tmbsundar

A Quiet Trend in the JavaScript Ecosystem: When directives look like the platform, developers treat them like the platform.

> - A tool to improve scanned document images and create a pdf

Would you mind sharing the approach you used or the product page if it is public?

Incidentally, I was trying today to get two images combined into a single image and convert that into a single PDF. Tried with paint.net, MS Paint 3D etc., It was messy and the resultant PDF was also huge. Finally, gave up and manually pasted the images into a word doc and exported them as a single PDF.

"Parle denies reports of 10,000 job losses, calls for rational tax structure on biscuits"

"The facts have been hyped by the media. The condition of job loss is actually an eventuality if our demand for lesser tax rates is not met," Mayank Shah told ANI." [1]

[1] http://www.newindianexpress.com/business/2019/aug/27/parle-d...

This is how bad the "factual" NYT media coverage about the whole thing is.

BTW, consumption of higher value biscuits/ cookies have gone up.[2]

[2] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/cons-products/...

This is great news. Really a gem of an open-source/ free SVG editor that can produce high quality images.

Do they have "flatten-layers" and export as a single file (similar to Illustrator) functionality yet?

I checked the release notes, but could not find anything around it.

This can sometimes be an issue, in the way the image is rendered especially by different browsers. You end up with some unintended image output than you developed in the tool because of the interaction between different layers and opacities. Even a .png export did not help in one instance.

1 - While learning some subject learn surrounding concepts or related facts as well. For example, if you are learning Calculus - learn the historical context, infinitesimal approach. If you are preparing for an exam and your text book gives one method and a specific topic, try learning related additional concepts and additional methods. This will help in not forgetting the core concept of technique. A close approximation scenario(not entirely true - but gives you an idea): you learn one forget one, learn four and retain two.

2 - Spaced Repetition - people have covered already.

3 - Active Recall - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_recall

4 - Active Learning - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_learning

Edit: Paragraph alignment

I love BSD.

But, last time I checked NVIDIA didn't have the right CUDA drivers for BSD. Is there any improvement on the status quo yet?

> Demonetization as a black money magic wand is a public face.

Pls check out my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17901835

linking this article (which argues, among other things, that "all money back" does not = no black money):

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/demonetisa...

Excerpt from the above link:

> I remember arguing in one of my articles that I wished all the cash was returned to the banks. Why? Because such people will be identified and will have to face the consequences of gaming the system. This is a long litigious process but major hints of the magnitude of black money involved (that was not supposed to be returned) is high. In his February 1, 2017 budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stated the following: “After the demonetisation, the preliminary analysis of data received in respect of deposits made by people in old currency presents a revealing picture. Deposits of more than Rs 80 lakh were made in 1.48 lakh accounts with average deposit size of Rs 3.31 crores.” (Para 142).

Let us reflect on these data. Just after demonetisation, and even over the last few days, a lot of experts continue to opine that demonetisation was doomed to failure because “No one hordes black money in cash”. Just think about it — Rs 3.31 crore was approximately $5,00,000 (2017 exchange rate) and there are 1,48,000 such individuals. There are not that many Colombian drug lords who individually keep $5,00,000 in cash. In the aggregate, this cash — and it is reported to be cash — is close to Rs 5 trillion. How far is this number from the Rs 2-3 trillion that was supposed to not come back? It maybe the case that most of us made a very conservative estimate of black cash in the Indian economy.

> The real reason for this was political chest thumping.

As in many things in politics, things are not 100% this way or that way. Every political and Economical action has a "signalling" component, which in itself does not mean that "signalling" is the only component.

One needs to look at below for a counter viewpoint, if willing to hear both sides of the debate:

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/demonetisa...

Excerpts from the above:

> The return of cash:

Many of us felt (including the government) that of the Rs 15.8 lakh crore (or trillion) rupee notes that were demonetised, about Rs 2-3 trillion would not be returned. The assumption was that this was the minimum of black cash in the system, and since those hoarding cash would be afraid of getting caught by the tax official, they would burn the cash, rather than return it to the authorities.

What happened was that all the cash got returned, and those expecting that this would not happen, were naïve. Let me speak for myself — I am surprised, and at the same time I am impressed by the ingenuity of Indians, especially those with black money. If the only objective of demonetisation was to not get all the money back, then clearly the policy failed.

