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Hong Kong Journalism Tech

Hong Kong Loses Court Bid to Ban Protest Song Appearing on Google

Googe Glory to Hong Kong WSJ

That’s the headline on my latest story, out Friday. It begins:

HONG KONG—A judge rejected a government bid to ban the dissemination online of a popular pro-democracy song, dealing a blow to Hong Kong’s efforts to extend a national-security crackdown to online platforms such as Google.

The ruling, delivered by one of the city’s national-security case judges handpicked by the government’s leader, is the latest in a series of setbacks dealt by the city’s courts to local authorities that are seeking to eliminate dissent.

If the judge had agreed to give the order, which sought to ban distribution of the song “Glory to Hong Kong” worldwide, it would have set the city on a collision course with Google and other platforms. Analysts said such a ban could have led the companies and their services to exit the financial center, which has for decades enjoyed a mostly open internet, unlike in China.

The case has added to the chill facing tech companies in Hong Kong, shifting the target for online dissent from individuals to platforms themselves. American tech giants in recent months have been shutting out users bit by bit in Hong Kong amid concern over the national security law.

Click through to read the rest.

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Journalism Tech

Meta’s Threads Isn’t Labeling Propaganda Accounts From Russia, China State Media

WSJ Meta Threads propaganda

That’s the headline on a story I had out Wednesday. It began:

State-backed news outlets from Russia and other authoritarian governments have rushed to join Meta Platforms’ new Threads microblogging service, posting propaganda such as a fake video purporting to show President Biden in a store perusing books on dementia.

Unlike on Facebook and Instagram, their verified accounts on Threads aren’t labeled as state-controlled media, raising questions over how the Facebook parent intends to police content on its Twitter rival that launched this month. Twitter, now being rebranded as X, in 2020 began applying labels to state-run news organizations; under Elon Musk, it removed them in April.

Meta also in 2020 began applying such labels to state-run media accounts on Facebook and Instagram. That came after independent studies found Russian influence campaigns ahead of the 2016 election used such services to suppress voter turnout and boost Donald Trump’s presidential bid.

Meta launched Threads before the service was fully built out to capitalize on Twitter’s struggles under Musk, The Wall Street Journal has reported. That means Threads lacks basic moderation features including the labels.

Russia’s RT and Sputnik News, China’s CGTN and Xinhua News, and Fars News—run by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard—have attracted more than 270,000 followers on Threads since the service launched this month, according to a tally by the Journal. That is far fewer than the hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers they have built over the years on Twitter.

Sputnik News, a Russian outlet that analysts describe as publishing propaganda, posted last week a manipulated video purporting to show Biden perusing books next to a sign saying “Brain exercises for dementia.”

Fact-checking groups debunked the video in 2020, saying that it took real footage of Biden looking at books in a store and superimposed a sign nearby that said “Brain exercises for dementia.” Sputnik News didn’t post the video to its Instagram account, where it is labeled as a state-affiliated organization.

After the Journal asked a Meta spokeswoman about the video of Biden on Threads, the post began showing a label describing it as “False information,” saying “independent fact-checkers say this information has no basis in fact.”

Click through to read the rest.

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Newley's Notes

NN313: Gorgeous Goldens Gather in Guisachan

Rainy Hong Kong

Sent as a newsletter July 22, 2023. Not on my list? Subscribe 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:

🌧️ Rainy Hong Kong, seen from above. I like the colors.

My WSJ latest:

🐦 I helped out with this story, just out: Elon Musk Replaces Twitter’s Blue Bird With an ‘X’ <– free link. It begins:

Elon Musk rolled out a new X logo on Twitter after saying its signature blue bird will fly away.

Early Monday, the Twitter website started showing the new X logo in its upper-left corner, where Twitter’s blue bird once perched. Musk had overnight changed his profile photo, as well as that of the official Twitter account, to the new “X” logo.

And:

Musk has spoken before about his ambition to use Twitter as the foundation of a vision that he has described as “X.com” and an “everything app.” In March Musk said that he thought it was possible for his company “to become the biggest financial institution in the world.” He has cited as a model WeChat, a popular Chinese app that is used for everything from messaging to mobile payments to business services.

As they say: stay tuned.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🎥 “Barbie” made $155 million on its opening weekend, making it the biggest movie of the year.

2) ✋ On “Oppenheimer” and that Palm Pilot.

3) 🎬 Also: Christopher Nolan’s films, ranked.

4) 🎼 Tech pioneer and musician Jaron Lanier on what his musical instruments have taught him.

