Tag: Space

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Learning by Proxy

New Space Race

When Sputnik was launched there was no way of knowing what the Russians were able to see in the US. There was a great deal of paranoia. In those days, it always felt like the Americans were far behind the Russians when it came to space.

Two researchers from John Hopkins University decided to monitor the signal emanating from the satellite. As they monitored the signals they noticed a Doppler Shift. It is the same effect that you notice when a train is moving towards or away from you. They also were able to determine the approximate location of the satellite as it moved across the sky.

An idea germinated. If we can determine the location of a satellite from the ground, it might be possible to do the reverse. And like that, we got the Global Positioning System. Launched in the 1970s the system was initially available only for military purposes. It was a constellation of satellites across the globe such that at any point three satellites would be able to accurately pinpoint any location on the planet. Any ground-based station or device would be able to ping three satellites and get their exact location.

black satellite dish on brown field during daytime
Photo by Darya Jum on Unsplash

Eventually, the US government decided to open this up to the public but with a healthy error added to it. This healthy error resulted in the shooting down of a Korean Airlines flight by the Russians. The plane was flying in Russian airspace. It was Ronald Reagan who decided to open up the system completely after the Korean Airlines disaster.

Most of our devices are connected to the GPS system which is owned and operated by the US. The GPS has 38 satellites as a part of its constellation. It is one thing to depend on a system that belongs to the US for civilian use but another to depend on it for military use.

Europe has its own constellation called Galileo which is operated by the European Space Agency, Russia has its own constellation called Glonass, China is building one called BeiDou which they launched in 2018 and India has been building its own called Navigation with Indian Constellation (NAVIC) since 2013.

The latest launch related to NAVIC was made in May 2023. That took the constellation to 9 satellites, there are plans to add many more. The next step would be to expand it to 11 satellites. The constellation still does not have GPS accuracy, but as a more recently launched constellation, it will have more up-to-date technology. As the constellation grows, the capabilities are bound to improve.

In 2019, ISRO attempted to land its first craft on the Moon. Chandrayaan-2 failed. The lander went off trajectory in the final moments of descent and went off-nominal course. It would have been India’s first landing on another celestial body. Expectations were high, the chief of ISRO was in tears as the Prime Minister consoled him as he departed from Sriharikota after the failed mission.

This week the successor, Chandrayaan 3 was launched and it will also have a lander and a rover.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, at 2.35 PM IST on Friday, July 14.

The mission follows Chandrayaan-2 where scientists aim to demonstrate various capabilities including reaching the orbit of the moon, making a soft-landing on the lunar surface using a lander, and a rover coming out of the lander to study the surface of the moon.

Sixteen minutes after lift-off, propulsion module successfully separated from the rocket and would orbit the earth for about 5-6 times in an elliptical cycle with 170 km closest and 36,500 km farthest from earth moving towards the lunar orbit.

Source: Mint

If they manage to land it successfully this time, India will become the fourth country after the US, USSR and China to manage this feat.

Rakesh Sharma was the first Indian to go to space. He was followed by Ravish Malhotra. Both men belonged to the Indian Air Force and went to space aboard Russian Soyuz T-11. India has never had a space vehicle capable of carrying humans into space. They are building one now called Gaganyaan. It will be the first indigenously developed space vehicle which would be able to carry a human into space.

Media watches Soyuz rocket launch
Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Truth be told it is not difficult to get a human into space. The real challenge is bringing them back to Earth. Withstanding the heat produced by friction with air during re-entry is challenging. Amongst the slew of announcements made during the Modi visit to the US, NASA will be sharing the heat shield technology.

NASA and ISRO have also agreed to a joint mission to the International Space Station in 2024, the White House said on Thursday.

“In the space sector, we will be able to announce that India is signing the Artemis Accords, which advance a common vision for space exploration for the benefit of all humankind,” said the US officials, adding that NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are developing a strategic framework for “Human Spaceflight Operations this year”.

Source: Times of India

In addition to this, the InSPACe program launched by ISRO has already spawned 140 private space-related companies including launch as well as satellite companies.

On the other side of the Himalayas…

As I mentioned earlier, China has started the development of its own geo-positioning system. China does not trust anybody. Depending on the US for something as critical and GPS in the battleground does not augur well for the country. Although their program started only in 2018, the country already has a constellation of 35 satellites in space dedicated to global positioning. Three times as many as India.

It also has a moon mission called Chang’e. There have been a total of 5 missions that have gone to the moon. Of these 3 have landed on the moon and Cheng’e 4 landed on the South Pole of the moon. It is almost the same mission that Chandrayaan 3 is trying to pull off.

The Chang’e 5 mission brought back samples of moon rock and dust back to Earth. Their next mission is scheduled to fly in 2025. By the end of this decade, China plans to put a man on the moon.

International Space Station orbits earth
Photo by NASA on Unsplash

In 2021, China also got started with the construction of the Tiangong Space Station. In 2022, they added two more modules to the first one and with that, they ensured that there can be a permanent Chinese presence in space.

The goal that they have stated is to get the first human to Mars.

The Chinese space program is far more developed than the Indian program which was focused purely on satellite launch till 10 years ago. The ambition in India, to do more than that and leave the mundane work of satellite launch to private organisations has been aggressively taking shape in the last 5 years.

But there is a yawning budgetary gap. ISRO has an annual budget of about $1.5 billion whereas the Chinese Space Agency has an annual budget of $12 billion, which is the second largest in the world. India is operating at 1/10th of the Chinese budget and it is commendable what they are able to do with so little.

If India is genuine about catching up with China, policy alone will not help. The government will have to put its money where its mouth is.

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Learning by Proxy

Space Wars | Learning by Proxy

Space was the ambition of the Nazis. Hitler had some really wild theories but the central amongst them was the Wunderwaffe. A wonder weapon, so powerful that it would put an end to all his enemies. From the Holy Grail to Incan treasures and spells, no theory was left to chance. Of the many real-world manifestations of the entire exercise, the most well known, was a weapon called the Vergeltungswaffe; also known as the V-weapon. The literal translation of the word means Retribution Weapon. Before retribution could be delivered, the world war came to an end.

In the psyche of people, the acronym for Vergeltungwaffe 2 would remain embedded as the V2 rocket.

The man who worked on the V2 rockets, Werner Von Braun was smuggled out of Germany, as a part of Operation Paperclip. He would have otherwise face trial at Nuremberg and would have most likely been hanged.

His first few years in the US were unpleasant. He was locked away with a few other fellow German scientists at a castle and the Americans were too suspicious to give him any real work. It was not until the mid-1950s when news of the Russian program came to America that Von Braun finally got his chance to work on the American rocket program.

His work culminated in the fateful launch in July 1970 that put a man on the moon.

During the second world war, America was only working on bombers and they had created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). In 1958, this organisation was rebranded as NASA as space became a mandate.

