iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Neeldhara Misra

Josh W. Comeau @joshwcomeau.com · 27/04/2026

🎉 Registration is now open for my latest course, Whimsical Animations! This course will teach you everything you need to know to design and build stunning, creative animations and interactions. It’s time to make the web less generic and boring! 😄

whimsy.joshwcomeau.com

Whimsical Animations

Learn how to create charming interactions and delightful touches using the magic of CSS, JavaScript, SVG, and Canvas. I’m sharing all my tricks in this one!

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Returning to typefully after a while. Posting this from Raycast -- in general nice to see many new integrations, including Claude and a MCP server.

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Reposted by Neeldhara Misra

Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 18/02/2026

Let's say you want, e.g., to compute the expectation of a Geometric r.v. That'll involve, at some point, evaluating a series of the form "Σ (k+1) p^k" which looks like what Lovecraft may have done to a geometric series. How to do it? One trick I enjoy: differentiate the same function, in two ways!

$We want to evaluate $$ \sum_{\color{red}k=0}^\infty (\color{red}k+1) \color{blue}p^{\color{red}k}\,. $$ Introduce the function $f$, for $|\color{blue}x|<1$: $$ f(\color{blue}x) = \sum_{\color{red}k=0}^\infty \color{blue}x^{\color{red}k}\,. $$ That's a nice geometric series, and we easily get $f(\color{blue}x) = \frac{1}{1-\color{blue}x}$. So we can differentiate that: $$ f'(\color{blue}x) = \frac{1}{(1-\color{blue}x)^2} $$ But $f$ was defined as a power series, and we can also differentiate *that* termwise: $$ f'(\color{blue}x) = \sum_{\color{red}k=1}^\infty \color{red}k \color{blue}x^{\color{red}{k-1}} = \sum_{\color{red}k=0}^\infty {(\color{red}k+1)} \color{blue}x^{\color{red}{k}}\,. $$ Well, $f'(\color{blue}x)= f'(\color{blue}x)$ (!), so we can use both expressions, and evaluate them at $\color{blue}p$: $$ \boxed{\sum_{\color{red}k=0}^\infty {(\color{red}k+1)} \color{blue}p^{\color{red}{k}} = \frac{1}{(1-\color{blue}p)^2}} $$$

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Reposted by Neeldhara Misra

azariah.bsky.social @azariah.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

I've finally put together the blog post accompanying a lecture that @neeldhara.bsky.social invited me to give over a year ago - which happened about a year after @shriram.bsky.social got us to start thinking about it :) Eventual consistency, I guess. :) johnazariah.github.io/2026/02/08/o...

johnazariah.github.io

One Loop to Traverse Them All

Dedicated to Prof Shriram Krishnamurthi, who incited the exploration into this area, and to Prof Neeldhara Misra, who invited me to give a version of this talk to her class at IIT Gandhinagar.

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Has anyone tried using Claude or its ilk with Overleaf? I'm tempted to try claude for chrome with OL. I use claude code in Cursor's terminal which seems to work well for my own stuff. But OL sync with GH or DB is a bit finicky so was wondering...

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

In the light of the recent news from IISc about tracking time-at-labs, timely to check out this compilation of opinions from the international scientific community on the matter, in the context of a similar situation that arose in Italy: www.openaccessrepository.it/records/1433...

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

I figure there may not be any off-the-shelf scripts that I can use. I tried vibe coding, but the part about getting the image recognition to work seemed non-trivial. Have you tried something like this before?

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

I want a gradescope-like UI for identifying the answer regions and for the app to compute scores of individual students + stats. The reason I can't use GS for my situation is that GS doesn't support confidence-based grading, which is what I am using for this exam. +

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

How hard is it to create a bespoke gradescope-ish app for a particular pen and paper exam? My use-case is the following: I have a question paper that is all multi-select or short answer (fill in the blanks), and a bunch of scans from an exam that happened. +

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Clocked ten years at IITGN today :) Thinking of writing a retrospective of sorts, if you have any ideas for what you might find useful in such a reflection, let me know!

