Techmeme: Uruguay's first unicorn, the payment processor dLocal, and GeneXus, a sophisticated COVID-19 advice app, have put the country's tech scene on the global map (Benedict Mander/Financial Times)

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December 28, 2020, 4:45 AM

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

Coco Liu / Bloomberg:

Alibaba raises proposed stock repurchase program by $4B to $10B, but shares slide 5%+ to a six month low in early Hong Kong trading amid antitrust fears — - Investors flee biggest names from Tencent to Meituan and JD — It coincides with a harsh clampdown on part-owned Ant Group

More: China Internet Watch

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, AppleInsider, Mashable, BGR India, 500ish, iPhone in Canada Blog, phonearena.com, iPhone Hacks, MyFixGuide.com, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, iMore, appleosophy.com, Pocketnow, Ubergizmo, Patently Apple, SlashGear, and iClarified

Tweets: @rsgnl, @asymco, @angellamuno, @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, The Guardian, WSMV-TV, The Tennessean, Washington Post, phonearena.com, International Business Times, and UPI

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

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 …

Scott Belsky / Medium:

Eight themes for the near future of tech: from decentralized workplaces and the rise of community-as-a-service to quirky social apps for kids under 16 — As we pull ourselves out of the ditch that was 2020, there are a few major themes of the future I'm particularly excited about.

More: Howard Lindzon. Tweets: @scottbelsky, @erickschonfeld, @om, @avidanross, @micahjay1, @benrbn, @satyap, @trengriffin, @soonaorlater, and @bill_gross

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

Tweets: @jonathanirl, @crazyswissie, and @lanceulanoff

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

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, @yesecondpost, @theactualcathal, @revolution_irl, @astraea1974, @_jack_poulson, @blmohr, @cnada, and @business

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 — The hottest app of early 2010 faded quickly when it was flooded with unwanted nudity. Smarter content moderation is helping to revive it.

Tweets: @sub8u, @taylorlorenz, and @evelyndouek

Sam Richards / The Intercept:

Documents detail CellHawk, a little-known surveillance tool used widely by law enforcement, which can visualize large amounts of data collected by cell towers — Until now, the Bartonville, Texas, company Hawk Analytics and its product CellHawk have largely escaped public scrutiny.

Sara Harrison / The Markup:

With $87M in political contributions, $200M spent on Prop 22, and record spending on federal lobbying, tech industry spent record amounts on politics in 2020 — As politicians and regulators turned their attention to Silicon Valley, tech companies went on the offensive

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:45 AM ET, December 28, 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

Andrew Goudsward / Reuters:

A US judge orders the White House to lift access restrictions imposed on the AP while the AP's lawsuit moves forward

Josh Xiao / Bloomberg:

Two influential Chinese bloggers say China is considering a ban on Hollywood movies as part of a set of measures to retaliate against Trump's tariffs

Michael M. Grynbaum / New York Times:

Some senior Trump press aides have refused to engage with reporters' questions because the journalists listed identifying pronouns in their email signatures

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More News

Benedict Mander / Financial Times:

Uruguay's first unicorn, the payment processor dLocal, and GeneXus, a sophisticated COVID-19 advice app, have put the country's tech scene on the global map

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

Report: Indian startups raised ~$9.3B from 1,088 deals in 2020, lower than $14.5B from 1,185 deals in 2019; rounds of $100M+ fell from 26 in 2019 to 20 in 2020

More: The Economic Times

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%

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earlier Picks

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: Washington Post, Slashdot, Associated Press, New York Times, and Bloomberg

Tweets: @fboversight, @marcoarment, @justinhendrix, @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: Towards Data Science and furidamu

Tweets: @nickwaye, @louisgray, and @alan_couzens

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

More: PYMNTS.com, phonearena.com, MSPoweruser, and Thurrott

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

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: @pomeranian99, @bcantrill, @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