This video titled How Security is 256 bit security attempts to give a sense of scale as we can understand. The context of this is Bitcoins which have SHA256 as the crypt algorithm. Other alt-coins have different algorithms for their crypts.

The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution

This is the story Semi-conductor revolution pioneered by Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby Author has done an excellent job of explaining the contribution of these engineers and success of American Industry as a result of these individuals.

I came across this Youtube channel, wherein a person by name Santhosh is explaining very hard to understand Compiler Design Concepts in Tamil

His playlist is here

I also came across compiler design lecture explanation in Hindi by a different people.

These are hard concepts. Even after reading the book, if I am struggling to understand; viewing these videos seems give a comfort and confidence. Something to say about the languages that we grew up with.

I like this anarchist movement of digital crypto-currency. People are betting on algorithms!

I spent time looking around and found that I liked z.cash, the concept of mining with hashpowers and effort that has gone into setting up cloud mining companies like genesis-mining.com and exchanges like kraken.com.

Trying with coindesk.com seems only like an entry point to this messy world.

When using Python3's async-await, not awaiting on coroutines was one of the common mistakes, I was making. I discovered that newer version of IntelliJ added a warning for it, so that it can spotted when you are writing the code itself.

It looks like children can learn multiple languages, and they can understand the structure of words used in language. Today we visited an ice-cream shop, and after enjoying ice-cream, Siddhartha said:

Siddhartha: I like the ice-cream.

Shalini: Say it in Sourashtra.

Siddhartha: Ice-cream love-ares.

The way his mind seems to have worked is. He placed the Subject of the sentence first, as it is usually in Sourashtra.

He did not know the equivalent of "like" in Saurashtra. So, he used the English word "love" and added the suffix "ares", which means, "being".

Correct translation should be: Ice-cream opa-ares.

It's interesting how close he was in constructing a sentence by intuitively forming the grammar and creating words using smaller parts.

I think, adults do this too.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The essence of this book is "Prioritize the activities that you are planning to do, do the most important ones properly.". By spreading thin, we waste our time, energy and don't complete activities to our satisfaction too. This message is drilled down the reader using multiple examples and anecdotes from successful businesses and business leaders. Excellent message, I admire it. The book was long for this simple message. I would have loved it more if the book was cut-down to 1/10 of its size.

Every number can be expressed as product of prime numbers.

Here is Daniel Finkel’s 100-square in primes. Just stare at it for few minutes to realize it's beauty.

The Financial Expert by R.K. Narayan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The story of Margayya will remain etched in mind forever. For that story reminded me of a paternal grandfather's elder brother, who was an accountant and a businessman and my maternal grandfather who was a very successful businessman, and who overcame odds multiple times.

One particular incident narrated in this story made me recollect my childhood in Madurai. Narayan narrates that during summer, the school children would sometimes come and ask for water at Margayya's house. That used to happen at my grandma's house at Madurai too. We had a "Copper Sombu", a form of crockery, to fetch water from inside for the thirsty and sometimes when the passerby asked for more water, we used go inside, fetch another full sombu and share with them. Those passerby's had not relation to us, and they would simply drop by when thirsty.

When Narayan shares these small incidents in the storybook, a reader who is grown up in India is sure to become nostalgic and appreciate many nuances of Indian life.

I loved reading this book.

On the topic of learning, it is known that "mastery orientation" is better.

It's like to do something because you don't know how to do it rather than to prove or to show, that you can do it. The problem solving or the learning is for the self. That's the essence of mastery based learning.

The final dialog from the movie "The Karate Kid" might be useful to recollect.

Mr. Han: Just tell me, Xiao Dre, why? Why do you need to go back out there so badly?

Dre Parker: Because I'm still scared. And no matter what happens, tonight, when I leave, I don't want to be scared anymore.

I read a article, titled " Awesome By Proxy- Addicted to Fake Achievement " by a person discovered what he was doing wrong when choosing the kind of games he was playing, and he could introspect and choose to change this style.

We humans are remarkably adept at finding ways to lie to ourselves, and ways to be self-destructive.