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How we built a medicine-substitution engine that refuses to be clever There is a category of bugs where the code looks perfectly correct in code review, the unit tests pass, the demo on stage goes beautifully, and a real person dies. Medicine substitution is one of them. We built Agada — point a phone camera at a medicine strip in India, and the app tells you whether the drug is registered with the regulator, what it does, and whether a chemically identical version is available at the government pharmacy for a fraction of the price. The point is real: Indians spend about ₹65,000 crore a year out of pocket on branded medicines when the same molecule sits in a Jan Aushadhi Kendra at a tenth of the cost. The Dolo-650 story (₹32 vs ₹4.90 for the same paracetamol) is the most famous example, not the only one. The hard part isn't the camera, the OCR, or the price lookup. The hard part is the substitution engine — the piece of code that decides "is this salt the same as that salt." Get that wrong in the wrong direction, and the app cheerfully tells a user that their 500mg anti-epileptic can be replaced with a 200mg one, because the strings look similar. So we built a matcher that refuses to be clever. This post is about the parts we deleted. The starting problem A user scans "Crocin 500mg Tablet IP". A Jan Aushadhi record says "Paracetamol 500 mg". A naive matcher says: both contain "500", both contain "Paracetamol" (or "Acetaminophen", which is the same thing in a different country), ship it. The user buys the generic. Savings: ₹20. Everyone wins. Now consider: Crocin 650 Advance vs Dolo 650 — same molecule, same dose, different brands. Fine. Augmentin 625 vs Augmentin 375 — same two salts, different ratio. The combo tolerance might let it through, but the clinical implication is real. Levofloxacin 500 vs Ofloxacin 400 — both fluoroquinolones, both "similar," but levofloxacin is the levo-isomer of ofloxacin and is dosed at roughly half. A "fuzzy" match here could halve so

Apple is planning to raise prices in response to the ongoing memory shortage. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Tim Cook says "price increases are unavoidable:" We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying to shield our customers from the […]

VSCO is taking on Adobe with a new Studio Pro editing app rolling out today on iOS and coming to macOS later this year, as Bloomberg reports. At launch, the app offers tools for batch editing, style matching from a reference image, and sharing images through VSCO Galleries. VSCO says more features are coming later, […]

We’re seeing good early Prime Day deals ahead of the event next week, and unsurprisingly, some of the best deals are on Amazon’s own devices. Several Echo speakers have dropped to new low prices, including the Echo Dot Max, which is on sale for $64.99 ($35 off) at Amazon. Our smart home reviewer Jennifer Pattison […]

Yesterday, Snap debuted its new $2,195 Specs glasses. In an interview with CNBC, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel described the Specs as something the company had been working on for more than 12 years, an attempt to "bring computing into the world" and "make it more human." He positioned them as a device to help people […]

Google's new smart speaker is more about Gemini than audio quality.

SanDisk has announced an expensive way to boost the PlayStation 5's storage capacity. The company's new Optimus GX PRO 850P NVMe SSD is an officially licensed PS5 accessory in capacities ranging from 1TB to 8TB. The largest option can store up to 200 PS5 games (based on average installation sizes) SanDisk claims, but thanks to […]

Amazon’s Prime Day is one of the biggest shopping events of the year, and the four-day sale for 2026 begins June 23rd at 3:01AM ET and ends at the same time on June 27th. It will grant Prime members access to some of the best prices of the year on Amazon devices, as well as […]

AI is pretty reliable at putting things on your calendar these days, but it hasn't quite cracked answering the related and all-important question of "What should I do this weekend?" Meta's new AI Mode in search could be a useful tool - if it ever learns to stop getting stuff wrong. AI Mode is a […]

Amazon’s Prime Day sale kicks off on June 23rd, but already we’re seeing some notable Apple deals trickle in. Whether you’re looking for a new pair of wireless earbuds or a smartwatch, many retailers are offering notable discounts ahead of the shopping event. Walmart and Amazon recently surprised us with a new all-time low on […]

LinkedIn is trying to make it easier for users to prove their proficiency with apps that are relevant to their current or future jobs. A new "connected apps" feature is launching today that allows users to link a selection of supported apps to their LinkedIn profile, with each app providing a "simple, specific description of […]

After teasing it on X last week, GuliKit announced a new version of its TV Docking Station today that now supports the Switch 2 as well as previous versions of the console, including the original Switch and OLED model. The new version of the dock carries forward a similar design as the original and looks […]

The smart home networking protocol Thread is adding a new way to onboard devices without a Thread border router. The feature, called Thread Direct, is designed to let users set up Thread-powered devices - such as smart plugs and smart locks - using only a phone or mobile device equipped with a Thread radio. Current […]

Jackery is jumping on the fridge-battery trend with what it says is the "world's slimmest." FridgeGuard also looks nice; a break from power stations that tend to look more at home at a job site than the kitchen or living room. Measuring just 2.63 inches (67mm) thick, the Jackery FridgeGuard power station is meant to […]

Matter, the smart home interoperability standard, might finally get a feature that should have been there from day one: a single shared Matter network managed by multiple ecosystems. With this feature, called Joint Fabric, smart devices added to the network will be controllable by any authorized platform - Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and […]

I'll admit it. I was wrong. Wildly colorful lighting is delightful for your smart home - well, outdoors, at least. Smart lighting is one of my favorite features of the smart home - it combines convenience with ambiance, letting you change the entire look of your room with just a press of a button. But, […]

The next humanoid robot might not have a head. It might not have legs. It might even sit on a wheeled base and fold down like a deck chair. But, as Genesis AI puts it, "humanoid robots don't need to look human." That explains the look of Eno, the new robot from the French startup […]

Anthropic's popularity with business users is growing so well that the latest beef with the government might actually boost it, data from Ramp suggests.

Pixels will get their OTA in the coming weeks, but don't expect monumental changes.

Google's Wear OS 7 update is starting to roll out today for the Pixel Watch 2, 3, and 4 , adding a new Live Updates feature that tracks live events from your Android smart watch. Live Updates will now sync with Wear OS devices, so updates like sports scores or an ongoing meal delivery will […]