China's Sorrow: Record floods raise questions about China's Three Gorges Dam.. “One of the major justifications for the Three Gorges Dam was flood control, but less than 20 years after its completion we have the highest floodwater in recorded history”. . . . . Dikes collapse
Rajeev on Chinese overreach: 'If the economy begins to flounder, the empire may fall apart sooner than we think... The fatal mistake for the USSR was the invasion of Afghanistan. Quite possibly the fatal mistake for the Chinese empire is the assault on Ladakh'.
Tibetan Government-in-Exile: The US has for the first time directly provided funds to
the Tibetan Government-in-Exile based in India, a move likely to rile up
China.
The big secret of tech innovation: Although this may sound strange, copying is good for innovation. This is how Chinese technology companies got started — by adapting Silicon Valley’s technologies for Chinese use and improving on them. The Chinese routinely monitor what app is achieving success elsewhere, and duplicate it before they start adding features and innovating; they learn from the best and improve.
Steve Jobs built the Macintosh by copying the windowing interface from the Palo Alto Research Center. As he admitted in 1994, “Picasso had a saying, ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal’; and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” Almost every Apple product has features that were first developed by others.. Mark Zuckerberg also built Facebook by copying from MySpace and Friendster, and he continues to copy products.
Chinese firm among bidders for Vande Bharat trains: The emergence of a Chinese company for these train sets being promoted as indigenous products comes after a violent face-off between India and China
Fail: India’s top exports to China remain in the raw materials category. “China has been very effectively using non-tariff barriers to curb imports that it wants to avoid. On the other hand, it also uses these restrictions as a political tool to control bilateral relations”. A contingency plan, prepared by the govt bats for increasing duties on the top 100 imports from China.
Delete Facebook: Delete FB account or quit army: Delhi HC to officer
Cycling could become the new normal: "Cycling for short distances can result in an annual benefit of Rs 1.8 trillion to the Indian economy and it also has the potential of increasing personal fuel savings by over Rs 27 billion. Investment in cycling infrastructure has economic benefits up to 5.5 times the initial amount pumped in," says a communique from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
Superstrata's carbon fiber e-bike: True unibody construction with no seams or welding. “This piece comes out as a single piece from our machines”.
Professor (Emeritus) Arogyaswami Joseph Paulraj, Stanford University, has been awarded the prestigious 2014 Marconi Society Prize. His idea for using multiple antennas (MIMO) at both the transmitting and receiving stations - which is at the heart of the current high speed WiFi and 4G mobile systems – has revolutionized high speed wireless delivery of multimedia services for billions of people.
shAAP is psecular: EC warns Kejriwal on pamphlets appealing for Muslim votes.
China air pollution reaching the U.S: "We've outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us."
Expect more credit card breaches: In all these attacks, cyber criminals used
memory-parsing software, also known as a "RAM scraper." When a customer
swipes a credit or debit card, the POS terminal grabs the transaction
data from the magnetic stripe and transfers it to the retailer's payment
processing provider. While the data is encrypted during the process,
RAM scrapers extract the information while it is in the computer's live
memory, where it very briefly appears in plain text.
Chet Kanojia: Chet Kanojia and Aereo Seek to Shake Up Television Industry
Tata Dynamo: Solar energy based electricity back-up system for domestic consumers.
Learn, Indian planners: Hamburg, Germany’s second largest city, plans to ban all cars from its centre over the next 20 years and put thousands of commuters on bikes.
Diabetes: A single faulty gene is linked to diabetes, according to Bellur Prabhakar, professor and head of microbiology and immunology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Saudi America, but not for long: "We see two chapters in the oil
markets. Up to 2020, we expect the tight oil to increase and the
need for Middle East oil will be less. But due to the limited resource base, U.S. tight oil is going to plateau and decline. After 2020 there will be
a major dominance of Middle East oil."
Santhakumar Kannappan at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Korea and a few pals have built high-performance supercapacitors out of graphene that store almost as much energy as a lithium-ion battery, can charge and discharge in seconds and maintain all this over many tens of thousands of charging cycles.
Preah Vihear: Cambodia gets sovereignty over the 900 year old Hindu temple on the border with Thailand.
This is how you deal with the Hans: A handful of Chinese scooter exhibitors at the International Motorcycle Exhibition had their goods seized by the Italian police because they had brought imitation Vespa scooters to the show.
Bad design and its consequences: Toyota's killer firmware... (I personally know someone whose Camry had unintended acceleration, so I am inclined to believe that this was a flawed design).
