Miscellaneous Topics thread

[Amber G.]

^^^Pranav is an Indian citizen who is completely blind. He’s an exceptionally bright young man — he was accepted to Stanford University, though his family couldn’t afford to send him there. My son met him accidentally a year or so back.

His company, Meta, supported him, and he demonstrated the Meta AI glasses to Narendra Modi. The glasses use AI vision to describe surroundings — including identifying colors, but *much* more — effectively acting as real-time visual assistance.

I’ve seen firsthand how transformative this kind of device can be for blind individuals.

[Tanaji]

Genuinely curious: how does a completely blind man understand colour?

[Amber G.]

Genuinely curious: how does a completely blind man understand colour?

A person who is completely blind doesn’t “see” color the way sighted people do. But color is also information — and information can be described.

Assistive AI glasses convert visual input into spoken description. So when the device says “These socks are navy blue” or “The mango is mostly yellow with some green,” it’s doing the same job our eyes do for us — just through audio instead of vision.

In practical terms, it helps with all the everyday things sighted people do independently:
- buying and matching clothes, - checking how ripe a mango is by its color, reading a restaurant menu, road signs, big colorful poster... even reading physics books or lecture 'reading the black-board.


In other words, it reduces dependence on a human assistant and gives real-time access to visual information. Color isn’t experienced visually — it’s understood contextually. And that understanding is what enables independence.

It is really life changing ..and seen it how it plays out in real life: imagine a blind professional walking into a meeting. The glasses quietly say, “Conference room. Five people seated. Raj is on your left. Screen at the front.” They can locate an empty chair, find the coffee table, glance toward whoever is speaking, and even follow a PowerPoint as key visuals are described. Later, they can “look” at a photo relatives sent and hear: “Two children on a beach at sunset, both smiling,” or watch a movie with rich audio description — much like the audio-described tracks already available in many films — and fully participate in the shared experience. It’s not about seeing in the traditional sense; it’s about accessing the same visual context the rest of us take for granted, without needing a personal assistant at their side.

[Manish_P]

^ A lot of progress has been made on enabling the deaf to 'hear'

If/When the scientists invent a device which can enable the blind to see, it will, in my opinion, be the greatest scientific invention of all time.

[sanjaykumar]

Describing a scene is hardly vision. No more than describing the taste of sidamo coffee is tasting.

The blind will definitely see. But it will take neural implants connected to optical sensors. The optic radiation may be bypassed by cortical implantation. It will mean an integrative processor to simulate that input.

[Tanaji]

I was about to say the same thing. A genuinely blind man will be told that this is a colour, but won’t understand what it is or differentiate between yellow and red (without putting it in sun)

This is not to take away anything from the utility of said devices though.

[Amber G.]

His company, Meta, supported him, and he demonstrated the Meta AI glasses to Narendra Modi. The glasses use AI vision to describe surroundings — including identifying colors, but *much* more — effectively acting as real-time visual assistance.

I’ve seen firsthand how transformative this kind of device can be for blind individuals.

Same Meta glasses are used in this story

[VinodTK]

An inside look at Pickaway County's Arsenal-1 |
Interview with Anduril founder Palmer Luckey

Tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey says the factory is moving from concept to production at a pace rarely seen in defense manufacturing.

Wish the people @ HAL, RM and related folks think and execute like Palmer Luckey
amazing person and a wonderful interview.

[drnayar]

India, Russia film cooperation.

Poster of Russian movie "Persimmon of My Love". It is the first major Russian feature film entirely shot in India. Set to premiere across Russia on April 1, blends Bollywood song and dance with Russian humour and brotherly drama.

https://x.com/sidhant/status/2038295030126051547

[arshyam]

Folks in Delhi, there is an interesting cultural festival organized by nationalist minded folks (primarily Sangam Talks, Garuda publications and Infinity Foundation). It's happening this weekend (April 3-5) at the India Habitat Centre. Entry/registration is free (only food needs to be paid for) and there are some good events and speaker panels coming up. They have arranged some book stalls as well for nationalist literature.

Yesterday there were some good talks by Rajiv Malhotra, Sanjeev Sanyal, J Sai Deepak, Amish Tripathi, Sankrant Sanu, etc.

See https://www.indraprasthafestival.com/

The Delhi NCT govt is one of the sponsors of the event (just mentioning this to show that institutional support is slowly building up at multiple levels - Delhi minister Kapil Mishra opened the event). From our part, we should attend these events where possible to keep the momentum going.

Please share this on X with your contacts to reach more folks.

[A_Gupta]

This is from "The Daily Mirror". A bit puzzling.

[uddu]

After 20 Years, This Scientist Proved Birds Can Talk and Use Grammar
For over two decades, Professor Toshitaka Suzuki dedicated his life to studying the Japanese tit, a small songbird native to Japan’s forests. Through years of careful observation and experiments, he discovered something incredible: these birds use grammar-like rules and combine sounds to form meaning, much like how humans use language.

In this video, we explore how his groundbreaking research challenges what we thought we knew about animal communication, and what it might mean for the way we understand intelligence in the natural world.

[S_Madhukar]

I was about to say the same thing. A genuinely blind man will be told that this is a colour, but won’t understand what it is or differentiate between yellow and red (without putting it in sun)

This is not to take away anything from the utility of said devices though.

I guess the glasses will make a blind person a walking talking LLM that fits perfectly with the current AI discourse in SV

[uddu]

https://x.com/the_fauxy/status/2042547797539590390
@the_fauxy
𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: 𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗮𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗠𝗜𝗪𝗚𝟮𝗦𝗟𝗚𝗕𝗧𝗤𝗤𝗜𝗔+, 𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗦𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗮𝘀 𝗝𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗦𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝘀𝘀𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗞𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹

[ricky_v]

was recently walking through a locality in the hitec area of hyderabad and saw shop names popping up in bengali. Farther on it was bengali primarily along with english and very little telugu.
Thought it a bit weird, maybe the bengali community was established in that area for some time and perhaps the shops displayed names catering to local clientele, though i have never encountered this phenomenon in any other city.
Still ahead were some forex / travel agencies that were openly advertising sales in Taka and dollar.
Now my question is:

1) is it common in bengali families to keep a part of their wealth in taka? so that they may pay indian agencies in taka for some myriad reason for travel inside and outside india?
2) i come from a city where there is a mini-pakistan, i am certain that such exists in all cities, but no mini-bangladeshs.
Are our civic planners actively planning for mini-bangladesh in every city in addition to the existing mini-pakistans? seems progressive.

At least make it a bit clandestine, display boards in oordo ffs