Posts by Raj

Google creates $10bn 'digitisation fund' for India

Both Facebook and Google have invested in the same behemoth entity - Reliance Jio. Half of this Google digitization fund goes into investment in Jio. Facebook and Google have both invested near identical $5 billion sums into Jio, which gives them under 10% each. Both made investments after Mukesh Ambani (net worth approx $75 billion) who owns the Jio platform, put a 20% stake on the block in spring 2020.

It doesn't get them much by way of control, but they're simply responding to the reality that Jio is THE big dog of Indian mobile data, and if they have no stake in it, they lose. With <10% stakes each, they just ensure they each have a stake in a mobile market with 1.1 billion subscribers, but neither are strong enough to demand anything from Ambani.

India bans 59 apps it says have privacy, national security problems. In a massive coincidence, they’re all Chinese

Re: Tit for tat fail?

The Chinese worship one thing - cold hard cash.

They aren’t always smart - their worldview often predisposes them to make stupid mistakes . Like you don’t piss off the guy you have a $50 billion surplus with. Particularly when the other side exports intermediates to you, If he blocks your exports its benefits him. If you block his exports that also benefits his efforts to replace what you’re exporting to him.

So far the Indian government has avoid saying anything while enacting sweeping bans on everything Chinese. Imports mostly blocked. Apps already stopped working. Huawei/ZTE banned, and more. The Chinese are in the ‘let’s not overreact’ mode and India has no interest in listening . Their misadventures gonna cost them billions and it’s a long way from the final cost.

Re: Tit for tat fail?

I realize youre just trying to sound funny using the extent of your limited awareness..The reality is that a lot more is happening.

* [url=https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-shipments-from-china-are-stuck-at-indian-ports-heres-why-6476135/]Shipments from China stuck at Indian ports as government blocks import clearance[/url], and the Indian government has avoided responding to urgent clearance requests from Beijing.

* [url=https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/modis-amended-enemy-property-law-gives-jitters-to-china/articleshow/62601031.cms]India amends enemy property law, enables broad confiscation of Chinese investments if war occurs[/url]

* All online shopping portals now required to clearly indicate country of origin. Specific countries (e.g. Vietnam, Thailand) required to furnish additional information of who owns the factory, to curtail Chinese producers using third countries as originator.

India ran a $55 billion trade deficit with China. A large part of Indian exports were intermediate goods, while most of Chinese exports were finished goods. Rather poor trade policy at work on India's part...

... until the Chinese start a war. They then demonstrate that they forget the cardinal rule of a trade imbalance - you don't piss off your third biggest source of a trade surplus (behind the US and EU). You coddle them and get them hooked to your cheap wares. If you piss them off, they can block your exports and blocking THEIR exports doesn't hurt them because they'll just feed that ore and intermediates into their industrial system instead.

This unfortunate war is going to end up costing the Chinese anywhere from $10-40 billion a year in foregone surpluses, going forward.

India reveals plans to make electronics manufacturing its top industry

Re: Follow in the footsteps of the Mahatma

Boo hoo, throwing the toys out of the pram are we ? Europe has a long history of protectionism when it comes to non-tariff barriers against the outside world and state funding of its own entities. When you're done not subsidizing Airbus and the rest, maybe you'll actually sound like you're making some sense. Oh wait, you'll never stop subsidizing them . What you'll do is furiously wave your hands about pretending you don't.

Re: Maybe but...

Well said . "Anti-Muslim politics and economics" my foot. I wouldn't have been anywhere as charitable as you were to the troll.

India says its brains saved the world from the last colosso-crisis – cough, Y2K – proving it can become self-reliant

Re: Self-reliance was fashionable!

Modi only espouses one side of 'self reliance' - blocking imports and pushing exports. Espousing overt mercantilism is a dog whistle that any sane politician would avoid stating openly. Always better to use more unoffensive language.

As is typical of most El Reg (and in general, British) articles on India, it is heavily coloured by successive generations of prejudice about India. Rather odd coming from a country that finds new ways to screw up its own COVID response, with its head of government contriving to get himself nearly killed in the process.

Modi's reference is a signal of that the very large stimulus measure (approximately 10% of GDP) will be kept from flowing out of the country by those spending it on purchasing imported gear, through the application of import duties, and that businesses need to apply their smarts to expand their own manufacturing base to compensate. In the post-COVID world of stimulus actions, it's important for national policymaking to consider that a stimulus measure is useless if their own population is simply an agent taking the stimulus cash and handing it to a foreign entity.

