Why is Australia literally begging to become yet another Special Administrative Region of China? [COMPACTIDEA]

Australia's behavior these days is hard to understand. It's poking China again and again and again - it just isn't stopping. First with Huawei, then with the whole "origins of coronavirus" thing, then AUKUS, then joining US for Taiwan, and in numerous other ways. What does Australia get out of all this? What's the benefit to ordinary Australians in making an enemy out of China? Tough to understand.

But one thing is more clear now than before - if Australia continues down this path for the next few/many years, the chances of it eventually being absorbed into the PRC as yet another SAR ["Australia Special Administrative Region" - ASAR] start to look non-zero. Does Australia want to become a SAR of China, like Taiwan looks set to become one day ["Taiwan Special Administrative Region" - TSAR]? Does the Australian government want to see future White Australians cleaning toilets of wealthy Chinese families? Does the Australian society want to see Australian women employed as maids and nannies in the homes and offices of affluent Chinese? Does the larger Western world want young Australian females selling themselves to rich Chinese men in bars and clubs?

Hard to understand why Australia is unnecessarily irritating China repeatedly.

MG Motor India's raw August 2021 unit numbers sold might look relatively low, but consider the average per-unit selling price also

It ain't right to just look at the headline 4,315 units sold sales number and think that Kia is selling a lot more, Tata is selling a lot more, Hyundai is selling a lot more, etc. Deeper analysis is needed, taking into account the much higher average per-car-sold price in the case of MG India:

• Hector / Hector Plus= Roughly INR 19 lakh per unit, on average.
  
• Gloster= Roughly INR 39 lakh per unit.
• ZS EV=  Roughly INR 25 lakh per unit.

These are on-road prices.

Average per car= about 21.6 lakh rupees. If you [unscientifically] "extrapolate" the 4,315 units figure to if the average per-unit price had been say 9 lakh rupees [to more properly compare MG to the likes of Hyundai, for example], MG India's unit sales start to look about 10,000 units a month. Of course this is highly unscientific as the growth in unit numbers as price decreases cannot be assumed to be linear, and price elasticity must be taken into account, among other factors.

Still. Point being that MG India's "real sales" when compared properly are much higher, and thus the threat to incumbent Korean, Japanese and Indian carmakers is far higher from this Chinese / British challenger company than what auto pundits might say and the public might feel.

TAGS= MORRIS GARAGES, SAIC, AUTOMOBILE, SUV, ASTOR, CHINA, SHANGHAI, MAHINDRA, MARUTI SUZUKI, CRETA, SELTOS, MATHEMATICS, STATISTICS, NORMALIZE, ECONOMICS

Do we want this type of world order where a single rogue country A can unilaterally prevent countries B and C from doing business with each other [COMPACTIDEA]

 

 

Iranian fuel tanker heading for Syria poses test for US sanctions

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/03/iranian-fuel-tanker-heading-syria-poses-test-us-sanctions

The United States of Sanctions

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-08-24/united-states-sanctions

TAGS= SANCTIONS, AMERICA, HEGEMONY, DOLLAR, SUPERPOWER, UNITED STATES, CRUDE OIL, PETROLEUM, EXTRATERRITORIAL LAWS, GEOPOLITICS, COMPETITION, RUSSIA, CHINA, BELARUS, IRAN, SYRIA, VENEZUELA, NORTH KOREA, PIPELINE

Recently started liking the Mahindra Bolero - underappreciated among urban Indians [COMPACTIDEA]

• If you momentarily forget about the newly-launched, more-chic Bolero Neo [and many or most of the points in this post will also apply to the Neo], then there's no car except Mahindra Bolero which allows an Indian car-buyer to own a large, rugged, spacious [7 seater], powerful car in the INR 9-11 lakh bracket. Everything else that's available is smaller and lighter, with less number of seats, and visibly smaller road presence.
• Yes it isn't as chic as the others, but think about kerb weight - it's 1600+ kg. Bolero gives you more meat than the rivals.
• In a way, the Bolero is like the samosa - old, yummy and reliable, but unnecessarily made to look cheap and downmarket by the urbans.
• A good thing about Bolero is that it isn't as "advanced" as other cars - no irritating touch controls, no fancy chips and software that spies on you, no complicated "features". Simple like the cars of yesterday. With all the essentials.
• A few improvements needed [or at least an optional higher variant with some/all of the below improvements]:
• Less vibration in the cabin.
• Slightly smoother ride.
• More refinement here and there.
• Improvements in ergonomics - like correcting the weird placement of some things in the cabin [rear speakers, power windows buttons, etc.].
• At least a 4-star NCAP rating [engineering improvements needed so that same total weight - hence same cost - provides higher structural safety and also more stability].
• Second front airbag.
• Rear disc brakes.
• Reverse parking camera.
• Rear defogger.
• Option of dual-tone colors.
• Floor carpets.
• Gear-change with less movement of the gear stick.
• Bolero should now be given the Neo's engine, since that's more powerful.
• 5-seater version should be offered in which space on rear seats is much higher, yet usable boot space will not be lesser because two seats will have been removed [plus car cost also might come down somewhat due to this].
• Mahindra might be worried that a too refined and feature-rich Bolero might cannibalize its Thar sales somewhat, especially if someone creates a great modification kit for say 1-1.5 lakh rupees which makes your top-model Bolero look far better than the Thar for a lower total price.
• All said and done, the Bolero is a good car overall and it can be made better without increasing its cost, and these improvements can have additional appeal for the urban folks.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m260Jj_D4eo
• 
  

