Congratulations to Spain for lifting the FIFA World Cup! My favourite part of the final is that Argentina lost sorely and Donald Trump looked like a complete moron.

Back home, things are not looking so good. As I write this we are right in the think of the student-led protest movement in Delhi. My admiration and constant support to the brave students and student leaders, Sonam Wangchuk, CJP folks and supporters from all over India. And for a change, a large number of celebrities have spoken up – Shabana Azmi, Prakash Raj, Hanumankind all BEING THERE for the protest, whereas celebrities like Vir Das, Rohan Joshi, Hrithik Roshan and many more voicing their support.

Of course there are the Modi-worshipping andhbakht racist crowd that think this Government can do no wrong. I can’t change what they think or say or choose to do. If you are on the fence however, just remember the recent disasters in the Indian education space, such as the NEET exam and the CBSE exam fiascos (see earlier TWITI episodes). Students have taken their lives because of these fiascos. And the Government has largely evaded responsibility and made nothing-promises.

The Government continues to be embarrassingly silent and have deployed police / thugs to use force on innocent unarmed students. And the local news media is also embarrassingly silent on this – international media has better coverage of this movement which is also embarrassing for India.

Another protest that didn’t get as much attention – Amazon’s Thane Data Centre Project protests. Here in Thane we got hundreds of brave residents protesting a proposed AWS data centre project nearby – for obvious environmental impacts.

Residents from the Balkum, Kolshet, and Dhokali neighborhoods voiced strong concerns that the proposed 53-acre (woah!) data centre would consume a minimum of 12 million litres of water daily, in addition to demanding vast amounts of electricity. They also expressed fears about persistent noise pollution, warning that it could endanger public health given the proximity of numerous housing complexes, five schools, and three medical facilities—including a paediatric hospital—all situated within a one-kilometre radius of the planned site.

Amason, unsurprisingly, said it was complying with all environmental laws, and the data centre would not utilise local power and water sources. An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement that the state-of-the-art facility “will not draw or divert power from the local distribution grid that serves residential and commercial consumers, but through its own dedicated high-voltage substation, planned in coordination with the utility.” (LOL!)

As to water utilisation, the spokesperson said the company recently achieved a ‘water positive’ status in India by returning more water to communities than it consumes. “Amazon does not currently use water for cooling in its data centers in India, including our Thane site, and we do not draw from the community’s drinking or potable water for cooling purposes,” the statement said.

I don’t know who they are trying to fool here. Data centres use up too much water, have a serious environmental impact. People are already sick of them. New York State introduced a halt on all data centre expansion projects until the environmental impacts are properly assessed. We need something like that in India – on a much bigger scale. And it’s obviously required in and around Mumbai, where water shortages were very real recently.

While this was going on, Telegana announces Amazon India’s biggest data centre project. In Hyderabad, that too. Damn it!

It is said to cost ₹ 60,000 crores and will be operational in 24 months. Hope Amazon maintains its “water positive” certification, which really means nothing.

Headlines

• Meta rolls back image generation feature (Meta AI’s Muse image generator that was launched last week) following the public’s backlash because all Instagram posts suddenly became training data for this AI. See, if you raise your voice enough, good stuff happens.
• Government tells not to deploy OpenAI and Claude for cybersecurity platforms. Centre asks Sarvam and BharatGen to develop own AI for cyber.
• Food safety body FSSAI issues multiple notices to Swiggy Instamart for selling expired or spoiled food products.
• Snapdeal pulled up for selling prescription medicine. The matter is with the Supreme Court.
• Zepto to launch premium grocery service called “Select” to take on Blinkit Gourmet and specialised players like FirstClub and Handpickd. Reports suggest that Flipkart and Amazon are also planning premium grocery tiers.
• SC imposes a ₹3 lakh fine on Samay Raina and two others for misconduct. The Supreme Court sharply criticised comedian Samay Raina and prominent YouTubers for not complying with a court order and for allegedly making insensitive remarks, and urged the government to pass a strict law to protect the dignity of persons with disabilities.
• OnePlus is set to exit certain markets by 2027 – including the US and EU. The company did not announce they will exit the Indian market, although reports suggest so.
• Skyroot launches Vikram1. This is the first satellite launched by a private Indian space tech company. Vikram 1 collected in-orbit test data (for another space tech startup called Cosmoserve) already despite a minor glitch. Might be able to remove Space debris. What a world (universe?) we live in. Btw, Reliance Jio gets IN-SPACe approval to launch a 1,600-satellite low-Earth orbit (LEO) network. Maybe they can join hands with Skyroot? Who knows!
• The Hindu Bureau The Government of India will invest ₹200 crore in Ather Energy through India-Japan Fund (IJF) a joint investment vehicle backed by the government of India and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).
• Zoho introduces Zoho Classes 2.0 which they say is an AI-powered academic learning management system (LMS) built in India and designed for educational institutions worldwide.
• Airtel and Jio are restricting unlimited 5G to smartphone only. That means that your unlimited 5G speed won’t apply to hotspots.
• PhonePe launches some tax filing feature.
• Chinese AI startup Moonshot had a DeepSeek moment.\One company called upliance.ai has launched a 12L “smart air fry oven”. It’s basically a big air fryer with the promise of AI.
• Lending platform Kissht received authorization to distribute Mutual Funds.
• Physics Wallah acquires majority stake in UPSC coaching institute Saarthi IAS.
• Aurum PropTech acquires Housing.com which is owned by Australian company REA.
• A ransomware group has published confidential files linked to the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant on the dark web. This is after a data breach involving Reliance Infrastructure. Investigators ongoing.
• Union Cabinet approved a Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme of 62,500 crores, and a Semicon 2.0 scheme of 1.28 lakh crores.
• Zomato is piloting AI powered voice bot for food delivery. Not voice to text, it looks like a conversational AI tool where users discuss food recommendations.
• Delhi HC orders Meta to remove Zee’s pirated content from Facebook.
• Makemytrip files for IPO. Well, it’s an OFS in which its US parent company and Singapore-based subsidiary will offload stake in its Indian entity.
• Apple Music increased thei rprices including in India.

And finally, now you can change your gmail ID in India. So if you created the email ID suckmaballz2737@gmail.com and are still forced to use it, you hae a chance of being able to change it in Gmail.

This Week’s Find

If you have pet(s), get this automatic pet feeder. Makes sure to feed your pets (I have 1 dog and 5 cats, trust me I know) on time and frees up your energy and worry.

Or, just this simple elevated cat feeding plate. My cats love this too.

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That’s it for now! Don’t forget you can see the weekly TWITI video on by YouTube channel, or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you’d like to receive the weekly news roundup directly to your inbox, subscribe to me on Substack. This is all free so share with a friend. See you next week!