Safety on Internet - What to do and what not to do on Social Media
Submitted by GAURANGAGG on Fri, 11/17/2017 - 11:45
Safety on Internet is the topic of interest for so many but vast majority isn't aware about how to keep them safe. Therefore I will be covering a few social platforms which needs to be well understood.
Snapchat is an extremely popular social media platform among youth audience ( 15-30 years old ).
Features:
- It lets you share your photographs temporarily with your set of friends.
- It has got amazing filters using which you can make your photographs fancy and more shareable.
- It lets you live stream your short videos temporarily with your set of friends.
How to upgrade macOS without any trouble?
Submitted by GAURANGAGG on Sat, 09/30/2017 - 20:23
Apple has started shipping free upgrades for MacBooks which is a great thing and it really helps us get access to new features, a secured operating system. But while that's tempting, upgrading macOS can get a bit messier.
So recently when I was upgrading my macbook's Sierra to High Sierra, something tragic happened.
So always remember,
- Always download/ initiate your upgradation process while using high speed internet connection or else you will struggle all the time.
- Have everything on cloud, these hard disks can crash anytime. These accounts and everything can get demolished but your cloud will stay.
- Have redundant backups of things around.
I tried to restart the machine 4 times but nothing worked out well.
Thereafter I tried resetting the NV RAM of the Mac by following steps:
Shut down your Mac, then turn it on and immediately hold down these four keys together: Option, Command, P, and R. Keep holding the keys for about 20 seconds, during which your Mac might appear to restart. (If you have a Mac that plays a startup sound when you turn it on, you can release the keys after the second startup sound.)
And, that didn't work out either for me.
So I tried pressing following keys to reset ( have to google )
and it showed me the following screen ( which was less depressing ):
And that was pretty movitating to me and selected the language, clicked on next button and then following screen appeared:
I selected Time Machine Option and it was such a heavenly feeling that things will work out just well ( they don't normally work like that ) but it did somehow:
But it asked for the password as my hard disk was encrypted which is okay, right? Well, the keyword wasn't working then - somehow I couldn't enter any input from my keyword and only my mouse was working. That was horrifying moment for me as I really thought that it will just work but it didn't.
So I restarted the computer 3 times and tried the above steps over and over but it just didn't work.
So then I pressed following keys again:
and it took me to a screen, and i moved the cursor on the top and then default macOS menu appears with few menu items on the right and wifi icons on the left. I entered my WiFi details there to connect it with Internet just in case something works out well.
Therefore I went to disk utility option and this time i took a brave yet stupid step and formatted my main hard disk. It just wiped out entire data from there and my macbook was data-less.
Then it showed me the screen of Internet Recovery and since I was connected to Internet, it started downloading lots of data from Internet which will now help me in the recovery process:
So this Internet Recovery Mode - took 40 minutes to download and load the packages it had to ( on 2 Mbps connection ) and finally showed the screen of great relief:
which is similar to earlier one but then when i selected Time Machine option, it took me to following screen:
I could enter my password which made me so happy as earlier I couldn't use the keyword ( not even the external one ).
Then I selected the latest backup I had and clicked on restore.
and it restored the backup in 5 hours.
So, I typed this blogpost in a hope that it will save thousands in some heartaches as whenever my mac does this thing to me, i get a severe heartache :D
So remember: Never format your hard disk from the top menu ( in case you have chosen reset NV RAM ) as once you are done with formatting of your main hard disk then nothing is help in the hard disk and you will land into Internet Recovery Mode ( which might look a wrong option but only that took me out of the trouble.
Apple/ macOS should fix the issue of keyword not functioning after resetting the NV Ram and getting into recovery mode.
Learnings from Vinod Khosla
Submitted by GAURANGAGG on Sun, 09/17/2017 - 21:01
Vinod Khosla is an Indian-born American engineer and businessman. Khosla is listed by Forbes magazine as a billionaire.[1] Khosla made his early fortune as one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, where he was the founding CEO and chairman in the early 1980s.
Following are some of the learnings from him which were shared by him at the Stanford's Leadership Panel Discussion Session:
Making things happen, things in which you believe. They wont always come true but many of the times they will.
