Shadow Warrior: January 2025

Friday, January 31, 2025

Quick notes: Lutyens properties | BYD in India...

Inspired by Waqf board, KKKaangress to reclaim 'its' properties: “There are a large number of properties, including in Delhi, that belong to the pre-1969 Indian National Congress that were subject to legislation. There is now a Supreme Court judgment, which says that all the pre-1969 properties in which the Congress had operated from belong to the INC”.

Chinese EVs in India?: BYD keen on India manufacturing despite Visa issues.... Xi wants EV dominance, NaMo wants shanti, sadbhavana. Match made in heaven! /s

India's battery hope: Hindustan Zinc to revolutionize batteries, challenge Lithium dominance. "We are working with IITs on how to innovate with zinc for EVs".

15-Minute Meal Revolution: Quick Commerce Killing Restaurants?

Tibet Dam Project: China could use it as "Water Bomb".

War prep: Chinese university applies for undersea cable cutter patent — device developed by coastal university located across the sea from Taiwan

Oh Dear, Did Someone Steal Something From OpenAI? OpenAI is investigating whether DeepSeek used its work to build its model—an ironic twist for a company that’s built plenty on, well, other people’s work
Extreme optimization: How DeepSeek trained its AI model on a lot less. . . . DeepSeek's AI breakthrough bypasses industry-standard CUDA for some functions.
Here come the AI lawsuits: LinkedIn accused of using private messages to train AI

Semiconductors: First 'Made-in-India' chip to now roll out in 2025.

Did Pannu threaten Trump yet? US Homeland Security agents visit gurdwaras to check for illegals. The Sikh American Legal Defence and Education Fund (SALDF) expressed grave concern over the directive rescinding the guidelines that designated “sensitive areas”, such as houses of worship.

Chinese illegal immigrants in US: “Sixty thousand Chinese males, mostly military age, do not leave China without the coordination and approval of the Chinese government. This is a coordinated national security vulnerability that the Chinese government is involved in.”

Solar Sheep: China's Unexpected Solar Power Success Story！

Freebie Raj: "All over the world, subsidy and welfare is given to those who can't afford. Here, we have women from two rich cities like Bengaluru and Mysuru, traveling free just because it is available".
I took an early morning bus to Mysuru, from Bengaluru. ₹210 fare. Comfortable KSRTC bus and a world class highway for fast travel.

But I got a few thoughts.

1) Nearly 30 of the 50 passengers were women. Just show Aadhar and travel free. Is this fair? Is it equality?
2) 20… pic.twitter.com/2TfkzF88IA
— Kiran Kumar S (@KiranKS) January 8, 2025

Thursday, January 30, 2025

the new bill gates?

move over, microsoft. the new legend is deepseek, and this man. from the #deepstate presstitute flunkeys over at the economist magazine, always ready to lionize a Chinese, possibly with a generous cheque from xinhua.

brown guy must be insane, no?

#deepstate flunkeys at the economist having a meltdown. hey, brit journos for hire, what secrets do you have that you are concerned about Kash Patel finding out? is it the regular checks you have been getting from the deep state (along with the ones from xinhua)?

Monday, January 27, 2025

DeepSeek - new AI model from China

Silicon Valley Is Raving About a Made-in-China AI Model: As of Saturday, DeepSeek models R1 and V3 were ranked in the top 10 on Chatbot Arena, a platform hosted by University of California, Berkeley, researchers that rates chatbot performance. A Google Gemini model was in the top spot, while DeepSeek bested Anthropic’s Claude and Grok from Elon Musk’s xAI.

DeepSeek said training one of its latest models cost $5.6 million, compared with the $100 million to $1 billion range cited last year by Anthropic.

How China’s new AI model DeepSeek is threatening U.S. dominance: “To see the DeepSeek new model, it’s super impressive in terms of both how they have really effectively done an open-source model that does this inference-time compute, and is super-compute efficient,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “We should take the developments out of China very, very seriously.”

DeepSeek also had to navigate the strict semiconductor restrictions that the U.S. govt has imposed on China, cutting the country off from access to the most powerful chips, like Nvidia’s H100s. The latest advancements suggest DeepSeek either found a way to work around the rules, or that the export controls were not the chokehold Washington intended.

“They can take a really good, big model and use a process called distillation,” said Benchmark General Partner Chetan Puttagunta. “Basically you use a very large model to help your small model get smart at the thing you want it to get smart at. That’s actually very cost-efficient.”

