Thursday, February 28, 2019

Quick notes: Diverting rivers | Terror shift...

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Pilot (Wing Cdr Abhinandan) Shot Down by Pak

An IAF pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan, has been shot down over Pakistan:



Pakistan launched retaliatory air raids against India in the Rajourie sector, dropping some bombs. They may have lured his MiG-21 across the border by allowing him to chase and shoot down one of their PAF-16s, and then shot him down. The video shows him being beaten and tortured by his captors:




Indian Air Strike: Will Imran Khan Survive?

Following India's latest air strike against Pakistan's terror camp, it remains to be seen what the political fallout will be inside Pakistan. While Pak authorities may keep trying to fool the public with staunch denials of the strike, it's not likely to placate everyone, and so a scapegoat would be demanded. As it's unlikely that the Pak Army chief could be dismissed, then it would fall upon the civilian head of govt Imran Khan to suffer the blame. But the loss of Imran Khan would leave the govt without a civilian puppet as a figleaf. This could embolden the 2 traditional main parties, belonging to Nawaz Sharif and the Bhutto clan, to try to regain power. There's of course no love lost between both of them and the army, which has in the past used its power to have each of them ousted.

India would benefit from having either of the 2 parties regain power, since they've both fallen out of love with the military and the never-ending irredentist jihad game. China would likewise benefit from seeing those 2 traditional parties in power, as they're more purchasable by Chinese business interests. One of the reasons why the Army ousted Nawaz more recently was out of a concern that he was getting too cosy with China through direct business deals, at the expense of Pakistan's national interests. America too would benefit from the retrenchment of Pakistan's army, as it seeks an endgame in Afghanistan.

So with Imran Khan being an extension of the Army's praetorian rule, it's only the Army who have a stake in his political survival, while just about everybody else in the world would benefit from his ouster. It's therefore in our interest to continue a more muscular and assertive policy to leave Imran twisting in the wind.

Friday, February 22, 2019

Turkey Faces Off With China Over Uighur Muslims



Maybe Pak should have to answer to Turks over its collaboration in the repression of Uighurs.

#FakeNoose

Rich, successful but still ambitious young minority actor in Chicago decides he needs to get more money for himself, and decides to fabricate a claim that he suffered an attempted lynching hate crime attack at the hands of intolerant nationalists. But then he gets caught:







There are obvious analogies here with the antics of India's crooked Leftists - Cow lynchings, Award Wapsee, Rohit Vemula, etc, etc - the litany of examples is too long to list.

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

not sure this amounts to a major critique of clean meat

Quick notes: 21 lessons | Solar pumps...

  • AI and big-data: Godsend for totalitarian regimes.

    In the late twentieth century democracies usually outperformed dictatorships because democracies were better at data-processing. Democracy diffuses the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place. Given twentieth-century technology, it was inefficient to concentrate too much information and power in one place. Nobody had the ability to process all the information fast enough and make the right decisions. This is part of the reason why the Soviet Union made far worse decisions than the United States, and why the Soviet economy lagged far behind the American economy.

    However, soon AI might swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. AI makes it possible to process enormous amounts of information centrally. Indeed, AI might make centralised systems far more efficient than diffused systems, because machine learning works better the more information it can analyse. If you concentrate all the information relating to a billion people in one database, disregarding all privacy concerns, you can train much better algorithms than if you respect individual privacy and have in your database only partial information on a million people. For example, if an authoritarian government orders all its citizens to have their DNA scanned and to share all their medical data with some central authority, it would gain an immense advantage in genetics and medical research over societies in which medical data is strictly private. The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century - the attempt to concentrate all information in one place - might become their decisive advantage in the twenty-first century.

    As algorithms come to know us so well, authoritarian governments could gain absolute control over their citizens, even more so than in Nazi Germany, and resistance to such regimes might be utterly impossible. Not only will the regime know exactly how you feel - it could make you feel whatever it wants. The dictator might not be able to provide citizens with healthcare or equality, but he could make them love him and hate his opponents. Democracy in its present form cannot survive the merger of biotech and infotech. Either democracy will successfully reinvent itself in a radically new form, or humans will come to live in ‘digital dictatorships’. - Yuval Noah Harari -
    21 Lessons for the 21st Century


  • Ties with Chinese Communist Party: Alibaba is the force behind hit Chinese Communist Party app.


  • India turns cautious on MNCs collecting data: MasterCard and Visa, the two biggest card networks in the U.S., as well as lobby groups that represent Google and Facebook — both of which offer payment solutions in India — spent months fiercely opposing the directive (on data localization). They were joined by as many as 30 U.S. senators, who urged India to rethink its stand on data localization. “We see this as a fundamental issue to the further development of digital trade, and one that is crucial to our economic partnership,” the senators wrote.


  • Cabinet nod for long-pending KUSUM: The scheme consists of three components: 1. Setting up 10 GW grid-connected renewable power plants, each of 500KW to 2MW in rural areas; 2. Installation of 1.75 million standalone off-grid solar water pumps to fulfill irrigation needs of farmers not connected to the grid; and 3. Solarisation of existing 1 million grid-connected agriculture pumps to make farmers independent of the grid supply and also sell surplus power to distribution companies and get extra income.


  • E-Waste: India generates more than two million tonnes of e-waste annually, and also imports undisclosed amounts of e-waste from other countries from around the world.


  • Decimated credibility: Catholic Church credibility on the line at abuse meeting


  • Hans target Africa: Chinese 'Ivory Queen' Yang Fenglan jailed in Tanzania


Sunday, February 17, 2019

Quick notes: China's role | Superpower's backing...


