Saturday, February 27, 2021

Quick notes: Affordable Tesla | Patent race...

  • Tesla’s affordable global EV being developed in China: The ultimate goal: to design, develop, and produce a vehicle that’s manufactured in China and sold to the rest of the world, possibly with 100% Chinese components.


  • 'China-free' tech supply chain: U.S. to accelerate efforts to build supply chains for chips and other strategically significant products that are less reliant on China, in partnership with the likes of Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. . . . . . India? Don't ask.


  • Who Is Leading the 5G Patent Race?: Huawei takes first place. . . . . India's English advantage not helping
  • Infographic: Who Is Leading the 5G Patent Race? | Statista


  • "We must continue to trade with China": A purely Bania perspective by Bajaj Auto MD Rajiv Bajaj. "We must always procure stuff from wherever it is most competitively available."


  • Ghazi Hunts Vikrant; Vikrant Hunts Ghazi: Pakistan hoped that a lucky torpedo or two from Ghazi might sink Vikant, turning its losing hand in the Bay of Bengal into a winning one—or at least constrain Vikrant’s operations. On the second day of the war on December 4, the Vikrat was cruising off the Andaman islands when her lookouts reported spotting a periscope.
    On December 3 Ghazi failed to locate Vikrant and instead moved to deploy mines at the entrance of Visakhapatnam port, the site of the Indian naval HQ. Around midnight on Dec 3-4 mysterious circumstances caused the submarine to sink with the loss of all 92 aboard.


  • Mohammedan slavery thrives: An estimated 69 percent of deaths among Indian, Nepali, and Bangladeshi migrant workers in Qatar over the past decade are categorized as “natural”. At least 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar prior to World Cup


  • Women Routinely Raped in Tibetan Camps: Just like Muslim women in Xinjiang, lay Buddhist girls and nuns are also submitted to systematic rape in Tibet’s transformation through education camps


  • Padma Shri Sridhar Vembu: Tech billionaire who returned from USA to rural India


  • Most polluted cities: Smaller and upcoming cities fare worse in the seasonal peak data and are the pollution hotspots because of vehicles, industry, power plants and waste management.


  • Is it safe to microwave food? Microwaved potatoes are high in acrylamide, boiled potatoes are not. Acrylamide interferes with cell’s DNA and acts as a carcinogen. Microwaves are more favorable to the growth of acrylamide than other methods of cooking.


  • Big profits for Big Tech: Amazon rainforest plots sold via Facebook Marketplace ads


Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Quick notes: Chinese imports | Uberization...

  • India to clear 45 investment proposals from China: India dropping barriers to Chinese investment and trade that were set up in the aftermath of the Galwan Valley clash. . . Chacha Modi says 'Hindi-Chini..'


  • China Back as Top India Trade Partner: China regained its position as India’s top trade partner in 2020, as New Delhi’s reliance on imported machines outweighed its efforts to curb commerce with Beijing after a bloody border conflict.


  • Dr Bharat Karnad: 'Indian Army's advantage has been lost.. Losing out in both symbolic and substantive terms, how is any of this a success for India?'


  • 'Uberize' = To Eliminate Salaried Positions: California’s vote to classify Uber and Lyft drivers as contractors has emboldened other employers to eliminate salaried positions—and has become a cornerstone of bigger plans to “Uberize” the U.S. workforce. The Gig Economy is coming for millions of American jobs. “There’s nobody backing you”.

    Tony West, Uber’s top lawyer, is Kamala Harris’s brother-in-law. Several of Biden’s cabinet picks have consulted for Uber, and his national security adviser previously helped the company try to cut a deal with unions. One of Biden’s key campaign advisers on labor, former Deputy Labor Secretary Seth Harris, co-wrote a 2015 paper with a fellow Obama alum advocating the creation of a middle-ground employment status that didn’t include a minimum wage.


  • Pagan Revival led by Hindus: Christianity is a “religion of the Book”, an artificial construct, whereas the ancestral religion was based on nature. Wherever there is reality, Pagan religion has to come up, inevitably. No presumed revelation was needed, nor any frantic attempt to preserve this revealed religion intact and impose it on the next generations. If ever we forget all about it, we can rediscover it for it is ever-present all around us.


  • True Meditation is Witnessing:


Sunday, February 21, 2021

Quick notes: Indian EVs | Digital colony...

  • Desi Tesla? TSLA looks to be moving forward with its sixth Gigafactory, in Karnataka

    + A Tesla will emit 193 grams of CO2 per KM in India as coal contributes 70% to our electricity mix.

    + Air pollution taking a heavy toll in Delhi. Smoke from the agricultural burns, notably from Punjab, contributes significantly to the capital’s air pollution levels.


  • The East India Company playbook: Big Tech is into digital colonization and more.



  • Next-G: Apple is already working on developing 6G wireless technology... India will wake up 10 years from now


  • Trump effect: Huawei turns to pig farming as smartphone sales fall.


