Ruvan W retweeted
Very excited to share Genie 4, our incredible interactive world model, bringing together real-time physics, reasoning, and audio! Simulations within simulations, makes you wonder just how deep the rabbit hole goes... I have a feeling we will be finding out soon enough...
Ruvan W retweeted
Once again, for those who want to bet their country's critical comms on Starlink:
From Ben Evans' awesome newsletter (see ben-evans.com/newsletter):
"Starlink suddenly stopped working for anything moving at over a certain speed in Ukraine ... and it turned out that (apparently) Elon Musk had made the decision by himself"
Ruvan W retweeted
So @officialunp a party once adored by large number of minorities in this country, wants Gnanasara; most racist monk of our lifetime to be pardoned.
#lka #SriLanka #racism #Buddhism
Ruvan W retweeted
Deleting 15 years of climate change data WE paid for so big oil can keep raping us on high prices seems criminal.
In order for any govt to have any real impact on cracking down on the drug menace, apprehending pedlars is not enough - what is done with the confiscated drugs is essential. Destroying would be to lose billions, so what can be done with them? @anuradisanayake @PresidentAKD
Ruvan W retweeted
Day 2 at RMV.
In the rain, muddy, sweaty, waited in queues for hours since 5.30am.
Finally when my token number was called they 'accepted' the documents.
However the gasbags prior to approving it tell me that the signature and seal on the original book isn't too visible (it isn't - and I argued that an 'original' book in use since the mid 2000s will naturally be as such). However, if one looks carefully you can see the faded seal and full signature underneath the old lamination.
I pointed out that everything else; the owner's letter of sale, his NIC copies, up-to-date revenue license, insurance, and all mandatory forms signed and attested were there. Also, all of this is what they previously perused and said was okay.
I thought it ironic that there were people bringing in their books in bits and tatters managing to get them approved 😅. Clearly there were books in far worse conditions getting green lit.
Having being told different things by different people working at the RMV (nothing helpful), at the end of my tether of patience I said 'fuck it', and walked out.
Today's mission is a failure.
My resolve does not accept failure.
Live to fight another day then.
I still refuse to offer 'special contributions'.
හරි. තව කට්ටක් කමු 😠
Ruvan W retweeted
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Document Datasets: A Large-Scale, Multilingual Resource for Law, News, and Policy
🆕 v2026-10-12-0839 is now live.
- 299,131 documents (85.4 GB)
- 26 distinct datasets
- සිංහල, தமிழ் & English
@GitHub: <github.com/nuuuwan/lk_datase…>
@arXiv: <arxiv.org/abs/2510.04124>
🤖 @GitHub is updated automatically & near-instantly as new data becomes available. # SriLanka #OpenData #NLP #LKA
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Document Datasets: A Large-Scale, Multilingual Resource for Law, News, and Policy
🆕 v2026-07-02-0940 is now live.
- 278,621 documents (80.7 GB)
- 26 distinct datasets
- සිංහල, தமிழ் & English
@GitHub: <github.com/nuuuwan/lk_datase…>
@arXiv: <arxiv.org/abs/2510.04124>
🤖 @GitHub is updated automatically & near-instantly as new data becomes available.
# SriLanka #OpenData #NLP #LKA
Ruvan W retweeted
Anthropic is merging 30,000 PRs per day to their monorepo. In other words- agent write code, agents review code and no humans have any understanding what's going on.
One has to wonder where the world is heading to in such a hurry.
New on our Engineering blog: Creating in-house source control.
In May, we merged around 2,500 code changes per day. In September, we merged more than 30,000 per day. As a result, we became bottlenecked by developer infrastructure built for human (rather than agent) scale.
Here, we share how we built a new version control system—and fully migrated our monorepo from git—in five months: anthropic.com/engineering/re…
Ruvan W retweeted
It's ok to have Starlink in SL, but nothing critical should depend on it. Historically we know that if a country's critical infrastructure (e.g. fuel supply, banking, internet) becomes too dependent on a US controlled entity, it can and will be used for political leverage.
BREAKING: Zelensky says he has been betrayed by Trump, that Elon Musk and Trump deliberately blocked Starlink in Ukraine overnight and that people have been killed as a result. "I am sure they knew what they did, absolutely. Because it was 1am at night, Starlink was blocked by SpaceX and the United States," he tells Piers Morgan.
"This decision will bring a lot of human losses. Of course, people will die." He said interceptors that rely on Starlink did not work, and that "this is not the right side of history."
Asked if he is angry with Musk, Zelensky said yes, calling it a big mistake.
"Now Putin is laughing because, I mean this is for him, simple victory," he says on the Trump-Russia diesel deal.
Ruvan W retweeted
Minister Nalinda Jayatissa says Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera is being treated in accordance with the law under the Prisons Ordinance, without any special treatment.
He said the same law and procedures applied to 63 other Buddhist monks currently serving prison sentences are being applied to Gnanasara Thera.
Ruvan W retweeted
History will be unforgiving.
There was never any Mecca "alliance" to defend Gaza from a Zionist genocide.
