San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
If you missed it ...
In a week that saw Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos step down, leaving Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg as the last founder-CEO in Big Tech, this also happened: SpaceX’s first all-civilian space flight set for late this year will provide an out-of-this-world fundraising opportunity for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which says it expects to generate $200 million for cancer research. Billionaire Jared Isaacman, who will finance and pilot the mission for himself and three others, will promote the remaining seat in a Super Bowl commercial. Anyone over 18 can go to St. Jude’s website to enter for a chance to win a seat. A drawing will be held March 1.
Amazon revealed plans for the next phase of its headquarters redevelopment in Virginia, featuring a signature 350-foot helixshaped office tower that can be climbed from the outside like a mountain hike. The head-turning twisted building at the center of the proposal was immediately compared to a poop emoji by some.
Google announced it is closing the internal studio tasked with developing games for its Stadia cloud-gaming service, a move that raises questions about the future of the Stadia service itself. Google started Stadia in November 2019 as a new type of videogame service that operates without a console and that stores game-playing sessions in the cloud. It lets players jump across devices including phones, PCs and laptops.
The Kingdom of Wakanda is staking out turf on the Disney + streaming service. A TV series set in the “Black Panther” kingdom will be developed as part of a five-year, exclusive television deal the Walt Disney Co. announced with filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s Proximity Media company. Coogler wrote and directed 2018’s “Black Panther,” a box-office hit that turned Chadwick Boseman into a superstar. The actor died in August of cancer.
Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. For more items and links, subscribe to the Tech Chronicle newsletter at www.sfchronicle.com/newsletters/techchronicle. Twitter: @techchronicle