Techmeme: Laptop and desktop manufacturers are still months away from fulfilling outstanding orders as sales see a renaissance; shortages won't ease until 2022 (Paresh Dave/Reuters)

Top News

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: MacRumors, AppleInsider, Engadget, The Verge, PCMag, Forbes, MyHealthyApple, BleepingComputer, Redmond Pie, Gizmodo, Fortune, and iMore. Tweets: @tweeting_frog

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, Thurrott, and Patently Apple

Tweets: @gadgets360 and @gadgets360

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 — End-of-year turnover is always rough, and it's going to get worse — Two of the biggest movies people want to talk about this week …

Tweets: @trengriffin, @stevie_mat, @themeganpurdy, @sachinrekhi, and @robabramowitz

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 — - Tech companies were the first to cancel events and send workers home because of Covid concerns in early 2020.

More: Wall Street Journal. Tweets: @necn, @nbc10boston, and @gregorymcneal

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 — - Keys from the likes of Google and Yubico became a hit among campaign workers this year, including in Joe Biden's campaign.

Tweets: @netik, @codinghorror, @eladgil, and @martin_casado

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 — David Silver of DeepMind, who helped create the program that defeated a Go champion, thinks rewards are central to how machines—and humans—acquire knowledge.

More: furidamu and BBC

Tweets: @nickwaye, @louisgray, and @alan_couzens

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 — In a weird way, I've known Ray Holt all my life, but I never knew what he had accomplished—or how his inventions wove their way into my own family.

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 — Back in June, Microsoft released a fix for a vulnerability in the Windows operating system that enabled attackers to increase …

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

Tweets: @maddiestone and @thehackersnews

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 than 100 million smartphones were sold globally with MediaTek chipsets in Q3 2020. — Qualcomm led the market for 5G chipsets in Q3 2020.

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

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 — Joe Biden has said he's no fan of Facebook. Now he has an opportunity to show it as he assumes landmark policy and legal battles against the company.

More: Slashdot, New York Times, and Bloomberg

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

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: TheStreet, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fortune

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. Tweets: @cnada, @business, and @blmohr

Sponsor Posts

Google:

Try Gemini 3 Pro — Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life

Shopify:

Shopify's new AI commerce stack — Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI and tech.

Zoho:

Connecting, collaborating, and growing: Zoho Mail 2025 wrap-up — Your inbox has been home to a lot this year—quick updates, long threads, approvals, reminders, and the occasional late-night draft you weren't sure about.

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

BG2 Pod:

AI Enterprise - Databricks & Glean

Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.

Subscribe to BG2 Pod.

Great Chat:

The stories we told ourselves in 2025

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Grit:

How Brands Stay Visible When AI Decides | Profound CEO James Cadwallader

Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.

Subscribe to Grit.

Lenny's Podcast:

The coming AI security crisis (and what to do about it) | Sander Schulhoff

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.

Big Technology Podcast:

OpenAI's Potential, Google's Speedy Model, Copilot Hits Turbulence

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:50 AM 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.