2020

• Emerging Trends in Real Estate®: US and Canada pwc.com
• Disney+ has more than 73M subscribers techcrunch.com
• Amazon’s in-garage delivery is now available in 4,000 US cities techcrunch.com
• L’Oréal rolls out a line of ‘virtual makeup’ techcrunch.com
• Amazon begins shifting Alexa’s cloud AI to its own silicon arstechnica.com
• PayPal now lets all US users buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency engadget.com
• Nintendo Switch sales topped 735,000 in October engadget.com
• Python creator Guido van Rossum joins Microsoft techcrunch.com
• Uber will now let users book rides 30 days in advance and pick a favorite driver techcrunch.com
• Spotify buying podcast hosting and ad company Megaphone for $235M techcrunch.com
• New forecast pegs TikTok to top 1.2B monthly active users in 2021 techcrunch.com
• Autonomous delivery startup Nuro hits $5 billion valuation on fresh funding of $500 million techcrunch.com
• Turkish AI Companies turkiye.ai
• Rolls-Royce plans 16 mini-nuclear plants for UK bbc.com
• Honda says will be first to mass produce level 3 autonomous cars reuters.com
• SoftBank Is in Talks to Sell Robot Maker Boston Dynamics to Hyundai bloomberg.com
• VW boosts investment in electric and autonomous car technology to $86 billon reuters.com
• Alibaba Sets ‘Singles Day’ Sales Record…$75.1 billion in sales in annual shopping event (WSJ) wsj.com

• Goodreads: Best Books of 2020 goodreads.com
• Peloton, Pizza and Videogames Grow in Stay-at-Home World (WSJ)”…Consumers holed up during the coronavirus pandemic redirected their travel and entertainment dollars toward pizza, videogames, home-exercise equipment and luxury goods, according to several companies that provided business updates Thursday…” wsj.com
• Sony confirms the PS5 won’t support SSD storage expansion at launch theverge.com
• Proposition 22, created to decide the future of the California gig economy, has passed. vox.com
• Battery-Free Underwater GPS media.mit.edu
• Apple will require apps to add privacy ‘nutrition labels’ starting December 8th theverge.com
• Gamelist for PS5 and XBox theverge.com
• WhatsApp finally begins rolling out payment service in India theverge.com
• Challenger bank Starling is out raising a new £200M funding round techcrunch.com
• Amazon to invest $2.8 billion to build its second data center region in India techcrunch.com
• Netflix tests a programmed linear TV and movie channel in France techcrunch.com
• Chinese autonomous vehicle startup Pony.ai hits $5.3 billion valuation techcrunch.com
• Bentley is making the shift to an all-electric lineup
• Amazon launches its first Amazon Air regional hub in Europe techcrunch.com
• The T-cell immune response to covid lasts at least six months economist.com
• Apple TV is coming to Xbox consoles on November 10th theverge.com
• YouTube brings in $5 billion in ad revenue as Alphabet and Google bounce back”…YouTube now has more than 30 million music and premium paid subscribers — 35 million, including free trials — and YouTube TV has more than 3 million subscribers…”
• Happy 13th birthday, Android. androidpolice.com
• The pandemic has created a middle class private jet boom wired.co.uk
• How a UK supermarket nourished Silicon Valley’s critics (FT) ft.com
• NASA’s Voyager 2 receives first commands since March, sends back a hello theguardian.com

