A Software Engineer's Diary...

The current kerfuffle over Snapchat and Facebook's  'self-destructing' videos actually being saveable  is a great thing to see, because it reminds people of why they should never sext unless they want their junk splattered all over whatever site the porn impresario and professional jerk Hunter Moore is running this week. Repeat after me: Anything you put on the Internet is potentially public. P.S. Cell phones count as the Internet. This is pretty much a fixed rule. Digital data can be copied. If it's only on your own computer, you have control of it. But as soon as it's shared with anyone —  anyone  — that person can copy and spread it. Or, as the always witty Chris Davies  said on Twitter , "Keep putting your genitals in front of people & they'll inevitably go viral." Oh, Those Teenagers Teenagers overlook this because teenagers are actually clinically brain damaged. They're biologically programmed to ignore risk and act on emotio...

Srinivasa Ramanujan  (Emory University) While on his death bed, the brilliant Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan cryptically wrote down functions he said came to him in dreams, with a hunch about how they behaved. Now 100 years later, researchers say they've proved he was right. "We've solved the problems from his last mysterious letters. For people who work in this area of math, the problem has been open for 90 years," Emory University mathematician Ken Ono said. 'For a brief window of time, he lit the world of math on fire.' - Emory University mathematician Ken Ono Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematician born in a rural village in South India, spent so much time thinking about math that he flunked out of college in India twice, Ono said. But he sent mathematicians letters describing his work, and one of the most preeminent ones, English mathematician G. H. Hardy, recognized the Indian boy's genius and invited him to ...

Round 1 (Telephonic)  Q1. For a given number, find the next greatest number which is just greater than previous one and made up of same digits. Q2. Find immediate ancestor of a given Node Q3. Clone the linked list having an extra random pointer in nodes which is pointing random node in the list. Round 2 (F2F)  Q1 In a binary tree, a random pointer is given in each node. If this pointer pointing other than any successor of the node then set it as NULL. Otherwise let it remain untouched. Write code. Q2. You will be given the number of pairs of parenthesis. Find out the total possible valid unique combinations and there should not be any duplicity. Write code Round 3 (F2F)  Project and some questions related to it. Q1 Given an in-order traversal of a special binary tree having property that the node is always greater than its left and right child. Construct the tree and write code. Q2 Find top 10 trending words inserted by users in sites like twitter. Only alg...

State-owned telecom firm BSNL's Website was hacked today by a group that demanded withdrawal of section 66 A of the IT Act.  The Website 'www.bsnl.co.in' was, however, quickly restored.  The group Anonymous India said that it hacked the Website in support of activists Aseem Trivedi and Alok Dixit, who are on a hunger strike to protest Section 66A of the IT Act.  "Our website has been hacked and our people are working on it," BSNL Chairman and Managing Director R K Upadhyay told PTI.  The site has since been restored. The Twitter account of Anonymous India (@opindia_revenge) said, "BSNL Websites hacked, passwords and database leaked http://pastebin.com/wjtiyvx4 Anonymous India demands withdrawal of Sec 66A of IT Act."  Trivedi and Dixit are on a hunger strike for the last six days in protest against Sec 66A of IT Act.  Facing public protests on the recent controversial arrest of some persons for their Facebook...

Placements at IIT Kharagpur have started with a bang. Three students have bagged salaries of Rs 80 lakh per annum while eight others have got annual offers of Rs 75 lakh each from Google and Microsoft.  "All the students are from the computer science department. The three Google recruits will be based in Mountain View, US, while the other eight will be in Redmont," said Rinhul Chandra, vice-president of the student's council in IIT-Kgp. The placements started on December 1 and the first phase will last till December 20.  Last year, the highest salary offered at IIT-Kgpwas Rs 78 lakh from Facebook, while in 2010, Dhiraj Kumar Singh had bagged a Rs 1.7 crore offer from Facebook which is the highest ever across all IITs. Though, the highest pay packages sky-rocketed this year, the minimum offers averaged around Rs 7-8 lakh.  "Till now, 650 of 1,775 students have been placed. This is the largest batch in the history of the IITs. Only if an...