The appeal to ego is just a simple construct to express the fact that the stimulus is going to be accompanied by measures to impose duties on imported items and will instead encourage local production focused on the domestic market and exports. Therefore 'you're smart - figure out how to put the money to use to build capacity to feed the domestic market and export into a crippled outside world, rather than passing the money into outside hands'.

Sounds too mercantile ? It's what everyone's going to try to do when they try to pick up the wreckage of their own economies. Getting an early mover advantage on it always helps to quickly push your way into markets when others cannot. For example, India produced no PPE gear until February (the first COVID case in India was on Jan 30). It now produces quarter of a million PPE items per day, second only to China. The paracetamol at Boots is likely to be made in India, too.

That's what the Chinese are doing too - grabbing the opportunity to saturate the world market while others have their industries shut. Modi simply wants his share of that pie while keeping the Chinese out of India.

India releases data-use protocols for its contact-tracing app... after five weeks and 100 million downloads

Re: "may be" uploaded on to an NIC server

The NIC isn’t in the business of monetizing anything. They manage all the national data portals and are a 45 year old government agency.

Contact tracing without location data is useless . Location describes HOW the contact occurred - in a crowded plaza, a quiet street, or something else.

Infosys fires employee who Facebooked 'let's hold hands and share coronavirus'

Re: Ah, that old chestnut.

Speaking of context, why do you presume this is a reasonable time to criticize India in the first place ?

The article talks about an Indian company firing someone for something that'd get him fired anyplace else in these times as well. Explain why that construes your self-entitled right to tar the whole country.

Re: Ah, that old chestnut.

Did you not read the part where I stated that I do not even consider his original claims to be worth a serious rebuttal ?

The 'two wrongs don't make a right' argument depends on the respective arguments being actually factual claims of wrongdoing.

The original post in question makes a series of gross exaggerations, on par with standard western views of India - find one odd story, then proceed to paint the entire nation with it. Therefore I'll treat his kind exactly the same way, tarring them all - which would include you - equally. It's only fair.

Re: Ah, that old chestnut.

Ah yes and now let’s list the very long list of thing they do in Britain, where the monarch walks around wearing things stolen from all over the place, something he average person would be clapped in irons for.

When you’re done absolutely spotlessly washing yourself clean of your every sin, I’ll consider thinking about the drivel you just wrote.

Re: Misfiring joke?

Not necessarily . There’s a subgroup of people, particularly Muslims, who hate the Indian PM and want to make the lockdown a failure so they can blame the PM. This subgroup also overlaps those who have no regard for just how potentially dangerous a public health crisis the Coronavirus could be.

Historically this demographic was the hardest to address when India eradicated polio as well - nearly all of the country was sanitized by the end of the 20th century, but several lame Islamic clerics issued fatwas ‘haram vaccines’ and the job took another 10 years.

Surprise! Plans for a Brexit version of the EU's Galileo have been delayed

Re: Good

The Indian NAVIC system is currently a 7-satellite constellation covering all of India and a 1500km region past its borders. Four more satellites are due for launch by 2022 to further expand coverage past India's borders. The long term plan is a 24-satellite GINS (Global Indian Navigation System) for which statutory filing of the frequency spectrum was done about 8 years ago. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 is the first SoC from them to have NAVIC support.

As with most such technologies developed by India, this has its genesis in adverse technology denial - back when GPS was degraded during the 1999 Kargil War. The Indian government responded by sanctioning the IRNSS project soon after and 20 years from the original incident, it's fully in operation.

How many times do we have to tell you? A Tesla isn't a self-driving car, say investigators after Apple man's fatal crash

Re: Tesla never said it's driverless

"What Tesla has done here, deliberately reducing cognitive load below safe sustainable levels, would have the researchers that pioneered the fields of cognitive ergonomics and studied human factors as they relate to machine control spinning in their graves."

This thesis is wrong. "Deliberate" is your subjective assertion, which you cannot substantiate anyway. However, they have done opposite of the factual aspect of the claim. The car I bought 4 years ago had a VASTLY different Autopilot in terms of capability and cognitive load, than what is the case now.