Things do work out! People are nice and they will accommodate and support you!
Datadump was the first company by Vinod Khosla which also got funded. It didn't work out and that's okay. After that, he co-founded Sun Microsystems.
The point is, people, don't remember your failures and willingness to fail gives you the ability to succeed. Anything worth doing is hard. Failure doesn't matter, success matters - everyone remembers the success.
Vinod Khosla started his first company in Delhi in 20. He was 19/20 when he was told that it would take 7 years to get the landline connection in Delhi ( there was a long waiting list ). He sort of picked up and moved to CMU.
He knew he had to be in the USA and he didn't have much money so he figured out how someone can pay for it, and that the scholarship which he got for his studies ( Bio-medical engineering department of CMU offered scholarship and further moved to Stanford after that. )
With enough persistence, most of the impossible things become possible.
You can turn things around when you stop taking NO as an answer for things you want dearly. Whatever the goal is, have the conviction and work on it.
When you can't convince them, confuse them. Identifying what you want, and getting it any how.
Having a belief system - what do you actually believe in. 90% of people will do what they are expected to do as opposed to what they want to do. Considering your time as valuable and using at the places where you truly want to spend on or else you will wonder what the heck you are doing with your life.
Having guts to believe in your belief system - he will consider his time well spent.
Leadership is to know what you believe in. Follow that compass - of your belief system.
Here's where are different and here's how we will go. Everyone, be it an individual or an organisation, everyone needs it.
Doing irrational things which syncs with your belief system, Apple was struggling for years and then Steve Jobs came in and made Apple the most valuable company in the world!
Having belief systems, and constantly pursuing it!
Unqualified people shouldn't comment on things they don't understand or which is away from their circle of competence/ belief system. Like English Majors commenting on what will be top future technology. They just cannot understand things that easily. They need proper guidance and must work on their areas of strengths.
Having the confidence to speak truth - people will appreciate that.
Time slots of activities are divided into 15 minutes. Dividing whole day into chunks and then working on things at an optimal rate of yours.
Having the luxury of doing what you want by not having a job. Get to do things which you want to do.
The learning experience of the startup whether it is successful or not is valuable. Learning the culture of the silicon valley and how it enhances the personality.
Earning the right of advising by doing the things yourself. For example working as a Angel Investor and advising the entrepreneurs and startups while the Investor herself hasn't done/ worked with any startup.
Writing off the investments mentally and then seeing the upside of earning in multiples out of your investments.
Know what you want to do. Matching your activities with your personality.
In startups, there are 90% chance of failure. Risk taking is absolutely important.
In the edges where there are uncertainties, there is hope of evolution and all the interesting possibilities lie there! Unless you are there and learning fast to be there and that's where new things are happening. All that happens at the edge.
Being in edges, the probability of failure is really high but it will give you exponential growth. People majorly reduce the possibility of failure to increase the success rate but the consequence of success is very little as compared to increasing the risk of failure to reduce the success rate. It is a lot fun!
Forecasting the future, being there! Being there the Puck is going to be at!
The probability of getting the forecasts right by any analyst from McK, Bain is similar and small. Explore the edges yourself, what's going to be revolutionary in next 10-15 years and going there!
It's about having the point of view, belief system.
5% people are needed to make the change in the society.
Less than 100 people will influence the entire society in different areas of society. They will have their internal compass and they won't refer the external forecasts.
Support belief system - deciding what you want to do in future. VK was 16 when he started coding in IIT Delhi.
Core belief system was to work on interesting things ( which has the major impact ) where ever he goes. Focusing on impact.
Keep on doing interesting things throughout your life, building, investing in great companies which are doing great impactful things and not just doing transactional investments.
Being proud of your failures, as it is the stepping stone. Probably you will have more failures than your success but that one success will be memorable and no one cares about the data dumps.
Quotes:
- Try to fail but don't fail to try!
- Only those who can fail greatly can succeed greatly! ( Example of Elon Musk )
Book Recommendations:
- Anti Fragile
- Black Swan.
- Sam Harris - Lying: https://www.samharris.org/lying
What matters to you: It is cook to disrupt things to impact. Taking new things/ projects. Knowing you can make impact the industry is rewarding.