Motorola will partner with the modular smartphone project Phonebloks to help design "LEGO" style smartphones with interchangeable parts: Project Ara
There is no actual transmission, CVT or otherwise in the new Honda Accord Hybrid. The electric motors do the job: How It Works
The power computer decouples the engine from the wheels and directs
its power to the motor-generator. The electricity produced by the
spinning generator is then delivered to the drive motor, which turns the
front wheels while any excess power is stored in the battery. At highway speeds, when the gasoline engine is at its most efficient,
the power controller shuts down the electric drive motor and lets the i-VTEC engine do its thing.
Shame on Qatar and the UAE
for reviving one of humanity’s gravest crimes, shame on FIFA for
endorsing its use, and shame on us all if we sit idly by and let the worst aspect of history repeat itself. To build gleaming cities, slavery still survives in the Middle East.
A7 processor in the new iPhone is impressive, but 64-bit computing offers no performance benefits, other than its ability to directly address over 4GB RAM
Low-end wart in FDI in research: Most of the activities in Indian R&D centres of Foreign corporations are relatively
unimportant with little long-term gains for the country. “Foreign corporations believe our educational system probably does not inculcate
the skills for innovation.” (... Macaulay's children, not supposed to think original)
A proposal to force Reliance Industries to give up 86 per cent of
eastern offshore KG-D6 gas block, including 8 gas discoveries worth at
least $8 billion, has been put up to Petroleum Minister.
NYT Editorial: India in Reverse: Mr. Singh has been an ineffectual leader without much authority. The real power is held by his political patron, Sonia Gandhi, who leads the Indian National Congress Party, which has expressed little concern for the country’s ailing economy. In the nine years that the coalition government has been in power,
several ministers have resigned in corruption scandals; large
infrastructure projects have been delayed by mismanagement; the
government’s budget deficit has ballooned, thanks to wasteful spending
like subsidies for diesel fuel; and politics have thwarted reforms in
labor and education.
Why Electric Cars Are Safer: “An engine block is just too rigid. So the shock wave is
pretty much transferred to the area directly behind the engine, with
minimal energy absorption.”
Telegraph editorial on the white lady's brinkmanship: The political philosophy of Sonia Gandhi was revealed in her startling statement that if there was no money available for the food security bill, the money would have to be found. She did not bother to suggest where the money was to be found. This defies even the simple common sense of the housewife who knows how to cut her coat according to the cloth that is available. It would be easy to cite Ms Gandhi’s statement as evidence of her utter irresponsibility. Thus she pushed through the food security bill without any guarantees about the delivery mechanism, because she is convinced that it will make her popular.
White lady's poison pill for Bharat: Make no mistake, the two populist legislations of the past week, the crippling of the rupee and stagnation of infrastructure and industry in the past decade are the equivalent of an economic Hiroshima. Remember how difficult it was to rebuild a broken Japan after World War II? That’s the task that awaits India's next PM.
For real innovation, thank the state: The Internet, GPS, touch-screen displays, and even the voice-activated smartphone assistant Siri all received state cash. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency bankrolled the Internet, and the CIA and the military funded GPS. Even the algorithm behind Google benefited from U.S. National Science Foundation funding. So, although the US is sold to us as the model example of
progress through private enterprise, innovation there has benefited from a very interventionist state.
NE excels on women's safety: In Darjeeling, police stations across the district will tell you that in the last decade they have come across only a couple of cases (of sexual crime). That, too, in one an outsider was involved. A cop I spoke to for this article remembered just a single case of “eve teasing” – in 1981. The Khasis of Meghalaya also score very high on gender parity. So do the Nagas, Mizos, Sikkimese and generally the people of the North-East.
Old enough to rape but young enough to escape punishment. God bless India.
— Donald Duck (@WatDaDuck_) August 24, 2013
The Supreme Court verdict against reservation in specialty and super-specialty courses in engineering and medical colleges, including
AIIMS, is generating political heat from expected quarters. This proposition is now binding on courts of lower,
coordinate and later jurisdiction.
Google Science Fair (GSF) 2013 has announced the 15 global finalists. Out of them, seven are of Indian origin.
The Integral Coach Factory has joined hands with IIT Madras to design solar-powered coaches that will draw power from the sun for interior lighting and cooling.
It took Mohammad Saidullah three days and just over $130 dollars to create his amphibious bicycle which he named after his wife Noor. Professor Anil Gupta has been traversing India in search of
inventions that are changing the lives of the country’s rural poor.
A glimpse of Telaban's priorities: 12% reservations for minorities in jobs and education, promotion of Urdu, Dalit Chief Minister... and the BJP looks on, jaded and dumb.
The latest in the war on mosquitoes uses non-toxic chemical compounds to make us invisible to mosquitoes. It neutralizes a
mosquito’s ability to detect carbon dioxide, which
humans exhale.
