Categories
Journalism Tech

Kanye West Suspended From Twitter After Swastika Tweet

That was the headline on my latest, a story out Friday with my colleague Sarah Needleman. It begins:

Twitter Inc. again suspended Kanye West’s account after the musician and designer posted a swastika in a tweet that the social-media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, said violated its rules.

Mr. West, who now legally goes by Ye and had recently returned from a previous Twitter suspension, on Thursday posted a picture of a swastika merged with the Star of David.

Asked on Twitter by a user to “fix Kanye please,” Mr. Musk replied: “I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.”

Mr. West’s account then began displaying a message saying it was suspended, with no tweets visible.

Click through to read the rest.

Categories
Journalism Tech

Twitter Becomes Stage for China Protests Despite Ban by Beijing

That was the headline on a story out Wednesday I wrote with my colleage Selina Cheng. It begins:

HONG KONG—Twitter is banned in China, but it is proving a critical platform for getting videos and images of protests occurring across the nation out to the rest of the world.

China’s robust internet censors have sprung into action to scrub domestic social media of photos and video streams showing demonstrations against harsh Covid restrictions, spurring citizens to circumvent the nation’s Great Firewall.

Twitter has been blocked in China since 2009, but people in the country are able to access it using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which disguise their locations. They can then send material via the platform’s messaging system to a handful of widely followed Twitter users, who in turn broadcast it globally.

One Twitter user who lives outside China and goes by the name of Li Laoshi, or Teacher Li, said he has been receiving more than a dozen messages per second with protest material at some points since public unrest erupted—the same number he used to get a day—so that he could repost them publicly.

“My daily routine is: wake up, post online, and feed my cat,” he said. The goal of the account, created in May 2020, is to record events that are subject to censorship in China, his profile states. It had more than 759,000 followers as of Wednesday, more than triple the number before protests began, according to social-media analytics site Social Blade.

Click through to read the rest.

Categories
Misc.

Winter Weather Arrives in Hong Kong. Finally

It felt like it would never come, with temperatures in the 70s and 80s just a few days ago.

But now it’s here. As if on cue, now that it’s December.

Actual winter weather!

The mercury has dipped to the low 60s and even high 50s. Skies are clear. The sun is out.

I love this time of year in Hong Kong. 🤗

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN300: Pack of Pups on the Prowl

Sent as a newsletter Sunday, November 22. Not on my email list? Enter your address here.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

Image of the week, above:

Another excellent vanity plate, spotted here in Hong Kong. If you work hard, as the saying goes, you gotta…

My WSJ latest:

🇮🇳 My latest, out Wednesday: Facebook Parent Meta Sees Executive Exodus in India

It begins:

Three of Meta Platforms Inc.’s top executives in India have departed the company in recent weeks, with the Facebook parent changing the country’s reporting structure amid its first broad global restructuring, according to people familiar with the matter.

They were: India head Ajit Mohan; the head of WhatsApp in India, Abhijit Bose; and Rajiv Aggarwal, Meta India’s public policy director.

The story included the exclusive tidbit that India’s office, which long reported to HQ in Menlo Park, California, will now report to Meta’s Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore. (That was later confirmed in a statement from Meta announcing the new India head, Sandhya Devanathan.)

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) ⚽ The World Cup is here! Ecuador defeated hosts Qatar 2–0 in the opening match yesterday. And England just demolished Iran 6–2.

2) 🍺 More on the World Cup: My WSJ colleagues have the inside story of how (chaotically) and why (a late decision by the Qatari royal family) the tournament’s last-minute beer ban came to be.

3) 📺 And finally: Qatar are a controversial World Cup host. England footballing great turned TV presenter Gary Lineker kicked off the BBC’s coverage of the event with a sober rundown of some of the issues.

4) 🐦 The latest on Twitter: Elon Musk has reinstated Former President Trump’s account, but it’s unclear if Trump will return, given his commitment to his own social media platform, Truth Social.

5) 💸 The FTX débâcle, simplified, by economist Alex Tabarrok.

6) 🇹🇭 Here’s a New York Times travel piece on the revitalization of Bangkok’s Charoen Krung Road, which runs along the Chao Phraya River.

