Dr. Ankit Sharma, PhD 🔥 👨‍🔬

Such an honor and grateful moment to visit @nasa Glenn Research Center and deliver a technical talk on our work for understanding the material flammability in Lunar gravity. Talk was well received with insightful questions and discussions.

Meet Rajeev Motwani (Every time you Google something, a boy from Jammu made that possible) > An Indian computer scientist born in Jammu, 1962 > Grew up in a military family that moved city to city, never settled anywhere > As a child he wanted to become a mathematician > His parents pushed him towards computers instead > Best decision they ever made > B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur, 1983 > PhD from UC Berkeley under Richard Karp, a Turing Award winner > Joined Stanford as a professor straight after > Founded MIDAS, one of the most influential research groups in Silicon Valley history > In 1998 two PhD students named Larry Page and Sergey Brin walked into his office > He saw potential in their idea when nobody else did > Co-authored the original PageRank paper with them > Helped them build what became Google > Also mentored the early team at PayPal > Won the Gödel Prize in 2001, the highest honour in theoretical computer science > Passed away on June 5, 2009 at just 47 years old IIT Kanpur named an entire building after him Sergey Brin said "Whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it." A boy who just wanted to study mathematics ended up building the foundation Google stands on. He never chased credit. He just kept opening doors for other people And the whole world walked through them without ever knowing his name

A spectacular journey fueled completely by an endless sea of blue 💙 To the billion fans who always believed, #TeamIndia says thank you 🙌 #MenInBlue | #T20WorldCup

A golden period of white-ball supremacy for Team India 🏆

The Kashmir willows have been a part of many champions’ kits. To see Jammu & Kashmir’s journey from being an enabler of champions, to becoming champions themselves, is beautiful. The season was built on consistency, resilience, and season-long excellence. Auqib Nabi’s impact with the ball stood out in a demanding campaign. A historic moment for the team, coaches, and support staff. Journeys like these define the beauty of domestic cricket.

Master class for entrepreneurs

My wife calls me, panicked. The call is from her number, and her voice is unmistakable- that’s my wife. ‘Babe, our son is hurt. He got in a bike wreck. I’m at the emergency room but they won’t take our insurance and I need cash to get him help. Please send me 3000 dollars as soon as you can, he’s really not doing well.’ Me- ‘Wow, that’s scary. Tell me our passphrase and then I’ll send the money.’ Her (it) - ‘What? What passphrase? This is your wife, our son is hurt. Send the money now!!’ Me- ‘I’ll call you back. I don’t believe that this is my wife. If it is, I’m sorry, but we discussed this.’ The number? Spoofed. Easy to do and there’s no way to tell if a phone number is being spoofed aside from hanging up and calling back to confirm. The voice? AI generated. Easily done. A few seconds of audio is all it takes to create a realistic audio deepfake. What can you do? 1) Create a family safe word or passphrase. Ours is definitely not ‘Keep Going’ although we considered it. Discuss the passphrase far away from phones or any recording device. This is as analog as possible. Don’t forget that the trigger for the passphrase is just as important as the phrase itself. So instead of asking ‘what’s the safe word?’ have a separate triggering question. For example, you could say ‘I’m eating banana cream pie’ and this would trigger your spouse to respond ‘purple velvet pillows’ if that’s the safe word. Make it fun, silly, and easy to remember. And DON’T WRITE IT DOWN. 2) Cognitive security is an essential skill in 2026. Assume every image and video you see online is fake until proven otherwise. Expect scams and spammers, and be pleasantly surprised when it’s not. 3) Figure out a backup communication option with people who you absolutely need to be able to reach. Don’t just rely on a phone number for communication. Have redundant, ideally encrypted methods of communication with family. What did I miss? I think (hope) Nikita is wrong on the timeframe- agentic bots like Claude bot are impressive but not quite ready to flood the phone lines in just 90 days. But I think it’s going to be a huge problem by the end of the year. I already get dozens of increasingly realistic spam calls and texts daily- it’s only going to get more annoying. Have a plan to keep your family and your finances safe!

Things are changing rapidly, where are we going?

It's truly fascinating how a race that's the highest-earning ethnic group , most educated with the lowest crime involvement, strongest family stability, hardworking contributors who use minimal government assistance, and just 1.5% of the population yet paying 6% of income taxes And still end up being the most hated race on one planet. Success can indeed breed resentment.

