The World Series & The Weekend Reader

Hi! I am Om, and this is my letter where I share what’s on my mind, my latest writings, and articles worth reading. In this issue, you will find:

• The Joy of Vision Pro
• Writings Worth Reading
• Meet Seattle’s Sherlock Holmes
• My Recent Writings

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But first, a little housekeeping note:

For the old website, every weekend, I used to send out a short newsletter with seven stories that I thought were worth reading. Ten years later, it still remains one of the most requested features. While I can’t promise seven great reads, I am going to collect as many good stories as possible, especially around themes of science, technology, and their impact. Of course, I will showcase non-tech feature-length journalism that is simply a great read.

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The Joy of Vision Pro

Last night, the Los Angeles Dodgers (the $1.2 billion superteam I wish the Yankees could imitate) won their second consecutive World Series . Talk about enhancing shareholder value! My LA friends are beyond thrilled, but as a baseball fan, I am so grateful that I saw such a hard-fought, close series where two teams went the distance and then some.

But that’s not the real story. The real story for me is that I saw the entire World Series on the Vision Pro 2. You know, the same device that The Information claimed Apple had stopped working on back in the summer of 2024, to focus on cheaper glasses. The same Vision Pro that the media said was out of production at the end of 2024. Apple had been working on upgrades, including a new chip (the M5), and making other modifications. (See Apple’s news release. My early impressions piece will follow soon.)

The review unit arrived just ahead of the championship series. Unlike other reviewers, I use Vision Pro pretty much every day during the baseball season. While the broadcasts are not truly immersive, the MLB app allows me to create an immersive environment with stats and shape how I experience the game. I wish every sport that I love had an app that allowed me to experience the games in such an immersive fashion. With my AirPods and the high-resolution screen, it was amazing to see the Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays go toe-to-toe. It felt as if I was there. It was a theater-viewing experience like no other. I don’t think I can watch sports (or video streams) any other way. But I also live alone, so it is not as isolating for me as it might be for others with families.

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3 Tech Stories Worth Reading

Technology can be positive or negative. It depends on how we humans put it to use. Neil Postman (whom I’ve been re-reading lately) said it best: “Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.” Today’s three reading picks are just examples of that.

How an Indian backwater became epicenter of digital scams

What an amazing piece of work by Snigdha Poonam for The Guardian. She tells the story of Jamtara, a poor district in Jharkhand, a state (and the state it was carved out of—Bihar) that has been an economic backwater. Even farming was barely enough to maintain sustenance. Over the past decade, cheap phones, digital wallets, and changing rules saw the villages in this region turn into India’s phishing capital. It is an in-depth look at two Indias: one where aspiration and survival are at each other’s throats, thanks to a digital revolution that has its good, its bad, and its ugly.

Will we even own physical self in the age of AI manipulation?

CNBC ran a story about a Minnesota man who used an early AI tool called DeepSwap to turn women in his community into porn actors. The victims decided to fight back and scored some kind of victory. The CNBC story is a clear, urgent map of where policy, platforms, and protections are failing, and what must change. I didn’t expect to read such a thoughtful piece on the CNBC website, so kudos to them for publishing it. But what really bothers me is that we are way beyond DeepSwap. We are living with Sora 2. We are dealing with AI from an amoral company like Meta. We are living in a world of looser moral and legal standards. The question that looms large in my mind: do we even have any copyright over our own identity (our physical self) if everything is manipulable?

Buy Now, Pay Later. And Pay Big!

As someone who views debt as salt, and uses it with extreme discretion, I have been amazed by the growing and endless popularity of buy now, pay later services such as Affirm and Klarna. It’s not just these companies— even before they came around, I avoided the temptation of credit cards. I remember reading sometime in the 1990s about PNC Bank and its credit cards for subprime borrowers. It all felt wrong. Perhaps it was because I grew up with the idea of living within one’s means. Whatever the reasons, I wasn’t a fan. And I’m still not.

However, given our current culture of endless consumption, turbocharged by social media, BNPL services have been growing. Some even use them to manage their household budgets because, for them, it is the only option. However, for a large number of customers, rampant consumption is the real reason. In the end, the bills always come due. The New York Times highlights this in a deeply detailed story about people living the good life with BNPL. (Alternative link if the mainfree link doesn’t work.)

Meet Seattle’s Sherlock Holmes. (A Non-Tech Read)

What a great yarn for the weekend. A story from over a century ago, this is the tale of Luke May, Seattle’s real American Sherlock, who used his intellect to dismantle a lazy arrest, exhume a body, and deduce suffocation from a livid discoloration. Nice, wonderful read.

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My Writing (Elsewhere)

• A conversation with iRobot’s founder Rodney Brooks, who says, “Don’t believe the (AI and robotics) hype.”
• I am a big fan of fountain pens, and I have a tiny newsletter about my hobby in case you want to sign up for OmLovesPens.

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Editor’s Note: It is a sign of the times that a substantial number of you are taking advantage of newsletters to read what I publish. I have made a subtle change to the website: we are now publishing as a newsletter. If you are a subscriber, nothing will change. If you are not, please consider subscribing and tell your friends and colleagues to do the same. Bydoing so, you will be supporting my writing. My goal is to publish up to three times a week, including a weekly list of my reading recommendations. (RSS feed remains unchanged.)

November 2, 2025. San Francisco