Hong Kong is a photographer’s paradise.
Since our move here a few months back, I feel like I have constantly had my iPhone out, snapping images of buildings, people, colors, views.
Here are a few of my favorites so far. Most also posted to Instagram (I’m @Newley there).
That’s the headline on a story I wrote with my colleague Joyu Wang yesterday. It begins:
HONG KONG–After 23 days without a locally transmitted coronavirus case and with much of the city returning to normal life, health officials here are investigating how a 66-year-old woman and her granddaughter tested positive.
The test results, announced Wednesday, illustrate the continuing challenges for authorities world-wide in eliminating the disease even in places that were successful with containment earlier on.
Seven close contacts of the woman have shown symptoms and have been sent to the hospital for testing, officials said Wednesday. The woman has no recent history of travel and hasn’t had contact with known carriers of the disease, officials said. They added that they plan to test residents of their apartment buildings.
The positive results drew a collective sigh from Hong Kongers who have been slowly resuming their normal life routines. Some government health advisers have set a mark of 28 days—or two quarantine periods without a local infection—as a key milestone toward victory over the coronavirus. The two new infections bring the total recorded in the city of about 7.5 million residents to 1,051, with four deaths—which is still relatively low.
Click through to read the rest.
Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, May 10, 2020.
Hi friends,
Remember a couple weeks ago when I wrote about India’s Jio – part of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance empire – getting a big $5.7 billion investment from Facebook?
Well, Jio execs have continued to raise funds to try to trim the debt they’ve accrued building out their huge 4G network.
Over the last week the company raised $750 million and $1.5 billion from two private equity firms in the U.S., Silver Lake and Vista Equity.
These new investors are betting, like Facebook, that they can get a piece of a huge digital platform in India that is growing to comprise not just mobile connections, but music, video, payments, and even – as the Facebook deal to link up WhatsApp with grocery shops shows – e-commerce. (You can bet Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart have taken note.)
The bigger trend, which I’ve written about over the years: India’s internet economy is still poised for massive growth as hundreds of millions of people start to consume online. Global investors want a piece of that.
On to this week’s links, where we have – I am happy to say – GOOD NEWS. The Covid–19 situation remains, especially in the U.S., troubling. But there is positive news out there. Read on.
1) Some interesting new consumer technologies are emerging amid the pandemic, from realtime audio chat apps (Clubhouse) to a boom in video conferencing (Zoom, etc). But don’t forget that the key to all of this – the key to our connectivity – has withstood mammoth pressures: the internet. It’s kept running throughout. Thank god.
2) Maybe, just maybe, llamas can help us fight Covid–19.
3) Seattle is permanently making about 20 miles of streets off-limits to most vehicle traffic, after earlier closing them down to let people walk and bike with sufficient physical distance. File under: how the coronavirus is changing cities.
4) More than 100 people from Juilliard’s community of students, alumni and artists, even while locked down, came together to create an online performance called “Bolero Juilliard”.
5) An Adoption, a Pandemic and an Evacuation. That’s the headline on a powerful, beautifully written story about love and hope by The New York Times’s Maria Abi-Habib. If you read just one story this week, make it this one.
6) People stuck inside, combined with the suspension of sports, are powering a “modern chess boom,” my WSJ colleagues report. Among those getting in on the game are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Joe Biden.
7) People are creating cool online diversions. One I’ve been enjoying, given our locked-down world in which international travel is verboten: a website called Drive & Listen. Select a city to see video filmed while driving around in that location – while simultaneously hearing the sounds playing on local FM radio in real-time. Mesmerizing. I have grooved to Bob Marley on Melodia FM while virtually cruising around Barcelona, enjoyed some B–52s while taking a tour through sunny Los Angeles, and more. (Note: the website works better on desktop computers than on mobile devices.) BONUS LINK: Point-of-view video from a train zooming though Switzerland, with a techno music soundtrack.
8) Shot: Comedy persists even amid the pandemic! Steve Carell is in a new Netflix sitcom called “Space Force,” and the trailer is excellent. It’s out May 29.
9) Chaser: And high brow humor, too! My new favorite Twitter account is Bookcase Credibility (@BCredibility), which analyzes the way books and bookshelves appear behind experts being interviewed over video.
10) Dog-related video of the week: this pup’s owner was in the hospital for five weeks. When he returned, the dog didn’t recognize him…until he did.
Quote of the week:
“If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way.” – Jerry Seinfeld.
Fist bump from Hong Kong,
That is just one the many memorable lines from onetime Hollywood hunk Val Kilmer in this winding and revelatory profile by Taffy Brodesser-Akner in the New York Times Magazine. Highly recommended.
Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, May 3, 2020.
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.
Not a subscriber yet? Get it here.
I was on Princeton University’s Policy Punchline podcast to talk all things tech in India with Tiger Gao, a Princeton junior.