> cash to GDP ratio

cash in fiscal year 2017/18 is 10 per cent below what it was in 2015/16 (the GDP has gone up for those wondering).

> Tax Compliance:

I remember arguing in one of my articles that I wished all the cash was returned to the banks. Why? Because such people will be identified and will have to face the consequences of gaming the system. This is a long litigious process but major hints of the magnitude of black money involved (that was not supposed to be returned) is high. In his February 1, 2017 budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stated the following: “After the demonetisation, the preliminary analysis of data received in respect of deposits made by people in old currency presents a revealing picture. Deposits of more than Rs 80 lakh were made in 1.48 lakh accounts with average deposit size of Rs 3.31 crores.” (Para 142).

Let us reflect on these data. Just after demonetisation, and even over the last few days, a lot of experts continue to opine that demonetisation was doomed to failure because “No one hordes black money in cash”. Just think about it — Rs 3.31 crore was approximately $5,00,000 (2017 exchange rate) and there are 1,48,000 such individuals. There are not that many Colombian drug lords who individually keep $5,00,000 in cash. In the aggregate, this cash — and it is reported to be cash — is close to Rs 5 trillion. How far is this number from the Rs 2-3 trillion that was supposed to not come back? It maybe the case that most of us made a very conservative estimate of black cash in the Indian economy.

> tax buoyancy, that is, the ratio of growth in tax revenues and growth in nominal GDP

The fact remains that an improvement in tax compliance has been a major success story of demonetisation.

> Withdrawal of cash from ATMs (plus paper clearing) as a proportion of all transactions (for example, RTGS, POS, IMPS) has declined by 30 per cent in volume and 17 per cent in value. The two periods are Jan-June 2016 (pre-demonetisation) and Jan-June 2018 (post-demonetisation).

Try "Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics" by Richard Hamming

> How do we work on changing customer's perspective?

What perspective are you trying to change here? This question is broad.

Rather if you are more specific and give one or two broad examples of what exactly happened vs what was expected by your clients and how to address them etc., you might get more useful answers.

Remember Indian IT companies vary from small boutique shops to mid-size to giants like Tatas. Company culture/ operating practices vary based on size and skill base.

The industry is quite mature and you may want to provide a little bit more information about your size/ context /problems faced, to get specific answers or recommendations.

I don't get this argument. Why would anybody go into a company expecting to be treated like shit? Stay away, if you know in advance.

To be clear, what I meant was - if you walk into a services based company with the expectation of working in a niche or a good product building experience, you may be disappointed. Peoples' expectation on the work they get and what it turns out to be (the project you are assigned etc.,) might make them feel like they are treated like shit.

If on any other ground (HR grounds, facilities, equality etc.,), they treat people like shit, then it's no more subjective, but subject to law of the land and corporate laws.

I think you are painting with a broad brush here rubbishing the entire company.

no growth

I've known people grow within Infosys just like any other big company

they pay you peanuts and earn millions

Not sure which offices you are referring to - India or US. In India at least, they are at par with peers engaged in the same Services model.

They treat you like shit

Subjective. Depending on what you expected and what you got in return.

You'll be just another fish in the sea.

This I agree. But, that's just like any other big corporate company unless you know how to navigate your way out in the maze.

no much work for you to do

Again subjective. I have come across people who complain of too much work.

The better alternative will be to join a product company if the OP has an option, rather than a services company, as other comments suggest. Any Services company operates predominantly on a head count / person hours model as against a product company or a product based start up which have completely different dynamics.

Elixir macros are nothing like C/C++ macros. Instead of working on strings, they are something like compile-time Elixir functions that are called in the middle of parsing, and work on the abstract syntax tree (AST), which is a code represented as Elixir data structure. Macro can work on AST, and spit out some alternative AST that represents the generated code.

The description above from the article seems like closer to the Lisp macros. I have not programmed in Elixir yet.

Can someone who knows comment on the similarity here?

When was the last time you tried? R55 is way snappier than Chrome. Nightly is also fast.

I have Nightly in one machine (Linux) and the R55 in a Windows machine. It's way fast than the previous versions I used to have and looks definitely snappier than G. chrome. Don't have any benchmarks with me, purely based on perception/ felt response times.

