This Week I Learned - Week #2 2025

This Week I Learned - 

* "With infrastructure, there’s a new formula for any country or company. I think of that formula as tokens per dollar per watt. Fundamentally, their (country or company) growth depends on how efficiently they can drive that equation" -  Satya Nadella 

* "I think India will be the use case capital of AI in the world." - Nandan Nilekani 

* The US Defense department updates its list of “Chinese Military Companies” annually. With the latest revision, it includes 134 companies with Tencent, SenseTime and the world’s biggest battery maker CATL among them. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2024 bans the Defense department from dealing with the designated companies.

* "Twitter is X and it is a dumpster fire. It’s run by a megalomaniac man child who openly supports fascists and the algorithm favours tech bros and growth hackers to real content creators. Interaction bait is favoured by the platform... It feels cold, automated and not a community but a bunch of “go getters” wanting to write the perfect engagement update."  - Christian Heilmann

* Interaction bait is killing social media. It's those posts that are designed to get you to comment, like, or share. 

* Policing the truth on social media is a Sisyphean challenge. Meta — the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Threads has effectively stopped trying. With Donald Trump about to begin his second term, Zuckerberg seems to have decided that alienating half the country is bad business. Twitter...replaced content moderation teams with crowdsourced “community notes” below disputed content. YouTube made a similar change last year. Now Meta is adopting the model, too. - NY Times

* Who says AI will replace humans? Salesforce plants to hire 2,000 people to sell AI products.

* The website Numbeo is created by Mladen Adamovic, a former software engineer at Google. It provides information about the cost of living, quality of life, and various socio-economic factors across cities and countries worldwide. 

Summary of cost of living in India as per Numbeo (as of 9-Jan-2015):

•     A family of four estimated monthly costs are 99,277.5₹ without rent.
•     A single person estimated monthly costs are 28,846.2₹ without rent.
•     Cost of living in India is, on average, 70.1% lower than in United States.
•     Rent in India is, on average, 87.9% lower than in United States.

* MediAssist Healthcare Services is the largest third-party administrator of health insurance which processes over a fifth of all hospitalisation claims. Findings from the analysis of its health insurance claims data of 2024 via a ToI report:

• Cancer claims saw the highest increase (12%) in 2024, followed closely by cardiac ailments.
• Respiratory ailments experienced the highest inflation in treatment costs (10-13%).
• The incidence of cancer rises after the age of 40, with a steeper increase among women.
• Women have a 1.2-1.5 times higher incidence rate of cancer compared to men, while men have a 1.3-1.5 times higher rate of cardiac ailments.
• For senior citizens, cataract treatment was the most common reason for hospitalisation.
• Cities with previously low-cost claims are now experiencing the highest medical inflation. This is attributed to the emergence of larger hospitals with more facilities.
• The increase in respiratory ailment costs is linked to increased diagnoses, pollution, and the potential long-term impact of Covid-19.
• The data suggests that while people are living longer, they are not necessarily healthier, with an increase in lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.