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Newley’s Notes 129: My Ode to ‘Wild Wild Country;’ Amazing Satellite Images; on Work and Creativity

Edition 129 of my email newsletter went out last week.

If you’d like NN delivered to your inbox, simply enter your email address here. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.


world map of circuits

Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes.

An administrative note: I’m changing the NN format slightly to provide me with a little more flexibility in assembling these missives.

You’ll notice there are no longer separate sections for 1) for my WSJ stories, 2) my blog posts, and 3) “5 cool tech-ish reads this week.” Now it’s one simpler, single list. But fret not: All the same awesomesomess remains – and now with added emoji! 👏👏

Anyway, on to this week’s NN…

10 items worth your time this week:

🙏 1) By me at Newley.com: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh docu-series ‘Wild, Wild Country’ — Yes, It’s That Good [Newley.com] – My notes on this fantastic Netflix series, along with links I found for more reading on the cult, ranging from a two-part 1986 New Yorker piece to various books and a new interview the Oregonian investigative journalist featured in the shows. This is one of those rare documentaries that lingers with you for days or weeks after you’ve watched it.

🐊 2) Why Zuckerberg’s 14-Year Apology Tour Hasn’t Fixed Facebook. [Wired] – Zeynep Tufekci, an academic who studies social media, provides important context: The Facebook founder has been apologizing for years. The first graf:

IN 2003, one year before Facebook was founded, a website called Facemash began nonconsensually scraping pictures of students at Harvard from the school’s intranet and asking users to rate their hotness. Obviously, it caused an outcry. The website’s developer quickly proffered an apology. “I hope you understand, this is not how I meant for things to go, and I apologize for any harm done as a result of my neglect to consider how quickly the site would spread and its consequences thereafter,” wrote a young Mark Zuckerberg. “I definitely see how my intentions could be seen in the wrong light.”

📰 3) Related: The Death of the Newsfeed [Ben-Evans.com] – Noted venture capitalist and tech commentator Benedict Evans writes about how newsfeeds, like Facebook’s, go from being chronological (when there are few users), to algorithmic (when there are too many users to show every post from your friends), and what that means for user experience. Thought experiment: If WhatsApp and its groups feature existed when Facebook launched, would FB ever have achieved its massive global scale? I think not.

✍️ 4) Do Capybaras Dream of Google Docs? [NewYorker.com] – “Google Docs, at any given moment,” Katy Waldman writes, “might be one or both things: an unremarkable feature of office life and a theatre for the mysteries of creativity.” I’m not sure I completely grasp this piece, but I do love it.

🛰️ 5) Earth’s Wonders Like You’ve Never Seen Them Before [Medium/Nature.com] – A cool collection of satellite images showing cities and geographic features from “off angles.” Many are gorgeous.

🐕 6) Ancient Maya traded dogs for use in religious ceremonies, new study shows [Ars Technica] – Head scratcher of the week.

🇹🇭 7) The Surprising Reason that There Are So Many Thai Restaurants in America [Vice] TLDR: “gastrodiplomacy”! Thanks, Wendy!

👩‍💻 8) A 2-Year Stanford Study Shows the Astonishing Productivity Boost of Working From Home. [Inc.com] – But don’t miss the interesting caveat.

🎨 9) Does Having a Day Job Mean Making Better Art? [NY Times] – A thought-provoking look at work and creativity.

🎤 10) One glorious thing: Marvin Gaye (Acapella) I heard it through the Grapevine. [YouTube].

What’s new in your world? Hit me with your updates.

If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If you received this from a (smart and cool) pal, you can sign up here.

👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,

Newley

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Newley’s Notes 128: China and 5G; Smartphones and our Eyes; Earthworm Jerky

2018 04 08 sunset

Edition 128 of my email newsletter went out last week.

If you’d like NN delivered to your inbox, simply enter your email address here. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.


Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, in which I share the best of what I write and the best of what I read.

If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If you received this from a pal, you can sign up here.

🇨🇳 What I Wrote in The Wall Street Journal

China’s Huawei Is Determined to Lead the Way on 5G Despite U.S. Concerns — For this story, which I wrote with my colleague Stu Woo, I traveled down to Chennai to see an obscure technical standards setting conference up close. The piece begins:

CHENNAI, India—The U.S. government is trying to thwart Huawei Technologies Co.’s ascent in wireless technology, but the Chinese company is determined to prevail.

Far from Washington, where the government has called Huawei a national security threat, the world’s largest maker of cellular-tower equipment is trying to guide the development and design of the next generation of mobile networks, dubbed 5G.

Huawei is sending large teams to industry-sponsored meetings—including one held recently in this south India port city. Just as the home-movie industry agreed years ago on specifications for DVD players, wireless-technology companies are now meeting to establish 5G standards.

