• McKinsey: COVID-19: Implications for business
• How execs at Twitter, Slack and Box decided to send everyone home
• Amazon to Hire 100,000 Warehouse and Delivery Workers Amid Coronavirus Shutdowns
• Nokia adds 5G to worldwide IoT network, lets carriers test new sensors
• “Microsoft Corp’s Teams chat and conferencing app gained more than 12 million daily users in one week, a 37.5% jump as more people worked from home during the coronavirus outbreak, the company said on Thursday…Teams had 44 million users as of March 18, Microsoft said, more than double the 20 million daily active users that the software maker reported in November. Teams users grew from 32 million to 44 million in the period between March 11 and March 18 alone, as many more U.S. companies asked employees to work from home, Microsoft said.”
• Netflix urged to slow streaming to prevent breaking the internet
• Ford releases a data set to accelerate autonomous car development
• iPadOS 13.4 lets iPads use trackpads
• Here’s everything new in Android 11 Developer Preview 2
• Can Astronauts Use GPS to Navigate on the Moon? NASA Scientists Say Yes
• PlayStation 5 will feature a 10.2-teraflop GPU and a speedy custom SSD
• E-commerce sales surpassed 10% of total (US) retail sales in 2019 for the first time
• WSJ: Square Gets Green Light to Open a Bank (paywall)
• Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight
• Italian hospital saves Covid-19 patients lives by 3D printing valves for reanimation devices

• Pandemic Erodes Gig Economy Work
• Coronavirus will change the grocery industry forever…”A third of consumers said Sunday that they had purchased groceries for online pick up or delivery in the past seven days, according to a survey by analysts at Gordon Haskett Research Advisors. Around 41% said they were buying groceries online for the first time.”

China's #WechatPay generates 1 billion+ payment transactions per day. That's more than Visa and Mastercard combined 🤔

— Matthew Brennan (@mbrennanchina) March 19, 2020

Verizon says that video gaming traffic was up 75% week over week across its network. General traffic was up 20% WoW. Video streaming up 12% WoW. Social media usage was flat. The increase is primarily due to lockdowns and self isolation keeping people at home due to COVID-19 pic.twitter.com/Bbb1ehmPhY

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) March 18, 2020

fascinated by Pre-Covidian Era & Covidian Era views of the World. pic.twitter.com/u7HoG368we

— Luke Wroblewski (@lukew) March 18, 2020

• OECD AI Policy Observatory
• Why you sometimes need to break the rules in data viz
• Harvard to Make All Classes Online March 23, President Says
• 2014: Sequoia’s Investment Memo on YouTube
• Huawei expects 20% drop in Android smartphone sales this year
• Amazon is now selling its cashierless store technology to other retailers
• Amazon is secretly working on a cure for the common cold
• What Office Life Might Look Like in the Year 2030 (paywall)
• Coronavirus Conference Gets Canceled Because of Coronavirus
• Augmented-reality startup Magic Leap reportedly considering selling itself
• Hackers are jumping on the COVID-19 pandemic to spread malware
• AT&T Suspends Broadband Data Caps During Coronavirus Crisis
• Gsuite 2 billion monthly active users
• Europe’s Deliveroo and Glovo switch on contactless delivery during COVID-19 pandemic
• Coronavirus Forces World’s Largest Work-From-Home Experiment

• Amazon makes its same-day delivery service faster in select U.S. cities
• “…British online grocer Ocado warns of “exceptionally high demand” as coronavirus spreads…Ocado suggests placing grocery orders two to three days in advance and booking a weekday delivery slot…Ocado’s stock rose more than 6% in late afternoon trading on Monday…”
• Facebook Messenger on iOS is now twice as fast and a quarter the size
• Alibaba says AI can identify coronavirus infections with 96% accuracy within 20 seconds
• Apple now lets apps send ads in push notifications…Apple single sign-on coming next month
• Google’s self-driving biz Waymo eyes expansion with $2.25B cash injection…this is the first time the company has welcomed external investment. Investors included VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, auto part maker Magna, and American auto retailer AutoNation
• Alipay owner Ant Financial takes minority stake in Klarna…”…Klarna said its technology is being used by more than 200,000 retailers and e-commerce platforms globally at this point, including AliExpress, H&M, ASOS,  Expedia Group, IKEA, Farfetch, Adidas, Spotify, Samsung and Nike…Last year it said it added over 75,000 new merchants …It claims a base of 85 million shoppers...”
• Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference will now be online only due to coronavirus concerns
• Earth may have been a ‘water world’ 3bn years ago, scientists find
• FT:Operators will spend about $1tn on kit to enable them to offer the latest generation networks (paywall)
• GM reveals ‘Ultium,’ the heart of its EV strategy…Using a single architecture for such a wide variety of vehicles provides much-needed scale and capital-efficiency to what has been a small-volume and profitability-challenged EV market
• NASA accepts applications for astronauts for the first time in four years
• Clearview AI is operating a sister entity called Insight Camera that’s been experimenting with live facial recognition
• Electric vehicles are changing the future of auto maintenance…Tires and glass emerge as dominant consumables of the EV era
• Nvidia acquires data storage and management platform SwiftStack…a software-centric data storage and management platform that supports public cloud, on-premises and edge deployments.
• Sequoia Capital sent a memo to its portfolio companies on Thursday.
• Twitter is testing ephemeral tweets in Brazil and calling them ‘fleets’