Games can be both a welcome and an annoying diversion on Facebook, the world's most popular online social network. This year, Facebookcrossed a big milestone - reaching 1 billion active users. Game companies such as "FarmVille" creator Zynga and Rovio Entertainment of "Angry Birds" fame seek to tap into that vast base of users to gain more players for their games.  This week, Facebook issued a list of the 25 top-rated games that launched on Facebook in 2012. The company says the rankings are based on user ratings and engagement with the games. It's the same methodology that Facebook uses to rank apps in its App Center.  Some of the games are played on Facebook's website, while others are only on Apple's iOS or Google's Android devices using Facebook's app.  Here's the list:  1. "SongPop" (by FreshPlanet, on Facebook.com, iOS and Android)  2. "Dragon City" (by Social Point, on Facebook.com)  3. "Bike Race" (b...

Delhi may soon become the first city in the country to have global retail chains like Walmartand Tesco, with the city government all set bring a bill in the Winter session of assembly beginning Tuesday to remove hurdles in ensure "effective" implementation of FDI in multi-brand retail.  The city government will bring an amendment to theAgricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act for facilitating direct purchase of produce from farmers by multi-national retailers.  The amendment to the existing legislation will allow direct connectivity between retailers and farmers.  As per the existing provision, farmers cannot sell their produce directly to retailers as it has to be routed through the wholesale market which are mostly under the grip of middlemen.  Officials said the amendment to APMC Act was required to "break monopoly" of the wholesale traders so that retailers can directly buy agricultural produce from farmers.  To break the monopo...

Google said Thursday its online social network had grown to 135 million active users, as it added a photo-sharing app to compete against services like Facebook's Instagram.  "Today Google+ is the fastest-growing network thingy ever," said Google senior vice president Vic Gundotra in a blog post.  He added that "135 million (users) are active in just the stream," and that more than 500 million have upgraded their Google accounts to potentially participate in the social network, which aims to rival Facebook.  "This enthusiasm, we think, stems from our building tools that build real relationships -- in a live hangout, around a breathtaking photo, or with an inner circle offriends," Gundotra said.  "So today we're launching two new improvements that help bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software."  Google said it has now introduced the mobile photo-sharing service Snapseed, made by Nik Software, to the social...

The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan have created a Facebook page to recruit persons to write for a planned quarterly magazine and to work on tasks like video editing and translation.  The Umar Media TTP page, which has nearly 290 likes, has a message posted on November 22 seeking writers for "Ahyah-e-Khilafat", which is described as the "official quarterly magazine" of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.  "Dear brothers and sisters, 'Pen is mightier than the sword (sic)'. Now you have a chance to use this mighty weapon," the message says.  Prospective contributors can write on "on topic of your choice, or on jihadi current affairs, history, Islamic movements, plight of ummah, etc etc", the message adds.  An earlier message posted in October states that "Umar Media is proud to announce online jobs opportunities (sic)".  The job "discription (sic) is video editing, translations, sharing, uploading, downl...

Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman calls Ubuntu 'spyware' and as bad as Windows.   Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman has now attacked Ubuntu distribution calling it a 'spyware' and as bad as Windows. Stallman said that the latest version of the Linux-based operating system, contains dangerous 'surveillance code'. In his post on the FSF blog, Stallman has criticised Ubuntu and the company behind it for adding the search feature in the latest version of the distribution. According to him, this version of Ubuntu sends packets to Canonical's servers without the knowledge of the users. Canonical had first introduced the 'Home Lens' unified search feature in Ubuntu 12.10. The feature inserts product recommendations from Amazon into the search result, irrespective of whether the users searched the web or local files. Stallman wrote, “This is just like the first surveillance practice I learned about in Windows. My late f...

