• Delta COVID variant now dominant strain worldwide, U.S. deaths surge –officials…”This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Walensky said, adding that 97% of people entering hospitals in the United States with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.
• Visa Rebrands for the Digital Economy
• 4 Best Practices to Ensure Your Product Stands Out on the Digital Shelf…Ecommerce success isn’t just about the buy button
• Corning’s new Gorilla Glass protects smartphone camera lenses and lets in more light
• Intel CEO Says Chip Shortage Could Stretch Into 2023 (WSJ)
• How to Motivate Your Teen to Be a Safer Driver (WSJ)
• A DNS outage just took down a large chunk of the internet
• China Plans to Build the World’s First Waterless Nuclear Reactor
• How to mend your broken pandemic brain
• Gallium, once an industrial-waste product, is transforming our increasingly electrified world (WSJ)
• Apple Delays Office Return as Covid-19 Delta Variant Spreads
• DeepMind says it will release the structure of every protein known to science…AlphaFold program’s prediction of nearly 20,000 human protein structures now free for researchers
• Mercedes-Benz to build eight battery factories in push to become electric-only automaker by 2030
• Twitter’s revenue jumps as ad revamp pays off (FT)
• Robotaxis: have Google and Amazon backed the wrong technology? (FT)
• Google is starting to tell you how it found Search results
• Why vertical farms could be the next big microgrid market

Ad spending per vehicle sold:⁰⁰Hyundai Genesis: $1,955 Lincoln: $1,553 Jaguar: $1,235 Lexus: $984⁰Cadillac: $908⁰Honda: $183⁰Mini: $91⁰Dodge: $78 Mitsubishi: $43⁰Tesla: $0⁰⁰Source: Ad Age (2020 spending) pic.twitter.com/5T6mRSnwzZ

— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) July 22, 2021

Douyin (TikTok China) experimenting with food delivery pic.twitter.com/BTg7qYZYFp

— Matthew Brennan (@mbrennanchina) July 15, 2021

• Anyone is building a marketplace for advice, one 5-minute call at a time
• Railsbank raises $70M to build out its fintech-as-a-service platform
• Walmart will be bringing Symbotic robots to 25 distribution centers
• “…today around 30% of the world’s population is exposed to a deadly combination of heat and humidity for at least 20 days each year, that percentage will increase to nearly half by 2100, even with the most drastic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions…”
• History teaches us how to be brutally honest about a problem and yet optimistic for a technological solution
• One of Dubai’s Oldest Lenders Prepares for a Digital-Only Future
• A Neanderthal carved a geometric design in bone 51,000 years ago
• If we want to look for life on Europa, we’d better bring a drill
• what we know about kids and long covid
• Humanoid Robot Keeps Getting Fired From His Jobs…Pepper, SoftBank’s robot, malfunctioned during scripture readings, took breaks in exercise class and couldn’t recognize the faces of family members (WSJ)
• Our brains “read” expressions of illusory faces in things just like real faces…”For the brain, fake or real, faces are all processed the same way.”
• Japan appoints Minister of Loneliness
• Virgin Galactic plans to take a tourist to space every day, says chief (FT)
• Germany establishes new military space command
• Scientists develop bendable ice
• NASA Announces Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Reactor Concept Awards
• Cyberattacks and Ransomware: How Can We Protect Energy Infrastructure? (WSJ)
• How computers with humanlike senses will change our lives?
• Amazon launches its mobile-first Kindle Vella serialized story platform
• VW Group’s 10-year plan: A single EV platform across all its brands
• With Apple Pay Later, Apple may take another stab at the PayPal model
• How used cars became the next big ecommerce battleground (FT)

I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I'm an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth. To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do https://t.co/Wyzj0nOBgX #Unity22 @virgingalactic pic.twitter.com/03EJmKiH8V

— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) July 11, 2021

• Which airlines will soar after the pandemic?
• Why Are Gamers So Much Better Than Scientists at Catching Fraud?
• Smart foam material gives robotic hand the ability to self-repair
• America’s Vaccine Future Is Fragmenting
• A traditional diesel-electric sub can stay under water for two or three days. Those with aip can do so for three weeks
• An Indonesian mapping platform is turning social media chatter into life-saving information during natural disasters.
• The Chinese content farms behind Factory TikTok
• Chip shortage to hit TV and smartphone OLED displays (FT)
• The great chip crisis threatens the promise of Moore’s Law
• Why Restaurants Feel Trapped By Delivery Apps…can’t live with them, can’t survive without them
• The Empires Jeff Bezos Built (WSJ)
• Juni, a ‘vertical’ neobank for e-commerce and online marketing companies, raises $21.5M
• Tencent Deploys Facial Recognition to Detect Minors Gaming at Night
• COVID vaccines to reach poorest countries in 2023 — despite recent pledges
• Bats’ brains predict their next move during flight
• WhatsApp will let you send images and videos in their ‘best quality’
• Square is going to make a hardware wallet for bitcoin
• mRNA vaccine technology moves to flu: Moderna says trial has begun
• Rail Network Hit by Possible Cyber Attack, State TV Says
• A logic circuit made from DNA

