All things technical and scientific and theoretical and stuff.
[This was co-authored with Yashwant Keswani for my college’s magazine. You might find references to our college’s intranet, where our professors provide us with course material.]
One of our TA’s once saw us experimenting with wget in the lab and he mentioned in passing that “Wget is the best download manager.” Or something to that effect. He had a way of making these succinct statements and then walking away like a badass. And a badass it turned out to be; both him and wget.
[This was written for my college magazine. So, many references exist that may only be understandable to people from my college. Especially the ‘II’ section is highly college specific.
Quite a few people commented that the my explanation of what Computational Science is, is quite good. I have decided to publish this in the hope that this helps someone.
Note: The article is being published as was in the magazine. No editing has been done.]
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When I came to this college, this new degree had just been announced. It had all the normal things but it also gave a minor in CS. Now, CS here doesn’t stand for Computer Science, it definitely doesn’t stand for Counter Strike (Although I’m sure many in our college could get one). CS is Computational Science. Now the first thing I thought of when I heard that was, “How is that different from Computer Science?”
Morbid:
adj.
characterized by an abnormal and unhealthy interest in disturbing and unpleasant subjects, especially death and disease.
This was co-authored with Anushree Gupta who blogs at https://anushreegupta93.wordpress.com
[Disclaimer: We don’t claim to know the exact workings of the internet so we are working with whatever knowledge we do have. Also, this touches upon quite a few things that are complexly interrelated and form feedback loops and vicious circles. Hence a linear flow may not always be found. Please bear with it.
Companies generally mean normal (non-internet) companies. “Website” has been used again and again instead of internet companies to keep the writers sane.]
The internet is basically just a lot of servers(data storage devices) that are interconnected, forming a network. Hence, interconnected+network=internet. Okay, maybe not, but essentially the internet isn’t a magical thing. It is just a collection of devices that are connected. Now keeping all these things working requires many resources. Need for resources generally implies that there is going to be a need for financial support for the infrastructure as well as the intellect working behind the scenes. In the current scenario, the Web as we know it is run by companies providing services to anyone who has access to the internet including social media, news and search among many others. Like regular companies, they need money to operate. So, how do these internet companies get money?
Continue reading “Filter Bubbles and the Surveillance Model”
Disclaimer: If you are thinking I would be talking about sorting algorithms, then, well, sorry. This is about my experience trying to get the Dired Mode in emacs to sort files in a particular directory according to time, while keeping the default sorting by name intact. Emacs knowledge may be needed to understand/appreciate this, possibly some elisp knowledge too.
Last year I had read the book “Automate This: How algorithms came to rule our world by Christopher Steiner[1]. It was a brilliant book about how algorithms have invaded each and every part of human life. How, in no time we have let algorithms automate parts of our life that used to be done manually, that required humans with specific skills or having advanced degrees. It was a very interesting book, one that I would recommend to anyone who wants to know why algorithms are going to rule the future and to see how far reaching the impacts of the mathematics and coding is.
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