Short read: Why are North Korean hackers such good crypto-thieves?
Despite claims of cryptocurrencies being a secure store of value, incidents of crypto thefts keep cropping up. Earlier this year in February, a Dubai based cryptocurrency exchange, ByBit, lost $1.5bn to hackers traced to North Korea. Apparently, this is not the first: “In 2023 North Korean hackers made away with a total of $661m, according […]
Short read: A.I. saved his life by discovering new uses for old drugs
The use cases for AI have spread far and wide across numerous different fields including life saving ones such as pharmaceuticals where AI is helping speed up discovery of new drugs. However, a less celebrated use case has been in ‘drug repurposing’, a field where healthcare practitioners look among existing drugs for treatment of diseases […]
Short read: Wildlife conservation funds biased against smaller species as larger animals take lion’s share: Study
As in the human kingdom, so in the animal kingdom – the most photogenic causes attract the greatest amount of sympathy and funding. Down to Earth says “A 25-year study has uncovered that the majority of global conservation funding is directed towards larger, more ‘charismatic’ species, leaving critically important animals and plants significantly underfunded…. Conducted by […]
Long read: We Are All Confident Idiots
Talking heads on financial media often sound confident about topics involving the inherently unknowable future. But then, the media wouldn’t invite folks who rightly demonstrate ignorance of the future. Not just the media, in general, we all prefer to listen to those who speak confidently. Turns out, confidence is directly proportional to ignorance. This was […]
Long read: Manoj ‘Bharat’ Kumar sang so Sunny Deol could yell—journey of Bollywood patriotism
Those of who grew up in Doordarshan era remember being fed a steady diet of the late Bollywood legend Manoj Kumar’s patriotic movies. In this article, Shekhar Gupta describes the impact this Bollywood star on the decade which, by a comfortable distance, should be deemed to India’s most perilous: the 1962-72 period was characterised by […]
Long read: American Disruption
Several critics of Trump have also admitted the need to reorder the current global trade system from an American perspective. Except the way Trump and his advisors have gone about achieving it i.e, through blanket tariffs is something that the critics believe is akin to shooting oneself in the foot. Ben Thompson who writes an […]
MeritorQ: Minimizing Risk by Focusing on Errors of Commission
Balancing the trade off between errors of commission and errors of omission in stock picking is essential to any investing process. In this newsletter we explain why these two errors are NOT created equal and usually portfolio hit rate is more sensitive to errors of commission. MeritorQ‘s rigorous rules-based screening steps in which we reject […]
Exit the Salaryman, Enter the Entrepreneur
Even as conventional white-collar employment becomes a tricky proposition, entrepreneurial opportunities are proliferating in modern India. For educated Indians, this shift – from a white-collar professional’s mindset to an entrepreneurial mindset – requires considerable attitudinal retooling. Ironically, those Indians who are able to make this shift are succeeding not just as entrepreneurs but also in […]
Short read: From the police to the prime minister: how Adolescence is making Britain face up to toxic masculinity
Whilst the implications of social media on impressionable minds is well documented, things are only getting worse. A new Netflix series shows how influencers on social media are driving teenage boys into toxic masculinity and misogyny. In Britain, this apparently has resulted in several crimes committed by young boys on girls and women. The series […]
Short read: 704 BRO personnel, 575 casual paid labourers killed in last five years, MoD tells Parliament
Anyone who has visited India’s extensive Himalayan borders over the past five years would have witnessed the large-scale road building being undertaking by the aptly named Border Roads Organisation (BRO) in harsh climatic conditions at very high altitudes. What we didn’t know until we read Smruti Deshpande’s piece is the toll that is taking on […]
Short read: Indian mural that spent decades on Norwegian hospital wall sells for record $13.8m
One of the most interesting aspects of a country’s art & literature is that when the country is “discovered” by the world as having merit, its art & literature are then seen in new – more positive – light by the global cognoscenti. MF Hussain’s ‘Gram Yatra’ selling for $14mn in New York last week […]
Long read: China is trying to kneecap Indian manufacturing
Liberation day is here. This time Trump wasn’t bluffing. Tariffs on Chinese imports hit 54%, close to the 60% he promised in his campaigns. Expert implications range from near term inflation to long term growth slowdown or potentially prolonged stagflation in the US. This will inevitably drag global growth down. More alarmingly, the rest of […]
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