Until digital video arrived in the late 1990s, 16-millimeter film was the mainstay of the amateur or independent filmmaker, requiring neither the investment nor the know-how of commercial cinema.
Source: Happy 100th Birthday, 16-Millimeter Film →
Fascinating. I had no idea about this history.
The winner of a major photography prize has rejected the award after revealing that the winning image was generated by AI.
Source - Major Photography Prize Winner Reveals Image Is AI-Generated, Rejects Award →
Had to happen sooner or later. This is just a start.
While (Apple’s) market share in India is sub-10% today, we believe Apple through its unmatched marketing and brand presence will be able to turn India into an incremental growth catalyst
Source: Apple Bets On Growth In India With Retail, Manufacturing Expansion →
Wish they did more and looked at India as a very different market. Strategies from first world won’t work here unfortunately.
I have a fascinating relationship with Mondays. There’s some charm to the first day of the week as if it dawns with a responsibility to set things right. With a new zeal not to carry the mistakes from the week gone by.
To follow the routine. To focus on the work. To get back to life.
With responsibility comes pressure. The pressure of all the things undone in the last week and pushed to the next. Pushed out with the hope that the first day of the following week would be different. Better. It never is.
I usually want to get back to all the right habits on Mondays. Why do so on any other day? In the middle of a week? Right? I remember we, friends, once had a running joke where we would answer any suggestion of starting something healthy with “let’s start on Monday”.
Gym? Let’s start on Monday. Stop eating junk food? Let’s start on Monday. Read more? “Let’s start …”
This habit of waiting for Monday to start something different, something good, has stuck with me. Funny how bad habits die hard.
Lawmakers have begun to contemplate new rules around authorship and ownership in connection with creative machines, and the stakes are huge for both the businesses that depend on creative work and the investors who poured billions into new AI tools.
Source - Who Owns a Song Created by AI? →
This is an important debate that needs addressed before it becomes a legal mess.
I generally find it easy to write about meta topics around my writing process. Or platforms. Among the people I read online, the behaviour is common. At the same time, I’m not too fond of these meta posts. All I am doing is convincing myself why the choice of a platform is the right one. No one cares about them.
Will I ever run out of places where I can write at? I won’t. Can I ever have enough of them? Never. Should I write about all of them? Absolutely not.
Holding oneself back from writing about a particular topic is antithetical to the spirit of blogging, where no topic is beyond the bounds.
But writing about every experiment lends me a false sense of achievement. I write because I want to think better. I write because I want to improve my writing skill. Writing mindlessly about my experiments doesn’t help me with either of those. Hence I don’t write meta posts any longer.
Or so I think. Ironically, this itself is a meta post.
Substack Notes experience, especially with signup, is horrible. I provided an email address to login. Finding things very similar to Twitter, I followed a bunch of people and soon I was bombarded with newsletter issues. When did I agree to sign up for the newsletters? Terrible!
The researchers input one paragraph per character into ChatGPT, describing their occupation, relationship with other agents, and memories they have
Source: Google Tells AI Agents to Behave Like ‘Believable Humans’ to Create ‘Artificial Society’ →
This is fascinating direction of research. This should start the debate on who says we aren’t the agents in some other worldly simulation.
I’ve learned through experience that skipping the rest your body is telling you it needs will only make it worse
Source - Women taking time for themselves →
Substack wants to be Buttondown. Substack wants to be Medium. Now, Substack wants to be Twitter. And it wants to do all of that in a single app. All those experiences do not align.
There’s a funny conflict to the idea of user interfaces: a good one tends to go unnoticed, the thoughtful design decisions too subtle to notice; a bad UX or UI is one that makes you want to scream
The reason AI is making such a difference in password cracking is that instead of having to run manual password analysis on leaked password databases, PassGAN is able to “autonomously learn the distribution of real passwords from actual password leaks.”
That’s scary. I knew the day was close when even our strong passwords were no longer were safe. I didn’t know it was this close.
It is the phase when I reevaluate my use of all the services I am subscribed to. Of course, my email client is one of the key ones on the list. I was an early Gmail account holder and have been an ardent user since then. But when Gmail got old, I never loved email. It got boring and tiring.
Recently, I realised that I love sending and receiving emails. But I wouldn’t say I like Gmail.
iCloud was handling my custom email domain. But as I am not all in on the Apple ecosystem – with my Android and Linux – the experience with iCloud Mail is terrible. In short, I had to find a new solution for my personal and custom email domains.
I started with a trial of Fastmail, and I was unimpressed. No doubt, the email service is brilliant. It’s no-nonsense and has everything that an email power user would want. Nothing more and just the way an email service should work. I, however, am not a power user. Nor do I love the experience that the typical email services provide. I needed something different to rekindle my love for email.
That’s when I was reminded of HEY. The last time I tried it, I loved the service but didn’t need it. Here’s what I wrote while ending the trial.
All in all, HEY is a brilliant service with a fresh perspective towards the way we use our emails. It can potentially enliven the email offerings from all the players, just the away Gmail did back in 2004. But I don’t face the problem it is trying to solve; I have no use for all its groundbreaking features.