The story ran in the print WSJ and attracted more than 80 comments online.

📲 5 Cool Tech-ish Reads This Week

😬 1. More fuel for the Facebook user data fire: Buzzfeed News’s Ryan Mac, Charlie Warzel and Alex Kantrowitz reported on an internal 2016 Facebook memo in which a vice president talked about aggressive tactics to grow its user base, such as “questionable contact importing practices” and “subtle language that helps people stay searchable.”

The upshot, they write: The memo “reveals the extent to which Facebook’s leadership understood the physical and social risks the platform’s products carried — even as the company downplayed those risks in public.”

📊 2. Speaking of which: How to Opt Out of Data Broker Sites.The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica user data scandal is really about how third parties use our personal details. Here’s a list of several such sites, with links to their opt out pages.

🚗 3. Searching for a peaceful drive in the U.S. countryside? Look no further than the America’s Quietest Routes website, which tells you the sleepiest routes to drive in each state, based on traffic counts.

🍴 4. Nutrition-related read of the week: Grubstreet’s “The Last Conversation You’ll Ever Need to Have About Eating Right” actually delivers on that ambitious headline. Mark Bittman and Yale University’s Dr. David L. Katz talk paleo, keto, carbs, and more.

(None of this will be a surprise to those who took my advice in 2012 and read “Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics.” It remains the most instructive book on food I’ve ever read.)

👓 5. On eyesight and smartphones. In Wired, the always-excellent Virginia Heffernan tackles the thorny subjects of aging, our failing vision, and gadgets. “If you were a nomadic goatherd in the Mongolian grasslands, you might not even consider presbyopia a pathology,” she writes.

🌲 Quote of the week

Humans had lived in nature for 5 million years. We were made to fit a natural environment. So we feel stress in an urban area…When we are exposed to nature, our bodies go back to how they should be.

That’s from Japanese scientist Yoshifumi Miyazaki, whose studies have shown that exposure to nature — or “forest bathing” — can lower stress hormones.

🥩 1 Silly, High-Protein Thing

Speaking of healthy (?) eating, you can buy earthworm jerky on Amazon. Product description: “This bag of earthworm contains 5 grams of 100% edible dehydrated large Earthworms.” One bag will set you back $14.99.

👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,

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Newley's Notes

Newley’s Notes 127: Uber Quits SE Asia; Facebook Gets Unfriended; Smoldering T-Rexes

2018-04-01abstract

Edition 127 of my email newsletter went out last week.

If you’d like NN delivered to your inbox, simply enter your email address here. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.


 

Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, in which I share the best of what I write and the best of what I read.

If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If you received this from a pal, you can sign up here.

The big Asia tech news this week is that Uber is quitting Southeast Asia. First China, then Russia, and now it’s leaving another region. That thrusts India and Brazil — two of the biggest remaining emerging markets in which it’s fighting — into the spotlight.

Meanwhile Alibaba is pouring another couple billion bucks into the Amazon of Southeast Asia.

On to this week’s NN!

🚘 What I Wrote in The Wall Street Journal

Uber Sells Southeast Asia Business to Rival Grab — The story begins:

Uber Technologies Inc. said Monday it would relinquish its battle for Southeast Asia’s riders, selling its local operations in exchange for a minority stake in homegrown champion Grab Inc.

In exchange for its operations in Southeast Asia, Uber is gaining a 27.5% stake in Singapore-based Grab, which has more monthly active users across much of the region than Uber, according to app analytics firm App Annie.

Uber’s Latest Retreat Leaves Brazil, India as the Key Battlegrounds — The story, which I wrote with my colleague P.R. Venkat, begins:

Uber Technologies Inc. has pulled back from several emerging markets but it is determined to hold on in two of the world’s most populous: India and Brazil.

In both, Uber has its hands full. But the potential is enormous for any company that comes to dominate.

Alibaba Bets Another $2 Billion on Southeast Asia — The story, which I wrote with my colleague Liza Lin, begins:

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Executive Chairman Jack Ma is doubling down on Southeast Asia, investing another $2 billion in e-commerce subsidiary Lazada Group and naming trusted confidante Lucy Peng as its chief executive.

The investment announced Monday comes on top of the $2 billion the Chinese e-commerce giant has poured into Lazada since buying a majority stake in 2016.

Singapore-based Lazada operates online marketplaces in six Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia, selling everything from lipstick and car wax to instant coffee and smartphones.

Stay tuned for more on Uber, and Southeast Asia e-commerce.

📲 5 Cool Tech-ish Reads This Week

(Or in the case of some of these items this week, not so cool. But important…)

1. Trump + Data Firm + Facebook = Perfect Storm. The Cambridge Analytica story, as you no doubt noticed, has exploded into a huge issue for Facebook.

Let’s try to sum things up: A Channel 4 News undercover investigation of the data firm connected to Trump led to scrutiny of how an academic obtained Facebook user details.

My colleagues Deepa Seetharaman and Katherine Bindley put together a good Q&A explaining what the fuss is about.

Then Mark Zuckerberg was criticized for taking so long to respond to the crisis, and issuing what seemed like a lame apology.

Later, adding fuel to the fire, Ars Technica reported that Facebook’s Android app logs some users’ phone call and messaging information. As my colleague Robert McMillan wrote: “While Facebook says there was nothing improper in its call logging, it is the latest example of Facebook users coming to the realization they are sharing vast quantities of data with the company—wittingly or not—each time they agree to one of its privacy settings or feature requests.”

Then on Monday the Federal Trade Commission confirmed reports that it has “opened a non-public investigation into Facebook for its user privacy practices,” Axios’s Dan Primack wrote.

Facebook’s stock dropped 14% last week — the most in one week since 2012.

2. An Uber self-diving struck and killed a woman in Arizona. It’s unclear why the car didn’t stop. Police released video of the crash showing the “safety driver” looking down, not at the road. Here’a detailed analysis from technologist Brad Templeton on what might have gone wrong.

3. Longread of the week: “War of Words: Meet the Texan Trolling for Putin.” Sub-head of this Texas Monthly piece: “In 2014, Russell Bonner Bentley was a middle-aged arborist living in Austin. Now he’s a local celebrity in a war-torn region of Ukraine—and a foot soldier in Russia’s information war.”

4. Remember the game “Oregon Trail”? Target is now selling a $25 handheld version. I want one bad. Looks to be lovingly made, too: there’s a tiny floppy disk for a power button! Here’s a video review.

5. Just FYI: Iggy Pop has an Instagram account for his pet cockatoo.

🦖 Quote of the week

“We knew he had a temper, but today he blew his top.”

That’s from an AP story about a huge animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex that went up in flames at a theme park in Canon City, Colorado. Click through for a memorable image.

📹 1 Silly Thing

Hide the Pain Harold Visits Manchester, England. Video is here. More on Harold and his eponymous meme is here.

🤳 NN reader feedback of the week:

“That’s EXACTLY the kind of thing an influencer would say.”

That’s from my kid bro M, responding to my blog post about taking a break from the Instgram app, in which I said IG has been pestering me to re-join, despite not having an enormous following there. “And I’m not even a power user, much less an ‘influencer,'” I wrote. “I have several hundred followers, but less than a thousand.”

Point taken.

Fist bump from New Delhi,

Newley

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Newley's Notes

Newley’s Notes 126: Say Hi to Our Puppy, Ginger!; Facebook’s CA Problem; Toto’s ‘Africa’ FTW

IMG_4081.jpg

Edition 126 of my email newsletter went out a couple weeks back (I’m late it posting it here).

If you’d like NN delivered to your inbox, simply enter your email address here. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.


Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, in which I share the best of what I write and the best of what I read.

If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If you received this from a pal, you can sign up here.

💬 What I Wrote at Newley.com

🐶 — Just posted: Introducing our Desi Dog, Ginger. TLDR: Say hello to our new puppy! The post includes lots of pics (like the one above) and information on her “designed by Darwin” genetic makeup.

🤳 — The Emails and Texts That Show How Badly Instagram Wants me Back. About a month ago I deleted the Instagram app on my phone. Then I started getting messages from IG begging me to return…

📲 5 Cool Tech-ish Reads This Week

1. Just out: New info on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. In a piece with The Observer headlined “How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions,” The New York Times reported yesterday on the platform and the firm that worked with Pres. Trump during the 2017 election:

An examination by The New York Times and The Observer of London reveals how Cambridge Analytica’s drive to bring to market a potentially powerful new weapon put the firm — and wealthy conservative investors seeking to reshape politics — under scrutiny from investigators and lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

And:

Details of Cambridge’s acquisition and use of Facebook data have surfaced in several accounts since the business began working on the 2016 campaign, setting off a furious debate about the merits of the firm’s so-called psychographic modeling techniques.

But the full scale of the data leak involving Americans has not been previously disclosed — and Facebook, until now, has not acknowledged it. Interviews with a half-dozen former employees and contractors, and a review of the firm’s emails and documents, have revealed that Cambridge not only relied on the private Facebook data but still possesses most or all of the trove.

Cambridge paid to acquire the personal information through an outside researcher who, Facebook says, claimed to be collecting it for academic purposes.

During a week of inquiries from The Times, Facebook downplayed the scope of the leak and questioned whether any of the data still remained out of its control. But on Friday, the company posted a statement expressing alarm and promising to take action.

Facebook, meanwhile, insists it wasn’t a breach, as Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier reports.

Here’s Axios’s Sara Fischer and David McCabe on the larger significance:

The scandal is another example of Facebook blaming outdated policies and ignorance for its platform being abused by bad actors — while struggling to contain the public relations fallout. The company is also tangling with the media outlets reporting on it.

Meanwhile Recode’s Kurt Wagner describes how CA was able to collect Facebook data on 50 million users: It began when about 27,000 people used Facebook Login to access an app called “thisisyourdigitallife…”

Bottom line: I think the backlash against big tech is clearly upon us. I see more and more folks on Twitter — certainly a filter bubble, but still — mentioning the r-word: regulation.

💉 2. Another huge story this week: The SEC charged Elizabeth Holmes, founder of blood testing startup Theranos, with fraud. The government’s investigation began after my WSJ colleague John Carreyrou in late 2015 broke the story regarding questions surrounding the company.

At Buzzfeed News, Stephanie M. Lee has a piece called “The Seven Biggest Lies Theranos Told.”

🎧 3. You haven’t truly heard Africa’s “Toto” until you’ve heard it playing in an empty mall. Go ahead, give it a listen. That’s from a thought provoking Jia Tolentino New Yorker piece about the emotions she encountered listening to the works of a 20-year-old Kaukauna, Wisconsin native, who edits song to make them sound like they’re coming from different rooms.

💱 4. John Oliver explains cryptocurrencies. Title says it all. Available on YouTube here.

🗣️ 5. Tech longread of the week: “Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet.” Another from the New Yorker, this time Andrew Marantz on how the popular site is trying to bring trolls to heel — without quashing free speech.

🔭 Quote of the week

“People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.”

That’s from a nice NYT roundup of quotes from Stephen Hawking, who passed away on Wednesday. Another of my faves: “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe. That makes us something very special.”

🤙 1 Silly Thing

“AIRBOARDERS: (Official Movie Trailer)”. Nothing to see here — just a bunch of cool L.A. dudes air getting radical…with business cards. NSFW: language

👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,

Newley

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Newley's Notes

NN125: Uber-Grab Deal; Alexa Gets Creepy; ‘Sopranos’ Prequel

trees

Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, in which I share the best of what I write and the best of what I read.

If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If you received this from a pal, you can sign up here.

What I Wrote in The Wall Street Journal

🚘 — Uber Agrees in Principle to Exit Southeast Asia for Stake in Rival — The story, which I wrote with my colleagues Greg Bensinger and Julie Steinberg, begins:

Uber Technologies Inc. has reached an agreement in principle to sell most of its Southeast Asia operations to local rival Grab Inc., ending a costly fight for market share in the fast-growing region, according to people familiar with the matter.

In exchange for its operations in Southeast Asia, Uber would gain a roughly 30% stake in Grab, these people said. The two companies are still hashing out the final terms of the pact, the people said, cautioning any deal would be subject to regulatory scrutiny. One of the people said Uber’s stake in Grab could wind up being smaller.

5 Cool Tech-ish Reads This Week

🗞️ 1. “Get news. Not too quickly. Avoid social.” That’s New York Times tech columnist Fahad Manjoo’s Michael Pollan-esque advice. In a much-discussed piece, Manjoo says for two months he disconnected from online news and social media, relying instead on print editions of the Gray Lady, The WSJ, and The Economist. He writes:

It has been life changing. Turning off the buzzing breaking-news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins.

The gist: he felt plenty well informed about the world but avoided needless micro-updates, hot takes, fake news and social media toxicity.

(Postscript: Dan Mitchell, writing later at Columbia Journalism Review, quibbled with just how disconnected Manjoo really may have been during the period, given that he was still frequently using Twitter.

“I think it’s clear that I meant I ‘unplugged’ from Twitter as a source of news, not that I didn’t tweet at all,” Manjoo told Mitchell.)

🙄 2. Alexa: super creepy. Some owners of speakers powered by Amazon’s Alexa reported that the devices have been intermittently letting out weird giggles. “We’re aware of this and working to fix it,” Amazon told The Verge’s Shannon Liao. Here’s a video.

(It is no secret that I don’t like these listening devices — sorry, connected home gadgets — one bit.)

🌁 3. Depressing San Francisco story of the week: A shortage of affordable housing due to the tech industry boom means some middle class workers are paying up to $2,400 per month for what are essentially dorm rooms that lack kitchens or bathrooms.

The company building the units, called Starcity, “has already opened three properties with 36 units,” writes Nellie Bowles in the New York Times. “It has nine more in development and a wait list of 8,000 people.”

💬 4. Tool of the week: A great place for finding real quotes, at a time when many dubious ones are floating around online, is Quotenik.com, by writer/editor/researcher Sara Bader. Tagline: “A growing library of verified quotes.” You can search by author and by topic.