But an "alliance" paid by petro-sheikh funds is now deployed against Yemen - a MUSLIM nation.
Ruvan W retweeted
In case you forgot: Gnanasara was stripped of his saffron robes in 2018, too, when he was jailed for contempt of court. He has conveniently forgotten that he had worn jail jumpers before. Worse still, people are reporting his claims without fact-checking them. Sadhu, sadhu.
The worst legacy left behind by the Rajapaksa regime is not even the millions siphoned off - it's setting drug pedling as the norm for politicking. The Residencies, Kirulapona has become a focus of these gangs and those combating this menace.
@SriLankaTweet
@GovSriLanka
1/2
Some hope that the fight to curb this is not yet given up on 👇🏽
It wasn't easy in Singapore either and we owe it to those vulnerable folks who also occupy these condos.
share.google/98yUfKVnDsDN7hl…
Ruvan W retweeted
How is it that the presidential pardons granted to Duminda Silva and Gnanasara Thero have been struck down as unlawful, yet the pardon granted to Sunil Ratnayake has not been similarly overturned?
Ratnayake was convicted of murdering eight Tamil civilians in the Mirusuvil massacre—including three children aged just 5, 13 and 15. The Colombo High Court sentenced him to death in 2015, and a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court unanimously upheld his conviction on 24 April 2019. This was not an unproven allegation. It was a conviction affirmed by the country’s highest court.
Yet, in March 2020, Gotabaya Rajapaksa used presidential power to pardon him and secure his release. With one executive decision, accountability painstakingly secured through years of legal proceedings was swept aside.
Legal challenges were filed, and the Supreme Court imposed a travel ban on Ratnayake in March 2025 while considering those challenges. But where is the final accountability the victims’ families deserve? We believe justice will be done.
If presidential power cannot lawfully shield Duminda Silva or Gnanasara Thero from punishment, the public deserves to know why Ratnayake’s pardon has not met the same scrutiny and consequence & the delay for it.
Are the lives of eight Tamil civilians worth less? Is justice different when the convicted killer wears a military uniform?
The demand is not for execution. It is for lawful punishment, equal justice and an end to impunity. A presidential pardon must not become a licence to erase responsibility for the murder of children. #lka @MASumanthiran @ShanakiyanR @anuradisanayake @Dr_HariniA #mirusuvilmassacre
Ruvan W retweeted
ON ACADEMIC PUBLISHING
I was recently asked to judge a competition in which undergraduates would use AI to generate a journal paper in five minutes.
I politely declined. But the invitation got me thinking about academic publishing, and the pressure to produce papers, and what some great scientists had to say about it.
Albert Einstein warned that
"...an academic career compels a young man to scientific production, and only strong characters can resist the temptation of superficial analysis..."
Peter Higgs (of boson fame), put it bluntly:
"Today I wouldn’t get an academic job. It’s as simple as that. I don’t think I would be regarded as productive enough."
Higgs also questioned whether the prevailing academic climate would have given him the peace and quiet he needed for his 1964 breakthrough.
Personally, I think we should reward academic work that reflects deep, sustained thought, and give researchers the time to do it, even when that takes years.
I know 5 minutes is an extreme. But I worry that the incentives in academia push us closer to the spirit of 5-minute competitions than than to the spirit of great minds like Einstein or Higgs.
Ruvan W retweeted
#SriLanka's finance ministry has advertised a tender for 1,000 4WD double cabs, and has changed the specifications that made a similar tender last year seem like a fix for one company.
Under the current tender, at least three companies can qualify. That's a good thing.
2025: advertised to buy 1,775 brand-new 4WD automatic diesel double-cabs but allowed only 12 days (seven working days) for bids. To apply, bidders had to OWN 10 service centres, including five outside the Western Province. Taken with other specifications, only Toyota Lanka could win. After widespread criticism, the procurement was dropped.
2026: less restrictive on the vehicle itself and on bidders' previous experience, potentially allowing more vehicle models and suppliers to qualify. But imposes a much higher bid-security requirement and a Rs.5 billion financial-capacity test. Bidder needs 10 local service centres, but only five must be owned. Franchise/dealership service centres are now permitted. Along with the other specifications, Toyota, Mitsubishi, and ISUZU meet the qualifications.
Higher participation drives better pricing, higher quality, and increased transparency for the buyer.
Full story: sundaytimes.lk/261004/news/g…
The government has a lot on its plate, but not cracking down hard on these gangs will only lead to a worse situation than before for all those poor families who are trying to make their new abode a spring board for a new start to their lives.
@SL_PoliceMedia
@srilanka_police
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Ruvan W retweeted
What a fucking joke the world has become!
Where are all the free and fair election types????
If Republicans win the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 2026 Midterm Elections, I’m going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America, $5,000! Thank you for your attention to this matter, and I look forward to signing those checks!
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
This repeats a promise Trump made in September 2026. The US has approximately 250 million adult citizens so the total cost would be over 1.25 trillion dollars. Congress must approve any such federal spending.
nytimes.com/2026/09/10/us/…
pbs.org/newshour/polit…