Quick notes: Train-18, Biohacking...

• 'Train-18', an indigenous “engine-less” train: The indigenous train designed to run at a top speed of 160 kmph will be free of locomotive since traction motors will be fitted underneath each coach to render them self-propelled. To be rolled out from the Integral Coach Factory by July end.



• Pay me for not eating: Intermittent fasting is getting Silicon Valley startup treatment. Some Silicon Valley execs swear that a form of fasting they call “biohacking” makes them more productive. Several startups are working to commercialize the tech world’s latest health craze. 



• Lockheed offers F-35 radar tech to India: Advanced radar fitted on their fifth-generation F-35 combat jets will be offered on the F-16 jets



• Moong over Microchips: All the sowing, watering, weeding, harvesting and cleaning are done at the farm. The cost of labour, seeds, water and electricity is borne by the farmer. But the bulk of the profits go to the trader who just packs the material and charges a bomb from unsuspecting city dwellers. 



• Samskrita Bharati Teacher:




• Cybersecurity vacancies: India has over 30,000 cybersecurity job vacancies, but hardly any takers. Companies willing to pay nearly twice as much as they do to other tech professionals. 



• Beijing’s big chip push goes into hyperdrive: China makes substantial strides in semiconductors

Quick notes: Minority status, Russian link...

• Constitution discriminates against Hindus: Minority Commission has original jurisdiction to decide on the minority status of an existing educational institution.



• One more link with Russia is cut: Indo-Russian 5th-Gen fighter is dead. Ajit Doval asks the Russia to go ahead on their own. F-35 Lightning II's prospects brighten.



• Science education in English is exclusionary: Principal Scientific Adviser K. Vijay Raghavan



•  Why Israel decided to revive Hebrew: “Reclaiming the Jewish homeland and righting the wrong of Roman imperialism that led to our exile isn't just about location, it is also about mindset. The mindset of Yiddish is the same as the mindset of willfully and passively going like sheep to the slaughter during the Holocaust and during pogroms prior. To truly stand up for ourselves and be a free people in our land, our language must truly be our own, not a bastardized mix of Hebrew and another language of our exile”.



• Suicidal obsession with cars: The social cost of congestion stands at Rs 60,000 crore annually for Delhi while the number for Bengaluru is Rs 37,000 crore.



• Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry: About 279,000 barrels a day of fuel won’t be needed this year. Every five weeks, Chinese cities add 9,500 electric buses—the equivalent of London’s entire working fleet.



• DuckDuckGo: The private search engine standing up to Google



• India cannot get what Europe can: Facebook to put 1.5 billion users out of reach of new EU privacy law



• Don`t be afraid of emptiness:

Quick notes: Indian surrender, TVR Shenoy...

• Accepting defeat: India has sought China's assistance to speed up Bengaluru-Chennai railway corridor besides redevelopment of Agra and Jhansi railway stations.



• China is winning the 5G race: “When you control telco networks, you can control everything”.



• Unhealthy state: Share of exports in GDP at 14-year low of 19.4%



• Corporate debt to equity is at all-time high: The biggest ever fire sale of Indian corporate assets has begun, to tide over bad loans crisis



• Corporates make 73% of bad loans: Rs 4.70 lakh crore worth of public sector bank bad loans were due to loans extended to industry.



• Trade deficit with China doubles in a decade. “Chinese exports to India rely strongly on manufactured items while India’s exports to China are mostly primary and intermediate products (ores, slag and ash, cotton etc)”.... Chinese ports have hoarded enough steel to produce 100 million cars.



• Feeding our next East India overlords: Amazon's India bet is paying off big time



• TVR Shenoy: India's First 'Sangh Journalist'... Editor who saw the future.
  
  
  



• Grasshopper: A learn-to-code app from Google’s Area 120 incubator



• Water From the Sun: Solar-powered water pumps offer farmers a way out of poverty



• Language route to tackle Maoist issue: The govt can't talk in tribal languages and doesn't understand what's the largely Gondi-speaking sons and daughters of the soil wished to convey. The tribes on the other hand consider Hindi as a language of the upper caste. Because of the language divide, welfare schemes don't percolate to them in forests.

Quick notes: Exit tax, Friend of my enemy...

• Exit tax on fleeing millionaires: There is an exodus of millionaires from India, and the govt suspects the rich are trying to escape scrutiny and tax liability.



• Strategic loss for India? Iran invites China for Chabahar development. "Any Chinese presence at Chabahar, even if not involved in the operation of the port, could be used as a way of undermining India’s influence with local authorities".



• The Friend of My Enemy: Iran is not comfortable with India because of its strategic partnership with the US and the new India-Israel relations. Ali Khamenei mentioned the Kashmir issue in some of his sermons for the first time and comparing it to the injustice meted out to Palestinians.



