Week 08/10/2020 - 08/16/2020

Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees. The injunction is stayed for 10 days, however, giving Uber and Lyft an opportunity to appeal the decision. Uber said it planned to file an immediate emergency appeal to block the ruling from going into effect.
Simon Property Group, the states’ largest mall landlord, reported its $1.1 billion revenue (declined 24%) in Q2 due to the failure of collecting all rents and also the covid-19 closure.
Kodak stock plunges 30% after its $765M loan from the US gov to make drugs is put on hold — regulators are investigating insider trading allegations.
Canopy Growth, Earth’s most valuable cannabis company, just hit investors with stronger-than-expected earnings. It has 22$ higher sales than the same quarter last year.

Joe Biden has selected Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate. She’ll become the first Black woman on a major party presidential ticket in U.S. history.
President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday that Russia has become the first country to approve a vaccine, Sputnik-V, to prevent coronavirus infection, which will be ready for the public by January
Big Ten conference presidents and chancellors voted today to postpone all fall sports seasons, including football, amid the coronavirus pandemic with the hopes of playing in the spring.
Lucid Motor, a Silicon Valley-based electric vehicle startup, says its upcoming Lucid Air luxury sedan is expected to achieve an unprecedented driving range of 517 miles on a single battery charge.
Facebook took down 22.5 million posts for hate speech during the second quarter of this year, more than ten times the number it removed in the same quarter last year and more than twice the number removed in the first quarter of 2020.
Facebook will launch a new division that will put all its payment products under one umbrella.
Airbnb is planning to file for IPO in August.
Softbank made around $12 billion in profit last quarter.

U.S. consumer prices rose more than expected in July, with a measure of underlying inflation increasing by the most in 29-1/2 years amid broad gains in the costs of goods and services.
Stocks rose sharply today, putting the S&P 500 just below its all-time high set in February as shares of the major tech companies recovered some of their steep losses from the previous session.
Tesla announced its first 5-for-1 stock split and its stock price surged again.
Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber, announced that if the appeal fails, Uber would likely pause its service in California until the November election.
Lyft’s reported 61% revenue drop in Q2. It had 8.7M active riders compared to 21M+ in the previous quarter.
Microsoft started taking orders for the Surface Duo, a new dual-screen Android devices, which indicates Microsoft is back to selling smartphones for the first time since it abandoned its mobile business more than four years ago.
Airbnb revenue fell 67% in Q2.
Tencent, which runs the world’s largest video games business and China’s biggest social media platform, reported a net profit of US$4.8 billion for Q2 and it has 37% quarterly profit increase.

Weekly jobless claims came in below 1 million for the first time since March.
Apple is going to promote a series of bundles that will let customers subcribe to several of its digital services at a lower monthly price. The bundle is called “Apple One”.
Trump blamed Democrats for holding up a deal on another coronavirus relief package, and ripped their proposal to give billions of dollars in aid to the U.S. Postal Service. Up to 70% of voters could use mail-in voting but Trump said mail-in voting could lead to “the gratest fraud in history”.
The Big Ten and the Pac-12 both canceled their upcoming fall football seasons this week. This could disrupt the flow of more than $1 billion from advertisers to the television networks that count on a slate of game broadcasts.
Israel, United Arab Emirates agree to “full normalization” of relations. As part of the agreement, Israel will suspend declaring sovereignty over areas outlined in the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan, the statement said, adding the country would focus on expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world.
A derecho made huge damange to the buidlings and corn plants in Iowa and Illinois. Fields planted with this year’s corn were flattened, while grain bins containing last year’s harvest were torn open. Many midwestern residents remain without power. This derecho was the worst derecho of the states since 2012.

U.S. productivity (the amount of output per hour of work) rose at a 7.3% rate in the second quarter as the number of hours worked fell by nearly half, the biggest drop-off since the government started tracking the data more than 70 years ago. The increase in productivity was the largest since 2009. Labor costs also jumped, rising 12.2%.
Firtnite developer Epic Games sues Apple and Google over app store practices. Facebook and Spotify fully support Epic Games’ moves.