Biden in UK, GameStop’s pivot, internet outage explainer

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Here’s what you need to know

The US loosened travel restrictions for 61 countries. But the list doesn’t include the UK, despite successful British and American vaccine programs and a “special relationship.”

Of course, Joe Biden still gets to go to London. The US president lands in the UK today, doesn’t even have to quarantine, and will meet this week with prime minister Boris Johnson, G7 leaders, and the queen.

The US Senate approved $250 billion in funding against China. A quarter of the that is for semiconductors, while the remainder is meant for US tech innovation and secure supply chains.

Tesla’s China deliveries are growing again. After a slow April, the company’s shipments increased 29% in May, but recent bad publicity could still put a dent in retail sales.

The IRS is investigating ProPublica’s billionaire tax allegations. But it’s trying to find out who leaked the info, rather than close tax avoidance loopholes.

Ferrari appointed a tech specialist as its new boss. Reflecting deep shifts in the auto industry, the Italian luxury car maker tapped up Benedetto Vigna, who currently runs a division of STMicroelectronics.

What to watch for

GameStop’s meme-fueled rise faces another test today as the company behind the fanfare reports its quarterly earnings. Infused with an enormous amount of capital, and under the gaze of a skeptical world, the company will try to prove it’s worth its bizarre $300 stock price.

Ye olde brick-and-mortar video game shoppe is trying to get with the times—and fast. It’s betting big on a new thing called e-commerce, funding its pivot with recent stock offerings that netted $551 million.

But GameStop has been reluctant to cash in on its newfound success, issuing only 3.5 million new shares of stock while fellow meme craze AMC Entertainment has issued more than 100 million new shares since the trading frenzy began in January. That’s seen the movie theater chain surpass GameStop in market capitalization while, somehow, its stock price continues to rise.

The memelords have delivered GameStop to glory. Can it seize the day?

Charting quick-service dining in India

Quick-service restaurants (QSR) are proving to be pandemic-proof in India, where takeout is quickly gaining more acceptance. This is good news for companies like Devyani International, the biggest Indian franchise of US-based fast-food conglomerate Yum! Brands. It’s IPO hasn’t even been approved yet, but it’s already being heralded as a success.

After all, Devyani International is hitting the market at a time when Indian share indices are close to their lifetime highs, and other QSRs like Burger King India have had big IPO successes in recent months. While KFC and Pizza Hut stores have made up a big slice of Devyani International’s revenue, the company has said that there’s still a chance Covid-19 could end up eating away at its profits in the future.

Breaking: The Internet

Large parts of the internet—including Quartz!—collapsed on Tuesday (Jan.  8) when servers belonging to cloud computing service provider Fastly went down for more than half an hour. Fastly and other similar companies perform a crucial service: offering users just-cached versions of web pages from a server close to them, instead of forcing them to wait (milliseconds) longer to access the originals of these pages stored on servers much further away.

We used that 30 minutes to brush up on our internet outage knowledge. Here’s a quick lexicon:

Error 503: The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) code issued by a server when it can’t handle a request made by a user because it is down or overloaded.

Varnish cache: A proxy server that helps users access HTTP websites faster. Varnish is the web-acceleration software that Fastly is built on.

Guru mediation: Fastly’s tongue-in-cheek twist on “guru meditation,” an error message popularized by a 1980s computer company called Amiga. Its “Joyboard” was a foot-controlled joystick. When the system crashed, Amiga engineers would relieve their frustrations by sitting cross-legged on the Joyboard, trying to be as still and balanced as a yogic guru.

Is it too risky to rely on just a few providers for our digital access? Not necessarily. Their companies’ servers are spread out around the world, which diversifies the ecosystem rather than concentrates it. And these kinds of outages are relatively rare. When they happen, they don’t last long. In fact, if you think about it, it’s sort of astonishing that the internet stays up as much as it does.

✦ If you found yourself panicking about Quartz’s brief disappearance, it might be time to consider a membership. Try it for free and access all of our journalism, workshops, emails, and more—as long as the internet’s working.

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(Psst.☝️ We took the last story out from behind our paywall to make sure you don’t miss it.)

Surprising discoveries

Anyone could have edited The Verge during the Fastly outage. The news site swapped in a Google doc for its homepage but forgot to change the permissions.

A woman got back the wallet she lost in 1975. The contents included a Grateful Dead concert ticket, poetry, and forgotten snapshots.

An award-winning landmine-sniffing rat is retiring. Magawa helped clear more than 225,000 square meters (55 acres) of land in Cambodia during his five-year career.

Australia has a new largest dinosaur. The recently discovered species, nicknamed “the southern titan,” would have been 6.5 m (21 ft) tall and 30 m (98 ft) long.

A Miami Beach condo is the most expensive home bought with cryptocurrency. How many pizzas could you buy with that $22.5 million?

Our best wishes for a productive day. Please send any news, comments, 46-year-old concert tickets, and suggested edits to Quartz’s homepage to hi@qz.com. Get the most out of Quartz by downloading our iOS app and becoming a member. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Hasit Shah, Sumnima Lama, Tripti Lahiri, Niharika Sharma, Annabelle Timsit, Samanth Subramanian, Scott Nover, Susan Howson, and Liz Webber.