Alibaba IPO’d Friday at $25 billion, the biggest IPO in history, and most of the world outside Asia met Jack Ma for the first time via a stock ticker. A former English teacher built China’s Amazon-eBay-PayPal combo and the US markets treated it like a moon landing. My mental map of “tech” is embarrassingly one-country and this fortnight fixed some of that.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus launched, lines around blocks, 10 million sold opening weekend, and within days the internet discovered the big one can bend in your pocket. “Bendgate” is trending; Apple says nine customers complained. Somewhere a materials engineer is having the healthcare.gov experience. Structural rigidity: also a capacity dimension.
Sports sendoff of the fortnight: Derek Jeter’s final home game at Yankee Stadium, walk-off single, obviously, because his career was scripted by someone sentimental. Twenty years, one team. In an industry where I’m considered loyal for being at one company for three years, twenty years anywhere sounds like science fiction.
TIL: Apple Pay’s tokenization design, where your card number never touches the merchant. Every payment eng blog is dissecting it. Elegant, boring, bulletproof: my favorite genre.