Vadivel's blog

"Universal Basic Income" - Heard about this only recently via an Elon Musk interview in November 2016 since then been reading about it. Understood it being discussed for many decades now and certainly not a new idea. What does it mean? A government would guarantee citizens a regular fixed sum of enough money to cover a basic standard of living, they can spend however they want, no questions asked. Majorly critics where saying something on this lines: 1. If we give money for free people will become more lazier 2. People would use it only for drinking / drugs / unhealthy things! etc., "Maybe 90 % of people will go smoke pot and play video games. But if 10 percent of the people go create new products and services and new wealth, that’s still a huge net win." - Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, California Experiments: 1. Finland this week started it on a 2-year trial basis (2000 randomly picked unemployed citizens to get Euro 560 per month) ...

For past 2 days I am using USP long distance phone Card to speak with my wife (Sai). The call time got over today morning. Most of the people here in the hotel said that they are using "Reliance India Calling Card". More importantly reliance is running an offer now and its named as "Valentine Offer". i.e., Pay USD 5 and talk for 120 minutes. It's a cool offer. So thought I would register in Reliance and get hold of that offer today. Their registration page is this https://www.relianceindiacall.com/US/fp_reg_step1.asp but one can't sign-up if we don't have a mobile /Land Line here in US! They themself say "Please do not register with a hotel/hostel/public phone numbers to avail Reliance India Call service. Instead you can use an auto-generated number for registration under Prepaid plan." . The last statement which talks about auto-generated number doesn't hold good till Feb 28th (thats when this offer ends!). I called up their customer care...