Techmeme: Mastercard SpendingPulse: US online holiday sales from Oct. 11 to Dec. 24 grew 49% YoY, for a 19.7% share of overall retail sales, up from about 13.4% in 2019 (Reuters)

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December 27, 2020, 6:50 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:

China's central bank tells Ant it must overhaul its lending, insurance, and wealth management businesses and come up with a timetable as soon as possible — - Authorities require Ant to overhaul business, set up timetable — Ant was blasted over governance, disdain toward compliance

More: Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and New York Times

Tweets: @doubleeph, @giorgiomomurder, @skupor, @business, @seyitaylor, @ashishdave, @spirosmargaris, and @luluyilun

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:

Apple's system status webpage indicates that the company has resolved an outage affecting iCloud Account and Sign In services — Apple's system status webpage indicates that the company has resolved an outage affecting “iCloud Account and Sign In” services.

More: Engadget, MacRumors, AppleInsider, The Verge, Gizchina, Pocketnow, Gizmodo, PCMag, iMore, Redmond Pie, Fortune, BleepingComputer, and Forbes

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:

Kuo: Apple Car's unclear development schedule means it may launch in 2025-2027, while changes in EV/self-driving market may push the launch to 2028 — Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Apple is targeting 2024 for production of its long-rumored electric vehicle with “next level” …

More: 9to5Mac, phonearena.com, 500ish, appleosophy.com, AppleInsider, iPhone in Canada Blog, iPhone Hacks, iMore, and Patently Apple

Tweets: @asymco, @angellamuno, @rsgnl, @bluelantern92, and @leaksapplepro

Lee Brown / New York Post:

Nashville mayor says the Christmas day explosion in the city appears to have targeted an AT&T building, amid reports the suspect was paranoid about 5G — Nashville's mayor said Sunday that the city's Christmas blast appeared to be an “infrastructure attack” on the AT&T building there …

More: AT&T, WSMV-TV, The Guardian, phonearena.com, and UPI

Tweets: @rstephens, @josephmenn, @charlesarthur, @hannonizer, @kurtbardella, @justinhendrix, @rolandixor, and @nc5_akoehn

Greg Ip / Wall Street Journal:

Due to the pandemic, trends that normally may have taken years to unfold, like remote work or the shift from physical to virtual commerce, happened in months — Spurred by the pandemic, business changes that normally might have taken years unfolded in months.

Tweets: @csapkota, @jessefelder, @mileskimball, and @mileskimball

Michelle Gao / CNBC:

From working remotely to benefiting from the new normal, tech companies led the way in pandemic response, but fell behind in stopping COVID-19 misinformation

Tweets: @mims, @necn, @joehall, @justrichwebster, @ruthbenghiat, @natbullard, @greg_ip, @mileskimball, @karaswisher, @cardiffgarcia, @nbc10boston, @shawndubravac, @gregorymcneal, and @alecstapp

Andrew Davis / Bloomberg:

Report: Facebook closed Irish subsidiary and moved billions in profits back to US following IRS suit; Irish subsidiary paid $101M in tax on $15B profit in 2018 — Facebook Inc. has moved to wind down several Irish holding companies that had allowed it to shift billions of dollars in profit to the country …

Source: The Times. More: The Guardian and Engadget

Tweets: @reflectingman, @cnada, @revolution_irl, @business, @_jack_poulson, and @blmohr

Paresh Dave / Reuters:

Laptop and desktop manufacturers are still months away from fulfilling outstanding orders as sales see a renaissance; shortages won't ease until 2022 — OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) - The world stocked up on laptop and desktop computers in 2020 at a level not seen since the iPhone debuted in 2007 …

More: phonearena.com, MSPoweruser, and Thurrott

Tweets: @seamus, @glenngabe, @sub8u, @tomwarren, @gadgets360, and @gadgets360

Miles Kruppa / Financial Times:

Study: the median valuation for SaaS companies raising their Series C rose by 40% to $210M this year, while their median revenue grew 20% — Valuations soar in Silicon Valley with venture capitalists racing to find next big thing — The surging value of cloud software companies …

Tweets: @trengriffin, @outsidadgitator, @julianklymochko, and @caffeinatedinv1

Kim Lyons / The Verge:

Citing environmental concerns Xiaomi CEO says its flagship Mi 11 phone will not come with a charger in the box; Xiaomi mocked Apple earlier over the same issue — Xiaomi's CEO confirmed the decision on social media site Weibo — Lei Jun, the CEO of Chinese phone maker Xiaomi …

Lars Eidnes / ITNEXT:

Analysis of the top 1M pages on the web finds that HTTP/2 is now more common than HTTP/1.1; jQuery, Google Analytics were the top JavaScript libraries by usage — We rendered the top 1 million pages on the web, tracking every conceivable performance metric, logging every error, noting every requested URL.