Pursue hot challenges and working towards all odds. Having the possible impact!
Family is important. Monthly report of all time spent on things, classifying time in different categories. Every month you need a report to check what's happening with your time!
Decide the priorities and measure them. Be disciplined.
Points to remember While construction:
Submitted by GAURANGAGG on Thu, 09/14/2017 - 07:12
Recently we got our house constructed and it was such a tedious work. Construction lasted for months and we rented out a home to ensure that we don't have to worry about all the dust and noise.
Like any project, getting home constructed wasn't a easy feat as there were so many things we weren't aware of. But its like everyone has to struggle for the first time.
Following are some of the points to remember ( I am not aware of many Englist words so leave comments so that I can improve it further ):
- Rodi should be even - with tool.
- Agreement has to be in writing with the Contractor.
- Parafeet is a must and the contractor will construct it too.
- He should write every aspect of construction in the agreement.
- Construction linked payment. 50% payment upto lanture.
- Taraaai - who will do that — Own or them?
- Grill will be done by constructor
- Sand dust should be cleaned / net before using for plastering. ( 4 sand/2 dust/1 cement )
- Water tank base - the cost has to be included. - we paid extra.
- Monty wall has to be 9” not 4.5”.
- The ratio of stone dust should be higher for strengthening.
- Breakup - Payment should be fragmented - modular - cost of each work has to be mapped out.
- If the outer walls are ( on L & R ) are not having any support, they must be plastered for more strength.
- The water tank should be at height as it needs good potential energy for maintaining pressure ( whats the upper bound?) - that’s for 2nd floor
- Individual pipelines should be available for every floor from the water tank so that they remain independent.
- Horizontal beam should be more to accommodate unanticipated additional load which can be added in the future on the lanture.
- Slope of the floors is critical to review.
- All payments should be made using cheque and countersigned by both parties.
- Modular kitchen — Stones + Stone Slab will be adjusted.
- Air removing Machine / Vibrator for lanture + concrete mixer machine payment will be done by contractor + cost of INR 700 water tank
Investigate before you Invest
Submitted by GAURANGAGG on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 00:04
Becoming an investor is easy. Have thousands of millions of bucks and then find a place to invest in. Without diligence however, you might lose a fortune while investing. Therefore investing carelessly, without proper knowledge isn’t investing but trying your luck in lottery. You might find a multi-bagger but that’s not something you can repeat nor you can find logical steps to achieve in future.
Something similar happened to me. I took advise of a fellow investor and bought shares of Aarvee Denims which is a Jeans manufacturer in Ahmedabad. This company earned 100% more profits than previous year ( 2015 v/s 2016 ) and therefore it received good response from investors and everyone was bullish seeing growth of 10% in 2 days.
On the day of Diwali, it jumped 10% again and therefore it was a time for blast for everyone.
But ever since then, the shares started declining 20% and stayed there fore about 4 months until an accident happened and employees got hospitalised. A month after another tragedy happened and soon pollution board sealed the company and therefore business operations in the major plant were shut down.
Their brand image, assets, production / manufacturing, everything suffered. Due to which the share prices sunk to 70% of the 52 high level which is dangerous for every investor of that organisation.
I suffered the loss of 60% in that transaction and it was first time to face such profound loss but now I have a story to share that never again I would repeat this kind of ignorance and I promise to be an active investor and will know INs and OUTs of the company I invest in.
Had I been aware, have been following social media - specific to that company, I would have known that this particular company was in news for all wrong reasons but I continued to be an ignorant investor who just invests and sleeps for a while to take up to see his portfolio reducing to ashes. So whenever you see people claiming how wealth is growth over the times passively or those you tells you the magic of compounding returns, just ignore them blindly. Ignorance and passiveness is never fancy and is sign of laziness. Be informed about your investments, study them deeply. That's exactly what I am going to do from now.
So on the Independence day of India, I swear to get independence from ignorance and ignorant state of mind - while buying shares. I won't touch shares of the company which don't fall in my circle of competance and I will be perpetually working on going deeper into it and expanding the size of competance.
I will also spend significant time in devouring the annual reports of the companies I will track to understand the values / vision of the promoters as they alone have the power to make or break the company.
