The Elemental

HoloLens an Elemental overview

Sun, 20 Dec 2020 20:16:52 Z

What is Holo Lens?
It is a mixed reality device. Through it you can see real world objects and virtual objects at a same time.

Holo Lens Hardware:

The top part is Headband which keeps the device secured on the head.
It has a computer in the back which projects the images in front of your eyes.
On the left side, there are Brightness buttons and volume buttons are on right side.
The front part is where all the sensors are. It is called Visor. It has following
2 cameras on each sides for tracking objects in space
A camera to take photos and videos 2 IR cameras for eye tracking
A sensor to check depth and distance of the objects
The middle part in this glass is display
It also has microphone and speaker

Why this is good?

Allows you to freely move around and use both of your hands

How to work with Holo Lens?
If you have used a Microsoft Windows computer, you know what to do. Only difference is, windows, menus and buttons will be floating in space.

The start button will be on your wrist and windows will be floating in space around you.

What to be careful?

The main things to be careful is surroundings. Make sure you don't bump into walls or furniture
Make sure head strap is not too tight - or you will get a headache
Also using it for a long time may give you a headache

My hands on experience

Where can I find more information?
The Microsoft site is a great start to understand concepts and you can also buy HoloLens from there. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/

Vibrot - A Simple Machine

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 06:51:35 Z

What is a simple machine?
Machines are devices with one or more parts which work together to make task simple. Machines can apply more force, do things faster or makes things easier to move.

What parts can be used in a simple machine?

Springs
Cogs
Pulleys
Levers
Wedges

What could be an example of simple machine?

Here is an example of a simple machine - a vibrating robot. It is called VIBROT for short. Vibrot is made with springs and cogs. Vibrot does movement as spring unwinds and cogs moves.

Bob

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 08:22:59 Z

trinoaijds; a

ho ho ho

The Life Timeline - My facts, your conclusion

Sun, 21 Mar 2021 02:26:47 Z

The facts

The events on a timeline are a great way to see relations and enable you to view the future with an improved lens. Let me tell you facts about the life and the universe. The facts are not new but I believe that you can draw many conclusions by putting them in a context.

The Universe is 13.8 billion years old

Through a range of measures and calculations, scientists can look back and narrow down the origin of the current universe to 13.8 billion years with an uncertainty down to only 20 million years. (1)

In other words, none of the celestial bodies we see in the night sky existed before 13.8 billion years ago.

Our Galaxy, the Milky Way is 13.6 billion years old

Most of the galaxies including our galaxy the Milky Way, were formed when the universe was very young, within the first 200 million years (2). And looking at the oldest stars in the galaxy, scientists have narrowed down the age of the Milky Way to be around 13.6 billion years.

In other words, our galaxy and many stars in our galaxy exist right from the big bang time.

The Sun is 4.6 billion years old

Our sun is relatively young in the solar system. After 9 billion years of Milky Way's existence, from a cloud of gas, our Sun was formed (3). By performing radioactive dating on meteorites shows that the Sun is 4.6 billion years old(4).

In other words, many stars in our galaxy had a head start of two to three times the age of our sun.

The planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old

The Sun's formation from the interstellar gas cloud created a spinning, swirling disk of material. The material in the disk clumped together in different sizes and they became planets (5). By measuring rocks using radiometric dating techniques, scientists can identify that the Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago(6).

In other words, the planets and the Sun formed within the same celestial moment.

The first living organism appeared

The fossils tell a story of living beings in the past and the environment in which they used to thrive. Microscopic living things like bacteria can be found in mud and rocks have been adopted to the environment for millennia. The oldest cyanobacteria-like fossils known are nearly 3.5 billion years old (7).

In other words, the DNA based life as we know was present within the first billion year.

Biosphere is here to amaze you

For a fragile human who needs everything just right for a mere existence, extremophiles pose a mental challenge. The bacteria have been found to be living 6.7 kilometres inside of Earth's crust.(8) The life survived in harsh radiation condition outside the ISS.(9) 100 million years old dormant bacteria has sprung to life in a right environment condition(10). The life has shown resilience against extreme pressure, temperature and lack of nutrients. (8)

In other words, the DNA based life we know, can happily survive and thrive in the most unusual environments form human view point. The life has demonstrated - it is made for an existence in the Universe.

Now, take a moment and think - what happens when you connect the dots?

Let me summarise the facts for you...
When universe formed, the galaxies formed within no time.
When our sun formed, the planets formed within the same celestial moment.
Not long after the planet formed, DNA based life showed up.
Even the life as we know it, can adapt, survive and thrive in the 'universal' conditions.

What is your conclusion?

If its still not clear, please take a moment and read summary again. The idea of the article is not to force a viewpoint, rather get you thinking. If you stop on timeline after every fact, you may derive more than one conclusions.

