Predestination - Mind Bending Movie

Damn! That was a really good movie and I wonder how I missed it all these years. I have got to watch all movies related to time travel, paradoxes and those that help you question existence. I mean this was crazy right. Whoever must have seen this movie would have taken a moment to absorb it.

I on the other hand took a paper and pencil and started making those intricate timelines and time jumps. The process of connecting the dots was really fun and I loved that fact that the director herein really think it through.

Here is one for your reference, if by any chance you are as lost as I was once I finished it. This will help you absorb it completely. Ladies and Gentlemen - The Timelines ...

Collective Intelligence

Someone once told Steve Jobs that the person standing on the interaction of science and design is destined to rule the world. And I am pretty sure Steve took it very seriously. It is evident in all his inventions in years to come.

I think the next wave of achieving greatness is going to be those people standing at the cross section of human and artificial intelligence. That is the technology everest that people and companies across the world are trying to climb and claim.

In this race, there might be a first movers advantage, but like in all startup races - the one who wins is not the one who comes first, but the one who is considered the last man standing.

We can broadly divide the tools that human being built into following three category -

1. Passive Tools - They do what you ask them to do. Suppose you have a knife. It will cut a vegetable where ample pressure is applied across its sharp edges. Nothing more and nothing less. These are considered essentially passive tools. 
2. Learning Tools - You can have a machine learning trading strategy that can optimize a set of parameters for most profit. This will be an exhaustive and iterative process, comes with a reasonably probability to make estimation, but doesn't guarantee future success.
3. Intuitive Tools- A dog instinctively knows that it is time to go out. When it is time to go you will find your pet jumping. That is nature and we haven't managed to conquer this arena. Doing something instinctively is pretty unique with humans/animals that is hard to impart to tools. 

But a combination of these three tool building strategies can be awesome. Basically, there are somethings we are good at, like instincts and there are somethings machines are good at, like going through exhaustive set of data and learning. What if we come together and each one of us do what we are good at?

Hello, Collective Intelligence!!

Currency Detection

It is interesting to read news about demonetization in India. The IT department just reported that they have found Rs. 1000 crore of black money via raid that are being conducted since 08-Nov-2016. But I still feel that we are behind the curve. The wire trail, tip off, agent disguising, KYC, identity proof, etc. are all are good ideas but still not upto mark. There should be some way of detection that hits these people at core. And I am going to dedicate this post in formulating that idea.

So basically, the government has to detect these bundles and bundles of cash kept under the bed, over the ceiling, behind the toilet seat, in basements, cars seats and where not. One thing we can be sure of - that it is hidden very innovatively.

Now detection requires eye sight, which essentially requires light to reflect from those bundles of notes and get absorbed in the eyes of IT sleuths. The first problem is the covering material. It can be anything including roof, covering polythene, house walls, etc. They all make things opaque for. So we can't use visible light, infrared light, ultraviolet light, millimeter wavelength microwaves for black money detection in cash form. However, if we go one step ahead the radio waves used by mobiles and wifi used by our devices can go through these walls. No matter how deep a basement you are in, you still get network connectivity. So we need some kind of modeling that allows us to project and make an imagery of the radio waves.

This is where "The Dark Knight" strikes. You remember this scene -

The concept is to use mobile devices and turn them into high-frequency generator. This should then allow you to plot / trace the whole country - city by city - block by block - in and out. India, as a country has definitely managed to achieve decent mobile penetration. Don't have any person or company as a watchdog on this. It will unnecessarily go into tangles of law and privacy. A better approach will be to have the live imagery feed further equipped with AI bots to automatically detect huge stacks of cash. Alas, the technology is not yet there and a little futuristic. But it would have helped the Modi government immensely during these times of upheaval where the government wants to clean the system as much as possible from the evils of black money.

Is there anyone who would care to venture in getting high-frequency generator right?