Video manipulation has been around for ages. In the last couple of years, things got more realistic with the introduction of ‘Deepfake’. In simple terms, Deepfake is a technology that creates very convincing counterfeit videos and audios of a specific person. Most often, this person is a public figure. Unlike old methods of video manipulation, Deepfake uses a specific realm of AI called ‘Deep Learning’ and hence the name ‘Deep’ fake. The first wide spread appearance of Deepfake videos were in late 2017 when a Reddit user started uploading a video series. And currently, Youtube has hundreds of Deepfake videos…

A meeting room with glass walls, whiteboard, and half a dozen people. A serious topic is being discussed. Multiple baritones can be heard along with one soprano. Many times, the soprano voice is being interrupted while she is speaking. Her ideas are good. Her arguments are valid. Still, a few are acting as if they didn’t hear her talk at all. She is usually me. The only girl in the team.

Once, over a cup of hot-chocolate, I told my friend about this. She nodded with empathy. She told me that she has faced similar treatment at work several times…

K-means clustering isn’t the best clustering algorithm out there. It isn’t highly accurate because K-means assumes all clusters to be even in size and spherical in shape. K-means also can’t handle complex geometry. It is specifically useful only for flat geometry clusters. And outliers, if present, can have a major influence on the output clusters. Yet, K-means has been popular for ages and is widely used in marketing and customer domains. This popularity has puzzled me for sometime. And I have now reached a point where I know why.

#1 High Accuracy Is Often Not a Business Requirement for Clustering

In most of the use-cases where clustering is used, the business…

Remember the “Kodak moment”?

The ability to capture memories into a picture using a personal device was what Kodak gifted to the world. Unfortunately, Kodak decided to cling on to analog cameras far too long, and eventually lost the game.

Nokia too has a similar story.

In 1979, Nokia created the first cellular network in the world. By the 1990s, Nokia was the leader in the realm of mobile phones. When its competitors started focusing on data and the internet, Nokia didn’t care. The company instead continued to focus on its hardware. Nokia did have great hardware. …

Once upon a time, data was scarce. When technology grew exponentially, it led to an increase in data, an increase in the ability to collect data, and eventually an increase in the ability to process data at speed. Many companies didn’t know what to do with this superpower. A few giants figured that out and implemented new ideas exceptionally well. New ideas led to new questions. What is ethical and unethical when processing data? Do companies know too much about their customers? How much is too much? Is it good or bad? Is it getting out of control? These questions…

Everything that we write reflects us. In fact, it is a combination of many reflections that represent us. The reflections of our perspectives, experiences, knowledge, intention, and most importantly the reflection of our mood at the point of time when we wrote what we wrote. All these elements evolve with time.

Something that seemed right to us yesterday might no longer be right today. Maybe we came to know more about it and realized that we were wrong. Or may be we started viewing it from a different angle. What we wrote as an angry response to a political event…

Whenever I read about minimalism, there is an image that comes to my mind. The image of a clean living room. That room has a blue ‘L’ shaped sofa accompanied by a light-colored rug and a round metal coffee table. The coffee table is clutter-free and only has a small decor tray on top. Few tile blocks away stand an elegant white TV stand coupled with small bookcases on either side. The TV and the stacked books add more charm to the room. That entire image feels so comfy that as I am shopping for my new home now, I…

Dwight D. Eisenhower lived and died years before I was even born. Yet, something that he has left behind has helped me and many others like me. He left behind a simple yet powerful prioritization tool that we call Eisenhower Matrix today.

During his life as an army general, statesman, and eventually the President, Dwight Eisenhower had to make numerous tough decisions daily. When there were a million things that ‘had-to-be-done’, but only a handful that ‘could-be-done’ each day, picking up the right task was a very serious issue. This was especially true while he served in the World Wars…