Change the Super Key - A Petition Towards the Manufactures!

Hello my fellow GNU/Linux users! My friend +Aniket Mazumdar and I are thinking about filing a petition towards major computer manufactures, to tell them to stop embedding the Windows logo onto the super key of the computers that come preinstalled with Ubuntu and for computers in general. I believe many of you (or maybe all of you) must have been annoyed by that logo at some point of time. This may seem trivial that two guys are going up against the manufactures.... But that's why I would like all of you to join us. I'll prepare a draft of the petition and share it with you. Meanwhile, do share your views on this.

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Why I Started Blogging

It's been almost 5 years since I started blogging. This is the 30th post being published. That means over the course of 5 years, I've written 6 posts per year. Although 30 is much less than I would have liked, this is one of those pet projects I have continued even after the honeymoon phase. Today I want take some time and discuss why I started this blog in the first place. I was in my 3rd year of engineering studies when I started out. I had already developed a keen interest towards programming and tech in general by then. Having a blog seemed liked a cool idea. There were couple of more reasons to go ahead with this idea. That's what we are here to discuss today. Setting up a blog seemed like a technically challenging task. I wanted to know how to setup a blog with comments, advertisements and with a custom domain. It sounded like a great way to acquire new skills and learn new things along the way. Back then I didn't know anyone who shared my enthusiasm for tech...

Dear edX!

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How to Automate NPS Contributions - A Step by Step Guide with Screenshots

Introduction The National Pension System is a great financial product for creating your retirement kitty. With contribution of just ₹5000 per month, you can accumulate more than a crore! I am a NPS subscriber (through NSDL eNPS) myself. If you have read my previous post regarding EPF you know I like NPS for the following reasons. 60 year lock-in period Additional tax exemption under section 80CCD (1B) Choice of various assets classes Choice of pension fund managers Option to change your asset allocation or pension fund manager Low cost of fund management Transparency & organization structure Good customer support Online account opening and management Multiple exit options at retirement Screenshot from Pension Calculator | NPS Trust Some Not So Great Things NPS is...

The State of Video Streaming Services in India [Part 2: The Aftermath]

It's been a year since I published my post about the state of video streaming services in India (which can be found here ). I wrote how media companies were trying to get a piece of that market. A lot has changed in a year. For starters, Hotstar has received a revamp and it works on my Kubuntu system now. Prime Video remains the best option for most people. Many more services have launched. Ozee has rebranded itself as Zee5. But a few things have stood the test of time. Netflix's pricing is as expensive as it was a year ago. Yes, that was sarcastic. Now there are lot of streaming services to choose from. Here's a list of some of the popular ones. Amazon Prime Video Hotstar Netflix YouTube Zee5 Eros Now Spuul Voot Hoichoi ALTBalaji Hooq JioCinema / JioTV Sony LIV YuppTV BIGFlix The list goes on and on. It is said that competition is good for the consumer. More the competition, more the aggressive pricing, more the benefit for the consumer. Just lo...

Angular's E2E Testing Framework - Why is it called Protractor?

The Angular Ecosystem Angular is an amazing framework. It enables us to build modern web apps easily. Yes we can build a modern web app with just HTML + CSS + JavaScript, maybe with a dash of jQuery 😉 But Angular just makes it whole lot easier. Users today's web apps to be fast, well designed, offline-capable, secure and a delightful. Since Angular is a opinionated framework, it forces you to make the right choices. Today Angular is not just a web framework. it has created its own ecosystem. As you might have guessed, I am a Angular fanboy 😎. But one thing I'm not a fan of is writing test cases 😛 I started learning about software testing in late 2019, because I asked to setup unit + E2E testing for one of our projects. What I learned was, Angular come with Karma + Jasmine setup (for unit testing) out of the box. But it has built a specialized E2E testing framework called Protractor . But I couldn't figure out why they called it Protractor of all things. Later it dawned o...

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