🕶️ 5. “The Big Lewbowski” is 20 years old. Charles Bramesco, writing in the New York Times, gives us “10 righteous heirs” to the Coen brothers’ masterpiece: Films released since 1998 that offer bits of Dude-esque stoner humor, film noir, and meta-strangeness.

🔫 Working Title of the Week

“The Many Saints of Newark.”

That’s the tentative title of a “Sopranos” prequel film — yes, you read that right — being produced by David Chase.

The official description, according to the NYT, says it will be “set in the era of the Newark riots in the ’60s, when the African-Americans and the Italians of Newark were at each other’s throats, and when among the gangsters of each group, it became especially lethal.”

There’s no release date yet, but I will certainly be watching this one.

🤡 1 Silly Thing

Bootleg_Daycare is the name of an Instagram account devoted to poorly done replicas of cartoon characters.

👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,

Newley

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Newley’s Notes 124: Uber and SoftBank; How to Neuter your Smartphone; Mr. Rogers Breakdancing

2018 03 06 water

Edition 124 of my email newsletter went out on Sunday.

If you’d like NN delivered to your inbox, simply enter your email address here. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.


Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes: The best of what I write. The best of what I read.

If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If you received this from a pal, you can sign up here.

What I wrote in The Wall Street Journal

🚗 — Uber Battles Ride-Sharing Startups in SoftBank ‘Family.’ The story, which I wrote with my colleague Mayumi Negishi, went online a few hours ago. It begins:

SoftBank Group Corp., the world’s biggest technology investor, has poured some $20 billion into ride-sharing companies around the globe, including Uber Technologies Inc.

Now, those companies are spending at least some of SoftBank’s money to battle each other.

In Japan, Uber is gearing up to fight China’s Didi Chuxing Technology Co., which is planning to enter the market after an investment by SoftBank of around $10 billion.

In India, Uber is facing off with local champion ANI Technologies Inc.’s Ola, in which SoftBank has about a 30% stake and a board seat. SoftBank invested $7.7 billion in Uber for a 15% stake this year.

Uber and Ola are also grappling in Australia, where Ola started operations in February. Uber in Southeast Asia is trailing Singapore’s Grab Inc., whose president joined from SoftBank in 2016 following its $750 million investment in the company.

Click through to read the rest.

📲 5 Cool Tech-ish Reads This Week

1. Ding Dong, Amazon’s here. The Seattle titan bought video doorbell startup Ring, as our WSJ story said, in a deal valued at more than $1 billion. Following Amazon’s move into groceries — don’t forget about Whole Foods, after all — it now looks to be strengthening its smart homes business:

The latest deal plays to Amazon’s efforts to control the devices that power smart homes, an area in which it is becoming a dominant player. Certain Ring doorbells and cameras already connect with its virtual assistant, Alexa.

Package theft has become an increasing problem for e-commerce companies as consumers order more online. Amazon has responded with solutions including package lockers and apartment buildings’ package hubs. Late last year, it launched its Cloud Cam security camera combined with its “Amazon Key” product, which allows its delivery drivers to deposit packages into customers’ homes via a smart lock system.

2….And speaking of Amazon, is it being used for money laundering? Patrick Reames, an (actual) author, discovered that someone had apparently been using his name to launder cash, cybersecurity pro Brian Krebs reports:

Reames said he suspects someone has been buying the book using stolen credit and/or debit cards, and pocketing the 60 percent that Amazon gives to authors. At $555 a pop, it would only take approximately 70 sales over three months to rack up the earnings that Amazon said he made.

3. How to make your smartphone less addictive. In this Vox video, Tristan Harris, a former product pro at Google, provides tips for making our devices less like miniature slot machines.

(TLDR: eliminate automated alerts, make the screen less colorful, and only keep genuinely useful apps on your home screen.) For more, check out the essays on Harris’s website.

4. More than half of Americans favor regulating Big Tech. That’s according to new poll from Axios and SurveyMonkey showing the number of citizens who are “‘more concerned'” government will not go far enough to regulate tech” has risen from 40% in November. The big picture:

That’s a seismic shift in the public’s perception of Silicon Valley over a short period of time. It shows how worried Americans are about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, but it also reflects a growing anxiety about the potentially addictive nature of some of the tech companies’ products, as well as the relentless spread of fake news on their platforms.

5. Why speeding is so much more dangerous than you think. A fascinating video explanation, using a real world example and some equations, showing why driving at 100 miles per hour, say, is so much more perilous than 70 miles per hour.

🏀 Stat of the week

Over the past 30 days, House of Highlights has done more video views on Instagram (662 million) than the official ESPN (206 million) and SportsCenter (316 million) accounts combined, according to social media analytics company CrowdTangle.

That’s from a Recode story on the insanely popular House of Highlights, an Instagram account where 23-year-old Omar Raja posts NBA videos and commentary.