Funding for NASA since 1959

Source: The Planetary Society

After the massive financing of the 1960s when John Kennedy committed to putting a man on the moon, NASA has had a stable budget of about USD 20 billion each year since the mid-1970s. Today NASA spends almost half that money on human spaceflight.

Allocation of NASA funds to various activities

Source: The Planetary Society

Companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and others have built fortunes taking slices of that $10 Billion pie that NASA spends on human spaceflight. While NASA does the science, it depends on outside suppliers to manufacture and deliver the necessary parts. This has been true since the beginning. None of you would have ever heard of the factories that NASA has, because they do not.

The companies mentioned above are part of what is known as the Military-Industrial Complex in the US. Not only NASA but also the Department of Defence and others are customers to these companies and source planes, fighters, helicopters, etc. from them.

SpaceX was a new entrant into the space business in 2010 and Elon Musk had hoped that he would provide some cost-benefit calculations and walk away with the contract. He walked in with his Silicon Valley millionaire swag only to be completely turned down. This is a report from 2014.

In a no-bid process, United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, received a bulk contract worth billions of dollars for 36 rocket launches earlier this year, despite plans to introduce more competition and other cost-saving measures.

Musk’s tweets yesterday focused on what happened next: The man who awarded ULA the contract, defense official Roger “Scott” Correll, was hired soon after his retirement to handle government relations at Aerojet Rocketdyne, a company that builds rocket engines for ULA. Musk didn’t mince words online when offering his interpretation of events:

Source: Quartz

Elon Musk was at the receiving end of it. He needed the NASA contracts desperately to keep SpaceX from sinking. At the time, he had managed to fly and land a few rockets but there was no revenue. His ONLY revenue model was NASA.

Source: Wikipedia

He had already received several hundreds of Millions in grants and funding from NASA since 2012, but in the absence of proven technology, they were unwilling to award contracts. There was certainly some lobbying and wrangling involved as well.

And then the 2016 elections swept around. This guy called Peter Thiel, with whom Elon Musk had run PayPal; who also happened to be a major investor in SpaceX, openly supported Donald Trump. Not only that, the company that Peter Thiel runs, Palantir, was responsible for the data crunching that delivered Trump his victory.

But the company that brought the idea of commercial space travel to fore was once struggling to even stay afloat. Elon Musk-led SpaceX was almost broke, with no way to turn around. The helping hand that pulled the pioneering company from this debacle came from US space agency NASA in the form of a $1.5 billion contract.

Source: Mint

The change in Musk and SpaceX’s fortunes are obvious to see from 2017. He just doubled the number of launches and money flowed like wine at a French party. NASA broke rank with their old trusted partners and SpaceX became part of the new Space Industrial Complex.

But Elon Musk – “look my whole body is a huge brain” – was not happy with sharing any of the money going to any other provider.

On August 7, the US Space Force announced two winners of a coveted agreement to launch dozens of spy satellites and other classified payloads into orbit.

United Launch Alliance won a 60% share of the future missions, planned for 2022 through 2027, while SpaceX scooped up the remaining 40%. Both companies beat out rivals Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, and Northrop Grumman for the multibillion-dollar spoils of the agreement, called National Security Space Launch Phase 2.

But in series of tweets by Elon Musk on Thursday, and following days of silence, the SpaceX founder appeared to be remarkably unhappy with how things turned out.

Source: Business Insider

Also, perhaps because by the end of 2020, he knew that Trump was not going to be re-elected.

Throughout 2020, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have been trading the title of the “richest person in the world”. Since the beginning of this millennium, both of them have been working on space companies. Unlike Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos has complained that he has so much money that there is no other way that he can blow it away.

Even so, as Blue Origins continues to gobble USD 1 Billion each year, there is only so much charity that Jeff wants to make. He wants those NASA contracts as well. So he sued NASA.

Well, Bezos is now frustrated by NASA. Last week, Blue sued the space agency in federal court, arguing that it inappropriately awarded a multi-billion dollar contract for a lunar lander to Blue’s chief rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Blue’s initial challenge to that decision was rejected by the Government Accountability Office, which found that NASA had not played favorites in choosing just one contractor due to lack of funding for two. The other members of its consortium, the companies Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper, declined to comment on the lawsuit their partner has brought.

Lawsuits between contractors and the government aren’t uncommon. In a way, they’ve helped define the rise of commercial space companies and SpaceX itself. But it’s worth looking at how this challenge diverges from others that arguably opened up low-earth orbit for business.

SpaceX sued NASA in 2005, before it even launched its first rocket. At the time, another nascent rocket maker, Kistler Aerospace, was on the verge of bankruptcy. It suddenly received a $227 million NASA contract to share its test data with the government. SpaceX challenged the case, arguing that if the government wants commercial rocket test data, it should accept competitive bids, not hand a contract to a company led by a former high-ranking NASA official. NASA withdrew the contract with Kistler.

Nine years later, in 2014, SpaceX sued the government again; this time challenging the US Air Force’s decision to award a multi-launch contract to United Launch Alliance (ULA), the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture that held a monopoly on US government spaceflight. (SpaceX had also challenged the creation of that monopoly in 2006.)

Source: Quartz

Obviously, this is a well-worn tactic that seems to have been used very effectively especially in the opaque world of the Industrial complex. A person like Jeff Bezos is not used to hearing “No” and he is getting tired of hearing it over and over from NASA.

So which Billionaire is going to get to blow away public money in their pursuit of space?

This is playing out as we continue to take this planet – the only habitable one we know for our form of life – hurtling towards the point of no return in terms of climate. It is a shame that this is what the richest on the planet feel, is the appropriate utilisation of money.

Much like the theme of GDP that I had mentioned last time, the trouble is that these people are so rich because all they have ever learnt is the accumulation of wealth and believe that is the only purpose of life. They feel Space is the most virgin area to exploit to continue to accumulate wealth. Hence they are slugging it out for a piece of it.

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Learning by Proxy

US Jobs | Learning by Proxy

Life is filled with dichotomies. One of the dichotomies facing American businesses right now is the high unemployment rate coupled with the inability to find workers. One would assume that if there were jobs on offer, people would come out looking for work. That has not happened.

US Jobs

Donald Trump had presided over the best jobs market in a long long time. George Bush the last republican president handed an absolute shit-show to Obama before he departed. The 2008 recession was just getting started when Obama stepped into office in Jan 2008.

Obama handed over an economy that was in great shape to Trump and thankfully Trump was only focused on building the wall and female reproductive rights (read supreme court). As a result, the tailwinds carried the economy all the way till COVID, that is.

The lockdown precipitated huge job losses and also furloughs (Unpaid leave). Restaurants, Cafes, Hotels, Amusement Parks, all businesses that had a physical interface with the customer laid of people like crazy. Then, the COVID situation got worse because nobody would listen to the president and drink bottles full of Clorox. His wisdom fell on deaf ears.

