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A long winter

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The Report  

Good morning and Happy Friday! Most countries in Europe are heading back into lockdowns to curb the second wave of COVID-19. Meanwhile, the Senate hearing saw Twitter, Facebook, and Google grilled. Comcast soars and TikTok’s parent company enters the smart home market.

 

 

CORONAVIRUS

 

Lockdowns Return As Europe Battles Second Wave

Pexels

 

Brace yourself folks. Winter is shaping up to be a volatile one. Our neighbors on the other side of the pond — pretty much the whole of Europe, really — are heading back into lockdowns as they battle the second wave of COVID-19. 

 

The situation is dire as almost all of Europe is overwhelmed by the second wave. Most countries have reinstated some sort of lockdowns: 

  • France – 47,637 cases on Thursday. Daily deaths are at the highest level since April. The nation restores a lockdown on Friday where people would need to fill in a form to justify leaving their homes and social gatherings are banned. 

  • Germany – 16,774 infections in the past 24 hours. Its new measures, which will come into force on Monday, include the closure of restaurants, bars, gyms, and theatres. 

  • The U.K. – 23,065 cases on Thursday and the total death toll is at 45,955. The calls for a lockdown intensify but the government has yet to impose anything. 

  • Poland – 20,156 cases on Thursday and 301 deaths. The country is back on a nationwide red-zone lockdown with a partial closure of primary schools and restaurants. 

  • Czech Republic – 1,448 cases per 100,000 over 14 days. It has one of the worst infection rates on the continent and has imposed a partial lockdown. 

Zooming out… even further

The situation isn’t exclusive to just Europe. Most of Asia, too, is confronting the second (and third) wave of the coronavirus with fresh lockdowns. 

 



 

BUSINESS

 

Peacock flies, so Comcast doesn’t flutter

Peacock

Comcast continues to benefit from our quarantine-fueled reliance on broadband internet, securing more customers than forecasted last quarter. But perhaps more notably, Comcast reported that Peacock already has 22 million subscribers, up from 10 million sign-ups in July.


Who are these Peacock subscribers?

  • Nobody knows how many of these subscribers actually pay for Peacock. That might not matter because ads otherwise support the platform’s free programming.

  • All this success is happening without NBC sitcom “The Office,” a fan-favorite among binge-watchers (“Let’s watch Jim and Pam get married for the ninth time!”).

  • Anyone who signed up hoping for more seasons of sci-fi adaptation “Brave New World” will be disappointed to learn the show is already canceled just months after its debut. But chances are, most viewers came for the old “Saturday Night Live” sketches.

Comcast shares spiked pre-market Thursday and continued to climb late in the day. The 3.63% stock growth comes despite double-digit drops in revenue in Comcast’s theme park and movie divisions. Unsurprisingly, it’s hard to make movies and ride roller coasters during a pandemic.

 

 

 

BUSINESS

 

Google, Twitter, and Facebook Grilled… Again

Pixabay

If you’re watching the U.S. Senate tech hearing, you might want to stock up on popcorn because it’s a whole lot of drama. 

 

Senate hearing – a recap 

Let us break it down for you. This truly is the simplified version, we promise! 

  • Lawmakers grilled the chief executives of Twitter, Facebook, Google, and each other at the Senate hearing for close to four hours. 

  • The Republicans claim that the companies were suppressing conservative views and for downplaying a recent New York Post article on Hunter Biden.

  • Meanwhile, the Democrats denounced it as a sham hearing to pressure the companies into going easy on the Republicans before Election Day.  

  • At the highly partisan hearing, the Commerce Committee lobbed over 120 questions at Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, FB’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Google’s Sundar Pichai.

  • Dorsey bore the brunt of questions and was asked 58 questions in total. More than four dozens of the questions were by Republicans asking him about the censorship of conservative politicians. 

  • Zuckerberg had 49 questions — mainly about how FB was protecting against interference in the election and how it was combating extremism online. 

  • Pichai was the luckiest of the trio and only had 22 questions — one of them was whether Google was too dominant. 

  • The most memorable question was Senator Ted Cruz’s “Who the hell elected you?”

The shouting, drama, and theatrics meant that the actual topic of the hearing — Section 230 — was barely debated. 

 

 

 

TECH

 

TikTok parent company enters smart home market

ByteDance

Admit it, you freaked out when your lip-sync dance videos were almost taken away earlier this year. TikTok may be on your phone, but are you ready to let TikTok into your home? 


Chinese parent company ByteDance on Thursday introduced the company’s first consumer hardware, a smart lamp, TechCrunch reports.


Here is why it matters:

  • Tiktok may get the most attention, but ByteDance is also a major overseas player in the education technology market. So this seemingly harmless smart home gadget is actually designed for busy parents to check in on their school-age children.

  • The Dali Smart Tutoring Lamp T5 — a name that only Skynet could’ve conceived — includes an AI camera that can help tutor your kids. Ready to have TikTok teach your kids?

  • This lamp retails for about $119 in China, and it’s been available since July. In ominous fashion, ByteDance is just now revealing itself as the product’s maker.

Will this lamp be an utter failure similar to Snapchat’s Spectacles or receive the same well-earned skepticism as Facebook’s Portal? Time will tell if and when this ByteDance product enters the U.S market.

 

 

 

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