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Senthil's Notes Posts

Peak iPhone

I look at data behind iPhone unit sales, and see versioning issues of a durable-goods monopolist rather than trade uncertainties. Using Clockspeed theory, I argue that iPhone pricing and versioning advantage was temporary. The advantage was great when it lasted, but it is now behind Apple, as the smartphone market matures.

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Paris to the Moon – Review

Paris to the Moon is a love letter, exquisite and heartfelt. It is not one that a pining star-crossed lover writes, but one a soldier writes to family back home. The Paris of lovers is well-trodden.  Paris to the Moon describes the Paris of a writer with a young family. Gopnik’s penchant for adorning unremarkable happenings with remarkable witticism makes the book lovely.  In the midst of absurdities and abstractions, swimming pools and schools, gyms and dinner plates (mellow and varnished like an old violin), never-ending dossiers, parks and pregnancy, politics and futbol, Adam Gopnik, all the while failing miserably to prevent his son from learning about Barney, reflects on our forlorn life away from home, even as we are having…

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Sights & Sounds 2018

Here are some films and podcast episodes that I liked in 2018. Sights (Film, TV, etc.) Bladerunner 2049 was a thought provoking movie and a well-deserved sequel to Bladerunner. Love per Square Foot was a cheerful and peppy urban love story set in Bombay. NetFlix has made a movie that Bollywood has forgotten how to make. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell made by BBC boasts high production and some great acting by all the principal characters. The TV series is less-nuanced than Susannah Clarke’s book by the same name, i.e., the TV series is darker and misses the whimsical funny elements in the book, that are understandably harder to translate to screen. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (season 1) is great…

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Standing on Escalators and Classroom Teaching

During the holiday travels, one of the vexing things that you might have come across is people in a hurry, those who hurtle by at excessive speed on airport escalators, as you stand.  Conversely, you might be the one trying to get back to your boarding area but blocked by a slow traveler carrying an unmanageable volume of luggage bags, more than what one ought to carry on enjoyable trips. In this article, I return to one of my favorite Operations topics in social behavior. Should people stand left (or right, depending on the country) in moving escalators, so that people in a hurry can walk by?  Is that efficient? It turns out not. It is better for everyone if we do…

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