This Week I Learned - Week #18 2025

This Week I Learned - 

* The rise of Model Fatigue – "I am feeling both overwhelmed and bored with news about yet another AI model being released by Company XYZ that will be a “game changer” and “leaves the others in the dust”. What we need is fewer news about models and more information what each of them is good for. Right now, it feels much more like a size competition rather than a competition of which is more applicable. It also doesn’t help that the few benchmarks we have continue to be rigged and skewed. I’m much more excited reporting and learning from case studies of people who used different models and found one or the other more appropriate." - Chris Heilmann

* ChatGPT can create Studio Ghibli style images but not xkcd style comic strips

* You need to log in to your primary phone every 14 days to keep linked devices connected to your WhatsApp account.

* IIT Madras started the world’s first B.S. Degree program in Data Science and Applications. This program is designed for students and working professionals from various educational backgrounds and different age groups to give them an opportunity to study from IIT Madras without having to write the JEE.  The video lectures are available on YouTube as playlists. 

The "Tools in Data Science" course which is part of the same BS program has been designed & delivered by S Anand, an alumnus of IIT Madras and the co-founder of Gramener.

* "...without Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), there would be no @zerodhaonline. Our tech stack is built on open source software. Remember, it is trusted by almost 2 crore Indians trust us with ~₹6 lakh crores of assets, and we contribute about 15% of daily retail exchange volumes in India. Over the years, we've not only been using FOSS, but have been actively contributing code, money, and time to existing projects. We have also been supporting the FOSS community and ecosystem in India via FOSS United Foundation and others. Recently, we launched a $1 million/year fund to support critical FOSS projects worldwide." - Nitin Kamath

* Browserstack's founders Nakul Aggarwal & Ritesh Arora (CSE '06, Hostel 6) donated 100 crores to IIT Bombay for upgrading 4 hostels. The billionaire founders have built a $4B company owning 85% of it.

* Rare earths are a group of 17 metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion for electric vehicles, cell phones, missile systems, and other electronics. There are no viable substitutes

* Nearly one million aspirants registered for the 2024 civil services exams. Little over half of them turned up for the preliminaries and, after the nine months of exams and interviews, just a thousand crossed the line to what’s considered the most coveted job in India. Engineers, doctors and science graduates dominate the applicant pool of civil services, yet when it comes to choosing the most heavily weighted optional subject, 85% of successful candidates turn to the humanities.

* The average age for a first-time home loan borrower has declined from 41 (for those born in the 1970s) to 28 (for the 1990s-born).

* "The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right" - Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright.