Lenovo's Warranty Policy Is Disappointing

This will be a short post. So let's cut to the chase. A few weeks ago my Lenovo G50-80 started having issues with the "y" key. I went to the store, and they contacted Lenovo's customer care department. The representative said that he wouldn't be able to help because I had installed Ubuntu on my system. That was just hilarious. How can a piece of software effect a hardware issue? I bought the laptop because it wasn't pre-installed with Windows. I bought it to exercise my software freedom. If Lenovo is not going allow me do that, then they should just stop selling these models.

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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

Notifications, Not Ads

Notifications on our smartphones are pretty common these days. Notifications are designed to provide the user with helpful information and alerts. For example, a reminder notification, an email notification, a download-in-progress notification. According to Google, Notifications provide short, timely, and relevant information about your app when it’s not in use. Source: Material Design | Notifications It's a useful feature offered by modern mobile operating systems. An average smartphone user gets many, many notifications each day. Some of 'em are useful, some of 'em are less so. Many are intruding in nature. The issue is that developers have started to abuse the notification framework. They are using notifications to serve ads and promotions which gets pretty annoying pretty quickly. These notifications are neither timely nor helpful. And almost none of apps allow you to opt out from this crap. The only thing you can do is block all notificat

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

Dear edX!

Dear edX, I was in my 2nd year of college when you came to life. And I was ecstatic! No, not to be in college (LOL) but to have finally found my calling. Computer programming. I was browsing through all the resources I could find. Codecademy courses mainly. And right at that moment, you arrived. Your parents hail from the Harvard University and from the MIT. So of course you received my attention. Also, you had an unique selling point: free certificates. This was huge! No one else was doing it. It seemed you were actually trying to help students learn new skills and show off to the world. I was stoked to enroll into the course developed world's top professors. The free certificates were a big motivator to complete the courses. The first course I enrolled into was developed by The Linux Foundation. I have taken several courses since then. Some were on computer programming, some were about a country's history and some provided advice on career growth and personal finance. 2

It's Time India Gets Cashless Payment

India just had a mobile network revolution yesterday; thanks to Reliance Jio. It's time India gets another long-due technology i.e. mobile payment. There are many advantages of using mobile payment over cash or ATM cards. You are less likely to lose your phone - assuming you fiddle with your phone as much as I do. Even if you lose your phone, you can at least try to track it down using GPS. Your phone doesn't physically deteriorate over time. No need for mints. No wastage of paper. It's environment friendly. No maintenance needed unlike ATMs. More secure than ATM PIN codes. Mobile payment uses your fingerprints for verification. Mobile payment is much more convenient. Your employer transfers your salary to the bank and you can directly pay from your bank account. No need to withdraw the cash and hand it over to the merchant, who eventually does the reverse process after they received the money. Such waste of time. Instead just bring your phone or watch close to the

Tensai Sensei

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