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Birds in data: Counting cuckoos and other stories

17 May 2024
Many legends abound about the monsoon in India — but none so delightful as that around the Jacobin pied cuckoo. A slender black and white cuckoo, the bird is easily identifiable with its long tail and distinctive crest. Even in flight, one can easily spot the bird by the white patches on its wings and […]

Behind the glamour of YouTube are wrung out stars

03 May 2024
Under the funny wrapper, the video tells the story of the pressure YouTubers have to deal with to keep up with the demand for regular content and to stay relevant. “It’s a part of my job to hear people tell me to go kill myself,” says Lilly Singh aka Superwoman, the Canadian-born YouTube star, in […]

From Loss to Liberation: How Dhiraj Rajaram Fought to Reclaim His Company and Himself

27 November 2023
As I sat across from Dhiraj, I couldn’t help but wonder about the duality of his public persona. To some, he’s an enigma—edgy, even a bit restless (a lot, at times). To others, he’s disarmingly simple and brutally honest. It’s a duality that doesn’t escape him, yet he seems largely indifferent. Depending on the person […]

World’s Insomniacs Find Cure in Indian Barber Massage Videos

27 March 2023
Indian Youtubers have found a global audience devouring videos of Indian barbers performing vigorous massages. These massages shot at rustic roadside salons relaxes stressed consumers and even help them fall asleep.

Finding Shamnad Basheer

22 December 2022
You have hit on the perfect idea for a start-up, raised your seed round of funding, got it off the ground and watched it vault to the status of a unicorn.

Beware of Entrepreneurship

17 October 2022
Entrepreneurship is like a ghost fight. You are fighting with your own ghost every day. In this heartfelt account Sunny Ghosh talks about the struggles of entrepreneurship beyond the usual chase of unicorn statuses and success stories.

This Yin and Yang of Screens

19 August 2022
We’ve never been more involved with our screens but is the relationship a healthy one? Even as Indians spent 4.7 hours on average on their phones in 2021, how much is too much?

As CSAM Surges, A New Drive to Prosecute Offenders

22 March 2022
What does it take to take down an illegal video clip containing child sexual abuse material from the internet? This is the story of Naina and Vicky and their quest to take down their video clip from the internet.

Removing Child Sexual Abuse Material from the Internet

22 March 2022
In 2019, the NCMEC got 16.9 million suspected CSAM reports, of which nearly 1.98 million were from India—the single-largest out of 241 countries. The Indian subcontinent ranks high when it comes to CSAM consumption.

Indian Teens Vent, Stan and Socialise on Discord

24 November 2021
Headquartered in San Francisco and founded in 2015, Discord is a platform that allows users to build and engage with like-minded members through chat, voice and video channels.

They Don’t Make ‘em Like They Used To

11 January 2021
There are different ways to make gadgets deliberately obsolete; through its quality, its functionality, and/or its appearance. One of the common methods used by the electronics industry ‘designing for limited repair’.

How the Phone You Chucked is Killing Seelampur

11 January 2021
The story of a teenage boy Aman is common among the 30,000 men, women and children who expose themselves to toxic fumes, acid splashes and lasting injuries in Seelampur, the town where all our old phones go to die.