Quick notes: 5G trials | Kerala tribals...

• 5G trials: Modi sarkar allows Huawei to conduct 5G trials in India. . . . . . Huawei's flagship phone will launch without any Google apps. . . . . US Navy bans TikTok



• The cold war no one is watching: China's ability to manufucture weaponry is much more efficient and advanced than India's.. It has consistently and aggressively underwritten the modernization of the arms industry in the form of steadily increasing defense budgets. This improved arms industry is, in turn, paying off in terms of making China a more formidable force to reckon with.



• Displacing native tribals, bringing in Christists? How Kerala govt’s forced relocation has deprived tribal communities of their rights Many are now struggling to survive away from the forest area, which generations of tribal communities have relied on for resources and their livelihood.



• Sadhguru on CAA & NRC: Calmly sends liberal dead bodies to the morgue.




• Showing the way: Former students of NIT, Trichy commit $3 million for research activities at their alma mater and for the institute's scholarships programmes. . . . hope others will follow.



• Power plant emissions: Mazda challenges our EV assumptions, claims long-range EVs are bad for the planet . . . . . India should focus on Hybrids for now



• Your data is your property:

Facebook admitted this week that they track your location even when you’ve turned off location tracking — and then sell that data to advertisers.

Your data is your property. Tech companies should absolutely not be allowed to use it without your permission.

— Andrew Yang🧢 (@AndrewYang) December 19, 2019




• Brave Hindu: 19 year old negotiates important policy changes at Stanford University to serve his Hindu lifestyle.




• Kneeling down: A space debris accord with US to clip India's options

Quick notes: UPI learnings | Trade war lost...

• Unified Payments Interface: Google thinks India’s UPI can become a global model.



• Trump lost the trade war: China stood firm and won. The sad truth is that the U.S. will continue to run huge wealth and technology transfers to China financed by America’s increasing net foreign debt that will show as net foreign assets on China’s books.
  
  

  That's certainly how the Chinese see it. Trump tried to bully them; they hung tough; and are basically ending up where they started, buying agricultural products while selling us increasingly sophisticated manufactured goods 2/ https://t.co/akDz4MGiIz

  — Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 15, 2019

  
  
  If losing some $17 billion in agricultural exports to China due to the trade war was tough for farmers, imagine a much larger market, with China taking some $50 billion away from American agribusiness in the future should relations deteriorate.
  
  This is not France versus Germany. This is a capitalist democracy versus a Frankenstein economy that’s one-part capitalist, one part state-controlled, and run by a single political party — the Communist Party — long considered the enemy of Western democracies.



• “Sheltering Minority Refugees Act”: This govt simply does not understand the art of telling its story and managing the narrative internationally.

India creates an act for sheltering persecuted minorities.

It is slammed in global media for “persecuting” minorities. 🙄

Language is key to narrative.

E.g. what if it had called the act, more accurately —“Sheltering Minority Refugees Act” instead of #CitizenshipAmendmentBill? https://t.co/SuQSd5vLlx

— Sankrant Sanu सानु संक्रान्त ਸੰਕ੍ਰਾਂਤ ਸਾਨੁ (@sankrant) December 10, 2019




• KKKaangress foments unrest: Joins hands with Breaking India forces. 



• Mohandas Pai: BJP's big disconnect with South and East India

Quick notes: Real-time translation | Han overlords...

• Real-Time Translation: Google's Interpreter Mode is here, and it will listen and translate up to 44 languages in real time. . . . . amazing possibilities for India.



• Afraid of their Han overlords: Pakistan halts investigation into sale of 629 Pakistani brides to China. Several women refused to testify because of threats from govt officials

Why is India squandering foreign exchange by sending students to study medicine in China?

Why aren't we dreaming big?https://t.co/SPW1z2EAM2

— Subhash Kak (@subhashkak1) December 8, 2019




• China sprinting ahead in computer chips: Chinese company unveiled next-generation x86 SoC plans: 32-Core servers, sub-7nm client designs by 2021



• 5G in 2020 is mostly a hype fest: Most of us won't be using 5G until 2025. . . . . . Investment needed for nationwide 5G? $2 trillion to $3 trillion




• Will they deliver? The startups driving India’s EV ambition



• Russian-Made Vikramaditya Was A Hunk Of Junk: With the job halfway done, and having already dropped $974 million, India could not afford to walk away from the deal. In 2010, India agreed to more than double the budget for the carrier to $2.2 billion.



• Say no to Halal:

If you are a meat eater, have the balls to say no to halal. Support jhatka meat, travel 5 km extra for it. Reject all halal certified products - chips, eye drops, oil. Halal is economy slavery. You came out of 700 years of slavery, don't go back into it.https://t.co/Sc7LrVvE5H

— Rakesh Krishnan Savarkar (@ByRakeshSimha) December 9, 2019




• Ek Kauwa Pyasa Tha:

Quick notes: Chinese students | Mobile payments...

• No English-medium burden: Chinese students far out-stripped peers in every other country in a survey of reading, math and science ability. In reading, the 10% most disadvantaged Chinese students tested had better skills than the OECD average.



• How China plans to lead the computer chip industry: China has made no secret of its desire to become self-sufficient in technology. The nation is both the world's largest importer and consumer of semiconductors. It currently produces just 16% of the semiconductors fuelling its tech boom.But it has plans to produce 40% of all semiconductors it uses by 2025.



• Google and Walmart Push India’s Billionaires Out of Mobile Payments: Not all of India’s tycoons are giving up on the business. Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, has been testing a payments service whose launch date is unknown. With an estimated net worth of $56 billion, Ambani has the firepower to take on giants like Google, Ant, and Facebook. But he may need plenty of patience, too. “This is an extremely competitive race. Only the companies that stay invested in the long run and win the trust of the customer will last.”



• Realestate in post-car world: An apartment complex with 636 units in Tempe, Arizona will be the first in the country to ban private cars. There is no parking, either on-site or off-site, for residents. There will still be plenty of transportation options—just not private cars—and the developer intends to take this idea to other U.S. cities next.



• VikAss: American waste ends up in Kanpur. 25 containers reached via Mundra Port by Adani Ports while the remaining 13 arrived via Navi Mumbai. Further, they were transported to Kanpur by a truck.



• Bacteriophages : The Virus That Kills Drug-Resistant Superbugs



• Comfort cows: Cow cuddling is a practice from Netherlands called "koe knuffelen," and it’s meant to get people back in touch with nature. "You’d think interacting with a big animal wouldn’t be relaxing, but it is shockingly relaxing."



• Madhav Gadgil: Through his work, he realised how unscientific and irrational was the manner in which development projects were often cleared in India. “While on a committee to assess the environmental impact of a hydroelectric project on the Bedthi river, I went on a field trip with an engineer from Rajasthan. I noticed that a large bloodstain was slowly spreading across his spotless white shirt and quickly realised that a leech at the project site must have bitten him. When I drew his attention to the blood, the poor man got the shock of his life. Coming from dry Rajasthan, he had no idea what a leech was. When I told him that such creatures thrive in tropical rain forests, he was aghast at my foolish notion that such forests were worth saving.”
  
  “When I was 12 years old, I went on a trek to the Sahyadri along with a friend. It was summer and we were very thirsty. We found a temple on a hilltop that had a well. When we requested the priest for water, he asked us if we were Brahmins. My friend belonged to the mali [gardener] caste. I replied that neither of us was Brahmin. Hence, we were refused water. That day, I decided not to have anything to do with a religion that stops someone from giving water to a thirsty 12-year-old boy.”



• What makes this illegal? 'Tantrik' poojas at temple in Andhra Pradesh creates stir. Can someone explain why it is illegal?

Quick notes: Bad loans | RCEP sequel...

• Indian banks wrote off Rs 2 trillion in bad loans in 2018-19: Even if the loan recovery rate under insolvency resolution were to improve to 50 per cent in coming years, India’s banks would still never be able to recover Rs 5 trillion from various errant corporate borrowers.



• Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train: Not a priority, says Shiv Sena 



• A swadeshi success story: 640 coaches of Train 18 to be manufactured in coming years



• Nuclear capable Agni-III missile fails in maiden night trial: “Suddenly it started behaving abnormally. It could be possibly due to metallurgical defects”.



• RCEP: Japan won’t sign China-backed RCEP if India doesn’t join. . . .  Tokyo indicates efforts are on to address India’s concerns on RCEP



• Resurrection of Bateshwar Temples: KK Muhammed, the anti-Ghazni




• Get a house that lasts three lifetimes in just 3 days: Light gauge steel, said to be rust-free and stronger than regular steel, is used to build the house frame.  The frame is then filled with thermoforming, following which concrete is sprayed from the inside as well as the outside to make six-inch-thick walls. These buildings are environmentally-friendly, as there is no burning of bricks.



• Throwing my garbage into your home: Bengaluru sends truckloads of trash – full of maggots, flies and dengue-bearing mosquitoes – to the landfills in villages around us, filling the air with stench, polluting their water, ruining their fertile lands, poisoning their cattle, and destroying their health. The trash dumps are conveniently located (for us, not for them) – far from the city, so we don’t have to see where our trash goes.



• VikAss: India's sacred groves are disappearing, taking biodiversity and culture with them. Over the last 60 years, the number of sacred groves in Kerala has shrunk from more than 10,000 to less than 1,500.



• Ferry Operators Switching From Diesel to Batteries: “This is a good idea because it quiets the boats while obviously removing tons of diesel fuel emissions. It saves millions of dollars annually.”