2020

• Covid-19 Propelled Businesses Into the Future. Ready or Not. (Paywall: WSJ) wsj.com
• FT People of the Year: BioNTech’s Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci (Paywall:FT) ft.com
• Will you have to carry a vaccine passport on your phone? technologyreview.com
• The power of value 4.0 for industrial internet of things technologyreview.com
• Nearly half a billion users played Among Us in November theverge.com
• Zoom may launch an email service and calendar app to compete with Google and Microsoft theverge.com
• Microsoft may be developing its own in-house ARM CPU designs arstechnica.com
• Tesla is going to release Full Self-Driving monthly subscription in early 2021 electrek.co
• Telegram, nearing 500 million users, to begin monetizing the app techcrunch.com
• TaskRabbit is resetting customer passwords after finding ‘suspicious activity’ on its network techcrunch.com
• Horizon Robotics, a Chinese rival to Nvidia, seeks to raise over $700M techcrunch.com
• Apple targets car production by 2024 and eyes ‘next level’ battery technology reuters.com
• The Battle for Mars independent.co.uk
• German firm says indoor vertical farm in Singapore will produce 1.5 tons of ‘leafy greens’ every day cnbc.com
• There are now almost 300 so-called “neobanks” live worldwide, with nearly half concentrated in Europe. sifted.eu
• How Amazon Wins: By Steamrolling Rivals and Partners (Paywall:WSJ) wsj.com
• Investors pour $1bn into buying up small merchants on Amazon (Paywall:FT) ft.com
• These breakthroughs will make 2021 better than 2020 gatesnotes.com
• Amazon Echo Frames theverge.com
• GP Bullhound Technology 2021 Predictions gpbullhound.com
• Fjord Trends 2021 accenture.com
• BBC Tech trends in 2021 bbc.com
• Trends In 2021: The Future Of Life, Learning And Play forbes.com
• Trendwatching: 21 meaningful, trend-driven innovation opportunities for 2021 info.trendwatching.com
• Top 100 Business Trends for 2021 trendhunter.com

• McKinsey: The Next Normal mckinsey.com
• The great hack attack: SolarWinds breach exposes big gaps in cyber security ft.com
• Deloitte 2021 Global Marketing Trends www2.deloitte.com
• AWS introduces new Chaos Engineering as a Service offering techcrunch.com
• Global Competitiveness Report Special Edition 2020 weforum.org
• Global chip shortage threatens production of laptops, smartphones and more reuters.com
• Battery prices have fallen 88 percent over the last decade arstechnica.com
• E-commerce became commerce…Online shopping made up 14 percent of all retail sales in the US last quarter as in-store retail flagged. vox.com
• Walmart will use fully driverless trucks to make deliveries in 2021 theverge.com
• Google Waives $1.5 Billion DeepMind Loan as AI Costs Mount bloomberg.com
• Floating ‘mini-nukes’ could power countries by 2025, says startup theguardian.com
• China just brought moon rocks back to Earth for the first time in its history technologyreview.com
• Google to shut down Android Things, a smart home OS that never took off theverge.com
• “None of us were ready” to manufacture genetic vaccines for a billion people technologyreview.com
• Amazon’s answer to SpaceX Starlink delivers 400Mbps in prototype phase arstechnica.com
• AI controlled a US military aircraft for the first time engadget.com
• OneWeb launches 36 satellites to join its global broadband constellation on orbit techcrunch.com
• UiPath files confidential IPO paperwork with SEC techcrunch.com
• WhatsApp to bring voice and video calls to desktop next year reuters.com
• Among Us’ is coming to Xbox in 2021 engadget.com
• A successful experiment gets us one step closer to a quantum internet engadget.com
• Twitter launches its voice-based ‘Spaces’ social networking feature into beta testing techcrunch.com
• Walmart to pilot test livestreamed video shopping on TikTok techcrunch.com
• F1 engine makers are testing sustainable fuel…Formula 1 aims to hit net zero carbon emissions within 10 years. engadget.com
• How Pfizer Delivered a Covid Vaccine in Record Time wsj.com

Zoom was adding 5,000-6,000 servers (on AWS) a night as they scaled in the early days of the pandemic 😲 #reInvent

