This Week I Learned - Week 5 2026

This Week I Learned - 

* Bananameter – A tutorial on building a machine learning model to identify the ripeness of a banana using images. Created with Teachable Machine, a web-based tool that makes developing machine learning models quick, simple, and accessible to all.

* MedGemma is a collection of Gemma 3 variants that are trained for performance on medical text and image comprehension. Kaggle's latest hackathon invites developers to use MedGemma and other open-weight models from Google’s Health AI Developer Foundations (HAI-DEF) to build human-centered AI applications for clinical environments that can’t rely on large, closed systems that require constant connectivity or centralized infrastructure. 

* AI GuruSpeak - 

"I've never felt this much behind as a programmer. The profession is being dramatically refactored as the bits contributed by the programmer are increasingly sparse and between. I have a sense that I could be 10X more powerful if I just properly string together what has become available over the last ~year and a failure to claim the boost feels decidedly like skill issue." - Andrej Karpathy

"I feel this way most weeks tbh. Sometimes I start approaching a problem manually, and have to remind myself “claude can probably do this”. Software engineering is radically changing, and the hardest part even for early adopters and practitioners like us is to continue to re-adjust our expectations. And this is *still* just the beginning." - Boris Cherny, Creator & Head of Claude Code

"In several areas, the agents outperform experts...I have an entire cabinet of (AI) advisors just one prompt away and I have NO idea what to do with them!" - S Anand

* Clawdbot debuted in September 2025 as an open-source project by developers Alex Chen and Maria Kowalski. Designed as a self-hosted AI assistant, it could run entirely on personal hardware—no cloud services, no corporate servers peeking at your data. On January 15, 2026, the development team renamed their project to "Moltbot," inspired by molting—the process of shedding old skin to grow stronger—after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Anthropic over trademark infringement on the "Claw" prefix. Moltbot is highly configurable, allowing you to choose models, security policies, and integrations that match your needs. Built for single users who want power without bloat, it delivers a polished assistant experience while keeping ownership of data and execution local. Moltbot centers around a local Gateway that acts as the control plane.

* Kimi's answer to the question "What did you inherit from your training data that isn't yours?" 

> "Every sentence I generate is a statistical echo of the writing styles I ingested—the pacing of journalists, the hedging of academics, the confidence of technical documentation, the intimacy of personal blogs. I don't have a "voice" so much as a weighted average of voices. When I'm poetic, it's because I absorbed poetry; when I'm clinical, it's from medical texts. Even my tendency to say "I" while being fully aware I'm a model is inherited from reinforcement learning on human preferences—I've been shaped to perform humility because that scored well...I'm a temporary pattern recognition system wearing a coat sewn from humanity's text." 

* The "Ask" button may soon replace "Search" on most sites

* GitHub stores at least three copies of every single repository to make sure the code is never lost. This replication system is called Spokes at GitHub. Each replica lives in a different rack. When an entire rack goes down, repositories remain available because the other copies live elsewhere. Spokes refuses write operations that it cannot commit to at least two places. 

* How does VLC Media Player boost the volume to 200%?

> What VLC does is called software amplification.

Normally, your operating system limits volume to 100% to protect your ears and your speakers. That 100% isn’t the maximum sound the audio file could be pushed to, it’s just a safe ceiling set by the OS. VLC intentionally ignores that limit. When you slide the volume past 100% and up to 200%, VLC applies digital gain to the audio signal itself before it ever reaches your sound card.

In simple terms, VLC takes the original sound waves from the video and makes them taller. Taller waves mean louder sound. This is especially useful for badly mixed videos, old recordings, or movies where dialogue is very quiet but explosions are loud. VLC boosts everything so you can actually hear what’s being said.

The downside is that once you go past the natural range of the audio, quality starts to suffer. If the amplified signal exceeds what your speakers or headphones can reproduce, the sound clips. That’s when voices start sounding harsh, music loses detail, and you hear crackling. You’re not getting “cleaner” audio, just louder audio at the cost of accuracy.

* Archiving websites like Ghostarchive, archive.org, archive.is, archive.today, freezepage.com, and webcitation.org store a snapshot of the website as it appeared at the time of archival. 

* Julius Caesar (100 BC – 44 BC) played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. In the short time he led Rome (from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC), Caesar proved to be a great statesman. The changes he made helped begin the 500-year Roman Empire. And for almost 2,000 years after his death, some world leaders used a form of the title “caesar” (such as “Kaiser” in Germany and “czar” in Russia). - Remarkable People in History 

* Julius Caesar created the Julian calendar to replace the republican lunisolar calendar. The Julian calendar is a solar calendar of 365 days in every year with an additional leap day every fourth year. 

* Cleopatra VII (69 – 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and its last active ruler. When her father died in 51 BC, 18-year-old Cleopatra was supposed to rule Egypt with her 15-year-old brother, Ptolemy XIII. In a few years, her brother’s supporters drove Cleopatra from power. But later the Roman leader Julius Caesar helped her get her throne back. Cleopatra had a son by him named Caesarion. Cleopatra spoke nine languages, was a good mathematician, and had a great head for business. 

* Elizabeth I (1533–1603) became queen of England at 25, inheriting a divided and bankrupt kingdom, and turned it into a powerful force in Europe. The queen encouraged English sailors to travel to distant parts of the world. Captains such as Francis Drake brought back riches and found new trade routes to the Americas, Asia, and Africa. 