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Having done this a couple of times (imperfectly), happy to help any way I can! Happily, the documentation covers a lot of ground already: gian.iith.ac.in/guidelines (2/2)

gian.iith.ac.in

GIAN – Global Initiative of Academic Networks

Official portal of GIAN, a Government of India initiative hosted by IIT Hyderabad to enable international academic collaboration.

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

ICYMI: a new phase of GIAN funding has been announced. If you are an eligible faculty member in India, great opportunity to play host, and if you identify as a "foreign expert" who'd like to visit, ping your friends here! Deadline: Sep 30. (1/2)

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

TIL that Pocket shut down :( Was my first read-it-later app. I haven't used it in ages, but still feel like I'll be missing it! I remember setting up IFTTT workflows to spam people when I tagged them on a pocket entry 😀

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

I am likely to be very off in my estimates of how long the chapters will take, but we'll figure it out as we go along :) Logistics: the readings will be coordinated via Circle (as an experiment) instead of WA groups. Please make sure to sign up at the links on the GAB site.

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

In the mornings IST, we are reading Theory of Probability. Book website: www.santoshvenkatesh.com/book GAB site: grokabook.com/texts/2025/p... In the mornings IST, we are reading DCIC Book website: dcic-world.org/2025-02-09/i... GAB site: grokabook.com/texts/2025/d...

santoshvenkatesh.com

The Theory of Probability | Santosh S. Venkatesh, Professor

From its classical foundations to the advanced modern theory, this elegant guide to probability weaves together mathematical proofs, historical panoramas, and lush, richly detailed applications.

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Recently vibecoded some slides in Manim via manim-slides: slides.neeldhara.com/evc/ The whole experience was... interesting. It's not replacing my current default for now, but might find ways of integrating it in modular ways.

slides.neeldhara.com

Manim Slides

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Slightly niche question: does anyone have Obsidian web clipper working on the Orion browser?

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Reposted by Neeldhara Misra

Anuj Dawar अनुज दावर انُج داور @anujdawar.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Now I can give you a more complete reply, @neeldhara.bsky.social. The chess book I was thinking of is Chess: The Complete Self-Tutor by Edward Lasker. Here is a sample of the interactive style.

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Reposted by Neeldhara Misra

Stephen @sp.degabrielle.name · 16/08/2025

The closest thing for me as a young person learning about computer science was ‘The Turing Omnibus’ with its bite-sized chapters and categories. My memory is chapters would tell you what was next so you could follow the automata or cryptography ‘paths’. I only have the ‘new’ version.

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Do you know of any examples of textbooks written in the style of interactive fiction?

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

TIL that Screenflow can’t import a MOV file generated by OBS studio :(

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

Anyone using the OBSBot Tiny 2 camera? Is it common for it to heat up and become laggy after about an 60-90 minutes of use? I don’t have AI tracking on and am using this on a Mac.

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Aye no fair this was a one-one mapping from @sriku.org’s list… On the follow up list I agree, but given that I don’t know what *I* am up to most of the time, this behaviour is on brand :D

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Thanks for sharing this! Turned it into a playable interactive here: interactives.neeldhara.com/knights-puzzle

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

To be clear, I'm the first to admit I have a problem! Will clean up someday 🙈

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Also open always: Granola, Anybox, Mathpix/Screenfloat/Cleanshot, Raycast/Hazel/Alfred/KM/Shortcuts, MacWhisper, Yoink, Dropzone, Popclip Open-when-needed: Obsidian/Craft/Collections, Screenflow/OBSbot/OBS, VSCode/Cursor/Windsurf (based on wherever I have credits left 👀), Typora, Overleaf, etc. +

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

So cool! 😎 Are you using the default Apple tools for mail and browsing? My list corresponding to yours would be: Shortwave/Superhuman, Orion*, Warp*, Obsidian Canvas, RevealJS (via Slides), Zoom, Skim, Bookends, NA, NA, WA/Telegram, Strongbox, Keychain, Fantastical, Godspeed. *experimental. +

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

I do get that when you use emacs you don't need anything else, but I think all those modes (?) should count as separate apps for a fair contest.

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

Heh... this happens for courses/services I've signed up for. A regular search I run on shortwave (an ai-first email client) involves digging these up 🙈 OTOH I can rattle off the dozen PKM apps I'm going between at the moment off the top of my head :( Not proud of this superpower, just to be clear!

