The Advisory Boar

By Abhijit Menon-Sen <>

Malicious pollution reports

Prakash Javadekar, Minister for Environment, springs to the defence of the nation against malicious reports that suggest that air pollution in Delhi reduces life expectancy.

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One month after demonetisation

A little over a month ago, our Glorious Leader eliminated corruption, black money, terrorism, and poor people in one bold and innovative move

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Metro station robbery: redux

Ramit's police complaint (made by way of some suitable boffin) resulted in the police going to the station the next day and arresting two people expanding their cellphone collection by the same means as before. They may not be the same people whom Ramit met, but the indications are that at least ten people are involved and—as we suspected—this is something that has been going on for a while.

I wonder if the earlier victims complained to the police. It's hard to believe that none of them did; so perhaps their complaints arrived too lown down the police hierarchy to prompt any serious action.

But I hope the cops find every one of the robbers now.

Armed robbery outside a Delhi Metro station

Ramit was robbed of his mobile phone by four armed men while waiting for me outside the New Ashok Nagar Metro Station. The Delhi Police were nowhere to be found.

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Exide warranty nightmare

Our UPS is hooked up to three Exide Powersafe EP65-12 SLA (Sealed Lead Acid) batteries. Normally, that gives us about six hours of backup time for my desktop, monitor, and a few assorted peripherals. It's not often that the mains power is off for so long (less than half a dozen times a year, I'd guess), but that capacity has proven invaluable in the past. For the last few months, however, the UPS has lasted for half an hour at most, even when the batteries were fully charged. Using a multimeter, I found that the voltage across one of the batteries fell rapidly to 10.5V just before the UPS died, while the other two remained above 12V. Since the batteries were still under warranty, I contacted the vendor to ask about having them replaced (which I have had to do in the past)

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Nonsensical DoT crypto restrictions

What are the regulations governing the use of cryptography and the development of cryptographic software in India? The answer is either "there aren't any" or "nobody really knows".

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Bird watchers and purple prose

Speaking of bird-watching and poetry, I've noticed that bird-watchers, at least on the few Indian bird-watching lists I subscribe to, adore ornate, flowery, Victorian-sounding prose. They applaud it when they see it in other people's reports, and do their best to put it in their own.

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