— Rachel Dines @ #reinvent (@RachelDines) December 15, 2020

• Goodreads: Best books of 2020 goodreads.com
• Disney+ Could Hit 260 Million Subscribers by 2024, CEO Bob Chapek Says wsj.com
• Outlook 2021: Sustaining the Outperforming Covid Recovery bcghendersoninstitute.com
• Wall Street Begins Trading Water Futures as a Commodity e360.yale.edu
• Apple Fitness+ launches this coming Monday at $9.99 per month arstechnica.com
• Facebook hit with massive antitrust lawsuit from 46 states techcrunch.com
• SpaceX’s Starship has flown a record 12.5 km into the air—and then crashed technologyreview.com
• Adobe just released the last Flash update ever…Adobe will stop supporting Flash on December 31st, 2020, and it will block Flash content from running on January 12th, 2021. theverge.com
• Amazon’s redesigned Fire TV software starts rolling out today theverge.com
• Seoul-based payment tech startup CHAI gets $60 million from Hanhwa, SoftBank Ventures Asia techcrunch.com
• Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics for nearly $1B therobotreport.com
• Coronavirus, election results, Kobe Bryant and Zoom among Google’s top 2020 search trends in US and world techcrunch.com
• App stores to see 130 billion downloads in 2020 and record consumer spend of $112 billion techcrunch.com
• With over 1 billion users, Chrome is both a browser and a major platform. The Chrome Web Store hosts more than 250,000 extensions and themes with 4 million Chrome extensions downloaded every day venturebeat.com
• McKinsey estimates that global digital-health revenues—from telemedicine, online pharmacies, wearable devices and so on—will rise from $350bn last year to $600bn in 2024 economist.com
• Sony to buy AT&T’s anime business for $1.18 billion to expand global footprint reuters.com
• The New Consumer Conversation in an Era of Uncertainty bcg.com

• After reaching $40B in revenue in record time, Amazon Web Services hints at its own reinvention geekwire.com
• AWS brings the Mac mini to its cloud techcrunch.com
• Facebook Buys Customer-Service Software Maker Kustomer bloomberg.com
• How the US, UK and China are planning to roll out vaccines technologyreview.com
• Japan is about to bring back samples of an asteroid 180 million miles away technologyreview.com
• Warner Bros. will release entire 2021 film slate in theaters and on HBO Max… includes Dune, Matrix 4, and Godzilla vs. Kong, among other titles. arstechnica.com
• More online retailers are following Amazon’s lead in making it easier to drop off items at brick-and-mortar locations near your home, no box or shipping label necessary vox.com
• The death and rebirth of America’s department stores, in charts vox.com
• Revolut lets businesses accept online payments techcrunch.com
• Grab-Singtel and Ant Group win digital bank licenses in Singapore techcrunch.com
• More than 500,000 full electric cars sold so far this year in Europe theguardian.com
• Singapore approves sale of lab-grown meat in world first reuters.com
• Stripe announces embedded business banking service Stripe Treasury…The company is partnering with banks to offer a banking-as-a-service API. In other words, Stripe clients will be able to provide bank accounts to their customers — the service is invite-only for now. techcrunch.com
• Microsoft launches Azure Purview, its new data governance service techcrunch.com
• Hulu officially launches its co-viewing feature, Watch Party techcrunch.com
• Elon Musk is open to talking about merging Tesla with another car company. These are the 4 most likely candidates, experts say. businessinsider.com
• Coronavirus: Vaccination ‘could become routine from 2022‘ bbc.com
• Elon Musk is ‘highly confident’ SpaceX will land humans on Mars by 2026 cnbc.com
• Gartner Says Global Smartphone Sales Declined 5.7% in Third Quarter of 2020 gartner.com
• The Luxury E-Commerce Wars Heat Up nytimes.com

