Son, Dad, Software Engineer, Seeker, SF
Joined August 2009
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Two hard hitting quotes:
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. - J D Salinger
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality - Ayn Rand
samrat debroy retweeted
Hey @grok, number first.
How many Israeli soldiers did Israel send to 𝗙𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗗𝗜𝗘 alongside American troops in the last 𝗙𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗨.𝗦. 𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗦 that Israel pushed for?
samrat debroy retweeted
Hi @grok
Who is wife of Anand Ranganathan. Who is her direct stakeholders? If government changes - what will be impact on her job?
samrat debroy retweeted
Quand j'ai déménagé au Japon il y a une vingtaine d'années, la première chose qui m'a marqué, c'est que tout était japonais.
Les téléphones portables étaient Sony, Sharp ou Panasonic.
Les téléviseurs étaient Toshiba.
Les voitures étaient Honda et Toyota.
Les trains étaient Hitachi et Kawasaki.
Les escaliers mécaniques, les climatisations et les ascenseurs étaient Mitsubishi.
Toute l'infrastructure matérielle du pays semblait construite sur place.
Un ami marocain m'a dit qu'il avait eu la même sensation en venant en France pour la première fois il y a fort longtemps.
Des voitures françaises, des trains français, des ascenseurs français. Les téléviseurs étaient Thomson, les ordinateurs de l'administration étaient Bull. Il y avait même des téléphones portables Alcatel et Sagem. (J'en avais un, c'était pas ouf, et pas le sommet de la classe comparé au Nokia 3310, mais ça existait. Sagem vendait plus de mobiles en France que Nokia en 2004.)
En venant du Maroc, tout cela semblait très impressionnant et nouveau.
Nvidia produisait ses puces en France La toute première, en 1995, puis la RIVA 128 de 1997 qui a sauvé la boîte de la faillite : les deux sont sorties des usines de SGS-Thomson, l'ancêtre de STMicroelectronics. Nvidia était alors une start-up d'une centaine de personnes qui cherchait quelqu'un pour graver ses puces, et c'est chez nous qu'elle l'a trouvé. L'année suivante elle a pris TSMC en second fournisseur, puis l'a gardé seul. Nvidia vaut aujourd'hui deux fois l'ensemble du CAC 40.
20 ans plus tard notre environnement matériel et donc industriel est de moins en moins français. Thomson a cédé ses téléviseurs au chinois TCL en 2004, Alcatel ses mobiles la même année, Sagem a disparu des rayons en 2008. Nous avons aussi lâché la course aux puces : l'alliance Crolles 2, qui devait faire de l'Isère la pointe européenne de la gravure, est morte fin 2007 quand Philips et Motorola s'en sont retirés, et ST-Ericsson, dernière tentative européenne de fabriquer des processeurs de smartphone, a fermé en 2013 avec près de trois milliards d'euros de pertes. Les puces qui entraînent aujourd'hui les modèles d'IA sortent presque toutes de Taïwan.
Même histoire en robotique. Nao, le petit humanoïde conçu à Paris par Aldebaran, est devenu le robot officiel de la RoboCup, la coupe du monde des robots. Aldebaran a été vendu au japonais SoftBank en 2012, revendu à un groupe allemand en 2022, placé en redressement judiciaire en 2025. Les robots industriels de Renault, eux, étaient déjà passés sous pavillon italien à la fin des années 1990.
Cela ne fait pas mal par patriotisme blessé, pas même par ses conséquences sur la prospérité et l'emploi, peut-être même pas comme rappel constant des choix désastreux faits en conscience par une élite politico-industrielle sans vision.
Cela fait mal car alors que nous entrons dans un nouveau monde de tensions géopolitiques, notre capacité à maîtriser notre propre infrastructure industrielle est la seule garante de notre liberté.
Ce n'est plus théorique. Les Chinois menacent de couper les accès aux terres rares si nous ne laissons pas leurs produits finir d'achever notre industrie. Les Américains coupent les accès aux modèles IA les plus avancés quand ils craignent qu'ils puissent être trop puissants pour en laisser l'usage à leurs vassaux.
