Business

YouTube Shopping wants to unseat TikTok Shop in Southeast Asia. YouTube has the end users, but can it attract influencers and brands to grow its ecommerce revenue?

They squandered the holy grail. I agree with this blogger that Apple Intelligence’s foundation is remarkable and unique. I have not seen any other tech companies approach AI features with the level of privacy and security that Apple did. I also agree with the author, to a lesser extent, that Apple Intelligence has not been a stellar success. It’s too new and early to call it a failure. But I do think that it’s hard to see Apple Intelligence is a game changer or the catalyst for the next upgrade cycle. Yes, people will still upgrade from their years-old phones, but is Apple Intelligence the reason?

Vision Capital Fund has a good write up on NuBank

On Bubble Watch. I love these memos by Howard Marks. “Bubbles are marked by bubble thinking. Perhaps for working purposes we should say that bubbles and crashes are times when extreme events cause people to lose their objectivity and view the world through highly skewed psychology – either too positive or too negative“

Banks Are Racking Up Wins Even Before Trump Is Back in White House. The regulatory environment will be much more friendly to banks in the next 4 years. Is it necessarily a good thing? To be determined. We saw bank collapses in the two years. A swing to the other end of the regulatory spectrum, mainly a lack of oversight and stringent tests, can get all of us into trouble again. I hope it won’t be the case.

Other Stuff I Find Interesting

Unemployed Office Workers Are Having a Harder Time Finding New Jobs. “More than 1.6 million unemployed workers have been job hunting for at least six months“

It’s the Most Indispensable Machine in the World—and It Depends on This Woman. The machines created by ASML are so technically advanced and sophisticated that I can hardly understand or believe what is described. It’s unfathomable that we humans can get to this level of technological advancement. This is a wonderful story that features Ms Hall, who seems to be an excellent engineer. But she is not the only customer support engineer at ASML like the headline suggests.

Why just two hours of exercise a week can be life-changing. “One retrospective study of over 37,000 people found those who did their week’s worth of physical activity over just one of two days had the same reduction in cardiovascular disease risk as those who did activity spread throughout the week.”

Why kids need to take more risks: science reveals the benefits of wild, free play. “Dodd found that children who spent more time playing adventurously had fewer signs of anxiety and depression (according to parent reports) than those who spent less time in adventurous play. The kids with more opportunities for risk seemed happier. This pattern of risky play as a protective factor against mental-health issues was stronger for children from lower-income households than for those from higher-income households.”

Stats

Online holiday spending rises nearly 9%

Mobile wallet in-person transactions made up more than 50% of all mobile wallet transactions in 2022

Startups from the Bay Area landed $90 billion in VC funds in 2024, which made up 57% of the global VC investments