Quick notes: Digital tax, Train-18...

• Britain’s new “digital services tax”: The new tax is expected to raise an additional £400m a year by targeting tech giants such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon... India was the first country to implement such a tax.



• Facebook, Google Face Billions in New Taxes Across Asia, Latin America: Inspired by EU proposals to impose a tax based on the revenue of tech companies rather than their profit, South Korea, India and at least seven other Asian-Pacific countries are exploring new taxes. Mexico, Chile and other Latin American countries too are contemplating new taxes aimed at boosting receipts from foreign tech firms. Such taxes are separate from corporate income taxes many companies already pay.



• India's 1st Engine-Less Train Said To Be Faster Than Shatabdi: Driven by a self-propulsion module sans a separate locomotive, Train 18 will cut travel time by 15% compared to the Shatabdi.



• Aircraft-like pressurised coaches for world's highest track in Leh:  The 465-km strategically significant line to be built at a cost of Rs 83,360 crore, will see railways' first pressurised coaches which are currently used only in the Quinghay-Tibet Railway Line.



• HAL: Outright purchase of Rafales without local manufacture would end up in an enormous life cycle cost which may drain out the exchequer.



• Letting Sunlight Indoors Kills Disease-Causing Bacteria:  Lit rooms had about half the viable bacteria (those that are able to grow), compared with dark rooms. Rooms that were exposed only to UV light had just slightly less viable bacteria than ones exposed to daylight.



• Paper Airplane Designs: A database of paper airplanes with easy to follow folding instructions.



• e-scooter: Ford is the next company to join the electric scooter craze.

1/ @Ford is entering the e-scooter rental business, through a subsidiary called "Jelly". Their website is in pre-launch mode as of now: https://t.co/viYOgryshd Their iOS app is not live on the app store yet, but the website lists they are active on @LifeAtPurdue campus.

— Sameer K (@thesameerk) October 23, 2018

Quick notes: Best CEOs, Data localization...

• The Best-Performing CEOs, 2018: For the second year in a row, the best-performing CEOs in the world were more likely to have an engineering degree than an MBA. Yet another reason to consider urging your kids to go into engineering.



• US wants to "prohibit" data localization: Major American IT companies are up in arms against the latest Indian directive.



• Sabarimala: Deities & Judges




• Early Time Restricted Feeding (eTRF): Merely restricting the number of hours you ate and moving to an earlier eating schedule, produced huge benefits even in the same person eating the same meals. Mean insulin levels dropped significantly, and insulin resistance dropped as well. Even more remarkable was that even after the washout period of seven weeks, the eTRF group maintained lower insulin levels at baseline. The benefits were maintained even after stopping the time restriction. Blood pressure dropped as well.



• Slaughter-free "clean" meat: "We make meat just out of meat. You just don't need to kill the animal,"



• Forgoing booze: We're taught from an early age that drinking is cool and glamorous. We have to learn for ourselves that it's not.



• Native American Prayer:
  
  Great Spirit,
  Give us hearts to understand
  Never to take from creation's beauty more than we give,
  Never to destroy want only for the furtherance of greed,
  Never to deny to give our hands for the building of earth's beauty,
  Never to take from her what we cannot use.
  
  Give us hearts to understand
  That to destroy earth's music is to create confusion,
  That to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty,
  That to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench,
  That as we care for her she will care for us.
  
  Give us hearts to understand
  We have forgotten who we are.
  We have sought only our own security.
  We have exploited simply for our own ends.
  We have distorted our knowledge.
  We have abused our power.
  
  Great Spirit,
  Whose dry lands thirst,
  Help us to find the way to refresh your lands.
  
  Great Spirit, Whose waters are choked with debris and pollution,
  Help us to find the way to cleanse your waters.
  
  Great Spirit,
  Whose beautiful earth grows ugly with misuse,
  Help us to find the way to restore beauty to your handiwork.
  
  Great Spirit,
  Whose creatures are being destroyed,
  Help us to find a way to replenish them
  
  Great Spirit, whose gifts to us are being lost in selfishness and corruption,
  Help us to find the way to restore our humanity.

Quick notes, Netflix addiction, Drone risk...

• Indian millenials are turning to Vipassana: “Excessive exposure to technology, which is leaving kids more confused than focused, has become the bane of our lives.”



• Obsession with streaming services: A clinic in Bengaluru is treating its first case of Netflix addiction. Improving connectivity has made binge-watching the norm in both small towns and big cities.



• Rise of the vernacular: YouTube scouts for more Indian content creators as local languages trend. "Roughly 95% of the content consumed is in native Indian languages and that is something we hadn’t seen earlier. Back in 2014, it was all Hindi and English".



• Risk in the Sky? This is what happens when a drone hits the wing of an airplane 




• Demise of IC engine: Israel plans to end internal combustion car sales by 2030. Court bans diesel cars in parts of Berlin.  How IC engines will die out in Eurasia.