Biden moved in – pushed the vaccine agenda and America is open to business again.

But…

The number of corporate calls with at least one mention of “labor shortage” is surging, according to transcripts collected by Sentieo, a financial research company. Up until 2021, there had been fewer than 60 mentions per quarter of the phrase “labor shortage.” In the second quarter of 2021, “labor shortage” was referenced 136 times.

“You certainly can’t have a conversation with any business person across America, certainly, [and] I think fast coming across the globe, without labor shortages and tightness in markets coming up,” said Marie Robinson, executive vice president and chief supply chain officer of food-distributing giant Sysco, on a May 20 analyst call.

Source: Quartz

There are a few things at play over here. There has been a huge push to try and raise minimum wages in the United States to $15 per hour. Currently, it is stuck at $7.25 per hour.

Source: Wikipedia

The green line represents the actual minimum wage as advertised. Which seems to have gone from $1 per hour to $7.25 per hour. The blue one represents the inflation-adjusted purchasing power as per 2020 dollars. It is obvious, being part of the labour force in 1970 was far more rewarding than in 2020.

This is precisely what makes those obnoxious CEO salaries possible. They are pinching 10 dollars each hour from those serving at the frontline and putting it in their pockets. That is how Jeff Bezos earns $149,353 a minute.

At $7.25 an hour, working 10 hours a day, 25 days a month (Sunday off), one would make $1812.5.

The Republicans have been quick to place the blame at the Democrats’ doorstep. The $2 Trillion aid package sent out a $1400 cheque to the poor, which Biden enacted as soon as becoming President. First of all, if $1400 is keep people away from jobs, you really need to consider how much you are paying them. In large cities in America, rent alone can be $500 – $1000 in poorer neighbourhoods.

But there is more than that!

Three million Americans retired during the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic in the US, and that could make returning to full employment in the US more challenging.

The US labor market is like a complicated, sophisticated house party: It’s not just one-in, one-out at the main entrance. People are switching rooms, popping in the side-door, falling out the windows and sneaking in again through the back. Americans have been quitting at the highest rate in decades as the pandemic recession spurred them reevaluate what they want from their employers, even as record-high job openings entice them with new opportunities.

If more workers are demonstrating the leverage they now hold by quitting, many are also showing their independence from the labor market by retiring. During the pandemic, the share of Americans in retirement jumped from about 18.5% to 19.5%:

Source: Quartz

America is ageing. The median age was 30 in 1980, it has slowly crept up to 39 by 2021. Youngsters are unwilling to start families because it is very expensive and the disparities they have inherited make it harder and harder for them to cover the costs.

Several immigrants, especially the undocumented ones who would have worked the seven dollar jobs most probably left the country during the lockdown, unable to cover costs in the US.

Most importantly, these people who work low wages were the first ones to be exposed to COVID and also died by the hoards. They also were in no position to afford care for themselves. There is bound to be fear about exposing themselves once more.

Also, irrespective, if the businesses are desperately looking for people, this is the time to ask for more. This is when they can hope to get ahead. So many are probably just playing hardball.

As a result,

“As you know, we are experiencing one of the greatest hiring challenges in the history of DFW Airport,” wrote Ken Buchanan, executive vice president of revenue management and customer experience at DFW airport, in a May 27 letter to concessionaires. “As we prepare for a busy summer, please continue to practice DFW Airport’s high standards of hiring operations and refrain from soliciting employees from other DFW operations (‘poaching’).”

Source: Quartz

Anti-poaching agreements are illegal. Apple and Google settled their case by paying $415 Million back in 2015.

Space Race

The term Space Race was coined during the cold was to describe the competition that was unleashed between Russia and the US to reach space. The fear at the time was that whoever had control of space, would be able to look into another country and control them just by having the capability to attack them at will.

Russia armed some German documents built their rockets. At the same time, Americans ran ‘Operation Paperclip‘ and smuggled all of the German scientists waiting to go to trial at Nuremberg to America to build their rockets.

Today, capitalists who have squeezed so much money out of people, as cited above, are taking that money to engage in some ego wars by going to space.

Jeff Bezos announced at the end of last month that he was going to go to space on July 20th with his brother on the Blue Origin spacecraft.

Richard Branson who has been working on Virgin Galactic since 2003 announced that he would be going to space on 11th July using a craft that is first flow under a plane to the upper reaches of the atmosphere before being released to launch to about 60 km above the earth.

Not only are they waving it at each other, but they are also trying to turn it into a mission to habilitate their image and get as much PR as they can.

Sirisha Bandla, a Telugu-origin woman, is all set to realise her childhood dream of going to space. With Virgin Galactic launching its crewed test spaceflight on July 11, Bandla will be the backbone of this operation and accompany company’s founder Richard Branson to space.

Source: New Indian Express

and

An 82-year-old woman who has spent six decades trying to reach space will join Jeff Bezos on the first human flight by his space company later this month.

Wally Funk, who underwent training in the 1960s, will become the oldest person to ever fly to space.

Mr Bezos has invited Ms Funk as an “honoured guest” and shared video on Instagram of him telling her the news.

She will join the Amazon founder, his brother Mark and a mystery person who paid $28m (£20m) at auction for a seat.

Source: BBC

Rich people. 🤦🏽‍♂️

Corporate Tax

Three issues back, I had explained the tax deal being entered into by the G7 and what that meant for the rest of the countries. I had ended that piece by saying – let the intimidations begin.

Turns out 130 countries have already fallen in line.

Officials from 130 countries, including G20 nations and OECD members, agreed on Thursday in Germany’s business hub of Frankfurt to the broad outlines for an overhaul of rules for taxing international companies.

“The principles underlying the solution vindicate India‘s stand,” the government said in a statement.

It listed advantages such as a greater share of profits for the markets, consideration of demand-side factors in profit allocation and tax rules to stop treaty shopping.

Source: The Wire

Given that India is not a tax haven and we “try” to tax corporations at a rate that is double what this agreement requires, I do not even know what this means for India. Also, given that the Prime Minister was casually joking about India’s commitment to “defending democracy, freedom of thought and liberty”, I don’t even know how serious they really are.

Also

The American oil & gas industry delivers one thing without fail – Catastrophe.

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Learning by Proxy

Learning by Proxy | Energy – Space – Xenophobia

Every Saturday, I publish this series called Learning by Proxy. It is a capsule of some of the stuff that I found interesting over the week along with some context to it. I hope you enjoy it.

I have changed the format this time to try and follow a thread across many stories. I hope people like it. Let me know.

Follow Up

Both parties – India and China are reported to be stepping back at the border. The satellite pictures don’t seem like that at all! Link

The USA, in the meantime, does not wish to lose access to the South China Sea. They sent a couple of destroyers into the South China Sea knowing fully well that the Chinese fleets were present in the area conducting exercises.

