Srikanth

[Spandan Roy @talksports45]

A plot for average vs median of batsmen in test cricket with a criteria of minimum 6000 runs in the format. Just look at Sir Don Bradman, what an outlier he is. The nearest to him is Ken Barrington and look at the distance between them.
The likes of Atherton, McCullum, Stokes, Bairstow in the channel of inconsistency, with a relatively low average as well as median. And then there is that 50+ avg and 30+ median bracket with Smith, Sachin.

[Anchit Gupta @AnchitGupta9]

This image from Nun Kun immediately reminded me of one of the most remarkable helicopter rescues in #IAFHistory.

The technique looks almost unreal. There is no landing ground, so the pilot effectively creates one. One skid is placed against the mountain while the helicopter is held in a partial hover, with almost no margin for movement. Keeping a helicopter lightly balanced on its skids or wheels can itself spell disaster, especially with so little rotor-tip clearance and at such an altitude. It demands extraordinary judgement and control.

In June 1992, Sqn Ldr Pankaj Jaiswal and Sqn Ldr Pravin Kumar Sharma of 111 Helicopter Unit faced something strikingly similar during the Indo-British Panch Chuli expedition.

British mountaineer Stephen Venables had just made the first ascent of Panch Chuli V when, during the descent on 21 June, an abseil anchor failed. He fell about 80 metres, badly damaging his right knee, breaking his left ankle and injuring his chest. His companions somehow lowered him to a small tent platform at about 5,600 metres, over 18,000 ft, but getting him off the mountain by conventional means was virtually impossible.

The ordeal before the helicopter arrived was itself extraordinary. Venables had to be lowered some 400 metres down the mountain, a process that took around 12 agonising hours. By the time the party finally reached the tent platform, nearly 36 hours had passed since they had left their bivouac. In the days that followed, food and gas began running dangerously low, while an avalanche swept across part of the route being used by his companions. They were isolated, exhausted and rapidly running out of options.

The IAF responded, but the mountain was not cooperating. Jaiswal and Sharma made repeated attempts to reach the site through cloud and poor weather. When they finally managed to enter the enclosed basin below Panch Chuli V, there was still one fundamental problem, there was nowhere to land.

Victor Saunders, who was on the mountain, left an extraordinary description of what followed. The helicopter hovered close by while the climbers tried to understand the pilots' signals through the rotor wash. Dick Renshaw had to lie across the collapsed tents and equipment to stop them from being blown away, while Saunders physically held on to the injured Venables to prevent him sliding away in his sleeping bag. At 5,600 metres, they were also very close to the operating limits of the Alouette.

Then the pilots attempted what Saunders called a "half landing".

They placed one skid on the outer edge of the tiny tent platform while holding the rest of the helicopter clear of the mountain. The rotor tips were only inches from the snow-covered slope, and scarcely more above the heads of the men below. There was no winch. The aircraft therefore had to remain precariously held there while the badly injured Venables was physically pushed and hauled through the open door.

Even then, it nearly went wrong. As they struggled to get Venables aboard, the helicopter began to wander slightly and the co-pilot urgently gestured for them to hurry. In desperation, Venables put his broken ankle against the skid and pushed himself upwards, while Saunders heaved his other leg into the cabin. The door could not initially be closed. The helicopter wobbled away with Venables still not completely inside before his leg was finally drawn in and the Perspex door shut.

And then they flew him out.

The expedition report called it an "outstanding and very courageous piece of flying". The official citations were equally revealing. By then the wind had picked up, dark cloud surrounded the area and unpredictable cloud shifts were making an already marginal situation worse. With the slope offering no place to land, one pilot held the helicopter with its right skid touching the mountain while the other helped get the casualty aboard. Both Jaiswal and Sharma were subsequently awarded the Vayu Sena Medal.

Nun Kun itself has repeatedly demanded exceptional helicopter flying.

In 1979, Maj Gur Iqbal Singh Dhodi of 663 Squadron earned the Shaurya Chakra after landing amongst crevasses and enormous boulders at about 6,750 metres to evacuate a critically ill Japanese mountaineer.

In 1981, Capt Ranjit Singh Dev of 26 AOP Flight earned another Shaurya Chakra for a Nun Kun rescue in which the citation records the landing area at 23,800 ft, 800 ft above the aircraft's stated service ceiling. He even dropped his co-pilot at Advance Base Camp to reduce weight before going in alone, and subsequently returned for the remaining mountaineers.

Technology changes. The mountain does not. And sometimes, one skid is all the landing ground a helicopter pilot gets.

PS: The original photograph I had was badly washed out. I have used AI only to improve the contrast and make the slope, rotor-tip clearance and situation more visible.