7) 💔 How “Love Is Blind,” over the course of three seasons, went from a “sociological fairy tale to a reality TV nightmare.”

8) 🔉 Soundprint is “like Yelp, but for noise” – an app that helps you find quiet bars, restaurants, and other places.

9) 🎧 Podcast of the week: Ken Burns talks to Tyler Cowen about making documentaries, why he’s lived in the same small New Hampshire town for decades, and why he loves quilts.

10) 🐼 This is the best 12-second compilation of panda fails you will see this week. (Thanks, Anasuya!)

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“There are some Wonderful people in this world”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN299: Precious Pups

Sent as a newsletter November 13, 2022. Not on my list? Sign up here.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

Image of the week, above:

🐶 I passed by a restaurant here in Hong Kong the other day and had to snap a pic of this King Charles Spaniel birthday party. The one in the middle was turning four!

My WSJ latest:

My latest, a story out Thursday with my colleague Sam Schechner: Facebook Parent Meta Announces Layoffs of 11,000 Staff.

It begins:

Meta Platforms Inc. said it would cut more than 11,000 workers, or 13% of staff, embarking on the company’s first broad restructuring as it copes with a slumping digital-ad market and plunging stock price.

The layoffs add to a wave of job cuts that are roiling Silicon Valley, where tech giants that added employees by the tens of thousands through the pandemic are now retrenching.

In a message to staff on Wednesday morning, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, would cut staff across all of its businesses, with its recruiting and business teams disproportionately affected.

Indeed, what a few days it’s been in the world of big tech. Read on…

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🐦 A week after billionaire Elon Musk acquired Twitter, the company began mass layoffs – thousands are estimated to have been fired – and now advertisers are fleeing the platform.

2) 👉 More: My WSJ colleagues have the story of what Musk’s first week was like inside the company.

3) 👀 Bonus link: examples of how mischief makers took advantage of Twitter’s new verification rules to impersonate companies.

4) 🛍️ Elsewhere, Amazon’s CEO is conducing a cost-cutting review, with special attention on the company’s Alexa business, my WSJ colleagues reported in a Thursday exclusive.

5) 💸 And then there’s FTX, the cryptocurrency platform, valued at $32 billion earlier this year, which declared bankruptcy on Friday. My colleagues have a look at how founder Sam Bankman-Fried has gone from “crypto hero to villain.”

6) 🇺🇸 On to politics! Shot: A predicted “red wave” in Congressional midterms has not materialized; Democrats are maintaining control of the Senate, and the House is still up for grabs.

7) ⭐ Chaser: “The single most important result of this election was the triumph of the normies,” says David Brooks. “Establishmentarian, practical leaders who are not always screaming angrily at you did phenomenally well, on right and left…”

8) 🇷🇺 Russia withdrew from the Ukrainian city of Kherson, another major setback for Putin.

9) 🐙 Octopuses apparently get grouchy and throw stuff at one another.

10) ⚽ The World Cup in Qatar starts on November 21 – a week from tomorrow! (Yes, it’s weird to have the tournament in the winter, but playing there in the summer was a non-starter.) Here’s a PDF of the match schedule. I will, of course, be pulling for the recently finalized U.S. squad.

💯 Also, here’s bonus footballing video: A player for Poland’s Warta Poznan amputee team, Marcin Oleksy, recently scored a beautiful goal (Thanks, Randy P.!).

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“this adorable puppy trying to bark away the hiccups will make your day”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.” – Edith Wharton

•••

🤗 What’s new with you? Hit reply to send me tips, queries, random comments, and videos of hiccuping pups.

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Journalism

Facebook Parent Meta Announces Layoffs of 11,000 Staff

That’s the headline on my newest story, out Wednesday with my colleague Sam Schechner. It begins:

Meta Platforms Inc. said it would cut more than 11,000 workers, or 13% of staff, embarking on the company’s first broad restructuring as it copes with a slumping digital-ad market and plunging stock price.

The layoffs add to a wave of job cuts that are roiling Silicon Valley, where tech giants that added employees by the tens of thousands through the pandemic are now retrenching.

