Weekly#493

  • Disney Plus in the third quarter to reach a total of 152 million and 221 million across all its services…Disney has finally surpassed Netflix in overall streaming subscribers
  • Disney is increasing the price of its ad-free Disney+ subscription to $10.99
  • Microsoft has decided to open a store in India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce
  • “…AWS saw revenues climb 36 percent from the prior year, while Microsoft reported its cloud biz saw year-over-year growth of 40 percent…”
  • Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022
  • Spotify starts selling live music tickets to fans directly
  • Everything Samsung Unpacked at its August 2022 Event
  • The collapse in cryptocurrencies is easing supply of the most sought after watches on the second-hand market, depressing prices for hard-to get-Patek Philippe and Rolex models.
  • Amazon has become the third-biggest digital advertising company behind Google and Facebook, hitting $31 billion in ad revenue in 2021
  • DevOps and Cloud InfoQ Trends Report – June 2022
  • AI, ML, and Data Engineering InfoQ Trends Report—August 2022
  • “…Among the hundreds of new car models for sale in the United States this year, only about 30 can be purchased with a manual transmission. Electric cars, which now account for more than 5 percent of car sales, don’t even have gearboxes…“
  • “…Amazon’s Roomba Deal Is Really About Mapping Your Home… the maps also represent a wealth of data for marketers. The size of your house is a pretty good proxy for your wealth. A floor covered in toys means you likely have kids. A household without much furniture is a household to which you can try to sell more furniture. This is all useful intel for a company such as Amazon which, you may have noticed, is in the business of selling stuff…“
  • Pearson looks to NFTs to profit from second-hand textbook sales
  • The global semiconductor shortage is causing more than 100,000 vehicles to be dropped from North American production schedules this week.
  • Impacts of climate change on pathogenic human diseases
  • 99 percent of Netflix subscribers haven’t tried its games yet…Netflix’s games see 1.7 million daily users
  • Crypto-driven GPU crash makes Nvidia miss Q2 projections by $1.4 billion
  • Delivery Hero Architecture Reviews
    • Each tribe lead presents four slides for 15 minutes, including:
      • An up-to-date architecture diagram following our common representation standard, with major past and planned changes highlighted.
      • Suggested updates to the global technical debt tracker
      • Interesting learnings generated in the last six months
      • Proposed changes to our reliability manifesto or architecture guideline

Weekly#492

  • Pinterest said global monthly active users declined by 5% from a year earlier to 433 million
  • Netflix Is Scrambling to Learn the Ad Business It Long Disdained (WSJ)
  • Amazon is buying iRobot for $1.7B
  • Most Mobile Game Genres See Revenue Declines in the U.S. During H1 2022 as Industry Headwinds Bite
  • YouTube rolls out experimental ‘pinch to zoom’ feature for Premium users
  • Researchers who previously revived some brain cells in dead pigs succeeded in repeating the process in more organs.
  • The Spotify System Model: Automated Architecture Visualization at Spotify
  • Google’s video chat merger begins: Now there are two “Google Meet” apps
  • Maintaining customer engagement is critical to maximizing long-term customer value in financial services
  • Uber reports positive cash flow for the first time… Ride-sharing group hits its target after burning through $25bn since being founded in 2009 (FT)
  • HBO Max, Discovery+ to Merge Into Single Streaming Platform Starting in Summer 2023
  • With plans to create realistic synthetic embryos, grown in jars, Renewal Bio is on a journey to the horizon of science and ethics.
  • Starbucks to unveil its web3-based rewards program next month
  • The age of brain-computer interfaces is on the horizon
  • Martı SPAC, Form 8-K
  • Monzo Growth

Weekly#491

  • Delivery Hero’s Platform business at adjusted EBITDA break-even already during Q2 2022
  • Google’s DeepMind AI Reveals 3D Structures of the ‘Entire Protein Universe‘
  • The Net-Zero Industry Tracker
  • “...Google’s latest blog post details the second delay to the shutdown of third-party tracking cookies. Google says it will now support the tracking method until “the second half of 2024…“
  • Apple Needs Another Affordable 5G iPhone
  • defining stablecoins; latest on NFTs; policy moves
  • a16z is Moving to the Cloud
  • Global smartphone shipments hit lowest point since pandemic start
  • Apple Reports Third Quarter Results…iPhone and Services drive June quarter record revenue
  • Rapid Loss of Smell Predicts Dementia and Smaller Brain Areas Linked to Alzheimer’s
  • Polymath Robotics launches plug-and-play autonomy software for any industrial vehicle
  • Ant Group IPO set for further delay as Jack Ma plans to give up control (FT:Lex)
  • Walmart Hawks Refurbished Goods to Inflation-Squeezed Shoppers
  • NASA To Send Two More Helicopters To Mars For 2033 Sample Return
  • Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Results
  • If This Is a Recession, We Might Not Know for Months (WSJ)

