Miscellany

Context: A small, unordered shelf of things I have stumbled upon and wanted to keep. Some are funny, some are genuinely illuminating, and a few are here simply because they changed how I think about a particular problem. They span cryptography, mathematics, literature, and the occasional absurd pun. I make no claim that they will matter to you the way they mattered to me, but if even one of them sends you down a good rabbit hole, the page has done its job.

* If you have any know of any similar 'interesting' things, drop me a note at kannan [at] mp [dot] proton [at] me.

• Some Quotes I came across and found pretty interesting
• A Witty Collection of Hexadecimal Magic Numbers - I usually use these as puns while introducing Hexadecimal number system.
• Chasing the Next RSA Milestone
• A really interesting video by Veritasium on how the Enigma Ciphers worked and was eventually broken
• A comprehensive video series by 3Blue1Brown on Neural Networks
• Lex Fridman's video essay on 1984 by George Orwell
• The Rest Is Science's podcast episode on the Scale of the Universe
• Cal Newport's essay on why reading still matters. On a related note, Neil Gaiman's 2013 essay on reading.
• Dr. Terence Tao's paper, lecture and a living summary on Mathematics in the Age of AI
• Prof. Walter Lewin's lecture series on Classical Mechanics
• Prof. Ramamurti Shankar's lecture series on Fundamentals of Physics I and Fundamentals of Physics II
• Sriram Krishnan's post on Group chats rule the world
• All-In Davos interview with Satya Nadella
• Sriram Krishnan's collection of interesting internal memos
• Prof. Simon Chesterman's paper on an Artificial Intelligence judge. It also provides a great view of the influence AI would have in the legal field.
• Kishore Mahbubani's memoir - A really interesting, intriguing and a source providing an open view on foreign affair and dynamics.
• Alex Banayan's The Third Door - While the broader narrative may not resonate with every reader, specific chapters detailing Qi Lu and Tim Ferriss's cold email method offer distinctive and highly actionable advice.
• Rivest, Shamir and Adleman's RSA paper - My recommendation: If you teach cryptography, assigning the original paper as coursework after covering the RSA algorithm will provide the valuable historical context. While it may not introduce new technical mechanics, reading the primary source illustrates the state of data privacy in the 1970s and underscores the landmark nature of the publication.
• Feynman Lectures
• Dr. Terence Tao's non-technical explanation of the Kakeya Conjecture.
• The experimental study of the Small World Problem. Similarly, Veritasium had explained the Six Degrees of Separation in their video. The Oracle of Bacon helps in visualizing the connection between any two actors.
• Panel discussion between Julian Gordan, Suresh Khadakbhavi and Radha Kizhanattam on OSS innovations and India's digital public infrastructure.
• Next time if you need to say no, you could say it in a fancy way - "To quote Shakespeare, as he writes in Hamlet Act 3 Scene III: No"
• Walter Isaacson's interview with Steven Bartlett
• President Nikos Christodoulides's interview with Nikhil Kamath
• Neil deGrasse Tyson's interview with 3Blue1Brown