The autopilot software is updated over the air several times a year, when the car is parked and connected to wifi. Four years back, Autopilot lacked a lot of the finesse and detail it has now. Artificially induced cognitive load was basically nonexistent then. There were warnings to hold the wheel, but that's it. It used to accelerate and brake like an inexperienced teenage driver - lacking the smoothness of gradual human control. It simply didn't engage in a lot more situations. It was clear it was an early technology, but still better than its then peers.

Today, even v1 Autopilot is a vastly different creature. The deceased Mr Huang had a car with v2 Autopilot that's even better. All Model 3s have v2, only the older Model Ss and some Xs have v1.

The difference is on two fronts. One, it's a LOT more smoother and 'real'. It brakes and accelerates gradually. With hands on wheel as immediate backup, I let it work in pouring rain - it handles the circumstances extremely well, managing astonishing lanekeeping combined with noticeably more gradual acceleration and braking than in dry conditions. It recognizes stopped cars and objects, an early criticism It detects and adjusts to speed limit signs. These are the smoothness and 'realness' factors.

The other change is in cognitive load. It is much higher now in terms of how often and how much you need to keep telling the car that you're actually responding to it. It has become - as lamented heavily on Tesla forums - a nanny role now. If you do not respond to the car's 'demonstrate attention' notices thrice, it disables autopilot and forces you to stop the car, wait and restart to re-enable it.

There are therefore two themes here - one is that the car has dramatically more cognitive load applied artificially, on the very basis you claim. The other is that car's Autopilot system has become vastly more capable than it was 3-4 years ago. It's nowhere near Musk's exaggerations, but it works spectacularly well both in stop-start city and highway grand tourer cruising modes.

I do not think the problem is a lack of cognitive load. Rather, L2+ autonomy is fundamentally a sweet spot of the perfect storm of being competent enough to convince the user that it works great, but it fundamentally does not. Making it either less or more capable would improve things. I do not see even an increased cognitive load compensating for the fact that the system works so well that it engenders complacency, but still lacks the competence to be actually trusted.

Re: Tesla never said it's driverless

The problem here - as someone whos driven a Tesla for a few years now - is not bad advertising . Owners know it doesn’t drive itself . The problem is that it does it’s autonomous driving so well that progressively drivers become complacent .

I’ve done 100+ mile drives with essentially no manual intervention other than hand lightly on the wheel and the odd lane change signal (the car changes lanes itself when you signal it and it sees the adjacent lane free).

The mental effort of such long drives is about that of one maybe 10-20% the distance without Tesla autopilot . It’s a significant contributory factor to drivers progressively thinking it can just handle itself, when it really can’t.

The explanation doesn’t make sense . The 85 carpool exit on 101 southbound is on the left, not right . It has a long poorly demarcated split off area leading to the gore point . Cars often cut across lanes there because the exit lane it much faster . The guy was playing and video game and didn’t even listen to the car . I know firsthand that a Model S warns you it’s losing lane delineation there , and to take over .

Deadly 737 Max jets no longer a Boeing concern – for now: Production suspended after biz runs out of parking space

Re: So what happened

It’s HCLs problem ? Last I checked, the planes have ‘Boeing 737’ written upon them, not ‘HCL 737’ . You need to do better than blame-some-brown-guys here .

Boeing makes the aircraft . They are responsible for ensuring the fidelity and functionality of every last piece of hardware and software, regardless of whom they subcontract to . Unless the subcontractor willfully concealed or misrepresented things to Boeing - which NO ONE is claiming here - this is entirely on Boeing , and for good reason .

The only thing the Bloomberg article makes clear is Boeing’s incompetence . Hand out mission critical software to lowest cost bidder ? Check . Piss poor product management including not accounting for lack of domain knowledge ? Check . No in house QA at the very least ? Check .

There’s a good reason why the throw HCL under the bus tactic hasn’t fooled anyone yet . The optics and facts are against Boeing . There’s no way they can pin 300 lives on anyone else especially when there’s absolutely no malicious wrongdoing on the suppliers part. Just Boeing’s.

Baby alert! Japan Air lets passengers book seats far away from screaming abdabs

Re: Solution to the problem

Babies and toddlers can equalize pressure in their ears when they suckle or are given something to drink - anything that promotes swallowing. Do that during takeoff roll and they're fine through to cruising altitude.