Ideas for Huawei and China - to acquire microchips for smartphones and for more [COMPACTIDEA]

1. Create a new mobile phone company that places a large order for various microprocessors and other chips used in smartphones - camera sensors, NAND flash memory chips, DRAM modules, camera sensors, etc. Once supplies have been received, the company is acquired by Huawei, along with all its hardware supplies. How tough is this if the Chinese government throws its weight behind?
2. Could Chinese government mandate centralized [special single intermediary buyer] procurement of all smartphone-related chips from all Western / risky sellers, and resell these chips to individual mobile phone makers from this intermediary firm?
3. Could Chinese government secretly or overtly force other phonemakers to share a certain portion of their supplies with Huawei? Or with the Chinese government itself?
4. Bigger batteries and liquid / vapor cooling will somewhat compensate for the higher energy consumption of Huawei's Kirin 710A. Samsung's M21 weighs less despite a big battery - so bigger battery doesn't necessarily mean more weight.
5. Safe overclocking?
6. Use multiple lower-performance processors per phone? Not just multiple cores but multiple processors?
7. Shift some workloads to the Cloud, to reduce local processing requirements? Huawei will have to be clever in this area.
8. Huawei must innovate on power-management techniques. Reduce hardware power usage. Smartly monitor and control power usage of apps. Turn off individual chips in the phone when not in use. And so on. Huawei must become a leader in power-management.
9. Innovations in transistor design, packaging and materials to overcome lithography / EUV limitations.
10. Start to use RISC-V to reduce dependence on ARM. Like mixed-ISA processors with some ARM cores and some RISC-V cores.
11. Cars can easily use microchips that consume more energy {inferior process node}, so all products where battery life, size, weight aren't as crucial as in smartphones are open for disruption by Huawei - cars, home appliances, power backup solutions, TVs, etc.

Tata Sky DTH - my A4 sized cheat sheet for the TV channels that I want to watch [COMPACTIDEA]

I realized that the user interface of both Airtel and Tata Sky DTH boxes are horrible, so I needed to make my own sheet to be able to know where are all the channels that I want to watch. This simple sheet is worth far more than the useless user interfaces in the boxes.

It's sad to see tiny Czech Republic publicly slapping and humiliating mighty Russia

Czechia expelled 18 Russia diplomats over a 2014 incident. Like they suddenly remembered the 2014 incident and had convulsions about it. Russia retaliated by expelling 20 Czech diplomats. Czech responded by expelling dozens of Russian diplomats + staff by May-end unless Russia cancels its order to expel 20 Czech diplomats.

This looks like a trap setup by Czechia, most likely with the American demon backing it. Otherwise why would the Czechs spoil their relations with Russia in such a bitter and public manner? Obviously the Czechs had pre-calculated the Russian response [20 Czechs expelled], and had already pre-calculated that they would respond to Russia's response by expelling dozens of Russian diplomats + staff to match the total Russian number to the total Czech number.

Three things to note here:

1. What bribe / carrot have the Americans given to the Czechs to convince them to make such a move?
2. What bribe / carrot have the Americans given to Slovakia to convince them to expel 3 Russian diplomats in "solidarity" with Czechia, essentially stirring trouble for no reason?
3. This "Czech" move looks like a belated American response to Russia, to the massive Jul'17 expulsion of 755 American diplomats + staff ordered by Putin, to match the Russian and American numbers, essentially setting a precedent for this move by the Czechs.

More than anything else though, it's sad to see Russia being such openly and publicly challenged and humiliated by tiny Czechia and Slovakia. America's dollar-printing machine is the foundation on which all such moves rest, and it's vital that the machine be destroyed.