Quick notes: Minority status | Best engineers...

• Minority status for Hindus: Delhi was the only govt that openly backed granting minority status to Hindus in any form at the state or UT level.
  
  Delhi said, "The central govt may declare the 'migrated minority status to the followers of Hinduism who are the religious minority in their origin state (i.e. J&K, Laddakh etc) and residing in Delhi after migration from their home state." . . . Why are BJP states opposing this?



• U.S. vs. China: The race to develop the most advanced chips. After working for years to catch up on U.S. technology, China has developed a chip that can rival Nvidia’s powerful A100.




• 12 Countries That Produce the Best Engineers in the World:
   12. Singapore
   11. Israel
   10. France
   9. Sweden
   8. South Korea
   7. The Netherlands
   6. Japan
   5. Switzerland
   4. United Kingdom
   3. Germany
   2. China
   1. United States
  
  China has quickly emerged as one of the best producers of some of the top engineers in the world. It spent 2.40% of its huge GDP in 2020 for the purposes of R&D. Its Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University are two of the top go-to universities in terms of quality engineering education. 



• Industrial espionage: How China sneaks out America's technology secrets



• TSMC Might Cut 3nm Prices to Lure AMD, Nvidia: N3 is an expensive technology to use. N3 extensively uses extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for up to 25 layers and each EUV scanner now costs $150 million - $200 million, depending on configuration. Increased costs mean lower profits for companies such as AMD, Broadcom, MediaTek, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. . . . TSMC's 3nm Journey: Slow Ramp, Huge Investments, Big Future



• India joins lithium hunt: Not only Argentina, India is also eyeing lithium reserves in Chile and Bolivia. The Andean Plains straddling Argentina, Chile and Bolivia – collectively called ‘Lithium Triangle’ – have about 56 per cent of the world’s total identified reserve of Lithium.



• Dr. Jason Fung: Author of The Cancer Code: A Revolutionary New Understanding of a Medical Mystery.




• Why is alcohol so harmful? The main way alcohol causes health problems is by damaging DNA. When you drink alcohol, your body metabolizes it into acetaldehyde, a chemical that is toxic to cells. Acetaldehyde both “damages your DNA and prevents your body from repairing the damage. Once your DNA is damaged, then a cell can grow out of control and create a cancer tumor.”
  
  Even a little alcohol can harm your health, research shows. Alcohol also creates oxidative stress, another form of DNA damage that can be particularly harmful to the cells that line blood vessels. Oxidative stress can lead to stiffened arteries, resulting in higher blood pressure and coronary artery disease. “It fundamentally affects DNA, and that’s why it affects so many organ systems.”



• Nepo (nepotism) babies: Those who use their parents' wealth and popularity to build their own careers. "I don't know anybody who becomes anything if they're just handed money".
  
  Warren Buffett wrote in 2021 that "after much observation of super-wealthy families, here's my recommendation: Leave the children enough so that they can do anything but not enough that they can do nothing".

Quick notes: Foreign universities | Himalayan loot...

• Foreign university campus: Foreign universities will presumably not have reservations. Those seeking quota benefits, therefore, will be confined to state-funded universities.
  
  
  - Foreign university campus: First level the playing field.
  
  
  - Foreign university campus: Will “superior” western education bring wokeism, minoritarianism, gender issues, racist polarisation etc?
  

  Can we avoid downsides of opening up our edu system to all kinds of disruptive ideas from western universities:wokeism, minoritarianism, gender issues, racist polarisation etc? Issue not purely eco. After 75 years we still seem to need “superior” western education! https://t.co/dskIJ5UM0x

  — Kanwal Sibal (@KanwalSibal) January 7, 2023

  
  
  - Foreign university campus: Go swadeshi to avert peril.
  

  Why can’t India (the vishwaguru) produce its own top universities? Why turning into a consumer of foreign universities setting up branches in India?
  Dangerous: Wokeism coming in. https://t.co/JfF2iI0pr8

  — Rajiv Malhotra (@RajivMessage) January 6, 2023




• 'Joshimath can't be saved': Not just Joshimath, homes have developed major cracks in Nainital, Uttarkashi, Bhatwari, Gopeshwar, Guptkashi, Karnprayag, Mussorie and a host of villages. Villagers blame the tunneling work being done on the Rishikesh-Karnprayag rail project and the dynamiting taking place for the extension of the Char Dham road for these cracks.



