grammar schools have been hit — shutting
down remote learning for students from
Baltimore to Las Vegas.
Cybersecurity firm Emsisoft estimates the cost
of U.S. ransomware attacks in the U.S. alone this
year at more than $9 billion between ransoms
paid and downtime/recovery.
— PC makers
After beginning the year grappling with
exasperating delays in their supply chains,
the personal computer industry found itself
scrambling to keep up with surging demand for
machines that became indispensable during
a pandemic that kept millions of workers and
students at home.
The outbreak initially stymied production
because PC makers weren’t able to get the parts
they needed from overseas factories that shut
down during the early stages of the health crisis.
Those closures contributed to a steep decline in
sales during the first three months of the year.
But it has been boom times ever since.
The July-September period was particularly
robust, with PC shipments in the U.S. surging
11% from the same time in 2019 — the
industry’s biggest quarterly sales increase in a
decade, according to the research firm Gartner.
— E-commerce
The biggest of the bunch, Amazon, is one of
the few companies that has thrived during the
coronavirus outbreak. People have turned to
it to order groceries, supplies and other items
online, helping the company bring in record
revenue and profits between April and June.
That came even though it had to spend $4