How could Google’s new logo be only 305 bytes, while its old logo is 14,000 bytes?

Answer by Ilya Yakubovich:

The old logo uses a complicated serif font which can only be created using bezier curves. All together, it has 100 anchor points, resulting in a 6 KB (6,380  bytes) file. When compressed, the size comes down to 2 KB (2,145 bytes).

A simplified version of the new logo, on the other hand, can be constructed almost entirely from circles and rectangles (with the exception of the lower-case g):

The entire logo consists of:

  • 10 circles (2 each for the capital G and lower case g, 2 for each O, and 2 for the e)
  • 5 rectangles (2 for the capital G, 1 for the lower case l, 2 for the e)
  • 1  shape made with 7 anchor points  (the descender on the lower-case g)

While Google hasn't released the optimized 305 byte logo and it doesn't seem to be available online, I believe that they got the size down to 305 bytes as they claim.

To verify this, I recreated the first letter (G) in the SVG format, resulting in a file that's 302 bytes uncompressed, and 195 bytes compressed.

Here's the entire uncompressed graphic, consisting of two circles and two rectangles:

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<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">                                                        
<circle r="100" cy="100" cx="100" fill="#4885ed"/>
<circle r="70" cy="100" cx="100" fill="#ffffff"/>
<rect transform="rotate(-40 166,67)" height="78" width="99" y="27" x="117" fill="#ffffff"/>
<rect height="30" width="88" y="87" x="111" fill="#4885ed"/>
</svg>

This generates the graphic on the right:

As another user pointed out, there is also a way to generate the new logo using strokes rather than fills. This is also something that wasn't possible to do with the old log, and can result in an even smaller file. The code for the entire logo (courtesy of Jaume Sanchez Elias) is 290 bytes:

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<svg xmlns="SVG namespace" width="600" height="250">
<g stroke-width="16" fill="none">
  <path d="M173 102a51 51 0 1 1-13-30m20 37h-53" stroke="#4a87ee"/>
  <circle cx="227" cy="128" r="32" stroke="#d83038"/>
  <circle cx="313" cy="128" r="32" stroke="#f4c022"/>
  <path d="M401 160a31 31 0 1 1 0-61m-4 0a24 29 0 1 1 0 61m26-67v79m-1-12a20 20 0 1 1-52 17" stroke="#4a87ee"/>
  <path stroke="#4ab95a" d="M449 51v115"/>
  <path d="M529 118a30 30 0 1 0-2 24m5-32l-62 28" stroke="#d83038"/>
</g>
</svg>

Using this approach, the entire logo can be drawn using 2 circles (for the 2 o's) and 4 paths (for the G, g, l, and e).

How could Google's new logo be only 305 bytes, while its old logo is 14,000 bytes?

SEBI for StartUps

Source: https://i0.wp.com/i.ndtvimg.com/i/2013-01/41358407281_625x300.jpg

In a move to help entrepreneurs and create more jobs Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) decided to make change in disclosure norms. These are the norms which requires you to disclose all the information which may effect investors decision. This will help startups to raise fund and grow faster.

The most common problem for startups is funding. The move to ease norms may bring the light to the path to achieve funding goals and may drive the success of the startup companies, which can create more jobs and bring economy to the new levels.

The new norms eased relaxations for the companies which works in the areas of IT, data analytics, intellectual property, bio-technology or nano-technology related areas. This will help the companies to get listed on separate Institutional Trading Platform. This is specialised platform designed for SMEs. You can read about them here.

SEBI opened this for institutional investors and HNI(High Networth Individuals), as want to safeguard investors against higher risk of investment in this case. Under the new platform the promoter holding is locked for only six years while in case of main platform it is three years. Startus may not disclose how they will use the fund or other details like group of companis , litigation. The minimum investment lot is 10 lac , as sebi want only big players to invest. Later startup can graduate to main platform and small investors can invest also.

The idea is simple. Create a new platform for new entities and ease the norms which are implemented in general. Once new entity is mature enough, one can move on. There are also norms for delisting and exiting.

