Techmeme: 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 (Kim Lyons/The Verge)

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December 28, 2020, 10:50 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 8%+, shedding $270B of value since its October peak amid antitrust fears — - Investors flee biggest names from Tencent to Meituan and JD — Probe coincides with a clampdown on part-owned Ant Group

More: Wall Street Journal and China Internet Watch

Tweets: @jchengwsj and @niubi

Coco Liu / Bloomberg:

Zuoyebang, which offers live-streamed classes and other remote study services and has 170 MAUs, raises $1.6B from Alibaba, Tiger Global, and others — - Zuoyebang's fundraising follows a $750 million round in June — Online learning has turned red-hot this year since pandemic

More: TechCrunch, Reuters, Nikkei Asia, and caixinglobal.com. Tweets: @grapefruitgals

Wency Chen / KrASIA:

Chinese online education startup Yuanfudao raises $300M from Jack Ma's Yunfeng Capital, bringing its total raised during 2020 to $3.5B — The high-flying company this year already snagged USD 3.5 billion from investors. — The high-flying online education company Yuanfudao …

More: Tech in Asia, Tech in Asia, and Pandaily

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: The Guardian, AT&T, The Tennessean, WSMV-TV, Washington Post, phonearena.com, International Business Times, NetBlocks, NPR, and UPI

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

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:

Kuo: Apple Car's unclear development schedule means it may launch in 2025-2027, while changes in EV and self-driving markets 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” …

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:

A look at challenger search engines like UK-based Mojeek, You.com, and Neeva, founded by former Google execs, all targeting Google as it fights antitrust suits — Challengers such as Neeva bet on alternative approaches as tech giant faces regulatory scrutiny

Tweets: @psb_dc, @martinsfp, @paulnemitz, @francesca_bria, and @aghose

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 …

Lily Hay Newman / Wired:

A look at the worst hacks of 2020: SolarWinds, Twitter, Blueleaks, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Vastaamo, and Garmin — From ransomware schemes to supply chain attacks, this year melded classic hacks with extraordinary circumstances. — WHAT A WAY to kick off a new decade.

More: Ars Technica

Scott Belsky / Medium:

8 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, @om, @avidanross, @trengriffin, @benrbn, @erickschonfeld, @soonaorlater, @bill_gross, @micahjay1, and @satyap

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

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

Financial Times:

South Korean antitrust regulators have asked Delivery Hero to sell its existing business before its $4B takeover of Woowa Brothers can go ahead — Seoul antitrust watchdog argues merger with Woowa Brothers would hurt competition — Delivery Hero's hopes of rapid expansion in Asia have hit …

More: Nikkei Asia

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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

Max Tani / Semafor:

Email: Rest of World tells donors it will “cease publishing as a standalone entity” in January 2027 as it seeks a new home; its site will stay available

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:

Ex-60 Minutes EP Bill Owens, who left after clashing with CBS execs, will join YouTube journalism startup Newpress, which raised $12M led by Emerson Collective

Ben Smith / Semafor:

Sources: after an NYT report questioned abuse recollections in Amy Griffin's memoir, the billionaire said she would target reporter Katherine Rosman's son

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More News

Phred Dvorak / Wall Street Journal:

Data shows Japan's venture deal volume last year was less than a tenth of China's and 3% of the US'; in H1 2020, Japan's startup funding fell slightly YoY

More: TechCrunch. Tweets: @thinkspection and @wsjasia

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

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

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

Tweets: @profferguson, @carlark3, @theintercept, and @theintercept

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

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

Earlier Picks

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

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

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:

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

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

Tweets: @jonathanirl, @crazyswissie, and @lanceulanoff

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

Source: The Times. More: The Guardian, coinspeaker.com, and Engadget

Tweets: @yesecondpost, @theactualcathal, @astraea1974, @sub8u, @reflectingman, @revolution_irl, @_jack_poulson, @blmohr, @cnada, and @business