@IAF_MCC

[The Kaipullai @thekaipullai]

Something extraordinary actually happened today.

Stuff so extraordinary, that even if it comes as a dream, you dismiss it as something that is impossibly improbable.

Thanks to your support and blessings, today I had the ultimate honor and privilege of having a conversation with our honorable Prime Minister on Mann Ki Baat about https://t.co/CIr1xkvilD

I still can't believe that he actually spoke to me, asked me about the website, its features and some questions on general history too. I am still in a daze.

For an amateur builder like me, i don't think there is a greater recognition or validation than this.

This conversation has given me enough motivation to take BharatRajya to the next level and make it the ideal history reference and visualization website for everyone.

Thank you @narendramodi ji, for encouraging people like us and inspiring us to achieve greater heights.

These is one conversation I will not forget in this lifetime. Or maybe even the next.

And rest assured sir, I won't let you down.

[Srikanth @srikanth_kv]

@xzx_slipknot Triple century with IPL Century and 5-wick hauls in Tests narrows it down to Gayle, Sehwag, Sanath.. Gayle's off No ODI WC... coz u said no to Sehwag it must be Sanath Jayasuriya

[Whitepilled India @Ind_Whitepill]

A stunning capture of the Vande Bharat Express traversing the Western Ghats between Bengaluru and Mangaluru. 🚆✨

[Anchit Gupta @AnchitGupta9]

This pic helped change the air war over Kargil. An IAF MiG-25 Foxbat took it in the third week of June 1999. And there is a reason to tell that story today. On 17 Aug 1981, 45 years ago, No. 102 Sqn was raised, beginning the MiG-25’s career in the IAF.

18 years later, the Foxbat was called upon to solve one of the most critical problems confronting the IAF in Kargil: accurately finding targets. It is also an important part of Safed Sagar that @NetflixIndia largely ignored.

Identifying Pakistani positions and fixing their precise coordinates had become a serious problem. The Army’s maps were dated and inadequate for extracting accurate coordinates. Newer Survey of India maps would only reach the troops towards the end of June.

The IAF therefore needed vertical aerial photography. It had the Avro 748, Jaguar, Canberra and MiG-25 available, but each had limitations.

The Avro was unsuitable for a hostile environment. Jaguars with Vicon cameras produced excellent low-level imagery, but operating low over Kargil meant exposure to SAMs. A No. 106 Sqn Canberra had already been struck by an Anza missile on its first reconnaissance sortie.

That left the MiG-25.

The Foxbat normally operated above 20 km at around Mach 2.4. Its 72-inch focal-length cameras offered enormous photographic coverage, while its Peleng-DM navigation system could associate accurate positional information with the imagery.

But at its normal altitude, the resolution was insufficient to identify small bunkers, sangars and concealed positions in Kargil. The Foxbat had to come down.

At around 8 km, the imagery was superb, but the aircraft would be dangerously exposed to shoulder-fired missiles. A 13–14 km profile offered greater safety, but required minimum reheat and pushed the aircraft to about Mach 1.3.

The eventual compromise was remarkable for a Foxbat: around 10 km and Mach 0.9. It gave roughly 5 km of vertical separation from the missile belts while allowing an effective fighter escort. The MiG-25 had no RWR, flares or chaff.

Two MiG-29s provided top cover, with two Mirage 2000s accompanying it. If seriously threatened, the escape plan was pure Foxbat: maximum afterburner, climb to 20 km, accelerate to Mach 2.4 and get out.

Navigation accuracy was equally critical. The Peleng-DM, like any inertial system, could drift. Its feed was integrated with the RSBN beacon system, and Wg Cdr P.J. Thakur went a step further, borrowing a handheld GPS from No. 7 Sqn to verify that the positions being generated were accurate.

The MiG-25 was ferried to Adampur on 18 June. Weather ruled out operations on 19 and 20 June. On 21 June 1999, Wg Cdr P.J. Thakur flew the first operational photo-reconnaissance mission over the Drass–Kargil sector.

Mirage 2000s flown by Wg Cdr S. Chhabra and Wg Cdr Rohit Verma accompanied the mission, while MiG-29s led by Wg Cdr S. Harpal Singh provided top cover.

Two Pakistani F-16s approached during the photographic run. The MiG-29s deterred them, and the Foxbat stayed on task.

The exposed film was then flown back to Bareilly for processing. When the photographs reached Western Air Command and Air HQ, the impact was evident. Tololing. Muntho Dhalo. Tiger Hill.

