Weekly Notes 24/2025
My visit to IITM/Chennai was enjoyable; I met many students and spent time with some of them. In general, it was great to catch up with all of them. This is the fifth year of the program. Many graduated this year with three-year and four-year degrees. It’s amazing to see this happening at this scale. I don’t think there is an equivalent. However, we can do a lot better, and we will as we grow together.
- Wrote a blog post or dictated a blog post while strolling IIT. It’s about dictating a blog post.
- It’s been a busy week. I’ve gotten a lot done, but the pipeline’s still long—I might need to put in a couple of hours over the weekend.
- My physiotherapy is going well. Pain is almost nil. I will restart yoga next month if everything goes as planned.
- Okay, now that I have some clarity on how June and July will be, I will be at VizChitra on June 27th at BIC, just as a participant and to meet folks.
- Explored the new Indic translation model by Sarvam. I am also trying to build a highly subjective test dataset to evaluate the translation models. It’s not fully ready yet. I need to have at least 1000 good samples to try. But you can check them here (JSON). Let me know if you would like to contribute. And I will figure out a way.
- If you have time for two articles to read, then you need to read ‘Nurturing Hope in Prison a Risky Business’ Umar Khalid’s letter from Tihar Jail. As a system, you have every right to file charges, argue your case, and seek justice. But jailing someone for five years without trial is not just inhuman — it’s something a colonial or apartheid regime would do, not a democracy. It’s a crime against India and humanity.
- I have not been attending events/talks. But this week I did attend an event at lossfunk about openpilot project by comma.ai. I don’t want an auto pilot. I want an augmented Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) which is open source and can probably run on cheap harware (phone?). I don’t want it to take any action, I want it to warn me or alert me. Give me ability to see things that I can’t see. Like thermal vision when driving in night, etc. I dont expect it to come from car companies. I think it will come from outside.
- I renewed my FSF Membership.
I agree completely with the desire for a driver-assistance system (but one that does not take control of the vehicle). This is how I drive the BYD. The cameras (four of them which provide a near complete top-down and side view) and the sensors (which I use for parking, and only occasional cruise control (I find it too agressive in braking).
What I need, as an experience driver, is something that can visually identify dangers, such as walls that might hide a speeding motorcycle (which recently happened). Cars that are driving too fast nearby, or have enough safety margin in space. Vision enhancers such as at night when I can’t see much at all (anything outside the headlights).
I get a lot out of the cameras, usually driving with two of them on the side screen, including an overview which shows overlay tires and side mirror lines, and the one for the left hand front tire (which I am farthest from as we are driving on the left hand side and the steering wheel is on the right).
I think three interfaces would be a good place to start: one over the steering wheel, one dedicated to 2-3 cameras, and one connected to Android Auto (music + maps).
In any case, I think folks have really forgotten about making driving better and easier (that is enhancing the driver), and instead are trying to autonomous, that is, replacing the driver, which we know is still error-prone, and frankly wrong-headed except in very narrow situations.