I created this small article in layman language so everybody can understand. I would suggets you can head over to following links for more specific insights.

 

Get bank details of anybody. No hacks. No technology. Simple flow in technology.

How to hack bank details of anybody?Here’s How I Can Know Anyone’s Bank Balance In India. Bank Security Bug Exposed.

From http://www.storypick.com/bank-security-bug/

Via: http://www.storypick.com/author/indrajeet/

Have you ever wondered how much money is there in your neighbours bank account? Do you want to know the bank account details of somebody but don`t want do any technical stuffs. Then indian banks made this easier for you. Here is what you can do to know the bank details of anybody using their passbook(yes passbook, not password). You just need the front page of their pass book and you can have all the details, all the transactions made with date and time. Moreover you can keep doing this as many times as you wanted.

Here goes the idea.

Get the barcode printed on the passbook.

Paste on your passbook and keep getting details.Simple and Hassle free.

PS: Tested by original author on various banks passbook printing machines.

Which is the best city in India to settle and why?

Gandhinagar: Why you should move here?

Answer by Ajeet Panigrahi:

Well before I answer this question, I would like to say that I lived in many different cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata , Chennai, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Patna, Pathankot, Kochi, Nashik, Lonavala, Nicobar, Bhubaneshwar, etc.

But the city I liked the most and one of the city where anyone can live a peaceful and uninterrupted life goes like this:

1. The city is Planned, in a damn good way. It was planned by HK Mewada and Prakash M Apte, who worked as trainees under Legendary Architect Le Corbusier, the architect who designed Chandigarh. The plan somewhat looks like this.


(Image source:  Page on indiatravelite.com )

2. Some one said about Greenery. This is the Greenest City in Asia with 54% forest cover of its total area. For instance, a normal city has 150 Trees per 100 persons, but this city has more than 400 trees per 100 which is very high.

​( Image Source: www.swastikrealbiz.com)

3. Has a market place in every 1 Sq. Km where one can find all the basic daily needs.
4. Has got garden in every sector where people spend time with families.
Few of the Gardens are so well made that they do attract lots of people from outside.

​( Image Source: www.omnilexica.com)

5. The normal view of a road is like this. Its not a Highway, but only a Sector Road.


​( Image Source: epaper.timesofindia.com)

6. Temples! There is Akshar Dham, Gandhi Mandir, and many small temples in each sector.


​(Image Source: www.travelguru.com)

7. Has got very less traffic. A busy day somewhat looks like this.


​( Image source: Xossip)

8. Pollution, naah, I couldn’t find any.

9. And the best part are the people. Gujjus are the best and one of the least violent people in entire country. Ther are always Maja Ma Che.

10.Mahatma Mandir..
Don’t be surprised, its not airport..


​(Image source: swapnasrushtiwaterpark.com)

11.These kind of pedestrians


​And you can roam anywhere anytime without fears.!!!pretty safe.
(Image Source : katiraconstruction.com)

12.Celebrations (Navratri)


​(Image Source: www.gandhinagarportal.com)

13. Water show


(Image source: www.swaminarayan.org)​

14. IT Parks (TCS Builiding) Many such buildings are coming up. Also to mention the first smartcity of India, GIFT City is also coming up.


​( Image Source: www.snehalshaharchitect.com )

15. This is how intersections/circles look like. There are many like these in Gandhinagar. They are just like mini parks built in between the roads.

(Image source: Google Images)

16. And to all the Non Vegetarians out there, resist this if you can. For your information, that is completely vegetarian. (I am saying it being a non vegetarian).

(Image source: Google Images)

There are many more things I can say but need to leave office.
And Yes the city is GANDHINAGAR, Capital of Gujarat.

Some things which I couldn’t add due to time constraints, added by Mithil Leua.
Edit 1: Sources added.
Edit 2: Some details of Interchanges and Food added.

Which is the best city in India to settle and why?

What are the most common mistakes first-time entrepreneurs make?

[ I found this nice answer on quora. Very informative. I am also entrepreneur, and i would like to be in touch with others, so i have added contact form at the end of this post. if you feel, please drop me some lines via that form.