Positions that had been difficult to locate with confidence were now clearly visible. Enlargements revealed bunkers, sangars and camouflaged positions. Crucially, the imagery could be tied to accurate coordinates.

Strike crews could now study their targets before take-off, see how they would appear from release height, fix their coordinates and plan the direction of attack.

Look again at the photograph. In the Kargil mountains, where locating a small position could be almost as difficult as attacking it, imagery of this quality mattered enormously.

The MiG-25 went on to fly four more missions over Kargil–Drass, besides reconnaissance over Rajouri–Poonch and a sortie to establish the situation around Gultari.

The Foxbat is remembered for Mach 2.4 and the stratosphere. Over Kargil, it made a critical contribution by doing almost the opposite: coming down to 10 km and slowing to Mach 0.9 so its cameras could see what mattered.

Happy birthday, No. 102 Squadron! #IAFHistory @IAF_MCC

[Anchit Gupta @AnchitGupta9]

Just finished @netflix SafedSagar. The first attempt to put the IAF’s Kargil story on a mainstream screen, and it is superb. It deserves cult classic status like Border. Yet it left me uneasy coz it risks repeating one of Border’s most consequential mistakes. Let me explain.

What makes SafedSagar exceptional is the extraordinary attention to historical detail. The names of officers, air bases, briefing rooms, charts, uniforms, vehicles, signboards and operational settings are deeply rooted in the reality of 1999. Much of what you see has clearly been reconstructed from the actual people, places and events of the Kargil War. Even several of the officers retain their real or nicknames. Where names have been changed, I assume there were reasons of consent or dramatic necessity.

A caveat: the aircraft depictions (types, serial numbers) and CGI could have been much, much better, but recreating military aviation convincingly is hard for any filmmaker.

But the real achievement of the series is not merely visual authenticity. It is how simply it explains some very difficult aspects of air operations over Kargil.

High-altitude bombing in 1999 was not a straightforward problem. Aircraft, weapons and procedures designed for very different conditions suddenly had to be adapted to targets at extraordinary elevations, in difficult terrain, with limited time and technology and Govt imposed restrictions. The IAF had to learn, improvise and find solutions while the war was underway.

Explaining all this to a general audience without turning the series into a lecture is extremely difficult. SafedSagar manages it beautifully. Whoever was responsible for translating that operational complexity into cinema deserves enormous credit.

It also gets something else right: the texture of IAF life.

The squadron is not presented as a collection of larger-than-life superheroes. You see professional pride, rivalry, frustration, humour, families, friendships, uncertainty and the support system that surrounds flying operations. There are creative liberties, inevitably, but the people mostly remain recognisably human.

That, to me, is one of the series’ greatest strengths. And it is precisely because SafedSagar is so good that the liberties it takes with history matter.

The biggest is the concentration of a very large part of the air war into No. 17 Squadron. No. 17 Squadron absolutely had an important role in the conflict. It flew fighter reconnaissance missions and, later in June, was involved in effective GPS-assisted night bombing. But it was one part of a much larger IAF effort involving several squadrons, aircraft types, bases, commanders and streams of innovation.

The series, understandably, needs a central unit around which to build its story. The danger is that cinematic compression gradually becomes historical attribution.

The handheld-GPS bombing solution is one example. The series appears to place its development very firmly within the world of No. 17 Squadron. The real history of how these innovations emerged across the IAF was more complex, and I would be very careful about attributing such developments to a single unit or group unless the documentary record supports it.

There are other moments where dramatic licence and historical memory sit uneasily together.

The sequence surrounding Sqn Ldr Ajay Ahuja is one. The essential truth must never be diluted: Ahuja ejected and was killed after coming down, and the evidence surrounding his death has long indicated brutal treatment. But the series adds considerable drama to the episode. It makes for powerful cinema, but invented detail around real officers and events can quickly become accepted as documented fact.

Likewise, the suggestion that GPS problems or delays resulted from a deliberate American act goes much further than the historical basis appears to support.

Normally, one might shrug and say: this is cinema. But SafedSagar is not an ordinary Bollywood war drama.

It is extraordinarily well made. It takes its history seriously. It uses real names, real units and real events. It has been received with considerable warmth and support from the IAF community. And because it feels so authentic, audiences will naturally assume that what they are watching is, in substance, what happened.

That gives the series enormous historical power.

Border did something similar for an earlier generation. It ensured that millions of Indians would remember Longewala. That was an extraordinary achievement. But it also fixed a particular cinematic version of the battle so deeply in popular memory that, for many people, separating the film from the actual course of events became almost impossible.

My fear is that SafedSagar could do the same. Not because it is careless with history. Almost the opposite.