The podcast series, if you’ve never heard it, features hour-long discussions with journalists, scholars, entrepreneurs and more on a variety of policy related issues. We recorded this episode before Facebook’s big $5.7 billion investment in Jio, which I mentioned in last week’s NN, but we touched on many related topics in this wide-ranging discussion. Thanks, Tiger and team, for having me on!
You can listen on Soundcloud here, or look up Policy Punchline in your podcast app of choice.
In NN 213 I mentioned some good books about pandemics, and reader James B. wrote in to share one I’d missed: “The Great Influenza,” about the illness that swept the world in 1918.
Thanks to another reader, Chris E., who tells me that the author of that book, John Barry, was recently on Peter Attia’s podcast. It’s a fascinating episode. (I like Attia’s podcast a lot, but hadn’t heard this episode. He’s a doctor who specializes in longevity, and often has very smart people on to talk about their fields of expertise.) Thanks, Chris. E.!
On to this week’s NN.
1) How long will coronavirus pandemic last? Perhaps as long as two years, according to a new report from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. And the pandemic won’t be stopped until 60–70% of the world’s population is immune.
“The virus caught the global community off guard, and its future course is still highly unpredictable,” the authors write. (You can read the report here.)
2) Now that some lockdowns around the world are lifting, here’s a good question: should you wear a face mask when exercising outside? The answer: If you can bear it, it’s probably a good idea.
3) Even as U.S. gross domestic product falls – with more contraction likely to come – tech giants’ stocks are climbing. “Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook now make up more than 20 percent of the value of the entire S&P 500 – a level that’s higher than it was even during the dot-com boom,” the New York Times reports. Why? They have a ton of cash on hand, and are more reliant on digital operations than physical ones.
4) Here’s a graphical guide to the more than 90 vaccines being developed to fight SARS-CoV–2.
5) Here’s a good overview of why the pandemic can feel so confusing, ranging from factors like the virus and the disease to research and messaging.
6) The British Museum has put more than 1.9 million photos from its collection online. View the images here.
7) On his 68th birthday, tech author and all-around big picture thinker Kevin Kelly provides “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice.”
8) Who needs makeup when you’ve got Snapchat and Instagram filters?
9) Indian street dogs seem to be becoming popular pets in India’s tech hub of Bangalore. Many of the dogs shown in that piece look just like Ginger.
10) Dog-related video of the week: “straight vibin’ #shiba.” [TikTok/@paula_the_koala]
Quote of the week:
“Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.” – Anita Brookner
Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley
Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, April 26, 2020.
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.
Not a subscriber yet? Get it here.
A big – and, for once, non-coronavirus related – story for this week on my radar: Facebook and India.
Faithful NN readers may recall that two years ago I wrote a page one story that began: “India’s richest man is catapulting hundreds of millions of poor people straight into the mobile internet age.”
The billionaire: Mukesh Ambani. His company: Reliance Jio. The product: inexpensive 4G mobile access, which had been nonexistent before.
Jio has continued to grow since that piece came out, unveiling new products aimed at consumers in rural India, where most of the country’s population lives.
On Wednesday news emerged that another very rich man – Mark Zuckerberg – was plowing $5.7 billion into Ambani’s firm.
My colleague and I called it, in our story about the deal, “a massive expansion of the social media giant’s commitment to a promising market where it has faced difficulties.”
About those difficulties: Facebook suffered a high profile setback when its Free Basics campaign was shut down on net neutrality grounds in 2016. And Facebook’s WhatsApp – which has a mammoth 400 million users in India – has been waiting for more than two years for permission to completely roll out its digital payments service.
In a subsequent piece, also out Wednesday, I wrote that the deal “could create a new kind of animal in the world’s biggest untapped digital market: a social media behemoth wedded to a mobile infrastructure titan – both coveting e-commerce.”
How would Facebook and Jio work together? One example the companies gave is that WhatsApp users could tap into the platform to buy items from neighborhood mom and pop shops, which Jio has been connecting via point of service machines. Other potential collaborations are less clear.
So: Facebook/WhatsApp gets to use Jio’s on-the-ground presence in rural India, access to its expertise in tapping the roughly half a billion people who have still yet to get online in the country, and partners with an Indian billionaire in a place it has faced regulatory hurdles.
Jio gets a big cash infusion, and perhaps tie-ins with WhatsApp to expand its e-commerce projects.
Will it work? As they say, stay tuned.
1) When should U.S. states begin to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic? New projections provide a simple answer: The earlier they locked down, the earlier they can safely resume normal life. And yet Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee – not among those states that acted quickly to enact restrictions – plan to ease lockdowns as early as this week.