More: The Startup

Reuters:

Mastercard SpendingPulse: US online holiday sales from Oct. 11 to Dec. 24 grew 49% YoY, for a 19.7% share of overall retail sales, up from about 13.4% in 2019 — (Reuters) -U.S. retail sales rose 3% during this year's expanded holiday shopping season from Oct. 11 to Dec. 24 …

Source: Business Wire. More: PYMNTS.com, Wall Street Journal, TheStreet, and Bloomberg

New York Times:

Beijing's frenzied drive to free itself from a reliance on imported chips could prove to be one of the enduring legacies of Trump's trade policies toward China — Beijing's drive to free itself from reliance on imported semiconductors has lifted start-ups and big firms alike. Some have flamed out.

Tweets: @nytimesbusiness, @orangeman1992, @jchengwsj, and @nytimestech

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:50 PM ET, December 27, 2020.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Associated Press:

President Trump signed an EO on May 1 instructing CPB and other agencies to cut federal funding for NPR and PBS, alleging “bias” in the broadcasters' reporting

Washington Post:

After VOA director said staff can begin a “phased return”, an appeals court stays the preliminary injunction that allowed VOA and USAGM staffers to go back

Brooks Barnes / New York Times:

Hands-on with Meta's Movie Mate, a chatbot that provides users trivia and other content during a movie, rolled out for one night for Blumhouse's M3GAN rerelease

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More News

Kevin Randall / Wired:

With traffic to Chatroulette booming amid COVID, the team is testing AI tools to moderate content; it now offers a filtered channel designed to exclude nudity

Tweets: @sub8u, @taylorlorenz, and @evelyndouek

Steven Overly / Politico:

Facebook critics say a general animosity toward Facebook in Washington may push the Biden administration into taking more proactive measures against the company

More: Associated Press, Slashdot, New York Times, and Bloomberg

Tweets: @justinhendrix, @fboversight, @rededdy56, @bruno_j_navarro, @alfonslopeztena, and @jason_kint

Will Knight / Wired:

David Silver, a principal research scientist at DeepMind, on AlphaGo, AlphaZero, and MuZero, applying reinforcement learning to real world problems, and more

More: furidamu and Towards Data Science

Tweets: @nickwaye, @alan_couzens, and @louisgray

Sarah Fallon / Wired:

Profile of Ray Holt, who in the 1960s jointly developed the F-14 Tomcat's Central Air Data Computer, considered by some to be the first microprocessor

Tweets: @bcantrill, @pomeranian99, @wired, @dantley, and @crispinburke

Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer:

Microsoft's patch for a zero-day privilege escalation Windows bug in June did not fix the vulnerability, which could still be exploited with some adjustments

Source: Google Project Zero. More: The Hacker News, Threatpost, TechRadar, and HotHardware.com News

Tweets: @maddiestone and @thehackersnews

Earlier Picks

Jordan Novet / CNBC:

2020 political campaigns secured emails with physical security keys from a nonprofit working with Google and Microsoft; source says Biden's campaign used keys

Tweets: @codinghorror, @netik, and @eladgil

Julia Alexander / The Verge:

2020 has been the beginning of major streaming exclusivity plays, forcing users to pay for four or five services as big studios prioritize their own platforms

Tweets: @loudmouthjulia, @tonyromm, @kibblesmith, @freak_leader, @loudmouthjulia, @jaspar, @sachgau, @charlie_l_hall, @samitsarkar, @hshaban, @sachinrekhi, @trengriffin, @stevie_mat, @themeganpurdy, and @robabramowitz

Gene Park / Washington Post:

Interview with Microsoft's VP of gaming ecosystem Sarah Bond, a former T-Mobile executive, on lowering entry barriers by selling Xbox as a subscription

Tweets: @launcherwp, @genepark, @genepark, and @htsuka

Ankit Malhotra / Counterpoint Research:

With 31% market share, MediaTek becomes the biggest smartphone SoC vendor globally in Q3, surpassing Qualcomm, which remains the largest 5G chipset vendor

More: phonearena.com, TechSpot, Pocketnow, Engadget, 91mobiles.com, The Indian Express, NDTV Gadgets 360, and Slashdot. Tweets: @liliputingnews