Every meeting of the flemish government in Belgium is live streamed on a YouTube channel.
Software is searching for phones and tries to identify a distracted politician. This with the help of AI. The results are then posted to social with the politician tagged. By @driesdepoorter pic.twitter.com/QUQHiYx2HI

— The Flemish Scrollers (@FlemishScroller) July 5, 2021

• Intel Delays Sapphire Rapids Xeon CPU Production To Q1 2022
• Virgin Galactic brings forward founder’s first trip to nine days before rival’s Blue Origin mission (FT)
  
• Virgin Orbit successfully launches its first commercial payloads to space
• Starlink’s “next-generation” user terminal will cost a lot less, Musk says
• Hepsiburada IPO,  F-1 Document
• Ant Group-Backed Kakao Pay Seeks Up to $1.4 Billion in IPO
• Bezos Hands Amazon Over to Trusted Deputy Andy Jassy
• Digital vaccination cards go into effect in Europe, with some turbulence.
• Physicists observationally confirm Hawking’s black hole theorem for the first time
• Sony Charging Devs At Least $25,000 For PlayStation Store Visibility
• TV-Style Commercials Are Coming To Console Games
• ‘Crucial Time’ for Cloud Gaming, Which Wants to Change How You Play
• Amazon Demands One More Thing From Some Vendors: A Piece of Their Company (WSJ)
• AI technology identifies 160 possible new drug treatments for COVID-19
• Uber will ask employees to return to work 50% of the time
• LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes data of 92% of users, including inferred salaries
• Faster Python programming: How these developers built Pyston, and where it goes next
• Qualcomm can beat Apple M1 chip, says CEO, thanks to ex-Apple engineers
• Japan’s In-Home Robot Experiment Short Circuits
• See the Highest-Resolution Atomic Image Ever Captured
• Good news: Google no longer requires publishers to use the AMP format. Bad news: What replaces it might be worse
• China’s Zhurong rover returns landing footage and sounds from Mars
• Ericsson Mobility Report
• DLD Summer: Videos

Global mobile data traffic is projected to reach massive 237 EB per month in 2026. Globally, the average usage-per-smartphone now exceeds 10 GB/month and is forecast to reach 35 GB/month by the end of 2026. #5G pic.twitter.com/MvTHl7eMy6

— Alvin Foo (@alvinfoo) July 2, 2021

• Why every platform wants to be a super app
• Microsoft just unveiled Windows 11: Here’s everything it announced
• Microsoft didn’t kill Skype, but Windows 11 is shoving it out of sight
• Microsoft announces Windows 11 will be able to run Android apps
• Biden’s new $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan includes $65B for universal broadband
• Microsoft hits $2 trillion market cap for first time
• Kickstarter CEO: Let’s try a 4-day work week
• London Underground to Gain Full Mobile Phone Coverage by 2024
• Google gets a new rival as Brave Search opens to the public…About 32 million people now use Brave’s ad-blocking browser each month.
• The next pandemic is already here. Covid can teach us how to fight it.
• Amazon, Google Probed in U.K. Over Fake Reviews (WSJ)
• Google delays plan to phase out third-party cookies by 2 years (FT)
• NASA’s Perseverance Rover Begins Its Search for Life on Mars (WSJ)
• Tesla Shareholder Panasonic Sells Stake for $3.6 Billion (WSJ)

I've spoken to 2,000+ people about remote work in the last 12 months

A few predictions of what is likely to emerge before 2030

[ a thread ] ???

— Chris Herd (@chris_herd) June 24, 2021

• The Future by a16z
• Spotify acquires Podz, a podcast discovery platform
• What makes the Delta covid-19 variant more infectious?
• How to Practice Emergency Preparedness as Self-Care
• BioNTech CEO Warns Delta Variant Could Lead to a Covid-19 Resurgence”…Roughly 16% of the global population had been fully vaccinated…”
• Bloomberg Vaccine Stats: 2.51 Billion Shots (Updated: June 17, 2021, 11:59 PM GMT+3)
• Germany’s Fraunhofer FKIE institute, who’ve built a drone prototype designed to find people by detecting human screams and listening for other signs of distress.
• Google’s adtech business set to face formal EU probe by year-end –sources
• The smart home gym that analyzes your moves will soon have Olympian trainers
• Amazon’s Halo body fat percentage calculator outperforms lab devices
• Nielsen Now Knows When You Are Streaming
• Facebook will start putting ads in Oculus Quest apps
• We Don’t Have Much Longer to Become a Type 1 Civilization
• TikTok Owner ByteDance’s Annual Revenue Jumps to $34.3 Billion (WSJ)
• This tech uses augmented reality to give surgeons ‘superpowers‘
• Google’s Next AI Move: Teaching Foreign Languages
• The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components
• A DNA-based storage system with files and metadata…Queries can take days, but it’s possible to pull out specific files.

