Thoughts

Background : For years, I had a habit of writing whenever I traveled. No laptop, no apps, just a pen, a notebook, and pages of cursive observations about airports, flights, fellow travelers, and the emotions that come with being away from home. Two decades later, I decided to digitize those notebooks and make them available on Kindle, eventually publishing them as Transit Tales: Between Airports and Emotions: Travel Blog 20 Years Too Late (View on Amazon). As a first step, I assumed modern LLM-powered handwriting recognition would effortlessly convert the pages into text. Instead, the journey led to an unexpected discovery: handwriting recognition is still far from "solved." The apparent success of modern handwriting recognition is increasingly a combination of imperfect OCR and powerful language-model reconstruction. What users see is often not what the system read, but what the system inferred. Handwriting Recognition: Better Than It Looks, But Not For The Reason You Think ...

Finding Signals in the Noise (September 2026) From hidden patterns to usable systems   Sunil Kumar Kopparapu   Much of science is the art of finding signal in noise. Looking back, that idea connects every stage of this journey, from algebra and signal processing to neural networks , computer vision, and speech technologies. Looking back, the journey was never driven by a grand plan. Rather, it unfolded through a series of small discoveries, each opening a door to a larger world.  One of the earliest lessons was that aptitude is often acquired rather than inherited. As a schoolboy, mathematics did not come naturally. It was only around Class V or VI that algebra began to make sense, thanks to my father. What had first appeared to be a collection of mysterious symbols revealed an underlying logic. There was a quiet satisfaction in realizing that abstract notation could describe concrete relationships. In retrospect, this may have been the first encounter with a recurring t...

Dated: 2008 (OCRed from Handwritten Notes) Mumbai – London – Dallas – Las Vegas – Chicago → London – Peterborough → London – Mumbai I start off from home with a heavy heart – not sure why because it is just a few days trip. Maybe it is the healing wound in my back or the thought of seeing your family for a few days – not sure, might not really be able to analyze. I came in early – reaching terminal 2C of the international airport. Very crowded – the vehicle in which I came goes all the way to the end and takes a turn and drops me at the gate – I see BA and enter showing my e‑ticket . I see not many people; it is 10:00 pm – the flight is at 02:15 am. I make some initial inquiry and stand in the queue – the wait continues – the queue length increases as it takes 2 U turn and the baggage screening has not yet started – whew… more wait and around 11:30 the baggage screening counter opens – the queue begins to move slowly – both checked‑in and hand baggage go through the X‑ray machine – bo...

Thank you for the kind welcome. I am truly honored and very pleased to be in the midst of this august gathering—both on the stage and in front of me. More importantly, I am delighted to be in front of the young minds present today. I am also thankful to Professor Choudhury, who made my coming here possible through the invitation and the follow‑up communication. Thank you, ma’am. I have a couple of thoughts I would like to share, simply because of my years of professional experience may offer some perspective. One thing that strikes me is the title of this conference. The fact that it is held every two years and continues to grow indicates the energy and enthusiasm of the organizers. I am sure the conference has seen many leaps in the quality of presentations and in the novelty of the work showcased. While I have only had the opportunity to look at the titles—not the full papers—I can easily imagine that the presentations must have been valuable. Coming back to the title, it is very apt...

The essay explores the absurdity of overcomplicating simple communication through the use of advanced AI. It narrates a scenario where two humans use a language model to draft and summarize an email about a 3 PM meeting, highlighting the ironic inefficiency of employing sophisticated technology for mundane tasks. The tale humorously questions whether AI is simplifying processes or merely adding unnecessary complexity to human interactions. This was entirely generated using Microsoft Copilot with little or no modifications. The prompt used was Given the scenario “Human A uses LLM to compose a mail to Human B and Human B uses LLM to summarize the received email!” Compose a humorous essay keeping in mind if using LLM was necessary in the first place. The Curious Case of the Overachieving LLM {Or the absurdity and ironic inefficiency of overcomplicating simple communication using advanced AI, specifically large language models (LLMs).} In the age of technological prowess, one might imagine...

స్వీయ పర్యవేక్షణపై మక్కువ A Google Translation of this article . ACM నుండి నా మెయిల్ బాక్స్ లో "స్మార్ట్ చెవిపోగు మానిటర్స్ బాడీ టెంపరేచర్" అనే ఈ వార్తా అంశాన్ని నేను చూశాను మరియు నన్ను పట్టుకున్న మొదటి విషయం ఏమిటంటే, నేను నా శరీర ఉష్ణోగ్రతను చివరిసారిగా ఎప్పుడు కొలిచాను. ఇది చాలా కాలం క్రితం కోవిడ్ సమయంలో కావచ్చు, శరీర ఉష్ణోగ్రత, ఎస్పిఓ 2 మరియు ఇతర విషయాలను ట్రాక్ చేయాలని మరియు కొంత కాలం పాటు ఉష్ణోగ్రత స్థిరంగా ఎక్కువగా ఉంటే దానిని అత్యవసర పరిస్థితిగా భావించమని డాక్టర్ నాకు సలహా ఇచ్చారు (ఇది రెండు రోజులు కావచ్చు!). నా శరీర ఉష్ణోగ్రతను కొంత కంటిన్యూటీతో పర్యవేక్షించడం నాకు అదే గుర్తుకు వచ్చింది. కాకపోతే జ్వరం వచ్చినప్పుడు మాత్రమే స్థానిక వైద్యుడు థర్మామీటర్ ను ఊపి నాలుక కింద పెట్టి కొన్ని సెకన్లు వేచి ఉండి, పాదరసం స్కేలుపై ఉష్ణోగ్రతను చదివి 101.2 అని ఉచ్ఛరిస్తారు (కొలత యూనిట్ గురించి చెప్పకపోయినా అది ఎక్కువ అని మీకు తెలుసు!). కాబట్టి ఆ వ్యాసం నా కుతూహలాన్ని రేకెత్తించింది మరియు నేను గీక్ వైర్ వార్తా కథనంలో ఉన్నాను. ఉష్ణోగ్రతను ఎలా కొలుస్తారు, సర్వవ్యాపితమైన "స్...

Obsessed with Monitoring Self Telugu translation using Google Translator here I saw this news item “ Smart Earring Monitors Body Temperature ” in my mail box from ACM and the first thing that stuck me is when was the last time I measured my body temperature. It was a very long time ago may be during COVID when the doctor advised me to keep track of the body temperature, SPO2 among other things and assume it an emergency if the temperature was consistently high for some period of time (may be it was two days!). That was the only time I recall monitoring my body temperature with some continuity. Else it was only when one had fever and the local physician would shake a thermometer and plop it under your tongue and then wait for a couple of seconds and read the temperature on the hard to read mercury scale and pronounce 101.2 (you know it was high even if he did not mention the unit of measurement!). Any high temperature meant no school, wet towel on the forehead and a sympathetic ...