Feedback

The above sequence may be extended through appearance of plants which are very new on the planet earth. And the Cambrian explosion is intentionally left out as it makes a part of other #deepthinking concept.

References:

(1) Age of the universe - https://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_age.html
(2) Age of the galaxy - https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/galaxies-age/en/
(3) Age of the sun - https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/sun/in-depth/
(4) Age of the sun - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/uncategorized/the-age-of-the-sun-2/
(5) Solar system formation - https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/our-solar-system/in-depth/
(6) Age of the earth - https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html
(7) Oldest life https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/bacteriafr.html
(8) Extreme life -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4187170/
(9) Extreme life - https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/08/02/5-extreme-life-forms-that-live-on-the-edge/
(10) Extreme life -https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-29/scientists-revive-100-million-year-old-bacteria-under-seafloor/12501526

What is DeFi?

Sat, 06 Mar 2021 04:42:34 Z

What is DeFi?

It is not one thing. It is a concept. It is an abbreviation. For some people, it is the best thing after a slice of bread. In human understandable terms, it is DEcentralized FInance.

But before we dive into Decentralised Finance, let me start with the Finance part of it.

When we think of ‘finance’, the first picture a mind paints has people in suites talking bureaucracy while trying to judge commoners by the rules which are obfuscated and biased in many ways. We plebes, have faced situations in our lifetime where traditional banks consider us not credit worthy or rules of assessment change on us without explanation. We have faced these while applying for student loans, car loans, house loans or while getting insurances or getting credit cards. These are the examples of financial products and examples of poor humans at the mercy of mighty powerful bank gods.

That is traditional finance – banks do checks and balances before issuing ‘credit’.

Sorry, before jumping on to Decentralised part of DEcentralized FInance, let me take a small detour and give you examples of centralization in traditional banking. Let me talk about a smallish (by the size of economy) country Australia:

The country has only four major privatised banks which cover the majority of the financial transactions in Australia.
The government has no influence on them as they meant to be private and answerable to the shareholders.
The Central Bank of Australia has no influence on them. This was evident again and again when private banks increased interest rates over and above the central bank rate increase and did only pass fraction or none when central bank cut the interest rates in past.
By the process, an individual shareholder has almost no say in their daily banking practices – ethical or otherwise.
By controlling ‘landing criteria’ in the name of risk mitigation, completely control the real estate and commercial market which are the engine of Australian economy. And this is more or less true in every country – a small number of ‘banks’ control the credit market and hence the economy while being answerable to no one. This is the concentration of power – centralised power.

And traditional banks have been working like this for centuries.

And now to the buzz word – DeFi. The same way traditional taxi business is disrupted by Uber likes, the accommodation industry by airbnb likes, the DeFi is set to question the traditional finance industry.

So again, What is DeFi?

A term for a variety of decentralised services that aim to replace current centralised financial system.

What are DeFi Services?

DeFi services could be exchanges where crypto and contracts can be executed, money market services around borrowing and lending; and insurance services.

Decentralised Exchange

DeX for short
Services that need no accounts or signups and there are no exchange fees
Services to buy, sell or trade crypto currencies
Completely autonomous and decentralised. No fear of exchange hacking or going down under regulatory pressure.

Decentralised money markets

Connect borrowers with lenders
Agreed set of loan rules between parties
Distribute interest among lenders

Decentralised Insurance

Connect people needing insurance with people or companies willing to insure for a fee
Agreed set of rules baked in the smart contract

What are some of the DeFi projects?

MakerDao (https://makerdao.com/ ) – Based on lock in collateral and DAI stable coin
In landing category, Compound (https://compound.finance/), which is based on Algorithemic Autonomous INTEREST Rate prototocol.
AAVE (https://aave.com/)

What are the DeFi risks?

The technology is very much in infancy phase and not all aspects are battle tested. There are many imitators and hype creators aimed at quick gain.

Takeaway

So in summary, the technology is here and it is clear that it can be used for solving real world problems.

Death Questions

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 04:23:51 Z

When we think of death, there are no statements to express why and how of it. Is it a process or a moment in time? As you can see, the elemental questions start right in the beginning while defining it.

What do you think when you see your beloved pet dying?

You are so helpless to in making their body fix itself on whatever it is experiencing and make it go better.

Why it is that you feel really bad when a dog or guinea pig dies but not as much when a fish dies? Is it because of our mammalian relation? Is it because we can read mammalian face (at least we think so) but can not judge fish emotions? Or is it because you perceive fish as living in an alien watery world and fish hasn't crossed the physical boundary and walked with you in backyard?

Covid Cuites

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 08:20:05 Z

Covid Cuties

This blog is written in Nov 2020, where we are still emerging from Covid Lockdowns and the world is still getting in terms of how to live in shadows of a pandemic.