None of this diminishes what the series has achieved. I hope and I encourage every Indian watches it. For once, a large audience will see the IAF’s role in Kargil not as a footnote to the ground war, but as a complex campaign fought by aircrew, engineers, controllers, planners, technicians and families confronting problems for which there were no ready-made answers.

That story deserved to be told. SafedSagar tells it brilliantly.

I only wish that a series with this much power to become our collective memory had been just a little more careful about where history ended and cinema began. Perhaps I am asking too much of a television series. But when a work is this good, and this important, it becomes worth asking.

[Soham | Strong Opinions @__my__opinions]

🚨 NEW UPI SCAM: The "Rogue Auto QR Code" Device Takeover 🚨

A highly sophisticated UPI scam is targeting commuters using Android phones. Within minutes, victims are seeing their bank accounts linked to remote devices without their consent.

Here is exactly how this technical exploit works and how to protect yourself:

💻 The Mechanics: How It Happens

1. The Hijacked QR: The fraudster displays a custom QR code. It does not open a secure payment page. Instead, it triggers an Android deep-link "Intent" payload.
2. The Forced Verification SMS: The malicious code forces the victim's phone to draft and send a hidden, encrypted UPI registration token (like the cryptic HDFCUPI... text seen at the bottom of the screenshot).
3. The Remote Device Bind: The scammers enter the victim's phone number into multiple banking apps on *their own burner devices*. When the victim's phone broadcasts that encrypted SMS token, NPCI systems mistakenly validate the *scammer's* phone as the legitimate primary device.
4. The Multi-Bank Explosion: Once the phone number is bound to the scammer's handset, automated scripts fetch every bank account linked to that number (HDFC, Axis, ICICI, etc.) in a matter of minutes.

🛡️ 100% Sure-Fire Kill Switches

If you or someone you know receives a sudden flood of UPI activation messages:

* Dial *99# Immediately: From the affected SIM, dial this universal USSD code. Select the option to Block UPI or Disable UPI Profile. This works instantly across all banks without needing internet.
* Call 1930: Reach out to the National Cyber Crime Helpline immediately to report active device-binding fraud and freeze downstream channels.
* Check SMS Forwarding: Dial *#21# to ensure the hacker hasn't secretly set up call or SMS forwarding. If they have, dial ##002# to wipe it out.
* De-register Your Apps: If you still have access to your Google Pay, PhonePe, or BHIM apps, go to settings and select De-register UPI Profile. This forces a termination of all external sessions.

💡 Golden Rule of Prevention

NEVER scan a street vendor or driver's QR code using your phone's default camera app or generic QR scanners. Always open a trusted, official app like Google Pay, PhonePe, BHIM, or your official banking app to scan. Safe payment interfaces will strictly block malicious device-binding intents.

Stay vigilant and share this to protect others! 🧵👇

#CyberSecurity #UPIFraud #TechExplained #SafeBanking #India @Cyberdost @MTPHereToHelp @MumbaiPolice

[The Kaipullai @thekaipullai]

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with WWE and Cricket trump cards. And when I was showing this to a friend of mine, he gave me a suggestion, that can we make a trump card out of Indian Kingdoms?

Which I realized, that considering all the data is already available, why not??

Here are the BharatRajya Patras, your very own downloadable trump cards for all important empires.

Rolling out today at https://t.co/R4OsAdHen9 - India's interactive historical atlas

[Shruti @heyshrutimishra]

WTF

AI companies are purchasing large quantities of used and rare books. Scanning their contents to train models. Then turning the originals to pulp.

The sum of human thought, digitized and shredded.

Every book that gets scanned disappears from the physical world permanently. The knowledge survives only as training data inside a system no one can hold, browse, or resell.

What used to sit on a shelf for centuries now exists as weights in a model that might get deprecated next quarter.

[Ammanichanda @Arkasiraee]

This looks like a simple transparent shock absorber filled with oil.

But what you are seeing is one of the most destructive phenomena in fluid engineering. This is cavitation in its true form.

The white cloud forming beneath the piston is not foam and it is not air. The oil is literally changing from liquid to vapour at room temperature.

When the piston moves rapidly, the oil is forced through tiny passages inside the damper. The fluid velocity increases, the local pressure drops, and if it falls below the oil's vapour pressure, the liquid begins to boil without any increase in temperature.

The moment the pressure recovers, those microscopic vapour bubbles collapse almost instantly. And that is where the real damage begins. The destructive forces of cavitation is really not understood well by most.

A collapsing cavitation bubble creates shockwaves and high-speed microjets that strike nearby surfaces with enormous local forces. Repeated millions of times, these tiny implosions can slowly eat away hardened metals, destroy precision components and reduce the lifespan of expensive machinery across industries.