DeepSeek R1 Explained to your grandma:

How small Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek shocked Silicon Valley: DeepSeek’s R1 release sparked a frenzied debate in Silicon Valley about whether better resourced US AI companies, including Meta and Anthropic, can defend their technical edge.

Industry insiders say DeepSeek’s singular focus on research makes it a dangerous competitor because it is willing to share its breakthroughs rather than protect them for commercial gains. DeepSeek has not raised money from outside funds or made significant moves to monetise its models.

DeepSeek claimed it used just 2,048 Nvidia H800s and $5.6mn to train a model with 671bn parameters, a fraction of what OpenAI and Google spent to train comparably sized models.

Ritwik Gupta, AI policy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said DeepSeek’s recent model releases demonstrate that “there is no moat when it comes to AI capabilities”. “The first person to train models has to expend lots of resources to get there,” he said. “But the second mover can get there cheaper and more quickly.”

Gupta added that China had a much larger talent pool of systems engineers than the US who understand how to get the best use of computing resources to train and run models more cheaply.

Twist in the tale: Nvidia Stock May Fall As DeepSeek’s ‘Amazing’ AI Model Disrupts OpenAI.. America’s policy of restricting Chinese access to Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips has unintentionally helped a Chinese AI developer leapfrog U.S. rivals who have full access to the company’s latest chips. This proves a basic reason why startups are often more successful than large companies: Scarcity spawns innovation.

The Empire Strikes Back: China Prepares One Trillion Yuan AI Plan to Rival $500 Billion US Stargate Project.

Friday, January 24, 2025

too many Stargate eggs in openAI basket?

this seems unwise. $500 billion for openAI? based on exactly what? and microsoft, for which I have always assumed openAI is a stalking horse, is not even in the picture as a founding member of this consortium? something's fishy here. I think masayoshi son of softbank is being gaslighted.

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

UK requires visas of US citizens

"special relationship" gone. I think they were seriously expecting to be offered a chance to be the US' 51st state. that's probably why keir starmer sent a bunch of his people to do election interference in the POTUS election 2024. alas, it boomeranged.

now starmer is peeved. this is a trump special.

Monday, January 20, 2025

tech must let govt snoop: EU

I guess the cat's out of the bag. this is why all western big tech apps must be viewed with suspicion. we knew this about Chinese apps all along.

suchir Balaji: no conspiracy theory

there's something seriously wrong at openAI.

MBAs in trouble?

damn! startled to hear that brand-name MBAs (like mine) are losing their allure. not that I care much any more since I am retired, but young indians better beware of spending like $300k on such degrees!

this could mean:

a) a backlash to US-style short termism in the CXO suite (which led to the de-industrialization of the US)

b) normal cyclical behavior

c) general weariness with US rah-rah sales and marketing (which leads to boom and bust cycles, eg. current AI hype)

digestion: white people discover pranayama

it has already been rebranded and is getting sold back to us.

Kamala for CA guv! #facepalm

hasn't this woman humiliated herself enough? she's shown herself to be entirely incompetent. why not just fade away? jeez! what exactly are these guys at the san Jose Mercury news smoking?

Sunday, January 19, 2025

SFO people spitting in the wind: TDS

given LA fires, moss landing battery fire, etc. exactly what do these guys want? not to mention the waste of money on Ukraine, and inflation?

more of the same, presumably?

Saturday, January 18, 2025

Cabinet Approves Funds for 3rd Launch Pad for ISRO

The 3rd launch pad will be used for newer-generation missions such as human spaceflight, reusable launch vehicles, and even a crewed mission to the Moon:

moss landing: end of 'green'?

the three mile island analogy is breathtaking

moss landing is the largest lithium battery facility in the US.

blow to US lithium battery and green ambitions. this facility is in monterey county, not far from silicon valley https://x.com/newscientist/status/1880398680622092598

trump's second coming

these are interesting times. we are seeing some nine pins falling by the wayside: deep state favorites like Hindenburg.

https://open.substack.com/pub/rajeevsrinivasan/p/ep-153-trumps-second-coming-the-dog?r=66qfh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Thursday, January 16, 2025

Quick notes: Trade colony | Awaiting Tejas...

Trade colony India: China just posted a trade surplus with the rest of the world of almost $1 trillion for 2024. China today accounts for around 27% of global industrial production.