In a message to staff on Wednesday morning, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, would cut staff across all of its businesses, with its recruiting and business teams disproportionately affected. The company is also tightening its belt by reducing its office space, moving to desk-sharing for some workers and extending a hiring freeze through the first quarter of 2023.

“This is a sad moment, and there’s no way around that,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote, adding that he had been wrong in assuming that an increase in online activity during the pandemic would continue. “I got this wrong and I take responsibility for that.”

Click through to read the rest.

My colleagues Jeff Horwitz and Salvador Rodriguez had the scoop Monday on the coming cuts.

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN298: Vroomin’ Vizslas

Sent as a newsletter Oct. 30, 2022. Not on my list? Sign up here.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

Image of the week, above:

🇭🇰 I can’t put my finger on what it is I like about this photo I snapped near Causeway Bay here in Hong Kong recently – the light, the movement of the pedestrians, the canyon of buildings in the background – but it captures the mid-day, lunchtime feeling of the city, with hundreds or thousands of people in any given area heading in all manner of directions, all for various reasons.

My WSJ latest:

🇮🇳 My latest story, out last weekend, is headlined: Meta-Backed Meesho Is Beating Amazon, Walmart in Race for Indian Shoppers. It begins:

An upstart e-commerce service is winning more new shoppers in India than Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart, posing a challenge to the U.S. retailing titans, which have plowed billions of dollars into the world’s biggest untapped digital market.

That service: Meesho, which an app analytics firm said was the world’s most-downloaded shopping app during the first half of the year, with some 127 million downloads. It’s growing quickly especially in India’s smaller cities and towns.

“Meesho is my Zara,” an 18-year-old shopper told us.

Click through to read the rest.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🦠 A story that’s been getting a lot of attention online since it came out Friday: a deep investigation by Katherine Eban and Jeff Kao into the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the potential origins of Covid.

2) 🐦 Now that Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, here’s a look at what might come next (un-banning accounts, such as Donald Trump’s? Combating bots? Allowing more kinds of speech? New business model?)

3) ✈️ A fascinating tale from my WSJ colleagues: Inside the Secret Prisoner Swap That Splintered the U.S. and China.

4) 🛸 The Pentagon and intelligence agencies are set to update a report on UFOs, concluding that many phenomena spotted by U.S. pilots have been surveillance operations by countries such as China, optical illusions or aerial debris – that is, not aliens.

5) 🤑 The always excellent Matt Levine has written a 40,000-word long cover story – “The Crypto Story” – that comprises the entire issue of the latest Bloomberg Businessweek.

6) 🚌 A sad result of Covid-inspired disruptions to U.S. schools: a massive decline in math and reading scores, a new test shows.

7) 🗣 A video journey through Ireland and the U.K, by accents.

8) 🤭 The 2022 finalists for the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are out.

9) 📺 HBO Max will release a three-part documentary series on the South Carolina Murdaugh murders on November 3.

10) 🌲 Go to Tree.fm to hear the sounds of forests around the world.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

🐕 “this man built a racetrack in his backyard for his dogs”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
India Tech

Meta-Backed Meesho Is Beating Amazon, Walmart in Race for Indian Shoppers

That’s the headline on my newest story, out Saturday. It begins:

An upstart e-commerce service is winning more new shoppers in India than Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart, posing a challenge to the U.S. retailing titans, which have plowed billions of dollars into the world’s biggest untapped digital market.

Bengaluru-based Meesho is leading the burgeoning social-commerce sector, allowing users to sell items by sharing product listings with friends via Meta Platforms Inc.’s popular WhatsApp messaging service, along with Facebook and Instagram. Meta is also an investor in Meesho, with an undisclosed stake.

Meesho was the world’s most-downloaded shopping app during the first half of this year, according to app analytics firm Apptopia, with shoppers pointing to its ease of use, wide selection of products and low prices. Some 127 million people downloaded the app, which is available only in India, compared with 81 million downloads for Amazon and 50 million for Flipkart during the period.

Amazon and Flipkart are “more for the top 1%-5% of the population” in terms of income, specializing in more expensive goods such as smartphones and televisions, said Meesho Chief Financial Officer Dhiresh Bansal.

