About Long Press
Long Press publishes three things. The Daily Five brings you five tech stories every morning, each one told the same way: the problem, what changed, the catch, and what it means for you. Known Issue is the column, and it goes after the things that have been broken for a while that nobody is fixing. Fine Print explains the rules, prices and service changes in India that most people skip, read from the source document and kept up to date.
Swami Guru
Swami has led product for 11+ years, most recently at Condé Nast from 2020 to 2026 (Vogue, GQ, Wired, Condé Nast Traveller and Architectural Digest), after earlier roles at Newsweek and Metro World News. Twenty brand launches across five continents. Long Press is written from inside that job, by someone who sat in the rooms where these decisions get made and knows which half of an announcement is the half that matters.
The three things Long Press publishes
How each one worksThe Daily Five
Five tech stories every morning, each one told the same way: the problem, what changed, the catch, and what it means for you. Five is a cap, not a target. More than five things happen most days and most of them do not matter, so the work is deciding what to leave out.
Every story, told the same way
Every item in the brief answers the same four questions:
- The problem: What was annoying, expensive or broken before this.
- What changed: What actually shipped, with the dates, prices and numbers, minus the adjectives.
- The catch: The subscription, the region it is not available in, the line in the footnote. There is nearly always one.
- What it means for you: Whether to act on it, wait, or ignore it.
Known Issue
In software, a known issue is the bug everyone has agreed to live with. This column is about the other kind: the things in your phone and apps that have been wrong long enough to count as a decision, not an oversight. Not launch reviews. The brief handles those.
How it differs from the brief
No embargo access to protect, so nothing to soften:
- Not today’s news. The brief is set off by something that happened this morning. A column is set off by something that has been true for months.
- Plain about the money. Who benefits from the thing staying broken is usually the answer, and usually the part nobody prints.
- The operator’s read. 11+ years leading product inside large publishers, which is mostly an education in why obvious fixes do not ship.
- A verdict. Buy it, skip it, or wait. Not “it depends”.
Fine Print
Fine print is the part of a contract, a bill or a government circular that most people skip, and it's usually where the catch is. These explainers read it for you: a rule, price or service change from a bank, telecom company, regulator or app you use in India, taken back to the source document. One a week, on Saturdays.
Every explainer, built the same way
The same blocks, in the same order, every time:
- Does this apply to you? A quick check, so most readers know in ten seconds whether to keep reading.
- The rule, quoted. A line from the circular, gazette or official FAQ, with the plain version beside it.
- The rupee maths. Worked examples of what it costs you, if anything.
- Kept current. A "last checked" date on every page and a public change log when the rules move.
Editorial Standards & Ethics
How this worksVisible Corrections Policy
Mistakes get fixed on the page, with a line saying what changed and when. Nothing gets quietly edited away. If you find something wrong, write to the desk.
Commercial Opportunities & Independence
Long Press takes sponsorships, newsletter placements and advisory work. Anything paid for is labelled as paid, every time, and the opinion is not part of the deal. For rates, write to builtbyswami@gmail.com.
Read it elsewhere
Feeds and searchRSS
Every brief and every column, the moment it publishes. Summaries rather than full text, so you still come to the page.
Subscribe to RSS →Archive search
Search every issue and column by keyword, company or topic.
Search the archive →The search index
The index the search page runs on. It is public, if you want to build something with it.
See the JSON →Contact the desk
Tips, corrections, or a story about something quietly broken where you work: builtbyswami@gmail.com. Published from Bengaluru (IST).