Why do I think I need it now? Well, to be frank. I still don’t. But I am falling in love with email again, and HEY’s unique take on how email should be done should help me stay en route. So, here’s to a new start for emails.
I enjoyed Tetris movie (funny I need to call it out - wish it was named better). I didn’t know the game had such a fascinating origin story. And I also didn’t know license negotiations can be made so intense. And fun. I was giggling at so many moments.
It’s a brilliant story wonderfully told.
I have finally setup my Trakt profile with history from all the shows that I could remember. Thought the list is not complete yet, but it’s a start at least.
I enjoy my evening walks with Snoopy. This guy continues to get all the attention from folks I have never met. I often hear someone call out his name, run to him, play with him and walk away with a smile. Completely ignoring my presence. As if I don’t exist. Such is the charm of cuteness, I believe.
He has also made new friends. He knows where he will find them. He walks to the place and waits for them to come to him. These are the regulars.
There’s a corner towards the end of our walk that both of us adore. It’s usually quiet. A cold breeze always flows through. It’s neither too light to expose us nor too dark to hide us. I make sure we halt there and sit next to each other. Nothing in my hand. Nothing on my mind. Nothingness. A bare moment of a void. Amidst the bustling #life.
And I like to believe Snoopy feels the same. Unperturbed. Many people walk by, but no one disturbs us. Maybe they acknowledge the tranquillity we feel.
Today’s walk was no different. And yet was slightly different. After sitting through the quiet moments, I realized it was a full moon in the sky. Pink moon. It looked big, majestic. My hand went to my pocket to pull my smartphone out as it often does. I wanted to take a picture of the magnificence I was looking at. I wanted to capture the moment.
How futile was the thought? The day there exists a technology that can capture such moments of calmness, their significance will dwindle. Such moments are rare; they need to be lived and felt. And in that feeling, in that rarity, lies their essence.
Wonder how people use Drafts. I keep hearing about the app without knowing how to use it. Is there some guide? Has someone written about it? Shall I ask ChatGPT?
A key concept to understand in the “Why are modern movies so dark?” debate is “motivated” light
Source - Why movies today look so dark today, in theaters and at home - Polygon →
Sometimes, all that matters is to hit that publish button. Do not worry about whether the subject makes sense. Or whether the way it is written does.
Whether there are too many adverbs. Or whether there is too little to say.
When words not published burden my mind, it is worthwhile to make way for them. To make them public. To not let them sit idle as a draft. I won’t return to them anyway. After all, writer’s block boldens itself in the drafts section.
So to unshackle my mind, I pick some draft and publish it in its form. What’s the worse that can happen? It would just be another terrible post in the ocean of terrible posts on the internet.
The good? It would be one post that I publish on the internet. For at least myself to read.
I have slowly grown to like Letterboxd - now at least I know what movies I have watched. What’s a similar service for TV shows? I tried TV Time - but it’s such a frustrating effort to add shows.
Am I writing enough? Am I writing too much? I cared a lot about these two questions in my early blogging days some 15 years ago. At that time, blog pundits filled the internet with suggestions on the posting schedule or the posts' length. With Twitter and Facebook dominating soon, all those suggestions became futile.
As online presence became a popularity contest, a burst of short meaningless quips became the norm.
Throw more at the wall, and something will stick.
I could never play the social media game. It needed the zeal to always stay connected. I instead felt burdened by the pressure of participating non-stop. No surprise, then, that I kept writing on my blog. A lot less frequently, but I did.
With Twitter and Facebook dropping in popularity, I expect blogging to attract a few new users as an outlet for their voice. And I also expect the pundits to pollute the internet again with their suggestions on the best ways to blog.
Let me spill the beans. There isn’t one.
Write anything. Write anytime. Write anywhere.
Don’t worry about followers. Don’t worry about likes and reposts. There aren’t any. Some see this as a limitation – I find it liberating.
I need not fight to make my words stand out because only I write on my blog. Everything I write is always visible.
Say I download the Wavelength Messenger app. And I also provide it with my mobile number. What next? Who will use this? Who do I connect with?
I was pretty excited to watch A Man Called Otto since I saw the trailer. Having loved the original character Ove, I was looking forward to watching Tom Hanks play the lead. And as expected, he made Ove his own.
When spectacle and larger-than-life characters are ruling the movie screens and box offices, such a heartwrenching yet endearing story shouldn’t be missed. If you have read the book, watch it for Hanks’s portrayal of Ove. If you haven’t, you must watch it for everything.
A day that dawned with many promises ended with a list of letdowns. I wasn’t allowed to work on the tasks that I wanted to work on. Other’s priorities polluting my calendar - the usual stuff.
To make matters worse, a few people carry an attitude which only mars the team’s morale and, eventually, their productivity.
It is one thing to believe you are smart. It is another to assume the others are dumb. The former shows confidence, later callousness.
The only saving grace is that it’s the start of the weekend.
Photography is a visual art, and as with most art forms, there are no rigid rules or formulas that guarantee a captivating image. However, there are certain key elements that often contribute to an image’s impact and appeal.
Source - 7 Essential Elements to a Good Photo →