Weekly#417

Even the World’s Most-Vaccinated Economy Faces a Tough Reopening
DLD Conference Videos
Toyota begins building smart city near Mount Fuji
Amazon acquires Selz, a Shopify competitor that helps small businesses build online stores
How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars
Google Mobile-First Indexing Deadline Is Around March 2021
MIT Technology Review: 10 Breakthrough Technologies
Firefox 86 brings multiple Picture-in-Picture, “Total Cookie Protection”
Chip shortage may threaten PlayStation 5 supplies at Christmas
Starlink broadband speeds will double to 300Mbps “later this year
Nickelodeon creates Avatar Studios to create new Avatar, Legend of Korra content
Mission: Impossible 7 will stream on Paramount Plus just 45 days after it hits theaters
Nvidia made $5 billion during a GPU shortage and expects to do it again in Q1
Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust
Pfizer seeks to store vaccine at higher temperatures, easing logistics…that would allow vials to be stored at -25 to -15 degrees Celsius (-13°F to 5°F) for a total of two weeks.
Square purchased approximately 3,318 bitcoins at an aggregate purchase price of $170 million
Microsoft Word is getting text predictions next month
YouTube to launch parental control features for families with tweens and teens
Airbnb is introducing Flexible Search, which will allow users to forgo putting in exact dates when they look to book lodging on the platform
Spotify to Add 85 New Markets With 1 Billion People
Coinbase S-1 Document
Twitter announces paid Super Follows to let you charge for tweets
Twitter CFO says company is confident about strategy to double revenues in two years
Digital vaccination passports likely available before summer, Merkel says
Covid-19 has persuaded some parents that home-schooling is better
China’s economy could double in size by 2035 — and surpass the U.S. along the way

Weekly#416

Perseverance Rover has landed on Mars
“…When the Perseverance rover sets down on Mars on Thursday, another NASA spacecraft already there will be listening for the thump-thump that will result when the newcomer arrives…”
Why Google’s Internet Balloon Project Loon Failed
Elon Musk’s SpaceX raised $850 million, jumping valuation to about $74 billion
Russia, China to sign agreement on international lunar research station
Google closes Stadia’s dedicated game studios after less than 2 years
Glassdoor now lets you filter company ratings by demographics
YouTube TV to Launch Option for 4K and Unlimited Streams, TikTok-Like YouTube Shorts Coming to U.S. in March
Ford says it will go all-electric in Europe by 2030
Jaguar to become all-electric brand from 2025
Apple will proxy Safe Browsing traffic on iOS 14.5 to hide user IPs from Google
Coca-Cola company trials first paper bottle
Bitcoin Jumps to $50,000
Bitcoin market cap hits $1 trillion
No 2. cryptocurrency ethereum soars to record high as bitcoin rally continues
“…China dominates battery production today, with 93 “gigafactories” that manufacture lithium-ion battery cells, vs. only four in the United States, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence…”
Sequoia-Backed Grocery App Dingdong Maicai Mulls U.S. IPO
Coupang, South Korean E-Commerce Giant, Unveils U.S. IPO Plan (paywall: WSJ)…Coupang S-1 Document
Shopify Q4 Presentation
3 ways that the U.S. population will change over the next decade
Apple reportedly negotiating to build iPads in India
Nvidia is purposefully making its new RTX 3060 graphics cards less efficient to mine Ethereum cryptocurrency.
How to audit Core Web Vitals
Microsoft announces Office 2021, available for Windows and macOS later this year
“…Apple has posted multiple job listings indicating that it is hiring engineers to work on 6G technology internally so it does not have to rely on partners like Qualcomm…”
Google announces the Android 12 Developer Preview
Math learning app Photomath raises $23 million as it reaches 220 million downloads
Google has appointed Dr. Marian Croak to lead its responsible artificial intelligence division within Google Research
AI creates psychedelic visual interpretations of famous poems
IBM Explores Sale of IBM Watson Health (paywall: WSJ)
China May Ban Rare Earth Technology Exports on Security Concerns

Weekly#415

Preparing for the Next Macroeconomic Cycle — and Its Risks
When Will Life Return to Normal? In 7 Years at Today’s Vaccine Rates
Disney says it now has 94.9 million Disney+ subscribers
United Airlines orders 200 vertical-takeoff electric airplanes
What, Exactly, Is Amazon Web Services?
Qualcomm objects to Nvidia’s $40 billion Arm acquisition
Spotify will let employees work from anywhere after the pandemic
Breached water plant employees used the same TeamViewer password and no firewall
Bitcoin Hits Record as Mastercard, BNY Mellon Embrace Crypto
Google is testing a dark mode for desktop search
Microsoft approached Pinterest about a takeover (Paywall: FT)
Top 100 subscription apps grew 34% to $13B in 2020, share of total spend remained the same
Monzo, nearing 5 million customers, has recruited a new US CEO
Android 12 leak appears to show major redesign with color-changing UI
The Apple car, briefly explained
Facebook Is Said to Be Building a Product to Compete With Clubhouse
The price of solar electricity has dropped 89% in 10 years
All the Coronavirus in the World Could Fit Inside a Coke Can, With Plenty of Room to Spare
The future of “smart” cities is in street lights
Germany to let citizens store ID cards on smartphone
The cinemas now hiring out their screens to gamers
Earth to Voyager 2: After a Year in the Darkness, We Can Talk to You Again
In a major new pandemic trend, people are turning to carbon dioxide monitoring devices to help assess ventilation quality
How Car Makers Collided With a Global Chip Shortage (Paywall: WSJ)

Weekly#414

Why Big Companies Keep Failing: The Stack Fallacy
Jeff Bezos to step down as Amazon CEO…Andy Jassy, head of Amazon Web Services, will take the reins as CEO beginning in the third quarter
Amazon reports first $100 billion quarter following holiday and pandemic shopping surge
Fire TV now reaches more than 50 million monthly active users around the world.
eBay’s sneaker category exploded with triple-digit growth last quarter
Amazon timeline
Alphabet revenue up 23% as core advertising business shows strong growth
Airstream’s New Trailer Comes With Beds That Transform Into an Office
“…in uncertain economic times there is often nostalgia for decor from former decades associated with comfort and stability…”
Facebook makes the case for activity tracking to iOS 14 users in new pop-ups
Sony says semiconductor shortage makes increased PS5 production difficult…Sony shipped more than 4.5 million PlayStation 5s
Spotify: 155 million premium subscribers, 345 million monthly active users
Apple will invest $3.6 billion in Kia Motors to build an Apple Car, report says
South Korea Leads World in Innovation as U.S. Exits Top Ten
Google Cloud lost $5.61 billion on $13.06 billion revenue last year
When the Electric Car Is King, Less Energy Is More
iOS 14.5 will support PS5 DualSense and Xbox Series X controllers
Neuralink has wired up a monkey to play video games using its mind
Pixel phones will be able to read your heart rate with their cameras
SpaceX Starlink public beta begins: It’s $99 a month plus $500 up front
VW Group will handle self-driving car development in-house, report says
Apple’s mixed reality headset could cost $3,000 and include 8K displays
We’re Teaching Robots to Evolve Autonomously—So They Can Adapt to Life Alone on Distant Planets
Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 aren’t launching this year
How the search for a ‘death ray’ led to radar
YouTube Expands Its CTV and Sports Offerings Ahead of Upfront Season