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

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