This same invisible phenomenon is one of the biggest challenges in naval engineering.

Ship propellers operating under enormous loads can suffer cavitation erosion, losing efficiency while creating underwater noise.

For advanced stealth submarines, that noise can become a major problem because cavitation can reveal their position. Decades of research have gone into specialised propeller designs, pump-jets, surface finishes and hydrodynamic optimisation to delay its formation.

The same issues affects hydroelectric turbines that convert the energy of entire rivers into electricity, and industrial pumps that move oil, chemicals and water through critical infrastructure around the world.

Perhaps the most remarkable part is that after 4-5 decades of advances in metallurgy, coatings and manufacturing, engineers still cannot simply build a material that is immune to cavitation.

The solution is not to make stronger metals forever. It is to understand the fluid dynamics so precisely that cavitation is prevented before in those destructive bubbles ever form.

[The Hidden Archive @JohnHam2334]

No one thinks they're evil. 👀🤯😱🔥🎬

[The Kaipullai @thekaipullai]

On this auspicious day of Ashada Ekadashi, I am very happy to announce the launch of my humble attempt to make history interesting.

https://t.co/SGfD2ebBpO

The idea is actually very very simple

You go to the site, select a year, and It will show you who ruled which part of India at that point in time.

[The Kaipullai @thekaipullai]

There are so many videos on the rise of the Mughal Empire

Well, here's the one on the fall of the Mughal Empire

Here's their story from 1707 - 1787

[Parimal @Fintech03]

If an Indian startup/defense firm wants to build rocket engines/satellite parts/surgical implants/advanced drone components, they need sub-micron precision metal parts made from heavy-duty alloys like Titanium & Inconel.

Historically, the ultra-precise 5-axis CNC machines required to carve these complex 3D parts had to be imported from countries like Germany/Japan/Switzerland at astronomical costs. To make matters worse, foreign suppliers face tight export controls on high-precision machining tech due to its dual-use potential in defense/missiles.

India had the engineering talent to design hardware, but was held back by a reliance on imported tooling & machining infrastructure.

A not so known startup Ethereal Machines is doing genuinely game-changing work for Indian deeptech & manufacturing, operating in a sector that rarely gets flashy headline attention compared to consumer tech.

Founded by Kaushik Mudda & Navin Jain out of RVCE in BLR, they hit on a fundamental bottleneck that was quietly crippling India’s hardware, aerospace & defense ecosystem.

Instead of just buying machines, Ethereal built their own multi-axis CNC machines from the ground up in India including their proprietary hardware, mechanics & complex CNC controller software. 🙏🙏

They built flagship proprietary machines like Halo, Aura & Nimbus that deliver sub 10 micron precision allowing intricate metal geometries to be carved in a single setup w/o manually repositioning the raw block.

Their early breakthrough was combining 3D printing (adding material) & multi-axis CNC milling (carving material away) into a single machine platform.

Instead of just selling machines, they run a massive 50K+ sq ft Smart Factory in Peenya, BLR operating 24/7. Startups in spacetech, drone tech, semiconductor equipment & medical devices can upload CAD designs & get aerospace-grade precision components delivered in days instead of months, cutting customer lead times by ~40%.

They became the 1st Indian company to win a CES "Best of Innovation" Award in Las Vegas for their hybrid manufacturing tech.

By controlling both the hardware & the software behind multi-axis machining, they give India's spacetech & defense ecosystem a local manufacturing fallback that cannot be disrupted by global supply chain shocks/export bans.

Top-tier deeptech investors like Peak XV Partners, Blume Ventures & Avataar Ventures backed them with major Series A & B funding rounds to set up a massive 300K sq. ft. mega-factory outside BLR.

Most people think of "Indian tech" as SaaS apps/fintech/q-com, Ethereal Machines is doing the heavy, unglamorous lifting, building the physical machine tools required to manufacture the rockets, drones, medical implants & chips of tomorrow right inside India. 🙏🙏

[The Kaipullai @thekaipullai]

How the East India company took over India

[iPaul @iPaulCanada]

2026世界人工智能大会，某科技公司展示的跨时代教具--AI黑板

[Architect NLA @one_miloo]

At this point, every country should be studying what China has done with manufacturing and technology.

[Matt Baker @slave_2_liberty]

This is Soooooo Frightening.....
Be careful what you wish for...

[Srikanth @srikanth_kv]

Damn the miniature engineering--- physics behind the simple one sitting on our wrists

[Evelyn @Evelyn23615628]

Why Do Watchmakers Need This Tiny Tool