Weekly#490

  • How the Metaverse Will Remake Your Strategy
  • Amazon has started drastically reducing the number of items it sells under its own brands, and the company has discussed the possibility of exiting the private-label business entirely (WSJ)
  • The Amazon customers said they saved 10% to 40% on computing costs by renting Graviton servers (The Information)
  • Tesla dumped 75% of its Bitcoin holdings
  • Google to pause all hiring for two weeks
  • SAP’s quarterly revenue beats estimates, trims 2022 profit outlook
  • Toyota plans to roll out hydrogen fuel-cell trucks for the Japanese market next year
  • Ocado Falls as Losses Grow on Britain’s Cost-of-Living Crisis
  • Netflix loses 970,000 subscribers, says ads and new fees are key to recovery
  • Xbox becomes first game console to formally support Discord voice chat
  • Microsoft launches simulator to train drone AI systems
  • Brain-Computer Interface Startup Implants First Device in US Patient
  • Amazon Announces General Availability of EC2 M1 Mac Instances to Build and Test on macOS
  • UK set to have world’s biggest automated drone superhighway
  • How China is creating new foods in space

Weekly#489

  • NASA’s Webb Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe
  • James Webb telescope finds evidence of water in atmosphere of planet WASP-96 b, 1,150 light-years away.
  • YouTube TV Now Has More Than 5 Million Users, Topping Hulu’s Live TV Service
  • Inside Apple’s Eight-Year Struggle to Build a Self-Driving Car
  • iPadOS 16 Review
  • Amazon launches cancer vaccine clinical trial in partnership with Fred Hutchinson
  • BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month
  • India set to overtake China as the world’s most populous country in 2023, UN says
  • America’s new agricultural frontier: vertical farms (FT)
  • Japanese researchers reveal plans for massive artificial-gravity buildings on moon
  • Artificial intelligence model finds potential drug molecules a thousand times faster
  • Stripe Cuts Internal Valuation by 28% (WSJ)…Payments processor was last valued by private investors at $95 billion
  • Netflix Surprised Everyone by Picking Microsoft as Its Partner for Ad-Supported Streaming

Weekly#488

  • Apple’s latest security : Lockdown Mode, link2, link3
  • Amazon.com Inc.  agreed to add Grubhub to its suite of Prime services in the U.S., in a deal aimed at expanding the food-ordering company’s reach by tapping Amazon’s membership program (WSJ)
  • Europe wants a high-speed rail network to replace airplanes
  • World’s first commercial sand battery begins energy storage in Finland
  • Switzerland’s 20 million kWh ‘water battery’ is now operational
  • “…As money leaves the market (see below), fundraises are likely to slow from 2021’s a company raising a new round every 6-9 months back to the historical norms of a company raising a round every 12-24 months. Companies with a valuation that far exceeds their product/market fit may not raise for 24-36 months, and many of them have the cash to last that long…”
  • Vehicle safety in Europe takes a giant leap forward
  • IDC: “All eyes will be on Apple” as Meta’s VR strategy “isn’t sustainable”
  • FedEx to close data centers, retire all mainframes by 2024, saving $400m
  • Your Corporate Purpose Changed. Has Your Strategy Kept Up?
  • Gartner predicts 9.5% drop in PC shipments
  • Disney could soon lose exclusive rights to Mickey Mouse…The beloved character was created in 1928 and will enter the public domain in 2024
  • BioNTech, Pfizer to start testing universal vaccine for coronaviruses

