$38 Billion in a Day and Nobody I Know Noticed
Alibaba just did roughly $38 billion in sales in 24 hours for Singles Day, and almost nobody outside China seems to have registered it happened.
For All Mankind and the Streaming Subscription Math
A weekend spent with the newly launched Apple TV+, mixed feelings on The Morning Show, and doing the actual math on how many streaming subscriptions I'm paying for now.
An Extra Hour, Spent Entirely on Apple TV+
Clocks fell back an hour this weekend and I burned the bonus time bouncing around Apple's brand new streaming service. Some quick, unfiltered thoughts on what's actually there.
The WeWork Bailout Math Doesn't Add Up
SoftBank's $9.5 billion rescue of WeWork left Adam Neumann with a payout north of a billion dollars. Some thoughts on that math, and on the theme-park feeling I always got walking past those offices.
IBM's Not Having It: The Quantum Supremacy Fight
Google's quantum supremacy paper landed in Nature today, but the more entertaining story is IBM's blog-post rebuttal claiming it's not so impossible after all.
Pixel 4's Face Unlock Doesn't Care If Your Eyes Are Open
Google's Pixel 4 launched this week without a fingerprint sensor, betting everything on a face unlock that reportedly doesn't check if your eyes are even open.
97 Years Old and Still Chasing a Better Cathode
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to the inventors of the lithium-ion battery, and a quick count of the cells within arm's reach says more about the everyday miracle than any headline does.
A Ring, Some Glasses, and Way Too Many Speakers
Amazon's September hardware event dumped out fifteen-odd new devices, including a smart ring and smart glasses. Some thoughts on why the beta-hardware-with-a-price-tag approach is starting to wear thin.
iOS 13 Weekend: Dark Mode Good, Bluetooth Bad
Updated to iOS 13 this weekend: dark mode is great, Bluetooth pairing with my car is not, and the new iPhones landed the same day a third of my office walked out for the climate strike.
The Leaked Quantum Paper Nobody Will Confirm Yet
A leaked NASA paper on Google's quantum computer briefly went public this week, claiming a 200-second calculation would take a supercomputer 10,000 years. Nobody's confirmed it yet, and that's the interesting part.
Camera Bumps vs. the Supreme Court Steps
While everyone was busy memeing the iPhone 11's camera bump, fifty state attorneys general quietly announced a real antitrust investigation into Google from the steps of the Supreme Court.
Everyone Was Watching Apple. 48 States Were Watching Google.
While the whole internet obsessed over the new iPhone cameras, 48 states quietly launched a joint antitrust investigation into Google three days earlier.