The carriers — the Ronald Reagan and the Nimitz — deployed “in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” according to a statement by the Navy’s Seventh Fleet. It said that the ships, which were accompanied by warships and aircraft, were conducting exercises to improve air defence and long-range missile strikes in “a rapidly evolving area of operations.”

Source: NYTimes

Playing with matches.

On COVID

COVID causes upper respiratory problems. But why? SARS-CoV-2 attaches itself to cells in the human body called ACE2 receptors. It happens to be present in abundance in the lungs. Hence the respiratory condition. ACE2 is also present in all other organs including the stomach, kidney, heart, and brain. Many patients suffer from diarrhoea and stomach upsets only to later discover that they are infected. The loss of the sense of smell is also because of the presence of ACE2 in the nose. Now, it turns out that many people infected by COVID-19 suffer from brain damage as well. ACE2?

Doctors may be missing signs of serious and potentially fatal brain disorders triggered by the coronavirus, as they emerge in mildly affected or recovering patients, scientists have warned.

Neurologists are on Wednesday publishing details of more than 40 UK Covid-19 patients whose complications ranged from brain inflammation and delirium to nerve damage and stroke. In some cases, the neurological problem was the patient’s first and main symptom.

Source: The Guardian

If these were the people who voted for Brexit, I suppose the damage might have been from before COVID.

The virus also seems to like men more than women and nobody knows why.

Energy

An achievement in power

The Indian Railways is an organisation that was created by the British to loot India more efficiently. Since then, India has made the railways an asset like none other. 59 years ago, the Indian railways embarked on an ambitious program to electrify the railways in the country. Today close to 99% of the railway lines are electrified and it has helped us shift away from Diesel to Coal.

Every once in a while a government organisation will do something in India that will make your chest swell with pride. A couple of years back Kochi became the first airport in the world to be 100% powered by solar energy. And now it is the turn of the railways!

According to details shared by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, the pilot project of a 1.7-megawatt solar power plant has been set up by Indian Railways in collaboration with Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited (BHEL) on railway land. The solar power plant project has been set up at Bina Traction Sub Station. The 1.7-megawatt solar power plant can produce around 25 lakh units of energy annually and save about an amount of Rs 1.37 crore for Indian Railways every year.

According to the Railway Board Chairman, Indian Railways is planning to install solar power plants with a total capacity of 3 gigawatts, in the coming years. The power generated by these solar plants will directly feed the traction power for locomotives, he said. The tenders have already been invited for this project, however, it will take around two to three years to complete this project, he further stated.

Source: Financial Express

And immediately after achieving this milestone, another ministry decided to sabotage this plan. How will they get to 3GW, with Indian solar panels?

Shot in the foot

Also, India has moved in big ways towards solar power over the past decade. This was made possible in no small way by cheap Chinese Imports. Things got so bad for Indian manufacturers went begging to the government to do something about it, a few years ago. Now, thanks to the spat at the border, the Power Ministry has decided to ban all imports of power equipment from China.

It is not immediately clear if the Indian power producers who have already tied up with Chinese equipment suppliers will get a waiver or a carve-out from the latest decision. As much as 9,570 MW of the currently under-construction power plants — all from the private sector — have contracted with Chinese companies for supplying boilers, turbines and generators. Total under- construction capacity is 15,861 MW, of which 12,245 MW is in the private sector.

Source: Financial Express

This kind of thoughtless policy announcement has been the landmark of the Modi government.

Space

Satellite Market

One of the big expectations that drove the space entrepreneurs to take massive risks with other people’s money was the fact that several smaller countries will need satellites in space. Without the resources to develop their space program, they will hire private companies to launch. African countries have been launching satellites for weather prediction as well as resource mapping. Now, it is the turn of the Middle East – not to study earth, but Mars!

Sarah bint Yousif Al-Amiri knows what it’s like to build a spacecraft, but she’s never launched one to Mars—or during a global pandemic. As the deputy project manager for the United Arab Emirates’ first interplanetary mission—and the country’s minister of state for advanced sciences—the 33-year-old engineer has spent the past few years bouncing between Dubai and Boulder, Colorado, where a team of Emirati scientists have been busy building a robotic satellite meteorologist called Hope. These days, Al-Amiri is quarantining near the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, where Hope is expected to depart on a seven-month journey to the Red Planet next week.

Source: Wired

Connecting the World

The Internet can change the fortunes of any place. Imagine not having access to the internet. There are several places in the world where it is not economically viable to provide internet. Alphabet, the parent company of Google has been experimenting with Project Loon for close to a decade now. The idea is to have stratospheric air balloons beam internet down onto the planet. The first deployment took place in Kenya.

A fleet of high-altitude balloons started delivering internet service to Kenya on Tuesday, extending online access to tens of thousands of people in the first-ever commercial deployment of the technology.

The balloons, which hover about 12 miles up in the stratosphere — well above commercial aeroplanes — will initially provide a 4G LTE network connection to a nearly 31,000-square-mile area across central and western Kenya, including the capital, Nairobi.

Source: NYTimes

Airtel in Space

Since we are on the topic of internet, space seems to be the frontier for delivering low latency high-speed internet. With Jio busy photocopying every app known to mankind, Airtel is beginning to look towards space. The company will be splurging a Billion dollars to buy a satellite constellation. Must seem like spending some pocket change given the liability the Supreme Court piled onto the company as spectrum charges last year. But visionary indeed.

Twenty years after launching mobile telephone services in India, Sunil Mittal took a giant leap to connect the next billion users through a constellation of satellites, possibly gaining a head-start in Indian telecom’s race towards 5G mobile networks. A consortium led by Bharti Enterprises has won 45% stake the bid for OneWeb, a bankrupt firm that makes satellites in the UK and the US. Bharti had bid jointly with the UK government for the auction. They would invest around $500 million each to acquire OneWeb, which had declared bankruptcy earlier this year.

Source: Inc42

Xenophobia

Who is a Kuwaiti?

There is a movie about the rescue missions that had to be attempted to bring Indians back when the Gulf War broke out. Many from India have made gulf home especially those from the southern state of Kerala. What happens when a country realises that 33% of its population are ex-pats from ONE single country?

The Indian community constitutes the largest ex-pat community in Kuwait, totalling 1.45 million, the report added. Over 8 lakh Indians could be forced out of Kuwait if a new bill on ex-pats is enacted into law, the Gulf News reported. The legal and legislative committee of Kuwait’s National Assembly has approved the draft ex-pat quota bill, according to which Indians should not exceed 15% of the population.

Source: Indian Express

To keep the population essentially Kuwaiti, they need to chase out people from other countries. How will they execute this plan?

Stupidity thy name is Trump Administration

With the surge in COVID cases, any remaining hope that the Universities could open in fall were dashed. That did not keep their audacity at bay. All Universities will deliver classes online – at the same tuition fee of ~ USD 50,000. I suppose they do realise the very same courses are available on Coursera for USD 39 – 79 a month. The Trump administration joined the party. After banning H1B for till the end of this year – because waiters gonna code; they announced that all students must go back if their courses are online!

The over 250,000 Indian students enrolled in US universities now run the risk of being sent packing. Some of these students have parents living in the US on H1B! Where do they go back?

The Donald Trump administration on July 6 tweaked an exemption that allowed foreign students to stay in the US even when most of their classes are being held online amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Source: Quartz

Students are free money. Their parents are rich and expatriating foreign exchange to ensure their kids can get a great education. Not only that students are a huge source of consumption. They eat a lot, buy a lot and experience a lot. At a time when the economy is undergoing a slump, to chase them away, especially when your economy hardly adds any value to them – is just stupid. Not to mention – this will destroy the ability of the universities to attract overseas students in the coming years.

Promptly – Harvard and MIT sued.

“By threatening to force many F-1 students to withdraw from Harvard and MIT, Defendants have put both schools to an impossible choice: lose numerous students who bring immense benefits to the school or take steps to retain those students through in-person classes, even when those steps contradict each school’s judgment about how best to protect the health of the students, faculty, staff, and the entire university community.”

Source: Indian Express

When you can’t offer perks

Companies are well known for making it as easy as possible for parents to come in and slog 16 hour days. Provide foosball tables and the likes that you would not be able to use at all, unless you were going to stay at work till 11 P.M. While there was a sinister side to the childcare and other support of that nature offered, they were still perks. This helped bring some of the best talents to the organisation. When your employee is sitting at home, what perk can you offer? Fewer working days!

Data from jobs marketplace ZipRecruiter shows that in 2020, so far, the share of company job postings offering four-day workweeks is 69 for every 10,000 job postings. It’s a tiny number to be sure, but it’s up from 40 in 2019. Between 2015 and 2018, the share was fewer than 18 in 10,000 postings each year.

Pre-pandemic, companies offered condensed schedules largely to attract and retain talent that prized flexibility. In the current climate, a shorter workweek is one way for companies to cut costs without resorting to layoffs.

Source: Quartz

Finally…

Sue spammers as a service

Startups are in the business of turning tough human work into simple products. We all get spammed every day. Spam is unwanted; in some cases meant to cause harm. These companies should be sued. But I am sure, not a single person has the time to sue them. Now, a UK based startup – DoNotPay – has launched a service that will automatically unsubscribe you from Spam while at the same time going after the spammers. The company bills itself to be the world’s first robot lawyer.

If you use a mainstream email provider, it likely catches most of the obviously useless and potentially malicious spam you receive, like scammy prescription drug offers and unsolicited sex tips. But when it comes to the endless promo emails from retailers and newsletters you don’t remember signing up for, you’re mostly on your own. Now a new tool from DoNotPay, a suite of consumer advocacy services, offers a lifeline that will make it easier to unsubscribe from email lists in a privacy-conscious way. It’ll also try to earn you some cash along the way.

Source: Wired

Signing off…

Categories
Learning by Proxy

H1B – Language – E-Commerce | Learning by Proxy

Every Saturday, I publish this series called ‘Learning by Proxy’. It is a capsule of some of the stuff that I found interesting over the week along with some context to it. I hope you enjoy it.

Follow Up

Actions speak louder than words

The Indian government as well as the Chinese government as talking down the dispute. But…

The fresh build-up includes the new Apache attack helicopter which are “tank killers” with their Hellfire air-to-ground missiles and rockets, and Chinook heavy-lift choppers, capable of transporting howitzers and troops to forward high-altitude areas, being deployed in Ladakh. 

Source: Times of India

Politics

Penny less

The Indian government has been having as difficult a time as the people. The draconian lockdown destroyed livelihoods but at the same time, it also destroyed tax income. With a slowing global economy and cratering oil prices, the government increased taxes on petrol and diesel to ensure that not all was lost. In late April, out of Rs. 70, Rs 50 was going to the government as taxes. The oil prices have since rebounded, but taxes have not been reduced. This can result is the inflation of food products. For the first time in India, Diesel is more expensive than Petrol!

The 18th daily increase in rates since oil companies on June 7 restarted revising prices in line with costs after ending an 82-day hiatus in rate revision, has taken diesel prices to fresh highs. In 18 days, diesel price has gone up by Rs. 10.49 per litre. Petrol price had risen in the past 17 days by Rs. 8.5 a litre.

Source: Indian Express

Canadian Bliss

After having the Supreme Court throw the Executive Order, to force dreamers out, into the garbage bin, Donald Trump can celebrate a victory. He issued an order banning the issues of 4 classes of visas to the US including the often used H1B for bringing high calibre talent to work for US companies. While this makes it hard for many immigrants especially those working offshore assignments; it will probably accelerate investments in Canadian headquarters for many tech companies. Canada is hell-bent on wooing talent. One nation’s loss is another’s gain. 

The US administration on Tuesday said it was extending the 60-day ban on immigration and non-immigrant worker visas till the end of 2020. Popular work visas including the much-coveted H-1B and H-2B, and certain categories of H-4, J, and L visas shall also remain suspended until December 31, the White House said in a press note.

Source: Indian Express

Economics

Money Money Money

Stock markets have evolved a great deal over the last century and while there is a retail (individual) participation, it represents a small proportion of the trading. As of 2016, 5.5% represented the retail participation in forex markets. While the number may be higher in stock markets, it would not be exponentially so. As of June, 50% of the trades in Indonesia were retail traders. Robinhood in the US and Zerodha in India have also seen exponential growth. This also explains why markets are behaving like they are high on coke, seemingly divorced from economic reality. Markets are essentially replacing casinos! It does not end well.

When a market maker buys retail orders from a broker—called payment for order flow—it most likely handles those trades internally. As trades flow in from brokerage apps, corporate clients, and institutional traders, those orders are offset against each other. The market maker fills the orders at the best price that would have been available on an exchange and then, if all goes well, pockets the spread. It sends some of the profit to the broker.

Robinhood, for example, was paid about $45 million in March, more than twice what it got in January, for selling customer orders to professional trading companies like Citadel Securities, a sister firm to the hedge fund Citadel, and Virtu.

Source: Quartz

Space

There is huge potential for space business, it should be opened up for private investment and made easier. Having said that when something is highly regulated, almost to a fault and is loosened incredibly, you wonder if there are vested interests. Reliance has been infused with monies equivalent to India’s (actual) stimulus package. They are in the business of the Internet. Now, all assets of ISRO, satellites et al have been made available for private exploitation ostensibly to level the playing field. 

Space is expensive and it is never going to be a level playing field.

We will allow private players to benefit from Isro’s assets and give them a level-playing field to boost India’s space sector further,” she had said. Javadekar, while likening the reform to reforms brought in the power sector during the time of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. 

Source: Times of India


Business

Language Barrier

In 2012, a thesis about India being the next China was written by some VC in America. On the back of this assumption, Billions were poured into the country. The American VCs did not know India but neither did Indian founders. 13% of India speaks English. Can you think of ONE successful consumer startup IPO in India over the past 10 years?

It took Flipkart 13 years to realise this. I suppose it is also driven by the fact that the only people that shop on Flipkart live in Tier-II cities and lower. I don’t know anyone in my circle you shops on Flipkart.

In a bid to expand its reach in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, e-commerce giant Flipkart, on Wednesday (June 24), announced that it has launched three new local languages onto its platform, which includes Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, besides Hindi and English.

Source: Inc42

E-Commerce Tentpole

One of the main tentpoles for the Facebook investment into Reliance was to leverage WhatsApp to dominate a whole bunch of industries. The lowest hanging fruit being e-commerce. This was further proved when Jio launched Jio Mart just days after the Facebook investment was closed – during the lockdown. If you are targeting grocery, warehousing and turn around time are key. What if you own all the major retail assets in the country? 

Reliance is making a bid to buy a majority stake in Future Group. This when Amazon has itself invested in the company. I don’t even know how this deal is even possible?!!

Note that Reliance is already India’s largest offline retailer, ending FY2020 with 28.7 million square feet of area operated. This includes the space of Jio stores. RIL’s large offline presence will get a meaningful boost with a deal with Future Group. At the end of December quarter, Future Retail had a retail area of 16.1 million square feet, whereas the measure for Future Lifestyle stood at 7.5 million square feet.

Source: LiveMint

Let the games begin – at CCI.


Technology / Science

Absorbing spit

The only people who spent a lot of time researching face masks before the pandemic were bank robbers. That has taken an about-turn since the pandemic started. Now interesting concepts are emerging. Different ways in which the face mask can be made more efficient. Concepts include:

Israeli startup Sonovia created tech—derived from research done at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University aimed at reducing disease spread in hospitals—that uses ultrasonic waves to mechanically insert nanoparticles of zinc oxide into textiles, including masks. The particles give off ions that the company says interact with the protein envelope surrounding the virus, deactivating it.

Source: Wired

Click the link, there are several other ideas in there. 

Intelligence but Artificial

If any of you have ever been subjected to a reCaptcha you would know how stupid AI can be. Countries, cops and military have been using facial recognition for a few years now. They have also been pushing the envelope of what the technology can do and the accuracy with which it can identify someone. But is it yet at a level where it can identify to convict/evidence? Image Recognition was used to convict in the USA only to later realise it made a mistake!

In January, Detroit police arrested and charged 42-year-old Robert Williams with stealing $4,000 in watches from a retail store 15 months earlier. Taken away in handcuffs in front of his two children, Williams was sent to an interrogation room where police presented him with their evidence: Facial-recognition software matched his driver’s license photo with surveillance footage from the night of the crime.

[…]

Williams spent the next 30 hours in custody before he was released on bail. With seemingly no other evidence of Williams’ involvement, police eventually dropped the charges. On Wednesday, Williams joined with the ACLU of Michigan to file a complaint against the Detroit Police Department, demanding they stop using the software in investigations.

Source: Wired

Misc

There was a huge furore about the Tabhligi Jamat and their congregation in March. The number of cases was a 4 digit numbers back then. Now, when we are adding 5 digit numbers every day. This!

Are we communal or are we communal?

Signing off…

Categories
Learning by Proxy

Tax – Real Estate – Water | Learning by Proxy

Every Saturday, I publish this series called ‘Learning by Proxy’. It is a capsule of some of the stuff that I found interesting over the week along with some context to it. I hope you enjoy it.

Follow Up

Indian and China have been having a lot of heated exchanges in Ladakh. This week it escalated and resulted in India losing 20 soldiers including a Commanding Officer.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh Tuesday reviewed the current operational situation in Eastern Ladakh, following Monday’s violent faceoff on the LAC, along with the Chief of Defence Staff and the three Service Chiefs. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was also present during the meeting.

Source: Indian Express

One name is conspicuously missing, don’t you think? Modi has been AWOL.

Also

The Indian army said that both sides suffered casualties, but there has been no word on numbers from China yet.

Tuesday’s battle was reportedly fought with rocks and clubs. However, no shots were fired.

The Indian army said a number of its troops “were critically injured in the line of duty”.

Source: BBC

Rocks and Wooden Clubs? No Shots fired? What the hell is going on?

China has taken the Galwan Valley and now their Foreign minister is like – Go on. Nothing to see here. Everything is resolved.


Politics

LGBTQ

Law is always very political and the appointment of supreme court justices is the greatest power wielded by politics over law. Trump got to appoint two Supreme Court justices and that was expected to swing the Supreme Court towards the far right. Imagine the surprise then, when the court declared that employment could not be taken away if a person was LGBTQ. The final vote came down the interpretation of the term ‘sex’ in a 1964 act. Whether it meant only man and woman or all sexual orientations. Neil Gorsuch who was the first appointments by Trump wrote out the order.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday outlawing anti-LGBTQ employment discrimination is a triumph for both the country and the court. It is a victory for the country because, in one fell swoop, the court granted vital protections to LGBTQ people in every state, making the United States a fairer, freer place.

Source: Quartz

Shooting yourself in the foot

The so-called stimulus package is an attempt by the Modi government to roll out the red carpet to investors to choose India. At the same time, the abysmal state of the government is forcing the tax officials to look at any vestige from which revenue can materialise. The Central GST collection during the lockdown fell from Rs. 47,000 Crores same period last year to a shade below Rs. 6000 Crores this year. An 87% per cent drop. The IT Department slapped Tiger Global with a tax bill of Rs. 14,500 Crores. Flipkart would not be Flipkart without Tiger Global. Antagonising them despite a Double Tax treaty with Mauritius is not a great move.

Earlier this week, news reports said Tiger Global may take India’s quasi-judicial body, Authority of Advance Ruling (AAR), to court over its claim that the investor has outstanding tax dues on its sale of shares in e-commerce major Flipkart in 2018.

Prima facie, experts, believe Tiger Global is protected against the payment under the India-Mauritius Double Tax Avoidance Agreement (DTAA), which prevents investors from being taxed twice on the same income in both countries.

Source: Quartz

Economics

Tipping Energy

Coal has been on its way down for a few years. In the US, gas-powered power plants have proved to be a much more viable source of energy than coal. This combined with the falling costs of renewable energy has made it harder for coal mines to continue to operate. Trump had said he will bring these coal jobs back. No one can stop the steady march of better economics, especially in a capitalistic system. This is not about the environment, it’s about profits.

The Texas-based utility that owns the Maryland plant just announced it will shut down Dickerson’s three power units after 60 years of operation, citing the high cost of operation. Like dozens of other coal plants across the country, Dickerson is a casualty of coal’s fast-moving demise. The industry has been squeezed between cheaper natural gas and expanding use of renewable energy for several years, but now the Covid-19-driven recession has jammed a stake through its economic heart.

Source: Wired

Stimulus – Togo Style

All of the big nations have been busy announcing large stimulus programs to get their economies back on their feet. To date, Germany has been one of the few that has put its money right in the hands of the workers who have lost their jobs or stand to lose their jobs. Togo is going a step further and putting money in the Novissi (digital wallet) accounts of informal workers!

For its part, Togo has looked to solve that problem with Novissi, a digital cash transfer program that sends funds to citizens through mobile money. Togo’s President Faure Gnassingbé has said the scheme targets informal workers whose incomes were “disrupted” by lockdowns. As of mid-April, over 1.1 million Togolese citizens—13% of the population—had registered for Novissi with around 450,000 people (65% of which were women) proving eligible beneficiaries and receiving up to 35% of the minimum wage.

Source: Quartz

Business

Flying Low

The airline industry has always been out with a begging bowl. In good times and in bad. As Richard Branson famously put it – If you want to be a Millionaire make a Billion dollars and start an airline. Almost every major western airline has been bailed out by the government and in some of them, the governments hold massive stakes. Interestingly, low-cost budget airlines in Europe seem to be in better stead despite not having needed a bail-out.

Ryanair and Wizz stocks are better bets right now than Air France-KLM and Lufthansa, according to Morgan Stanley. That’s because the flag carriers rely more heavily on business travel and long-haul routes that will likely to be slower to bounce back. They will also have a lot of work to do to repay the money they’ve borrowed from taxpayers. (Norwegian Air, a discount carrier for long-haul flights that got a $271 million loan from the Norwegian government, has fallen more than 90% in the stock market this year.)

Source: Quartz

Real Estate

I had written about the reckoning that real estate will soon be faced with. The increasing move towards ‘work from home’ and the closure of malls causing an upsurge in OTT was bound to hit commercial real estate. Malls thrive because of the footfalls multiplexes drive to the malls. Multiplexes have been closed and have no clear opening date. Retailers refused to open their stores unless malls waived rent. An open mall with stores closed does not make for good business. DLF blinked.

Under the new proposal, DLF Shopping Malls is offering rental partners a 100% waiver on MG rent for the entire lockdown period till June 15. Post this, a 75% off on MG rent is offered till June 30, sources said. DLF has also proposed a 50%, 24% and 10% waiver on MG rent for July-September 2020, October-December 2020 and January-March 2021, respectively, they added.

Source: Financial Express

To add insult to injury, CavinKare one of the large FMCG companies based in the south known for brands such as Chic and Nyle decided to pull the shutters on its HQ. Everyone except factory employees can work from home!

“We have shut down our corporate office and closed all four branches. We see no need for it. We have called for bids from tenants for the 40,000sqft office,” Ranganathan said. Additionally, the four branches have also been shut. “Only factories and R&D centres will have employees come in and work,” he said. Nearly 300 people worked out of the corporate office, while the company has a staff strength of 1,900. 

While most companies have announced aggressive WFH models in a bid to save on costs and stop the spread of the Covid pandemic, Cavinkare’s Ranganathan said he has chosen it for productivity reasons. “It is more from a productivity standpoint. We have seen a 30% increase in productivity in the nearly 100 days of lockdown,” he said.

Source: Times Of India

Technology / Science

The Price of Water

In space water is an especially valuable resource, but not for the reasons that you think. Yes, water is important for humans to survive. Also, in space, the only way to create thrust is by losing mass. Water = Mass. When you use fuel in space to propel, you are essentially ejecting mass to create force (thrust) towards the opposite direction. It costs about USD 18,500 to put one Kg in space. Not the most economical way to put fuel in space. Alternatively, you can mine the water on the Moon and use it as fuel. Now, NASA is going to determine the price for it.

That’s why Bridenstine’s statement is so important: If NASA follows through by saying we’ll pay $X for propellant delivered to location Y, that could give hypothetical lunar mining entrepreneurs the market they need to get off the ground and encourage private propellant buyers to make their own plans to use these resources. (One technological wrinkle will be designing spacecraft for regular refuelling.)

Source: Quartz

Retweet no more

Recently Twitter has grown a spine. This has meant that the company is beginning to cut back on all kinds of misinformation. How many times have you retweeted an article just after looking at its headline without even bothering to read it? They have started tracking that!

Twitter seemingly expanded the amount of data it collects from users to include the links in tweets that were opened, the tweet that included the links, and when it was opened. Zucker-Scharff noted that the link-tracking appears to have begun last month; he said the file containing the history of links on which he had clicked did not appear the last time he examined Twitter’s code in 2018.

Put together, this does much more than flag if a user is sharing something they haven’t read. It could also identify them. For example, if law enforcement has anonymized browser data on several users, officials could use timestamps to identify the person, matching the anonymous data with the Twitter timestamps.

Source: Wired

Spying with Lightbulbs

Researchers have found a way to listen to conversations taking place by watching the vibrations on a lightbulb! So stop using bulbs. LED all the way.

Researchers from Israeli’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Weizmann Institute of Science today revealed a new technique for long-distance eavesdropping they call “lamphone.” They say it allows anyone with a laptop and less than a thousand dollars of equipment—just a telescope and a $400 electro-optical sensor—to listen in on any sounds in a room that’s hundreds of feet away in real-time, simply by observing the minuscule vibrations those sounds create on the glass surface of a light bulb inside. By measuring the tiny changes in light output from the bulb that those vibrations cause, the researchers show that a spy can pick up sound clearly enough to discern the contents of conversations or even recognize a piece of music.

Source: Wired

Misc

Have you ever watched a Chess match? I am guessing not.

Hence it would come as a great surprise that Twitch, a service that streams video games is getting hooked to Chess. All thanks to Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. I was watching a short video included in the news piece and its amazing.

Signing off…

Categories
Learning by Proxy

America – Testing – Space | Learning by Proxy

Every Saturday, I publish this series called ‘Learning by Proxy’. It is a capsule of some of the stuff that I found interesting over the week along with some context to it. I hope you enjoy it.

When I started on the suggestion of a friend, I did not know how it would play out. This is the 10th edition already! I know some of you like it. Do share if you do.

Follow Up

China has already crossed into Indian territory and by the looks of it, the de-escalation suggested is because their goals have been met. They took a bit of the salami slice they wanted to. Read this piece on the Chinese strategy from Hindustan Times. 


Politics

Mr. President

Americans have a way of doing things that few others can.

