China has landed a rover on Mars for the first time—here’s what happens next
Another media acquisition? This one would involve Amazon, MGM, and ~$9B
Toy Retailer Rolls Out Online Shopping for Kids as Young as 3 (WSJ)
Spotify will auto-transcribe podcasts over the coming weeks
How space weather could wreck NASA’s return to the moon…A new study suggests that extreme solar activity might make future Artemis missions too dangerous to launch later this decade.
Apple launches an affiliate program for paid podcast subscriptions
China’s JD Logistics set to raise $3.2 billion in Hong Kong IPO
Snap announces new Spectacles AR glasses, which let you overlay digital objects on the real world
Snap emphasizes commerce in updates to its camera and AR platforms
Tencent Q1 profit rises 65% as online gaming revenue climbs
Denial of Electricity Service Could Become Next Geopolitical Weapon…with electricity expected to account for a large share of the world’s energy use by 2050, the stakes are high (WSJ)
Google announces its first-ever physical retail store
20 percent of Switch sales now going to households that already had a Switch
Google, Samsung, and Fitbit team up to save Wear OS
factory14 raises $200M to jump into the Amazon marketplace roll-up race
Bain Capital Ventures raised $1.3 billion to fund young startups, and young VC firms
The top 50 companies by value added $4.5 trillion of stock market capitalization in 2020, taking their combined worth to about 28% of global gross domestic product
✔️ Self-serve pantry
✔️ Phone booths
✔️ Comfy seating
Offices may need to do makeovers to lure workers back to office after a year of working from home. Narita Cheah of architectural design firm Paperspace Asia tells @mljamrisko more https://t.co/BtFfuO9rnW@Quicktakepic.twitter.com/ATNWr29r8f
The climate solution actually adding millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere
Michael Collins, who piloted the Apollo 11 command module, has died
Smartphone shipments jumped 27% globally in Q1, 347 milion units
Blue Origin will start selling tickets for New Shepard space tourism flights on May 5
Waymo’s New CEOs Say Self-Driving Unit Eyes Outside Funding
Amazon’s ads business is generating nearly $7 billion a quarter, and growth is accelerating
China plans to launch the core module for its first permanent space station this week in the latest big step forward for the country’s space exploration program.
Teaching children to play chess found to decrease risk aversion
“…How often do people actually copy and paste from Stack Overflow? Now we know…One out of every four users who visits a Stack Overflow question copies something within five minutes of hitting the page. That adds up to 40,623,987 copies across 7,305,042 posts and comments between March 26th and April 9th. People copy from answers about ten times as often as they do from questions and about 35 times as often as they do fromcomments…”
Microsoft Outlook now lets you end all meetings early to give your brain a rest…Back-to-back meetings can now have a break in between
“…In certain applications, hydrogen is a promising contender for a carbon-zero fuel. Which countries are leading the race for its implementation?Hydrogen is the lightest gas with the lowest density. It is also plentiful; it is stored in water (H2O) and hydrocarbons, such as methane (CH4), but cannot be captured. It has to be separated in its compound state to produce a useable fuel. (In liquid form, hydrogen is 1/800 the volume of hydrogen in its gasstate.)…”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX wins $2.9 billion NASA moon landing contract
Amazon Opens London Augmented Reality Salon to Showcase Tech
Chat App Discord Ends Takeover Talks With Microsoft…now focused on a potential public listing in the long term
Livestreaming has taken over Chinese e-commerce. Now, online shopping giants are trying to replicate the model in Russia.
EU to consider ban on using A.I. for mass surveillance and social credit scores
How Amazon Strong-Arms Partners Using Its Power Across Multiple Businesses (WSJ)
Cable Companies Emerge as Force in Cellphone Business…More than five million Americans have turned to cable providers for cellphone service, attracted by lower prices and ease of adjusting plans
Garry Kasparov launches a community-first chess platform
France is giving citizens $3,000 to get rid of their car and get an ebike
Intel, Nvidia, TSMC execs agree: Chip shortage could last into 2023
Ford’s BlueCruise self-driving tech did a 110,000-mile road trip
Coinbase opens at $102 billion valuation on first day of public trading
Apple Working on Combined TV Box, Speaker to Revive Home Efforts
Google Shopping for Android, iOS shutting down in favor of the web
Ferrari’s Electric Reluctance Eases as Chairman Sees 2025 Debut
Ground zero in China for live stream sellers is Beixiazhu. This 1 town is filled with 1000's of sellers shipping serious volumes at crazy low prices through live stream. #9.9包邮 pic.twitter.com/nGUiZhSKTs
China Creates its Own Digital Currency, a First for Major Economy (WSJ)
Hitachi Ltd. ’s $9.6 billion purchase of digital-engineering firm GlobalLogic Inc. amounts to a big bet that enterprise software will unleash the power of big data on heavy industry. (WSJ)
The rise and fall of a massive industry based on missed calls
Chip Shortage Costs Carmakers Output of 1.3 Million Vehicles
Google Is Ending Cookies and the Ad Industry Has an Alternative
Google Maps has a wild new feature that will guide you through indoor spaces like airports
Containerize all the things! Arm v9 takes security seriously
Spotify Acquires Sports-Talk App Locker Room…Deal values the company at around $50 million (WSJ)
Microsoft wins US army contract for augmented reality headsets worth up to $21.9bn (FT)…Microsoft is supplying 120,000 HoloLens-based headsets to the US Army
Google is accelerating partial reopening of offices and putting limits on future of remote work…Google employees will begin returning to offices in a “limited” capacity in April, according to a memo on Wednesday…If after Sept. 1, employees want to work remotely for more than 14 days per year, they will need to formally apply.