The US presidential election became the most-searched item and Kim Kardashian was the most-searched person on Yahoo! in a year when online searches were dominated by big news stories and pop culture obsessions, the search engine company said on Monday.  The search term "election" topped the list of searches, led not only by extensive media coverage but also widening conversation on online social media platforms. The term "political polls" was No. 8 of the top 10 Yahoo! searches of the year.  "The 2012 elections dominated the online searches, which is amazing because if something is in the news, it's already accessible ... people were really saturated by it, but even so, that was a key word that people typed throughout the year," Vera Chan, Yahoo!'s web trend analyst, said in a conference call.  Chan said only two other news stories have topped the list in the past decade, those being the death ofMichael Jackson in 2009 and the BP oil spill in 2010...

Social networking  Facebook Inc is in talks to acquire popular  messaging app Whatsapp , a move that will beef-up its mobile services business, says a media report. "Whatsapp, the multiplatform mobile messaging app that has been one of the runaway success stories for ad-free, paid services, has been in talks to be acquired by Facebook, " a technology blog said citing sources close to the matter. "We are still digging around on potential price and other details...," the report said citing sources. Whatsapp, which was founded in 2009, has 1,000 million daily active users globally and delivers about one billion messages per day. The social networking firm, which was founded eight years ago by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students, at present has around one billion users across the world. Facebook has been making efforts to improve its mobile service business and made buyouts including the purchase of photo...

Day 1 of placements at the premier IIT-Bombay on Saturday ended on a high note for many. It was evident from the status on Sriram Bhargav's Facebook page that read "placed at Samsung US/Korea". The firm is believed to have made the highest offer this year of around US $1,50,000 (Rs 80 lakh) per annum. Deepankar Reddy from the institute's computer science and engineering department was also hired with one of the highest packages at Rocket Fuel. Sagar Chordia and Saif Hasan, computer engineering students, will go on to join Facebook. Hasan, who is from Kanodar in north Gujarat, and Sagar from Pune are both among the top rankers of the department. Hasan developed the Facebook photo downloaded which he developed in the Hack night competition. Sagar, who is also studying statistics at the Powai campus, went through 4 rounds of intense interviews by Facebook before they were hired. On his Facebook page, Sagar noted "Day 1 of IIT-B placements ... 18 hours o...

And as he entered the cave, he found complete darkness, except a small beam coming from somewhere in front of him. It made him understand that the cave was deep enough. He touched the sidewall, found it rough, and he felt like if he had put his hand in a lot of sand. He took his hand of the wall and jolted it, and he could smell the dust. There was no sound. Being brave enough, he started moving, getting stumbled by hitting the crests in the path, but he kept moving. It was a hole in the ceiling of the cave, from where the light beams were coming. Though it was dark, he opened the map. “Pirate Tikona’s Base” he muttered, and waited for a while. Map was still blank. “Perhaps this is a waste of time”, he thought, “let me try again”, and screamed this time “Pirate Tikona’s Base”. And the next moment, his heart got filled with fear as he heard sounds like those of cloud thunder, and suddenly a number of holds appeared in the ceiling of the cave. Perhaps the cave had awakened. ...

For the first time, a host of companies, including luxury car makers Mercedes Benz, Rolls Royce and Toshiba Corporation would be among the new firms to offer placements to prospective students of IIT Madras here. Other companies participating in the placement programme are Boston Consulting Group,Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, ITC Ltd,Google India, Sony, Shell, Facebook, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, IBM and Samsung Electronics, it said. Nearly 100 new companies, including Procter and Gamble, Walmart, Bajaj Auto, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, MRF Tyres would participate in the placement activities, scheduled to begin tomorrow, a press release from IIT Madras said. A total of 1,263 students would participate in the first phase of placement from December 1 to 22 while the second phase would begin from January 16, 2013, the release added.