Glitch

At T-minus 6.6 seconds, as the 120-ton space shuttle sits, surrounded by almost 4 Million pounds of rocket fuel is ready to defy gravity as its on board computers take in the command.

As its pressure sensors, pumps, temperatures are nominal the computers give the order to light the main engines and the choreography of incredible engineering happens as each of the three engines fire off precisely at 160 milli seconds apart, tons of super-cooled liquid fuel pouring into combustion chambers, the ship rocking on its launch pad, held to the ground only by bolts.

It is always an absolute beauty to watch a shuttle take off, as the time goes T-minus 0 seconds. At this time the on-board computers check all the sensor data, they give the order to light the solid rocket boosters. In less than one second, the rocket achieves 6.6 million pounds of thrust!

And the spacecraft majestically takes off its launch pad!

No human pushes a button to make this happen, there is no astronaut sits with a joy stick to set the shuttle in orbit, it's an awesome display of power of computers and software doing its job in a well-choreographed manner.

But how much work does the software does? what makes this remarkable?

In this episode, we will be discussing about how this engineering marvel defies gravity and how important and crucial for its software to be bug free or GLITCH free ;) 

Recently WhatsApp Users in India received a pop-up notification, informing them about the new policy. 

And everyone has been talking about it lately..

So what is this all about? Why do I need to care about this new whatsapp terms and conditions?

Most important of all why is that a messaging app like whatsapp is more interested in all of my data!?

Are our mobile phones spying on us?

As technology becomes more complex, it is less easy for people to understand how it does what it does, it can be scary: specially when that technology is applied to something that is aimed entirely at companies making money, instead of making life easier for people.

So this is exactly what I am gonna talk about in today’s episode…

Most of us slow down as we age. We’re similar to conventional machines, like old cars or hair dryers that run less efficiently as they get on in years.

But digital gadgets, particularly smartphones and computers? We expect them to operate quickly. Forever!

There are plenty of conspiracy theories seeking to explain why our phones, tablets and computers always slow down as they get older. In today’s episode I will look into what is happening behind the screens.

If you remember my first episode where I spoke about the magic of reset, I would have mentioned that there are few problems which cannot be fixed even by a system reset, these are such issues when both hardware and software can suffer causing the gadget to slow down.

The main reason why phones slow down over time is that software updates often leave older hardware behind. Companies also update apps to take advantage of faster processing speeds and more efficient architectures. 

So for the users of the older hardware models, It often means that the new version of the app they loved will run slightly slower than the older version of the same app. 

During a software update process the older and less efficient code can get overlooked and left behind. The cumulative effect is that your older phone or laptop is having to work harder to get the same results, as more demands get placed on it by this newer software.

If the latest and greatest smartphones and laptops have better hardware capabilities, then developers are inevitably going to take advantage of them by introducing more advanced features or by optimizing their code. That’s fine if you’ve picked up a flagship device in the last 12 months, but gradually, older devices struggle to keep up with the code changes and eventually get left behind completely.

More about me on www.ivkrm.com

We would have wondered why does rebooting a computer fix so many problems?
Or how can a simple reboot of my wireless router fix my internet connection?

Join me in this episode where I try to answer common questions like, Why does resetting a device or restarting a program fix so many problems? And why don’t geeks try to identify and fix problems rather than use the blunt hammer of “reset it”?

Also in this episode I talk about the concept of memory and what happens behind the screen of any device when it gets into such problems.

More about me on www.ivkrm.com

A malfunction in a system, or as we developers call it a BUG!

Is not always bad, if we look back at history, few of the amazing path breaking inventions have happened due to such, unanticipated outcomes or by the innovative people who have always made themselves to stand out of the normal thought process!

This is exactly what this show is gonna talk about - Glitches!

My Name is Vikram and I am an embedded software developer, I am sitting down to share my excitement from my field of work and the few interesting thoughts which I have learnt in my years of experience!