• Joshimath: The neglected warning from 46 years ago: During the ramping up of the infrastructure, including the building of roads and houses, for the so-called development of Joshimath, enormous quantities of earth and boulders were removed using dynamite. Forests had also been cleared for timber used for construction in the seventies



• How green was my valley by Madhav Gadgil: The Himalayan loot that triggered the Joshimath disaster.
  
  Chandiprasad's organisation took up ecodevelopment work such as soil and water conservation, erection of a stone wall to protect the forest, or tree planting. The tasks were executed by everybody working in unison. The discussions were led by a physics professor from Gopeshwar college, but stonemasons who fabricated the water mills also provided their inputs.
  
  Unfortunately, the govt had a monopoly on the water resources and their only interest was to construct giant projects like Tehri to supply electricity for the capital city of Delhi. This tragic diversion of all resources of Himalayas in the service of the powers that be, in fact, had begun when the British govt leased forests from the Tehri maharaja.




• Android on RISC-V: Google is planning to bring full support for RISC-V chips to Android in the coming years, which could pave the way for RISC-V phones, tablets, smartwatches, set-top-boxes, or automotive systems, among other things.



• Bye bye: Dell plans to phase out Chinese chips from PCs by next year



• Taiwan-Invasion war game sees China quickly flopping: Huge cost to US, Chinese and Taiwanese militaries. At the end of the conflict, at least two US aircraft carriers would lie at the bottom of the Pacific and China’s modern navy, which is the largest in the world, would be in “shambles.”
  
  Those are among the conclusions the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), made after running what it claims is one of the most extensive war-game simulations ever conducted on a possible conflict over Taiwan.



• A dud? Why is India's single-use plastic ban failing? Adequate investments have not been made to make the transition. "The might of the plastics industry, really needs a tsunami to shake it up". . . . . Single-use plastic cutlery and plates to be banned in England.



• Hydra: The Greek island that banned wheels. A growing number of places around the world are looking to reduce reliance on cars.



• Madhup Mudgal: Haman hai ishq mastana - Kabir Bhajan

Quick notes: Rupee-Rouble | American accent...

• Rupee-Rouble: Russia and India will ditch dollar and euro in trade.



• Slaves trying to speak like their masters: Next gen call center workers

These people have gone mad. Meanwhile China in eating our lunch in AI patents and manufacturing.

The only "skill" they can comprehend is "speaking like our masters." So they remain slaves.https://t.co/81OOxSZcCw

— Sankrant Sanu सानु संक्रान्त ਸੰਕ੍ਰਾਂਤ ਸਾਨੁ (@sankrant) December 27, 2022




• Illegal call centers: Americans lost over $10 Billion to fraudsters in India in the past year. . . No clear law or policy or regulation: has been actively discussed or implemented to curb this menace.



• Welcome to NoToChina.org: Best products Not-Made-In-China



• The chip shortage is over: And now there’s a glut... AMD, Intel, and Nvidia reportedly slash oders with TSMC



• Austria’s Silent Monopolies On Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing: EV Group and IMS Nanofabrication. "Through these two firms, Austria’s market share is 82% in wafer bonding and over 95% of production multibeam mask writers."



• TSMC’s 3nm Conundrum, Does It Even Make Sense? Density improvements are 56%, with a 40% cost increase. This results in an 11% cost per transistor improvement, the weakest ever scaling for a major process technology in 50+ years. Most chip designs will not achieve the 56% density improvement, but instead a much lower ~30%. This would imply a cost per transistor increase



• The Ancient Science Of Mantra Chanting:

Quick notes: US meddling | Origins of Indian IT...

• US State Department to sponsor transgender activism in India: To support the creation of transgender activist groups inside corporations in India.



• The untold story of Indian IT industry: Dr Homi Bhabha was actually the creator of many things that are relevant to India today, including computers. Bhabha wrote a report at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in 1959 on the need for computer education and the need for India to embark on a computer industry.
  
  “In 1962, TIFR released the first digital computer for scientific applications - ‘TIFRAC’. Joined MTech computer science in 1965 when IIT Kanpur started the first computer science school. We need to recognise all these events and people and as the starting points for this industry in India”.



