AI Feature Ask

Though I very much like how the various LLM AI apps are outdoing each other with various new feaure launches, I wish they would make the following happen.

1. Ability to pin few of the following conversations.

I might have multiple conversations but few of them are the ones that I might go to often and would use it in a regular manner. It would be helpful to have this feature.

Teams has it, Whatsapp has it. 

Reason calling out that other apps have it is to drive home the point that it should not be that difficult to build it

2. Ability to respond to specific message

When I am having a long back and forth conversations in an app. There would be a need to go and refer one conversation or follow it up from there specifically. Though most of the apps remember context and pick up the cues instinctively, it would be good to have the ability to respond to one particular message and take it from there

3. Table of contents

There are times, a conversation is pretty long. Scrolling up and down and finding one particular thing becomes such a difficult thing. If there are long conversations, it would be good to create an automated table of contents sorta thing which helps in easier navigation.

Blast from the past: Tales of clearance

  With the today's twitter war on accusations by an importer, was reminded off the two tales I heard quite sometime ago...

I was staying in a bachelor mansion kinda place... (Kinda cause it wasn't a mansion mansion per se. Stories about this place is for another day.)

One person who was staying there with us was a customs clearing agent. One day, he had left a huge wad of substantial cash lying around unattended and was sleeping. (To be fair, amongst us, he always carried a huge amount of cash) (I always thought he was the highest earner as well, only later I realized he carried a lot of cash but not earned as much)

One of our other mansion mate chided him for leaving the money that way. The agent man responded, no big deal even if i lose, no one cares. it is all money that anyways, "he gives away" Intrigued me, ended up asking lot of naive questions about what he does how he does.

In simple words, he said, his job was to get the imported goods out of port at the earliest. Money was the best way to get it out. He also explained no one bothered as all the businessmen were focused was to get the goods out of the port at the earliest. More the inventory lied in the port, more the loss.(Then, little did i knew about the cash conversion cycle, inventory turn around and all that but that day, i learnt, faster they got the goods out, it is good for business) He also told me the money spent to get the goods out was literally nothing in a big scheme of things and the money was marginal. He also said the money "spent" to clear the goods was always reasonable as the people never wanted to kill the golden goose.

After hearing about all of it, The naive innocent me asked him a  follow up question: "How did people react to the Indian movie?" (Not the Indian 2, you can have a fair estimate of my age but you would be wrong) Was any one scared, worried? did anyone change?

He laughed and went on to tell me another story. 

One clerk got rich enough to buy a car in a super short time frame. He asked me to guess the quantum of the "scheme" It was one of the toughest case study question, I have come across. Later he revealed, the person was actually selling a form that was supposed to be given free for a single digit value. No one was aware that form was actually free or didn't give a damn as the amount was miniscule. Yet the numbers were so huge for the person to buy a car!!!

Amongst us was also a guy who worked for a large industrial house, who was supposedly known for their squeaky clean image. The industrial house guy was in finance and had to regularly deal with external government offices, clearing lot of approvals, papers, taxes and what not...

 The cynical me (Yeah am naive as well as cynical; go figure) turned to him and asked him, what about this firm? are they really clean or is it all made up stories, and I have never seen you carrying cash as this fellow?

He smiled and said, he doesn't carry cash cause they don't pay and the stories are true. I was like how do you get the work done? Is it because you are too big and powerful? do you deal with different level. 

He said, we flat out refuse. we make it clear, we will follow rules, if the officer wants to delay they could delay.

As a result, people knew they will follow rules and papers move. every now and then there will be a new officer who will try something funny with them. Either they will be patient or the new officer will be schooled by other colleagues that the tactics doesn't work for them.