TechCrunch:

You’re not going to use Coda, which was founded in 2017 and received funding from VC heavyweights like Greylock, Khosla Ventures and NEA, as a full-blown low code/no code service. It’s still a bit too limited for that. But you can use it to build your own custom inventory system, for example, or to build a basic CRM or to-do app that fits your specific needs. Or you could just use it as an online text editor and then slowly add features like third-party integrations with the likes of Slack or Figma as needed. All of that is easy enough for anybody who has ever used a function in Excel or Google Sheets.

This looks neat. Like GoogleDocs or Quip on Steroids.

An egg is the most popular photo on Instagram. What’s that worth? – Recode:

Lachtman thinks @world_record_egg could rake in as much as $250,000 to run a single ad to all of its followers if it decides to sell out. Others, like Sean Spielberg at Points North Group, an influencer marketing analytics company, think it could be even more.

“I think [they could sell an ad for] close to a million dollars,” Spielberg said, adding that normal rules around how much an influencer can usually charge per follower doesn’t apply to a viral sensation like the Instagram Egg. “[The rules] break down in an example like this where the account has over four million followers, but it’s clearly reached many, many multiples of that many people.”

O_O

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal REVOLUTION, “Marginal REVOLUTION”:
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Earther:

The project in question is the Eagle Shadow Mountain Solar Farm, which will begin operating in 2021. The farm will have a generating capacity of 300 megawatts, enough to power about 210,000 American homes. But it’s the price part that’s eye-popping. It will operate at a flat rate of $23.76 per megawatt-hour over the course of a 25-year power purchasing agreement (the term for a contract between an electricity generator and utility who buys it). On the surface, that price may not mean a lot to you if you’re not an energy nerd, but it’s a huge deal.

“On their face, they’re less than a third the price of building a new coal or natural gas power plant,” Ramez Naam, an energy expert and lecturer at Singularity University, told Earther in an email. “In fact, building these plants is cheaper than just operating an existing coal or natural gas plant.”

There’s a 30 percent federal investment tax credit for solar projects that helps drive down the cost of this and other solar projects. But Naam said even if you take away that credit, “these bids, un-subsidized, are still cheaper than any new coal or gas plants, and possibly cheaper than operating existing plants.”

New York Magazine: “Vice Media Was Built on a Bluff”:

If the modern version of Vice has a born-on date, it may have come in the spring of 2010, when the company landed a meeting with Intel, the computer-chip-maker, which wanted more young people to care about Pentium processors. Vice was still running on a shoestring, and Intel promised access to a $2 billion annual marketing budget. “Shane’s whole thing was, ‘We can’t let them think we’re these poor kids,’ ” says one former employee. (A number of current and former Vice employees, many of whom signed nondisclosure agreements, requested anonymity in order to talk about the company.) According to multiple employees who worked at Vice at the time, Smith went to the architecture firm across the hall from Vice’s Williamsburg office and asked how much it would cost to get them to move out ASAP. Vice’s 50 employees then worked around the clock for several days setting up the new space to look like it had been Vice’s all along. Vice constructed a glass-enclosed conference room to host the Intel meeting, and late one night, an employee answered a buzz at the door to find a plumber who’d come to install a fancy Japanese toilet.

On the morning of the Intel meeting, Vice employees were instructed to get to the office early, to bring friends with laptops to circulate in and out of the new space, and to “be yourselves, but 40 percent less yourselves,” which meant looking like the hip 20-somethings they were but in a way that wouldn’t scare off a marketing executive. A few employees put on a photo shoot in a ground-floor studio as the Intel executives walked by. “Shane’s strategy was, ‘I’m not gonna tell them we own the studio, but I’m not gonna tell them we don’t,’ ” one former employee says. That night, Smith took the marketers to dinner, then to a bar where Vice employees had been told to assemble for a party. When Smith arrived, just ahead of the Intel employees, he walked up behind multiple Vice employees and whispered into their ears, “Dance.”

What a story.

Make sure to read all of it. Vice has always been odd -how are they this successful with that content? for example-, and this explains a lot of why that is. (or was)

John Gruber on Google Duplex and Google in general:

I maintain that Google is wrong for the way it presents in-the-works not-yet-ready features. I think like Microsoft of old (and Apple of ancient times), Google, institutionally, is only excited about things that are in the works, not the things it’s actually shipping. But unlike Microsoft of old, Google presents concept videos without labeling them as concept videos.

But I think the other problem is with the media, that, time after time, buys into Google’s demo claims unquestionably — and then never circles back to them when they don’t ship.

This is spot on.