2) Bill Gates says the coronavirus pandemic will produce massive global innovation, just like World War II did. Think treatments, vaccines, testing, contact tracing. “Melinda and I grew up learning that World War II was the defining moment of our parents’ generation,” he writes. “In a similar way, the COVID–19 pandemic – the first modern pandemic – will define this era.”
3) Will major cities still be worth living in after the coronavirus? Some people who can afford to are accelerating their plans to leave New York City, a WSJ colleague reports. “This could go on for six months, 12 months,“ said one resident who is ditching Manhattan. ”And who knows what the city could look like after.”
4) The coronavirus pandemic will inspire a lot of art. What kinds of themes will writers and directors explore? Think economic inequality and marginalized communities, death’s inevitability – and perhaps the end of the superhero.
5) One unexpected result of the pandemic: Zoom is giving us new glimpses into our colleagues’ lives. We should just roll with it, The New Yorker’s Naomi Fry writes.
6) And speaking of Zoom: With so many people stuck at home, folks have been creating fun backgrounds for videocalls. There’s ZoomerBackgrounds (my fave is “guy looking back at me”, aka the Distracted Boyfriend meme), and even StarWars.com is getting in on the act (I’m partial to Tatooine). There are some good ones from The Met museum, as well.
7) Former Wall Street Journal global economics editor Neil King says a cancer diagnosis in past years has prepared him for the coronavirus. “I have seen the beauty of life on the six-month plan, which goes something like this: Be confident in the span you know you have; extract from it all you can; look no further,” he writes.
8) A family in Australia had their trip to Europe cancelled by the coronavirus. But they decided to simulate the 15-hour flight…from the comfort of their living room. They “screened” their luggage and even ate “in-flight” meals.
9) Here’s an interesting travelogue from an eight day walk along the eastern coast of Japan’s Kii Peninsula.
10) Dog video of the week: Doggo’s just trying to help.
Quote of the week:
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” – Georg Hegel.
Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley
That’s the headline on my most recent story, out Wednesday with my colleague Jeff Horwitz. It begins:
Facebook Inc. said it would pay $5.7 billion for just under 10% of Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms Ltd., a massive expansion of the social media giant’s commitment to a promising market where it has faced difficulties.
The deal, unveiled late Tuesday, is Facebook’s largest overseas investment and gives it the opportunity to bring its WhatsApp messaging service—which has more than 400 million users in India—into closer partnership with the mobile operator that upended India’s telecommunications industry with cut-rate data plans.
Jio Platforms Ltd. and its subsidiary, mobile operator Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., are part of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd. Jio Infocomm provides services to about 388 million customers.
The deal shows how Facebook, like other tech giants, is pushing ahead and taking advantage of its relative strength during a pandemic that is causing most other industries to retreat.
In a subsequent story, I looked a little closer at the who gets what out of the deal. The lede:
Facebook Inc.’s $5.7 billion tie-up with an Indian mobile leader could create a new kind of animal in the world’s biggest untapped digital market: a social media behemoth wedded to a mobile infrastructure titan—both coveting e-commerce.
Now the two companies are expected to square off against some formidable online shopping rivals: Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc., which have each invested billions in the South Asian market.
Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, April 19, 2020.
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.
Not a subscriber yet? Get it here.
1) Longread of the week, economics-of-the-coronavirus edition: The Price of the Coronavirus Pandemic [The New Yorker]
“When COVID–19 recedes, it will leave behind a severe economic crisis. But, as always, some people will profit.”
2) Rick Steves Is Learning to Cook and Enjoying Every Sunset [GQ]
“Talking to the travel guru about his life in isolation, which includes piano playing and stocking up on weed.”
3) Shot: How Facebook Works for Trump [The Atlantic]
“Donald Trump won the presidency by using the social network’s advertising machinery in exactly the way the company wanted. He’s poised to do it again.”
4) Chaser: Biden Is Losing the Internet. Does That Matter? [New York Times]
“Mr. Biden’s biggest problem is structural. Most of our online political communication takes place on internet platforms that are designed to amplify content that provokes strong emotional reactions, often by reinforcing tribal identities.”
5) Why Walking Matters – Now More Than Ever [Wall Street Journal]
“Our upright gait is not just a defining feature of what it means to be human. It also makes our bodies and brains work better.”
6) Coyotes, bobcats and bears: Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park [Los Angeles Times]
“‘It’s not like they aren’t usually here,’ he said of the bears, bobcats and coyotes that he and other employees now see congregating outside their cabins and apartments. ‘It’s that they usually hang back at the edges, or move in the shadows.’”
7) A History of Soccer in Six Matches [New York Times]
“From the Hungary team that shattered England’s delusions to the club that came to define the sport, through Pelé and Johan Cruyff, here are six games that explain modern soccer.”
8) This week’s six-hour moment of zen: Relax with Sheep at Shafer Vineyards in Napa Valley [YouTube]
“Everyone at the winery loves it when the sheep arrive.”