Our child traveled the equivalent of two round the world trips before he was two - a combination of multiple transpacifics and US transcons. He has no trouble with it and quite enjoys flying, with his trusty bag of toys and ipad, and his preferred window seat to play in calmly, and makes a show of swallowing right after takeoff too.

Roscomos: We know all about how the hole in the Soyuz went down, but we're not telling you

Re: Success rate

And you’re judging success by anticipated potential for discovery, which is just another subjective metric entirely based on unknowns. You cannot even offer a quantitative measure, just a probabilistic one.

The rover weighs 27kg and has a design life of 14 days . The orbiter has a 2300kg weight and had an original design life of 1 year, since extended to almost 7 years due to the high precision of orbit injection . The lander got within a few hundred metres of lunar soil under perfect control before fine braking failed, having gotten that far with much greater accuracy than hoped for.

Their relative weights and design lives offer a clue to their relative importance. While the rover might have been a great discoverer, it was never designed for much. The orbiter was and remains the main payload carrier and its own projected life has been enhanced almost an order of magnitude. The ISRO has very good cause to claim whatever percentage of success they chose to state .

In related news, Mangalyaan-1 has completed 5 years in Mars orbit days ago, far more than its original goal, for similar reasons.

Valorous Vikram lunar lander – or Star Wreck: Enterprise? India's Moon craft goes all silent running during descent

Re: Some fan of Modi used Hindu distance units?

India uses the metric system . ‘Modi fans Hindu distance units’ - while there might be some such thing, are entirely irrelevant to the topic and are more a reflection of the commenters religio-political bigotry than anything else.

Re: Some fan of Modi used Hindu distance units?

Indeed . Offshoring has been going on for 3 decades now . Indian companies have been uniforms dismissed as incompetent at it, yet the business has grown from $1-2 billion a year in earnings to over $200 billion now. Now, either they’re sufficiently competent to grow business that much - and it’s a competitive business - or, those who are offshoring are substantially MORE incompetent over the course of a generation.

Either way, the standard ire at the topic is, at best, directed at the wrong entities who only see a guy ‘taking away’ a job and fall over trying to blame him.

Re: Re. 404

That’s been the common refrain of Indian watchers for some time - give us a continuous split screen of the telemetry even if you’re otherwise going to repeatedly pan the mission controllers.

No, one of the fine braking thrusters overcompensated and tilted the lander over.

The ISRO have also stated that he lander has been found by the orbiters cameras, and that they’re trying to communicate with it . This suggests it didn’t hard land, because if it was in many pieces there would be no point in trying to talk to it.

Re: It was the moon tardigrades...

Jokes on them when the rover battery dies after 500m and there’s no local supercharger to plug it into .

Re: Some fan of Modi used Hindu distance units?

A political rant, racism and reference to unrelated business all in one post . You win the prize.

Re: Major achievement

ISRO has further mentioned that due to the precision of orbit injection , the orbiters planned life was extended from the original 1-2 years to potentially 7 years .

ISRO got almost everything right in this . It sucks to lose the lander a mere 2km from surface but it all worked perfectly until then . It’s easier to land on Mars than the moon because the gravity conditions are closer to the Earth compared to what it is on the moon .

India's Chandrayaan-2 and Vikram lander split amicably above Moon, SpaceX hops over Texas

Re: One Lunar Day?

It is part of the set of experiments . They have published several research studies on the ability to wake up the systems after the cold soak of a lunar night , including technical analysis of the Li-Ion cells being used at ultra low temperatures . There’s a greater than 0 chance that the systems will actually revive as they hope it will .

Six-day cruise lies ahead for India's Chandrayaan-2 probe before the real lunar shenanigans begin

Re: The Vikram lander

You’re simply making my point further - unrelated Middle Eastern origin anecdotes are simply too obscure when the story is about an Indian mission and not a middle eastern one .

Most Indians would look at you confused if you tried to make the joke to them, until you spelled out what you meant, whereupon they’d tell you the same thing - Vikram in this context is not a reference to a person at all, and neither is the name of the rover (Pragyan).

Two Soyuz launches, Starhopper hops, sats play chicken with Indian weapons test fallout

Re: India shouldn't have done that

The 'major nations' - US, Russia and China - have already done ASAT tests themselves. We're hardly about to see any negative commentary from them as anything more than rank hypocrisy.

