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Current Affairs Discourse

Blog about Current Affairs

Current Affairs Discourse

Supply & Demand chains disruptions?

  April 8, 2020 April 8, 2020   By:   21st century, Coronavirus, Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy  , , , No Comments

This have never happened before ever!

Global supply chains AND Demand Chains collapse!!

Not even in 2008 or 2001 or 1930s. How is that possible?

Natural disasters, which is what Coronavirus is, usually impact global supply chains if the disaster happens at a global supply base location.

This causes supply shortage, price spike, demand contraction or new supply and self correction.

A recession causes demand collapse, supply glut, price collapse, supply contraction and self correction.

Now we are about to see both simultaneously: Supply disruption AND demand collapse. There is no precedent for this.

Yes, we have had pandemics before, however it was before globalization and global trade and global intertwined economy. All impact was local. There was no global savings glut or global trade or global travel.

We do, however, have $30+ Trillion of global QE stimulus out there now when we combine 2008 and 2020.

Who will be doing the consumption?

New Golf rules during Coronavirus!

  April 6, 2020 April 6, 2020   By:   Coronavirus, Golf  , No Comments

Finally got out to golf after a long break and ran into new Coronavirus golf rules!

Golf during Coronavirus
Single riders or walk. What about the caddy?

Flag stick is locked down. Don’t touch it! Compatible with new regulation I suppose.

No rakes in bunkers. Pick it up or play as is. Use your shoes smooth out if you want. Sounds like a good idea all the time. Speeds up play.

No congregation anywhere on golf course. This too speeds up play I noticed.

No shaking hands, high five etc. Again, keeps things moving as a side benefit.

Club house closed. Can get to go orders. Hmmm…

Wash your hands after touching surfaces. Range balls?

Justin Rose concurs!

 

BCG Vaccine vs COVID-19 Immunity Hypothesis

  April 1, 2020 April 1, 2020   By:   21st century, Autonomous, Health Care, Root Cause Analysis, Safety and Security  , , No Comments

There appears to be something to the theory that BCG (TB) vaccination provides immunity to COVID-19.

The clinical trial mentioned in the tweet above could take a long time. Since proving causation from a mere correlation is a giant leap.

However, if there is enough data to prove a strong R square for the regression between people with BCG vaccination and immunity to COVID-19 it might be enough to “prove” the causation via hypothesis test with reasonable degree of certainty.

Not too different from how most drugs are approved for specific purposes by the FDA.

Establishing causation conclusively by turning the problem on and off as is done in engineering problem solving, or should be I should say, is simply not possible in most medical issues.

Now there are situations where such conclusive proof is elusive even in the engineering world. The hypothesis test with 95% confidence level is quite adequate for most situations.

When it isn’t, it is still possible to fail safe the system via multiple redundant backup systems.

Like in an aircraft for example. However, even that can fail.

Case in point is Boeing 737 max MCAS fiasco.

Soon to be seen in the “full self drive” cars…

TALF Is Back!!

  March 23, 2020 March 23, 2020   By:   Blockchain, Monetary Policy  , , , , No Comments

Is it 2008 Redux? This is about selling secuterized assets (loans) to the Fed. Term Asset Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF)

What is the Other assets?

Basically zero percent loan backed by assets.

Will it be similar to 2008 or different? 2008 was about Collateralized Mortgage Bond Securities (CMBS) mostly and Colleteralized Debt Obligations (CDO).

I sure hope it is NOT Bitcoin and other block chain digital currencies this time around.

So what is it?

 

Small Business Cash Flow Management during Coronavirus

  March 18, 2020 March 18, 2020   By:   Cash Flow, Small Business  , , No Comments

Starting to see lot of posts from Small Business Owners about the severe contraction in cash flows due to the Cornonavirus shutdown.

Unlike large corporations that have a recourse via short term commercial paper to tide over cash flow constraints which is also being supported by The Fed now, Small Business do not have lot of options.

The fundamentals of cash flow management and Working Capital Gap reduction however are the same for all business. This might help.

 

Having said that, Small businesses do not have the leverage to negotiate with suppliers, lessors, banks etc. Customers are usually transactional and not in Long Term Contracts. So this poses unique challenges.

There are some levers that can be used. For VC funded startups, the VC might step in if they see viability. For the rest, usually the owner has to use personal resources.

However, before doing that it might help to optimize for the new reality.

How? contact@processisinc.com

 

WiFi6 Mesh Network for Gigabit Problem Solving

  March 16, 2020 March 16, 2020   By:   21st century, Autonomous, IoT  , , , , , , , No Comments

I have been trying to get the Gigabit internet service for a while now. It finally happened. Just in time for the entire family working and schooling from home due to the Corona virus induced COVID-19 seclusion!

The fiber service provider provides their own Modem in this case. Needed to get a new router since my old router is a Cable Modem/Router combo. Seemed like a good idea when I got the combo router just couple of years ago. Had to get a new router since the then five year old router was obsolete. Such is the travails of technology. The dreaded incompatibility of the hardware as software evolves.

Should have leased the router? Perhaps. I suspect a lifetime TCO analysis would probably indicate otherwise. Anyway, getting back to issue at hand, the new router evaluation brought to light, you guessed it, new technology! WiFi6 protocol.

Lo behold, I found a brand new router just out in the market. None of my devices are Wifi6 yet, but they will be eventually. Especially with IoT and the connected 21st century autonomous economy. So I went with it. It has been an interesting couple of weeks. Figured some things out during the course of troubleshooting with the service provider and the router vendor.

Needed to breakdown the problems into its individual components and formulate a hypothesis. Is it the back haul? The fiber install? The modem? The router hardware? The router software? Wifi congestion? Settings? Some combination of the above?

All said and done, the performance of the network is a lot better than it was before I got the gigabit service. However, it could be better.

Still work in progress…

21st Century Entrepreneurship! It is not about mobile apps…

  October 1, 2019 October 1, 2019   By:   21st century, Autonomous, IoT  , , , , , , , , No Comments

The recent upheaval in the 2019 IPOs might just be a good indication of peak mobile and peak mobile apps.

 

WeWork just shelved its IPO! Most of the the other 2019 IPOs are trading well below the IPO valuations and may have a long way to go before reasonable valuation if any.

 

Moving forward, the opportunity of a lifetime might be in the autonomous space (not limited to automotive) where AI and 5G enabled edge computing via IoT is the key enabler and safety & security is paramount.

 

These are interesting times indeed for early stage startup scene…

 

https://twitter.com/processisinc/status/1169555281593950209

We are at the cusp of yet another episode of Roaring 20s. 100 years since the last one.

Here is why: https://www.slideshare.net/ShakerCherukuri/roaring-20s-again

Stay tuned for more…

Boeing 737 Max 8 adding New Flight Control System Module?

  August 2, 2019 August 2, 2019   By:   Root Cause Analysis, Safety and Security  , , , , No Comments

This is a big deal! Agree.

https://twitter.com/processisinc/status/1157459811514142720?s=21

However what is the new problem discovered?

https://twitter.com/processisinc/status/1155102744216264704?s=21

So looks like the software only fix was deemed to be ludicrous as I suspected.

 

The erroneous streams of data are now deem to be due to cosmic rays bombarding the microprocessor cells?

 

This was replicated in a lab? How? Using cosmic rays?

 

Was the problem tuned on and off?

 

The fix will now be a third control module that evaluates the two Flight control systems outputs and decide what makes sense? During erroneous streams of data caused by cosmic rays bombardment on the microprocessor cells?

 

How exactly is all this going to be validated?

 

To be continued…

Flight Control Systems and Systems Integration issues on Boeing 737 Max 8?

  April 2, 2019 April 2, 2019   By:   Autonomous, Root Cause Analysis, Safety and Security  , , , , No Comments

Update 7

The offset was 60 degrees between the two AOA sensors in the case of Ethiopian Air after an incident during take off? Bird strike?

Plus the following…

 

Cutting out the power to MCAS motors did not fix the steep dive? What does that mean?

The Integration issues:

https://twitter.com/ProcessISInc/status/1113051884225486848

Flight control systems issue: Major upgrade in the works. Plus AOA sensor input to MCAS is not the same on all aircrafts?

This is Epic systems design and implementation failure possibly?

Boeing 737 Max 8 MCAS – Is the proposed Fix good enough?

  March 29, 2019 March 29, 2019   By:   Autonomous, Root Cause Analysis, Safety and Security  , , , , , No Comments

Swiss cheese. You hear that a lot in systems design and engineering.

It is often not possible to fail safe a system with 100% certainty.

Especially true when there is an unforeseen and/or unintended consequence and a fix is proposed to a problem.

Root cause may not be known with certainty, however, a fix could be put in place as a short term remedy to alleviate the cascade catastrophic failure.

Swiss cheese.

If you stack up a few of them, then the likelihood of a through and through hole is quite low.

In fact, the entire aircraft systems design is based on this principle. With several redundancies and backup and backups for backups.

Engines being the most obvious example. There is computers, sensors etc that also have redundancies. Which is why the 737 Max and other Aircrafts cost $100Million.

So why then was this Autonmous MCAS System basing it’s entire activation on a single sensor input?

The proposed fix:

It appears that Ethiopian Air AOA sensor offset was also 20 degrees!!

What does that imply? MCAS won’t activate with 20 degree offset with the above fix.

However, it doesn’t fix the root of the issue. What is causing this offset?

Could there be a deeper issue here which could be impacting other systems as well?

Could this be more than the unintended consequences of the MCAS algorithm discussed here:

MCAS Algorithm & The Unintended Consequences – Boeing 737 Max

 

To be continued…thoughts in progress.