• Apple reports record $64.7 billion revenue in Q4 2020 despite iPhone delay venturebeat.com
• Amazon reports $96.1 billion in Q3 2020 revenue: AWS up 29%, subscriptions up 33%, and ‘other’ up 51%…Subscription services were up 33% to $6.58 billion. This segment mainly constitutes Amazon Prime and its 150 million paid members. venturebeat.com
• SpaceX Starlink public beta begins: It’s $99 a month plus $500 up front…About 3% of Starlink satellites have failed so far arstechnica.com
• making Ocado’s operations streamlined and efficient—in just 5 minutes robotics can complete 50,000 orders forbes.com
• US grid-battery costs dropped 70% over 3 years arstechnica.com
• Amazon launches shopping website in Sweden uk.reuters.com
• UK study finds evidence of waning antibody immunity to COVID-19 over time uk.reuters.com
• Microsoft cloud business gathers steam as pandemic boosts growth uk.reuters.com
• Visa to Acquire YellowPepper businesswire.com
• Visa’s Planned Purchase of Plaid Faces Antitrust Scrutiny at the Justice Department (WSJ) wsj.com
• No Implants Needed For Precise Control Deep Into The Brain spectrum.ieee.org
• Don’t fear AI. It will lead to long-term job growth. weforum.org
• Apple is quietly building a search rival to Google ahead of the DOJ’s landmark antitrust case, according to a report…Apple develops alternative to Google search businessinsider.com
• Sony sets 100m sales target for new PlayStation 5 console (FT) ft.com
• Marketers Try New Data Tools to Navigate Pandemic…Analytics platforms developed by marketers’ agencies collate information on everything from foot traffic to local pandemic restrictions (WSJ) wsj.com
• WhatsApp is now delivering roughly 100 billion messages a day techcrunch.com
• Under Armour to sell MyFitnessPal for $345 million, after acquiring it in 2015 for $475 million techcrunch.com
• Smartphone shipments dip in China for Q3, led by Huawei decline techcrunch.com
• PlayStation CEO says VR won’t be a ‘meaningful’ part of gaming for years theverge.com
• The Simple Rule That Could Keep COVID-19 Deaths Down theatlantic.com
• Corsair acquires EpocCam, a webcam app for iPhone techcrunch.com
• Google’s AI converts webpages into videos venturebeat.com
• Humans have been living in space for 20 years straight nationalgeographic.com
• These drones will plant 40,000 trees in a month. By 2028, they’ll have planted 1 billion fastcompany.com
• “…Even if people now work from home only one day a week, how many retailers will experience that as a 20% decline in footfall…” ben-evans.com

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Siri is currently at 25% of Google Search in terms of query volume.

— Horace Dediu (@asymco) October 28, 2020

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WhatsApp is now delivering 100bn messages a day. That’s roughly 5 times more than the entire global SMS system did at its peak.

— Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) October 30, 2020

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Banner Image : https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-fireworks-display-2526105/

• IMF World Economic Outlook imf.org
• The Future of Jobs Report 2020 [PDF] www3.weforum.org
• The Jobs Reset Summit weforum.org
• AOC’s Among Us livestream hints at Twitch’s political power technologyreview.com
• Quibi Is Shutting Down Barely Six Months After Going Live (WSJ) wsj.com
• In defense of Quibi vox.com
• Porsche’s Taycan is the first car with a native Apple Podcasts app theverge.com
• “…More than 175 million people message WhatsApp business accounts every day…” wsj.com
• Palantir to Help U.S. Track Covid-19 Vaccines wsj.com
• Facebook Dating launches in Europe after 9-month+ delay over privacy concerns techcrunch.com
• The Why of Digital Transformation bcghendersoninstitute.com
• Tesla is a chain of startups, Elon Musk explains techcrunch.com
• Airbnb hires Jony Ive to design next-gen products and services appleinsider.com
• Tesla starts Full Self-Driving Beta rollout, Elon Musk says it ‘will be extremely slow and cautious’ electrek.co
• PayPal to let you buy and sell cryptocurrencies in the US techcrunch.com
• Chinese live tutoring app Yuanfudao is now worth $15.5 billion techcrunch.com
• Top 10 Skills of  2025 
  • Analytical thinking and innovation
  • Active learning and learning strategies
  • Complex problem-solving
  • Critical thinking and analysis
  • Creativity, originality and initiative
  • Leadership and social influence
  • Technology use, monitoring and control
  • Technology design and programming
  • Resillience, stress tolerance and flexibility
  • Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation

