What I wrote last week
A helpful post on the new Covid-19 variant, Omicron
Good reads on Business
Uber introduced the new membership plan called Uber One. Perks include unlimited $0 delivery fees for qualified orders ($30+ for groceries and $15+ for other stuff), 5% off on eligible rides & deliveries, $5 refund if a delivery arrives after the Latest Estimate Time and other perks. It’s the same as DoorDash’s Dash Pass or Instacart’s subscription. The difference is that Uber’s plan also includes rides.
Incentives – How will Visa Amazon Play Out? If you are interested in fintech or payments, subscribe to Tom’s newsletter. It’s good.
More than Joe Rogan: Inside Spotify’s audio revolution. “The same could be said for Spotify, which over the last three years has transitioned from a groundbreaking music streaming service to one that also now offers 3.2 million podcasts on its platform. The expansion has been nothing short of meteoric when you consider that Apple, which has been offering podcasts since 2005, has just over 2 million audio shows. Spotify’s gains were highlighted in its third-quarter earnings report in late October, when it revealed that 3.2 million figure, as well as the fact that advertising revenue from podcasts helped drive total ad revenue up 75% year over year. Stockholm-based Spotify is now on track to pass 1 billion euros (more than $1 billion) in ad revenue for the first time this year.”
Apple taps TSMC to build custom iPhone 5G modem in 2023. A competitive advantage is what you do so much more efficiently and better than your competitors. In the case of Apple, it’s the integration of hardware and software. Within hardware, it’s a combination of so many things, including chip, industrial design and supply chain. Reliant on Qualcomm for the modem chip in the iPhone, Apple decided to be more independent and bring deeper integration by designing its own chip and outsourcing the production to TSMC. Think about it this way. Apple became the most valuable firm in the world while relying on others for parts of their products. Now they gained the capability to own most of the production process. What a company.
Starbucks has opened a store with Amazon Go. “At this store, customers that have ordered ahead of time via the Starbucks app can walk in, look to see if their order is ready via the large digital Order Status sign, pick up their drink and walk out. They can also use their Amazon app or credit card to scan into the store and pick up a Dominique Ansel pastry (or a number of other New York City-specific items Ess-a-Bagel), Amazon Kitchen sandwich or sushi roll from the marketplace and just walk out. Once they exit the store with the item, they’ll be charged via their Amazon account via the Amazon Just Walk Out Technology as seen in the Amazon Go stores.” The more Amazon tests this technology, the better it will become. A few years from now, they’ll be miles ahead of others in reimagining the retail experience
AmEx Pitched Business Customers a Tax Break That Doesn’t Add Up. Another shady exercise by a major financial institution.
An interesting write-up on Visa from Greenskeeper Asset Management
Other stuff I found interesting
The ER charged him $6,589.77 for 6 stitches, a cost that led his wife to avoid the ER. The healthcare system in the U.S is really broken and quite frankly just disgraceful.
Workers in Vietnam lived inside factories to keep Samsung’s products on shelves during the pandemic. Poorer countries should band together to pressure tech companies and their suppliers into increasing workers’ pay. Divided, they will be taken advantage of. The economic output is reflected on the paper, but the price that workers have to pay and the longer term sustainability is also damaged
The Humble Brilliance of Italy’s Moka Coffee Pot. “The various species of Coffea, the seeds of which are dried, roasted, and ground to make coffee, are native to east Africa, particularly Ethiopia. Coffee as a beverage first shows up in the historical record—which is not necessarily to say that it wasn’t consumed in its native Ethiopia first—in what is now Yemen. It spread quickly throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and firmly established itself as part of the culture in what are now Turkey and Iran. Italians began coming up with their own gadgets for brewing coffee in the 19th century, but the biggest by far was the idea of applying pressure to coffee in order to create a strong, and more importantly fast, drink. This is the age of steam, a miraculous source of power that can unlock the world, and though it’s not entirely clear who originated the idea of using steam to brew coffee, certainly it was in Italy that it was popularized. The first known patent for a machine we might now recognize as an espresso machine was registered by Angelo Moriondo, who created a giant complicated steam-driven machine in 1884, but who never bothered to manufacture it. Luigi Bezzera, from Milan, modified the Moriondo patent, and hisdesign was further modified (though less so than Bezzera’s) by Desidiero Pavoni, whose La Pavoni introduced the world to espresso in 1906, at a world’s fair held in Milan.”
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Minh Quang Duong 