Why China needs India more than ever: China’s Export Boom Means Trump Tariffs Would Hit Beijing Where It Hurts. . India should sync up with Trump for max damage

Shakeout time: China makes more cars than it needs. Excess capacity among carmakers in China is driving the world’s largest auto market into a shakeout phase. . . . Chacha Modi to the rescue..?

US To Effectively Ban Chinese Vehicles: New rule would effectively ban all Chinese vehicles from the US under the auspices of blocking the "sale or import" of connected vehicle software from "countries of concern."

'Achievments abroad is not enough': Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu shares the #1 reason Indians have no respect globally. “To earn true respect in the world, Indians have to develop deep capabilities in India. Achievements abroad won't do it."

"First 40 Tejas still not...": Still awaiting Tejas from 2010 deal: IAF chief as China tests sixth-gen jet

India's loss: How China’s Synthetic Diamonds Crushed India’s $20 Billion Diamond Industry.

Bengaluru must shun car-centric planning: Instead of investing in projects that increase the vehicle footprint, the government should implement the vision outlined in the CMP— prioritising public transport, walking and cycling, and reducing dependence on private vehicles. It is time to shift focus towards building infrastructure that moves people, not just cars.

Pakistan jackpot: Finds gold deposits worth Rs 609 billion.

Hindenburg Research Shuts Down: Founder Cites Toll On Well-being

Strange how this is all happening before Trump takes office

ISRO Achieves Successful Docking of Spacecraft

SpaDeX Docking Update:

🌟Docking Success

Spacecraft docking successfully completed! A historic moment.

Let’s walk through the SpaDeX docking process:

Manoeuvre from 15m to 3m hold point completed. Docking initiated with precision, leading to successful spacecraft capture.…
— ISRO (@isro) January 16, 2025

even Dems want suchir Balaji probe

the tech bros and indian Americans are now seen as beginning to lean towards trump, so this ro guy, who would have been congressman if I were still living in the Bay area, is now trying to insinuate himself.

the real issue of poor suchir balaji's possible murder is getting politicized.

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Indus Script Deciphered by Bharath Rao (aka. Yajnadevam), Found To Be Sanskritic

Monday, January 13, 2025

happy new year: makara sankranti, Maha kumbh mela

Jan 14 is when I celebrate the new year, not the Gregorian new year which is a random date. makara sankranti is a real astronomical event, when the sun moves into the constellation makara or Capricorn, and it marks the end of the winter (such as it is) in India. (funny thing is it has broiling hot in Kerala lately 90+ def F, 33 deg C. some winter!). tomorrow is the start of the malayalam month of makaram/Capricorn. it will be makaram 1, 1200 ME (malabar era).

5,000 years ago makara sankranti (based on the solar calendar) used to coincide with the uttarayanam (loosely speaking the winter solstice). because of the precession of the equinoxes, that is because the earth's axis is tilted at 23 degrees, the two dates are diverging. 18,000 years later, the two will coincide again.

in bhishma's time, or around 3102 BCE, the two coincided, and this is why bhishma lay on the bed of arrows (sara-sayya) waiting for uttararayanam, the auspicious time, to arrive, before he passed away on the winter solstice, Dec 22.

my father passed away on the exact opposite, on Jun 21, the summer solstice, in 2003.

and this year we have the Maha kumbha mela, which happens once in 144 years.

wish all of you a great year ahead!

Sunday, January 12, 2025

ISRO Space Docking Attempt Halted Due to Problems

ISRO has halted its attempt to dock 2 spacecraft together in orbit, after encountering problems. After closing the separation distance to within 3 meters, apparently the Chaser spacecraft is suffering a computer crash, because its guidance control loop is encountering excessive variability in the readings from the optical sensors. It's hard to say without further details, but it may be some kind of parallax issue. They'll try to resume their docking efforts after studying the data to solve the problem, but in the meantime the spacecraft have been returned to a safer separation distance of 64 meters.

SpaDeX Docking Update:

A trial attempt to reach up to 15 m and further to 3 m is done.

Moving back spacecrafts to safe distance

The docking process will be done after analysing data further.

Stay tuned for updates.#SpaDeX #ISRO
— ISRO (@isro) January 12, 2025

Anyway, space rendezvous & docking is a previously unattempted advanced capability that ISRO is attempting to master, and so it's natural that things can go wrong along the way. That's all par for the course.

The only issue I'd take here is how they're speaking as if everything's gone according to plan, without even acknowledging that any problem has occurred.