5) 💪 An interesting trend in crowded, hot Singapore: “Microgyms.”

6) 💉 Why Oregon’s effort to decriminalize drugs is failing.

7) ✏️ Video: antique pencil sharpeners.

8) 🗣 How Shakespeare’s plays were originally pronounced.

9) 🪐 A timeline of the far future.

10) 🐐 Lionel Messi made his debut for MLS side Inter Miami, coming on in the 54th minute and…well, just watch.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Golden Retrievers celebrating their 155th anniversary in Scotland as a species.” Backstory is here. Thanks, Anasuya!

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Doubt can only be removed by action.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN312: Calculating Canines

Kyiv book fair poster

Sent as a newsletter July 18, 2023. Not on my list? Join 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 powerful poster for a book festival that took place in Kyiv last month. Created by Art Studio Agrafka.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week

1) 🇸🇬 Huge news in Singapore, long known for its efficient government: Antigraft officials are investigating the transport minister.

2) ⏲️ Meta’s Threads is getting a lot of attention, but people might be running out of time for yet another social media platform.

3) 🇬🇺 A deep look at Guam, its people, and the territory’s strategic importance for the U.S. military as tensions with China rise.

4) 🍎 Quitting Apple’s ecosystem is neither easy nor cheap.

5) 🦦 Otters are straight up stealing surfboards in California.

6) 🌐 Las Vegas’s new $2 billion, 366-foot-tall, 1.2 million-LED orb/theater is bonkers‘.

7) 🤖 In which a New Yorker writer commissions an AI bot to try to do his job.

8) ⭐ Related: “How to Use AI to Do Stuff: An Opinionated Guide.”

9) 🐴 Excellent video from this year’s Finish Hobbyhorse Championships.

10) 🔗 Go to Wilby.me/surprise to visit a random Web 1.0 website.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Clever dog uses hot dog bun as bait to snatch fish out of water.”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.” — Milan Kundera, RIP

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN311: Blisteringly Fast Border Collies

Evan WSJ page one

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.

Sent as a newsletter July 10. Not on my list? Sign up here.

👋 Hi friends,

Image of the week, above:

Friday’s WSJ page one. More below…

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 📰 Friday marked 100 days since our WSJ colleague Evan Gershkovich was wrongfully arrested in Russia for doing his job. We continue to keep his name front and center. You can read his reporting, and our stories about him, at WSJ.com/Evan.

2) 🧵 Bad news for Elon: Meta (FKA Facebook) launched Threads, a Twitter rival, and it’s already attracted 70 million users. (If you must know, I’m @Newley.)

3) ⚠️ A major new study from Denmark found heavy cannabis users were much more likely to be diagnosed later with clinical depression and bipolar disorder.

4) 🔥 Last week may have been the Earth’s hottest ever on record.

5) 📷 Here are the winners of this year’s Drone Photo Awards.

6) 🎳 GQ profiles Australian professional bowler Jason Belmonte, known for his two-handed roll.

7) 🎤 Nice collection of 2023 pop music party songs from around the world.

8) 😌 You may have heard of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos, but are you familiar with “unintentional ASMR”?

9) 🍿 MovieSpoilers provides plot summaries – and endings! – of various films.

10) ⚽ The first female head coach of an English men’s professional soccer side is Hannah Dingley, recently appointed by Forest Green Rovers.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Just watch this dog, he’s better than me.”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Do not consider painful what is good for you.” – Euripides

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN310: Sailor the Speedy Border Whippet

Hong Kong sunset

Sent as a newsletter July 3, 2023. 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:

🇭🇰 A recent sunset here in Hong Kong.

My WSJ latest:

🥽 Just out, a story with my colleague Raffaele Huang: Zuckerberg’s Quest to Re-Enter China Faces Challenge: His Own Words <– Free link

The story begins:

HONG KONG—Mark Zuckerberg in late 2021 had a question for those working on Meta Platforms’ strategy for its virtual-reality headset: If Apple can sell iPhones in China, and Tesla can sell cars, why can’t we sell our devices there?

The question, posed on a video call, led to a push by Meta to restart its China business by selling its Quest headsets in the country, according to a person familiar with the matter, more than a decade after Facebook was blocked there.

The company held discussions with several Chinese tech companies and has made progress with videogame powerhouse Tencent Holdings, people familiar with the matter said. But the effort faces challenges, in part because Chinese executives worry that Zuckerberg isn’t seen as friendly to China, according to people familiar with the matter.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇷🇺 In last week’s NN I pointed to several stories about Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion against Putin. For more, check out this excellent WSJ documentary, available on YouTube: “Inside Prigozhin’s Wagner, Russia’s Secret War Company.”