MG Siegler:

Take Bright, for example. By almost all critical accounts, it’s a bad movie. But while this might matter if it were released in a traditional movie theater, it turns out that this doesn’t actually matter on Netflix. Well, to be fair, it probably does matter at least somewhat, but it matters far less. Because at the end of the day, critical response is still subjective, even in aggregate. As such, it’s not all-encompassing. There will always be people who disagree with an assessment and will enjoy a movie that others did not — or, at the very least, will want to see it. Netflix just lowered the barrier to make this happen.

Going to a movie theater is a complicated and increasingly expensive process. If you hear a movie sucks, you’re probably not going to bother. (And that’s even more true if the theater itself sucks.) But if it’s playing at home, on a service you’re already paying for… […]

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Seven years ago (!), I offered up the idea of Netflix using its unique model to “save” cancelled cult hits. Arrested Development happened. Twin Peaks happened (though on Showtime). Firefly? Not yet. But many others have. Including Full House. Which is somehow a hit again.

But it’s not actually “somehow”, it was inevitable.

Next, what if Netflix convinces top-tier content to think outside the format? The Avengers movies are great, but given the sheer number of characters now involved, they’re getting too elaborate and convoluted for the two-hour film format. What if instead, they were five, 90 minute-long episodes? Who wouldn’t want to watch that? Who wouldn’t pay to watch that? Who wouldn’t pay a small premium on top of what we already pay Netflix to watch such content? No one. And Netflix has to know that. (Certainly Disney does!) The data is already there in the form of box office receipts.

The point is, it’s a combination of great content (or even less-than-great content), mixed with Netflix’s willingness to experiment with new formats and methods of distribution that is truly changing Hollywood’s game.

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I am waiting for some while now for more experimentation in formats on Netflix. Right now, Netflix still does TV (seasons) and cinema (movies) with scripted content. It won’t be long until they stumble upon genuine on-demand streaming formats. Especially the shared universe comic book route screams for a more free flow approach to time length of installments.

WIRED:

The problem, Nohl points out, is worse than vendors merely neglecting to patch older devices, a common phenomenon. Instead, it’s that they tell users they install patches that they in fact don’t, creating a false sense of security. „We found several vendors that didn’t install a single patch but changed the patch date forward by several months,“ Nohl says. „That’s deliberate deception, and it’s not very common.“

Troubling, fascinating new aspect of the modularity of the Android platform.

Ben Thompson at Stratechery:

it is one thing to sit on top of an existing industry and, well, be a media company/lead generation tool. There have been a whole host of businesses that did exactly that, and while there is plenty of money to be made, without some sort of integration into the value chain of the industry itself they simply aren’t transformative. To put it another way, aggregation doesn’t transform value chains; integration does.

Why aggregation matters is that it is the means by which new integrations are achieved:

Netflix leveraged its position as an aggregator of video content into the integration of the customer relationship and content creation, undoing the integration of linear channels and content creation
Airbnb/Uber and other similar services integrate the customer relationship with the driver/homeowner relationship, undoing the integration of cars/property with payment
Google and Facebook integrated content discovery with advertising, undoing the integration of editorial and advertising
More broadly — and this really gets at why Zillow is different — Aggregators that change industries (including Aggregator-like Amazon and Apple that deal with physical goods) integrate the customer relationship with however it is their industry generates revenue; Zillow, on the other hand, was completely divorced from the home selling-and-buying process.

​Just being a tech layer vs. changing the industry one is in:

Zillow has long been a better bet than Redfin, which has admirably IPO’d with a business that basically adds a tech layer (and thus superior lead generation) to a traditional real estate agency; the reality is that simply adding a tech layer doesn’t change industries — that requires new business models.

​What Zillow’s future will say about other tech companies in similar situations such as Spotify:

how Zillow fares will result in lessons that may be applicable broadly. Think of Spotify, for example: I was a bit bearish on the company last month because of the power of Spotify’s suppliers; the bull case is that Spotify’s ownership of the customer relationship will allows the company to build out the capability to sidestep the record labels even as the record labels can’t punish Spotify because they need them. That’s exactly what Zillow is testing right now: just how much power comes from being an Aggregator, and how much an industry can be transformed when that power is wielded.

Fascinating.
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CNBC:

German multinational Siemens is expanding its already sizeable Middle East presence by investing in the digital sphere, to the tune of $500 million over the next three years. […]

The company plans to build 20 MindSphere Application Centers in 17 countries, where hundreds of Siemens engineers and specialists will work with customers on projects in machine learning and data analysis.

The MindSphere center in Abu Dhabi will focus on developing operational efficiency for customers in areas like water, waste and oil and gas, while the other, to be located in Dubai, will work on solutions for airports, cargo and logistics.

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