Quick notes: Trade deal | Muslim refugees...

• India-UK trade deal - one-way street? The UK economy is in shambles. India's economy is expected to double in GDP in the decade.
  
  The report of the House of Lords International Agreements Committee is replete with sermonising text. It observes, “India has a notoriously difficult business environment— corruption levels are high, business permits are difficult to obtain, tax and customs processes are complex, levels of contract enforcement are low, and IP protections are limited.”
  
  It also points out that the UK Government “has not been specific about the importance it will give to human, environmental and other rights and protections, nor (in most cases) about its red lines.”


.@RajivMessage explains the shortcomings of exporting India's manpower to help build foreign technology companies. He also emphasizes the need for #atmanirbhar in #research & #development as well. #aiandpower @NITIAayog
Watch the full conversation here- https://t.co/O0Y4HjKPKf pic.twitter.com/pSdZzh1N7W

— Infinity Foundation (@InfinityMessage) August 4, 2021





• Muslim refugees unwelcome in the Caliphate: Turkey deports hundreds of Syrian refugees. Syrians taken to the border with Syria and forced to cross at gunpoint.



• Cyber Jihad: Turkey secretly helped Pakistan in setting up a cyber army to shape public opinion and influence the views of Muslims in Southeast Asia



• Pope Francis: "Even nuns watch porn". He advised the group to "delete this from your phone, so you will not have temptation in hand".



• Drug manufacturing in India: Unregulated, out of control. Unlike other regulators like the TRAI and Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) does not have any statutory backing.



• Ubuntu on RISC-V, under $20 computer: At the heart is a 1 GHz Allwinner D1 XuanTie C906 single-core processor based on RISC-V architecture



• Tennis is mad at Pickleball mania: Pickleball is more accessible and fun than tennis. An 'addictive' game that won't stop growing



• Why You Should Avoid Vegetable Oils Many of us grew up believing that vegetable oils were good and butter was bad. We were told, even by government and medical associations, to use more vegetable, seed and bean oils (like soybean, corn, safflower, canola). Now we know this advice was completely wrong.

Quick notes: Chip research | Scam industry...

• Semiconductor industry can thrive underrobust network: What is needed is a network of institutions researching and developing the semiconductor industry along the lines of what has taken root in the USA. The Ohio State University is setting up a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary education and research centre—Centre for Advanced Semiconductor Fabrication Research and Education (CAFE)— to advance the fabrication and development of semiconductors and next-generation device technologies.
  
  Intel has announced a $3 million funding award for CAFE over three years. India needs a similar network which can provide a stable research base and explore alternatives in case of global upheavals. The demand for electronics goods in India will only increase in the coming years, and we cannot afford to miss the bus



• Why semiconductors are central to world economy, geopolitics: From the earliest days of the missile race, the Pentagon was fixated on applying computing power to defence systems. The first major application of chips was in missile guidance systems, but today they are used in everything from communications to sensors to electronic warfare.



• India's Thriving Scam Industry: No clear law or policy or regulation has been actively discussed or implemented to curb this menace.



• Bowing to colonial masters: Indian car makers propose tax cut on imports in trade deal with Britain. "Everyone is acting on a lot of apprehension and few data points on what impact a duty cut can have".

1/ India's thinking is dominated by English, which means it is shaped by what goes on in the US and UK. I will explore some consequences here.

First let's come to economics. Both the US and UK are highly financialized, "post-industrial" or "post- manufacturing" economies.

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) October 21, 2022




• Baikal CPU: Russian Baikal 48-Core CPU benchmarks emerge



• Drone power: Ukraine confirms 1st known case of fighter jet going down to a Kamikaze Drone

Interesting! A Ukrainian MiG-29 shoots down a Geran-2, proximity suggests, using his cannon. The drone explodes on being hit and plummets to the ground. Apparently, the MiG-29 itself went down, likely due to shrapnel hits from the exploding Geran-2! https://t.co/2DlLwt7l1k

— Vijainder K Thakur (@vkthakur) October 12, 2022




• Upgraded Shahed-136: Russia has 'upgraded' Iranian Shahed-136 Kamikaze drones to boost its lethality & accuracy. Moscow has installed its domestic GLONASS GPU control modules in place of the inertial navigation system.



