In today’s letter: David on how Dark Mode can save us; Joanna reviews Amazon’s missing clock; and the Instant Message podcast crew ponders the meaning of a Razr phone comeback. But first ...

Dear reader:

Have we told you lately that we love you?

This week, after reading Christopher Mims’s column on email’s ability to reach people in meaningful ways, it seemed important to make that clear. After all, this newsletter wasn’t pushed to you by a cryptic algorithm that determined its virality on a scale of one to 10 billion. You signed up for it.

Email’s comeback isn’t borne of some high-tech advancement in @-sign science. If anything, maybe we’re a little fed up with the relentless urgency and abruptness of smartphone app notifications. This newsletter hits your inbox Sunday; you open it—or not—at your leisure. It’s a nice, uncomplicated relationship we hope you appreciate as much as we do.

 —Wilson Rothman & Brian Fitzgerald

Define ‘Conflict’: WeWork’s CEO made millions of dollars by being a landlord to…WeWork. Adam Neumann has bought properties and leased them to his co-working startup, sparking conflict-of-interest concerns.

Tesla Thins Its Ranks: The electric-car maker plans to eliminate 7% of its full-time workforce, its second round of job cuts in a year as it tries to maintain profitability while lowering the price of its Model 3 sedan.

Executive Exodus: Snap pushed out two senior executives after an investigation into an inappropriate relationship involving one of them. Meanwhile, its CFO plans to leave after less than a year on the job.

House Party: Microsoft pledged $500 million to support affordable housing in the Seattle area, an effort to address concerns tech companies’ success has pushed people out of their communities.

Facebook gives you a daily reminder of your friends’ special day. Now that people are deactivating their accounts or taking breaks, those key dates are getting forgotten.

Denise Mueller-Korenek shattered the previous land-speed record for the fastest human on a bicycle on earth. We were with her when she did it.

• Missing explanations in Apple’s numbers (Monday Note)

• A show report from CES 2019 (Sinofsky)

• Facebook’s ‘10-year challenge’: harmless meme? (Wired)

• We must rein in the data brokers (Tim Cook)

Me: “Alexa, how much time left on the Brussels sprouts?”
Alexa: “You have nine minutes left.”

5 minutes later...

Me: “Alexa, how much time left on the Brussels sprouts?”
Alexa: “Four minutes. Now quit asking!”

Alexa didn’t say that last bit, but Amazon likely created the new $30 Echo Wall Clock because of how annoying humans can get, asking this over and over.

Unfortunately, for the time being you’ll have to keep asking, because Amazon has stopped selling its new product due to connectivity issues. The company is working to improve the issues and will make it available again in the coming weeks, an Amazon spokeswoman said.  I didn’t experience those issues with my review unit. Rather, I found it to be an interesting extension of one of Alexa’s best skills.

The clock is, well, a clock. The physical hour and minute hands tell you the time. The thrill is in the 60 LEDs surrounding the clock’s face. When you set a timer via your Echo device, the lit-up LEDs correspond to the number of minutes remaining: A 10-minute timer gets 10 LEDs, one turning off every minute. When the timer hits zero and the Echo speaker’s chime goes off, all the lights flash blue. It’s a rave. Amazon says the Echo can handle dozens timers at once. I gave up after trying five.

The Echo Wall Clock doesn’t have a mic or a speaker. Powered by four AA batteries, it’s designed to take commands from an Amazon Echo speaker within 30 feet. (It requires an Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, etc. It won’t work with Alexa-equipped devices such as the Sonos One.)

I’m sorry, Alexa, but I don’t plan to buy the Echo Wall Clock when it becomes available again. It feels cheap and I don’t have the kitchen wall space. Still, I did find it handy during dinner prep. A timer you can look at? Who’d have thought that’d be such a time saver?

Email threading, aka conversation view, bundles a message with its replies and forwards, theoretically making long conversations easier to follow. (If that sounds annoying, just know that threading has detractors as well as devotees, but we think it keeps users from missing notes.) You’ll know threading is active if an email in your inbox has a number next to it, indicating how many are in the chain.

To turn on (or off) Gmail threading in your web browser, click the gear icon (⚙️) on the top right corner, then Settings > General > Conversation View. Click the circular button, then scroll down and hit Save Changes.

On smartphones, tap the hamburger icon (☰) on the top left of the app, then scroll to ⚙️Settings then Account > Conversation View.

The once-revolutionary smartphone is losing its power to amaze—and maybe its singular hold on our lives.

We want to know what you think! Reply to this email and share your feedback.

Brought to you by personal tech editor Wilson Rothman and deputy tech editor Brian Fitzgerald. You can email us at wilson.rothman@wsj.com and fitzy@wsj.com or find us on Twitter: @wjrothman and @BryFitz.