Hi, we've got 3 charts for you today:
That Tesla has announced its highest ever number of deliveries, up 73% on last year, is quite an impressive feat given the global shortage of computer chips. That shortage, and other supply chain issues, have weighed on rival automakers such as Ford and General Motors, which saw their respective sales fall 27% and 33% in the most recent quarter.
Competition heats up
Whenever we update this Tesla chart, it usually looks similar, with record delivery numbers in each of the last 5 quarters.
Of course, Tesla's deliveries are still around one-tenth of those of the biggest automakers in the world (such as Volkswagen or Toyota), and so Musk and co. need to keep breaking their own records to justify the company's massive stock market valuation. At the latest count Tesla's market cap. is about $774bn (almost 6x Volkswagen's).
What will be interesting is how the market values electric rival Rivian, which has only begun delivering its truck in September. The company is reportedly hoping to raise $8bn at an $80bn valuation. If it pulls that off, it will be a seriously well-funded competitor, with 100,000 pre-orders from Amazon to boot.
South Korean show Squid Game has officially gone viral, as millions around the world have tuned in to watch the hunger-games-style drama, which sees hundreds of contestants battle it out in life-or-death games.
Google searches for the show, which was originally released on September 17th, have eclipsed relative search volume for other viral shows like The Crown, The Witcher, Tiger King and The Mandalorian. Netflix's co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, even confirmed that it was on track to become Netflix's most-watched show in any language in the company's history.
K-POP
South Korea has had a stunning influence on global pop culture in the last decade, starting with Psy's Gangnam Style in 2012. Since then K-pop sensations BTS and Blackpink have become two of the biggest bands in the world, thriller Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2019, and now Squid Game is breaking records in the age of streaming.
Facebook has had quite a week. On Monday the company's 3 major platforms, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, all went down for 6+ hours. Then a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, testified in front of a Senate Commerce subcommittee, where she did didn't pull any punches.
The outages at the start of the week were a boon for Facebook rivals. Messaging apps like Telegram and Signal surged up the app download rankings, with Telegram's founder claiming 70 million new users on Monday. Snapchat and TikTok also scooped up more screentime, with usage up 23% and 11% respectively. Facebook's stock dropped 5%, only to gain half of its losses back yesterday.
The bigger problem
The technical issues may have been Facebook's longest outage for years, but the damage done is likely to be limited to Monday. That's not quite true for whistleblower Haugen's testimony to the Senate yesterday. She doubled down on her criticism that Facebook is harmful to teen mental health (and knows it), stokes divisions within society and is harmful to democracy.
Zuckerberg answered the age old Facebook prompt "what's on your mind" with a 1300+ word rebuttal of Haugen's main criticisms.
1) The Australian city of Melbourne often tops rankings for "best places to live". It's now officially also the world's "most locked down city".
2) Incredible data heatmaps of the IMDB ratings for any TV show, from Jim Vallandingham. The Game of Thrones one still isn't pretty.
3) A trillion-dollar platinum coin could be minted to temporarily fill the hole in the treasury's budget if Congress can't solve the debt-ceiling problem in the US.
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5) A new hydrogel tablet can reportedly purify a liter of contaminated river water in less than 1 hour.
6) A global deal on corporate tax is apparently "one-millimeter" away, according to the French finance minister. The deal could see a minimum corporate tax rate of 15% across participating countries.
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