Weekly readings – 19th September 2020

What I wrote

I reviewed a few books such as: The Anatomy of The Swipe, Tape Sucks, The Motley Fool Investment Guide, 7 Powers: The Foundation of Business Strategy

I put down some thoughts on Apple Fitness+ and Apple One

Business

A deep dive analysis into Snowflake

Wonder why your grocery delivery service is more expensive than going to the store? A thread👇🏽

— Pradeep Elankumaran (@pradeep24) September 4, 2020

Companies like @SnowflakeDB @asana @Airbnb are making headlines as some of the most anticipated IPOs of 2020. It feels like yesterday we were preparing to take @okta public.

What it’s actually like to go through an IPO & be a public company ⬇️

— Todd McKinnon (@toddmckinnon) September 16, 2020

A study on the effect of Wikipedia on businesses

Our estimates show that adding about 2,000 characters (approximately two paragraphs) of text and one photo to a city’s Wikipedia page increased the number of nights spent in this city by about 9% during the tourist season compared to cities in the control group.6 The effect comes mostly from pages that were initially relatively incomplete. In particular, the treatment increases hotel stays by about 33% in cities which initially had very short pages in a particular language, while there was no effect on city-language combinations where the pages were well developed.

Technology

A review of Microsoft Duo by WSJ. It’s quite concerning that a $1,400 phone has a subpar camera and a buggy software

What I found interesting

A brief profile by BBC of Freiburg, a green and futuristic city in Germany

An interactive map of the Earth some 240 million years ago

A damning memo of a Facebook employee on how the leadership turned a blind eye on election manipulations. She wrote “I have blood on my hands”

The US is almost at the bottom among advanced countries when it comes to well-being of children

The Three Year Rule: How To Stay Motivated Working On A Long-Term Project

A WSJ profile on Trevor Noah and his journey from South Africa to America

According to Census, Asians had the highest median income in the US in 2019 and foreign born folks grew median income at a faster rate than native-borns

Hard not to be impressed with the way @Schwarzenegger talks about his early success… pic.twitter.com/WiU5pxtHLp

— Adam Nash (@adamnash) September 11, 2020