We've reached 100 subscribers to this newsletter! Thank you for being in the first 100! I was in Delhi this past week just to be with my people there. There are a lot of things that came up in this time that I have to write about. It will take its own time for me to process and write though. Soon!

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March 21, 2026

Poshan Tracker Face Verification

Looking into Poshan Tracker face verification system. Includes details about decompiling Android APK, obfuscated python and react-native modules, and such.

Read more...

We have a brand new episode of Arogya Haadi out.

In this video S Varalakshmi, President of Karnataka State Anganwadi workers' Union (CITU) talks about the evolution and significance of Anganwadi in improving the lives and health of children, pregnant and lactating women in India. It is in Kannada and 1 hour long.

Watch here

Kerala is going through an election season. OpenDataKerala team collected various data sources and put them together in a web portal. I wrote the code for the web portal (with Opencode + Big Pickle). I'll perhaps write later about the technical aspects of engineering a website that's data heavy, yet runs on github pages. As of today, there are about 71,800 hits to the homepage.

Visit the portal

Other Things I Read

1. This profile of Sam Altman reveals in intimate details how capitalism works. It could have been written about Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Narendra Modi, or Mukesh Ambani, and it would have an overall similar storyline. It could have been about much smaller "entrepreneurs". What's true among all of them is that they would sacrifice any other value in the relentless pursuit for money. 
   
   
2. I'm critical of modern medicine. But not in the way many so-called "decolonial"/"post-modern" thinkers are. I'm critical of modern medicine that it doesn't use all of its knowledge effectively. While we have expanded our understanding to the levels of individual genes, our treatments are still based on studies conducted in general populations. This has reasons. The economics of personalized medicine doesn't really work out in favor of cutting edge science. And the ethical principles followed in medicine are centered on the concept of doctor holding power over the patient.
   
   But all of that turns around when a billionaire takes charge of their own cancer treatment! In this story of Gitlab's co-founder Sid, the author Elliot gives a Siddhartha Mukherjee-esque walkthrough of how Sid moved away from yesterday's modern medicine to tomorrow's modern medicine to take control of their own body and their own cancer. It is also personally interesting to me because my worlds collide in this. I use gitlab and has several acquaintances who work in gitlab. Even if it's focused on medicine and not the socio-political aspects, it is absolutely fascinating to me when I see folks in tech think about health (and vice versa).
   
   
3. The Death of Nithin Raj: Caste, Campuses, and the Myth of Progressive Kerala
   
   
4. I read here and there about this psychological concept called "shadow side". It's about the side of you that have always been hidden/repressed. It can come and bite you in strange ways. I don't have any particular link for it, but you could search for it if interested.

Other Things I Watched

1. There is a 20 minute short film called "Boiled Rice". It is in Tulu but has English subtitles. No spoilers.
2. I randomly clicked on this podcast episode titled "The Let Them Theory: How to Take Back Your Peace and Power" and found it interesting. It talks about how to
   - not try to make other people happy at the cost of our own
   - not try to rescue people (this I was already doing)
   - not try to make people understand you
   - not try to seek validation from people

That's it for this week. Please do ask people who might be interested to subscribe to this newsletter so when I send updates, more people read them. Also feel free to write back to me with anything!