  • Padma Shri Chintala Venkat Reddy: This Hyderabad farmer has won a patent for Vitamin D-enriched rice and wheat


  • Phthalates: Chemicals in plastics damage babies' brains. Phthalates are in PVC plumbing and scores of products including shampoo, soap, hair spray and nail polish


  • Colonial Hangover:


  • Home Geothermal Energy: By drilling holes about 300 to 500 feet underground, ground-source heat pumps can tap air at much more stable temperatures. This isn’t a new concept: “There are a lot of terrific ground-source heat pumps out there; they’ll heat your home and cool your home comfortably”.


  • 11 types of horse riding saddles and their uses: When buying a saddle, it should fit both horse and rider correctly.


  • Demographic Jihad on Europe: Are migrant YouTubers influencing others to travel to the EU?

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Quick notes: Jerusalem pilgrimage | No more engines...

  • Taypayer funding for Abrahamics: Tamil Nadu hikes Jerusalem pilgrimage number to 1,000  


  • No more engines for Jaguars: Jaguar will be EV-only from 2025; Land Rover will be 60 percent BEV.


  • Comparing with China on the role of govt in R&D: "In semiconductors, the upfront investment is so massive, that you want some assurance that there is a market for what you are going to build. Because the day you build your facility, it is not going to be state-of-the-art. It will be state-of-the-art only with incremental acquisition of knowledge and expertise. China aimed very low in semiconductors, but they got an assurance that there will be a buyer for that. Their government made sure Chinese consumption is pointed towards the production of SMIC. Indian government has never been willing to give such an assurance to someone who will invest $5 billion in putting up a fab".



  • National Research Foundation: The NRF will distribute 100 billion rupees (US$1.37 billion) annually for its first five years. In 2018, India spent 0.69% of its GDP on research and development, compared with 0.84% a decade earlier. This compares with China’s 2018 spending of 2.1% and South Korea’s of 4.2%. India had just 255 researchers per million people in 2017. Israel had 8,342 per million, Sweden 7,597 and South Korea 7,498 in the same year.


  • Not everything is translatable into dollars: We have seen clear evidence that big dams are not sustainable in the Himalayas.


  • Don't party yet: We handled Galwan and its fallout well. But that is not the end of the story. India has now clearly emerged in Beijing’s eyes as the one immediate adversary who will not concede to China’s political will for economic and commercial reasons. That means new contours of conflict have been drawn for the future, which is why India must prepare, redouble efforts to build its border infrastructure and narrow the gap as fast as possible.


  • Kundali comes to the west: New dating app for astrology lovers and skeptics alike  


  • Big Tech Blinks: In Australia, Google and Facebook may soon pay lump sums for news


Monday, February 15, 2021

Fighting for peace..


Dear Greta,
Have you not heard of children suffering from acute respiratory ailments due to stubble burning by your newly found farmer friends?


Sunday, February 14, 2021

Quick notes: Paraglacial dams | Vishwa coolie...

  • VikAss in Himalayas: 'Run of the river' dams, which operate by digging large tunnels into the side of the mountain, actually weakened the mountain by introducing fractures and fissures, increasing the risk of landslides.

    "While receding, they leave behind huge amounts of boulders, rocks, and moraines. A heavy rainfall or landslide could easily trigger floodwaters to surge down the narrow mountain streams, carrying a deadly mixture of sediment and rocks. If this great mass of water and solids meets any barrier on the way, it'll just smash through the barrier. Each time it smashes a barrier, it moves downstream with further energy. More energy means more mass is going to be lifted from the riverbed, or the river banks."


  • Divine punishment? Raini village elders blame removal of temple for Chamoli tragedy. Raini is the same village which initiated the famous Chipko Movement in 1973. Raini villagers had also raised concerns that dams along the river could destabilize the mountain.


  • English medium Vishwa-Coolies: In ancient times India was the world's premier knowledge producer and exporter. Today it is the biggest importer and consumer of foreign technology.


  • China Creating a Highly-Networked Military: PLA linking its Army and Air Force units into a single, unified combat alert duty in an effort to connect air defense radar and communications with PLA ground brigades.


  • Crime against humanity: China refuses to give WHO raw data on early Covid-19 cases


  • Af-Pak: Hazara Shiites, prime targets of Sunni extremists. The Hazaras are among the most persecuted people on this planet.


  • Essence of Calculus: Series of videos



  • J Sai Deepak: Uttarakhand, an eco-sensitive zone, aspiring for the same degree of road connectivity and “infrastructure” as Delhi notwithstanding the environmental impact of ceaseless “developmental” activity on its fragile ecological balance.

  • Our mountain will fall one day: We have learnt nothing from 2013 Uttarakhand disaster. The ecological sanctity of the rivers is critically compromised. “Many Hydro-electric projects have been sanctioned inside protected areas, two inside the core zone of the Nanda Devi National Park. Two projects have been sanctioned on the Mandakini river inside the Kedarnath Musk Deer Sanctuary and another is located just at its boundary.

    Earlier, four projects on the Gori Ganga were inside the Askot Musk Deer Sanctuary. Another six large projects on the Dhauliganga (E) and Kali rivers were also within the Askot Sanctuary. Efforts made by the developers to have large parts of the sanctuary de-notified finally succeeded with the Supreme Court ordering a fresh demarcation of the sanctuary. Now most of the above projects are outside the Sanctuary.”