Edition 139 of my email newsletter went out last Sunday.
If you’d like NN delivered to your inbox before it’s posted here, simply enter your email address at this link. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.
Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes.
It’s been a fantastic World Cup opening weekend! Can’t decide which I’ve enjoyed most: Ronaldo’s hat trick in the scintillating Spain-Portugal game or the Iceland goalkeeper’s penalty save on Messi! And there’s still so much more to come!
On to this week’s NN…
Here are ten items worth your time this week:
🚘 1) A story by my colleague Sean McLain and me: Toyota Plans Billion-Dollar Investment in Ride-Hailing Startup Grab [WSJ] — Toytota is trying to expand beyond its core cars business, and is now pouring funds into Singapore-based grab, which as you’ll recall has chased Uber out of Southeast Asia.
💲 2) A huge legal and business story this week: AT&T Beats U.S. in Antitrust Fight Over Time Warner [WSJ] — The federal judge’s decision is a “historic defeat for the Justice Department that could rewrite the media landscape and set the stage for other deals,” write my colleagues Brent Kendall and Drew FitzGerald. The New York Times‘s Jim Stewart, in a column surveying the state of antitrust law, writes that “The most immediate impacts of the ruling on Tuesday are the removal of an obstacle to a megamerger and the likely bursting of a dam of mergers that were waiting the decision.”
⏏️ 3) Apple Tries to Stop Developers From Sharing Data on Users’ Friends [Bloomberg] — “Sharing of friends’ data without their consent is what got Facebook Inc. into so much trouble when one of its outside developers gave information on millions of people to Cambridge Analytica,” write Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier and Mark Gurman, and now Apple’s “quietly closing” a related loophole.
🎬 4) And speaking of Apple: Oprah strikes deal with Apple as new Hollywood content wars heat up [CNN] — Apple joins Amazon and Netflix in building up stables of original content.
⛔ 5) Smart speaker story of the week: Senators Demand Answers From Amazon on Echo’s Snooping Habits [Wired] — Remember the woman in Portland, Oregon who said an Alexa-powered gadget, without her permission, recorded and sent to a contact a conversation she had with her husband? Two senators are asking Jeff Bezos to explain how it happened.
🚁 6) Take a First Look at Larry Page’s Latest Flying Car [Bloomberg] — “The Kitty Hawk Flyer sports 10 battery-powered propellors and two control sticks,” Brad Stone writes, “and looks like a human-sized drone.” Click through for photos.
🏫 7) Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey! ‘Saved by the Bell’ Now a Restaurant [New York Times] — It looks amazing. Pics on Instagram are here.
🆒 8) How Soccer Players’ Hair Became So Influential [Racked] — TLDR: stars’ haircuts have become are clearly on display (no hats or helmets); a diversity of cultures means a lot of variation; players can pioneer cool coiffures to stand out.
😎 9) Chilled out video of the week: Open Ocean: 10 Hours of Relaxing Oceanscapes [YouTube/BBC Earth]. “Be wowed by the brilliant hues of our blue planet and the incredible animals that live therewith…”
⚾ 10) Fun dog video of the week: Bark In The Park Event Goes Sideways [Twitter video] — It was dog night at a double A baseball game in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and an enthusiastic German Shepherd became entranced by a ball…
✌️Quote of the week:
“All they could do was put enough stinky food up there to encourage him to go up the last two floors…We were all kind of worried he might be too tired to do so but thankfully the little guy kept going.”
That’s from a New York Times story headlined Daredevil Raccoon Climbs Minnesota Skyscraper and Becomes a Sensation.
If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If you received this from a pal, you can sign up here.
👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,
Newley