-Gaurav Chauhan]

 

Answer by Yash Kotak:

I started my first company Lumos right after graduating from IIT Gandhinagar. Dreamy eyed noobs that we were, we made tons of mistakes.

I’ll mention the top 5 mistakes we made that led to our failure. But first the story to give you some background:

July 2014

In July, we started building smart internet connected switches that learn from user behavior and automate all the electronic appliances in a home.

We felt that it’s a pity that our search results and news feed are personalized to us but our homes, where we spend most of our time, are not.

We had a vision that our switches will learn and personalize the electronic appliances in a home to its owner. We decided to name the company Lumos.(Yes, I am a big Harry Potter Fan!)

We took some pre-seed investment from an angel investor and headed off to our alma mater IIT Gandhinagar to get incubated. We converted a lab into our office space and the Lumos saga started!

The Lumos Team at Work!

We built like crazy. That’s the thing about us engineers; if you give us something interesting to build, we will forget everything else and just build. Our first prototype, which automated lights, was ready in 45 days.

The second prototype, which could automate lights, fans, ACs and water heaters was out in another month. This is really fast according to hardware standards.

November 2014

In mid-November, we got a product designer on board to design the final product. In December, we were already in talks with investors to raise the next round of funding.

Our First PCB (That did not work 😛 )

We were on track to have a market-ready hardware product in less than one year. We were pleased with ourselves. The investors were pleased with us. Life was a bed of roses.

December 2014

Until it was not. We had underestimated the work that goes into making a market-ready hardware product. We had overestimated the demand and utility of our product.

Hardware products sell at 4x–5x the component costs. How did we not know this?!

We were wildly wrong about the price at which we thought our product would sell. And when all this realization came together, shit got real.

January 2015-April 2015

We were forced into a deathly spiral of pivots that almost killed the company. We made bigger mistakes. We left IoT as a sector. We lost a cofounder on the way. The pivots are a long story. I’ll save it for another day.

Now that you have some background, here are the top 5 mistakes we made in Lumos and what we learnt from them.


Mistake 1: We were neither experts nor target users of the product that we were building.

We had never used the existing home automation products in our homes. We were not experts in the IoT sector. When you have new at something, you give yourself the famous Dunning Kruger Pass on your decisions.

“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate.”

And we did give ourselves the Dunning Kruger pass. Had we been users of existing smart switches, we would have known that the incremental value that our product was offering was quite low. Had we been experts in IoT, we would have known how to price hardware and the difficulties in building it.

By avoiding this mistake, you can avoid a lot of other mistakes which happen as a result of this one.

Learning: Work on something where you are either an expert or a top user. If not, become an expert/top user.

Homejoy founder Adora Cheung herself worked as a professional cleaner to understand the business.

Mistake 2: We did not do the due diligence on the idea before we started building the product.

We did not understand the market and competition well enough. We also did not figure out the persona of our customer. And whether that customer was looking for the value that we were providing.

We did not question whether we would be able to provide that value in that first place.(Machine Learning cannot read the human mind. Not yet!).

It is always possible to validate or disvalidate a lot of assumptions about the product, market and competition without building the full-fledged product.

One way we could have done it was by selling existing products to our potential customers.

Learning: I learnt this very useful method in an accelerator. Make a thorough list of hinge-breaking assumptions for your market, product and competition. Hinge breaking assumptions are those that can make or break your company.

Rank them according to probability of the assumption being wrong and subsequent risk to company. Start validating from the top while building as less as possible.

Mistake 3: We let sunk cost bias affect our decisions about pivoting.

It was not that we were clueless about the problems in our product. We had doubts in our minds. In a startup, you almost always have doubts. But we had built so much. We were in love with our product. And we were not ready to ask the difficult questions.

Is it okay to be doubtful about your product? Is it okay to voice your doubts and bring the team morale down?

Or make your cofounders feel that you are not as committed to the idea and the vision as they are?

It helps to be transparent about your doubts with co-founders in the long run.

It would have saved us a couple of months and some money.

