Quick notes: Weaning off coal | K-shaped recovery...

• How Long Will Coal Remain King in India? “It's critical that India build no new coal plants and also begin retiring existing ones, particularly older, highly polluting plants”. . Balancing development and "breathable air”: The cost-competitiveness of renewable energy alternatives, air pollution regulations and water scarcity have been putting pressure on the coal sector.



• ‘K-shaped’ recovery: The rich are minting money in the pandemic like never before. “So much of what policy makers did was to enable those that were wealthiest to rebound fastest from the pandemic.”
  
  - Poorer quality jobs add to people’s woes: Not only have jobs evaporated, people have also been forced to move to less productive and poorly paid alternatives.




• Hampi musical pillars: Visitors continue to tap the pillars to satiate their curiosity. Because of which many pillars are disfigured. A few of them have suffered an extensive damage.



• How chairs with backs have contributed to our back pain: A seat back essentially makes sitting even more passive than just sitting on a bench or a stool because you lean against the seat back and you're using even fewer muscles, even less effort to stabilize your upper body. And the result is that we end up having very weak backs. So there are a lot of muscles that we use in our backs to hold up our upper body, and those muscles, if we don't use them, just like every other muscle in your body, they atrophy.



• Reining in Big Tech: Google agrees to pay French news sites to send them traffic. . . Google threatens to shut down search in Australia

Read the section “India is for sale” in my AI book. I anticipated that Jio-Facebook deal will undermine India’s interests in this way. https://t.co/qBGZmdDdi9https://t.co/bgeRSkKpkc

— Rajiv Malhotra (@RajivMessage) January 21, 2021




• Tribals not a "votebank" in Kerala politics: “The approach of the Kerala civil society, state govt and NGOs towards tribal communities is deplorable. The general view is that tribals should learn from the other ‘civilised’ communities. But in my view, it was just the opposite”.



• HAL chairman Madhavan: Several countries have shown interest in procuring Tejas aircraft. . . AMCA: India to decide on Engine Partner



• Swappable batteries: Pioneering the technology from Bengaluru, SUN Mobility has proposed to install 100 "Swap Points" in the city by end of 2021

Quick notes: Advertising blitz | Cleantech ecosystem...

• WhatsApp scrambles as users fret over privacy: The reaction in India - where 400 million users exchange more messages on WhatsApp than anywhere in the world - has forced the messaging app to unleash an advertising blitz costing tens of millions of rupees this week in at least 10 English and Hindi newspapers.




• China’s Plan to Take Over the Global Economy: China kept Google on the far side of the Great Firewall of China. It did so to allow Tencent, Baidu, and other Chinese companies to come up the learning curve without getting stifled in the cradle by American competition.
  
  Huawei is building the world’s biggest Cloud computing capacity and racing to design the world’s fastest artificial-intelligence processors. And behind Huawei stands the Chinese government’s massive commitment to supercomputing, and — most ominously — to quantum computing. Americans are busy with the valuation of competing providers of streaming video, the relative merits of e-commerce platforms at Amazon and Walmart, and the profitability of the 110th smartphone dating app. The Chinese want to transform the way we live. They do the physics, and we do the apps.
  
  In principle, China’s virtual empire is just an extension of what Facebook, Google, and Amazon have been doing for years. They don’t steal your data, although you may not be aware of how much personal information you hand over to them every day.


- The myth of India's IT prowess: Big Fat Lie

The main casualty of the Big Tech crackdown is the myth of India’s “strategic autonomy” & the myth of its “IT prowess”. If the country accepted such a huge lie that was visible in plain sight, imagine how bad the state of India’s defence & foreign policy is, cloaked in secrecy.

— Abhijit Iyer-Mitra (@Iyervval) January 13, 2021




• A vibrant Cleantech startup ecosystem takes root in India: The rise of renewables is forcing utilities and other energy stakeholders to make the grid smarter, more resilient and efficient.



• RISC-V: The Linux of the chip world, is starting to produce technological breakthroughs.
  
  Move over, ARM: BeagleV is a $150 RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

Quick notes: State actors | Annus horribilis...

• Big Tech is like a state actor now: Google, Facebook and Twitter should be treated as state actors under existing legal doctrines. A threat to our sovereignty.
  
  - Govt open to launching Indian app store. . . . We have to develop our own tech platforms.

India has the market size to do a serious Android fork, with a mobile OS and App Store controlled by neither Apple nor Google.

