Weeknotes 10

5 Sep 2021

My Posts

An account of all problems faced by game developers, ranging from opening a door to enabling multiplayer. It was a bit astounding to realise the amount of work needed to develop games. I think building a simple, multiplayer game would be a great engineering challenge which will keep one occupied for months. Source
It’s a cool sci-fi like magic where low resolution images are upscaled. I haven’t fully read the paper in which it was based on but the idea is really cool. There were people arguing in HackerNews comments about how sometimes the upscaled images were nowhere close to the original. I found an article on it and though it talks about a different algorithm and explores a different root cause, it’s about a similar problem. Source

PhonePe has made the insights gathered from all the transaction data available to everyone through a free API called Pulse. There are some interesting insights but the API docs/link has not yet been put here. Source

An interesting take on how remote work is only an advantage for the few while many suffer. This article draws parallels from history and the present, and helps us understand how technology in general has contributed to income inequality. If you don’t want to sign in to read the article, use the reader mode in your browser, it’ll allow you to read the content without signing up. Source
The author makes a point about how we are already living in a metaverse. This article has made me think that NFTs aren’t necessarily a scam and it might hold value in the future. Source

A fired New York Credit Union employee has deleted almost 21 GB of data in revenge. While they had backups to some of it, they had to spend $10,000 to get the entire data back. I would strongly recommend everyone to think what would happen if someone in your organisation does something similar. Will you be able to get the full data back? If not, you’re screwed. My advice: automated backups. Source

A new South Korean law has mandated platforms like Apple and Google to allow developers to add built-in payment systems. This comes as a blow to Apple and Google who until now have required for all in-app purchases to flow through them and has charged a share of the revenue as fees. Instances like these illustrate the point that the solution to a lot of tech problems is legislation. Source
Qualcomm is coming up with a new bluetooth codec which will support CD-quality audio. It would be great if they can make it work without connection drops, a problem Sony’s LDAC suffers from. Source

Internet shutdowns by governments have increased over the past few years. They have been primarily used as a means to bring order and sometimes as a means to suppress dissent. This brings a Reddit post by a Hong Kong protester to my mind, though strictly not related to internet shutdowns, it is a sobering reminder of how technology has become an integral part of our lives. Source

The author talks about “Dead Internet Theory” where people claim Internet has been devoid of people for a long time and the traffic is mostly AI, bots and influencers controlled by the government to make us buy stuff and control us. News Article The “source” of the conspiracy