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

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
WhatsApp messages for events: Zoho Backstage enhancements  —  Event communication involves more than just sending updates to attendees.  In an event's lifecycle, organizers coordinate with purchasers, speakers …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Weird, Big Business of Microdramas
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Big Technology Podcast:
How AI Should Handle News, Politics, Medicine, and Mental Health — With Campbell Brown
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.
Training Data:
Parallel's Parag Agrawal: Building a New Web for AI Agents
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Invest Like the Best:
Neil Movva - Making AI 10x Cheaper
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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.
 

About This Page

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.

More News

Earlier Picks

Steven Overly / Politico:
Paresh Dave / Reuters: