Quick notes: What Musk wants | WTO is toast...

• What Musk Really Wants: India’s appeasement of Trump comes to nought.. All this touchy-feely diplomatic propaganda masked what Musk really wants from India — that his Starlink be allowed to enter the Indian market via an administrative allocation of spectrum (as opposed to the hefty sums paid by the existing Indian players through competitive bidding), a reduction in import duties on electric vehicles, especially Tesla, whose low-cost models he hopes to sell in India, and a possible collaboration between Space X and ISRO.



• Forever indebted to our colonial masters: UK and India relaunch trade talks in Delhi... "Oxford seat for my daughter and you get to loot India again, deal?"



• Darshan devo Shankar: Raag Yaman Kalyan bandish. Rahul Ranade, Navin and Chirag Solanki.




• ‘The WTO is toast.’: What happens to global trade now. The free trade promise of consumers buying from the lowest-cost producers could be imperiled.



• Trouble for China: Any deep understanding between the US and Russia will erode China’s influence at the high table.



• What If China, America Make Up?: Possibility of America and China reaching some level of tactical accommodation. . . Trump Says New China Trade Deal ‘Possible’. I have with President Xi is, I would say, a great one”.



• The world's deadliest dam failures have occurred in China:

My column: The world's deadliest dam failures have occurred in China. And if a powerful earthquake caused China's super-dam to collapse, millions downstream could die, largely in India's populous Brahmaputra Valley. Yet India has said little on the threat. https://t.co/5AKxJZPRsG

— Brahma Chellaney (@Chellaney) January 29, 2025




• Raja Koduri on Intel's "cancel" culture: Intel’s ex-exec Raja Koduri says “You don’t learn without shipping”; gives a rundown into what’s wrong with Team Blue and how Intel is held back by bureaucratic snakes



• Hand in the cookie jar: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn’t illegal without proof of seeding



• China's bicycle revival: "Automobiles, as a transportation method, have their limits".

Quick notes: H-1B Visas | Distillation...

• The less Modi talks of the H1B visa the better: Everybody and his proverbial uncle in the leadership circles in the US and the West has about had it with the Indian PM’s pleadings to let in more Indian engineers and science grads as a way of pleasing his middle class voter base. The US’ intake of Indian STEMers will be whatever the American economy and system requires.
  
  Countries like Vietnam, that are following the Trumpian route to making the govt more receptive to the private sector, have already stolen a march over India, and will be beyond India’s ability to catch up with in the manufacturing sector. Time, therefore, for Modi to stop pushing the H1B stuff and regain a bit of self-respect for the nation. Or, there will be more humiliations in tow, like the C-17 returning the illegals in chains to Amritsar.
  
  
• The Problems with H-1B Visas and India’s Brain Drain:




• False prestige: India to go all out to win bid for 2036 Olympic Games



• Modi sarkar saving China from Trump: Reliance brings Shein to India five years after ban. . . No more a national security threat?



• ‘Distillation’ Is AI’s New Buzzword—and a Scary One for AI Companies. It is like asking any question you want of Einstein and becoming almost as knowledgeable as he is in physics. It's an easy way for smaller developers, in particular, to recreate some of the capabilities of much larger models in a much more cost-efficient manner, and doing it in a way that also produces AI models that themselves are a lot smaller and more cost-efficient.



• Mark’s unlawful activity: Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations



• English-medium champs: Why Can't India Build its Own DeepSeek or ChatGPT?



• Electric Scooter-Cum-Rickshaw: Hero MotoCorp Unveils Convertible Surge S32 Electric Scooter.



• Immigration Crackdown: UK Targets Indian Restaurants In Trump-Style Immigration Crackdown