Mayank's Blog

I have been fascinated by science fiction stories since my childhood. From Jules Verne's wonderful " Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea " to Andy Weir's " The Martian ", sci-fi books have never been boring. Till I read Robert Masello's " The Einstein Prophecy ". This book was suggested by the Kindle bookstore as number one popular book in sci-fi category. With a print volume of only 326 pages, I immediately bought it on my Kindle. The story is set in the World War II era with the Allied powers facing off the Axis powers. The story moves briskly at first with good description of the environment and the war situation. Our hero is a US military officer Lucas. Yes, despite the book's title Einstein is not a major player in the story. Also, he does not make a prophecy. Lucas is trying to find an ancient object which will allow Allied forces to defeat Germany. Apparently it is something so important that even Hitler is also looking f...

I am sure many of you must have by now read the New York Times article which paints a very unflattering account of Amazon and the way it treats its workers. Examples are cited where a worker was given low performance ratings because she missed work as she was suffering from cancer. In another instance, a worker was asked to go on a business trip just a day after suffering a miscarriage. There are many others instances cited in the article. While these are horrible stories, I am not here to criticize Amazon. Thing is, that these are the practices followed by nearly every organization. Every company exists to earn profit and they want to squeeze as much out of their resources to maximize it. This is also true of Indian IT industry. In general, the work done by the Indian IT industry is monotonous, not innovative and something which their "onsite" counterparts will prefer not to do. Indians are ready to take these up at much lower wages and thus work comes here. Even wit...

Have you recently tried to shop on any Indian e-commerce website? If you have, you too would be frustrated by the constant nagging done by these sites to download their app. Myntra has gone ahead and shut its website down completely! Others like Flipkart won't let you browse any product in peace and will immediately try to "connect" you to their app - even when you are already at their site and trying to buy a product. Amazon India will release "app-only" offers and discounts. All this is done in the garb of making customer experience better. @mayankMSFT We direct users to the mobile App in order to provide better shopping experience. We have passed your feedback along. — flipkartsupport (@flipkartsupport) August 7, 2015 Only problem is that it makes user experience even worse. These companies are trying to lure the consumer into a walled garden so that they make bad, misinformed buying decisions . Let me elaborate. On a desktop browser...

There are certain tasks that the Indian society expects a person to fulfill - get a good job, get married at a certain age, buy a house, buy a car, have kids etc. So it would seem natural to you that after getting married I have started looking around for a house to buy. It isn't so. My hunt for a house began with a trip to the mall to buy a sofa set. It should not come as a surprise that I like movies. I have watched hundreds of movies and now that I have means at my disposal I started to improve my movie viewing experience. With TV and audio system out of the way, a comfy couch was all that was needed. So I dragged my wife with me to the mall and started evaluating the over-priced sofas. We hopped and jumped on a lot of them and when the dust finally settled, my heart was with a sofa that was also a recliner, rocking chair, had foot support, was made of high quality dead skin... err leather - the complete package! It also came with a hefty price tag. We came back home to di...

Download the Remote Keyboard service for you Windows Phone app. You will need administrator privileges on your PC to run the app. NOTE: 1. Supported OSes are Windows 7 and Windows 8. 2. Your firewall must not be blocking connection to local IP addresses.

If you are going to watch a Mission Impossible movie for emotions, story and nice little subtleties then, and I hate to break this to you, you are at the wrong party! For the past 15 years, people go to theatres to watch Ethan Hunt do stuff that’s not humanly possible. Ethan not only does it but does it in style. As with other MI movies, Impossible Mission Force (IMF) main agent Ethan Hunt is entrusted with the task of saving the world. The only little twist in the story is the initiation of Ghost protocol, effectively ending any support to Ethan and his gang. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Ethan eventually succeeds. But don’t blame yourself if you still get the chills when Ethan cries out, “Mission Accomplished!”. MI4 is full of action sequences, one better than the other. My favorite scene is when Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt) jumps down the Burj Khalifa with little more than a fire hose to support him. The looming sandstorm in the background, in all its IMAX glory, makes...

When I first came to Hyderabad, I did all the touristy things that one is supposed to do when visiting a new city. I was fascinated by the old city charm that Hyderabad exudes but never had I thought that I would ever be living in this city. Strangely enough, here I am writing this, after spending more that six months living here. Like with yours truly, you have to spend some time with this city to begin liking it. Me being a nerd, the first thing that stood out as a beacon of hope during the initial dark days here was the internet connection provided by Beam Telecom. I have lived in quite a few cities of India and believe me nowhere you will get such blazing fast internet speeds at such affordable prices. It’s a pity that Beam is just limited to Hyderabad. Next thing that deserves a mention here is the Rajnikant -style driving practiced here. Crossing a road, travelling in an auto-rickshaw, driving a car/bike, everything here gives you an adrenaline rush! You just don’t mess with...