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Fortune senior writer Michal Lev-Ram is filling in for Adam today.
As a journalism major in the early 2000s, I had two options: newspaper track or magazine track. I chose the latter. The dean of the journalism department at San Francisco State University at the time had regaled us students with stories of editing Hunter S. Thompson’s work at Rolling Stone, and it all sounded much more exciting than covering city hall meetings for a daily. (An aside: I also passed on an optional “online journalism” class because, you know, why take a course I didn’t need in order to graduate?)
Fast forward about 20 years and this dichotomy—newspaper or magazine—sounds painfully outdated. Not only do we have so many other categories within media, but the delineations between all of these classifications have blurred.
This week is a great example: On Thursday, Fortune, a nonagenarian print magazine, wrapped up a three-day conference—the Most Powerful Women Summit—hosted online for the first time. Also this week, we launched a new podcast, Fortune Brainstorm, a weekly audio show about how technology is disrupting our world and reshaping our lives, sometimes in ways we don’t fully realize. In the first episode, Aparna Bawa, COO of Zoom, talks about working from home and helping steer one of the most important apps during the pandemic.
I’m so proud to co-host this podcast project with Fortune deputy editor Brian O’Keefe. We’ve both gotten very good at building makeshift recording studios in our respective apartments—Brian in New York and me in Silicon Valley—using lots of pillows and blankets.
I don’t think either Brian or I ever thought we’d be starting a podcast while working from home, which is exactly what our first episode is all about. But we’re excited to dive into the many ways tech is changing us, and how our changing habits are, in turn, transforming tech. Our producers have also told us that my mom, a former computer programmer, can make occasional guest appearances. (She does not know this yet.) I hope you’ll check out the new podcast, subscribe in your favorite podcast app if you like it, and send us feedback and ideas.
I never did get to edit Hunter S. Thompson. But I’ve gotten to stretch myself in other ways over the years. As my editor, Adam Lashinsky, said just yesterday: “It all comes back to the journalism.”
Michal Lev-Ram
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Infected far and wide. While today's biggest headline concerns a certain world leader who contracted COVID-19, over in techland, Amazon says about 20,000 workers in its 1.3 million frontline workforce have tested positive. The company calculates that's about half as many as should be expected based on local infection rates.
Where have I heard this one before? The latest critique of how social media are dividing Americans comes from former President Barack Obama. "People have gotten even more stuck in their own narrow biases,” he said during Signal, Twilio’s developer conference, on Thursday. “One of the things we’re going to have to figure out is how do we rediscover some common culture when you’ve got a bazillion websites and 100 channels?”
We light it up, we won't come down. Elsewhere in politics, the Senate Commerce Committee voted to subpoena Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to appear at yet another hearing. Republicans want to question the execs about alleged conservative bias while Dems want to talk privacy and media domination.
Sally smurfs seashells by the seashore. The feds weren't joking when they imposed anti-money laundering rules on digital currency exchanges. On Thursday, prosecutors filed a pile of charges against BitMEX and its top executives alleging they allowed U.S. citizens to trade without keeping adequate records and controls. Americans aren't supposed to be using the crypto exchange, which is headquartered in the Seychelles and operates mainly from Hong Kong. The exchange said it complied with U.S. laws and plans to fight the charges.
You want me to break something else? It wasn't quite as bad as when Sauron recruited Saruman, but the stock market debut of Palantir had a slight hiccup. One of the benefits of a direct listing is that employees are supposed to be able to sell their shares immediately. It seems Morgan Stanley's Shareworks platform suffered technical difficulties that prevented Palantir shareholders from selling for a few hours, meaning they missed the $11.42 high price for the day. Meanwhile, popular gaming platform Roblox is planning to go public next year but hasn't decided whether or not to use the direct listing method, Reuters reports. And electric truck component maker Hyliion completed its merger with SPAC Tortoise Acquisition and starts trading today with the symbol HYLN.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
One of the selling points of the USB-C connector was to simplify our gadget-charging days. But it hasn't worked out that way, as developer and writer Owen Williams explains in an essay in Debugger.
Anyone going all-in on USB-C will run into problems with an optional standard called Power Delivery. The standard allows devices to charge at a much higher wattage relative to older connectors, therefore allowing them to charge faster. But it requires the right combination of charger, cables, and device to actually achieve this.
If you buy a USB-C charger that doesn’t support Power Delivery and try to use it with a Microsoft Surface, for example, the laptop will complain that it’s “not charging” despite receiving some power. Fixing this requires figuring out whether or not it’s the cable or wall charger that doesn’t support Power Delivery, and replacing it with something that does support it. There would be no way for a layperson to hold two USB-C chargers and know the difference between one that supports Power Delivery and one that doesn’t.
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few great long reads I came across this week:
The disruption con: why big tech’s favourite buzzword is nonsense (The Guardian)
How one magic word became a way of justifying Silicon Valley’s unconstrained power.
Can Podcasts Improve Our Well-Being? (The New Yorker)
“The Happiness Lab” is part of a wave of positive-psychology audio that takes a quantitative view of the quest to be happy.
Inside Cameo, the celebrity shoutout app hungry for fame (Wired UK)
Cameo lets you buy personalised greetings from sport stars, singers, influencers and zoo animals. What does it say about the nature of modern celebrity?
Hype Man of the Century (The Verge)
When Chinese millionaire Justin Sun acquired BitTorrent, was he trying to skirt the trade war? Or fly right in the face of it, no matter the cost?
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
How A.I. is playing a bigger role in music streaming than you ever imagined By Jonathan Vanian
Startup IonQ drastically ups the quantum computing ante By Robert Hackett
Magic Leap’s Peggy Johnson: Becoming CEO of a pivoting business doesn’t mean jumping off the ‘glass cliff’ By Lydia Belanger
What, exactly, does the U.S. Space Force do? Its secretary is glad you asked By Aric Jenkins
Companies need to emphasize skills over degrees, IBM chair Ginni Rometty says By Aaron Pressman
The World Health Organization is leaning on big tech to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic By Nicole Goodkind
In a time of crisis, Americans send a clear message to Corporate America: Focus on workers By Martin Whittaker
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
It was a running joke on the sitcom The Big Bang Theory for years, but getting a decent toilet to operate in zero gravity on the International Space Station is no gag to the astronauts who reside there. So NASA is sending up a new $23 million toilet made of titanium and shaped to better accommodate the bodies of women and men. Now go relax and don't flush your weekend down the drain.
Aaron Pressman