Amazon triples profit to $11.2bn, pays ZERO DOLLARS in corp tax – instead we pay it $129m

Wait, so *I* can’t deduct state and local taxes beyond $10K anymore but Amazon can deduct a billion of it ?

Space policy boffin: Blighty can't just ctrl-C, ctrl-V plans for Galileo into its Brexit satellite

There have been NAVIC reference chipsets out for a couple of years now, and India is in the process of requiring all commercial mobile / navigation devices sold within the country to have NAVIC as the default option, from a point in near future.

Re: NAVIC

The NAVIC constellation of seven IRNSS satellites covers India and 1500kms past its borders. Nothing to do with the UK in any form.

Galileo, here we go again. My my, the Brits are gonna miss EU

Re: Forget the politicians

"In the case of the US, are you confusing visas with their electronic travel authorisation system for visa free travel? In most cases a "visa" still means sending off your passport and getting a visa put in it."

No, there is such a thing as an electronic visa that combines the ESTA mechanism with visa issuance. It involves an online registration, uploading your passport bio page and a picture in scanned form, and paying a fee. You get your approval or denial by email and you print the approval notice and carry it with you.

India has updated its immigration systems to process pretty much the entire world this way, for tourism and medical visitors. You no longer send out a passport anywhere. That's only done for longer and more specialized visit types, that don't apply to the vast majority of the visitors.

Re: Fgs

"The Commonwealth doesn't have one, India has one.

If you ask nicely and permit increased immigration they might let you join in... but it is a regional system with coverage of the area containing targets for their nuclear missiles."

The current IRNSS system is indeed regional. It was conceptualized after GPS access issues during the 1999 Kargil War. Budget allocations started 2006, and satellite launches started in 2013.

It became operational in Spring 2018 with the launch of the 7th satellite IRNSS-1I in April, and covers India along with an area extending 1500km around it. The total cost so far is approx $340 million for the project, 7 sats and launchers (PSLV-XL).

It will be expanded to a global network of 24 satellites, probably by the mid 2020s.

India already has an operational sat nav system as well .

Re: Fgs

It has ‘limited geographical coverage’ because it’s not a commonwealth or global system by design . IRNSS is the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System. Like the Chinese Beidou system, it’s India’s homegrown navigational satellite system, created after the US blocked access to accurate GPS signal in the past, leading them to decide the only way forward was a homegrown system .

Tesla undecimates its workforce but Elon insists everything's absolutely fine

I’m glad you acknowledge the impact of your own constraints on carbuying choice . Too many criticisms of EVs related to inability to home charge, conflate the persons own constraints with that of the car .

A contractor or foreman clearly shouldn’t buy a Kia Rio or Toyota Yaris, and then complain it can’t handle the piles of lumber he tried to stick inside at Home Depot . Similarly, it isn’t the smart choice to buy an EV if you’re clearly constrained from easily charging it .

However, when you live/work someplace where the charging infrastructure works for you, at least with a Tesla and it’s network of chargers, I find practically no compromise . Quite the opposite, since my energy and overall operational costs are way lower .

Your post is factually wrong. Is also is extremely short sighted, and apparently that of a person who hasn’t used the car he’s talking about, at any length . And yes, I know - I drive a Model S.

It doesn’t take ‘hours to supercharge a Tesla’ . The time to gain a functional charge is counted in *minutes* . You can go from 20% to over 80% charge in under 30 minutes . Over 90% in between 30-45 minutes . Beyond that, charge rate tapers .

BUT - charging 100% is usually pointless . Regen braking is turned off due to high charge level, so you don’t gain what it would otherwise offer . Superchargers in most urban areas with lots of Tesla’s are 50mi apart or less.

Another gaping hole almost every non EV owner discounts - because they’ve never experienced its worth - is that having a plug in the garage means you wake up every morning to a full tank . And no, it doesn’t take 10-12hrs . A NEMA 14-50 pushing a sustained 40A gets you an approx 30 miles/hr charge rate . My 75D is typically done in 5-6hrs, using the ToU rate starting midnight , with anywhere from 10-20% initial charge and 90% limit setting .