• The Ethereum community & Single Sign-On
• Consumer prices jump 5% in May, fastest pace since the summer of 2008
• G-20 GDP returns to pre-pandemic levels, with China seeing a massive rebound
• SoftBank investment helps Klarna to $45.6bn valuation (FT)
• Suborbital travel isn’t subject to same rules as commercial flight (WSJ)
• The first new close-up picture of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede in more than 20 years
• Digital driver’s licenses are coming
• CarPlay in iOS 15: Announce Messages with Siri, Driving Focus customization, new wallpapers
• Self-driving Waymo trucks to haul loads between Houston and Fort Worth
• What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour
• Linux Foundation readies Global COVID Certificate Network
• Apple Hires Former BMW Executive for Its Rebooted Car Project, 
• Nvidia acquires hi-def mapping startup DeepMap to bolster AV technology
• Kuo: Apple’s First AR Headset to Launch in Second Quarter of 2022

• Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine
• How the Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Works
• How Nine Covid-19 Vaccines Work
• Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker

Apple Wallet users, welcome to China 2017 https://t.co/jWI0U2GdMY

— ??????? ??????? (@mbrennanchina) June 7, 2021

• The concept behind mRNA as a drug is strikingly simple: it is the molecule that your own cells use to carry instructions from your genes, written in a simple four-letter chemical language.In 1815 a volcanic eruption wreaked havoc around the world. But it led to the birth of the bicycle (Economist)
• Apple Loses Multiple Top Managers From Self-Driving Car Division
• DHL will deploy 2,000 Locus Robotics units by 2022
• Etsy buys British fashion app Depop for $1.6bn in ‘Gen Z’ push (FT)
• Ransomware attack hits meat industry and  Massachusetts ferries
• WeTransfer Plans IPO at 1 Billion-Euro Valuation
• Google Photos wants money: Stricter storage limitations kick in next week
• Chinese ‘artificial sun’ hits new mark in fusion energy mission
• A New Approach to Hypersonic Transportation
• 7-Eleven to install 500 EV charging ports by the end of 2022
• Stack Overflow acquired by Prosus for $1.8 billion
• The UK Has a Plan for a New ‘Pandemic Radar’ System
• The mRNA vaccine revolution is just beginning.  “…The concept behind mRNA as a drug is strikingly simple: it is the molecule that your own cells use to carry instructions from your genes, written in a simple four-letter chemical language.….Moderna has taken to calling mRNA therapies the “software of life”, or an “operating system” for medicine…“
• Apple ‘homeOS’ Mentioned in Job Listing Ahead of WWDC
• Spotted the WhatsApp for iPad official app, under development
• EU set to unveil plans for bloc-wide digital wallet
• United Airlines announced it was purchasing a fleet of 15 planes that can travel faster than the speed of sound.
• Apple wants staff back in offices by September
• Sharks Almost Went the Way of the Dinosaurs 19 Million Years Ago
• Realtime Robotics raises a $31M Series A
• Little Black Door launches app on iOS/Android allowing women to share wardrobes, online and off
• Silicon Valley bets on crypto projects to disrupt finance (FT)

• The Wharton School: DeFi Beyond the Hype (link from Global İşler #37)
• Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC
• 24-inch M1 iMac teardown finds… not that much inside, actually…It’s basically a MacBook Air with a large screen and a small cooling system
• Google launches its third major operating system, Fuchsia…The Google Nest Hub is the world’s first commercial Fuchsia device.
• Joe Biden opens up California coast to offshore wind
• From trash to jet fuel in 60 minutes—and 220 ºC
• Microsoft uses GPT-3 to let you code in natural language
• iOS 14.6 is now available
• Amazon Agrees to Buy MGM Film Studio for $8.45 Billion
• This AI makes Robert De Niro perform lines in flawless German
• Heirloom Carbon Technologies believes carbon removal for $50 a ton, and aims to remove one billion tons by 2035
• The wearables, includes smartwatches, fitness trackers, and augmented reality glasses—shipped more than 100 million units in the first quarter for the first time, according to research firm IDC
• Ford Expects 40% of Global Vehicle Volume to Be Fully Electric By 2030 (WSJ)
• Apple and the End of the Car as We Know It…As cars become computers with wheels, Apple is joining other tech companies in eyeing the $5 trillion auto market (WSJ)
• Tesla starts using in-car camera for Autopilot driver monitoring
• Big Data Model Takes Local London Team to Soccer’s Richest Game
• Sony lists PC version of Uncharted 4 in investor report
• Zero-gravity space fridge could keep astronaut food fresh for years
• The U.S. Is Back in the 5G Game (WSJ)
• Cities have their own distinct microbial fingerprints
• Study on use of fuel cell hydrogen in railway environment [PDF]
• Germany gives greenlight to driverless vehicles on public roads
• Longitudinal analysis of blood markers reveals progressive loss of resilience and predicts human lifespan limit
• Immunity to the Coronavirus May Persist for Years, Scientists Find
• German scientists identify possible cause of vaccine blood clots