This Week I Learned - Week #2 2026

This Week I Learned -

* The Open Access book Data Center as a Computer, Designing Warehouse-Scale Machines [^PDF]by Googlers Luiz André Barroso, Urs Hölzle  and Parthasarathy Ranganathan examines how Warehouse Scale Computers (WSCs) treat the data center itself as one massive computer designed at warehouse scale, with hardware and software working in concert. The term Warehouse-Scale Computing was coined by Luiz André Barroso. Warehouse-scale computers (WSCs) power cloud computing and all the great web services we use daily, including recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML). The 343 paged book has around 120 illustrations including this one -

* Researchers at International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad used visual learning models to analyse video recordings of the cooking processes of Biriyani to conclude that there is a systematic and detectable difference among the variations. The paper titled ‘How Does India Cook Biryani’ lists its authors as C.V. Rishi, Farzana S., Shubham Goel, Aditya Arun and C.V. Jawahar, who is a faculty member at the IIIT-H, was presented at the ‘Indian Conference on Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing’ at Mandi in December 2025.

* When downloading files from unknown sources, the "safest" choice is rarely absolute, but some formats are significantly more difficult to weaponize than others. 

In general, MOBI and AZW3 are relatively safe because they are the most restricted in terms of the code they can execute. MOBI & AZW3 are Amazon’s proprietary Kindle formats. Because they were designed to run on low-power e-ink devices, they have almost no support for the advanced scripts or "active content" that hackers use to infect computers. If you are using a dedicated Kindle device, the risk is near zero because the device's OS is too simple to run PC malware. 

An EPUB is a collection of HTML and CSS files. Most modern e-book readers sandbox (isolate) these files so they can't touch your system. EPUB3 supports JavaScript. While a standard Kindle or Kobo won't run it, a powerful app on your PC or Android might.

RAR and PDF are the most dangerous. PDFs are powerful enough to execute JavaScript & communicate with external servers. Malware authors use archives (RAR, ZIP) to hide from Antivirus. Some scanners struggle to see inside nested or password-protected archives. 

* In Windows, ensure "File name extensions" is checked in your folder settings. This prevents a file named book.epub.exe from looking like just book.epub.

* Use an offline tool like Calibre to convert a suspicious PDF into an EPUB. This process usually strips out malicious scripts and "active" elements.

* There are nearly 197,000 Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) recognised startups. Nearly 44,000 start-ups registered with the government in 2025, the highest annual addition since Startup India was launched. There are nearly 125 active unicorns.

* "Some of the finest nat­ur­al­ists this coun­try has ever pro­duced had what might be con­sidered doubt­ful basic qual­i­fic­a­tions. This would include Charles McCann, a top class bot­an­ist, mam­ma­lo­gist, her­pet­o­lo­gist, ento­mo­lo­gist and a fine writer as well. It would also include S.H. Prater and Dr. Salim Ali (who was even­tu­ally con­ferred an hon­or­ary doc­tor­ate for his life­time's work). Today in some quar­ters these all ­time greats would be called 'anec­dotal sci­ent­ists'. But such people have actu­ally been the back­bone of the BNHS and their work con­sti­tutes the vast major­ity of the Journ­als of the BNHS." - J.C. Daniel, Honorary Secretary - Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS)

* "Being outrageous is a way to succeed." - Arnold Schwarzenegger in his autobiography Total Recall 

* "Capitalism corrupts, socialism corrupts absolutely!" - Milton Friedman, The Road to Serfdom