Click through to read the rest.

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN297: Awesome Australian Shepherds

Sent as a newsletter October 16, 2022. Not on my list? Enter your email here.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

Image of the week, above:

☀️ The weather here in Hong Kong has been fantastic the last couple of weeks, with deep blue skies, a gentle breeze, and temperatures dipping ever so slightly to about 80 Fahrenheit (27 Celsius).

💐 Here’s a photo of our beloved Ginger on a recent walk. Sometimes you’ve gotta stop and smell the flowers.

🆕 My WSJ latest:

🚢 My latest, out Monday: In Hong Kong, Sanctioned Russian Tycoon’s Superyacht Sparks U.S.-China Spat.

It begins:

The anchoring in Hong Kong waters of a sanctioned Russian oligarch’s superyacht is ramping up tensions between Beijing and Washington, which warned against the financial center being used as a safe haven.

The 465-foot Nord, owned by steel magnate Alexey Mordashov, moored west of the Chinese territory’s Victoria Harbour last week after departing from the far-eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, according to website MarineTraffic.

Its presence has drawn onlookers in passing boats eager to snap photos of one the world’s biggest luxury vessels. Equipped with two helicopter pads, a cinema and swimming pool, it can be seen flying a Russian flag. It has also ignited a spat between U.S. and Chinese officials, already at loggerheads over Beijing’s crackdowns on freedoms in the former British colony.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇨🇳 Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a speech Sunday opening the twice-a-decade Communist Party congress “cast himself as the decisive helmsman his country needs in surmounting great adversity,” my WSJ colleague Chun Han Wong reports. (Xi had been in power ten years and appears set for another five.)

2) 🇺🇸 President Biden said in his administration’s national security strategy that this “decisive decade” must see the U.S. “outcompeting China and restraining Russia.” You can read the document here .

3) ⚖️ A jury ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay $965 million to Sandy Hook victims’ relatives for his lies about the school shooting.

4) 📺 Netflix is launching next month a less expensive service, supported by ads, that will cost $6.99 a month .

5) 🥽 Meta debuted its $1,499 virtual reality headset, meant for professional use…though it’s unclear what working in the metaverse means, exactly.

6) 🔍 Actress Angela Lansbury, best known for her role on “Murder She Wrote,” died at age 96.

7) 🎸 Also RIP Mike Schank, buddy of filmmaker Mark Borchadt in the wonderful 1999 documentary “American Movie.”

8) 🤑 Salary Transparent Street is a YouTube channel in which people are interviewed on the street about how much money they make.

9) 🔥 Artist Damien Hirst burned 1,000 of his paintings , which now exist only as NFTs.

10) 🇮🇹 The trailer for the second season of “White Lotus” is out, featuring Michael Imperioli (!) and set in Sicily.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Who wants to see a BIRTHDAY-slam?!”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Everything changes. Don’t be afraid.” — Al Swearengen, in “Deadwood”

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Journalism

In Hong Kong, Sanctioned Russian Tycoon’s Superyacht Sparks U.S.-China Spat

That’s the headline on my newest story, out Monday. It begins:

The anchoring in Hong Kong waters of a sanctioned Russian oligarch’s superyacht is ramping up tensions between Beijing and Washington, which warned against the financial center being used as a safe haven.

The 465-foot Nord, owned by steel magnate Alexey Mordashov, moored west of the Chinese territory’s Victoria Harbour last week after departing from the far-eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, according to website MarineTraffic.

Its presence has drawn onlookers in passing boats eager to snap photos of one the world’s biggest luxury vessels. Equipped with two helicopter pads, a cinema and swimming pool, it can be seen flying a Russian flag. It has also ignited a spat between U.S. and Chinese officials, already at loggerheads over Beijing’s crackdowns on freedoms in the former British colony.

“The possible use of Hong Kong as a safe haven by individuals evading sanctions from multiple jurisdictions further calls into question the transparency of the business environment,” a U.S. State Department spokesman said Saturday. “Hong Kong’s reputation as a financial center depends on adherence to international laws and standards.”

Click through to read the rest.