Amazon says it expects some employees to return to the office this summer, most will return in fall
ILM shows off the new Stagecraft LED wall used for season 2 of ‘The Mandalorian’
TSMC to Invest $100 Billion to Increase Semiconductor Output (WSJ)
High-Frequency traders eye satellites for ultimate speed boost (WSJ) …but one satellite operator has touted speeds of less than 29 milliseconds from Chicago to London.
Apple to build battery-based solar energy storage project in Monterey County
Suez Canal Traffic Snarl Is Making Shipping Costs Skyrocket…Cost to ship a standard container to Europe has quadrupled…Rerouting around Africa would cost $300,000 just for the fuel…Suez Canal blockage is delaying an estimated $400 million an hour in goods
Are Electric Cars Really Better for the Environment (WSJ)
Zoom said Monday that it would start selling its videoconferencing technology so other companies can embed it in their own products (WSJ)
Amazon-backed Deliveroo seeks valuation of up to $12 billion in its London IPO
The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work—Are We Ready?
“…The biggest takeaway was that all the activities related to online dating ratcheted up during the pandemic. Conversations on average were 32 percent longer than they had been pre-pandemic and people matched — meaning both people found the other attractive — 42 percent more. There were about 20 percent more messages per day in February of this year than there had been in February of last year. The number of swipes on Tinder broke 3 billion in a single day for the first time in March of 2020, and then proceeded to surpass that benchmark 130 more times since…”
TSMC: How a Taiwanese chipmaker became a linchpin of the global economy
Exclusive: Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi to make EVs using Great Wall’s plant – sources
Xiaomi says to launch its own computer chip on March 29…flags rising costs of chips
Microsoft Is in Exclusive Talks to Acquire Discord…Deal valuing chat app at $10 billion or more could be completed next month (WSJ)
Some artists found a lifeline selling NFTs. Others worry it’s a trap.
Musicians Turn to NFTs to Make Up for Lost Revenue…Artists are connecting with fans and generating revenue by selling digital collectibles, even if they are hard to value (WSJ)
Event Horizon Telescope captures new view of black hole in polarized light…Magnetic fields swirling around a black hole
Facebook is making a bracelet that lets you control computers with your brain…The device would let you interact with Facebook’s upcoming augmented-reality glasses just by thinking…It uses electromyography (EMG) to interpret electrical activity from motor nerves as they send information from the brain to the hand.
Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support
Global chip shortage worsens, forces production cuts at GM, Hyundai
“…Intel on Tuesday committed to a record $19 billion to $20 billion in capital expenditures this year, or about 45% above the company’s average annual capital expenditures over the past five years…” (WSJ)
How the pandemic fueled a new criminal business model
Twitter begins testing a way to watch YouTube videos from the home timeline on iOS
NFL finalizes a new 11-year media rights deal, Amazon gets exclusive Thursday Night rights. “…Advertisers, meanwhile, are buying more in streaming TV, especially on internet-connected sets, where U.S. ad spending will total nearly $13.41 billion this year, up from nearly $9.03 billion in 2020, according to research firm eMarketer…”
“…My gut says that, for us, it’s still very important to physically be in touch with one another because collaboration isn’t always a planned activity. Innovation isn’t always a planned activity,” Cook said. “It’s bumping into each other over the course of the day and advancing an idea that you just had. And you really need to be together to do that…”
Google to Invest $7 Billion in Bet on Post-Pandemic Office…The tech giant says ‘coming together is core to its culture in announcing U.S. investment (WSJ)
Study finds 3-ft distancing in schools is enough—but the debate is far from over/ article link
BMW’s big electric car push: Selling 2 million new EVs by 2025
Microsoft PowerPoint can now help you practice presentations almost anywhere — no humans required
Chrome now instantly captions audio and video on the web
World-Wide Streaming Subscriptions Pass One Billion During Pandemic…Mass movie theatre closures caused global box-office revenue to drop more than $30 billion in 2020, Motion Picture Association says (WSJ)
15 billion car locations. Nearly any country on Earth. ‘The Ulysses Group’ is pitching a powerful surveillance technology
Lenders are turning to coercive loan apps that shut down smartphones if customers fall behind on payments.
Covid: EU plans rollout of travel certificate before summer
From Remote Work to Hybrid Work: The Tech You’ll Need to Link Home and Office (WSJ)
Nvidia raises GeForce Now subscription plan to $10 per month
Morgan Stanley becomes the first big U.S. bank to offer its wealthy clients access to bitcoin funds
Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70 Million Merchants