| Amazon: |
Amazon plans to acquire podcast network Wondery, which will join Amazon Music — We've signed an agreement to acquire Wondery, a top-rated podcast creator and producer that entertains and educates listeners. — We're pleased to announce that Wondery—an innovative podcast publisher … | Stephanie Chan / Sensor Tower Blog: |
Consumers worldwide spent $407.6M across the App Store and Google Play on Christmas, up 34.5% YoY; mobile games rose 27% YoY to $295.6M, led by Honor of Kings — 2020 has been a record-setting year for worldwide spending on mobile apps and games, which passed $100 billion in a single year for the first time ever in November.| Christopher Palmeri / Bloomberg: |
| Lily Hay Newman / Wired: |
Ransomware attacks have transitioned from a model of many small payments from various individuals to a smaller group of large targets with massive ransoms — 2020 was a great year for ransomware gangs. For hospitals, schools, municipal governments, and everyone else, it's going to get worse before it gets better.| Todd Spangler / Variety: |
ESPN+ is raising its annual fee for new subscribers from $49.99 to $59.99; renewals for existing subscribers will remain $49.99 through March 2, 2021 — UFC fans are going to pay more to catch the promoter's premiere fights on Disney's ESPN Plus streaming sports package next year.| Golan Hazani / CTech: |
Sources: SimilarWeb is planning a Nasdaq IPO in Q2 2021, aiming for a $2B+ valuation; the company has raised $240M in total, including $120M in October — The market intelligence company joins list of Israeli firms set to embark on a U.S. IPO in the coming months which already includes eToro … | Jason Del Rey / Vox: |
eMarketer: US e-commerce sales, up 12%-16% in recent years, will have grown by 30%+ in 2020 and Amazon's US retail business grew an estimated 39% YoY in 2020 — When we look back at 2020 in the business world, we'll remember it as the year online shopping stopped being the future of retail and became the present.| Rohit Prasad / Fast Company: |
The head scientist for Alexa argues that Turing Test, designed as a thought experiment, is no longer relevant for building AIs that are designed to help humans — This year marks 70 years since Alan Turing published his paper introducing the concept of the Turing Test in response to the question, “Can machines think?”| Nick Statt / The Verge: |
Gadget trade-in site Gazelle, one of the longest running used smartphone buyers in the US, says it will end its core trade-in program on February 1, 2021 — The company's long-running trade-in program will end on February 1st, 2021 — Gazelle, one of the longest-running used smartphone buyers in the US … | Mark Sweney / The Guardian: |
Ampere: UK streaming subscribers grew 34% YoY in 2020, with a combined 32.4M for Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+, the top three services — Britons spent 40% of their waking hours watching TV during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, fuelling the biggest year for new subscribers to streaming services.| Elizabeth A. Harris / New York Times: |
Association of American Publishers: audiobooks revenue is up 17%+ YoY, e-book sales are up 16%+; NPD BookScan says US print book sales are up ~8% in 2020 — With people stuck at home and so many other activities shut down, a lot of reading — or at least a lot of book buying — happened this year.| Kevin Helms / Bitcoin News: |
New York regulators have authorized a subsidiary of Japan's GMO Internet to issue the world's first publicly available stablecoin backed by the Japanese yen — The New York State Department of Financial Services, the Bitlicense regulator, has authorized GMO to issue U.S. dollar and Japanese yen-pegged stablecoins.| Nic Fildes / Financial Times: |
Researcher: Get Schooled, an education charity established by Bill Gates and Viacom, left personal details of hundreds of thousands of US students exposed — Database at charity set up by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was ‘open and accessible’ during website revamp
Try Gemini 3 Pro — Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Transform ML Experimentation with Tangle — Save months of compute time with Tangle, built by Shopify. Try this open-source platform to simplify ML workflows, ensure reproducibility, and seamlessly share with collaborators.
Top shortcuts to work your way through Zoho Cliq — The debate between mouse and keyboard users has been around for years. Whether it's about efficiency, speed, or productivity, there's always this question …
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.
This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:30 PM ET, December 30, 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.
| Nathaniel Popper / New York Times: |
| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
| Emily Birnbaum / Protocol: |
| Reed Albergotti / Washington Post: |
| Svea Herbst-Bayliss / Reuters: |
| Reed Albergotti / Washington Post: |
| Bloomberg: |