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Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car subsidiary, is reshuffling its top executive lineup. On April 2, John Krafcik, Waymo’s CEO since 2015, declared that he will be stepping down from his role. He will be replaced by Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, the company’s former COO and CTO. Krafcik will remain as an advisor to the company. “[With] the fully autonomous Waymo One ride-hailing service open to all in our launch area of Metro Phoenix, and with the fifth generation of the Waymo Driver being prepared for deployment in ride-hailing and goods delivery, it’s a wonderful opportunity for me to pass the baton to Tekedra and Dmitri as Waymo’s co-CEOs,” Krafcikwrote on LinkedInas he declared his departure....

The first draft of the human genome waspublished 20 years agoin2001, took nearly three years and costbetween US$500 million and $1 billion. TheHuman Genome Projecthas allowed scientists to read, almost end to end, the 3 billion pairs of DNA bases – or “letters” – that biologically define a human being. That project has allowed a new generation ofresearchers like me, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute, to identifynovel targets for cancer treatments, engineermice with human immune systemsand even build awebpage where anyone can navigate the entire human genomewith the same ease with which you use Google Maps....

Update (12PM CET, December 30, 2021):Politico reportsthat plans to launch theAllianceforthe Futureofthe Internet this week have been postponed. A new frontier in the battle for the web may emerge this week. At a virtual “Summit for Democracy” hosted by President Joe Biden, the White House is expected to launch its “Alliance for the Future of the Internet.” While precise plans for the alliance remain unclear, internal documents suggest the US aims to pull allies towards its vision of a free internet — and away from the models of China and Russia....

One of the largest crypto exchanges in the US, Coinbase, announced last week that it’s planning to go public on April 14. The firm said that theSecurities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accepted its S-1 registration statement and it’ll have the ticker symbol of COIN, which is pretty cool. We’re happy to announce that earlier today, the SEC declared our S-1 registration statement effective and that we expect our direct listing to occur on April 14, 2021, with our Class A common stock trading on the@NASDAQunder the ticker symbol COIN....

Instagram is already a popular social network with more than 1 billion active users. But with TikTok’s ballooning growth, the firm is now thinking of moving out of its “photo-sharing app” silo. Last night, Instagram’s chief, Adam Mosseri, said in a video that the company is now building features focusing on creators, video, shopping, and messaging. Mosseri added that people now use Instagram “to be entertained.” He also acknowledged the scale of TikTok and YouTube — and hinted that the company wants to compete with them both....