• Apple Suppliers Accelerate Buildup Outside China: A legion of skilled workers who'd received some education and training has been the backbone of China's rise as the world's factory. A direct replacement for China isn't immediately in the cards, however firms like Foxconn Pegatron are putting the foundations in place to handle more of the final assembly and packaging of products outside China.
  
  - Apple looking to move production of Mac Pro to Vietnam. Vietnam has attracted 21 Apple suppliers to operate in the country.
  
  - Foxconn building hostel to house 60,000 employees in Tamil Nadu



• Cars? In this economy? Car-free streets are here to stay. Here’s how four cities took back miles of pavement from cars, making a popular pandemic solution into a permanent fixture.




• A trash heap 62 meters high in India: Over decades, dangerous toxins have seeped into the ground, polluting the water supply for thousands of residents living nearby. “The methane leak from this landfill would have the same climate impact as emissions from 350,000 US cars”.
  
  
  



• 'Asking for a friend': Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff told employees in a Slack message that the company’s newest hires aren’t being productive enough, and he asked for feedback as to why that’s the case. “Are we not building tribal knowledge with new employees without an office culture?” he asked in a message viewed by CNBC. He said he was “asking for a friend,” a phrase people often use on the internet to humorously reveal their curiosity about a topic.
  
  Management lessons from Marc B:
  1. CEO poses important directional issues as questions rather than commands.
  2. CEO shows gratitude for feedback.
  3. Trust as a primary company value.



• TSMC's 3nm Node: No SRAM scaling implies more expensive chips



• Kalapini Komkali: Ram Niranjan Nyara re, Kabir nirgun bhajan

Quick notes: Trade agreements | Arizona fab...

• ‘Respect the Laxman Rekha’: : Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar criticises SC. . . . . .More power to you, Sir! No one relinquishes power voluntarily. It takes force. Finally, someone steps up to put India's SC in its place, which has been making a mockery of separation of powers.



• FTAs and their discontents: Do free trade agreements benefit India? India's balance of trade has worsened with countries with which it has signed free trade agreements



• 3nm by 2026: TSMC Commits to $40 Billion investment of Arizona Fab.
  
  Pointing to high costs and a US skills shortage, TSMC has reported challenges to the completion by next December of its new 4 nanometer semiconductor plant north of Phoenix



• The incredible shrinking future of college: The population of college-age Americans is about to crash. It will change higher education forever.



• Pathetic record: Western medicine has failed people with chronic pain.




• Gambling Addiction: Online gambling ravaged UK. America could be next.



• The eight negations: Nagarjuna's eightfold negations are that there is no becoming, no not being, no annihilation, no persistence, no unity, no diversity, no coming, and no departure.. "Substance does not exist, non-substance also does not exist, nothing that is to be designated by words exists at all. All the things that are designated by words similar to 'nirvan' are void of an own being".
  
  The eight negations are actually four pairs of neither birth nor death, neither end nor permanence, neither identity nor difference, neither coming nor going.



• Journalism Competition and Preservation Act: US legislation pits Big Tech against news outlets.. Big Tech benefits tremendously from journalism content, yet they refuse to pay local publishers fairly for the content that fuels their platforms.



• New Zealand plans law to require Facebook, Google to pay for news: The legislation will be modelled on similar laws in Australia and Canada. "It is critical that those benefiting from their news content actually pay for it."



• Kumar Mardur: Raag Gaud Sarang | Kirana Khayal.

Quick notes: Tech threat | Car-free streets...

• Dylan Patel: China's Biren is a bigger threat to Nvidia’s AI training hardware dominance than the competition from Intel, AMD, Graphcore, SambaNova, or Cerebras. How China is attempting to evade US sanctions.



• 'Most countries won't forgive deaths of children': 'The deaths of the children in the Gambia would batter India's reputation as the developing world's pharmacy.'



• Dabbawalas seek cycling lanes in Mumbai: The iconic Dabbawalas of Mumbai have stressed on the need for cycling lanes in the financial capital of the country and safe parking spaces for their cycles, which is their primary mode of transport for tiffin delivery



• Rethinking car obsession: Planning for People & Bikes, Not for Cars




• Kannan Parakunnil's Grasshoper Global: Thiruvananthapuram startup goes places with veg ‘chicken’ shawarma



• Uma Valeti's Upside Foods: FDA gives safety nod to 'no kill' meat