🕺 1 Silly/Awesome Thing

Mr Rogers breakdancing. In this video from 1985, a 12-year-old named Jermaine Vaughn guides Mr. Rogers. More on the episode is here.

👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,

Newley

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Newley’s Notes 123: iPhones vs. China Rivals; 15th Century Linguistic Riddle; Exploding Supernova

2018 02 27 trees

Edition 123 of my email newsletter went out on Sunday.

To join the list, simply enter your email address here. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.


Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes: The best of what I write. The best of what I read.

🙏 Reminder: If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If you received this from a pal, you can sign up here.

NN was on hiatus last week in part due to travel: We took a fantastic trip to the Southern Indian state of Kerala. It was my first visit to this part of India, and I really loved it: It’s much less crowded than many Northern Indian cities, and with its tropical climate it feels almost like Southeast Asia.

🛥️ We met some friends and did a houseboat tour through the Kerala backwaters, then took in the sights in the city of Kochi (aka Cochin), among them the Commonwealth’s oldest synagogue, built in the 16th century.

I’ll probably write more about this journey soon. Highly recommended.

On to this week’s NN:

✍️ What I wrote in The Wall Street Journal

— “Why the iPhone Is Losing Out to Chinese Devices in Asia.” The story begins:

NEW DELHI—The iPhone X has set a new benchmark for smartphone prices and bolstered Apple Inc.’s bottom line, but its steep price may be hobbling its future in Asia’s biggest markets and allowing Chinese challengers to grab market share.

Buyers from India to Indonesia are opting for models from Chinese smartphone makers like Xiaomi Corp. — sometimes called “the Apple of China” — along with BBK Electronics Corp.’s Oppo and Vivo.

Click through to hear from consumers in India and Indonesia on why they’re giving up their iPhones in favor of inexpensive models that nevertheless have some cool features.

Note: I am not entirely certain, but I think this passage…

Oppo’s “selfie expert” F3 offers options such as a front-facing camera for selfies with wide angle that lends itself to “wefies,” or group shots with several people crammed into the frame.

…may represent the first time the word “wefie” or “wefies” has ever appeared in The Wall Street Journal in print (vs. online)… 🤳

📲 5 Cool Tech-ish Reads This Week

1. Dropbox filed for an IPO. The popular cloud storage company’s public offering could be the biggest tech IPO since Snap’s in March 2017, according to our WSJ story. Here’s the wider context:

Dropbox’s offering will give public investors rare access to the class of richly valued tech startups. Most of the startups with the highest valuations have put off IPOs as they still have access to ample amounts of capital from giant investors including Japanese firm SoftBank Group Corp.

Uber Technologies Inc. and home-rental company Airbnb Inc. aren’t expected to debut until at least 2019, and with the exception of Spotify AB, which will go public without raising new capital in an atypical debut, few of the best-known private companies are expected to go public this year.

CNBC has a rundown of who stands to make the most cash from the deal:

Co-founder and CEO Drew Houston is Dropbox’s biggest shareholder, owning 25 percent of the shares before the offering. Arash Ferdowsi, the other co-founder and former chief technology officer, owns 10 percent.

Among institutional investors, Sequoia Capital, which led Dropbox’s seed round in 2007 and first venture round the following year, owns 23 percent, followed by Accel at 5 percent and T. Rowe Price at 3.5 percent.

2. Jason Kottke on how blogging has changed. I’ve read Kottke’s blog, Kottke.org, pretty much since it launched twenty years ago, in 1998. It’s one of the world’s longest running and best known independent blogs. I launched my blog — back when they were called “weblogs” — four years later, inspired in part by Kottke’s mission to essentially just share cool stuff online.

In this Q&A with Laura Hazard Ownen at Harvard’s NiemanLab, Kottke talks about content consumption trends: Fewer people are reading blogs following the rise of social media and the fall of RSS, but as advertising has diminished he’s launched a successful new membership model to help pay the bills.

3. A 15th century linguistic riddle, solved? University of Alberta scientists used algorithms to show the fabled Voynich manuscript may be written in a coded version of Hebrew. Not everyone’s buying the conclusions, as described by some media outlets, however.

For more, here’s a 2016 New Yorker piece with additional details on the mysterious manuscript.

4. “The Case Against Google.” File under: the burgeoning backlash against Big Tech. In this New York Times Magazine long-read doing the rounds this week, Charles Duhigg details antitrust complaints about the search giant. There are plenty of anecdotes here from execs who say Google has unfairly crushed their rival companies. The other side of the coin: Are customers actually being harmed by Google?

5. Hot new Q&A site: Molly. “Silicon Valley insiders have recently been answering questions about themselves via a new service called Molly,” writes Kia Kokalitcheva at Axios. “Ask personal questions,” the Molly tagline reads, “Molly gets answers.”