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

:) I see... I dug up the spotlight shortcut to try, and it seems to work fine for the few PPT files I have on my system. It couldn't detect the ones on OneDrive but I suspect I don't have those downloaded.

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Reposted by Neeldhara Misra

Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

My thoughts on the crucial importance of methodology on self-reported AI performance on mathematics competitions, and my policy on commenting on such reports going forward: mathstodon.xyz/@tao/1148814...

mathstodon.xyz

Terence Tao (@tao@mathstodon.xyz)

It is tempting to view the capability of current AI technology as a singular quantity: either a given task X is within the ability of current tools, or it is not. However, there is in fact a very wid...

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

FWIW: chatgpt.com/share/687ce9... Not sure if any of those proposed fixes are useful, but the bit about moving the backup files out of the index seems like a reasonable suggestion and not too hard to do?

chatgpt.com

ChatGPT - New chat

Shared via ChatGPT

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

I'm hoping to eventually have natural language search for my files, which I can use to look for answers to vague queries. I've given in to using rewind :| I'm also somewhat hopeful for Fabric(.so) 🤞 Gemini in Google Drive is nice, but not very because my iitgn WS doesn't have it, sigh.

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

For a dedicated tool Houdah Spot has been around a while and has worked well for me. You can access it through Raycast and Alfred. It does rely on the spotlight index, AFAIR. Find Any File (FAF) is an alternative that I think does not. There's a nice list of alternatives on the FAF page too.

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

I just remembered that I've embarassed myself already with this list of 50: www.neeldhara.com/blog/new-mac/ Applying 80-20 to that, not so bad!

neeldhara.com

Neeldhara - New Mac

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

I recently took stock and I don't want to share :P

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

Has anyone tried AI video generation in Canva yet? What's your experience with it? Also couldn't figure out the pricing from a quick look, hard to imagine that unlimited usage would be included in the default plan...

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

We will be soft-launching a new initiative for teachers in the higher education sector in India, centered around a training program but will also feature a community and regular live events (workshops, talks, etc). Help us finalize a logo bu voting here: 99designs.com/contests/po...

99designs.com

Help me choose my new design!

I’m running a brand starter pack contest on 99designs. Designers have submitted 377 designs so far. Please vote on your favorite as I’d love to receive your feedback.

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Reposted by Neeldhara Misra

Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

I am super-pleased to be serving on the PC of the excellent and much-needed "Undone Science in CS" 2026: "to provide an opportunity to pause and reflect on the epistemological and ethical aspects of computer science". For much more information, please see: www.undonecs.org/2026/

undonecs.org

Undone Computer Science 2026

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Thinking it might be useful to compile interesting grading mechanisms. Would you share your favorite experiences from either side of the fence? I'm especially interested in policy innovations for large classes post-LLMs, but anything is welcome!

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Encountered struggle from Math for Human Flourishing during our reading group today. It reminded me of this lovely video by Courtney Gibbons. I was little alarmed that the original tweet no longer exists: very glad to have found it on Youtube! www.youtube.com/watch?v=kenf...

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Hypothetical grading policy. Would it be easy for participants to get grades that do not reflect their competence either in terms of underestimating it (i.e, the grading policy is unfair) or overestimating it (i.e, the policy is easy to game)?

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Heh, that's fair! Sent you an email :D

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Reposted by Neeldhara Misra

Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

We're looking for creative engineers/tinkerers/tool builders that want to engage with cutting-edge research questions in our lab at the @ncbsbangalore.bsky.social Please help me share the word!

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Yep, figured re. 2025, your summer travel posts were great to see! Do keep us in mind for your next India trip :)

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Neeldhara Misra @neeldhara.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Thanks for watching! I figured you'd remember the lab :) Re. jalmandaps, we had to reserve something for a follow up visit... 🤞 Keeping an eye on: www.espncricinfo.com/cricket-grou... (Yep, there is commentary from both the Dean RnD and the Director, my recollection is that you met the Director.)

espncricinfo.com

Narendra Modi Stadium Fixtures | Upcoming Cricket Matches

Stay updated with the upcoming cricket matches at Narendra Modi Stadium. Get the schedule, dates, and details of cricket fixtures held at this cricket ground.

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