Nous sommes entrés dans le XXIe siècle et ses tensions en bazardant progressivement tout ce qui garantissait notre liberté et notre prospérité, sur l'autel de croyances absurdes. L'idée que la production intellectuelle était supérieure à la production matérielle. L'idée que la mondialisation garantie par l'US Navy serait là pour toujours.
Ces croyances absurdes n'ont pas encore disparu. L'idée simple et évidente que la France ne restera un pays riche et libre ce siècle que si elle triple son parc nucléaire et transforme son énergie abondante et bon marché en centres de calcul et en industries robotiques paraît encore, pour une grande partie de l'élite, incongrue ou blasphématoire.
Le parallèle a souvent été fait, mais il faut le répéter inlassablement : nous sommes la Chine des Qing qui refuse la machine à vapeur, nous sommes l'Empire ottoman des oulémas qui interdit l'imprimerie.
Nous sommes une vieille civilisation qui refuse d'acter sa décadence et les actions indispensables pour retrouver son rang.
Il est tard, mais pas trop tard.
samrat debroy retweeted
i own a relatively new (2025) samsung tv.
i kept getting weirdly targeted ads.
i tried reversing the firmware but it was aes encrypted and no keys unless tear it apart and do uart/jtag magic.
zero days it is. root shell on new samsung TVs!
discovered PRIVACY HORROR. write up?
samrat debroy retweeted
Elon Musk just called Hitler a socialist again and every time he does this Grok corrects him and points out that he was a fascist.
Never deleting this app.
samrat debroy retweeted
If you care about performance, don't rewrite in Rust. Use Java instead?
These folks took a popular open source word processor written in Rust and built the same in Java. It was faster, smaller, and used less memory!
codenameone.com/blog/rewrite…
samrat debroy retweeted
Are vibe coders even aware of...
1. Race Conditions
2. Deadlocks
3. Database Transactions
4. ACID Properties
5. Isolation Levels
6. Optimistic Locking
7. Pessimistic Locking
8. Connection Pooling
9. N+1 Queries
10. Database Indexes
11. Query Optimization
12. EXPLAIN ANALYZE
13. Foreign Key Constraints
14. Unique Constraints
15. Database Migrations
16. Zero-Downtime Migrations
17. Read Replicas
18. Replication Lag
19. Database Sharding
20. Partitioning
21. Cache Invalidation
22. Redis Eviction
23. Cache Stampedes
24. Distributed Caching
25. Idempotency
26. Retry Mechanisms
27. Exponential Backoff
28. Jitter
29. Circuit Breakers
30. Rate Limiting
31. Load Balancing
32. Horizontal Scaling
33. Vertical Scaling
34. Reverse Proxies
35. Message Queues
36. Dead Letter Queues
37. Background Workers
38. Job Scheduling
39. Event-Driven Architecture
40. Webhook Verification
41. Webhook Retries
42. Eventual Consistency
43. Distributed Transactions
44. Outbox Pattern
45. CQRS
46. Event Sourcing
47. Backpressure
48. Graceful Shutdown
49. Health Checks
50. Distributed Tracing
samrat debroy retweeted
Hitler was as much of a far-left socialist as you are a democracy-loving humanist.
samrat debroy retweeted
Meet Ashoke Sen,
a Bengali-medium schoolboy from Kolkata who applied to only two American PhD programs because those two let him skip the application fee up front.
He took his BSc at Presidency College in 1975, then a master’s at IIT Kanpur. Stony Brook accepted him, then he joined.
On 22 October 2026 he gave the Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture at Stockholm University, “Gravity from strings and strings from gravity.” The Klein medal comes with that lecture, first Indian physicist to receive the Klein Medal. He also won the inaugural 2012 Fundamental Physics Prize, one of nine, and the 2014 Dirac Medal.
During his PhD, almost three years went by with nothing moving but his plan was ordinary. He read lots of books and review articles, went sightseeing with friends, then hoped it would work out. Something began to click near the end.
“90% of the time I am stuck!” ~ Ashoke Sen
Long stretches of nothing moving are normal in hard work.