China Muslim-Tracking Database Uncovered Online

A researcher has uncovered a Facial Recognition tracking system for China's Muslims which correlates all kinds of sensitive information about them for surveillance purposes:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinese-company-leaves-muslim-tracking-facial-recognition-database-exposed-online/

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Quick notes: Silicon prowess | Uighur detention...

  • Significant milestone: China's SMIC to start 14nm mass production in H1 2019


  • Spy hotbed: Hundreds of Chinese and Russian spies in Brussels


  • Will other Muslim countries react? After years of silence, Turkey rebukes China for mass detention of Muslim Uighurs


  • Dr. Jason Fung: 'Therapeutic Fasting - Solving the Two-Compartment Problem'



  • Fish pass: Hilsa to be found again in Ganga river near Prayagraj. Earlier Hilsa fish used to reach up to the then Allahabad (now Prayagraj). However, the movement of Hilsa stopped after the Farakka Navigation Lock came up in 1976. Fish pass or Fishway is a structure or natural barriers like dams, locks, and waterfalls to ensure the natural migration of fish.


  • ‘The tonic of the wilderness’: The Japanese practice of forest bathing is proven to lower heart rate and blood pressure, reduce stress hormone production, boost the immune system, and improve overall feelings of wellbeing.  Forest bathing—basically just being in the presence of trees—became part of a national public health program in Japan. 


  • Yuval Noah Harari: Humans are Losing Touch with the Physical World



  • Journey from the Self to the Self:


Saturday, February 09, 2019

Quick notes: Punitive action | NPA nightmare...

  • You can't win against Walmart (or Amazon): U.S. considers withdrawal of zero tariffs for India -- strongest punitive action since Trump took office. The trigger was India’s new e-commerce rules that restrict Amazon.com Inc and Walmart-backed Flipkart. Also a factor is India's data localization drive against MNCs such as Mastercard and Visa. 


  • Sharia too? Kaangress says it will scrap triple talaq law if voted to power


  • The NPA nightmare: Indian banks may have an over Rs30,00,00,00,00,000 bad loan storm coming


  • Magnetic north just changed: Why is magnetic north changing so fast?


  • The miracle mineral the world needs: Compost can do something that mineral fertiliser cannot. It doesn't just provide phosphorus and other vital nutrients – it can also restore the soil structure by adding organic matter.


  • Ultracapacitor: Tesla's clever acquisition of Maxwell. One way that ultracaps can be recharged in a vehicle is through regenerative braking, wherein the kinetic energy of braking is captured and used to generate electricity that is then stored in the ultracap. This is something that Lamborghini is doing with Maxwell technology. Another use of an ultracapacitor in a vehicle is to take care of peak transient load requirements. When the battery system alone just can't get it done, then the ultracap can kick in to handle the electrical demand.


  • Physics suggests that the future has already happened: Our intuition tells us that the future can be changed, but Einstein's theory of relativity suggests that there is no real difference between the future and the past.  The future, present and past may actually not be as different as we think.


  • Nuns 'sex slaves' scandal: Fresh blow to Catholic church. It is the first time that the pope has publicly admitted this abuse is taking place


  • Better than UPA II:


Tuesday, February 05, 2019

Quick notes: Loan waiver for all, Laundry business...

  • Populism gone wild: Kangress promises 'farm loan waiver for all'.


  • RCom Bankruptcy: How India’s banks ran up a $7 Billion phone bill


  • Urgent need to connect bank databases: Shell companies have been used extensively for laundering the proceeds of crime. They thrive as bank databases are unconnected. In the Nirav Modi case, there was a Swift database, Punjab National Bank’s core banking system and the foreign exchange transactions database. All the three databases were not automatically connected.


  • How London's streets are paved with dirty money.
    . The City of London: Capital of an Invisible Empire.
    . London’s Laundry Business: Billions of pounds of corruptly gained money has been laundered by criminals and foreign officials buying upmarket London properties through anonymous offshore front companies – making the city arguably the world capital of money laundering.

  • . The tax haven in the heart of London: It is the hub of a global network of tax havens sucking up offshore trillions from around the world and sending it, or the business of handling it, to London. 


  • Hats-off to whoever made this possible: Bengaluru’s 75-year-old Selvamma goes high-tech using a solar-powered fan to grill corn on the roadside.


  • 'Complete Streets': Planning should factor in all people using our streets, not just drivers. "When you plan just for cars, you get cars, and we now have so many that traffic is horrendous and getting worse, it just won’t work anymore". It translates to roads being reduced and lanes narrowed, parking spaces eliminated, bike lanes added and the walk from curb to curb shortened.


  • China Is A Naval Powerhouse: China shipyards build civilian and military ships at the same time and most if not whole R&D and staff cost is dumped on civilain market. US navy shipiards not only don't do civilian ships but mostly have narrow specialization.


  • Why our screens make us less happy:


Friday, February 01, 2019

Quick notes: Landmine detector, Railgun...

  • Multi-spectral land mine detection technology: 16-year-old Ahmedabad boy develops drone that can destroy landmines without human risk



  • Train 18 a super hit! Train 18 became the fastest Indian Railways train, hitting speeds of over 180 kmph during its trials on a section of the Delhi-Mumbai Rajdhani route.


  • Can America Match It? China's deadly naval Railgun is out for sea trials.


  • Spying concerns: EU considers proposals to exclude Chinese firms from 5G networks


  • Vote banks are on sale:


  • New e-commerce rules: Amazon pulls numerous products from India website


  • Bring back the milk man: About 91% of all plastic waste has never been recycled. “Preventing in the first place is always better than cleaning up after”.


  • Church crimes: Pope says weary Church 'wounded by her own sin,' in reference to abuse


  • Free e-book: The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey