The logos of Hyundai and Renault are fundamentally and absolutely uninspiring, and need to be changed [COMPACTIDEA]

This thought is originally from Jan'16.

The issue with logos of Hyundai and Renault is that these aren't artistic or tasteful. These very "ordinary", school-grade logos might have been fine for these two companies when they were small, but today these low-class logos are actually hurting these companies and becoming an impediment to the companies acquiring a premium image in the hearts and minds of the public. Further, these logos are so immature that they can't ever "grow" into premium logos in your mind.

In contrast, look at logos of Alfa Romeo, Lister Cars, or BMW's M. So artistic, elegant, tasteful, and you feel that they're premium even without knowing about the brand.

Bizarre voting seen for FIFA 2026 bids - no logical explanations visible [COMPACTIDEA]

While I had expected and predicted that the United 2026 bid would win, I hadn't expected the following weird votes.

• America was able to successfully milk votes from many of the nations it has destroyed or helped to destroy - Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. Was this because there are puppets here or was it because of covert threats?
• Why does American Samoa get to vote when it is among the "unincorporated territories of the United States". US territory voting for US?
• Several African nations didn't vote for their fellow African brother Morocco - Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc. Was this out of fear of Trump, or maybe some sort of intra-continent rivalry?
• Several Muslim nations didn't vote for their fellow Islamic brother Morocco - Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, UAE, etc. Was this out of fear of Trump or religious differences?
• Taiwan ["Chinese Taipei"] voted for Morocco? It's supposed to be a vassal of America!
• China voted for Morocco, yet Hong Kong and Macau [both of which weirdly get to vote separately] voted for America and Morocco, respectively??
• Russia for America???
• Venezuela has been literally destroyed by America, and yet they voted for America???? Are these people fools?

Quick thoughts on Kim Jong-un's air travel to Singapore [RAWDUMP]

• Good that he flew on an Air China plane. US won't dare to shoot down a Chinese plane.
• Especially not the one that carries the Chinese Premier or Xi Jinping himself.
• Also good that he also flew two of North Korea's own Ilyushin planes [Il-62M and Il-76] to Singapore. Creates uncertainty about in which one he might be [raises safety], and also increases his prestige.
• Use of prestigious Chinese plane for Kim's flight - in particular the one that the Chinese Premier or Xi Jinping himself uses - raises rather than reduces Kim's prestige.
• Arrival of multiple planes from both China and North Korea decently balances the power that's projected by the arrival of American planes.
• Presence of Chinese aircraft sends a clear message to US and to the world that China is very much involved and present in this summit.
• Kim Jong-un must never give up his nuclear weapons else will be certainly meet the fate of Saddam and Gaddafi, or maybe worse. He must understand, remember, and continually remind himself that Americans and some of their so-called "allies" are among the worst scum our planet has. They're bloodthirsty monsters without souls who can keep killing and destroying endlessly to grab resources and power.
• Russia too should've sent one or two aircraft in support of Kim Jong-un, and to show what West calls "solidarity". The presence of massive Russian Il-96 and Il-76 airplanes would've raised the prestige of both North Korea and Russia, and would've made America look weaker and more isolated. Or maybe Russian and Chinese fighter jets could've escorted the Air China aircraft - again, this would've sent a clear message.

Why doesn't Flipkart sell Domino's pizzas, movie tickets, bicycles, bikes, mopeds, and even flight tickets, hotel rooms and train reservations?

The broader point here is that Flipkart has that immense "footfall" every seller craves for. And there are some product categories that seem like Flipkart can quickly and easily add these to its online store to further monetize this footfall. In particular, products that are more "fixed/standard" and whose prices are more or less constant [like pizzas or garlic bread or movie tickets] are even easier for Flipkart to sell than, say, dynamically-priced airline tickets [whose prices are fetched in real-time from global reservation systems]. It should be quite easy for Flipkart to collaborate with Domino's or Pizza Hut [or both? Or is collaborating with only one more profitable?] to create a sort of dedicated "store-within-a-store" where Flipkart users can quickly and seamlessly order food stuff for home delivery or manual pickup. It should even be possible to "gift" a pizza to someone sitting anywhere in India where this service is available. The possibilities are endless.

Many of Japan's high-tech industries and companies are in ill health - so they're up for grabs by China and China should quickly milk these [COMPACTIDEA]

It's no secret that developing an end-to-end semiconductor industry at home is China's dream. US won't allow China to buy any US high-tech firm. Europe too is closing its doors. Japan seems like it's still up for grabs. China should acquire as many Japanese microprocessor firms as possible before anti-China laws get enacted [at the behest of America]. Many of the major Japanese firms with high-end technology are in a poor financial state currently, and in great need of Chinese money. Both sides are needy. No reason a marriage shouldn't take place.

Reliance Jio should entirely kill its current shitty lineup of LYF smartphones and resell popular phones of top Chinese and even Korean makers under its own brand [COMPACTIDEA]

Current phones by Reliance's LYF are pure shit. Nothing less. For INR 20K they give you pure horse-shit. Same for INR 10K or 7K or any other price point. At these prices, Chinese smartphone sellers - Huawei/Honor, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Gionee and even Lenovo and Moto/Motorola - simply create magic. Phones such as Redmi Note 5, Redmi Note 5 Pro, Redmi 5, Honor 9 Lite, Honor 7X, Redmi Note 4, Redmi Y1 Lite, Redmi 5A, Mi A1, etc., are pure gold [relatively speaking, at their respective price points, compared to phones from other manufacturers at similar price points], with which no current LYF phone can hope to compete. It's better to kill the entire current lineup of LYF phones. Instead, Reliance should resell popular Chinese phones via its own online and offline distribution channels. Even select Korean phones - from LG and Samsung - offer good value for money and should be resold by Reliance, either as standalone handsets or bundled with long-term Jio subscriptions.

Us Indians trust State Bank of India so much! [COMPACTIDEA]

As I wrote before, many Indians - including me to some-though-diminishing extent - don't trust the name "Reliance" and consider it a "chor". So reading the news story below about the launch of Jio Payments Bank, I was a bit less than confident about the trustworthiness of this "bank" until I noticed the four magical words which changed my feelings completely - State Bank of India. Like LIC, Indians blindly trust SBI. And why not, SBI has earned the trust of Indian public.

Fear not our very own Mukesh Ambani - instead, fear these "गोरी चमड़ी वाले" Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Larry Page, etc.

Distrusting, fearing and criticizing Reliance Industries - and more generally the "Reliance" name - and the Ambani brothers is one of the favorite topics of discussion for many Indian people. I used to be somewhat in this camp till sometime ago. Not anymore, after I saw how America's Walmart [and now even Amazon itself] is desperate to gobble up India's Flipkart. Not good at all. These evil  White-skinned Americans will buy everything good we have, and then extort us and milk our wealth and control us and we might become slaves once again before we realize what's going on. Better be Ambani's slaves than slaves of the Americans or the British. That's the logic behind my changed feelings. Ambani's empire will actually help to scare away giant global/multinational corporations intent on owning the Indian "trophy". We need to stop these evil companies from controlling us - physically, mentally/psychologically, and financially. More power to Indian conglomerates and to Indian entrepreneurs. We need to buy Indian-grown and Indian-designed products, manufactured by Indian workers in Indian-owned factories and made using Indian raw materials, and sold to us by Indian-owned and Indian-domiciled companies run by Indians. We must not let evil Westerners run the show here. Not after centuries of occupation, brazen loot and slavery, which has resulted in national humiliation, and a national loss of dignity and confidence that lasts in Indians even to this day.

You will almost have tears in your eyes thinking about the condition of the man holding the stick in the photo below. This is what the British did to us. Our History textbooks need to be filled with such photos. The evil misdeeds of the British to us and our nation must not be forgotten. Fire must be lit in the heart of every Indian child, so that we all work to restore out national honor.

For business reasons as well as for geopolitical good of mankind, major smartphone sellers should increasingly incorporate MediaTek Helio and HiSilicon Kirin mobile processors

The underlying assumption here is that for the same or similar performance/specifications, a MediaTek Helio or a HiSilicon Kirin or a Spreadtrum / Unisoc [and though  less likely, maybe even a Samsung Exynos] mobile microprocessor can be had for a meaningfully lower amount of money compared to a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip [sort of like AMD's chips are so much cheaper than Intel's]. It's vital that this world be de-americanized as fast as possible. A de-americanized world will be free from the perpetual wars waged every day by America, and will be a place where killer bombs and missiles don't keep falling from the skies on the bodies of innocent men, women and children. A meaningful step in this direction can be if the use of American products/services is reduced to as low an amount as possible [at any given time], so that whatever money the rest of the world spends goes to other nations rather than to the United States. Samsung [with Exynos] and Huawei [with Kirin] are doing a good job in this regard by using their own chips in many [though not all] of their smartphones, rather than using US-designed Qualcomm chips. But much more still needs to be done. More smartphone companies need to start using non-Snapdragon microprocessors in their phones. Sony, Gionee, Asus and Oppo did launch a few phones with the very good Helio chips, but this shift to HiSilicon and MediaTek [and maybe Exynos too, assuming Samsung sells it to others and sell it at low prices] needs to be accelerated for the better of mankind. Firms such as Sony, LG, BlackBerry, Lenovo, HTC, Moto/Motorola, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, ZTE, Nokia, Asus, Meizu, Gionee, and others must increase the proportion of phones that use these "alternative" chips to break the business of Qualcomm and thus America. And this isn't only political or geopolitical - it's also great for business. Money saved on the SoC can be used to boost either profits or marketing or the other specifications/features of the devices, thus making them more attractive. It's an overall win for the world, and frankly the Chinese government needs to gently and quietly nudge its huge smartphone companies to do this quickly [and frankly it's a shame that most of the major phones coming from China's top smartphone companies - one example being Xiaomi's Redmi Note 5 Pro - continue to use American processors rather than the equally-capable or maybe better processors from fellow Chinese brethren].

Made in China seems to be moving in the direction of Made in Japan and Made in Germany [COMPACTIDEA]

It seems like China's homegrown manufacturers are now beginning to produce products that are very good in quality. An industry in which this can be observed rather clearly is smartphones, where Chinese/Taiwanese brands such as Huawei/Honor, Xiaomi/Mi, Vivo, Oppo, OnePlus, Lenovo, ZTE, Gionee, HTC, Meizu, etc., now manufacture and sell phones that are in no way inferior to stuff coming from American, Korean or Japanese brands. In fact, Chinese/Taiwanese brands are actually pushing the innovation envelope. If, as a country, China keeps focusing on customer-centered innovation, cost-control, quality, and after-sales service, the time when Made in China becomes as respected as Made in Japan or Made in Korea isn't far.