Prashanth

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@MuftiJeans Reg ticket id 37245, you have pleasantly surprised me with swift and efficient service in making sure the wrong size shirt I'd ordered is picked up and refund also processed so quickly. Appreciate your care for customers.

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@MuftiJeans What sort of customer care are you offering your customers ? Does it take 2 whole weeks to respond to a simple customer request that any other decent brand would take just a day to fulfill? What sort of brand experience is this?!?!?! Horrible business you are running

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@MuftiJeans Hoe much longer should I wait for any functional response from uou? I shared all the data you needed on mail 5 days back. Is anything happening at all? Do I need to go on social media about this?

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@MuftiJeans Hello, is anything happening to make the return actually happen? It's been ten days of followup

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@MuftiJeans I received Mufti shirt through the order details in image attached and need to return it since the size is wrong. I have been given Ticket ID 38103. Could you please expedite your customer care and ensure the return pickup and refund happens? Pls let me know

[Hamza Alsamraee @HamzaAlsamraee]

I’m a math major at Stanford

I’ll be the first to tell you I’ll never solve a partial differential equation for work

But why is that the standard we judge the value of learning by?

This whole idea of “it’s not applicable in the real world” is silly

College isn’t a vocational training program

It’s meant to provoke your curiosity. To expand your horizons

If you want “real world” learning, go to a bootcamp/trade school etc. There’s nothing wrong with that. But trying to turn college into trade school is stupid

Besides, all the “useless” stuff you learn in school teaches you how to think. How to analyze problems. How to weigh different perspectives. It’s not a surprise the smartest people I’ve met in business also happen to have a lot of “useless” knowledge

It’s because curiosity shouldn’t be constrained by capitalist pursuit. Paradoxically, if you let capitalism restrain what you learn, you end up losing. You end up being a very non interesting person with little ability to think laterally. Soon, an AI agent will be able to outperform you

Go read about philosophy, math, history, whatever intrigues you. Who gives a damn if it makes you money. It’ll make you human

[Prashanth @whattefun]

Now this is such fun learning! 👉https://t.co/DUQz1CgQ5a

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@neildsilva Shucks, Neil, you ain't alone. Heard from my nephew who went to Australia after doing his Anim Honours course in Hyd - the Uni grad cert showed completion date as Muly 2025 instead of July. So blimps are lifting off across the blessed country. Sigh!

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@KillaTheFilm @upendrasidhaye @ranjitgugle @vishesh @JarPictures Would be lovely if there's a translation 🙏

[GDP @bookwormengr]

Protectionism vs Indian National AI Muscle building program
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Thanks for bringing up this very important question, Sadanand - I should have been clearer in my eassay. The idea is NOT to restrict customers' AI technology choice - it is counter productive. Customers are free to choose what they want (allowed by data locality needs).
Then how these Indian AI labs will make money?

Recall how DARPA works:
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The Indian AI labs will be labs - with no obligation to sell (if they still do successfully, they keep the upside). They work on research projects. Their funding is decided by purely outcomes of foundation model quality. They have to open source their research and models.
They are given progressively increasing challenges to meet/exceed benchmarks so that they reach SOTA in no more than 3 years. Again SOTA is a moving target, it needs to be reviewed from time to time to change the pace.

This is how OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek (funded single handedly by High Flyer), Qwen (funded single handedly by Alibaba) were in early days. This is how DARPA helps teams to chase crazy ideas without revenue goals, but "measurable outcomes and short timelines". Below are notes about DARPA funding.

This is also how Chinese Provincial governments encourage EV, Solar Panel, Semiconductor startups. Research in early days is funded by government with clear goals.

Focus Area:
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1. LLMs are not the only Foundation models. There are Vision, Voice, Robotics foundation models. And then there are multiple multi-modal models.
2. The program also need to focus on India specific dataset (already happening - thanks to IITs and startup like Saravam), but moreover, we need to build evaluation sets that are sorely lacking in low resource languages.
3. We also need to focus on hardware and think about being able to work with multiple supply chains, as well as, learn to build models at various sizes. Start with Nvidia in early days. India also has lot of chip design first and emerging manufacturing ecosystem (though it will take time).
4. We also need to work with defense, security, weather, healthcare services to see their needs can be met/or they can sponsor challenges, provide datasets & establish the benchmarks (this should ideally be done in year 2).

Be Vishwa-Vidyarthi first (one who learns from everyone).
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Initially there will be lot of "reinventing the wheel" in terms of setting up the pipelines, or recreating things already created elsewhere; but that is how you learn: by copying the masters.

That is how SONY become good at making transistors and then they gifted WALKMAN to the world.

Chinese have no shame in doing it, Indians should not either. Remember walk before run.

Why India must be good at building foundation model when there are open source ones?
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India is a glorious civilisation, that can not choose to depend on hostile nations. At the same time, India can contribute to local and global prosperity by building this technology.

Analogy
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This program is like going for morning jog/gym. You do it to build lung & heart capacity and muscles. It instantly doesn't give you money, but enables you to earn more money by keeping you energetic and vibrant through out the day.

This shall be India's National AI Muscle building program. It will spin up a high tech ecosystem through spin offs - the way it works in Israel, China and USA.

3 billion USD over 3 years is price too cheap not to miss this industrial revolution. I will write later how I arrived at this number.

Thanks Sadanand for posing this question, and everyone who supported me through their retweets. I am new to writing on twitter.

@svembu @TheJaggi @AbhijitChavda @vikramchandra @RajeevRC_X @AshwiniVaishnaw @priyankac19 @TVMohandasPai @sanjeevsanyal @srinivasiyc @anandmahindra @nikhilkamathcio @narendramodi @PMOIndia

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@pargaien Hilarious! I'd think a retired Forest Officer would know his flora and fauna, but I guess a wife never stops being a wife. Women know their men remain boys, eh? Thanks for sharing with a big heart.

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@neildsilva Neil, this is a great move! Listening is more directly linked to the empathic brain part, which can only make for a great story experience. Plus, I enjoy thinking up chilling stuff, and can write a little bit. Do give a shout-out if I could help in anyway.

[Prashanth @whattefun]

https://t.co/LhJ9xXVoN9 HerStory: How To Catch A Serial Killer

How interesting this woman, how resilient, brilliant and yet remarkably balanced in the midst of such work. Glad to learn about her, and her seminal work.

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@supriyan Wonderful to read about this, while the gong of the heart is quietly reverberating for another heart-rending subaltern cry repurposed for pop culture consumption.

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@MerriamWebster I never understood when 'waiting for' became 'waiting on', and I still don't get why the transplant.

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@neildsilva So do I!

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@neildsilva Wonderful to know. I've just begun to enjoy your oeuvre. Horror can serve as a window to the dark recesses of humanity's soul, and awareness can speak some hidden truths to power, both for the individual and the society. Respect to storytellers who do this difficult work.

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@firstpost Why is the Trending section on your homepage not updated since the Cricket World Cup?

[Prashanth @whattefun]

@Phansalkar1 @reviewonfire @NoBrokerHood @bigbasket_com @bigbasketblog Such a disappointing customer (un)focus from Mangalam Flowers. Promote to people without proper service standards in place, and refuse honour your own commitments for refund for over a month... very bad experience. Everyone, beware of this company.