Yup Crashed mine as well and my whole machine also hung up on me.

I would also wager that a lack of a thriving app store eco-system was/is a major factor that played Windows down.

By the time Windows entered the Market, Android and iOS had the critical mass of developers and users in downloading games and apps from their respective apps stores and Windows could not break into the network effect.

Also, they allow duplicates I guess.

You mean from the 25 kV lines?

I didn't down vote you. But, I wanted to put some views here:

if its a coal train

No coal trains in India except Heritage pieces.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Railways#Locomotives

You have a point. But, consider this:

- Currently 47% kms length of the running track is electrified. They are not doing away with electrification and completely going solar. - Currently they have 5869 Diesel and 5214 electric locomotives in total. (almost 47% again.) [2]

[2] http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/railwayboard/uploads/direct...

The Diesel ones have an Auxiliary power units to save Diesel which they are hauling around anyway now. Your point of hauling around batteries and equipment even now happens in all Diesel locos with multiple compressors and stuff. [3].

[3] https://medhaindia.com/index.php/products/fuel-saving-soluti...

The Solar changes will mostly augment the Diesel units progressively thus strategically reducing dependence on Diesel, which India is a huge importer every year.

The Strategy is twofold as they are speeding up electrification plus thus reducing the share of Diesel locos and also experimenting with Solar stuff.

why are you building this in house?

This is an existing desktop application built years ago (10+) and went through many updates over the years.

Lot of business specific customisations are also in. Hence, can't ditch it and go for a generic solution at this stage.

currently desktop or web based

currently desktop based. Want to move to web based.

Can't edit this comment anymore. Hence, posting as a reply.

Looks like UWP is more specific to Windows. When moving away from VB, I was thinking of more decoupling from any specific lock-down, in case this can be productized later.

But be aware - study the depth of some of these plugins. Invoice entry screens are fraught with all sorts of things like real time validation (e.g. will you allow a user to specify a quantity of an item greater than what is in stock? Can you calculate tax amounts on the fly line by line? Can the user change the pricing of the item on the fly and are there rules that have to be adhered to in order to prevent fraud) etc.

Yes. You hit the nail on it's head. All of these apply in this case.

Thanks. Would explore this option.

It's not keyboard short-cuts, but the ease of showing a let's say 10 by 8 cell grid and entering data by moving up, down, side - left and right. etc.,

Thanks for your comments.

If this is a hobby project

No. It's a production live project. But, there is no urgent timeline as of now. I am not in a hurry to move.

if you're used to the ease of VB

Yes. But, not looking a close experience in web tech. I am familiar with web tech to some extent. But, the grid thing is a little bit tricky for me.

Thanks for sharing Anvil - Will look at your solution.

> We are not only being colonized by machines, we are becoming machines, and gladly

Got reminded of Erich Fromm's - Automaton Conformity:

"The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self." [1]

Extract from “Fear of Freedom” (1941)

[1] http://www.heathwoodpress.com/automaton-conformity-erich-fro...

You need to read the book and his work to understand that bit.

It's not just reading the book. "Reading the book" makes you understand the way the brain works and can induce and "help" sustain "real pain" in places you think it to be. He also makes it clear that the advice "it's all in your mind" is just not going to help and only an insult to the sufferer.

If I understand correctly, he does not exclude physical examinations and advises to go through scans to determine anything serious and attend immediately. For the rest, he outlines the process by which, your brain can trick you into "induce real pain" and sustain real pain.

Any kind of relaxation or - a) reading the book = understanding the process b) relaxation/ meditation which takes away your concentration away c) letting out your aggression on some contact sports etc., can help.

Great work and initiative.

A quick suggestion:

The bullets seem to be at the same level for the name + link of the game and the characteristics of the game. This gets a little confusing as in some cases I thought the second or third bullet point is also another game but lacks hyperlink - thus tried clicking them.

Hence, if you can make them as sub-headings/ sub-bullets or may be within parentheses or some visual differentiation, it will be great.

In quality circles this is known as cost of poor quality. We might need Deming type thinking again to counter the short term thinking.

* Deming's chain reaction: *

http://www.transformationforum.org/Chain_Reaction.html