Weekly#487

  • IBM has quietly announced its first-ever cloudy mainframes will go live on June 30…Z mainframe platform on the IBM Cloud, by offering virtual machines running z/OS as-a-service.
  • The Next ‘iPhone Moment’ Will Eventually Arrive. Hurry Up Already
  • Mercedes-Benz runs on 900 Kubernetes clusters
  • The 30-year-old comic book that became a Silicon Valley bible (FT)
  • Meta has reduced its target for hiring engineers in 2022 to around 6,000-7,000, down from an initial plan to hire about 10,000 new engineers, Zuckerberg said.
  • The dollar’s share of total allocated reserves was 59% in the first quarter of 2022
  • New algorithm can predict future crime a week in advance, with 90% accuracy, and within a range of about 1000 feet.
  • “…We Asked GPT-3 to Write an Academic Paper about Itself—Then We Tried to Get It Published…”
  • A group of MIT researchers is exploring a radical idea for reversing global warming: using a raft of “space bubbles” to reflect sunlight away from our planet.
  • Venture capital’s reckoning
  • Steve Jobs awarded posthumous Medal of Freedom by President Biden
  • Klarna in Talks to Raise Fresh Cash at Slashed $6.5 Billion Valuation…The deal would be a huge comedown for the company, which investors valued at $45.6 billion in 2021 (WSJ)
  • Microsoft Cloud Computing System Suffering From Global Shortage…Due to a confluence of crises, the second-largest cloud provider has been operating in the yellow zone, meaning its data centers have a less-than-normal level of servers available. (WSJ)

Weekly#486

  • GitHub’s AI code assistant Copilot takes flight. And that’ll be $10 a month
  • Mars Express orbiter to get code update after 19 years
  • Energy-hungry data centers are quietly moving into cities
  • Amazon launches CodeWhisperer, a GitHub Copilot-like AI pair programming tool
  • Spotify revamps in-app concert discovery with new Live Events Feed
  • Wilco gamifies your path through your software engineering career
  • DoorDash teams up with grocer Loblaw as ultrafast delivery rivalry heats up (FT)
  • 7 Modern Microservice Design Patterns
  • For the first time, a small rocket will launch a private spacecraft to the Moon
  • As Bitcoin Busts, What’s the Future of Web3? And What Even Is Web3?
  • Nasa starts shutting down Voyager after 50 years…Nasa must start limiting the craft processes in order to keep them operating until 2030
  • “…Pinduoduo shares have more than doubled since then, while Meituan shares have climbed 80%, and JD shares are up more than 50% in Hong Kong. Kuaishou is up by nearly 47%…”
  • Valve’s Steam Deck makes a brilliant case against walled gardens
  • iOS 16 Will Let iPhone Users Bypass CAPTCHAs in Supported Apps and Websites

Weekly#485

  • How To Be A Great 21st Century CEO
  • Klarna faces valuation slash to $15bn as it seeks fresh round of funding
  • Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s First Year on the Job: Undoing Bezos-Led Overexpansion (WSJ)
  • Welcome to the E-Commerce Winter (The Information)
  • Solar Power for Rentals: It’s Easier Than You Think
  • Apple scores deal for Major League Soccer streaming rights worth $2.5bn (FT)
  • Roku Stock Jumps After Unveiling Walmart E-Commerce Partnership
  • “…Unit economics is becoming an albatross around the necks of tech-adjacent businesses that listed on public markets in recent years…” (FT)

Weekly#484

  • Microplastics found in freshly fallen Antarctic snow for first time
  • Today’s CEOs Don’t Just Lead Companies. They Lead Ecosystems
  • Google releases Android 13 beta 3, reaches platform stability
  • Spotify Targets One Billion Listeners by 2030 Amid Profitability Concerns (WSJ)“…Audible controls about 48% of U.S. audiobook unit sales, according to book-audience researcher Codex Group LLC…”
  • Amazon gets into AR shopping with launch of ‘Virtual Try-On for Shoes’
  • WWDC 2022 recap: iOS 16, new MacBook Air, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9 and more
    • Apple: new financing arm banks on credit (FT:Lex)
    • Apple’s “next generation” of CarPlay plans to take over every screen in your car
    • What WatchOS 9 May Reveal About the Next Apple Watch
    • iPadOS 16 has lots of updates, but new multitasking features require an M1 chip
    • Apple’s medication feature is a step in the right direction
  • Meta Halts Development of Apple Watch Rival With Two Cameras
  • Autonomous cargo ship completes first ever transoceanic voyage
  • Apple is coming for Garmin but it has a battery problem. 18 hours still falls short of other multisport watches