“He is a crazy guy, but in a good way. As Steve was a crazy guy, which I respect a lot. Crazy enough to want to completely change the way people live,” Mr. Son said of Bloom’s co-founder and chief executive, KR Sridhar. He was comparing Mr. Sridhar to Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, known to have been a confidant of Mr. Son.
Outsmarting bugs with a fan may be a poorly known strategy. But the
method, it turns out, is endorsed by the American Mosquito Control
Association.
“Mosquitoes are relatively weak fliers,” it says on its Web site, “so placing a large fan on your deck can provide a low-tech solution.”
Boeing has about 800 Dreamliners set to be built; if people start pulling out, the company is going to be in serious trouble. (..here is an earlier post on Gamechanging.. )
Dr. Amar G. Bose, the visionary engineer, inventor and billionaire
entrepreneur died on Friday at his home in Wayland,
Mass. He was 83.
Dr. Bose focused relentlessly on acoustic
engineering innovation. His speakers, though expensive, earned a
reputation for bringing concert-hall-quality audio into the home.
And by refusing to offer stock to the public, Dr. Bose was able to
pursue risky long-term research, such as noise-canceling headphones and
an innovative suspension system for cars, without the pressures of
quarterly earnings announcements.
In a 2004 interview in Popular Science magazine, he said: “I would have
been fired a hundred times at a company run by M.B.A.’s. But I never
went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could
do interesting things that hadn’t been done before.”
Unlike batteries, capacitors can charge quickly and discharge rapidly when needed; and, unlike batteries, they don't deteriorate in prolonged use. Mazda's brake energy regeneration system (i-ELOOP) is unique because it uses a capacitor instead of battery. 'i-ELOOP' efficiently converts the vehicle's kinetic energy into electricity as it decelerates, and uses the electricity to power the climate control, audio system and numerous other electrical components. While the gasoline version of the 2014 Mazda6 earns 26 mpg city, 38
highway in the EPA cycle, the i-ELOOP version earns 2 mpg better in both
the city and highway cycles.
Indian govt would die to get this kind of FDI, but here is where Israel scores over India:
Few statements have been parroted with as much certainty by the
colonized elite than the idea that India's software successprimarily
results from its large English-speaking workforce. If it were true, then Kenya, with an English-based colonial class system and a
large English work force, must also be disproportionately successful in
software. This turns out to not be the case. Furthermore, this theory
also fails to explain why Israel, which follows largely Hebrew and
Arabic-medium schooling, is also a notable software success.
People in Israel migrated from all parts of
the world in the twentieth century. These people spoke many different
languages, yet Israel chose Hebrew, not English as the official
language, reviving for modern times what had been declare a “dead” or
classical language. This would be the equivalent of India choosing
Sanskrit as its official and link language, instead of the colonial
choice of English. While it can be argued that a choice of Sanskrit
would have instilled a far greater sense of pride, rootedness and
nationhood in India society, even contemplating such a choice was beyond
the ken of the colonial elite, so well trained by the British, that
ruled India at her independence.
To understand the success of Israel over
Kenya in software, the explanation, indeed, must be found elsewhere,
other than in language. I remember reading in one of the physicist
Richard Feynman's early books how a respect for learning was a deep part
of Jewish culture. In a similar way, in India traditionally learning
has been considered the highest good. All of our scriptures extol
learning, and parents have traditionally placed a great emphasis on
learning.
While the learning of English as a language
can still be considered a positive factor in the development of India's
software industry, English as a primary medium of education and
the resultant English-based class system can only be considered an
impediment to this success.
Tesla should consider selling its cars
without batteries. Considering that a Tesla battery costs about $30K, a Model-S minus the battery should cost significantly cheaper.
This will succeed once the buyer has the option of of leasing the
battery from a battery-rental-cum-charging/swapping-station -- a fusion of a car-rental and a gas-station (..instead of renting a whole car, you just rent a charged battery.. instead of filling gas, you get your depleted battery swapped with a fully charged one). Thus, battery maintenance and replacement will no longer be the buyer's headache.
This is not very different from how we buy the phone instrument while taking a cell
phone service of our choice (..pre-paid, post paid, 3G, 4G..). This might go a long way in expanding the electric car market.
"The benchmarks were impressive but the real surprise was the current
consumption recorded during the benchmarks; Intel Atom not only
outperformed the competition but it did so with up to
half the current drain." Intel
Atom stood out with only 0.85A of average current vs. 1.38A for the Samsung
Exynos Octa, and 1.79A for the Qualcomm APQ8064T.
