Down Under by Bill Bryson
Never knew Bryson was such a funny writer. In all those reading during the college days, I saw his ‘A short history of everything’, misjudged him to be a philosopher or an imitator from ‘A brief histo...
Book Reviews · Latest
The Ethics of Ambiguity
The Ethics of Ambiguity Free people allow, even push, others to be free. I cannot think anything else is better to start the review of The Ethics of Ambiguity, because this is the hinge on which Simone de Beauvoir’s whole argument turns: to want my own freedom honestly is already to want yours. Freedom, for her, only makes sense in a world shared with others. Written in 1947 in the wake of world war two, when existentialism was being dismissed as gloomy and amoral, the book sets out to show that philosophy without God or fixed human nature can still produce an ethical society.
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From the Shelf
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The Corporation by Joel Bakan
New ideas and understanding of corporation spring forth in Joel Bakan’s The Corporation. He presents facts from historical precedents about Ford’s lawsuit from his partners, General Motors’ misalignme...
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Its a simple story set in Africa about a time when old times were being replaced by new times. Endearing old times derived from nature were replaced by rigid customs named after humans. Stories are th...
The Infinite Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence by Sebastian Mallby
Narcissistic minds show their true colours when faced with challenge of scaling a complex and unwanted solution for society’s problems. Their romance with idealism takes a backseat and practical matte...
Imperial Twilight by Stephen Platt
Stephen Platt's Imperial Twilight tells the story of the Opium Wars with more sympathy for the Chinese side than most Western histories—but it is still a Western book. The narrative arc is familiar: a...
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a classic story about survival, not of spiritual growth. It contains hints of colonial anxiety - or lets say colonial supremacy -, which do not diminish after isolation from humans ...
From Bacteria to Bach and Back by Daniel C. Dennett
Profound, thought provoking and insightful are the three most appropriate words to describe this book. It takes on a humongous task of understanding human mind - particularly consciousness - and prese...
The Open Society and its Enemies vol. 1 by Karl Popper
‘Socrates Good, Plato Bad’ is the only way I can summarise this book. Although it may seem controversial, Popper has persuaded me enough to let go of any reservations against the phrase. Popper dissec...
Ideas
All Essays →From Bacteria to Bach and Back by Daniel C. Dennett
Profound, thought provoking and insightful are the three most appropriate words to describe this book. It takes on a humongous task of understanding human mind - particularly consciousness - and prese...
The AI Challenge for Humans: Can Society Remain a Passive Audience?
Introduction
On 12 September 2026, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a 3,800-word essay, "We Must Pace the Frontier," asking for controls on how fast frontier AI models are developed [1]. Before th...
Soros on Soros
Great things are paradoxical and so is this book. I can judge this book in hindsight which allows me to be more critical of George Soros’ current mindset. But, at the time of this book’s publication, ...
The Wire
All Stories →- TechCrunch AIApple Watch’s AI features for rewinding and recapping conversations begin beta testingNow in beta: Apple's new Audio Intelligence features can help you remember what someone said or take notes on conversations.
- TechCrunch AIGoogle takes Dreambeans to India in bid to bring AI-generated personal stories to the massesGoogle's Dreambeans, its latest AI experiment, now supports 13 Indian languages.
- TechCrunch AIApple may try to increase revenue by doing…something with third-party AI apps
- TechCrunch AIY Combinator’s Garry Tan uses AI agents so much, he spends up to $200K a year on tokens
- TechCrunch AITrajectory raises $45M to make AI model training accessible to nontechnical experts
- TechCrunch AIAnthropic warns that it’s very close to RSI capability, aka self-building AI
- MIT Technology ReviewHere’s who is falling in line for Trump’s “Super Intelligence” loyalty test
- Hacker News (Open Source)Nvidia – open-source auto-ontologyArticle URL: https://github.com/NVIDIA/auto-ontology Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50348962 Points: 11 # Comments: 1
- Hacker News (Open Source)Open-Source 5G Ran Platforms: A Dual Perspective on Performance and CapabilitiesArticle URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.25820 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50347464 Points: 22 # Comments: 0
- GitHub Blog: Open SourceGame Off 2026: The theme is SHIFT
- Open Source InitiativeFOSDEM 2027: CFP for Open Source & EU Policy Devroom
- Open Source InitiativeWe Must Open the Frontier: OSI, OFAI Support Calls for the U.S. to Develop More Open Models
- Open Source InitiativeOSI brings the State of the Source to All Things Open 2026
- Hacker News (Open Source)UAE-based Falcon AI NSFW classifier among top global open-source models (2025)