Telugu Bytes

Aravind is back from India after a long trip and shares his thoughts on the weather, philanthropy, education, IT and everything else happening in India. 

• Teach for India
• Folllow Tarun Cherukuri on Facebook
• Hindu coverage of Tarun

Dhruv and Aravind try to follow follow follow follow Sukumar's latest thriller Nannaku Prematho. This episode is full of spoilers.

• Spoiler Alert
• Sukumar's 3 Cs - Concept, Creativity and.. we'll talk about the third later.
• Dhruv's take
• AK's take
• 3 kinds of moviegoers and how Sukumar impresses them
• 3 lead roles and how they performed
• Supporting cast and crew
• 3 roles of Sukumar - story, screenplay and direction - how he did
• 3 favorite scenes in the film of ours
• The third C is *---*---*---*
• Complaints about the film
• Looking forward

Ravi laments about too many JavaScript frameworks, Praveen tries to make sense of all this and bring some sanity.

• History of Javascript
• HTML, CSS and Javascript - How all of them work together?
• Gmail history and pioneers of AJAX
• Advent of JQuery
• MVC pattern
• Different JavaScript MVC frameworks
  • BackboneJS
  • ReactJS
  • AngularJS
• Facebook reverses MobileWeb approach
• Praveen concludes that lack of diversity in client side languages forced developers to bootstrap various Server side paradigms as JS frameworks

Dhruv Vemula and 'Spidy' Sri Atluru talk about the best Telugu and English films they've seen in 2015, and the worst ones..

• Telugu films including Baahubali, Srimanthudu, Bhale Bhale Magadivoy, Bruce Lee, Akhil etc.
• English films including Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jurassic World, Mad Max, Star Wars etc.
• Other good films we might have missed

We have a second guest after Spidy at Telugubytes. In this episode, Ravi talks to Praveen, longtime listener of Telugubytes, Software Engineer at Uber & Paypal about his career as Software Engineer and how he got started.

• Praveen and Ravi reminisce about their early days of grad school
• Praveen explains how he prepared and what it takes to succeed in interviews.
• Experience at Uber versus Paypal
• Ondemand economy and its implications on future

Follow us at Twitter for updates about the show - @telugubytes, You can also follow the hosts at: @gummadi, @praveengorthy, @dhruvtv

With iOS9, the discussion on web ads and ad-blockers has gone mainstream. In this episode, Dhruv and Ravi have a discussion on the topic.

• Origin of web ads
• Newspaper ads and TV ads
• Ad Networks
• Google and Facebook
• Ad-Blocking in Firefox and Chrome
• iOS 9 content blockers
• Native ads
• Facebook Instant Articles
• Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

We discuss the success of Baahubali and discuss if it can change the way Telugu films are produced and marketed.

• Ticket prices and the "range" of Telugu films
• Baahubali's production and financing
• Remunerations of Telugu film stars
• Collections and fan wars

We chart the rise of SS Rajamouli over the years, from Shantinivasam to Baahubali.

• Shantinivasam
• Student No. 1 and the years of obscurity
• Simhadri
  • Intensity
  • Inspirations from Braveheart
  • Dialogues and dramatization
• Sye
  • The villain
• Chatrapathi
  • Utilizing Prabhas
  • The interval block
• Vikramarkudu
  • Sleaze in the first half
  • Titla
  • The mass appeal
• Yamadonga
  • The pre-interval scene
  • NTR's transformation
• Magadheera
  • His best story?
  • Periods of sustained drama
• His influences, inspirations and claims of plagiarism
  • Simhadri : Singamalai scene - Braveheart
  • Sye : Coach pep talk - Any Given Sunday
  • Chatrapathi
  • Magadheera : Om Shanti Om?
  • Magadheera's original story
• Maryadaramanna
  • Purpose
• Eega
  • Story and VFX
  • Surprises
• Baahubali
  • Culmination of his learnings
  • Craft
• Rajamouli vs. Competition
  • Top 5 directors in India
• What's next for Rajamouli?
  • Meluha trilogy
  • Mahabharatam
• What makes Rajamouli Rajamouli?
  • Personality traits
  • Forever the learner
  • Lessons
• Conclusion

Dhruv and Spidy (Sri Atluru)  attempt a review of Baahubali. 

• This episode is full of spoilers. Please watch the movie before you listen. Please!
• We sometimes slip into English during the conversation. It's not deliberate. Excuse us.
• We sometimes refer to celebrities (cast and crew) in the singular (athadu, vaadu). This is purely because it's a casual conversation between friends. We mean no disrespect - we love and adore them!

• How we liked the movie
• Talk from the audience
• Announcement, budget, marketing and expectations
• Spidy's favorite scenes from the film
• Dhruv's favorite scenes from the film
• Character introductions
• How songs fit into the film
• Post-interval block
• War scenes
• da Vinci's chariot design
• Prabhas and Rana as Baahubali and Bhallaladeva
• Anushka as Devasena
• Ramyakrishna and the character of Shivagami
• Senthil's cinematography
• VFX - The waterfall and the fort
• Keeravani's outstanding music and background score
• Tidbits and trivia
• Flaws
• Reviewing the reviews
• Looking forward to Part 2

• Dhruv and Ravi's take on trips and planning
• Dick Costolo is stepping down as CEO of Twitter
  • An employee's farewell letter
  • BBC's worst CEOs of 2014
• TWTR stock price in the last three months
• What is Twitter?
  • Microblogging service or a social network
  • Montly Active Users (MAU)
  • Twitter vs. Facebook MAU
• Chris Sacca's open letter - What Twitter Can Be
• 1 billion people have tried Twitter, but most don't stick
• Is the onboarding process broken?
• Are they slow to execute?
• What can Twitter do?
  • Become a protocol - or is it too late?
  • Focus on 'Live'
  • Mine tweets for deep insights
• Who should be the next CEO?
• Will Google buy Twitter?