• Vitamin D: If you are an office worker, get your Vitamin D level checked. If you are an office worker in India, get your Vitamin D level checked as soon as possible. If you are an office worker from India working in a cold country, get your Vitamin D level checked today. Most likely you’ll be Vitamin D deficient. A study in India found that 80% of the urban population and 70% of the rural population is Vitamin D deficient.



• Indra Nooyi's Advice: Ms Nooyi said that her mother's advice to "leave the crown in the garage" holds true.  "Do not bring it in. If your husband wants to bring his crown in, that's just fine. That's crown. But don't take your crown in," she said, adding that some people may "hate" her for making such a remark.  "If you want to stay married, if you want to be a daughter, wife, mother, unfortunately the crown stays in the car. That is the unfortunate rule number one. Somebody has got to play the role of getting everybody together," she said.



• Boston Dynamics: Parkour Atlas.




• Big Cola and pollution: Whose plastic waste most pollutes our environment?
  

Quick notes: ShareChat, Python convert...

• Sorry Facebook: Indian politicians are now flocking to an unlikely “no English” social network, ShareChat, a fast-growing, indigenous social network. Unlike most of the popular social networks in India, this Android-based platform supports 14 Indian languages. It, pointedly, does not support English.



• Python convert: This year’s Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to a Python convert. Instead of using Mathematica, Romer used Python—the most popular language for data science and statistics.



• Bengaluru set to go the Amsterdam way: Bicycle sharing system may take off soon.



• Tata Group history is also the history of Indian industry: “Even though he was at the helm of the Tata Group for 53 years, J.R.D never owned a personal plane. The house he stayed in was not his own; it was rented. He operated through empowering people.”



• The placebo effect: What they weren't told was that they would all get placebos, capsules containing nothing but ground rice. "Just because a placebo contains no active chemicals, does not mean the effects of taking it are not real. The average person thinks that placebo is something that's a lie or some fakery, something where the person has been tricked and it isn't real. But science has told us, particularly over the last two decades, that it is something that is very real, it's something that we can see played out in our physiology and neurochemistry."



• Swami Sivananda explains about the importance of spirituality in the life of a woman:





• China Makes A Big Play In Silicon Valley: The Chinese govt has been forming global partnerships with Western think tanks, recruiting key talent at networking events sponsored by the Chinese govt and working with U.S. universities."I'd say they're very systematic, very long term in their approach and very well-funded".. Instead of buying an existing U.S. business, these Chinese tech giants come to the U.S. and build new companies from the ground up, in what's known as "greenfield" investments. They hire away a lot of U.S. employees who might otherwise work for American businesses.



• Amazon carries its weight: The Online Vendors Association filed a petition with the Competition Commission of India alleging that the online retailer favors merchants that it partly owns, such as Cloudtail and Appario.



• Churchill's magnanimity: "As a matter of fact the grain he took away from Bengal was NOT NEEDED by the allied forces (and largely rotted) but he took it anyway to punish Bengal for having supported Gandhi. Millions died. It was a bumper crop year"



Hhmm Churchill forgot to reflect on his decision to ignore India's plight in fighting the famine during his administration. Causing millions of Indian to die on the street while stealing their grains and supplied it to British armies.

— orang biasa2 jek (@faridnor) October 7, 2018

Quick notes: Silk road, Meatable...

• Chinese debt trap: Pakistan cuts Chinese 'Silk Road' project by $2 bn due to debt concerns. 'Pakistan is a poor country that cannot afford huge burden of the loans'. 



• Hackers take on China: Meet 'Intrusion Truth,' the mysterious group doxing Chinese intel hackers. “Intellectual property theft is a global confrontation fought between the West and its online adversaries, mainly China. Until recently, China has been winning—it has acted with impunity, stealing data using commercial hackers that it pays and tasks but later claims are criminals. The use of commercial hackers is a deliberate attempt to circumvent the statements that China has made committing to stop this illegal activity”.



• Indians are now travelling for Instagram: Domestic Indian tourism climbed 39% between 2016 and 2017, and international travel spiked 60%. Around 25 million Indians take trips abroad every year. This may cross 50 million in two years



• Meatable: A new lab-grown meat startup may have overcome a key barrier to making meat without slaughter



• Mazda rotary range extender: Combining a small rotary-engine range extender with electric power could help overcome some of the rotary's challenges by using electric power to handle high loads and by maintaining a steady rpm from the rotary. 



• Micro Nuclear Reactors: Small and micro reactors could revitalize the nuclear sector



• Balancing the 5 Prana-Vayus: Exhalations and inhalations are connected to a vast inner system of energy, a latticework of activities all woven around the central hub of the breath.



• "Open, moderate Islam": Saudi Arabia Embraces Yoga In Move Towards 'Moderation' 



• CK Nayudu: One of India's greatest cricketers and one of a handful to have played in six decades. In 1956-57, aged 62, he scored 52 in his last innings for Uttar Pradesh; earlier in the season he made 84 against Rajasthan, striking Vinoo Mankad for two sixes.