In one of the many corners of the internet, there was a lot of excitement about the discovery of a new black hole (Sagittarius A*). For anyone remotely interested in Astronomy and scientific research in general (like me), this was a pretty big event – after all, this is only the 2nd time that scientists... Continue Reading →
#67: Complexity in Supply Chains – High Performance Computing to the rescue?
‘Supply Chains were always complex and difficult to manage. The pandemic has pushed global supply chains to a breaking point’ – is what one of my first managers used to say, when presented with an underwhelming insight, ‘a blinding glimpse of the obvious’. And in management speak, ‘complexity’ is popular these days with the term... Continue Reading →
#66. Stochastic processes: why we should care
My friend is trying to improve his basketball game and he finds himself at the basketball court in his neighborhood just about every day. He has set himself a target of practicing free throws until he gets 5 shots in a row. Anytime the streak is broken, his counter starts all over again and he... Continue Reading →
#65. Lessons from the Elon Musk world
Spent the holidays reading two books: one on SpaceX1 and the other on Tesla2. Both of them were really about Elon Musk (not surprising given his outsized influence in both these firms). While I don’t count myself as a Musk fan, it is difficult not to be impressed by what he and his teams have... Continue Reading →
#64. Maker Mindset (Continued)
A few weeks ago, I had talked about building an IoT device (Air Quality Index monitor) and how easy the process has become. In the last couple of weeks, I have been working with my 12-year old daughter to build another device – she wanted to build a sensor that would alert when someone walked... Continue Reading →