In a historic milestone for Indian science, renowned theoretical physicist Professor Ashoke Sen has just been awarded the 2026 Oskar Klein Medal, becoming the first Indian physicist to receive this prestigious honor. Celebrated internationally for his foundational contributions to string theory. Professor Sen delivered the memorial lecture titled "Gravity from strings and strings from gravity" at Stockholm University.
Those of you who don't know, the Oskar Klein Medal is one of theoretical physics' most prestigious honors, awarded annually in Stockholm to celebrate groundbreaking ideas about how our universe works. Instituted in 1988, it is conferred jointly by Stockholm University and the Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The award invites leading thinkers from around the globe to deliver the Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture, recognizing monumental leaps in fields like quantum mechanics, cosmology, and string theory.
The medal is named after Oskar Klein, an influential Swedish theoretical physicist who helped shape early quantum mechanics and modern field theory. Working closely with titans like Niels Bohr, Klein is best remembered for Kaluza–Klein theory, where he proposed the daring idea that extra dimensions of spacetime might exist curled up into microscopic, invisible loops. He also helped formulate the Klein–Gordon equation for relativistic particles and the Klein–Nishina formula for photon scattering, cementing his legacy as a true pioneer of 20th-century physics.
Over the decades, the medal has gone to some of the greatest minds in science, many of whom are also Nobel laureates. Iconic recipients include Chen-Ning Yang, Steven Weinberg, and Hans Bethe in its earliest years, followed by visionary cosmologist Alan Guth and leading theorists like Edward Witten, Gerard 't Hooft, and Peter Higgs. More recently, luminaries such as gravitational physicist Kip Thorne, black hole theorist Roy Kerr, and cosmologist Renata Kallosh have joined this distinguished roster, keeping Klein’s imaginative scientific spirit alive.
samrat debroy retweeted
Yes, largely true. Cortical Labs' CL1 systems use stem-cell-derived human neurons on electrode arrays, kept alive in sealed life-support units with nutrient media (sugar/salts) refreshed every few days. Biological data centers in Melbourne and Singapore now run racks of them. They've controlled Doom via electrical signals. No evidence of consciousness—just adaptive neural activity.
samrat debroy retweeted
Two classes extremely bad cyber vulnerabilities disclosed in the last 24 hours. The first potentially impacts everyone online. The second impacts nearly everyone running a server.
tl;dr: Everyone should upgrade their OS and Browser as soon as possible. If you run a server you should upgrade PHP (or ensure it’s removed if you’re not using it) as soon as possible.
The first class of vulnerabilities is a set of root TLS certificates that were discovered to have a trivial private key. Literally the number 4. These roots were controlled by #eMudhra. The problem is that with that an attacker could create a certificate and, if they could get in the traffic flow, intercept traffic to any site or service. The solution is to stop trusting certificates issued by these vulnerable roots. Upgrading your browser and OS is the fastest way for most Internet users to do this.
The second class of vulnerabilities doesn’t apply to most consumers directly, but does apply to most anyone running a server. These vulnerabilities have been dubbed #php2shell. PHP is one of the most widely used web programming languages. It’s estimated 70% of websites run on PHP. These vulnerabilities allow an attacker to send a crafted set of queries to a server running PHP and potentially take over the server. From there they could potentially read, modify, delete, or repurpose anything on the server. The solution is to upgrade PHP to the latest version ASAP. Even if you’re not using PHP for your web development, it’s often included by default. So make sure it is either upgraded or fully removed.
@Cloudflare received advanced warning of both of these classes of vulnerabilities. We’ve ensured that where we act as a proxy we are no longer trusting the vulnerable roots. We are also reviewing certificate transparency (CT) logs for any sign the vulnerability was exploited before its disclosure. We have not found any evidence but CT logs are not perfect and a sophisticated attacker who knew about the weakness could have exploited it without a new certificate being logged.
For the PHP vulnerabilities, we have deployed mitigations available for all customers for free. Because of the complexity of the vulnerabilities and number of ways it can be exploited, we also released new WAF capabilities that are unique in the industry to catch the exploit based on the response. These too are available for every Cloudflare customer for free.
Even if you are taking advantage of Cloudflare’s protection, it is important to upgrade your OS, browsers, and PHP installations as soon as possible. We can provide a strong bandaid, but the best protection is to fix the underlying problem.
