3 Techies Banter #3TB

Pop Quiz - Have you heard of Kudumbashree? Or Cauvery Handicrafts? What about Biswa Bangla? If you are at a loss, you are missing the ONDC bus. Kudumbashree (Kerala Emporium) deals in Pickles, Honey and other Gourmet foods. Cauvery Handicrafts deals in wooden crafts like Channapatna toys, Rosewood paintings and jewellery. Biswa Bangla is famous for its collection of Darjeeling Teas and Sundarban H...

If you thought PPP stood only for Public-Private Partnerships, you are not much of a writer. At 3TB, we think PPP should only mean Petrache Poenaru Pen - dedicated to the inventor of the fountain pen. With everyone agitating for a name change, it is time for us fountain pen activists to get a pen named after its creator. That seems to be a just cause. And now we come to the trickiest word in the E...

In this episode, we take you deep into the wondering world of the QWERTY keyboard, where: the longest top-row word is 'rupturewort', a type of plant Peru is the only country that can be typed on one row of a keyboard If you type letters using alternate hands, skepticism is the longest typed word you can type And then we come to a scene out of Yes Minister, where three barrages on the Yamuna River...

Growing up, we always thought that any housing crisis could be solved like Amol Palekar and Zareena Wahab in Gharonda. By singing Do Deewane Shahar Mein around a whole bunch of under-constructions buildings. We were so naive :-). In India, more than half of urban households live in single rooms, with an average of 4.4 persons per room. An estimated 150 million people are homeless globally, though...

Do you understand the token economy? If yes, then you are in exalted company - the company of Psittacus Erithacus. No, it is not a Roman Emperor. It is the big-brained African Grey Parrot. They are known to exchange currency for food. Parrots also have some other attractive traits, which will be revealed in the episode. The shortest cameo in a movie is possibly Brad Pitt for 8 seconds in Deadpool...

We so love our trivia and science. And, as purists, we hate fakes. Which is why we do not get why, while most of the characters in the series Rocket Boys are real people, Dr. Raza Mehdi, who is shown to have played a significant role in Bhabha’s life, is fictional. Why did they do that? Wouldn't Meghnad Saha be the right choice? You tell us. More factoids. Have you ever tried studying during load-...

People find all kinds of new ways to use tech and devices. In 2010, the United States Air Force used 1,760 PlayStation 3 consoles to build a supercomputer for the Department of Defense. They used PS3s because it was more cost-efficient and “green.” Closer to home, we had washing machines making lassi and buffaloes using Lifebuoy. So we thought - why not find out if ChatGPT knew how to take out a p...

Emboldened by your response to our first "Shorts", we are back with our next episode.  Our knowledge-seeking journey led us to find the longest (and possibly "wisest") living land being. From then onto parrots on the token economy, hamburgers and Hamburg and practical tips on the right time to garnish your homemade pizza with toppings. We also delve into the mysterious world of data extrapolation...

Which "EdTech" has had the most impact on the Indian education ecosystem? While they would loathe being narrowly defined as an ed-tech entity- the answer undoubtedly is EkStep. To appreciate the impact, we must first understand the landscape - 250 million children, 9.4 million teachers, 20+ languages and 60 education boards. In five years, the EkStep team accomplished the following:  Created 50 bi...

We are all very comfortable in our "Shorts". So it is no surprise that 3TB now has its own "shorts". This carries the ideal dose of knowledge and wit - for those who like a breezy listen and for those getting prepped to listen to our regular podcasts. As the title suggests, it is a little bit of this and a little bit of that with some arse thrown it. We hope you like this new format we are experim...

The history of clothing mirrors the progress of human civilisation. Unwittingly, we use a slew of textile metaphors in our daily lives. We comment on "threads"; we "seamlessly" integrate x with y; we "weave" through traffic as technology touches every "fabric" of our lives. Fascinating? However, in recent times, fashion has fallen into disrepute. Dyeing and finishing alone are responsible for 3% o...

Finally, the 3 Techies are back with Season 3 in the blistering summer heat. Maybe we are just too hot for our own good 😉. Which is also the reason we waited a day and did not release this on the Summer Solstice (June 21) 🙂. 3TB remains a staunch believer in the Rule of 3. So our starting theme for S3 is Roti, Kapda aur Makaan (the constituents of Living Wage). And Paapi Pet seems the fitting fi...