Learning: It is absolutely necessary for founders to be committed to the vision of the company. However, there are multiple ways to achieve a vision. Don’t fall in love with one way. Accept the possibility that you might have to start things over from scratch.

Build a culture of transparency in your company. Encourage dissent among cofounders and deal with it objectively.

Mistake 4: We were trying to do everything for everybody.

We were making switches that could automate your lights, fans, ACs and water heaters. We would have tried to automate your TV, Fridge, Oven and Car as well had it been feasible to do so.

We were pitching power savings as well as luxury. This made the product and the pitch very complicated.

Learning: As a startup, you are constrained in resources. So it is always better to identify and solve one problem very well instead of solving n problems in a so-so way.

Nest solved the heating problem. Dropcam and Canary solved the security problem. Try to be a drug for your customer instead of being a vitamin.

Mistake 5: We underestimated hardware.

Building a successful startup is hard. Building a hardware startup is 10 times harder.

Pebble, with all its Kickstarter success, is still in troubled waters.

Building a prototype is the easiest part of building a hardware startup. The real challenge comes in product design, production engineering, manufacturing, distribution and marketing/sales. And you need to have friends in China.

Also, hardware product validation and iteration cycles are much longer than software ones. Getting funding is relatively difficult; VCs ask for traction(~$1M on Kickstarter/Indiegogo last I heard)because of the inherent risk in a hardware startup.

Managing cash flows is hard because you have to pay your vendors months before you get paid from your customers.

Source: The Lean Hardware Startup: Investing in Hardware Startups

Considering all this, we were not the right team to build a hardware company.

Learning: Understand what you are getting into if you are starting a hardware company and plan accordingly. Get experienced people on your team or get into a hardware accelerator like HAXLR8R.

Today.

Eventually, we ended up leaving hardware and IoT and decided to build something that solves a problem that we had experienced.

Since Gandhinagar(where Lumos was located) does not have many startups, interacting and sharing experiences with other entrepreneurs was always a big problem for us.

Also, we had to subscribe to a lot of blogs (crowded inbox) just to stay updated with top content on Entrepreneurship.

We decided to build FundaMine to solve this problem.

FundaMine is a community for professionals to stay updated and interact with others in their profession.

Currently, FundaMine has communities(mines) on Entrepreneurship, Product Management, Android Dev and IoT. Do check it out!

Drop me a line at yashpkotak@gmail.com if you have any comments or want to discuss anything in detail. I can also be reached at @YashPKotak. If you are in Bangalore, we can also catch up for a cup of coffee!

What are the most common mistakes first-time entrepreneurs make?

 

Is there any TV series better than Game of Thrones?

Original thread on quora

Answer by Ankit Singh Yadav:


At present, I won’t say these ( mentioned below) are better because genre is completely different but they are in the same league as of GoT-


1.The Americans –

Spy story set in cold war era.I’m hooked already.Put in excellent writing,superb acting, a clear conceptual vision and you got a great show. It does the near-impossible of making American viewers cheer for Russian spies in America  ( Can you believe that ).The series is created and produced by former CIA officer Joe Weisberg.Set during the Cold War period in the 1980s, The Americans is the story of Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), two Soviet KGB officers posing as an American married couple living in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. with their unsuspecting children (Holly Taylor and Keidrich Sellati) and their neighbor, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), an FBI counterintelligence agent. It just finished it’s second season and it’s the highest rated show of 2014.


2.Fargo –

It’s an American dark comedy-crime drama television series inspired by the 1996 film of the same name.Fargo has received broad acclaim from television critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes currently reports a 98% “certified fresh” critics rating. Fargo presents more quirky characters and a new storyline that is expertly executed with dark humor and odd twists.

3.True Detective –

True Detective is an American television crime drama series on HBO created and written by Nic Pizzolatto. It’s about two detectives, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson of Louisiana State Police Criminal Investigations Division hunting for a serial killer in Louisiana across seventeen years. Many top critics call it the best show of 2014. Matthew McConaughey is just too good.He is going to give Heisenberg a run for his money at Emmy’s this year ( already won ahead of  him at critics choice award this year ).It’s current IMDB rating 9.4.It’s anthology series.