2) 🤖 People may fear mass layoffs, but artificial intelligence just represents another another wave of automation, writes tech analyst Benedict Evans.

3) 📸 Here are the winners of this year’s Audubon Photography Awards.

4) 🍕 Is that a pizza depicted in a fresco from 79 A.D. that was recently discovered in Pompeii?

5) 🪧 Here’s a beautiful collection of street sign lettering in India.

6) 🌹 With crime, open drug use, and housing prices all rising, Portland, Oregon is losing its residents.

7) 🍴 The signature dishes at the world’s 150 most legendary restaurants.

8) 📞 What after work time was like for young people before cellphones.

9) 🗾 Everything you always wanted to know about amazing Japanese convenience stores.

10) 🐊 Extreme food, Taiwan edition: crocodile ramen.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Sailor the Touchdown Dog Sets Record for the Longest Catch at a Live Sporting Event” (Thanks, Anasuya!)

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” – William James

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Journalism Tech

Zuckerberg’s Quest to Re-Enter China Faces Challenge: His Own Words

Zuckerberg China Tencent Meta VR

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

HONG KONG — Mark Zuckerberg in late 2021 had a question for those working on Meta Platforms’ strategy for its virtual-reality headset: If Apple can sell iPhones in China, and Tesla can sell cars, why can’t we sell our devices there?

The question, posed on a video call, led to a push by Meta to restart its China business by selling its Quest headsets in the country, according to a person familiar with the matter, more than a decade after Facebook was blocked there.

The company held discussions with several Chinese tech companies and has made progress with videogame powerhouse Tencent Holdings, people familiar with the matter said. But the effort faces challenges, in part because Chinese executives worry that Zuckerberg isn’t seen as friendly to China, according to people familiar with the matter.

In recent years the Meta founder has accused China of stealing technology and taken aim at ByteDance, the Chinese owner of video-sharing platform TikTok. That has undermined a charm offensive Zuckerberg undertook in Beijing in 2016 and bolstered negative views of the entrepreneur in Beijing, the people said.

Officials’ perceptions of Zuckerberg could add uncertainty should Meta and its partner seek licenses and approvals for their products and services in China, some of the people said.

Click through to read the rest.

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN309: Bounding Belgians

WSJ page one Modi India economy

Sent as a newsletter June 26, 2023. Not on my list? Join 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:

On Thursday’s WSJ page one: my latest, a story with my super-sharp colleague Niharika Mandhana. The headline: Modi’s Vision for India Rests On Six Giant Companies. ⬅️ Free link. It begins:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi says this is India’s decade. That claim rests heavily on a handful of dominant conglomerates.

Increasingly aligned with Modi’s priorities, the roughly half-dozen mega-firms—which include Reliance Industries and Adani Group, helmed by two of Asia’s richest tycoons—have the ability to raise vast sums of capital, and the experience and political connections to navigate India’s byzantine bureaucracy. Capitalizing on government subsidies and privatization plans, they are executing projects with a scale and speed that have eluded India in the past.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇷🇺 Shot: You no doubt saw the dramatic events in Russia over the weekend. The headline on on a story by my colleagues Yaroslav Trofimov and Thomas Grove sums it up: Putin’s War on Ukraine Backfires, Leading to Wagner Uprising at Home.

2) 🤷‍♂️ Chaser: Anne Applebaum, in The Atlantic, looks at how the the Russian population — including military leaders — stepped aside to allow Wagner’s advances: “After spending years cultivating public apathy, the Russian president found his people indifferent to his fate.”

3) ⚠️ And one more: “Wars abroad have a way of unleashing uncontrollable political processes at home,” Joshua Yaffa in the New Yorker, writes of Putin’s weakness.

4) 🇧🇷 A look at the unending popularity in Brazil of the Australian-themed Outback Steakhouse.

5) 📍 How maps change the way we perceive the world.

6) 🍿 There’s a trailer out for “3 Body Problem,” based on the popular sci-fi novel by Liu Cixin. Coming to Netflix in January.

7) 🚶‍♀️The surprising new hotspot for walkable communities in the U.S.: the South.

8) 🔥 Max Park, a 21-year-old from Cerritos, Calif., solved a Rubik’s cube in an astonishing 3.13 seconds, a new world world record.

9) 👀 One for the morbidly curious: a Wikipedia page listing condemned prisoners’ last meals around the world.