• 2020 Turkey Media and Ad Stat by MMA (in Turkish) mmaturkey.org
• Surging Online Sales Drive Growth for Shopify’s Fulfillment Service (WSJ) wsj.com
• New iPhone 12 and HomePod Mini macrumors.com
• Virgin Galactic readies first spaceflight from Spaceport America for ‘later this this fall’ techcrunch.com
• Apple Is Poaching From Google’s iPhone Hacking Team vice.com
• Zoom to start first phase of E2E encryption rollout next week techcrunch.com
• Zoom launches its events platform and marketplace, brings apps to your calls techcrunch.com
• Solar energy reaches historically low costs theverge.com
• Dropbox is the latest San Francisco tech company to make remote work permanent cnbc.com
• This machine takes office-air CO₂ and turns it into fuel arstechnica.com
• Disney is restructuring its media and entertainment divisions, as streaming becomes the most important facet of the company’s media business…Disney+, which said in August it had over 60 million subscribers world-wide, has been a big beneficiary of the pandemic’s streaming surge. cnbc.com
• Introducing the new Google Analytics blog.google
• Your guide to MMX, Japan’s Martian Moons eXploration mission planetary.org
• Alphabet’s New Moonshot Is to Transform How We Grow Food…Project Mineral singularityhub.com
• How drone swarms will defend Britain economist.com
• San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S. bloomberg.com
• Germany drafting law to give people the legal right to work from home weforum.org
• EBay Goes Back to Basics“…He has distinguished eBay by focusing on “‘non-new in season”—the kind of merchandise you can’t generally find at the mall or on Amazon, including previous-season apparel, and used, vintage, and certified refurbished goods.” barrons.com
• Covid-19: China’s Qingdao to test nine million in five days.”..China said 11 million people in the city had been tested in 10 days earlier this year…In this process, a batch of between five and 10 samples was tested. Only if a sample tested positive would the team go back to carry out individual tests to see who was positive within the batch…“ bbc.com
• Amazon’s Prime Day Accelerates Shift to Online Shopping (WSJ)
  • Overall spending on Amazon’s site increased by 36% in the U.S. during the two-day event compared with Prime Day last year, according to research firm Edison Trends, though that was lower than the 42% increase the company saw in 2019. Before the event, research firm eMarketer projected that Amazon’s total U.S. Prime Day sales would reach $6.17 billion.
  • Amazon didn’t disclose detailed financial figures for the event, but the company said third-party businesses on its platform sold more than $3.5 billion during the event, a nearly 60% increase from last year. An iRobot Roomba vacuum and Kids Against Maturity card game were among the bestselling items in the U.S.

If the pandemic happened in the 90’s pic.twitter.com/LGeHeOBHzY

— Paddy Raff (@paddyraffcomedy) October 16, 2020

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• “…Capital markets think a new era is dawning: conventional banks now account for only 72% of the total market value of the global banking and payments industry, down from 81% at the start of the year…” economist.com
• Owning an electric car really does save money, Consumer Reports finds…Most EVs are $6,000-$10,000 cheaper to operate than an equivalent vehicle. arstechnica.com
• A NASA mission is about to capture carbon-rich dust from a former water world sciencemag.org
• IBM to split into two companies by end of 2021…As-yet unnamed “NewCo” will handle IBM’s “managed infrastructure services.” arstechnica.com
• Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record quantamagazine.org
• The future of the Belt has begun in first trailer for The Expanse S5 arstechnica.com
• Amazon unveils its new electric delivery vans built by Rivian…
• The delivery giant aims to have 10,000 vehicles on the road by 2022
• Microsoft Edge gets free 24-hour video calls, screenshot tool, and shopping features venturebeat.com
• AMD Is in Advanced Talks to Buy Xilinx (WSJ) wsj.com
• Two women share chemistry Nobel in historic win for ‘genetic scissors‘ bbc.com
• Waymo finally launches an actual public, driverless taxi service arstechnica.com
• Ant’s IPO Runs Low on Time to Avoid U.S. Election Turbulence bloomberg.com
• Digital money Ant Group and fintech come of age economist.com
• Microsoft app store playbook swipes at Apple, Google axios.com
• NVIDIA Uses AI to Slash Bandwidth on Video Calls petapixel.com
• Pentagon wants SpaceX delivering cargo around the globe — and a live test could come next year airforcetimes.com
• Microsoft Thinks You’ve Been Missing Your Commute in Lockdown (WSJ)”…‘Virtual commutes’ on Teams aim to rebuild the boundaries between work and home life, and signify the tech firm’s move into corporate well-being…” wsj.com
• “…The committee asserted repeatedly that Amazon dominates U.S. e-commerce. The company’s market share of U.S. online sales is often said to be about 39%, but the figure is as high as 74% across a range of product categories, according to the report, which also called out practices of other large tech companies…” WSJ wsj.com
• How 10 billion people could live well by 2050 – using as much energy as we did 60 years ago theconversation.com
• On Oct. 1, AT&T stopped selling digital-subscriber-line connections usatoday.com
• Amazon’s Growing Ad Business Could Forever Change Tech… debugger.medium.com
• Apple TV now plays YouTube videos in 4K, with limits engadget.com