[23rd March 2025] Interesting Things I Learnt This Week

 1. How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need? - This article explains that even for NASA's highest accuracy calculations, such as interplanetary navigation, only a small number of pi's decimals are needed. For example, JPL uses pi to the 15th decimal place (3.141592653589793). The article illustrates this by calculating the circumference of Voyager 1's distance from Earth, the circumference of Earth, and even the circumference of the known universe, demonstrating that only a limited number of decimal places are necessary for accurate calculations, even at vast scales.

My Take: We often get super excited about accuracy and going to crazy lengths to achieve it. But, honestly, for any everyday functional use of pi, having 3 digits after the decimal gives you really good accuracy, which is usually within the range of error from other stuff anyway. In fact, that article mentions 37 decimals would be enough to calculate the circumference of the observable universe with the accuracy of one hydrogen atom! We should totally pause sometimes and figure out what's "good enough" because the extra gains from more accuracy might not be worth it. But then, why are we calculating the value of pi to billions of decimals? One reason could just be: because we can! But there's another reason, we think pi contains all possible number combinations and could, in the future, be used as a reference to compress data better and maybe even for other things. Pi is one of the most intriguing mathematical concepts, and we've made surprisingly little progress in understanding it over the years.

 

2. 9 Intriguing Engineering Feats for 2025 - The "Top Tech 2025" report highlights several groundbreaking technological advancements poised to impact various sectors. Key developments include MethaneSAT's public methane emission tracking, the commencement of radioactive waste vitrification at the Hanford Site, and Airhart Aeronautics' user-friendly personal aircraft. Additionally, India's Agri Stack database aims to revolutionize farming, Rocket Lab's reusable Neutron rocket seeks to challenge SpaceX, and Baidu anticipates profitable robotaxi operations. The report also notes Java's 30th anniversary, the advancement of high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) for AI, and the emergence of high-NA EUV lithography for next-generation computer chips.

My Take: This was a super interesting article. Everything mentioned is really cool, but these 3 things totally caught my attention: the Agri database by the Government of India, the Airhart Sling (an airplane anyone can fly), and 30 years of Java. Let me know what you found most interesting!

 

3. Outliers: Estée Lauder—A Success Story - The podcast discusses the life and success of Estée Lauder, highlighting her journey from creating a homemade face cream to building a multi-billion-dollar global cosmetics powerhouse. It emphasizes her relentless drive, pioneering marketing tactics, and ability to turn obstacles into opportunities.

My Take:I gotta admit, I'd never even heard of Estée Lauder before this podcast. Maybe 'cause their companies aren't that active in India. But hearing about her, especially how she focused on making customers feel good instead of just chasing the money, picking her fights with the big guys carefully, and always building allies by giving out free samples... those are just a few of the amazing things she must've done to get as successful as she did. I hope I can emulate some of the things she did at Sudama Health.

4. Introducing GNOME 48, “Bengaluru” - GNOME 48, codenamed "Bengaluru",  release pays tribute to the dedication of the GNOME Asia 2024 organizers. It introduces a suite of enhancements focusing on user experience and system performance. Notable improvements include refined notification stacking, new digital well-being features like screen time limits, and the introduction of the minimalist "Decibels" audio player. The release also features new "Adwaita Sans & Mono" fonts, dynamic triple buffering for smoother performance, and HDR support for compatible displays, alongside Wayland color management and improved Nvidia GPU support. System-level updates include battery health preservation with an 80% charge limit and significant improvements to core applications like Nautilus and the image viewer. Overall, GNOME 48 emphasizes usability and performance, positioning it for inclusion in upcoming Linux distributions.

My Take: I had no idea Gnome Asia 2024 was being held in Bengaluru! Mainly because I'm more of a KDE person, and even this post is written on Firefox (sorry!) on KDE. But I'm glad more open-source contributions are coming from Bangalore. It feels nice to know a project like Gnome recognizes the contributions from here. I know about efforts like Absurd Industries, FLOSS Fund and FOSS United trying to make things happen in other areas too, but I guess we need more effort than just those. A sincere thanks to everyone who helps make this happen.