10) 📖 “Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings.”

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“That’s incredible!”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” — Neil Postman

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN308: Persistent Pups

License plate Lehman chapter 11

Sent as a newsletter June 19, 2023. Not on my list? Join 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:

A Hong Kong vanity plate for the finance buffs and economic historians out there: September 15, 2008.

Yes, that’s the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.

My WSJ latest:

I’ve had a couple of stories out since my last dispatch, both touching on Hong Kong and big tech.

The first, earlier this month: 32 YouTube Videos Cited as Court Is Asked to Ban ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ Protest Anthem <– Free link

The lede:

Government officials in the financial center are seeking a court order to block the dissemination online of a popular pro-democracy song, the first major legal challenge to U.S. tech companies such as Google over politically sensitive content on their platforms.

And the second, out last week: American Tech Giants Are Slowly Cutting Off Hong Kong Internet Users. <– Free link

It began:

Bit by bit, American tech giants are shutting out users in Hong Kong, where moves by authorities to thwart online dissent are shifting the target from individuals to platforms such as Google’s YouTube.

As they say: watch this space.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🗞 How a graduate student at the College of Charleston discovered the largest known slave auction in the U.S.

2) 🪐 One of Saturn’s moons contains all of the elements needed for life.

3) 🏃‍♂️ More and more research shows that, even compared to other lifestyle factors, ample exercise is the key to longevity.

4) 📹 A profile of YouTuber Mr. Beast – real name: Jimmy Donaldson – whose philanthropic stunts have gained him more than 150 million subscribers.

5) 🗣 South Florida is home to a new dialect of English.

6) 🧼 A look at the company culture and corporate performance of Dr. Bronner’s, which clocked $170 million in revenue last year.

7) ⭐ Dozens of the world’s most popular self-help books, boiled down to 11 core teachings.

8) 💧 Big rain + big snowfall this year = amazing waterfalls in Yosemite.

9) 📖 RIP, Cormac McCarthy.

10) ⚽ Here is a lovely story about an over–80 soccer league in Tokyo.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“He’ll keep doing this until you give him belly rubs.”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“People who think they have writer’s block don’t have writer’s block. They have fear of bad writing. If you show me all your bad writing, sooner or later you’re going to have to show me some good writing.” – Seth Godin

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
India Journalism

Modi’s Vision for India Rests On Six Giant Companies

Modi’s Vision for India Rests On Six Giant Companies

That’s the headline on my newest story, a piece with my colleague Niharika Mandhana that ran on Thursday’s page one.

It begins:

NEW DELHI–Prime Minister Narendra Modi says this is India’s decade. That claim rests heavily on a handful of dominant conglomerates.

Increasingly aligned with Modi’s priorities, the roughly half-dozen mega-firms—which include Reliance Industries and Adani Group, helmed by two of Asia’s richest tycoons—have the ability to raise vast sums of capital, and the experience and political connections to navigate India’s byzantine bureaucracy. Capitalizing on government subsidies and privatization plans, they are executing projects with a scale and speed that have eluded India in the past.

Among their ventures: A new airport for Mumbai, designed by the firm founded by the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid to look like a lotus flower, which is scheduled to start opening next year after the Adani Group took it over. When completed, it’s expected to connect to high-speed rail and handle 90 million passengers annually—only slightly fewer than Atlanta’s main airport, the world’s busiest, last year.

After spending more than $45 billion to build out telecommunications networks, Reliance Industries — a petrochemicals, textiles and retail juggernaut — is constructing factories to make solar panels and batteries for energy storage to position India as a credible alternative to China. It has pledged $75 billion in green-energy spending over the next 15 years.

The 155-year-old Tata Group, which took control of the formerly state-owned Air India last year, recently placed one of the largest orders in aviation history for 470 new aircraft. The salt-to-steel-to-software behemoth, which owns British automaker Jaguar Land Rover, is forging ahead with producing electric vehicles, military transport aircraft, smartphones and telecom hardware, with plans to invest $90 billion in India over five years.

Half a dozen conglomerates now control or have major stakes in 25% of India’s port capacity, 45% of cement production, a third of steel making, nearly 60% of all telecom subscriptions, and more than 45% of coal imports. An analysis by the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, a research firm, shows that a quarter of all new investment proposals by private companies since 2014 have come from the companies.

“This is the period where it’s not the mad rush of entrepreneurs going out to build new capacities, to become great entrepreneurs—this is the era of great concentration,” said Mahesh Vyas, CMIE’s managing director.

Click through to read the rest.