The death of George Floyd, juxtaposed on the Pandemic where a disproportionately larger number of black people have died was like putting salt on an open wound. To make matters worse, this was not a stray incident, Ahmed Aubrey a young boy was shot in a residential area by while men just a few weeks back. The anger coalesced and spilt onto the street. 72 cities in America protested and many of them burned. The president instead of soothing the pain was searching for cayenne pepper.

If anti-fascists are terrorists, then does America represent the opposite?

The protests even reached the gates of the white house. And the brave president hid in the bunker!

US President Donald Trump was rushed to a White House bunker after hundreds of protesters gathered outside the White House, with some of them resorting to stone-pelting. The incident, according to the Associated Press, happened on Friday night as protests against George Floyd’s death spread to several cities. The AP report said Trump spent nearly an hour in the bunker, which was designed for use in emergencies like terrorist attacks.

Source: Indian Express

And then he threatened to unleash the military on his people.

Declaring himself “your president of law and order,” President Donald Trump vowed Monday to return order to American streets using the military if widespread violence isn’t quelled, even as peaceful protesters just outside the White House gates were dispersed with tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets.

Source: CNN

Reminds you of Tiananmen Square? Maybe all the hate directed at China is just love in disguise! You see we often do the worst things that we can to those we love the most.

The last time that social and economic inequality was rising, new political ideas were emerging, economic mismanagement and environmental factors led to agricultural failure, unmanageable national debt, and political mismanagement were rife; it was January 1793 and King Louis XVI was executed by the guillotine at Place de la Revolution in Paris. 

Revolutions tend to start in this climate.

G7 or G10 or G11

In the first post which I had written in this series, I had mentioned the oil crisis of 1973 which had brought the USA to its knees when the Saudi’s refused to sell them oil. This oil crisis led to an informal meeting of Western Finance Minister which resulted in the creation of the Group of Seven – G7. Seven developed countries for geopolitical purposes met each year to plan how to carve up the world, each year. The world has changed a lot in the last 50 years. Trump wanted the composition of this group to change. Perhaps rightly so.

“I don’t feel that… it properly represents what’s going on in the world. It’s a very outdated group of countries,” Mr Trump said on Saturday.

The G7 group, which the US hosts this year, includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the UK.

The president said Russia, South Korea, Australia, and India should be invited.

Source: BBC

Economics

Transparency

Closer home we have the PM Cares Fund. An opaque account that has been taking in Crores from every organisation that can afford to curry favours. At the same end of the Spectrum are US and UK who have been putting the country under greater debt and distributing the money to keep the shareholders rich. There is a growing call for transparency and the call to know who were these companies that were supported by the government.

While it’s not naming recipients, the UK-owned development bank said it will, sometime in the near future, provide information about the amount of emergency funding each lender has made available to help small businesses weather the coronavirus disruption.[…]

In the meantime, a firestorm is brewing in the US. More than $500 billion has been shovelled out through the government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that provides forgivable loans to smaller enterprises. Controversy erupted when it emerged that large, publicly traded companies like Shake Shack had accessed the borrowing (the burger chain and others have since returned the money).

Source: Quartz

Flattening the Curve

In India, the lockdown has devastated several businesses especially the small ones. In addition to this, the stimulus announced has had little or no support for the small businesses. Now that the lockdown is being relaxed, India is having a ‘Hold my Beer’ moment. The number of daily cases has surged upwards from 4000 per day to close to 10,000 per day. The government had the entire population locked up for 8 weeks and did nothing to ramp up testing! And even now very little is being done. 

The city tested between 4,000 and 4,200 daily, even as the number of positive cases detected rose steadily. Mumbai has the capacity to carry out about 10,000 tests every day.

The city’s stagnant testing numbers were in sharp contrast to the daily testing figures for Maharashtra as a whole, which saw a 100 per cent jump over the same period — from 7,237 tests on May 1 to 14,504 tests on May 31.

Source: Indian Express
Source: @20ncounting [twitter]

Indian has the unique distinction of ending the lockdown as the cases began to surge.

As Rajiv Bajaj aptly said – “We seem to have flattened the wrong curve – The GDP Curve”

Business

Space

The US and USSR embarked on their respective space programs in the 1960s out of fear of one another. Once the fear died, so did the space programs. None of it has been for the want of Investment. 

The USA retired its Space Shuttle Program which had outlasted its expiry date by over a decade. In 2010, under the Nasa Authorisation Act, the Space Launch System (SLS) contract was awarded to ULA backed by Boeing. They have since taken in USD 18.6 Billion and delivered zero flights. SpaceX, the new kid in town has posed a credible threat to Boeing and this week managed to put a man in space for the first time.

With privately-led spaceflight, NASA will once again be able to send astronauts to low-earth orbit, expanding its scientific research and preparations for missions to the Moon or Mars. Today’s launch is also a crucial step toward a new orbital economy, which SpaceX founder Elon Musk believes will have the same impact as the internet.

Source: Quartz

Board Games

Charles Darrow is improperly credited for the creation of Monopoly. It was created by Elizabeth Magie, who in 1903 created the game in Washington DC. Monopolists were big in those days and Elizabeth, a stenographer would spend her nights trying to create this game, to create a world where anybody could be one. The lockdown has given board games a second life. Families can play them together. Most of them last for some time and they are very engaging. 

When most people hear “board games” they think games like Monopoly, Clue, and Guess Who?—household names that many of us played as children. The biggest companies like Hasbro, which makes Monopoly, would consider anything less than a million copies sold as a failure, says Englestein.

But hobbyist tabletop games are a different breed. Some of them, like Settlers of Catan or Pandemic, are fairly popular. But there are hundreds and thousands of smaller games that most people will never hear of. In this industry, selling 20,000 units is considered a success, says Englestein. While a single large mainstream gaming company may bring in $10 billion in annual revenue, the entire hobbyist industry could generate just $1.5 billion.

Source: Quartz

Technology / Science

Perception

When a professional tennis player delivers a service, the ball goes from one end of the court to the in about 200 milliseconds. The player at the opposite end of the court has already decided what shot he/she is going to play based on the way the ball is thrown up. Professional players can predict where the ball will go based on the shape of the body as the opponent begins to serve. 

Turns out we can hear hand movement even we don’t see it. So would hand movement have a role to play in communication? Can you predict what is about to be said?

There’s a strong chance that your conversation partner’s movements will leave an acoustic signature that you may be able to perceive, says Wim Pouw, a cognitive scientist at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and the author of a new study on this topic recently published in the journal PNAS.

Source: Quartz

Misc

The American Supreme Court has offered an incredible amount of protection to Cops who have killed citizens. Here is an incredible article from Reuters on the subject. Worth a read!

The Cyclone that landed in Mumbai caused rains in Patna. The winds were strong and took it all the way across, saving Mumbai from prolonged showers which we know the city cannot take. 

Signing off…