• Slack’s stock climbs on possible Salesforce acquisition techcrunch.com
• AI can run your work meetings now arstechnica.com
• HBO Max, for instance, has around 9 million users; Roku has 46 million users, giving it an estimated 30 percent of the streaming device market. vox.com
• SpaceX Starlink engineers take questions in Reddit AMA—here are highlights…Expanded beta is coming in January, and there’s no plan for data caps. arstechnica.com
• Alibaba vies for a piece of China’s booming EV market techcrunch.com
• Thanksgiving online shopping hits record $5.1B, up 21.5% on 2019, 47% of sales via mobile techcrunch.com
• Bigblue wants to automate e-commerce fulfillment in Europe techcrunch.com
• SpaceX successfully launches a Falcon 9 booster for a record seventh time techcrunch.com
• Mobile banking app Current raises $131M Series C, tops 2 million members techcrunch.com
• 1% of farms operate 70% of world’s farmland theguardian.com
• Microsoft hints at turning Xbox into an app for your TV theverge.com
• How my electric car is helping to power my home’ bbc.com
• China launches ambitious mission to land on moon and return samples to Earth cbsnews.com
• “The Queen’s Gambit” set the record as the most-watched scripted limited series to date on Netflix — with 62 million member accounts tuning in to the show in the first 28 days, according to the company. variety.com
• Imagine a World Without Apps nytimes.com
• How Archaeologists Are Using Deep Learning to Dig Deeper nytimes.com

• An Economist’s Guide to the World in 2050 bloomberg.com
• Four Reasons the Stay-at-Home Economy Is Here to Stay (WSJ:Paywall) “…First, companies have made huge investments in the infrastructure needed to deliver goods and services to our homes quickly and efficiently, which means those products are now easier to use and often less expensive. Second, families have also invested in the services and gadgets to keep their members safe and sated while sheltering in place. Third, our habits have changed: Many people have gotten over the “hump” of adopting new technologies earlier than they otherwise might have. And finally, hundreds of thousands of Americans who lost traditional jobs in retail and service—on showroom floors and inside restaurants—have found new ones working in online order fulfillment and delivery. Even those who retained their jobs are seeing their roles shift to address these new conduits for economic activity...” wsj.com
• During the pandemic, 10 years of consumer adoption of e-commerce was compressed into three months, according to a recent survey by McKinsey wsj.com
• Who should get a covid-19 vaccine first?…Mathematicians are faced with two conflicting priorities when modeling for vaccines: Should they prevent deaths or slow transmission? technologyreview.com
• Rocket Lab has successfully recovered a booster for the first time technologyreview.com
• Spotify has 300 million users vox.com
• “…That’s a remarkable thing. It’s the first time you’ve ever been able to decide exactly when and where you want to watch a big, would-be-blockbuster Hollywood movie on opening day…“ vox.com
• Google Chrome is available as an Apple M1 native app today arstechnica.com
• Stadia game streaming will come to iOS via Web browser arstechnica.com
• Google revamps its strategy towards banking (FT:Paywall) ft.com
• Google Pay gets a major redesign with a new emphasis on personal finance
  • Google Pay now has about 150 million users in 30 countries
  • Google is also partnering with 11 banks to launch a new kind of bank account in 2021. Called Plex, these mobile-first bank accounts will have no monthly fees, overdraft charges or minimum balances. The banks will own the accounts but the Google Pay app will be the main conduit for managing these accounts
  • …combining three things into one,”
    • One is the ability to pay friends and businesses really fast.
    • Explore offers and rewards, so you can save money at shops.
    • Getting insights about your spending so you can stay on top of your money.”
• Apple drops its cut of App Store revenues from 30% to 15% for some developers…The cut benefits only developers who pull in less than $1 million annually. arstechnica.com
• Thanks to SpaceX, NASA regains a capability it lost for a decade arstechnica.com
• Windows Turn 35: A Visual History…The PC revolution started off life 35 years ago this week. Microsoft launched its first version of Windows on November 20th, 1985 theverge.com
• Microsoft and Apple working on Xbox Series X controller support for iPhones and iPads theverge.com
• Eero’s security subscription now lets parents block sites at the router level theverge.com
• OneWeb emerges from bankruptcy, aims to begin launching satellites again on December 17 techcrunch.com
• LidarPhone attack converts smart vacuums into microphones zdnet.com
• Japan Inc to begin experiments issuing digital yen reuters.com