Few other mentions-

4. House of Cards –
I would say the second season is way better than the first.It”s all politics,power and corruption.They add chinese angle to the second season too.And did i say Kevin Spacey was awesome.

5.American Horror Story –
It’s genre is horror and it’s an anthology series,with  each season is conceived as a self-contained miniseries.It has three great seasons.

Potential to be Great –

1. Outlander -:
One of the most awaited show for past one year or so and for the book fans the wait of 23 years is over.It’s finally here. The pilot is too good and true to book. So Outlander is a World War II-era woman time-travels back to 18th-century Scotland. Sounds ridiculous? Well it should be but  it’s much much better than I’m making it sound.  Outlander has a woman at its center. That woman, Claire (Caitroina Balfe), is neither hapless nor incompetent. She has a job and we see her doing it(a nurse in world war 2 ). She has complicated thoughts about love, duty, and honor. She argues; she’s obstinate; she’s unruly. She’s passionate and sexual but not sexualized.
The scenery is delicious; the leading man is handsome, and his accent is legit.There are visceral action scenes; there are men being men and living the sort of simple life of honor.There are even witches and time travel and the music is damn good.Reviews have been great for first season not just for pilot. Whether it’s a  female version of Game of Thrones as some people are calling it  or not i will be coming back for more.It has all the ingredients of a hit .

2.Halt and Catch Fire – Just watch the first two episodes and i will be coming back for more.The series is set in the early 1980s ( 1983 ) and depicts a fictionalized insider’s view of the personal computer revolution. Reverse engineering an IBM chip and all that.
EDIT – It’s a dud.Don’t waste your time watching it.
3.Orange is the new Black – It’s based on Piper Kerman’s memoir,Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, about her experiences in prison.First season received universal acclaimed.

My All Time Top Five –

1. Band of Brothers

I always have keen interest in the WWII  and stories related to it.It took me 3 years to complete it because I don’t want it to be over ever but all good things has to end . It’s the highest rated item on IMDB, no other movie/series/mini-series has matched it yet. It has 9.6 rating.
Let me just quote some top reviews for it because i don’t think i can write better than them.
Caryn James of The New York Times called it “an extraordinary 10-part series that masters its greatest challenge: it balances the ideal of heroism with the violence and terror of battle, reflecting what is both civilized and savage about war.”
Robert Bianco of USA Today said the series was “significantly flawed and yet absolutely extraordinary — just like the men it portrays,”

New York Post ,Adam Buckman  — ” After watching the 10-hour Band of Brothers, I’m so drained by the intensity of what I have just beheld that I’m ready to declare this World War II miniseries the finest piece of work ever produced for television.”

Howard Rosenberg of Los Angeles Times ” — May be the best-ever film depiction of war in the trenches, large screen or small, and TV’s loftiest miniseries since the Brits sent over “The Jewel in the Crown” in 1984. Give Band of Brothers a medal.”

Robert W. Butle of Kansas City Star — “Over nine weeks and 10 hours, this extraordinary television event looks for humanity in the midst of carnage and despair. Time and time again, Band of Brothers finds it.”

2.Breaking Bad –

Have been watching it when first episode aired in USA and over the course of six years became so attached to it that when it ended last year it left a hole which is near impossible to fill. Any list of greatest show of all time without Breaking Bad is incomplete. In 2014, Breaking Bad entered the Guinness Book of Records as the highest rated show of all time.
All Hail the Great Heisenberg.

3.The Wire –

Well if it hasn’t been for season 5 it might be number one on the list.

4. The Sopranos –

This show made HBO what it is today.

5.Friends

The Shield

Mad Men

Deadwood

Person of Interest

Twin Peaks-

Can’t pick one.

I hope to see Game of Thrones on this list once it’s finished.


Is there any TV series better than Game of Thrones?

LinkedIn: What makes a LinkedIn profile great?