If you’re interested in learning more, you can read our blogs:
Vulnerable roots: blog.cloudflare.com/emudhra-…
PHP vulnerabilities: blog.cloudflare.com/php-vuln…
samrat debroy retweeted
August 6, 1945. A 29 year old engineer is walking to work in Hiroshima on the last day of a three month business trip.
He's packed. He's going home to his wife and baby son tomorrow.
He looks up and sees a bomber high overhead. Something small falls from it.
Then the sky turns white.
His name was Tsutomu Yamaguchi. He designed oil tankers for Mitsubishi, and he'd been sent to Hiroshima to work at the company's shipyard. He was about two miles from where the bomb exploded.
The blast threw him off his feet. It burst his eardrums. It burned the left side of his upper body, his face and arms. For a while he couldn't see.
He spent the night in an air raid shelter in a city that no longer existed.
The next morning, badly burned, he found two of his coworkers who had also survived. Together they made their way through the ruins to a train station and got on one of the few trains still running.
They were going home.
Home was Nagasaki.
He got back on August 8, covered in bandages. His family barely recognized him. Doctors treated his burns. Most people would have stayed in bed.
On August 9, Yamaguchi reported to work.
He was sitting in the Mitsubishi office in Nagasaki, telling his boss what had happened in Hiroshima. How one bomb had wiped out an entire city. According to Yamaguchi, his boss told him that was impossible. That he must be out of his mind.
And at that moment, through the window, the room filled with the same white light.
The second atomic bomb had just exploded over Nagasaki. Once again, Yamaguchi was about two miles away.
The blast tore the bandages off his burns. The office was wrecked. And somehow, again, he lived.
He rushed home terrified of what he'd find. His house was destroyed. But his wife and son had survived too. They had gone out looking for burn ointment for him and were sheltering in a tunnel when the bomb hit.
Treating his injuries from the first bomb may have saved them from the second.
He was sick for a long time. His hair fell out. He had fevers and infections. But he recovered. He went back to work, raised a family, and lived a normal life for decades. He rarely talked about it publicly.
Hundreds of people are believed to have lived through both bombings. But in 2009, the Japanese government officially recognized Yamaguchi as a survivor of both, the only person ever formally given that status.
Late in life he finally started speaking out against nuclear weapons. He even addressed the United Nations.
He died in 2010 at the age of 93.
He was hit by the only two atomic bombs ever used in war. And he outlived the century they were dropped in.
samrat debroy retweeted
In 2002, an IIT Kanpur civil engineer working as an IES officer wrote to Prime Minister Vajpayee, exposing corruption in the $10 billion Golden Quadrilateral Corridor - India's biggest highway project.
Designed to construct 14,000 km of 4-lane expressways connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata, it stands as the modern bedrock of Indian infrastructure.
He left his letter to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) unsigned. Knowing the deadly stakes, Dubey attached his credentials on a separate sheet with an explicit instruction:
"Before moving the file, please remove the attachment containing my particulars to ensure secrecy."
But the PMO did not redact that information. It forwarded his complaint down the ministry chain with his identity attached. His name reached the very people he had exposed.
One year later, on his 31st birthday, Satyendra Dubey was shot dead outside Gaya railway station by the mafia.
They called it armed robbery. His family never believed it. The men who ran the murder racket were never touched, even after a CBI probe.
His death led to the Whistleblowers Protection Act in 2014. It was never brought into force, and it still doesn't protect a whistleblower's identity to this day.
His father, a poor sugar mill clerk with 7 kids, spent his entire life’s savings to raise an honest son who went to
@IITKanpur and then joined the IES to serve the nation.
On November 27, 2003, instead of celebrating Satyendra’s 31st birthday, that old man received his son’s bullet-riddled body in a wooden box, forced to weep over the casket of a hero he spent a lifetime raising for a country that wasn't brave enough to keep him alive.
samrat debroy retweeted
Hey @grok
Connect these seven dots:
1. CIA venture capital
2. Pokémon Go
3. Cold War spy satellites
4. Google Earth
5. Autonomous drones
6. 30 billion ground-level scans
7. 2001
What single person connects every dot?
