Quick notes: Civil aviation | RISC-V phones...

• Shut down the civil aviation ministry: There is no reason for keeping an entire ministry with a total staff strength of 2,300, just for the oversight of a few aviation sector laws and regulatory bodies



• Entitled MNCs: Visa Inc has complained to the U.S. govt that India's "informal and formal" promotion of domestic payments rival RuPay hurts the U.S. giant in a key market. In public Visa has downplayed concerns about the rise of RuPay. Mastercard has raised similar concerns privately with the USTR.



• Princes to paupers: India's salesmen face ruin as tycoon Ambani targets mom-and-pop stores. Tiny shops account for 4/5ths of India's $900 bln retail sector



• Omicron: No certainty if PCR tests detect Omicron Variant. . . . May elude current vaccines. . . όμικρο
  
  “There is a possibility that we are seeing a more infectious and less virulent version of the virus, which would be one of those steps along a happier route to living with the virus”.
  
  "Generally, high transmission with reduced disease severity is an evolutionary win for the virus and many viruses evolve to this state, existing in an equilibrium with the host".
  
  The theory is that, if a less virulent strain becomes dominant, more people will become infected but fewer will be critically sick. The virus, while still a problem, also becomes part of the solution; every person who recovers from a mild case is left with greater immunity against future infections than any of the current vaccines provide.

At some point in the future, I hope a thriller movie will be made where COVID variants are the dark forces & are attacked by an ‘Avenger’ hero called Omicron who compels the evil variants to mutate into a docile flu. https://t.co/rpqesqBMMs

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) November 30, 2021




• Manu Joseph: When Modi cancelled his most humane reform yet it was a triumph for rich north Indian farmers and the movement they handled. In the end the rich and the middle-class sabotaged reform for the poor. Same old story of India.



• Displacing ARM: The world's first RISC-V phone might be just around the corner.. The first major step on porting Android to RISC-V was, unsurprisingly, authored by Alibaba, who produced the first working Android 10 port for the RISC-V ISA.
  
  Chinese company Sipeed expects to release first RISC-V smartphone models next year.
  
  Homemade CPUs - China's Bid For Independence China's tech giants are striving for autonomy from U.S. chipsets. But true semiconductor independence will require China to develop its own extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, required to etch microscopic circuits on silicon. SMIC, China's main chip foundry, can't provide anything smaller than 14 nm.
  
  SMIC claims to have mastered the 3nm chip process in the lab and is trying to buy the EUV lithography machines necessary for production from ASML, the Dutch company that currently has a monopoly on the critical equipment. But the United States is intent on blocking the sale.
  
  The Chinese Academy of Sciences has an EUV lithography research team and Tsinghua University has developed a new type of particle accelerator light source, which could be used for EUV lithography. But getting that technology out of the lab and into a machine remains many years away.
  
  Intel's plan-B? There is no way x86 can defend itself against ARM for a whole 5–10 years longer. Intel has started a new RISC-V development platform and invested in SiFive. RISC-V has inherent advantages which will allow Intel to compete in the opposite end of the market where they cannot compete at the moment with x86.. . . . . .



• Chinese Hypersonic Missile ‘Overcame the Constraints of Physics: The July test featured “a technological advance that enabled it to fire a missile as it approached its target traveling at least five times the speed of sound—a capability no country has previously demonstrated.”



• Anonymous trolls: Australia to introduce new laws to force media platforms to unmask online trolls. "The online world should not be a wild west where bots and bigots and trolls and others are anonymously going around and can harm people,"



• Ajith Namboothiri: Ninnu Kori.. Vasantha raga Varnam




• India’s oral traditions need to be mainstreamed: The Haridasu was a singer, musician, storyteller, actor, stand-up comedian and salesperson, all rolled into one! The accompanists were talented players of the mridangam and the harmonium.



• New demographic reality: India’s fertility rate slips below replacement level.



• Bengaluru scientists find potential treatment for autism: “However, this does not mean that there will be a sudden cure. There is a long and arduous process for drug discoveries to take place and could take about 12 years to complete. The molecule has to be tested for toxicity, its solubility pattern has to be worked out.”



• Thanksgiving and the Myth of Native American ‘Savages’: The friendliness of the Wampanoag was extraordinary, because they had recently been ravaged by diseases caught from previous European explorers. Europeans had also killed, kidnapped and enslaved Native Americans in the region. The Plymouth settlers, during their desperate first year, had even stolen grain and other goods from the Wampanoag,



• Mohan Bhagwat: Kindly shut up, sir

Every time I hear this Man, my respect for him dips at least by a few thousand miles. Nothing but contradiction & confusion!! https://t.co/oFbmfRX52o

— ProfMKay 🇮🇳🇨🇭🇸🇬 (@ProfMKay) November 27, 2021