Answer by Aaron Clayton-Dunn:

I work at a startup and we’re building out our engineering staff. In order to find our application engineer last spring, I spent weeks scouring LinkedIn. Having read thousands of profiles, I figure I’ll summarize what makes a profile stand out to me. If you are looking for a technical role and you want to generate a lot of interest from recruiters, here’s my advice:

1. Upload a picture. Of you. Yes, your face. At a good resolution. Why? Two reasons. One—when recruiters spend all day looking at profiles, it’s easy to forget that each profile is actually linked to a human being, not just a humanoid machine that may or may not meet the job requirements. A picture of said human is a good reminder of that. Two—recruiters end up seeing the same profiles again and again as they try out hundreds of different filters. Because visual memory is one of our species’ superpowers, the picture will anchor your profile in recruiters’ minds. When they stumble upon it again, they’ll remember you and continue building their mental model of you instead of starting over from scratch.

2. Make a call to action in your summary. If you are willing to speak to recruiters, encourage readers to get in touch.

3. Include your contact information unless you are categorically closed off to anyone reaching out to you for any reason. Who knows what someone will want to get in touch about! Add the “Advice for Contacting” section and put your email address in an obscured format like first (AT) last (DOT) com to evade unwanted attention from simple-minded bots. I would urge you not to rely on people contacting you through LinkedIn’s messaging system for a few reasons. Not every recruiter has the paid account which allows you to contact people that way. Those who do have paid accounts have limits on the number of people they can converse with. Finally, the messaging system is surprisingly buggy.

4. Write a summary that gets at the heart of what you’re interested in doing and conveys both your expertise and your eagerness to learn and take on new challenges.

At the end of the summary, just go ahead and write “Keywords: graphics, graphics engine, game engine, OpenGL, WebGL, C++, [insert 30 more].” By using the term “keywords,” you don’t have to shy away from redundancies which are helpful to include if you want to turn up in lots of searches. “Skills” is a good approach too, especially when you take the time to break the skills into categories. Feel free to include both keywords and skills.

5. Convey your passion for something. And not just your passion for solving hard problems. That’s what everybody writes. What do you love to work on and think about? Games? Distributed systems? Bioinformatics? Write that! And don’t stop there. If you’re actively pursuing a new job, explain the type of role you’re seeking, the company size you’re targeting, and the technologies you’re excited to explore. It’s not just about finding a job. You’re a software engineer; believe me, you can get a job. It’s about finding a job you love.

6. For each section in your work experience, list your responsibilities and accomplishments. Be honest, be specific, and use numbers when possible.
7. Don’t write big paragraphs. Break up your ideas into logical chunks and use single dashes or tildes for bullet points.

8. Link to other places you want people to find you online. If possible, showcase your work on Github or on a “projects” or “portfolio” page on your personal website.

9. Here’s a good one from Mr. Friedman, my ninth grade English teacher: read over your writing out loud. You’ll weed out some typos and realize when a sentence has taken a turn for the worse.

10. Ask one or two friends who write well to read over your profile. They’ll help you make your points succinctly and fix up your grammar mistakes. Hopefully they’ll wince and stop you from writing a summary like “People often call on me to solve arbitrarily complex problems” or a headline like “Perceiving the future.” I didn’t make those quotes up.

11. If you’re looking for a job in a new city, update your location to that new city. This step is easily overlooked but actually quite important. The city you choose dictates who contacts you and what jobs LinkedIn recommends to you.

12. If your job experience involves a number of shorter engagements, be aware that this might be a “red flag” for certain employers who are looking for someone with a track record of long-term commitments. If you are looking for a long-term position but you’ve held a number of positions for less than a year, I would suggest saying something in your summary to create a short narrative of your career path and aspirations and affirm that you are looking to make a serious commitment to a new employer. Alternatively, if you are looking for part-time or short-term engagements, make that clear in your summary. That’s perfectly fine too and it’s always good to be upfront about what you’re looking for.

13. Solicit a handful of strong recommendations.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Good luck finding a job where you learn a lot, work on something important, and spend your time with people you admire and enjoy working with!

LinkedIn: What makes a LinkedIn profile great?