Have you ever wanted to be on stage with Pink Floyd or experience Avatar like the Na'vi?  The 3 Techies did something close - we went through a few fantastic tech immersions during our travels to the UK and Ireland and thought it only right to share our insights in this episode. All you need to do is name the three immersive experiences we covered in this episode. (yes, you must listen to the full...

The year is 2050. Sheetal, Nilesh and Samiran are reminiscing about that amazing episode they recorded in April 2023 about life in 2050. The crystal gazing they got right, and the predictions that did not go as expected. They did feel a sense of satisfaction that they had made such bold predictions and had lived to see them come true. No one on Earth was chasing them on the streets with brickbats....

Predictions. As expected 😉, two main theories provide conflicting explanations. The first claims that we are more likely to perceive what we expect because it is more likely to be there. The second proposes that we are more likely to perceive what we do not expect because it provides more information. That was predictable👻👻👻. The EU-funded ConflictedPrediction project hopes to address this par...

When we think immersive, we think about Disney theme parks, Avatar, the movie, ABBA and Van Gogh experiences and more. The more evolved also talk about  29 Rooms and Secret Cinema.  But what are immersive experiences really about? At its heart, it is about making the world a better place through empathy, feeling what the other person is going through, seeing what they are seeing, and being in thei...

Gloom, Doom and yet - a 1000 flowers Bloomed in 2022. 2022 was about the long tail of the pandemic, inflation, multiple humanitarian crises, worldwide climate change, and war in Europe. Wherever you turned, it was hard to escape the sense that things were falling apart. 2022 was also a year of human rights and conservation victories, significant milestones in global health and development, and a w...

Natwarlal (not the Amitabh Bachan type) is best known for selling the Taj Mahal, The Red Fort and the Rashtrapati Bhavan.  Frank Abagnale (Catch Me If You Can fame) impersonated a doctor, a lawyer, and a pilot. He even logged 2 million miles of flying and cleared the bar exam.  Are these cases for better crime detection? Or just the correct use cases for verifiable credentials?  Join us as we talk...

Who is Santa Claus? Is he the source of unending joy and happiness for children worldwide that we have all been led to believe?  Or could he be the first MCU hero with superpowers like super speed, super insight and a super cool ride.  Or, as we, at 3TB, suspect, he is a tech geek who loves playing around with quantum mechanics with the right splattering of AI, digital cloning, warp-speed mobility...

3 Techies Banter operates at the top of the Maslow Hierarchy. Why do we claim that? Well. Who else laughs at their own jokes without a care in the world. And believe us when we say tech jokes are tough to come by 😂. We are very high on self-esteem and love our show. Stands to reason, really. If we don't like our podcast, how can we expect others to? We have had loads of fun making this season 🤪....

A lot of people question if one person wrote the Mahabharata. Maybe, Maybe Not. But the critical question is whether something so complex can ever be written in the modern era irrespective of the number of people used. For those amazed by the Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, remember that the Mahabharata is roughly 7X the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined and 15X the length of the Chr...

The oldest known written melody is the Hurrian Hymn Number 6, from around 1400 BC. Closer home, Indian classical music is one of the oldest unbroken musical traditions in the world. Its origin can be traced to recitations of Vedic scriptures i.e. 6000 years ago. Similarly, the history of art extends from prehistoric cave paintings thru Byzantine, Baroque, Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism all the...

The illustration is indicative of the times. Even Lord Ganesha sometimes has to supplement the expertise of Mooshak with a more contemporary "mouse". If the gods can keep up with the times, so can you. And the best way is to listen to our podcast regularly. Do keep writing to us with your feedback (3TB@unblox.com). We have some exciting episodes planned for you in the next few weeks. Vakratunda Ma...

Did you know that the average human attention span is just 8.25 seconds? (Shorter than a goldfish). That is a 25% drop between 2000 and 2015. We are a hyper-distracted lot.  At the office, we check our email inbox 11 times an hour. We pick up our phone more than 1,500 times weekly, once every 5.5 mins. The average time we watch an internet video is 2.7 minutes. But OTT consumption is spiralling; w...

The Holy Grail of the modern enterprise is the Happy and Motivated Employee. Do you think employees would be more productive, collaborative, happier and super motivated if they had better tech tools? What if you allowed them to relocate whenever they wished to with their pianos and horses at company cost (read musical instruments and pets)? Has the pandemic changed our value systems and what we wa...