• Uprising? New nationalist movement emerges from Pakistan’s Pashtun protests



• Trump flirts with re-entering TPP: “If you want to send a message to China, the best way to do that is to start doing business with their competitors”



• Death: Whatever is, is you. You are the unlimited, which is not susceptible to the senses. By limiting yourself to the body, you have closed yourself to the unlimited potential which you really are




• From Sanskrit to Macedonskrit: "Stop translating, I understand what you are saying. You are speaking here some corrupted form of Sanskrit".



• Brain drain: Taiwan battles a brain drain as China aims to woo young talent away 



• A Challenger to Silicon Valley Emerges: The U.S. approach is “We’ll build a better product and just win over all the countries”. The Chinese approach is “we’ll fund the local partner to beat off the American companies”. All the rest of the world will basically be a land grab between the U.S. and China. Chinese-led venture funding is about 15 times its size in 2013, outpacing growth in U.S.-led financing, which roughly doubled in that time period.
  

Quick notes: Fund crunch, Saving democracy...

• Proud of you, but no funds for you: Fund crunch hits ISRO programmes. The shortfall is so stiff that the Department of Space does not have enough money at the moment to "initiate advance actions for procurement of materials and renewal of fabrication contracts" for the next phase of PSLV missions.



• AI - comparing India and China: India's policy initiatives are not comprehensive yet and lag other G20 countries. China, on the other hand, today harbours one of the biggest clusters of AI scientists. "China's AI programme is highly structured and driven 'top down' whereas India's approach is more 'organic, driven largely by the private sector and driven by their unique needs for AI".



• Digital India blunder: Modi govt involved FB and Google on hundreds of initiatives under the Digital India programme.“We have to understand these are all data intermediaries. It is but natural that they will use data in every manner. India does not have a privacy law and a data protection law.” 



• Saving democracy from Facebook: The govt should stop using FB, Google and Twitter for e-governance, and thereby stop providing free advertising for these companies for print and broadcast media.



• Reality or perception? As Dalit anger grows, RSS warns Modi-Shah to step up



• Samskrutam: Ananda Himani




• RBI survey: More than half the people surveyed expect no improvement in their incomes, job prospects or the economy a year from now.

Quick notes: IITM, Fighter aircraft...

• India's best: How IIT Madras beat all the odds to become India’s top engineering college... Keep those Periyarites and Leftists out!.



• Dud assets: Indian banks stare at $38-bn new bad loans from power sector



• What aircraft is this RFI for? It is obvious the option IAF would prefer is to add 110 more Rafales. Dassault having pocketed $12 billion for 36 of these would be happy to sell the rest for another $20-$30 billion with TOT (transfer of technology). And well connected Reliance Defence is already chosen as its strategic partner. As with TOT provisions in past contracts, Rafale TOT will come with the advanced technologies as “black boxes” — which is not helpful.



• MMRCA redux? “In the MMRCA tender, vendors promised capabilities that were still under development. This time, they are aware of the stringency of Indian weapons procurement”. The RFI emphasises the need for significant transfer of technology to build the fighters in India.



• Sanskrit: Vanessa Acevedo




• Kerala church: "Yoga and Christian beliefs cannot go hand in hand. Yoga believes in oneness and does not differentiate between the creator and creation"....essentially, the church does not believe in your innate divinity.



• The church doesn't get it: "What difference does it make to you whether Jesus Christ lived at a certain time or not? What has it to do with you that Moses saw God in the burning bush? The fact that Moses saw God in the burning bush does not constitute your seeing Him, does it? If it does, then the fact that Moses ate is enough for you; you ought to stop eating. Each one must experience it himself." --Swami Vivekananda.



• Language of access: Chinese is the second most popular language on the Internet after English. In contrast, Indic content accounts for barely 0.1 per cent of the worldwide Internet content.... MNCs understand the value of the vernacular, unlike NRN who wanted us to abandon our languages.

Quick notes: Amazon model, Russian moves...

• Former Walmart CEO wants Amazon split up:  "They're not making money in retail, and they're putting retailers out of business. Amazon has operated its retail segment at a loss for decades, subsidizing the retail portion of its business with profits from other areas, such as web services. It's anti-competitive, it's predatory, and it's not right.".... Lesson for India!



• Putin tightens Turkey alliance with nuclear project... Russia is arming the Afghan Taliban.... Yazidis remain in fear on Iraq's Mount Sinjar after attempted genocide



• Breakfast cereal: Why cereal is NOT your best breakfast bet



• Abhinav Seetharaman: The beauty that is Sanskrit




• Who sponsors these studies? A questionable new study "explains" the origins of ancient Indians



• Dumping pesticides: Ducks are the future for pesticide-free rice farms



• Breakfast cereal: Why cereal is NOT your best breakfast bet