9) Melting Ice Exposes Mountain Pass Used by Vikings, Including Ancient Dog and Leash [Gizmodo]
“These items, some made from organic materials, became locked in glacial ice, preserving a record of use that spans 1,200 years.”
10) Dog-related video of the week: Chihuahua puppy is too cute for little boy to handle [Reddit]
Quote of the week:
“If you know the why, you can live any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley
Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, April 12, 2020.
Hi, friends, and happy Easter.
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.
Not a subscriber yet? Get it here.
My newest story, out Tuesday: Facebook’s WhatsApp Battles Coronavirus Misinformation. It begins:
Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp is limiting users’ ability to forward content on its encrypted messaging platform, as misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic proliferates on the service in its biggest market, India.
In one of the biggest changes WhatsApp has made to a core feature, the company said Tuesday that its more than two billion users globally can now send along frequently forwarded messages they receive to only one person or group at a time, down from five.
And:
Among the messages on WhatsApp that have circulated in India in recent weeks, according to fact-checking groups, is a claim that a treatment has been developed that cures Covid–19 within three hours. Others say a disinfectant will be sprayed in cities at night to kill the virus and that NASA satellite images show the coronavirus has been abating in India. All were identified by fact checkers as false.
The story was linked to in Harvard’s Nieman Lab daily email and in Shira Ovide’s new (and excellent) New York Times newsletter, On Tech.
Meanwhile, I shared on Newley.com some notes from a 2016 book I recently read called “Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built,” by Duncan Clark. Click here to read the post.
TLDR: This is a well researched, in-depth book about Ma and the e-commerce giant he built.
And finally, an addendum: In last week’s NN, I listed a few nonfiction books about pandemics.
Thanks to reader James B., who wrote in to share a much-heralded title I missed, and which he says is worth checking out: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John M. Barry.
Thanks, James!
1) A Shift on the Front Line [New England Journal of Medicine]
“I have just finished the night shift on the Covid–19 ward. I look at myself in the mirror: I have a C on my nose from the FFP2 (N95) mask I wear all the time, deep marks on my face left by the elastic bands; my eyes look tired, my hair is damp with sweat. I am not a doctor and a woman any longer – now I am just a doctor, a soldier in the war against the virus.”
2) Apple, Google to Turn Smartphones Into Coronavirus Tracking Devices [WSJ]
“Apple Inc. and Google will build software together that would alert people if they were in contact with someone infected with the coronavirus, an unprecedented collaboration between two Silicon Valley giants and rivals.”
3) Tips From Someone With Nearly 50 Years Of Social Distancing Experience [NPR]
“We’re all social distancing these days, and it’s unclear when exactly that will end. But Billy Barr has been doing this for almost 50 years. He’s the only full-time resident of Gothic, Colo.”
4) Spreading pathogen maps [SciFi Interfaces]
“So while the world is in the grip of the novel COVID–19 coronavirus pandemic, I’ve been thinking about those fictional user interfaces that appear in pandemic movies that project how quickly the infectious-agent-in-question will spread.”
5) A Mini-Office, Delivered to Your Door [Dwellito]
“Give yourself a quiet place to work with a mini office next to your home. In 6 to 8 weeks, you could have a pre-built office delivered to your front door, starting at $9,000.”
6) The 18 Best TV Shows for Vicarious Travel Thrills [New York Times]
“One of the genuine delights of the streaming era is the degree to which it has made international television available, and readily too – with scores of shows streaming on Amazon, Hulu, HBO and (especially) Netflix.”
7) Dave Grohl’s Pandemic Playlist [The Atlantic]
“The Foo Fighters front man picks a song for your every quarantine mood.”
8) The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic [New York Times Magazine]
“After 40 years, Yankovic is now no longer a novelty, but an institution – a garish bright patch in the middle of America’s pop-cultural wallpaper, a completely ridiculous national treasure, an absurd living legend.”
9) Easter’s Healing Touch [WSJ essay]
“In a grim time, the holiday reminds us that the cornerstone of Christian faith is God’s love for a wounded world.”
10) Dog related video of the week: “Our puppies just had the best. day. ever. They got to explore the @GeorgiaAquarium while it is closed to the public.” [Twitter: @AtlantaHumane]
Quote of the week:
“Let go or be dragged.” – Zen proverb
Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley
From time to time I share notes about the books I’ve been reading, or have revisited recently after many years.
These posts are meant to help me remember what I’ve learned, and to point out titles I think are worth consulting.
They’re neither formal book reviews nor comprehensive book summaries, but I hope you find them useful. For previous postings, see my Book Notes category.
Published: 2016
ISBN: 9780062413406
Amazon link
The story — told by China expert, former investment banker, and onetime Alibaba advisor — of how Jack Ma founded the country’s online shopping juggernaut and built it into a growing global force.