• El Capitan, the name (hint: Yosemite's half-dome)
• OS X Wi-Fi performance
• Metal on OS X
  • Possibilities on Apple TV
• iOS 9
  • Search and deep linking to apps
  • WebKit content blocker
  • WKWebView
• watchOS 2
  • Native apps
  • Possibilities
• Apple Music and Apple News

• Sundar Pichai's shoutout to the TV show 'Silicon Valley'
• Hooli, the fictitious company in the show
• Android M
  • Granular app permissions
  • Web views can share cookies
  • Google Now on Tap
• Josh Topolsky's article on Google Now on Tap.
• Google Photos
  • Competition: Flickr, Amazon Photos, iCloud photo library, Dropbox
  • Machine learning for photos
• Android Pay
• Google Cardboard (VR headset)
  • Google : RGV :: Oculus : Rajamouli

• Dhruv's thoughts on his Apple Watch
  • Pricing - is it really worth it?
  • Fitness trackers: Apple Watch vs. Fitbit vs. others
  • Other features
• Dhruv's India trip
  • Situation in Telangana
  • Situation in Andhra
  • Weather
  • Tech scene in Bangalore
  • Indian tech salaries vs. US salaries
  • Web apps vs. Mobile apps for Indian startups

• Thoughts on MacBook
  • Pros and cons
  • Looks
  • Ports
  • Who is it for?
  • Competition: Dell XPS 13, Asus and Acer's ultrabooks
  • Would you buy?
• Thoughts on Apple Watch
  • Pricing
  • Would you buy?
  • Which one?
  • Competition: Fitbit, Pebble
• What's the best smartphone in the market?

• Sorry for the background hiss, couldn't get rid of it completely.

• Solving on whiteboards
• Attitude
• Resume and projects

This is Part 1 on our two-part podcast on Programming Interviews. This week, we talk about how we went from hating programming interviews to understanding and appreciating them, and doing well. 

• Our first experience with programming interviews at BITS Pilani in 2005-06.
• How our friend Sankar Tanguturi mastered the art of interviews, and taught us how to do the same.
• Our initial hatred for interviews
• Why should I study algorithms etc. to interview for jobs where I'll be doing something completely different? Ravi answers some FAQs.
• How much does luck matter in interviews?

Hopefully, we've answered the "why" in this episode. In the next one, we talk about "how" to prepare for programming interviews.

• Pawan Kalyan on Twitter.
• Why do celebrities use Twitter? Why not Facebook?
• Reach of Facebook vs. Twitter in India
• Can we use Twitter analytics as a metric for success?
• 2014 in tech
• Things Dhruv is looking forward to in 2015
  • Apple Watch
  • Rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Virtual Reality (VR)

Chat about how and why Ravi built his new desktop, and memories of our first computers.

• Why did Ravi need a new computer?
• When did we buy our first computers?
  • "Assembled" computers and pirated software
  • Famous computers at BITS - Russell's media machine
• How to pick parts for a modern-day desktop
  • CPU and motherboard
  • RAM and SSD
  • Monitors
• Economics of buying a branded computer vs. building it
• How long does it take to research and build one
• Breakdown of the cost
• Our current work and home setups

This week we have  our first special guest, Sri Atluru (SPIDY), who joins us to discuss about the iPhone event, Apple Pay and where Apple is going in general. We end this episode with a 20 minute long Tollywood ramble about new  and upcoming releases. (Disclaimer: All the comments in the end about actors/directors are made in a lighter vein, please don’t consider them as personal attacks on anyone.)

• Dhruv buys iPhone 6 and his initial views on the device

• Spidy follows up with his views on iPhone and Apple

• iPhone controversies post release

• • iPhone 6+ Bendgate controversy

  • • How Apple handled it versus Antenna gate and how it compared it with Jobs epic press conference after that?

• iOS 8.0.1 botched release?

• • A disgusting Businessweek article places a blame on a middle level QA manager.

  • Spidy and Gummadi debate on managerial styles of Jobs vs Cook.

• Apple Pay

• Spidy explains why he is longing for Apple Pay and how its going to fundamentally change the payment industry.

• Tollywood

• Spidy and Dhruv weigh on the latest Tollywood’s disaster Aagadu and Sreenu Vytla

• Expectations on next week’s release, Govindudu Andarivadele.

• • Crucial film for Krishna Vamsi’s career

  • Bandla Ganesh’s epic GAV audio release speech

Topics:

• iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+

• • Would Steve Jobs allowed this mutiple screen sizes?

  • Android Comparisons

  • • Galaxy Ad

    • Move from Apple to Android Guide

• Apple Pay

• • How is the authentication done?

  • How much difference does it make?

  • Does Paypal need to really fear this?

  • • Paypal ad

• Apple Watch

• • Some thoughts on the spectacular intro video

  • Thoughts on this new category and Apple’s approach to it

• Aagadu

• • Expectations and some lackluster music by Thaman (as usual)

• Ai

• • Some thoughts on Shankar’s next mega blockbuster

User feedback:

• Sound quality - We upgraded our equipment and made sure the sound is being picked up the correct microphones.

• • AT2020+ (Ravi’s Microphone)

  • Blue Yeti (Dhruv’s Microphone)

• Going to be more conscious about the cliches and stepping over each other. Also going to drift away more from the Q&A format and get into a more conversational style.

Links

• Apple Keynote

• Bendict Evans about iWatch

• A watch enthusiast’s review  about iWatch

• iPhone 6 review by Walt Mossberg