I’ve decided to start posting weeklies inspired by some folks from the OCaml and the Bangalore Indie Web communities.

I spent a bunch of time over the weekend updating the setup of Orgzly Revived and Termux and my scripts for syncing everything between my phone and my laptop. I hadn’t bothered copying over my setup to my current phone since it felt too brittle after using it for a few months on my previous phone.

With Orgzly being revived and getting continuous improvements, and the availability of LLMs to debug and fix annoying breakages that I don’t want to sink time into, hopefully this time everything will work better…

Hopefully, this will all help me continue to be regular with these weeklies.

• Android playstore and F-droid

  While working on this setup I stumbled on this site “Keep Android Open”. It is a site which explains the planned changes to Android’s permissions for installing apps. The change seems like an iOS-ification of Android where only apps by developers registered with Google can be installed, even if they are not distributed via the Play Store. I had received a notification from Google about deleting my developer account since it was inactive and I didn’t pay much attention to it. This proposed change is so much wider reaching, though, and needs more investigation.

• Phones stand in for earthquake sensors in Venezuela

  I read an article about how Google runs an earthquake warning system that’s great for countries without a public-funded earthquake warning system. It’s the first time in a long time that I felt something from Google gave me the “Don’t be evil” vibes. For a company that managed to worsen their search for increasing traffic and ad revenue, this is pleasantly surprising!

• Google Summer of Code updates

  I’m co-mentoring a student for GSoC again this year. Last week, we submitted his mid-term evaluation and he’s good to go for the rest of the GSoC period.

  It’s been an interesting experience mentoring this year, with Zulip maintainers allowing and encouraging students to use LLMs for their work. There’s a detailed AI usage policy here for all contributors, but I think the current breed of LLM agents make it easy to fall into the trap of cedeing control to them, and letting them drive you. It does need conscious effort from contributors to wrestle with the problem they are working on and understand any AI generated code well enough to critic, modify, explain and own it. We have been trying our best to make sure my mentee doesn’t fall into those traps and is making the time and space to be thoughtful and deliberate with their AI use.

  Also, I’ve applied to attend the mentor summit for the first time and I’ve been accepted! If everything goes well, I’m hoping to attend the GSoC summit for the first time, in October in Berlin!

• Home-built Websites for personal needs

  My fitness trainer has built a website for himself using Lovable and Claude! The idea is to ease his workflows to track the progress of everyone who trains at the gym (in person or virtually). I could tell at first glance that the website is AI generated, but it’s pretty cool that he could make the time and was able to build something for himself.

  A couple of weeks ago, an architect friend reached out to me to have a chat about a new SaaS startup that she’s working on with a friend to help improve the workflows for architects to go from first draft sketches to proper plans/models. She has a couple of CS students/interns who are “vibe-coding” the first version of their app. They are also training some models for the transformation, I believe.

  Whatever qualms and complaints I have about the use of LLMs for knowledge work and all the current buzz and hype around it, I enjoy stories like these of it empowering people to build things they need to improve their workflows. I also enjoyed this thread (somewhat old, now) from Hacker News of people sharing what they are building with LLMs.

• Ads on Instagram - BBC Documentary

  I watched this BBC documentary on how Instagram allows ads promoting child abuse. Sadly, I’m not surprised by everything that the documentary explained. I’ve previously come across ads that are phishing scams, crypto scams, etc., and it didn’t look like Meta was doing anything to prevent such ads. I wasn’t surprised to learn that they don’t seem to be doing much in this case too. I don’t think these problems are unsolvable if these platforms care to take responsibility, given the tech available today.

• Video on the discovery of Nitroplasts

  I watched this video shared by Chaitu on nitroplasts, the organelle that lets Eukaryotes fix atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia. Until this recent discovery, it was thought that only Bacteria and Prokaryotes can do this, and this is the first instance of an algae (Braarudosphaera bigelowii) that seemed to have “engulfed” a bacteria that can do this, which eventually turned into an organelle (similar to the evolution of mitochondria). This seems like a much more recent evolution than mitochondria and chloroplasts and possible provides a window into how such organelles get formed. And studying nitroplasts in Bigelowii could lead to research that could reduce our dependence on synthetic fertilizers, for instance.

• Sid’s birthday

  We attended Sid’s (nephew) 4th birthday. This was his first birthday after his little sister was born. He was so excited by all the toys he got, but also wasn’t expecting any of us to bring gifts for his sister. He wanted them all, but understood on adults explaining it.

  I like how he was cautiously sharing his new toys with her too. He got a new robot which dances with lights and music to Indian songs. He understandably didn’t want to share it. It had enough moving parts and seemed breakable in his little sister’s hands. His dad tried to explain that his sister is playing with it carefully, and he kept repeating “Of course, she will break it!”, until he saw that this line of argument wasn’t working. He came back later saying, “It is too bright for her” (with all the lights that glitter).

• Carnatic Cafe

  I usually avoid eating out at South Indian restaurants in Delhi, but in solidarity with Chaitu who ate at a couple of Indian restaruants after we left from his place in Vienna, we ended up eating in Carnatic Cafe. I found the Vada in Vienna to be better than here, but the Rava Masala Onion Dosa was great!

• Penguin Bookfair by Hubhawks

  We attended the Penguin Book Fair by Hubhawks. I wasn’t aware it had a “Buy by the bag” pricing. The available selection of the books didn’t seem compelling enough to spend more than a few minutes in the small hall filled to the brim with people. Many of whom were trying to fill up their bags to the brim, err.. I mean the zipper, to make the most of the pricing model but frustrated by it.