Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 199 // Week 35 // 2020

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By Himanshu Sachdeva

Hello!

Welcome to another edition of Saturday Pentacle.

Hope you are starting the weekend relaxed and on a good note.

The past week I struggled to get any walks or runs in. So it was quite literally (only) working from the home week.

I’m excited for this weekend as there is an audio/microphones webinar I’m attending to learn more about improving audio quality (for my podcast/youtube videos), where an expert from Shure will be sharing his ideas, techniques and different types of equipment.

This week I listened to an audiobook for 2-3 days consistently (The Ride of a Lifetime). Listening to the experiences of people who have reached the highest level of their expertise is just awesome!

Moving forward to the newsletter, here is my weekly creative progress –

  1. My Language learning is going consistent at the moment. Learning 15-20 minutes every day. I think when I’m able to understand movies and literature, then I’ll announce here which language I’m learning.
  2. My book reading progress – (added another interesting book to reading list this week – 3rd one)
    1. The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from the CEO of the Walt Disney Company – Progress 40% (Audible)
    2. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – Progress 20% (Audible) – no much progress on this one last week.
    3. The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry – Progress 20% (Audible)
    4. World War Z by Max Brooks – Progress 15% (Audible)

That’s it for personal and creative updates.

Without further adieu, please enjoy this week’s Saturday-Pentacle.


Issue 199 // Week 35 // 2020


A tribute to an Indian Cinema Legend

AK Hangal – इतना सन्नाटा क्यों है भाई.. (Why it is so silent, brother…)

This line is famous in Indian Cinema because of AK Hangal. On 26th Aug 2020, it was his 8th Death Anniversary.

He has worked with all the legendary actors in Indian Cinema. He has played each and every character role there is. He had this soothing elderly presence in most of the movies in the 80s and the 90s.

He lived for 98 years and died on 26th Aug 2012. May he rest in peace.


A product or rather a tribe I’m finding myself attracted to

Mechanical Keyboards – They have been like an underground movement of sorts from a long time. With different layouts (60%, 40% etc), custom keycaps, led lights and a whole plethora of customization options, the Mechanical Keyboards have come a long way.

Earlier only the gaming community seemed more attracted to these kinds of custom keyboards. But now these keyboards have started getting the attention of the mainstream creatives as well.

But it still remains an expensive hobby, in India, I remember the TVS Gold Bharat Keyboard since my childhood, which has been the choice of professionals who have to type a lot. But now as the Internet is bringing the world closer and making it smaller. A whole new world of possibilities in Mechanical Keyboards area is opening up.

I couldn’t imagine someone will have a YouTube channel just dedicated to Mechanical Keyboards, reviewing them, making us listen to the ASMR sounds of keyboards. That’s next level shi*. But here is a channel which does exactly this – Taeha Types

If this got you interested and excited, you can check out below video to learn more about Mechanical Keyboards –


An article and upcoming tech I’m fascinated by —

All about Neuralink by waitbutwhy – Neuralink is a new interface on which Elon Musk (the founder of Tesla and SpaceX) is working since past couple of years. He thinks that the current way of interacting with computers (by keyboard, mouse or a digital pencil etc.) limits our bandwidth while talking to computers. So in the Neuralink project, he’s trying to make a direct interface between the human brain and the computer. I think they are almost there with this interface. Neuralink just did a demo where a pig was implanted with Neuralink implant and they showed how they get the information of neurons firing in the brain as the pig touched different things.

I know it sounds scary that you can just think and the note will be written on the computer or a file will be saved or more. It is scary but at the same time, it’s exciting too. But will this make us cyborgs? I don’t know, maybe we are already cyborgs. Computer and Mobile phones are our second brain nowadays. Without them, we are like almost stripped away from power. So instead of getting scared from what’s coming, we should learn about it in detail.

To learn everything about Neuralink, check out the article (title link or click here). It’s a long article as are most of them on this blog waitbutwhy. But it’s worth spending that time to learn about how humans evolved till here and what is Neuralink and where we might be heading.

Here is the demo video –


A song I loved —

May Be by half•alive – Stumbled upon this beautiful groovy rich song by half•alive from Now, Not Yet album on Spotify.

Definately lifted my Mood, check it out –


Quote which I found meaningful –

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating them is right. They are missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

— Eric Hoffer

Before saying “see you next week”

I’m really excited to share the new Lifestyle Architecture Lab interactive community on Vibely app! 💙

Join today with this special invite link to the group.

Why vibely? Basically it’s a place where we want to make the group and our content interactive. There are daily interesting challenges like –

  • Reading for 1 hour everyday and posting your progress
  • Doing one act of kindness every day
  • Journaling prompts for you
  • Travel writing for 500 words

and more such creative challenges.