Xiaomi, KaiOS, Cyanogen, and the history of Chinese Android forks show there is a path here. https://t.co/DxB6VY6xul

— balajis.com (@balajis) January 11, 2021




• Will 2021 be China’s annus horribilis? Claude Arpi: Has Beijing succeeded in intimidating India with its brazen info warfare? Absolutely not. Has Mr Xi’s prestige been enhanced after Ladakh? Certainly not. Instead, it showed the PLA’s limitations facing a determined adversary.
  
  Economically too, Beijing lost a lot, especially with India (and several other countries) banning a number of Chinese apps and the decision to not award big contracts to China. One could add many issues to the list. All this makes me think 2021 will an “annus horribilis” for China and its new Great Helmsman. It would only be justice.



• Signal and Telegram downloads surge: WhatsApp collects account registration information such as your phone number, transaction data, service-related information, information on how you interact with others, including businesses when using the service, and mobile device information.
  
  - Elon Musk discloses funding Signal, says will 'donate more'



• Zero-dairy way to preserve native Indian cow breeds: Beejom doubles up as an animal sanctuary for native Indian cow breeds by trailing the focus away from dairy farming and towards an economy around cow dung and cow urine instead.




• Big Tech is tracking you: Hidden map on your phone shows everywhere you’ve been and the photos you took there



• Air Taxi: The autonomous urban aircraft market may be worth $1.5 trillion by 2040



• Robot uses UV-C Light to fight Covid in schools, offices: Adibot is programmed to disinfect rooms on its own. UV light is proven to kill bacteria and viruses, including COVID-19, but it’s also harmful to human eyes and skin, potentially causing skin cancer or cataracts.

Quick notes: WHO hits a wall | Drone swarms...

• China again blocks entry to WHO team studying Covid's origins: The WHO has been attempting to send in the team of global experts since July. Scientists have long said it is essential to find out how the virus jumped species into humans. . . . How China blocked WHO early in the outbreak.



• Chinese drone swarms - new tactical possibilities: Large drone swarms, intended for coordinated surveillance and attack, were launched from truck-based, forty-eight-unit launchers and helicopters in a recent test.
  
  Networking sophistication will control the extent to which groups of small drones could function as precision-guided munitions. They would need to operate with a data link or real-time video exchange technology in order to be retasked and sent toward fast-changing targets such as a moving ship or armored convoy. Uncoordinated drone swarms would be much less effective as an inability to share data would negate any dispersed surveillance advantage that might otherwise be afforded.



• Translation: Free Tibet will become a reality: Xi Jinping orders Chinese Army to prepare for war ‘at any second’. . . . . China deploys tanks along LAC opposite Indian posts



• Drone Warships? Countless examples of the advantages drones will bring to maritime warfare.



• Who am I? “The earliest mistake is made – who do you take yourself to be? Mostly we are living in an idea of ourselves that is constructed through our society, family, so many factors."




• An Indian success story: Indian electronics and lifestyle startup Boat raises $100 million. . . . . Trendy, affordable audio products and accessories



• Amazon did not help when debt mounted amid lockdown: Future Group alleged that Amazon's actions "lacked good faith" when the group's retail business was severely hit by the lockdown. Amazon merely put up a "facade of 'facilitating' the raising of finance by the Promoters".



• Bird hits from wind farms: Conflict between wildlife and clean energy.

Quick notes: Missile exports | Transcendental Meditation...

• Akash missile export: Govt to approach China-wary nations. Focus will be on high-value defence platforms to achieve target of $5-billion annual exports.. “The export version of Akash will be different from the system currently deployed with the Indian Armed Forces”.



• Exploiting the loopholes: Amazon, Flipkart are violating investment rules related to multi brand retailing.



• Jerry Seinfeld: Transcendental Meditation and weight training will 'solve just about anyone's life'. Seinfeld practices TM twice a day or “any time I feel like I’m dipping”... Oprah Winfrey, hedgefund billionaire Ray Dalio and even singer Lady Gaga are proponents of TM, and credit much of their success and productivity to the practice.



• Meet India's lower-caste Hindu priest:


• Crops grown in Bangalore high on toxic heavy metals: The 17 lakes in and around Bangalore have become part of the city's drainage system, into which flow untreated sewage and industrial effluents from garment factories, electroplating industries, distilleries and other small-scale but polluting units. "The heavy metals are absorbed by the crops along with other essential plant nutrients." Cadmium can be a carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor which can lead to fertility and reproductive issues in men and women while long-term exposure can lead to bone diseases.



• How to Build your Own LIGHTBOARD: Elisa Valkyria