For the past two years, we’ve seen a relentless, coordinated attack on one of the most successful immigrant groups in the United States: Indian Americans. The racism, scapegoating, and open hostility toward Indians has been wildly disproportionate to reality and in many cases amplified by foreign-funded influence operations primarily from Qatar-linked networks ( allegedly )that benefit from division inside the U.S. Here’s the reality check no one wants to talk about: Indian immigrants are not even on the list of major welfare recipients. They are among the lowest recipients in the country. So when political opportunists like James Fishy back or Casey Putsch try to turn Indians into a campaign villain , remember the facts. Remember the statistics. Remember who actually contributes, builds, and pays in. Don’t fall for lazy narratives. Don’t fall for manufactured outrage. And don’t let serious national issues be reduced to cheap grift politics. Wake up, America.

25 years ago, Dutch researchers tested how fast fire can spread through a flammable ceiling in a café or bar setting.

New video shows fire spreading at bar in Swiss ski resort, with guests failing to react. At least 40 people died

‘The Thinking Game’ documentary has just passed 200M views on YouTube in just 4 weeks! 🤯Perfect holiday viewing if you’re interested in a behind-the-scenes look at how an AGI lab works, or what goes into making a Nobel Prize winning project like AlphaFold happen.🧬🚀

A significant stride in India’s space sector… The successful LVM3-M6 launch, placing the heaviest satellite ever launched from Indian soil, the spacecraft of USA, BlueBird Block-2, into its intended orbit, marks a proud milestone in India’s space journey. It strengthens India’s heavy-lift launch capability and reinforces our growing role in the global commercial launch market. This is also reflective of our efforts towards an Aatmanirbhar Bharat. Congratulations to our hardworking space scientists and engineers. India continues to soar higher in the world of space! @isro

What a moment! Relive the #LVM3M6 liftoff highlights here:   For More information Visit: isro.gov.in/LVM3_M6_BlueBi…   #LVM3M6 #BlueBirdBlock2 #ISRO #NSIL

new: Hundreds, if not thousands, of Indian H1B visa holders who flew from the US to India this month to renew their work permits found their appointments abruptly cancelled, and could be stranded in the country for months, away from family and at risk of losing their jobs. “This is the biggest mess we have seen,” one lawyer told me.

Indian H-1B visa holders who traveled back to India this month to renew their American work permits are now stranded after their appointments were abruptly canceled and rescheduled for months later, according to immigration lawyers. wapo.st/4pUpcIc

The colors of our atmosphere seen from space! Multiple vibrant layers of green atomic oxygen, orange hydroxyl radicals, and red airglow excited from solar activity.

A number of people are talking about implications of AI to schools. I spoke about some of my thoughts to a school board earlier, some highlights: 1. You will never be able to detect the use of AI in homework. Full stop. All "detectors" of AI imo don't really work, can be defeated in various ways, and are in principle doomed to fail. You have to assume that any work done outside classroom has used AI. 2. Therefore, the majority of grading has to shift to in-class work (instead of at-home assignments), in settings where teachers can physically monitor students. The students remain motivated to learn how to solve problems without AI because they know they will be evaluated without it in class later. 3. We want students to be able to use AI, it is here to stay and it is extremely powerful, but we also don't want students to be naked in the world without it. Using the calculator as an example of a historically disruptive technology, school teaches you how to do all the basic math & arithmetic so that you can in principle do it by hand, even if calculators are pervasive and greatly speed up work in practical settings. In addition, you understand what it's doing for you, so should it give you a wrong answer (e.g. you mistyped "prompt"), you should be able to notice it, gut check it, verify it in some other way, etc. The verification ability is especially important in the case of AI, which is presently a lot more fallible in a great variety of ways compared to calculators. 4. A lot of the evaluation settings remain at teacher's discretion and involve a creative design space of no tools, cheatsheets, open book, provided AI responses, direct internet/AI access, etc. TLDR the goal is that the students are proficient in the use of AI, but can also exist without it, and imo the only way to get there is to flip classes around and move the majority of testing to in class settings.

We have lost too many people around this time of year to not say it: reach out to those you haven’t heard from in a while, ask them how they are really doing, grab a coffee a walk or a hike. Chances are, someone you know is in despair. It can make a difference.