🌟 Quote of the week

“It’s like winning the cosmic lottery.”

That’s Alex Filippenko, an astronomer at UC Berkely, on fellow (amateur) astronomer Victor Buso’s impossibly lucky photograph — the first of its kind — showing a burst of light from a exploding supernova.

✈️ 1 Silly Thing

This is what happens when you activate an airplane’s emergency slide. A highly watchable gif.

👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,

Newley

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Newley's Notes

Newley’s Notes 121: Notes from ‘Sapiens’; Tractor Hacking; ‘Donkey Kong’ Scandal?

2018 02 10galaxy

Edition 121 of my email newsletter went out on Monday.

To join the list, simply enter your email address here. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.


Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes: The best of what I write. The best of what I read.

What I wrote at Newley.com

Book Notes: ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,’ by Yuval Noah Harari — You might have heard about this book. It’s been all the rage among Silicon Valley types for a few years. I loved it, so as I sometimes do, I shared my notes.

📲 5 Cool Tech-ish Reads This Week

1. Cryptocurrency utopians are flocking to Puerto Rico, where they want to build a blockchain-based community, Nellie Bowles reports in the New York Times. Among the reasons:

Puerto Rico offers an unparalleled tax incentive: no federal personal income taxes, no capital gains tax and favorable business taxes — all without having to renounce your American citizenship. For now, the local government seems receptive toward the crypto utopians; the governor will speak at their blockchain summit conference, called Puerto Crypto, in March.

2. Farmers in the Midwest are hacking John Deere software to fix their tractors themselves rather than using pricey dealerships. Interesting video report from Vice’s Motherboard.

3. Megan McArdle’s 12 Rules for Life. Not exactly tech related, but just plain smart and fun: From relationship tips to giving better compliments to dinner rolls, the always-excellent author and Bloomberg View columnist has got you covered.

4. Did “Donkey Kong” legend Billy Mitchell cheat? Venture Beat’s Jeff Grubb reports:

A Donkey Kong fansite has removed three high scores from arcade legend Billy Mitchell after an analysis revealed he likely misled the community about playing on real arcade hardware and that he instead submitted emulator gameplay.

Using an emulator rather than the real arcade game could make it easier and thus enable cheating, apparently. The lion-maned Mitchell stars in the excellent 2007 documentary “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.” (Trailer is here.)

5. “The Chrome Extensions We Can’t Live Without,” by Wired staff members. There are some gems in this list of add-ons to Google’s browser, such as the new-to-me Great Suspender (stops loading tabs you’re not using); HabitLab (a Stanford University tool for curbing your use of social media and other sites); and xTab (which sets a limit on how many tabs you can keep open).

🔬 Quote of the week

“I think this is one of the greatest advances in over 150 years of Maya archaeology.”

That’s from Stephen Houston, a Brown University archaeology and anthropology professor, on the huge network of previously undiscovered Maya ruins researchers have found in Guatemala.

💫 1 Silly Thing

“Mr. Bean Is A Master Of Physical Comedy.” An entertaining video from NerdWriter.

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Got any tips for improving Newley’s Notes? Hit reply! I love hearing from folks.

👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,

Newley

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Newley’s Notes 120: Apple’s New HomePod; Exercise Data Dangers; Silent Music Videos

Colors

Edition 120 of my email newsletter went out on Wednesday.

To join the list, simply enter your email address here. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.


Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes.

If you like this newsletter, please invite others to sign up.

Administrative note: Anasuya suggested a tagline for Newley’s Notes:

The best of what I write. The best of what I read.

Do you like it? If not, hit me up and suggest a better one!

📲 5 Cool Tech-ish Reads This Week

1. Apple’s HomePod is coming. The $349 voice-activated speaker, which was supposed to launch before the holidays, will be in stores beginning Feb. 9, my WSJ colleague Tripp Mickle reports. It’ll have to play catchup to Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home devices. At The Verge, Dieter Bohn writes:

The bet on the HomePod is the same as the bet on almost every new Apple product: that the spec list doesn’t add up to the whole experience. It’s a bet that there will be some special Apple design magic in the hardware and the software that just makes it feel better to use.

We’ll see.

2. Amazon’s cashierless convenience store opened to the public. Recode has a bunch of photos of the shop, located in Seattle. You scan an app when you walk in, and cameras in the ceiling match you to your account; you’re billed when you walk out. More in a separate Recode story here. With Amazon buying Whole Foods, it’s clear they’re moving into physical retail in a big way.

3. File under: Whoops. A reminder that our connected devices give off data exhaust: Fitness tracking app Strava released a map based on more than 3 trillion GPS data points around the world — such as where people exercise outside — showing the location of U.S. miliary personnel, Alex Hern writes in The Guardian:

In locations like Afghanistan, Djibouti and Syria, the users of Strava seem to be almost exclusively foreign military personnel, meaning that bases stand out brightly. In Helmand province, Afghanistan, for instance, the locations of forward operating bases can be clearly seen, glowing white against the black map.

