Wednesday, October 09, 2019

Elon Musk's Giant Blind Spot: Human Beings

There is this no small detail called gravity. It is big, it is fat.



And gravity is physics. And Elon Musk has a degree in physics from U Penn. He must know his physics because he seems to send rockets out into space at will.

But Elon was no biology major, looks like.

There is this funny thing called gravity. The human body needs the earth's gravity. That is why long term human habitation on the moon is a bad idea. Robots? Yes. Human beings? No, no.

In absence of gravity, your eyes might bulge out. Your joints might start getting, well, disjointed. Your bones need gravity to stay bones.

But Elon stays oblivious to the fact. He says everyone who signs up for Mars will get 10 cubic meters of space inside his spaceship, "which is a lot."

And that's just gravity. Radiation will have to be another blog post. Radiation might make those ten cubic meters a microwave experience, which is a lot. Like, too much.

It is not like Elon does not have enough on his plate. There are trillions to be made through robotic asteroid mining. Spices used to be like gold. Gold can become like spices. I want his 10,000 satellites to provide gigabit broadband every point on earth. I like the idea of any point on earth to any other point on earth in 30 minutes. You escape zero gravity before the bones figure it out. Hyperloop is massive. I have an entire real estate tech startup around the Hyperloop concept. Tesla? I want one. Solar tiles on the roof? I want. Super cheap, super boring tunnels? I want them. Although it could get literally boring down there unless the walls of those underground vehicles come alive and are entertainment.

Save earth like this is the only planet we got. There is no other. Plant a trillion trees. Elon should design some drones that will plant those trillion trees. And his satellites should map out the earth to find out every patch of land where trees can be planted. And let's get it done and over with already.

Somebody drop an apple on Elon's head.











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Tuesday, October 08, 2019

The Dubai Magic (1)

Dubai's Remarkable Economic Transformation












Dubai Economy Dubai is an important tourist destination and its port (JebeL Ali) operates at the centre of the exporting trade in the Middle East. With the introduction of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) in 2004, it has allowed Dubai to develop as a global hub for service industries such as IT and finance. ....... Dubai is the second wealthiest emirate in the UAE, after Abu Dhabi which is the capital state. Most tourists believe Dubai’s revenues came primarily from oil but in fact it only used a moderate amount of oil reserves to generate the infrastructure for trade, manufacturing and tourism, in order to build up Dubai's economy. ........

About 95% of Dubai’s Gross Domestic Product is not oil-based. So far oil has accounted for less than one percent of Dubai’s GDP and tourism to produce 20% of the GDP. These figures explain why Dubai has had to become a more dynamic and diversified economy in order to survive the decay of fossil fuels.

......... In the early 1990’s there were only a handful of hotels available for tourists and Dubai never had high oil revenues like Abu Dhabi so something had to change. The Burj Al Project in 1994 (Burj Al Arab Hotel) gave hope to the economy, as a long term strategy, an ambition to become the world’s top tourist destination. ......... Dubai is an international IT hub that serves service industries such as Finance and IT. Dubai Internet City, along with Dubai Media City forms the TECOM (Dubai Technology, Electronic Commerce and Media Free Zone Authority), which is an enclave who houses well-known IT firms such as EMC Corporation, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Oracle Corporation and IBM, and media organisations such as BBC, MBC, CNN, Reuters and Sky News. ...... With an amazing growth rate of 6.1% in 2014, Dubai has again became one of the fastest growing economies in the world. ......

By 2014, Dubai’s largest trading partner was identified to be China followed by India and United States.

......... Based on its air traffic in 2013, Dubai was the 7th most visited countries in the world and it is being expected that Dubai will accommodate more than 15 million visitors by 2016. Dubai has also surfaced as the shopping capital of the Middle East, thanks to its diverse souks and innumerable shopping centres. Dubai is aptly referred to as the ‘City of gold’, as the city houses nearly 250 gold shops. ..........

Dubai has won the bid to host the most awaited Expo 2020, which will give an amazing boost to its economy, and is expected to create over 270,000 jobs.





Here's how Dubai transformed from a fishing village to a global real estate hub The city trails only New York and Shanghai for the number of buildings taller than 150 meters. ........ Dubai’s transformation from a fishing village to a global real estate hub has been nothing short of remarkable. From having the world’s tallest building to man-made islands in the shape of a world map, the U.A.E.’s most populous city has never shied away from ambitious construction projects........ Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, summed up the ambition of his people in a quote: "Dubai will never settle for anything less than first place." .......... Indeed, the city’s economic growth has been nearly unparalleled over the past two decades. Unlike neighboring emirates, Dubai had a modest supply of oil and knew that diversifying their economy would be vital for future success........ In 2002, reforms allowed foreigners to own real estate and that industry boomed overnight. Today, oil accounts for a minuscule 1% of Dubai’s GDP. ........... World’s tallest building – Burj Khalifa ..... World’s tallest hotel – JW Marriott Marquis Hotel....... World’s largest shopping center – Dubai Mall ....... World’s largest indoor theme park – IMG Worlds of Adventure ....... World’s Busiest Airport (International Travelers) – Dubai International Airport ......... World’s longest fully automated metro network – Dubai Metro ...........For a city of only 3.0 million people, Dubai has a remarkable number of skyscrapers. In fact, the city trails only New York and Shanghai for the number of buildings taller than 150m (492ft). ......... during the period of 2007–2014 Dubai essentially kept pace with high-rise development in the United States as a whole. (Dubai’s population is 0.9% the size of the United States.) ...........

In 2009, headlines around the world proclaimed that Dubai’s real estate bubble had finally burst.

........ Going into 2017, there were 11,600 active projects worth over $800 billion. As well, Expo 2020 is expected to add fuel to the twin engines of Dubai’s economy: real estate development and tourism. .......... With the U.A.E. set to further relax foreign ownership roles, the city’s economic prospects remain as sunny as its weather forecast.




































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Monday, October 07, 2019

Dubai's Remarkable Economic Transformation



A post shared by Fazza (@faz3) on




A post shared by Fazza (@faz3) on



There are those who say Dubai is remarkable, but there are many cities like Dubai. I see Dubai in a league all its own. There are those who say Dubai is remarkable, but it is now downhill from here. I see that Dubai's best days are ahead still. It will not happen on its own. The effort will have to be made. But I am optimistic it will be made. Dubai is more than one chic city, beautiful to visit. Dubai can be to Pakistan what Hong Kong has been to China. Even today something like 60% of the FDI that goes into China goes through Hong Kong. Before the number was larger. There are things only governments can do. But once Pakistan can get its act straight on the basics like law and order, and infrastructure, I see Dubai playing an indispensable role in the rapid economic rise of Pakistan. For all its remarkable achievements I see Dubai ready for take-off. Dubai today is like China in 1990. I see that kind of graph ahead for the city. And it is dazzling as it is.

When I say Dubai is ready for take-off, that is not just a statement on Dubai the city, remarkable as it is, and the amazing transformation it has achieved in such a short period of time, but primarily a statement on where the world of technology is going. What will happen in tech in the next 25 years will be at least 100 times bigger than what has happened over the past 25 years. And Dubai is in a very good position to benefit from that. That positioning is a win-win for the world. Dubai will rise further and lift up the world with it.

I consider myself a student of Dubai's amazing transformation. I would like to know in great detail how it came to be.

As I see it, some of the future innovation in tech is going to be pretty capital intensive. And it might make sense for the various Gulf countries to channel their investments through Dubai. Dubai already has a reputation. Silicon Valley by now is many places. Silicon Valley always was an idea in the first place. And in thus channeling not only will Dubai rise to the next level, but it will also help every participating country follow its lead and similarly diversify. Diversification is survival at this point. It is diversify or decline for every country in the region. But in diversifying the region will lift the world. It will lift Africa. It will lift South Asia. It will lift the masses in the Middle East itself.

The Blockchain will do to money what the Internet has done to media. Money will be democratized. Look how easy it is to send messages and share photos and video clips today. The dollar a day people will get similar access to financial services. And places like Dubai that will facilitate all that will harvest rich dividends.

I am personally interested in making some moves. Today I had the good fortune to learn the wonderful people at Noor Almuna approved my loan application. And I am so very thankful. I have given to them in writing, I will give them first preference during phase two and phase three of my company. And I will.

But there is also a bigger picture. My real estate tech startup is going to be the first of several companies.

An entrepreneur like me is an artist who needs three buckets of paint. Human capital, financial capital, and physical capital (also known as technology). Indians powered the rise of Silicon Valley. And right now Dubai beats Silicon Valley on visa issues, although it could do even better. Dubai leads on the two buckets. And the third bucket is derivative. And Dubai is in an excellent geographic location. You have large masses in South Asia, and Africa nearby. Those are the next two Chinas.

I am itching to make moves in Dubai.


Dubai Economy
Here's how Dubai transformed from a fishing village to a global real estate hub
Dubai's the Very Model of a Modern Mideast Economy Saudi Arabia is trying to reduce its dependence on oil. A neighbor has already done it.
Dubai Economic Report 2018
How Dubai Became Dubai
Dubai – the future business capital of the world?





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Sunday, October 06, 2019

AI And Fire, I.E. Larry Ellison On Fire

Earlier in the afternoon, Ellison had made the point that the same regulators who are scrutinizing autonomous driving would likely have felt the same way about the invention of fire—too dangerous. Is AI dangerous? “Probably,” Ellison said with a grin. “More dangerous than fire.”

-- Larry Ellison







Oracle’s Larry Ellison on Uber, Tesla, Autonomous Driving, and More







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Sunday, September 29, 2019

Elon Musk's Starship Announcement












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Monday, September 23, 2019

Peter Diamandis: Spatial Web, Web 3.0

The Four Converging Technologies Giving Rise to the Spatial Web boundaries between the digital and physical are beginning to fade....... Web 3.0, or the Spatial Web ...... version 1.0, static documents and read-only interactions limited the internet to one-way exchanges. Web 2.0 provided quite an upgrade, introducing multimedia content, interactive web pages, and participatory social media. ..... mediated by two-dimensional screens. .............

the rise of Web 3.0, riding the convergence of high-bandwidth 5G connectivity, rapidly evolving AR eyewear, an emerging trillion-sensor economy, and powerful artificial intelligence.

....... freeing our eyes from the tyranny of the screen ....... convergence of AR, AI, sensors, and blockchain ...... graphics processing units (GPUs)—electric circuits that perform rapid calculations to render images ........ blockchain can now enable distributed GPU processing power, and blockchains specifically dedicated to AR holographic processing are on the rise. ........ cameras and sensors will aggregate real-time data from any environment to seamlessly integrate physical and virtual worlds ....... In healthcare, smart AR glasses will provide physicians with immediately accessible and maximally relevant information (parsed from the entirety of a patient’s medical records and current research) to aid in accurate diagnoses and treatments, freeing doctors to engage in the more human-centric tasks of establishing trust, educating patients and demonstrating empathy. ............. AR will converge with AI, sensors, and blockchain to multiply manufacturer productivity and employee experience. ....... digital guides superimposed on production tables will vastly improve employee accuracy and speed, while minimizing error rates. ........ Boeing brought Skylight’s smart AR glasses to the runway, now used in the manufacturing of hundreds of airplanes. Sure enough—the aerospace giant has now seen a 25 percent drop in production time and near-zero error rates. ........ Jaguar Land Rover, for instance, implemented Bosch’s Re’flekt One AR solution to gear technicians with “x-ray” vision: allowing them to visualize the insides of Range Rover Sport vehicles without removing any dashboards. ........ Perhaps one of the most profitable business opportunities, AR guidance through centralized AI systems will also serve to mitigate supply chain inefficiencies at extraordinary scale. Coordinating moving parts, eliminating the need for manned scanners at each checkpoint, and directing traffic within warehouses, joint AI-AR systems will vastly improve workflow while overseeing quality assurance. ............

“All these technologies that are coming together around artificial intelligence are going to augment the capabilities of the worker and that’s very powerful. I call it Augmented Intelligence. The idea is that you can take someone of a certain skill level and by augmenting them with artificial intelligence via augmented reality and the Internet of Things, you can elevate the skill level of that worker.”

.........Perhaps the most heartening outcome of the AI-AR convergence is that, rather than replacing humans in manufacturing, AR is an ideal interface for human collaboration with AI. And as AI merges with human capital, prepare to see exponential improvements in productivity, professional training, and product quality. ..........

Stacked convergence of blockchain, sensors, AI and AR will disrupt almost every major industry.

......... Because AR requires much more compute power than typical 2D experiences, centralized GPUs and cloud computing systems are hard at work to provide the necessary infrastructure. Nonetheless, the workload is taxing and blockchain may prove the best solution. ........ “I predicted that 90% of computing would eventually reside in the web based cloud… Otoy has created a remarkable technology which moves that last 10%—high-end graphics processing—entirely to the cloud. This is a disruptive and important achievement. In my view, it marks the tipping point where the web replaces the PC as the dominant computing platform of the future.” ............. our future of brick-and-mortar retail will largely lean on blockchain to create the necessary digital links. .....

distributed computing power with blockchain networks like RNDR will democratize AR, boosting global consumer adoption at plummeting price points.









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Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Internet Of Things

How the world will change as computers spread into everyday objects The “Internet of Things” will fundamentally change the relationship between consumers and producers ....... by 2035 the world will have a trillion connected computers, built into everything from food packaging to bridges and clothes. ...... One way to think of it is as the second phase of the internet. ...... a series of unresolved arguments about ownership, data, surveillance, competition and security will spill over from the virtual world into the real one. ...... Flows of data from iot gadgets are just as valuable as those gleaned from Facebook posts or a Google search history.


Drastic falls in cost are powering another computer revolution The first act, in the aftermath of the second world war, brought computing to governments and big corporations. The second brought it to ordinary people, through desktop pcs, laptops and, most recently, smartphones. The third will bring the benefits—and drawbacks—of computerisation to everything else, as it becomes embedded in all sorts of items that are not themselves computers, from factories and toothbrushes to pacemakers and beehives......Countless tiny chips will be woven into buildings, cities, clothes and human bodies, all linked by the internet......... Smart traffic systems will reduce waiting times at traffic lights and better distribute cars through a city. ........ Data from factory robots, for instance, will allow algorithms to predict when they will break down, and schedule maintenance to ensure that does not happen. Implanted sensors will spot early signs of illness in farm animals, and micromanage their feeding. Collectively, those benefits will add up to a more profound change: by gathering and processing vast quantities of data about itself, a computerised world will allow its inhabitants to quantify and analyse all manner of things that used to be intuitive and inexact.......... analogy with another world-changing innovation. Over the past century electricity has allowed consumers and businesses at least in the rich world, access to a fundamental, universally useful good—energy—when and where they needed it.

The IOT aims to do for information what electricity did for energy.

...... total spending on it will reach $520bn by 2021........ the economic impact of the iot could be as much as $11.1trn every year by 2025......... Like most futures, a lot of the iot is already here—it is just not (yet) evenly distributed. ....... The price of computation today is roughly one hundred-millionth what it was in the 1970s ........ a megabyte of data storage in 1956 would have cost around $9,200 ($85,000 in today’s prices). It now costs just $0.00002....... between 1950 and 2010 the amount of number-crunching possible with a kilowatt-hour of energy grew roughly a hundred-billion-fold. ....... In 1860, sending a ten-word telegram from New York to New Orleans cost $2.70 (about $84 in today’s money). These days, speeds are measured in megabits per second. (A megabit is equal to roughly 2,700 ten-word telegrams). Connection speeds of tens of megabits per second can be had for a few tens of dollars a month. ......

51.2% of the world’s population had internet access in 2018, up from 23.1% ten years ago.

........ The final ingredient is a way to gather all the data that a trillion-computer world will generate and to make sense of it all. Modern artificial-intelligence techniques excel at extracting useful patterns from large quantities of raw data. ........ the new sorts of chips that might make the iot work, which will cost less than a cent each and will be able to harvest the energy they need to run from sunlight or ambient heat........ A world of ubiquitous sensors is a world of ubiquitous surveillance. Consumer gadgets stream usage data back to their corporate makers. Smart buildings—from airports to office blocks—can already track the people who move through them in real time. Thirty years of hacks and cyber-attacks have proved that computers are insecure machines. As they spread, so will that insecurity. Miscreants will be able to exploit it remotely and at a huge scale.



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Monday, September 16, 2019

Libra And The "Global" Financial System







Will Facebook’s Libra Change the Way the World Banks? The Templars were originally a Catholic military order that took up residence in Jerusalem, where they pledged to protect Christian pilgrims. They created the economic infrastructure for the Crusades, writing promissory notes in France or England that were redeemable in the Levant. A cipher based on the shape of the cross ostensibly guaranteed the notes’ security. In other words, the Templars created a variant on modern international transfer services, five hundred years before the first central bank......... Today, the demand mounts for a similar system, but on a global scale. Billions of people have no access to banks. Countless others endure high fees and slow transactions, especially when sending money across borders. What we consider a global financial system is, in reality, hardly global. Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank of International Settlements, and the Financial Stability Board provide little more than a multilateral veneer over relationships that are primarily bilateral and dominated by commercial and central banks. Even within borders, moving money involves costly processes of settlement and exchange........... A blockchain-type network creates a public ledger, a universally trustworthy account of who owes what. Just as the Templar cipher verified an otherwise forgeable piece of paper, cryptography will ensure that Libra cannot be spent twice or otherwise duplicated. Such technologically guaranteed, artificial scarcity allows cryptocurrencies to operate as money........ Libra will be redeemable at a fixed price for certain established currencies (such as dollars, euros, and yen). Members of the association will deposit assets in the Libra Reserve as backing any time someone wants to buy more Libra. As a result, whereas Bitcoin fluctuates wildly in value, Libra should remain relatively stable. That stability makes Libra potentially useful not only as a store of value but as a medium of exchange. Users will, Facebook argues, be able to send money around the world as easily as they send messages and videos........ In addition to banking the unbanked, Libra could replace traditional intermediaries in cross-border transactions, such as remittances, which amount to more than $600 billion per year. Libra could also end up reducing the power of central banks in countries with weak currencies or strong capital controls, because it will allow people to move their money out of these countries more easily. ......... Facebook is already in the crosshairs of governments around the world, and the stakes are nothing less than the stability of the global economy....... Much of the current financial system is antiquated below the surface. ........ The country with the most to lose from Libra also has the most to gain from a revolution in the global financial system. That country is China. China bans Facebook and forbids trading in cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin) that could circumvent its capital controls. China is also home to the world’s biggest digital payments systems. WeChatPay and AliPay together process as many transactions in a day as the United States does in nine months. They operate only with China’s own currency, the renminbi, and they are centrally controlled, which makes payments easy for the government to access or limit. Facebook’s argument to regulators is that if an American company doesn’t move aggressively into blockchain-based payments, China will. The truth is that Facebook’s entry has accelerated China’s movement in this direction.........

No country is more interested than China in displacing American hegemony over global financial institutions. Cryptocurrency serves that objective.

........ There is also the IMF, whose director, Christine Lagarde, has already hinted at a possible “IMFcoin” based on the IMF-sponsored assets known as Special Drawing Rights......... Money transfer helped the order become one of the wealthiest institutions in medieval Europe—a sprawling financial empire and powerful creditor to kings. After the crusaders were pushed out of the Levant, however, the Templars languished. And then the order collapsed abruptly at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

The French King Philip IV, deeply in debt to the Templars, arrested and tortured many of its members on trumped-up charges of heresy. He eventually convinced the pope to ban the order, coincidentally canceling his debts.

The Templars’ power and wealth were their undoing. Facebook should take heed.




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Friday, September 13, 2019

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Navigating The Hong Kong Protests
Hong Kong: A Crisis For Capitalism As Much As Communism
News: Hong Kong, Plan B, Mainland, Bubble Tea Summit
Hong Kong 2019: This Is 1989 For Asia
Hong Kong Should Take The Plunge
China, US, Hong Kong, Xinjiang
Universal Basic Income (aka Freedom Dividend) Is Not Free Money
Hong Kong Should Inspire America?
Hong Kong Protests: The World Should Not Watch A Possible Massacre







What I am attempting in Hong Kong is the butterfly effect. I have done this once before. For Nepal in 2005, 2006. But this is much larger in scale. I think it is doable. The most effective way to proceed is to make all parties feel like they have been heard and they have been understood. There has to be intense listening. But also fearless calls for action every step of the way.
















Trying To Understand Hong Kong And China
News: Hong Kong, Kashmir, Vigilantism, Curfew, Terrorism, Diaspora
Hong Kong, Non Violence Works
Globalization 4.0
Xi Jinping Should Act
The Asymmetry Between Beijing And Hong Kong Is On Hong Kong's Side
Defiant Hong Kong
The Two Wangs
Hong Kong: Antennae Problem?
Hong Kong: No Police Solution, No Military Solution, Only A Political Solution
Hong Kong: Let The Dragon Grow Up
























































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