This Week I Learned - Week #8 2025

This Week I Learned - 

* Langflow is a low-code app builder for RAG and multi-agent AI applications. It’s Python-based and agnostic to any model, API, or database.

* Andrej Karpathy's review of Grok 3 - As far as a quick vibe check over ~2 hours this morning, Grok 3 + Thinking feels somewhere around the state of the art territory of OpenAI's strongest models (o1-pro, $200/month), and slightly better than DeepSeek-R1 and Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. Which is quite incredible considering that the team started from scratch ~1 year ago, this timescale to state of the art territory is unprecedented.  

* Thirukural dataset on Huggingface

* To search on GitHub Communities for a user's posts - category:Copilot author:username

* The Sydney-headquartered company Canva has more than 200 million users worldwide. India is Canva’s fourth largest market. 

* Speed-watching is basically listening or watching content at accelerated speeds. YouTube updated controls allowing viewers to select playback speeds in .05 increments instead of .25 increments, giving more options for exactly how fast or slow you want to watch a video. According to Alan Castel, a UCLA professor of psychology, people generally speak at a rate of about 150 words per minute. Comprehension begins to decline as speech approaches double speed — about 275 words per minute. 

* Indian IT contributes 10% to India's GDP

* Of the 55 counties with which Washington has a large trade deficit, 24 have over 10 percent of more of their trade items heavily dependent on the US. China is the best prepared: only 5 percent of Chinese exports are heavily dependent on the US. India’s dependence level stands at 16 percent: 94 percent of Indian solar panel exports and 90 percent of its fish, uranium, and thorium ore exports headed to the US in 2023.

* One of the brightest spots of Indian economy, not just Karnataka’s, is a 17km stretch in Bengaluru, called Outer Ring Road (ORR) between the once (in)famous Silk Board and KR Puram. More than 30 mega tech parks host 600+ companies with 12-15 lakh employees in this area.

* Indian equity mutual funds are sitting on a cash pile, with around 4.8 percent of their assets waiting to be deployed.

* Gold is an asset that produces nothing, generates no income, and whose value depends entirely on what someone else will pay for it. 

* Since 2006, HAL has delivered only 40 Tejas aircraft.

* Hyderabad has a population density of 18,161 people per square kilometre. This figure is significantly higher than Delhi’s 11,313 people per square km, despite the national capital being known for its overcrowding. Manila in the Philippines is the most densely populated city in the world. On an average, 43,079 people live within one square km in Manila, while Mumbai leads the charts in India with a population density of 28,508 people per square km.

* Telangana’s population stands at 3.5 crore, covering a geographical area of 1,12,077 square km, which results in a relatively low population density of 312 people per square km. 

* There has been a three-fold rise in vehicle registrations in Telangana between 2023 and 2024

* Addressing the second edition of International Temples Convention & Expo (ITCX) in Tirupati, the AP Chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu highlighted the role of temples as economic and cultural hubs, estimating temple-related activities in India at ₹6 lakh crore. AP is planning to build a Lord Venkateswara temple in every state capital in the country and across major international cities to unite devotees and promote spiritual heritage globally.

* Zepto, the fastest-growing unicorn in recent years from India, launched its 10-minute food-delivery segment Zepto Café in 2022. Zomato launched Bistro targeting the large in-office market wanting quick access to snacks, meals, and beverages within 10-15 mins. 

* The average commission charged by Swiggy and Zomato is anywhere between 16% and 30%. For newer players it is mostly in the upper end of the spectrum. The average life span of new restaurants as of today is not more than 2-2.5 years. 

* Restaurants that allow booking a table, and payment of bill using Swiggy and Zomato often offer a discount of 15%-20% on the bill, depending on the banking partner.

* Around 60% of mobile users in India receive at least three spam calls every day while roughly 90% receive spam text messages from different sources.

* The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the world’s largest accounting body, has firmly stated that tax audits should remain solely under its purview, rejecting demands from Company Secretaries (CS) and Cost Accountants (CMA) for inclusion in the definition of “accountant” under the newly-introduced Income Tax Bill 2025.

* "None of the creators of our great mythological works were Brahmins".

* Birkenstock says its tradition of shoemaking goes back to 1774

* A platitude is a statement that is seen as trite, meaningless, or prosaic, aimed at quelling social, emotional, or cognitive unease. The statement may be true, but its meaning has been lost due to its excessive use as a thought-terminating cliché. 

Examples -

• "Everything will work out in the end"
• "Everything happens for a reason"
• "What's done is done"
• "Happiness is a choice"
• "Money can't buy happiness"
• "Better late than never" 
• "Nice guys finish last"
• "There's more fish in the sea"