Techmeme
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
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” …
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 …
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.
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.
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.
Michelle Gao / CNBC:
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 …
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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Steven Overly / Politico:
Paresh Dave / Reuters: