Arvind's Newsletter

1. India's face-off with Big Tech will intensify in 2023 writes Megha Mandavia of Wall Street Journal. Google's parent company appealed an Indian antitrust ruling against its Android smartphone operating system, and a lobby group representing it and other tech giants criticised India's proposed digital competition law. New Delhi also wants to pass a law increasing its oversight of internet companies, and a data protectiob bill critics call "Orwellian". Silicon Valley is fearful of " being drafted as a foot soldier in a more muscular Indian surveillance state," and worries that " India's unique approach becomes a blueprint for other large emerging markets."

2. Every year The MIT Review predicts the 10 breakthrough technologies of the year . Here are this year's top 10 breakthrough technologies that matter the most right now. It looks at the advances that will have a big impact on our lives and break down why they matter. Read on.

3. Not satisfied with simply taking Elon Musk’s top spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Bernard Arnault of LVMH is also taking plot lines from HBO. The world’s richest person and CEO of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH named his daughter, Delphine Arnault, CEO of the fashion house Dior, setting up a sibling battle for succession of his company. Arnault is cementing family control over a business he co-founded 35 years ago, in a move seen by many in the fashion industry as setting up a succession battle between Delphine, 47, and her brother Antoine, 45, who was promoted last month to run the holding company that controls LVMH and the $178bn Arnault fortune.

4. AI news is all over media and maybe over-hyped. Microsoft researchers announced a new text-to-speech AI model called VALL-E that can closely simulate a person's voice when given a three-second audio sample. Once it learns a specific voice, VALL-E can synthesise audio of that person saying anything-and do it in a way that attempts to preserve the speaker's emotional tone.

5. Every year The New York Times's Travel highlights trip ideas for the year in "52 places to go " feature. This year there some usual suspects like London, Madrid and Istanbul but also some unusual places as the Travel editor explores the theme of "wide open spaces"- including the American Prairie in USA, Lencois Maranhenses National Park in Brazil and Tassili n' Ajjer in Algeria. In South Asia there are two old favourites Kerala (God's own country) and Bhutan ( the happiest country). Explore.