Good morning, team. Let’s do it.

1. Jeff Bezos has announced he will step down as Amazon’s CEO later this year and be replaced by Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy. In a letter to Amazon employees published Tuesday afternoon, Bezos announced that he would transition to executive chairman, where he’ll focus on “new products and early initiatives.” It was reported at the tail end of last year that Bezos had become more fully involved in the daily operations of the company after having spent the past few years almost exclusively focused on long-term projects.

2. The RBA kept the official cash rate on hold at 0.10% on Tuesday, as expected by everybody. With the central bank having run out of monetary ammunition, further stimulus is expected to remain the domain of state and federal governments. However, the Morrison government has largely ruled out the notion that more stimulus is forthcoming, setting an expectation that the economy will be left to its own devices for now.

3. Australian lending has grown once again, with $26 billion in new borrowing commitments approved in December alone, according to the latest ABS figures. It represents 31.2% growth on last year’s figure, with owner-occupier loans up nearly 40% year-on-year. Given the strength of buyer appetite, coupled by a lack of sellers, the Commonwealth Bank is forecasting 8% price growth across capital cities this year.

4. Advocates for the unemployed have condemned an industry proposal which would prolong the boosted JobSeeker, but only for the long-term jobless. The Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union called the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry proposal “divisive”. Under the proposal, those who lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic would return to the standard JobSeeker rate of roughly $40 a day.

5. The country’s adult industry peak body has criticised a proposed federal law that would force hosts and social media platforms to take down sexually explicit content. Launched late last year, the government’s draft Online Safety Act was proposed to combat online harms including cyberbullying, image-based abuse and violent material. The Eros Association said the inclusion of sexually explicit material in the Act could force sex workers offline.

6. Reddit day-traders are failing to hold the line, based on Tuesday’s trading activity of GameStop and AMC Entertainment. GameStop plunged 40% on Tuesday after falling 31% in Monday’s trading session. AMC Entertainment fell 31% on Tuesday after trading flat on Monday. Meanwhile, Netflix is planning to make a movie about the GameStop stocks saga.

7. One of Uber’s earliest investors Bill Gurley said the company “burned” billions of dollars on self-driving tech. “We probably burned $US2.5 billion on autonomous that was a waste of money,” Gurley said, adding that in retrospect that sum would have been better spent on growing Uber Eats. The appeal of self-driving vehicles for a platform like Uber is obvious: if the copany could develop robotaxis capable of reliably ferrying passengers around without intervention, it would theoretically save heaps on payroll and other costs associated with employing human drivers. So far, it’s seemed like more of a pipe dream than an actual strategy.

8. SpaceX launched a 16-story prototype of its Starship Mars rocket system 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) above Boca Chica, Texas on Tuesday. The prototype, called SN9, was supposed to attempt a soft landing, but the spaceship slammed into the ground sideways and exploded. This is the second time the aerospace company, founded by Elon Musk, has launched such an ambitious Starship flight and seen the vehicle destroyed upon landing. You can watch it all here:

9. A mutation in the coronavirus variants found in South Africa and Brazil has been detected in the variant found in the UK. Scientists believe the E484K mutation could help the coronavirus evade antibodies. “If this E484K mutation is acquired by most of the UK B.1.1.7 variants, the recent reassurances from recent studies showing that the mRNA vaccines” – like those from Moderna and Pfizer – “will still offer optimum protection against the original UK variant may no longer apply,” Julian Tang, a clinical virologist at the University of Leicester, said in a statement.

10. The Trump campaign’s chief pollster put together an autopsy detailing why he lost the 2020 election. The conclusions confirm public data indicating that Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and diminished support among white voters were key factors in his loss. They also fly in the face of Trump’s claim that he lost the election because it was “rigged” and stolen from him.

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