Vaccines against the three major killers of the world's poorest: TB, HIV and malaria are unlikely to have vaccines anytime soon unless vastly more money is committed to researching them, according to the Bill Gates-funded Gates Open Research...

My dad’s first memory is hiding under a table 80 years ago tonight, when Nazis took his dad to Dachau on #Kristallnacht.

His parents, my Omi and Opi, always considered themselves more German than Jewish, so they didn’t think they’d get swept up in the madness.

Opi was taken to city hall with other Jews and lined up against a wall. He thought he was going to be shot.

He always remembered when they got to Dachau there were pajamas with Jewish stars waiting on their cots. Obviously not a spontaneous thing.

He was very lucky. His family got him a fake Uruguayan visa and he was out of Dachau six weeks later. “Before Christmas,” my dad recalls.

Today is also death anniversary of P.V.Narasimha Rao, the man who liberalized the Indian economy, and opened it up. And more than anything else, provided the much needed stability for India in the turbulent 90s. One of the best PMs IMO. #PVNarasimhaRao

The man who dismantled India's Licence Raj, opened up relations with Israel, adopted a Look East Policy. P.V.Narasimha Rao took over as PM, when India was faced with multiple challenges both on political and economic front in 1991.

Assasination of Rajiv Gandhi, Economic crisis, India was facing a bleak scenario, in 1991 when PVNR became the PM. It is to PVNR's credit that when he stepped down as PM in 1996,more people in India were optimistic about their future, more confident. #PVNarasimhaRao

I was one of those who grew up during the PVNR era, experienced the initial changes he bought along. He introduced far sweeping reforms( forced or otherwise) , when he was just running a minority Govt dependent on allies support. #PVNarasimhaRao

Heading a minority Govt,PVNR managed to pass through crucial bills on economy, not a mean feat at all. He had to deal with the Nehruvian-Socialist lobby in his own party, apart from the Left, but managed to push through the economic reforms. #PVNarsimhaRao

So, I want to talk about how sexual harassment and fair pay are linked at Google (and beyond), because I think that's an angle that isn't being highlighted enough in the coverage of these walk-outs. I'm going to frame it largely around my personal experience there. Thread.

When I was sexually harassed by the director of the area I was working in, I was afraid to report it because I was worried that "getting him in trouble" would result in the subtle retaliation of missed leadership opportunities.

I wanted to continue working on the team I was on, because I'd gained a lot of very deep knowledge and expertise in that area, as well as reputation and camaraderie with the other folks working in that area. I didn't want to make the situation more "difficult."

To get promoted at Google, several need to happen: 1. you need opportunities for ownership and leadership above your current level (basically, opportunities to show you're working at the next level you're trying to get promoted to). The work you're "assigned" has a big impact.

2. You need glowing reviews from peers, *at or particularly above the level you're hoping to get promoted to.* Basically, you need people a lot more senior than you to say you're doing awesome work.

@danielashby @AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd I'll bite. Let's try to keep it factual. There's a reasonable basis to some aspects of this question, that it might be possible to agree on. Then there are other, more variable, elements which depend on external factors such as transport and energy policy. /1

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd First up, we know reasonably well how much energy it takes to propel a high-speed train along the HS2 route. We can translate that into effective CO2 generated by making some assumptions about how green the electricity grid is. /2

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd Secondly, we have a reasonable grasp of how much CO2 is going to be generated by building HS2 - there are standard methods of working this out, based on the amount of steel, concrete, earthmoving, machine-fuelling etc required. /3

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd Thirdly, we can estimate how much CO2 is generated by cutting down trees, and how much is captured by planting new trees. We can also estimate how much CO2 is needed to keep the railway running and generated by maintaining the track /4

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd We know how much CO2 is saved by moving goods by freight train on the lines freed up by moving the express trains on to HS2, rather than by truck. /5

THREAD: Almost a year into the launch of Aarogya Setu, there is still little to no public data on its benefits. Yet, many of its flaws are well documented. Now it's going to be used for vaccine rollouts despite meager progress in public

Experts have been warning us about Aarogya Setu's capacity for surveillance. Post integration with COWIN, it will likely become a permanent part of our health data landscape. We've written to the NIC with key concerns, because here's what we've learnt in 1 year:
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To justify violation of privacy, necessity and proportionality have to be proven. Aarogya Setu has disregarded these principles - we know because we analysed its Data Protocol, which MeitY released after public pressure. It fails to satisfy the basic threshold of legality.
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A lack of transparency has pervaded the ecosystem. RTIs on Aarogya Setu failed to receive adequate answers. In fact, we had to send a legal notice because CIC refused to let RTI activist Saurav Das attend his own show cause hearing regarding critical info about Aarogya Setu.
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Issues have been raised about the non open-source nature of the app. Even when the source code was released, it was the code for an earlier version of the app that was made available. The server-side code of the app was not available at all.
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