Covid has made us see the world with different lens. What we perceived necessities so far turns out only constraints created by us.

"We have to go to office to work with colleagues."
"I have to go on a site to do an inspection."
"I have to take an international flight to attend the matter in person" People have come up with innovative ways to overcome these excuses.

Learning from history when young people are united and there is nothing else to do, they do what animal inside us urges them to do. There are many observed, unspoken and documented cases of baby booms through out the history.

Post World War II
Electricity outages
Post holidays - September babies

Study shows that consumption of alcohol sky rocketed during lockdown period. By doing 1+1,

People in lockdown
People intoxicated

So the environment when babies are conceived is:

Uncertain at best of the times - about jobs, constantly changing government regulations and scientific community guidance
Anxiety fueled - about their jobs and their loved ones.
Intoxicated bodies
Constrains on nutritious food - as restaurants and fresh food supplies were restricted, young generation turned to chemical stuffed canned food.
An exact opposite to well thought out family planning

So question is:
Are Covid Cuites going to be a healthy generation?

Over the next few decades, we will witness a mass experiment on the humankind. If you are an investor, a macro thinker, here are possible flow down impacts:

In near term, baby related supplies to be in demand and hence the suppliers will flourish
Possibility of uncommitted young couples to lead to single parenting which will cause social system and government services to be under stress.
In couple of years, we will witness strain on child care system
The mass parental leaves will cause vacuum in workforce.
In half a decade, we will witness strain on schools.

Blockchain

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 11:40:02 Z

Blockchain

In recent times, the word Blockchain has become a buzz word. People are using it without understanding the basic fundamentals. Here is an elemental view of blockchain. As per The Elemental philosophy, if you know the basics, the elemental concepts, you know it all. Hope this article will provide you enough knowledge no matter what level your skills are.

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is a technology that allows storing a piece of digital information for which ownership and other metadata can be verified and hence makes it extremely hard or almost impossible to forge.

How blockchain works?

The blockchain is a technology that works like a linked chain you see in a hardware store. Each link loop is connected with two other link loops. Same way, in blockchain, each piece of securable data (node) is linked to data before after and it.
The addresses of connected nodes are encrypted in such a way that changing a node in between would require relinking all nodes appearing after that change.

Who invented blockchain?

It is hard to pinpoint one event to identify as an invention of blockchain. The academia is researching and releasing various papers on digitally signed chain of blocks since early 1990s. The blockchain became mainstream with the research paper and an implementation of digital currency Bitcoin around 2008-2009 by a group of developers known by a pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

What are the types of blockchains?

There are two main types of blockchains based on freedom of participants to join – private and public blockchains.

Public blockchain – In which anyone with internet can participate
Private blockchain – which is similar to public except only closed group of users participate

When the concept of private blockchain extends to a group of organisations, it can be called consortium blockchain.
It is considered a hybrid blockchain when amount of data to keep private vs public is tweaked as per implementation need.

What are the blockchain applications?

The biggest and the most successful blockchain use case is the digital currency. There are few of very widely popular implementations like Bitcoin and Ethereum. However a digital ledger, a verifiable chains of blocks, can have many applications. Following is a list to name a few:

Supply chain – verify origin and authenticity of goods
Financial services – faster settlements
Smart contracts – digital contracts execution and enforcement
Identity – digital ID

The Island Of Light

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 04:42:08 Z

This beautifully written elemental poem The Island Of Light is all about learning, sharing and kindness. It is up to us to make the world around us bright and joyful. The happiness comes from kindness and joy of learning something new. The author shows path to happiness but also indicates not following that do not end well.

The island of light,  
Has the power of might,  
With the tower of sight,  
And people who are very bright,  

With a magical candy store,  
And kids who want more,  
The children are not mean,  
And when people hear the word learning, they are keen  

There are lights that flood the air,  
Which magically make people kind and fair,  
People are not in the trend,  
And that’s the end!

Elemental Author: KKangaroo

Dry Eyes

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 04:39:57 Z

The beautiful elemental poem Dry Eyes shows that feelings and emotions are expressed through the human eyes. The eyes tell a story about personality and human resilience. Sometimes it is OK for an adult to cry and let it out. There is no shame in crying. People cry when they are happy, when they are sad or when they are in pain.

Eyes are the gateway to human soul - don't keep Dry Eyes. Let the emotions flow!

People have Dry Eyes,  
And people ask why they have red eyes,  
It can be painful,  
And if you don’t have dry eyes, you can be playful  

Mainly if you have red eyes, it means that they are dry,  
And if you want to fix it, you just have to cry,  
If people ask “why do you have dry eyes?”,  
The answer is always “it because I don't cry!”

Elemental Author: KKangaroo