It’s a really fun place to be. You’ll get gamified rewards and recognitions for completing the challenges. We are trying to make it a safe place for all the like-minded people to join in the self-growth journey. If you are already working on your passion projects then you’ll get all the support you can and no bashing or judgement for being who you want to be.💡

Join today with this special invite link to the group.

P.S.: Our Facebook group is not going anywhere, we are just adding an interactive branch to it.

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu


About Author

I’m Himanshu Sachdeva, a technology professional working in Mumbai, India. I spend most of my spare time making Podcasts, YouTube videos and write on Lifestyle Design and sometimes stories.

Every Saturday, I send out an email newsletter called “Saturday Pentacle”, a list of the cool stuff I explored in the past week, including quotes, photos, books, articles, movies, documentaries and so on!

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.


Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 199 // Week 35 // 2020


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App of the week –

Pocket

This is my favourite app for ‘Read it Later’ purpose. For example – If I’m reading any article on the interwebs (internet), so I just need a pocket chrome extension for 1 click save that article to Pocket. So that you can get back to that article later for later reading.

This app is silky smooth and comes with good functionality like dark mode for reading on a pure black screen, brightness adjustment (on iPhone and Android apps) and also other display settings like changing the reading font, font size, line space etc.

Once you use it, you’ll feel like never reading an article on any site, you’ll always want to save it to the Pocket app and read it from there.

Just in case if I got you curious, you can go check out this app –


My most popular Instagram post recently

Turning back from the hills.

As I stood there in the midst of the road leading to the city. The hills were right behind me, it was ethereal the way the clouds were striking into these hills and making the whole atmosphere moistly cold.

Should I turn around and just get lost in the hills and never go back? My heart thought.

You’ll be free from the prison of a concrete jungle where you are chained to the rhythm, cutting your life short day by day in this vicious circle of eat, sleep, work repeat! Heart whispered again inside me.

But taking a deep breath and then exhaling into a sigh, I turned back…back from the hills.


Article(s) I’m enjoying (and pondering)

The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence – If you are interested in what future hold and want to learn in detail about AI (Artificial Intelligence) then this long article is for you. Tim Urban of WaitbutWhy.com has written this article in 2015. But till today it feels like reading something completely mind boggling. There is a lot (like a lot lot) of knowledge put in this article.

Summary of the article This article can’t exactly be summarized because there is a plethora of topics covered, but or a very broad level it argues on how the progress of human growth has always been exponential instead of linear and we might just be sitting at the edge of a curve where a life altering human progress boom might be brewing. Tim also talks mainly about AI and how it can be so intense that serious people like Elon Musk are also terrified by AI. AI’s calibre has three major categories as defined by Tim in this article –

1) Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI): A Weak AI, Artificial Narrow Intelligence is AI that specializes in one area. Think of it as a robot who knows how to defeat someone in a chess game but that’s the only thing it knows.

2) Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): Sometimes referred to as Strong AI, or Human-Level AI, Artificial General Intelligence refers to a computer that is as smart as a human across the board. This is where the problem starts and where AI may be a curse in disguise. That’s the point where job cuts may happen and machines start replacing humans in a workplace.

3) Artificial Superintelligence (ASI): Oxford philosopher and leading AI thinker Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.” This is where terms like immortality or extinction come in picture. Either this level of AI makes the human race better (immortal) or it breaks it and we extinct.


What I’m reading/watching/listening to

Elon Musk’s interview with Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval at the NGA 2017 SUMMER MEETING – As you guys know already, I’m an admirer of Elon Musk and really appreciate what he’s doing in the world of technology (software & hardware). He is the real Iron Man of our world, literally the version similar to what Robert Downy Jr. played in Marvel Studio version of the Film. He has a vision towards which he works, he loves to solve problems and doesn’t have boundaries of domain when he’s trying to solve a problem. Like Paypal solved a big cross border transaction problem, Tesla solved a fuel problem, SpaceX solved the problem by being able to commercialize the Space Travel (well, still a long way to go, but a very good start) or the Hyperloop, which will be solving the problem of road travel by cutting down the times significantly (think Los Angeles to San Francisco in 35 minutes with an average speed of 600 Miles per hour), even though it’s on paper but recently the actual trial started and it’s a step in the positive direction.

So the point is Elon is solving problems which probably would have been solved after a decade or two and that is really fascinating.

Last week when I came across this interview of Elon with Brian Sandoval (Governor of the state of Nevada), it was a treat.

He discussed a wide range of topics including Artificial Intelligence, Tesla, SpaceX, Solar power etc. What I found intriguing was the fact that Elon Musk was urging the government to regulate the development of AI. Because as good as it can be to human race, AI can also become a danger to the human existence, he mentioned.

Elon also answered a few interesting questions asked by some state Governors and the general public.

Please enjoy this treat of an interview.

P.S.: This is an abridged version of the original interview.


Quote I’m pondering on lately – 

“Optimal lives are designed, not discovered.”

— James Clear


Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu

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