Archives | Musings of Vishal

2026 ⁵

February ²

A three-dimensional lattice of glowing nodes and translucent white lines floating within soft, overlapping clouds of blue, purple, green, and amber, representing structured human knowledge existing inside a vast, continuous space of ideas

Can AI Create New Lines?

February 26, 2026 · 19 min

The Internet Is Being Rewritten for Machines, Thanks to Cloudflare

February 14, 2026 · 8 min

January ³

The WhatsApp Lawsuit and a Tangent on What’s Technically Possible

January 28, 2026 · 8 min

The Zero-Click Internet: When AI Becomes the Only Door to Information

January 9, 2026 · 11 min

On-Device LLMs & Your Encrypted Data: The Profiling Risk Amplified

January 9, 2026 · 26 min

2025 ¹¹

December ¹

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Zesty Lemon and Garlic Dressing in a white ceramic bowl.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Zesty Lemon and Garlic Dressing

December 24, 2025 · 5 min

October ²

A sketch showing different humans sitting on differnt planes, adjusted to their comfort.

A Manifesto for Human-Centered Seating

October 28, 2025 · 3 min

A dark map view showing a fictitious map with a water body, and a yellow region highlighted on the land.

Efficiently Handling Geospatial Interactive Map Data: Rendering Polygons Without Overloading Your Servers

October 23, 2025 · 9 min

September ¹

I Don’t Give a Fuck If I Sound Like AI

September 9, 2025 · 3 min

August ²

An old man walking on the street, as seen through a cafe window. Wearing a pink shirt, white lungi, and a towel on his shoulder.

An Old Man and His Ice Cream

August 28, 2025 · 2 min

A vintage-style collage showing strawberries, watermelon, hibiscus, honey, and coffee cherries. The warm, textured palette blends fruit, flowers, and cosmic elements into a whimsical celebration of the following coffee’s flavors.

Coffee Haul from the Americas

August 25, 2025 · 7 min

July ¹

Warm, softly blurred background featuring gentle shades of cream, peach, and pale yellow with subtle pink and orange tones creating a sunlit, dreamy effect.

Entropy and Intelligence: A Personal Manifesto

July 9, 2025 · 4 min

June ²

Soft pastel radial gradient background with a subtle blend of pale green, lavender, pink, and light blue tones creating a calming, dreamy atmosphere.

The Asymmetry Problem: Why Human–AI Trust is Fundamentally Broken

June 17, 2025 · 15 min

Encrypted, But Not Invisible: How Apps Could Use On-Device ML to Profile You

June 1, 2025 · 20 min

May ¹

An image showing a robot emoji, indicative of AI/LLM, and 3 em dashes next to it. An upper case M is placed below one of the em dashes to show it's width in relation.

Who Stole My Em Dash?

May 13, 2025 · 1 min

March ¹

A photo of Anand driving the car, shot on film. The highway to Goa Mopa airport is seen in the background. Shot with Rollei 35S on Kodak Pro Image 100 film.

A Nihilistic Conversation with Anand, the Driver

March 1, 2025 · 2 min

2024 ²

July ¹

A midjourney imagining of a dark movie theatre showing silhauttes of people.

The Fidgeting Strangers

July 30, 2024 · 2 min

January ¹

An image showing a seating section in 080 Terminal 1 lounge at Bangalore airprot.

Subtle Patriarchal Patterns—As Noticed from an Airport Chair

January 26, 2024 · 4 min

2023 ⁵

August ²

An illustration showing a fisher-person underwater. A metophor on Phishing, a kind of cyber attack.

Why Checking the Box Matters—Juspay’s Possibly Risky Shortcut in HDFC Net Banking

August 30, 2023 · 8 min

A midjourney imagining of a busy Bangalore street where the story takes place.

Beautiful Routines

August 18, 2023 · 1 min

July ³

A cover image with the Musings branding

Musings—My New Blog Site

July 4, 2023 · 4 min

The Search for Privacy-Friendly Website Analysis

July 3, 2023 · 5 min

Onsen with an outdoor pool

Onsens in Japan

July 2, 2023 · 3 min

2020 ³

October ¹

A cover image showing alight from a lamp reflecting off of a smooth surface.

Home—The Details Matter

October 11, 2020 · 5 min

September ¹

An illustration of passphrase entered in a secure input field.

Cacti Passphrase Best Practices

September 9, 2020 · 4 min

August ¹

A banner image that only shows the selection feature of Cacti Vault.

Photo Selections—Cacti Vault

August 17, 2020 · 3 min

2019 ¹

September ¹

An image showing a high-level system overview of the Verizy backend architecture.

How Verizy Handles over 1M Resource-Intensive Requests Every Month?

September 30, 2019 · 4 min

2018 ²

March ¹

The Biggest Problem in Striving for Inbox Zero (Iz)

March 17, 2018 · 5 min

February ¹

An Apple Music Inconsistency

February 9, 2018 · 1 min

2017 ¹

February ¹

An image representing 3D touch.

My Paltry Gripe on Inconsistencies between Force Touch and 3D Touch

February 14, 2017 · 4 min

2016 ⁹

December ¹

A cover image representation for the Swift Animator tool..

Swift: Animator

December 7, 2016 · 4 min

November ¹

A image showing a timeline illustration of Dispatch Group's typical functionality.'

Swift: DispatchGroup

November 29, 2016 · 3 min

October ⁴

An arrow pointing right, cover image

The Importance of Moving Forward

October 28, 2016 · 8 min

A Macbook Pro with Touch Bar

Touch Bar

October 28, 2016 · 6 min

Finite State Machine in Swift

October 26, 2016 · 7 min

Cover image showing the sea from Kizhunna beach

Kerala — Kizhunna Beach

October 17, 2016 · 4 min

September ²

Happy 18th Birthday, Google

September 27, 2016 · 4 min

Reliance Jio — My take on the service

September 13, 2016 · 5 min

January ¹

Why iPhone 7 won’t have Li-Fi

January 23, 2016 · 3 min

2015 ²

December ¹

A cover image showing a grid of drawers that typically archive physical objects or notes.

Archiving and Unarchiving Swift Structure Instances — Revisited

December 8, 2015 · 6 min

November ¹

Archiving and Unarchiving Swift Structure Instances

November 4, 2015 · 2 min