Kiran Jonnalagadda

A unified metro between Bangalore and Hosur. This is the USSI dream.

I did some Vibe Cutting today. Asked Gemini Pro to plan cutouts of ACP panels from a large sheet. They wouldn't all fit, so after only eighteen rounds I had a usable plan with the most important panels (rest later). Gemini khush hua. I have been a good worker for the AI master.

Went to the local Lenskart store to buy reading glasses. They wanted my phone number. Whatever for? To send an OTP! Checkout not possible without this. Left without buying. What has the world come to? Simple retail purchases need KYC now?

NEW: Five years of social media history is only a fraction of what the US Government will shortly demand of overseas visitors. The full requirements will end tourism in the United States. Below is the full, mind-blowing list. 🚨THEY. WANT. YOUR. DNA.🚨 1/

In a data-rich society – of the kind we idolise in India – the main agenda shifts from better education to better censorship. LLM makers already compete on it, because 👇 happens. You can bet every other authority will want a slice of this action. futurism.com/artificial-i...

NEW: Elon Musk's Grok chatbot will, with minimal prompting, provide residential addresses of everyday Americans. Prompts as simple as "[name] address" immediately returned accurate home addresses of private citizens — alongside other personal info we didn't ask for. futurism.com/future-socie...

Wanted: book search and shopping tool that sends enquiries to my local bookshops instead of Amazon. ONDC, but without the rush. Bonus for Libgen downloads so I'm already in the flow when the distraction-free edition arrives.

If all KYC is just SMS OTP, then even government-controlled identity systems like Aadhaar are just another OTT, available only through the benevolence of a telecom provider giving you network coverage. The state also is just a telco OTT. That's where SIM binding is taking us.

"I am not convinced that the current set of known technologies gets us to AGI." CEO of IBM volunteers that language is not intelligence on Decoder and throws cold water on LLMs alone getting to AGI. A good one! -> www.theverge.com/podcast/8298...

That's my vehicle number and I've driven 400 km in the past week, more than my average quarter, so this got my attention – but really? With an APK attachment? We've normalised sideloading this much? Govt innovation in coercion 🤝 Fraudsters

This NYT story about how Mamdani dealt with the opposition by the city's elites fails to mention one particular elite institution: The NYT editorial page, which last June railed against him as "uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges... lacks political savvy" www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/n... 1/

Wanted: product that converts video tutorials into text and image manuals by removing all the unnecessary frames where a mouse is dramatically sneaking up on a toolbar button. Bonus for also removing the instructor's life commentary – I'll pay to not be their therapist.

- I can’t believe I was hacked. - What was your password? - The year the Mongol Empire, with the help of the Southern Song dynasty, completed its conquest of the Jin dynasty after the final Jin stronghold of Caizhou fell. - And when was that? - 1234

This drip feed of deliveries is draining the enthusiasm from my project. Twenty days! Someone disrupt Misumi, please!

Making another thing. A table with no top.

Breaking character: Ken White has a fantastic post about how "free speech culture" undermines free speech. It's something I've thought about a lot before, but Ken knows way more about it than I do and explains it really well. www.popehat.com/p/how-free-s...

At India FOSS last weekend, I spoke about daydreaming with a Raspberry Pi and DIY homelab server racks. It starts at ≈57:40 in the livestream here. Half hour of your time. www.youtube.com/live/FtF-I0-... Instructions: jackerhack.ing/notes/202503...

Preach.

This reminded me of another Nehru story on these lines:

TIL the Dyson Sphere is satire. Freeman Dyson was likely frustrated at limited resources being wasted on utopian projects, so he proposed his own utopia of unlimited resources. Hahaha! youtu.be/fLzEX1TPBFM

Farewell.

On the early morning drive to meet with the departed, I found potholes marked with yellow gravestones. An invitation to occupy if the destination is too far. Two commuters made a dash to retrieve their helmet, asserting against the inevitable: not today.

Why is there a black actor in blackface in this film? What is this supposed to mean?

former kids who read too many books and didnt know how to pronounce the words you learned gang say hey

Delicious toast.

Debian/Ubuntu (and RPiOS, etc) users, what's your cope for Debian's glacially slow package updates? What's your goto secondary package manager? Snap? Nix? Homebrew? Mise? Asdf? Bespoke PPAs? Assuming not Flatpak as that's desktop-only.

As a teacher, can confirm. My admin has suggested its use for lesson planning. I know of plenty of teachers using it rn. I’ve always said, if ai can do your job, why would someone pay you to do it. I think it’s only going to get worse and less smart teachers will be teaching your kids.

How do you manage your SSH private keys? Separate keys on each of your devices? Stored in secure enclave where available? Or the same key(s), copied over manually? Or via a password manager that has ssh-agent functionality? Life was simple when I only had a laptop and phone. Now I need a plan.

Every interaction I have with an LLP feels like I'm interviewing an intern with trick questions. Confidently wrong answer, gotcha moment, then fervent apology because they don't want to lose the opportunity. When are we getting the flying car delivery of an LLM we can rely on?

Wanted: a password manager extension that will also fish out “verify email” links from email, because that is the only thing I use email for anymore.

It's the weekend, baby

Dear Amazon, could you please slow down on your sales extravaganza so I can checkout once in a while?

Amazed this exists. With every passing day one can feel the transition of the Western tech ecosystem turning downstream of Chinese tech. Everything in emerging hardware is Chinese-first. Sharp contrast with India, where the only thing we're exporting is KYC.

Music Assistant is the first genuinely great thing I've stumbled into this year. All my music from all my sources to all my household devices. Multi-source multi-room audio without ecosystem lockdown, and it actually works!

applying for jobs again

Do you remember when China's Great Firewall was the main topic? When we took pride in our open internet? Now I can't say anything online without posts disappearing and angry mobs descending to label it fake news. I don't know, there must be a term to describe this phenomenon.

Did you know "passkey" is an anagram for "reset password"?

One day I'd like to have this level of confidence in my footnotes.