The Branded and Gilded Life

When Hertz signed off on an order for 100,000 Teslas to be delivered within 14 months, it sent the company's stock soaring to over a trillion. This single order is worth $4.2 billion, and it marks a shift in thinking. Having an electric fleet changes the game for car rentals. Hertz would have factored in the savings on fuel, maintenance and the charging network before making a commitment as far-re...

Read that carefully again. There's a mountain of difference between being stupid and looking stupid. And that's the focus of a great article in Hacker News. If you're willing to ask 'dumb' questions that look obvious to a lot of people, you end up learning things they don't. Here's an example. At a discussion on disposal of nuclear waste, everyone was focused on the harmful effects it had on the e...

Chart above copyright by FT Facebook has been locked out of Apple's ecosystem for targeting. And that is impacting their ad business. Just like it is for Google  Now, here's the sting in the tail. Apple's advertising revenue has tripled. No guessing where that came from! By playing up the privacy angle, Apple has secured a lucrative market for itself. Brings to mind what Amazon did a few years ago...

We've all got the WhatsApp forwards. Exercise routines that need to be followed. Strengthening everything from the abs to the pectorals to the biceps. In most cases, this degenerates into a barely comprehensible routine and for the most part, it's simply people going through the motions. This site, Musclewiki , has managed to simplify it to the part you are interested in with a solid UX tweak. Ins...

The posters freeze Bond in pivotal moments. Or enhance the aura. What most viewers never think about is that the movie posters and other shots of the cast are never derived from the footage. There are still photographers assigned to the set and they are the ones who create the images that go into practically all of the publicity material. The question is why? Movie and still photography are comple...

It went against the moral fiber. Only a couple of agency guys feverishly cracking a product brief for a client could have concocted this back in 1973. It went on to become an essential after-dinner tipple in hallowed circles. But it wasn't always this way. In 2007, Diageo announced that it had sold its billionth bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream liqueur. But the start or the journey was nowhere as sm...

The other day, I placed an order for some pickles and a couple of other small eatables at an online store. I don't want to name them because they did follow process and refunded the money for a stockout item. Zomato and Swiggy have understood the problem and fixed it. They know that restaurants can run out of the dishes when there's a sudden influx of people ordering the same thing. Then, there ar...

You're not supposed to know about them either. But it shows that after all the trouble you take to secure your phone, your messages can be easily read. What exactly does Syniverse do? It routes the billions of messages sent out every day between the telecom companies.  Practically every telecom company in the world is a customer. And here's the enormity of the problem. The company was hacked back...

They came to the Santa Monica pier from different directions. One of them is a guitarist who has been playing for over 20 years and has a sizeable subscriber base on YouTube - nearly 250,000. He sets up a mic and invites people to sing while he plays the guitar. Most beach goers have nothing more on their minds than to snack, chit-chat and while away a lazy afternoon. Then, a cautious Indian girl...

James Gleick gave a great example of why efficiency should not be optimised beyond a point in his book, Chaos. The example he used was of major airports, where flights took off and landed every 15 seconds or so. Alternating between a landing and a takeoff, efficiency parameters were pushed to the limit. But if an airplane developed a snag on the ground while taxiing towards take off, it threw ever...

Why did a tire company become the world's standard for haute cuisine? Michelin assumed, correctly, that if more people traveled to eat out, they would replace their tires more often and increase the company's business over time. They started out by awarding stars to restaurants back in 1900 and that became so popular, they had to appoint a series of 'inspectors' to assess food quality and see if s...

There are great books available on the internet. But it's like the difference between reading a recipe and getting down to cooking. Unless you make a speech in front of a real audience, you'll never know what it actually means. What the authors tell you will all ring true, but only after you make the actual attempt. And no, speaking to your reflection in the mirror does not count. Does everyone ne...

