Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

In 2021, at just 24, Alexandr Wang became the world's youngest self-made billionaire when Scale AI the company he co-founded in 2016 after dropping out of MIT hit a $7.3 billion valuation.  Scale AI provided high-quality labeled data and model evaluations that power everything from self-driving cars to chatbots. One LinkedIn post called out Scale's data-labeling model for low-wage work overseas asserting that he made his fortune arbitraging the difference between low wages in countries he outsourced to, like Venezuela, Kenya and Ethiopia, where he paid less than $2/hr in wages and high prices he charged American AI companies and the US Dept of Defense, for human labeling of AI training data.  At 28, he has become Meta's chief AI officer, leading the shiny new Meta Superintelligence Labs. In June 2025, Meta Platforms purchased 49% of Scale AI in a $14.3 billion deal and Wang moved to work for Meta.   In interviews, Wang (now " radicalized by AI coding ") predic...

The Track Order page on Jiomart e-commerce website shows a 502 Bad Gateway error page revealing it is hosted on the Microsoft Azure platform & uses "Microsoft-Azure-Application-Gateway/v2" as its load balancer/reverse proxy. This is of course, public knowledge for many Azure-hosted sites (easily detectable via headers, DNS, or tools like Wappalyzer). The 502 Bad Gateway default error message from Azure Application Gateway (v2 SKU) is shown when it can't communicate properly with the backend server (e.g., invalid response, timeout, or misconfiguration). In security best practices (e.g., OWASP guidelines), avoiding detailed server/proxy info in error messages is recommended to follow the "principle of least information" as it slightly reduces fingerprinting (identifying exact tech stack for targeted attacks). For better user experience and minimal obfuscation, custom error pages in Azure Application Gateway (supports 502 and 403 errors) can be configured or t...

Ujaval Gandhi’s talk about how he built a sustainable business around open-source GIS training.  He shares the lessons he learned along the way -  "Open content is not only good for the community but it's also good for business. It drives a lot of traffic....One of the things I learned in a kind of interesting way is just naturally I would put all the errors that the software would get and the search engines index them really well. For a month I looked at my stats and the number one referer to my sites was the QIS error spatial index doesn't exist and I had a content like if you get this error run this tool it'll fix it and then I had a video on explaining spatial index and then people watch that video and say I like this style let me explore more and then they sign up for a course." About a decade ago, during my time working with ASP.NET, I was drawn to forum questions about things that weren’t possible out of the box. I enjoyed finding workarounds or alternati...

A couple of decades ago, technical books were the primary way to learn new technologies, until ebooks and video tutorials took over. Physical books still hold a special charm for me, especially when I want to study without distractions. Among the Azure books I’ve read, my favourite is Learn Azure in a Month of Lunches by Iain Foulds, which I read during the Covid lockdown. I enjoyed it because it has all the  ingredients I expect in a good technical book . It doesn’t force the reader to read between the lines and is well supported by clear illustrations and screenshots. I liked it so much that I now use it as a benchmark to rate other technical books. I started reading Microsoft Azure in Action (2025) by Lars Klint to catch up on newer services and features and to see how they can be applied to real-world scenarios. Written by a Microsoft Azure MVP from Australia, the book is a practical, hands-on guide designed to help developers and engineers navigate the vast landscape of Micr...

Cartoon co-created with Gemini. See more of my AI co-creations . Lying to avoid conflict is a global sport.

Grok can do the Hindi-English mix very well.  Grok's explanation and examples for the word "condescending" -  Arre yaar, "condescending" ka matlab hai – woh attitude jab koi upar se neeche dekhta hai, jaise woh khud Mount Everest pe baitha ho aur tum road ke pothole mein. Simple English: Talking to someone like they're a 5-year-old who just asked why the sky is blue, even if they're a grown adult with a PhD. Desi example for crystal clarity: Imagine your rich NRI cousin comes home after 10 years, pats you on the head and says, "Aww, still using an Android phone? So cute yaar, here take my old iPhone 12." That smug, "I know better than you" tone? Peak condescending behavior. Universal example: When someone explains something you already know, but sloooowly and loudly, like you're hard of hearing. "Do... you... know... what... a... smartphone... is?" Bonus Indian uncle version: Boss at office: "Beta, ye Excel ka formu...

Nikita Namjoshi 's video " How do thinking and reasoning models work? " from the Google for Developers channel explains the concepts behind "thinking models" or "reasoning models," such as Gemini, and how they use more computation at inference time to achieve better results in complex tasks. Video Summary The video focuses on how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be improved to handle complex tasks like coding, advanced mathematics, and data analysis by utilizing more compute power during the generation phase (inference or test time). The Problem: LLMs generate responses by predicting one token at a time. When solving complex problems, the model has to figure out the entire solution in a single pass to generate the correct final answer, which is difficult. The Solution: Chain of Thought (CoT): CoT prompting is a technique where the model is prompted to generate a series of intermediate steps (a "chain of thought") that lead to the final answer...

  Cartoon co-created with Copilot. See more of my AI co-creations

Cartoon co-created with Copilot.  See more of my AI co-creations

VizChitra is India's first of its kind data visualisation community.     VizChitra 2005 happened in June 2025 and featured talks by various experts.  

"The hardest job in leading Agentic AI projects will be convincing brilliant people to start with the "dumbest" possible version that creates value." - Indy Sawhney, AWS "Dumbest" possible version doesn't have the same ring as Minimum Viable Product though. Who wants to be associated with "dumb" things? 😃

GitHub Actions Certification Exam (GH-200)  is designed for DevOps engineers, software developers, and IT professionals with intermediate-level experience in GitHub Actions, including workflow creation, automation, and CI/CD pipeline management. This exam covers: Streamlining workflows Automating tasks Optimizing software pipelines Study Notes: MS Learn - Automate your workflow with GitHub Actions GitHub Actions: Beginner to Pro Practice tests: MS Learn Practice assessment GHCertified  ( 127 questions) Video Tutorials: Instructor - Sid Palas, 24 Sept 2025 Duration - 3h 42m  Instructor - Andrew Brown, 7 May 2024 Duration - 3h 10m 

China is the largest source of merchandise goods (by value) for around two-thirds of countries worldwide .  In many countries, China has overtaken the United States as the largest origin of their imported goods.  China’s trade surplus has officially topped $1 trillion, marking the first time any country has ever reached such an excess of exports over imports. 🌏 Our World in Data is a project of Global Change Data Lab, a nonprofit based in the UK.  Our World in Data offers a curated collection of charts on its website as well as datasets, indicators and  Grapher Chart API .  Our World in Data (OWID) built their own open source data visualization platform Grapher because Datawrapper, Tableau, Plotly, various libraries based on d3 were not suitable.

See more of my AI co-creations

Ben Horowitz (born 1966 is an American businessman, investor, and author, best known as co‑founder and general partner of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).  Highlights from his commencement speech at Columbia University to the Class of 2015: * Don’t listen to your friends. Think for yourself. * Don’t follow your passion, follow your contribution. Why? Passions are hard to prioritize. What you’re passionate about at 21 is not necessarily what you’re gonna be passionate about at 40.  You’re not necessarily good at your passion. * What you take out of the world over time is much less important than what you’ve put into the world.  * Find the thing that you’re great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better and that is the thing to follow. * What’s remarkable from a historical standpoint about this time in the world, to me, are not the unprecedented challenges; it’s the unprecedented opportunities .