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Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes.
🔌 🍨 My latest scoop, with my colleagues Julie Steinberg and Jon Emont, is about Amazon and Gojek in Indonesia. The story, out Wednesday, begins:
Amazon.com Inc. Indonesian ride-hailing startup Gojek Group have held preliminary talks on a partnership, according to people familiar with the matter, which could expand the online retail giant’s services into a populous new market.
The companies have discussed an arrangement by which Amazon would make a sizable investment in Gojek and tap into the Jakarta-based company’s delivery infrastructure in Indonesia, one of the people said.
Click thorough to read the rest. Bloomberg and Reuters, among others, followed with pieces of their own.
Here are ten items worth your time this week:
🇨🇳 1) How China Uses LinkedIn to Recruit Spies Abroad [New York Times]
“‘Instead of dispatching spies to the U.S. to recruit a single target, it’s more efficient to sit behind a computer in China and send out friend requests to thousands of targets using fake profiles.’”
🚓 2) You can now find out if Amazon’s Ring has partnered with your local police [CNET]
“Ring has released an official map detailing every police department that’s partnered with it, showing how widely and rapidly it’s been cozying up to law enforcement. ”
📱 3) Google unearths 2-year iPhone spyware attack [Financial Times]
“Apple’s prized reputation for protecting its customers’ security and privacy has taken another hit, with the discovery that iPhone owners were susceptible to more than a dozen software vulnerabilities for at least two years.”
🌯 4) Kiwibots win fans at UC Berkeley as they deliver fast food at slow speeds [SF Chronicle]
“The Kiwibots do not figure out their own routes. Instead, people in Colombia, the home country of Chavez and his two co-founders, plot ‘waypoints’ for the bots to follow, sending them instructions every five to 10 seconds on where to go.”
🍎 5) Apple Opens Door to iPhone Repairs by More Outside Vendors [WSJ]
“Apple Inc. is launching a new product-repair program in the U.S. in which independent businesses can repair Apple products using the same parts and tools as the company’s authorized service providers.”
🆕 And: “Separately, Apple said Thursday it plans to host a Sept. 10 event at the Steve Jobs Theater on its corporate campus, where it is widely expected to unveil products including three new iPhone models.”
🌐 6) Startups’ new frontier: Optimizing your friendships [Axios]
“Now ‘personal CRM,’ which applies the same techniques to personal relationships, has become one of the hottest app categories in Silicon Valley…”
🧬 7) Search For ‘Gay Genes’ Comes Up Short In Large New Study [NPR]
“A huge new study finds a faint hint of genetic variation that may be linked to same-sex behavior. The study broadly reinforces the observation that both biology and a person’s environment influence sexuality, but the results reveal very little about that biology.”
🎼 8) The Ultimate List of Work and Study Music [LifeHacker]
“Here are some of my greatest sources of background music for work, studying, and creativity.”
🌌 9) The Complete Galactic Plane: Up and Down [Astronomy Picture of the Day]
“Is it possible to capture the entire plane of our galaxy in a single image? Yes, but not in one exposure – and it took some planning to do it in two.”
🐺 10) 1 year later and Mr Bubz is still the greatest video to ever hit the internet [Twitter: @elvishpresley]
💡 Quote of the week:
“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.” – Truman Capote
👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,
Newley