Author: akshay
-
My Response to Whatsapp’s (?) Cease and Desist Notification Against Me
I’d received a letter in legalese from someone who claims to be WhatsApp’s lawyer asking me to do certain ludicrous things. Here’s my response. Dear RAB, This is in response to your email on 4th August titled “WhatsApps’s Cease and Desist and Demand Against Python-whatsapp-bot, pyWhatsapp, and QRtoWhatsapp”. Let me make it clear to you…
-
Don’t put all your eggs in one Wikipedia
If you have ever tried creating a wikipedia article on a not so popular subject you know how it gets flagged for speedy deletion even before you make the second edit on the page. For example, I recently tried creating a page for Swathanthra Malayalam Computing which anyone active in the free software sphere of…
-
Secure Communication on Mobile Phones Using Only Libre Apps
I have previously written why I prefer Telegram over WhatsApp and that gap continues to widen since Telegram introduced an API for building bots and since WhatsApp sent me a legal notice for building a bot. Meanwhile, one thing we should remember is that despite Telegram’s promise that it’ll eventually open source all code, its…
-
Does Healthcare Need Technology or Policy or Passionate People or all of these?
At HackIndia 2015 in Bangalore which I’d attended during the last 7 hours of 18th July as part of the Mozilla team, I had met three young doctors roaming around from booth to booth. One of them, incidentally, is living in Mysore and I had a meetup with him (S) and his sister (V) at…
-
[jog-journal] Natural Selection in Dogs and FOSS Contributors
The usual pack of stray dogs were serenely looking at the morning walkers in front of oval ground – not moving unless the wheel of an oncoming car is directed at the ground under their rib cages. One of them suddenly started jumping with joy as it saw an old man and ran towards him.…
-
[jog-journal] Streaks
Streaks are very important. For today, I’d not have gotten up had it not been for the streak. Yes, the 2 day streak is the most difficult. And not just that. I didn’t even think while running today. I was testing the efficiency of my method to achieve runner’s high. And it is pretty much…
-
[jog-journal] Is Runner’s High Just an Energy?
Ever since finishing VJ James’ Nireeswaran yesterday, I can’t get rid of the idea that every thing in the universe is just energy. Our body is made up of molecules of various kind. But inside, they’re just subatomic particles in different configurations. And protons and electrons and neutrons apparently have this wave-particle state. Everything is…
-
Standing up to be Happy
Woke up to a dream today, like the last few days. Ran to surgery ward where we discussed deep vein thrombosis – Virchow’s triad and more. Try this question: A very young girl (13 or 15 year old), comes to emergency room with acute abdomenal pain in the right iliac fossa. What do you do/ask/investigate?…
-
Turns out there’s a reason why people love Surgery
Reading someone else’s blog is a great motivator to write one’s own blog. I just went through some of the very first posts in Lamya’s blog. And the idea of documenting one’s day/week in excruciating details still fills me with enthusiasm. The reader deserves to know. They can’t be left hanging off the cliff. Every…
-
Beautifying GNOME with Paper theme (Material design)
Last night while I was searching for alternative window managers I discovered this wonderful GNOME Shell theme called “Paper”. After installing it, I’m enjoying looking at my computer screen. Here’re some screenshots. Applications Overview. Look at the menu menu on the top right. Nautilus with folder icons Tweak tool showing the wonderful checkboxes and the…