And:

… a map of Homey Airport, Nevada – the US Air Force base commonly known as Area 51 – records a lone cyclist taking a ride from the base along the west edge of Groom Lake, marked on the heatmap by a thin red line.

The map in its entirety is available online here.

4. “The Follower Factory.” This in depth New York Times story illuminates the murky world of social media manipulation, focusing on a little-known U.S. company called Devumi, which “sells Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online.”

5. TypesetInTheFuture.com is a blog (and soon to be book) about fonts in sci-fi movies. Nerd out on examinations of “2001: A Space Odyssey,“, “Alien,” and — my favorite, of course — “Bladerunner.”

🍔 Quote of the week

Whopper neutrality was repealed. They voted on it.

That’s from an entertaining video explainer/advertisement in which Burger King gives the world its take on net neutrality — using burgers.

💫 1 Silly Thing

“Silent Music Videos.” After the item in last week’s NN about Wookies dubbed to sound like Pee-Wee Herman, reader Lee LeFever writes in with a couple of gems.

People are now, it appears, creating new versions of music videos — and inserting non-musical audio. The result is quite bemusing.

Here’s David Bowie and Mick Jagger’s “Dancing in the Street,” and Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball.” Thanks, Lee!

👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,

Newley

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Newley’s Notes 119: Morning Message Overload; Our Greece Trip; Wookies Channel Pee-Wee

2018 01 24milkyway

Edition 119 of my email newsletter went out on yesterday.

To join the list, simply enter your email address here. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.


Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes. If you like this newsletter, please invite others to sign up.

📝 What I Wrote in The Wall Street Journal

The Internet Is Filling Up Because Indians Are Sending Millions of ‘Good Morning!’ Texts. The story, out yesterday, begins:

Google researchers in Silicon Valley were trying to figure out why so many smartphones were freezing up half a world away. One in three smartphone users in India run out of space on their phones daily.

The answer? Two words. “Good Morning!”

The glitch, Google discovered, was an overabundance of sun-dappled flowers, adorable toddlers, birds and sunsets sent along with a cheery message.

Millions of Indians are getting online for the first time—and they are filling up the internet. Many like nothing better than to begin the day by sending greetings from their phones. Starting before sunrise and reaching a crescendo before 8 a.m., internet newbies post millions of good-morning images to friends, family and strangers.

The story has touched a nerve, it seems, having been widely shared today on Twitter and Facebook. It’s on the front page of today’s print paper and is among our most-popular stories on the WSJ site. I’ve received some heartwarming feedback from readers, much of it along the lines of: I thought I was the only one plagued by this phenomenon!

💬 What I Wrote at Newley.com

Trip Report: 2-Week Greece Getaway. Anasuya and I went to Greece in August. It was a fantastic trip. Here’s my (long-overdue) blog post about the journey, with images and maps and travel tips and more. The TLDR:

Greece is amazing. If you haven’t gone, you should visit if at all possible. We went to Athens and the islands of Mykonos and Folegandros, and loved each destination.

📲 5 Cool Tech-ish Reads This Week

1. “Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble,” is the title of a New York Times magazine piece by top technology author Steven Johnson that some folks are calling the best longform story yet about the cryptocurrency’s rise. His point: the underlying tech, known as the blockchain, could truly be revolutionary. Bitcoin? Maybe not so much.

2. The Economist on the backlash against Big Tech. This piece, written in the form of an email to the likes of Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai et al, summarizes what’s happened to public perception of Facebook, Amazon, Google and other behemoths:

You are an industry that embraces acronyms, so let me explain the situation with a new one: “BAADD”. You are thought to be too big, anti-competitive, addictive and destructive to democracy.

What can they do? Become more transparent, for one, according to the author.

3. Gorgeous aerial video of the earth in all its glory. “Over several months of prep and R&D we modified a LearJet and flew above the earth looking straight down at the shear beauty of what Mother Nature has to offer us that we all too often miss from the ground,” writes Vincent Laforet.

4. New site: A Google for Netflix. I love this: Flixable.com lets you see not just the new movies and shows added to Netflix every day, but also lets you search by genre, IMDB rating, release date and more. You can also see when content’s about to become unavailable on the platform. It’s also available for Canada, the UK and Finland.

5. Not tech-related, but important: “1 Son, 4 Overdoses, 6 Hours” is a moving New York Times story by Katherine Q. Seelye — with incredible photos by the great Todd Heisler — about how one family in New Hampshire has been hit by the opioid epidemic.

💫 1 Silly Thing

“What if Wookiees Sounded Like Pee-Wee Herman?”. Here’s your answer.

👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,

Newley