. It was unique and I loved it for that since something new was being tried out. But it fizzled out soon enough because voice is easy to use, but much harder to consume.

When you hear those podcasts, the density of information retained is exponentially lower than if you read the same thing in 1/5th of the time. It seems useful if you are doing it on a commute, but very wasteful if you are sitting up and watching it on its own.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

@shantanugoel Gotcha, thanks for sharing! Didn’t know that.

[Ankur Sharma @ankursharma1493]

Starting Docsmin from today!
An open-sourced platform to help startups and dev tools build, manage and keep their documentation up to date!

More details soon!

[Orange Book 🍊📖 @orangebook]

The more insecure you are, the more you feel like showing your superiority; strong people don't pick fights in the streets, smart people don't argue unnecessarily, wealthy people don't show off what they can afford, happy people don't tell you how you should live your life.

[Vinay @remoteengineeer]

Amazon started adding marketplace fee in the order total before placing the order. It was 5rs for the last 2 orders for me.
So, these practices are really becoming a norm now?