• Bayraktar TB-2 vs Shahed-136: Ukraine becomes proxy battlefield for Turkish and Iranian drones



• ‘An empty world is a sad world’: Zuckerberg’s metaverse is getting slammed in internal documents. Horizon’s user base has steadily declined since spring. Most users don’t return after the first month.



• From ‘lying down’ to ‘let it rot’: Once-flourishing middle class faces end of ‘Chinese Dream’



• Extreme weather: India suffered income loss of $159 bn in key sectors due to extreme heat in 2021



• Stabilised mud blocks:

Quick notes: Toxic pills | Quantum entanglement...

• Poisonous prescriptions: The dark side of Indian pharma comes out with Africa's cough syrup deaths.. . . . India's lax drug regulatory mechanism under spotlight after 69 killed in Gambia.

  Drug regulation in India beggars the imagination. The black hole that exists is not a racket, it’s a crime against humanity. It directly affects you, your children, your loved ones.
  
  This book is a full inventory of this massive abomination. @d_s_thakur @Preddy85 pic.twitter.com/bObmBvFJpB

  — Ambarish Satwik (@AmbarishSatwik) October 11, 2022

  
  Drug regulation: Missing files and no accountability



• The Chips Act Shows How to Invest in Education: The Chips Act makes large-scale federal investment in innovative research and manufacturing of microchips. It has already stimulated private-sector investment designed to take the microchip industry from decline in the U.S. to the forefront of economic development. Micron and IBM have announced investments of roughly $120 billion in New York State to build facilities to manufacture and develop microchips. Those announcements follow Intel’s decision to invest $100 billion in Ohio.
  
  But what many don’t know about the Chips Act is that its significant federal spending goes beyond manufacturing, innovation, and incentives for research and development. The act provides $13.2 billion focused on R&D and workforce development with a specific investment in education and in science, technology, engineering, and math skills. It will offer a real pipeline from schools, to college, to career for many students.



• The Universe Is Not Locally Real: And the Physics Nobel Prize winners proved it. One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real. “Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; “local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings.





• Digital Detox: Village in Maharashtra declares "independence" from two modern-day addictions - television and mobile internet. At least, for a couple of hours every day.



• With 5G here, data is the new alcohol: The heady alcohol of the superspeed connectivity that the future generation of consumers will live in and take for granted in the future.



• Hindi overlords: Amit Shah-headed panel wants Hindi replace English in IITs, courts in north India



• Stop poking at us with Hindi rod: All four southern states carry the same message: Leave us alone, we are happy with our own culture and language. Imposing a new language and a new culture would be a farce.



• Indians trying to enter the US via Mexico: More than 16,290 Indians were taken into custody by the CBP between October 2021 and August 2022.



• "I'm a mom who hates Halloween and I'm not alone": "Give me candy or I'll do something you don't like."

Quick notes: LCH | Gladiator diet ...

• Ideal for mountain warfare: For mountain war against China, is India’s LCH helicopter superior to AH-64E Apache? .. Against armor on open ground, Apaches would devastate Chinese and Pakistani tanks. But in the Himalayas, where terrain and climate conspire to limit troop deployments, a flying arsenal probably isn’t needed. Just an armed helicopter that can fly above the mountains.



• India-Pak rivalry plays out in South Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Turkey and Pakistan conducted a joint exercise named 'Three Brothers' last year in the name of Islam. India's military assistance to Armenia comes against the backdrop of Pakistan's bonhomie with Azerbaijan
  
  However, in spite of these developments, an interesting fact is that India has stronger economic ties with Azerbaijan than with Armenia. ONGC has also invested heavily in Azerbaijan's gas sector.



• Fewer awards will rust scientific temper: In one silent stroke, the Union govt has decided to do away with over 200 awards, including scholarships, fellowships and internal awards for scientific excellence.



• Hordearii ("barley eaters"): Roman gladiators were mostly vegetarian.




• The first laptop with a RISC-V processor goes on sale: The laptop is the result of a partnership between China’s DeepComputing and Xcalibyte, and it’s powered by a new Alibaba T-Head TH1520 processor. It features four 2.5 GHz Xuantie C910 64-bit RISC-V processor cores, a neural processing unit with up to 4 TOPS performance, and an Imagination GPU.



• NOT white man's burden: UK defies climate warnings with new oil and gas licences. The decision is at odds with international climate scientists who say fossil fuel projects should be closed down, not expanded.