And the 255mi range ? That is not the range you get by babying the car . Rather, it’s what you get when you do 70-75mph on the freeway . If you putter along at 35-45mph around town, you’ll get a higher range than advertised : https://insideevs.com/heres-how-speed-impacts-range-of-the-tesla-model-s/

I’ve driven mine two years now . Well north of 50K miles in those years . My round trip commute is almost 200 miles, and I can do it on one charge . I’ve driven up to the Canadian border and back from LA . It just works . Supercharging plus destination chargers meant I woke up more than once with a full tank in the car .

Range anxiety is a normal thing for those who aren’t familiar, or even EV newcomers . Most other EVs are not yet functional , but Tesla’s are . The supercharger network is a force multiplier that no one else has, as yet .

Another quarter, another record-breaking Tesla loss: Let's take a question from YouTube, eh, Mr Musk?

Re: Pioneers

Dismal real world ranges ? Tesla’s get their quoted ranges under real world conditions . The 259 miles on a 75D is not something you get by babying it a time 55mph with a tailwind downhill - I get 98-102% of rated range doing 70-75 on the freeway with the AC on .

Commonwealth Games brochure declares that England is now in Africa

It's time...

... to round up Robert Redford and Meryl Streep for a sequel to their 80s movie - Back Into Africa.

India signals ban on cryptocurrencies, embraces blockchain

So , how much did you lose in the last two months ? Bitcoin is just a modern day tulip mania . Its technology is far more useful . And that’s exactly what India is doing - keeping its citizens from blowing money on BS while investing in using the technology to suit its needs .

Re: Sales tax in India

There’s no such tax if the company manufactures them in India . That’s the whole purpose of setting up a tax structure than minimally impacts local production and increases duties by level of imported content . Its an extremely sensible and effective approach . It just bothers you because it impacts you .

Hypocrisy ? Labour is one of the three pillars of capitalism, along with goods and capital . The west particularly wants free movement of capital so it can invest its sizeable capital surpluses elsewhere , movement of goods to suit its own industry, but not movement of labour, since that’s too inconvenient for you right now. But oh, not 100-150 years ago, when indentured labour was absolutely a necessity . You should stop being a whiny little b***h.

Re: India

Your response is all over the place, combining a few headline facts with a lot of garbage . ‘Construction services’ ? That’s not even merchandise trade . India separately breaks out merchandise and services trade figures . Look it up .

H-1B visa hopefuls, green card holders are feeling the wrath of 'America first' Trump

Re: Sorry Reality I'd Harsh

You’re assuming India forced the US hand in this . The reality is that the US and even UK corporations loved and continue to love outsourcing . Indian companies didn’t make the laws and the loopholes . The US did . And left it open for 20+ years . But hey it sounds cathartic to take it on the other guy right ?

Since when ? I got my employment based GC in the late 2000s (2008 I think), and all I had was biometrics. No interview. Only the citizenship naturalization process had one as standard.

Nervy nuke-armed nation fires missile with 5,000km range

Lots of whiny bitching on here

Looks like the comments have all the usual talking points covered:

* Trump

* bloody Hindoooos

* We give them aid ???

* Savages shit in the streets

* Assorted noise about the Empire.

Don't you guys tire of it ? You keep sending us money and get enormously upset about it, then send more. I'd hate to see it end, not because of the money which is peanuts to a country with a $3 trillion GDP growing at 7% a year, but the expression of wanton impotence is just so absurdly funny.

Dick move: Navy flyboy flings firmament phallus for flabbergasted folk

And that’s what happens

... when you have seamen up in the air .

Tesla launches electric truck it guarantees won't break for a million miles

Re: Tesla semi?

I’ve owned a Model S for two years and have covered over 40K miles, and that comment is nonsense . I get within 100-102% of rated range doing 70-75mph on the freeway with the climate control running . Under extremely inclement conditions - heavy rain and wind - I still manage within 110-115% . Under 55mph I get above rated range performance . There’s absolutely no ‘feathering’ involved . Quite the opposite in fact , considering the instantaneous torque on tap.

Dear racist Airbnb host, we've enrolled you in an Asian American studies course

Re: Asian

They aren't recruiting Chinese students . They're appealing to international students, who pay full fees . The Chinese just happen to be the biggest segment of that . Local Chinese and Indian students aren't at an advantage . Quite the opposite . They face academic standards far higher than whites, much less the less performing minorities like the Hispanics and Blacks .