During serial binge watches, we hit it all the time. Titles set the foundations of motion graphics, but we're impatient to dive into the movie and we ignore the artistry. They come in the way and no matter how exquisite, they're the appetizers to be dispensed with. In the darkness of a movie theater, they set the mood for the film. Early on film makers knew that apart from providing information ab...

Cameras everywhere. From traffic lights to apartment complexes to warehouses. Recording movement 24/7. The eyes in the sky as well as on the ground. Kids being monitored remotely, and exams conducted with cameras vigilantly recording every move and click of the mouse. Or surgeries monitored for insurance purposes. It wasn't meant to be this way. There are several origin stories about how it began....

Did the movie's theme song play in your mind when you read the first line? It should have because it's one of the most recalled tracks from movies. Ennio Morricone had collaborated with Sergio Leone on several films. He came up with the title's opening to capture the coyote's high-pitched wail and then blended it into a track that goes in unpredictable directions. In most themes, there is a set of...

We've travelled on trains so often, we hardly think of the conceptual leap it took to make it a transportation option worldwide. Car and cycle wheels are round and we don't think much of the turning radius required to make turns. But wheels on a train run on parallel tracks. So, how do they handle turns? Cars and bikes can sweep across the road but trains are restricted Won't one of the wheels mov...

Plot points in the popular serials are quite instructive. You realise everyone has to balance books, including criminals. The difference is that taxmen go after legitimate businesses to collect their dues while police dig into criminal enterprises. In the series Animal Kingdom on Netflix, the lady running the show has an elaborate set of businesses through which money is 'washed.' And from the det...

Never? Or when you've decided the effort is not worth it? Can both be true? The sunk cost fallacy is about persisting with something simply because you're invested in it. Either in terms of time or money. The sunk cost fallacy becomes perseverance when it succeeds. Two concepts that are the polar opposite of each other transition perfectly from one to the other. Evidence can be produced to support...

There's a slice of life permanently devoted to paying back. For the car, the house, the TV, the fridge and more. And rents are the ones that drill big holes in monthly budgets. Sweden has one of the biggest government rent control programs running since World War 2. The objective was that the middle class and people earning less should not be priced out of the best neighborhoods. And with all the...

And to top it off, the company he stole from offered him a job. As head of security, no less. It was a heist like no other. Crypto valued at over $600 million was siphoned from one of the exchanges. This is where things get interesting. Unlike robberies in the real world, where there are 'fences' to help launder the ill-gotten riches, crypto is harder to launder. When the money is transferred out,...

Before Windows 95 was launched, the earlier versions - Windows 2 & 3 already had a base of over 50 million users. Back in the early 90s, that was huge . And the worry was that a complete change would help some users but make it worse for millions. Finding what people would wrestle with was the problem. Today, we look at files and folders and they seem so basic, it's hard to believe that people nee...

Be careful about what you listen to first thing in the morning We all experience this from time to time You hear a tune playing and then, it loops in your head all day. It may even be something you don't particularly like. But you're stuck with it. Certain riffs that have an ability to burrow deep. And that's the focus of a new commercial from Spotify. Two guys walk down a college classroom corrid...

MacKenzie Scott was married to Jeff Bezos. And her divorce gave her a windfall of billions of dollars. She's handing it out liberally to charities and organisations doing stellar public work. Most of the time, they struggle to raise funds. So, this is clearly a gift of gigantic proportions. An article in Bloomberg analysed the sectors to which she has provided money. Years from now, we'll see the...

It's not a trick question. Or maybe it should be phrased another way. Smiles can be an integral part of power play. But they're rarely, if ever, spoken about in that context It's hard to wear a tough expression in response to a smile. And  they're often the preamble to conversations. Setting up the stage, as it were for a dialogue. In social situations, from networking to parties, the ones willing...

Fuji film was a distant second to Kodak in the consumer market. But then, the market flipped. Smartphones took over from cameras and removed the need for film altogether. And it went downhill for market leaders from there. Kodak slipped away into bankruptcy and the theory was that the company lost market share when people stopped buying cameras and film which led to the decline. However, the real...