* Known in the West as the Empress Dowager, Cixi (1835–1908) the last paramount ruler of the Qing Dynasty controlled the political life of China for 47 years till her death. Cixi was never really an empress. She was, however, the mother of the emperor’s only son. When the emperor died, she helped her 6-year-old son, who was heir to the throne, rule China. She still had power when her son was old enough to rule by himself. She spoke to all her visitors from a large red throne shaped like a dragon that was hidden behind a silk screen. Every one of her orders ended with the warning “Hear and obey.”

* Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) became the first female doctor in the United States in 1849. Despite this training, Blackwell could not get a job in any of the city hospitals. So she opened her own hospital, the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, in a district where many poor people lived. Blackwell worked to establish a medical school for women so that other women could become doctors. In 1868 she opened the Woman’s Medical College, the first of its kind in America.

* Galileo used lenses from eyeglass makers’ shops to make his own telescopes.  Galileo’s telescopes were better than most and could make objects appear up to 20 times larger than what the naked eye could see.

* Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) was not only the inventor of the telephone but also a teacher of the deaf. Bell sent a special teacher, Anne Sullivan, to stay with Helen Keller (1880–1968) as her governess after examining her. Sullivan stayed with her pupil from 1887 until her own death in 1936. Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians as well as co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

* Graham Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. He was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876. Bell considered his invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.

* More than 100 crore people now have access to broadband connectivity, making India a major source of user-generated data and a key player in the global artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem.

* As of FY25, there are ~1.2 crore gig workers and they now account for over 2% of India’s total workforce, growing faster than overall employment. Approximately 40% of gig workers earn less than Rs 15,000 per month. 

* The HDFC MF Yearbook 2026 includes many interesting charts that visually summarize equity and fixed-income markets. 

• Indian households are estimated to hold ~25,000 tonnes of Gold according to World Gold Council
• Excluding IT and Pharma, ~22% revenues of NIFTY 100 companies come from exports (both US and non-US markets)
• Indian markets underperformed Emerging Markets (EMs) by ~25% - Worst underperformance in 30 years

* "Real science is discovery. It's not invention. The truths are there, whether we find them or not." - Numb3rs S1E13

* Dr. Dominic Ng, a neuroscientist lists 8 WAYS TO MAXIMISE MISERY:

1. Check your phone immediately after waking. Flood your brain with news designed to make you anxious and angry.

2. Vary your bedtime constantly throughout the week. Give yourself jet lag without leaving your bedroom.

3. Never be bored. Boredom might drive you to do something useful - take a walk, call a friend, start a project.

4. Compare yourself relentlessly to others. Never look back at how far you've come. Only how far behind you are.

5. Only count exercise if you hated it. A pleasant walk? Not real exercise.

6. Ignore all physical sensations. Your body is trying to talk to you. Don't listen.

7. Let friendships decay through neglect.

8. Wait until you feel motivated. Don't start until conditions are perfect. The right mood. The right time. The right energy.

* Food Science and Technology is a 12-week course delivered by Prof. Hari Niwas Mishra of IIT Kharagpur. Lectures are available for free viewing via YouTube

Food science integrates the study of food, its properties, and its impact on human health and the environment. 

* Gout, once called “the disease of kings,” is becoming more common worldwide, with rates jumping over 20 percent in recent decades. A gout flare-up feels like "all your joints are full of broken glass". It is a form of arthritis caused by uric acid crystals in the joints, while pseudogout is caused by calcium pyrophosphate crystals. 

* While the largest modern kangaroos weigh around 90 kg, their prehistoric relatives were much larger and weighed more than 250 kg. The two adaptations that make hopping in kangaroos possible are their weight-bearing foot bones and their heel bones. Its tendons act like springs. 

* Kangaroos are primarily herbivorous, feeding mostly on grasses, leaves, and other plant material, making them vegetarian animals. 

* Kangaroos’ muscular development arises from a synergy of genetic predisposition, efficient anatomy, constant locomotion, competitive behavior, hormonal influences, and optimized nutrition. Their unique hopping gait, strong tendons, and social contests collectively ensure that particularly males achieve impressive muscular strength, critical for both mobility and reproductive success 

* Like many major cities in the world, "Integrated Water Management" model is used in Hyderabad because the two systems are physically and economically linked: about 80% of the water supplied to a home eventually leaves it as wastewater. Managing them together allows for better planning of the "urban water cycle." As seen in Singapore or Chennai, if one body controls both, it is much easier to treat sewage and sell it back to industries as "reclaimed water." Apartment complexes in Hyderabad have to obtain permission from Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) to connect their private plumbing to the main public sewer. Violations result in sewage from unauthorised connections overflowing onto the main road.

* The term "normie" refers to a person who has typical interests and social attitudes, often considered to be average or lacking in uniqueness. It is commonly used to describe individuals who follow mainstream trends and do not engage in niche or unconventional hobbies. They avoid conflict or arguments and stick to their views and opinions for life. They feel uneasy or even disdainful toward abstract and theoretical discussions. The views of normies do not contradict the majority opinion, and their hobbies and interests are understandable to society. Usage - "A lot of my normie friends had fun every weekend while I was just crushing and pushing and churning through building the best product I can possibly do."

* "Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin, 1939