The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, the New York Times first reported on Friday night, and later supported by The Wall Street Journal. This EUA follows a recommendation by an independent panel of experts commissioned by the FDA to review Pfizer’s application and provide a recommendation, which the panel unanimously supported earlier this week.

Following this authorization, shipment of the vaccine are expected to begin immediately, with 2.9 million doses in the initial shipment order. Patients in the category of highly vulnerable individuals, which include healthcare workers and senior citizens in long-term care facilities, are expected to begin receiving doses within just a few days not was the EUA is granted.

This approval isn’t a full certification by the U.S. therapeutics regulator, but it is an emergency measure that still requires a comprehensive review of the available information supplied by Pfizer based on its Phase 3 clinical trial, which covered a group of 44,000 volunteer participants. Pfizer found that its vaccine, which is an mRNA-based treatment, was 95% effective in its final analysis of the data resulting form the trial to date – and also found that safety data indicated no significant safety issues in patients who received the vaccine.

On top of the initial 2.9 million dose order, the U.S. intends to distribute around 25 million doses by the end of 2020, which could result in far fewer people actually vaccinated since the Pfizer course requires two innoculations for maximum efficacy. Most American shouldn’t expect the vaccine to be available until at least late Q1 or Q2 2021, given the pace of Pfizer’s production and the U.S. order volume.

Still, this is a promising first step, and a monumental achievement in terms of vaccine development turnaround time, since it’s been roughly eight months since work began on the Pfizer vaccine candidate. Moderna has also submitted an EUA for its vaccine candidate, which is also an mRNA treatment (which provides instructions to a person’s cells to produce effective countermeasures to the virus). That could follow shortly, meaning two vaccines might be available under EUA within the U.S. before the end of the year.

Hyundai takes a controlling stake in an iconic robotics company, Twitter acquires a screen-sharing startup and we round up some security-themed gift ideas. This is your Daily Crunch for December 11, 2020.

The big story: Hyundai acquires 80% stake in Boston Robotics

Boston Robotics is behind a number of impressive robots, including the dog-like quadruped Spot. Over the past decade, it’s changed ownership several times, with Google acquiring it in 2013, then selling it to Japanese investment giant SoftBank in 2017.

After today’s deal, which values Boston Robotics at $1.1 billion and is subject to regulatory approval, SoftBank will still own a 20% stake.

“Boston Dynamics will benefit substantially from new capital, technology, affiliated customers, and Hyundai Motor Group’s global market reach enhancing commercialization opportunity for its robot products,” Hyundai said in a press release.

The tech giants

Twitter acquires screen-sharing social app Squad — The entire Squad team is joining Twitter, while the Squad app will be shut down tomorrow.

Europe urged to block Google-Fitbit ahead of major digital policy overhaul — Shoshana Zuboff, the Harvard professor who wrote the defining book on surveillance capitalism, has become the latest voice raised against the $2.1 billion deal.

Twitter app code indicates that live video broadcasting app Periscope may get shut down — If Periscope does get shut down, it would be the end of a five-year run.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Gorillas, the on-demand grocery delivery startup taking Berlin by storm, has raised $44M Series A — Gorillas delivers groceries within an average of 10 minutes.

Sweden’s Tink raises $103M as its open banking platform grows to 3,400 banks and 250M customers — Tink aggregates a number of banks and financial services by way of an API.

Benchmark fills out its, yes, bench, with Miles Grimshaw — From his post as a general partner with New York-based Thrive, Grimshaw sourced deals in Lattice, Mapbox, Benchling and Airtable.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Cloud-gaming platforms were 2020’s most overhyped trend — The future of the technology is bright, but much less sexy.

General Catalyst’s Katherine Boyle and Peter Boyce are looking for ‘obsessive’ founders — We sat down with Boyle and Boyce to discuss what they look for in founders, which sectors they’re most excited about and how business has changed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What to expect while fundraising in 2021 — DocSend CEO Russ Heddleston peers into a post-pandemic future.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Gift Guide: 9 security and privacy gifts to keep your friends and family safe — It’s a good time to evaluate how you’re keeping your data safe, and to help others in your life do the same.

Disney+ has plans for 10 Marvel shows and 10 Star Wars shows in the next few years — The company announced an ambitious slate of streaming originals.

Give the gift of Extra Crunch for 25% off — Speaking of Extra Crunch, TechCrunch readers can send an annual membership as a gift to a friend, family member or co-worker for 25% off.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Austinites, watch out; another tech company is headed into town.

Just days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed during an interview that he has moved to Texas, and less than two weeks after HP Enterprises, a spin-out of one of the iconic Silicon Valley company Hewlett-Packard, announced that it is separately moving to Texas, yet another of the Bay Area’s best-known brands — Oracle —  is pulling up stakes and headed east to Texas, too.

The news was first reported by Bloomberg. The company confirmed the move in a statement sent to TechCrunch, saying that along with a “more flexible employee work location policy,” it has changed its corporate headquarters from Redwood Shores, Ca., to Austin. “We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work.”

A spokeswoman declined to answer more questions related to the move, but Oracle says that “many” of its employees can choose their office location, as well as continue to work from home part time or all the time.

Oracle already had an office in Austin, along with numerous other cities across the U.S., including L.A., Seattle, Denver, Orlando, and Burlington, Vt.

This story is developing. Check back for more updates.

You don’t have to buy into 5G conspiracy theories to think that you could do with a little less radiation in your life. One way of blocking radiation is a Faraday cage, but this is usually a metal mesh of some kind, making everyday use difficult. Researchers at Drexel University have managed to create a Faraday fabric by infusing ordinary cotton with a compound called MXene — meaning your tinfoil hat is about to get a lot comfier.

Faraday cages work because radiation in radio frequencies is blocked by certain metals, but because of its wavelength, the metal doesn’t even have to be solid — it can be a solid cage or flexible mesh. Many facilities are lined with materials like this to prevent outside radiation from interfering with sensitive measurements, but recently companies like Silent Pocket have integrated meshes into bags and cases that totally isolate devices from incoming signals.

Let’s be frank here and say that this is definitely paranoia-adjacent. RF radiation is not harmful in the doses and frequencies we get it, and the FCC makes sure no device exceeds certain thresholds. But there’s also the possibility that your phone or laptop is naively connecting to public Wi-Fi, getting its MAC number skimmed by other devices, and otherwise interacting with the environment in a way you might not like. And honestly… with the amount of devices emitting radiation right now, who wouldn’t mind lowering their dose a little, just to be extra sure?

That may be much easier to do in the near future, as Yury Gogotsi and his team at the Drexel Nanomaterials Institute, of which he is director, have come up with a way to coat ordinary textile fibers in a metallic compound that makes them effective Faraday cages — but also flexible, durable and washable.

The material, which they call MXene and is more of a category than a single compound, is useful in lots of ways, and the subject of dozens of papers by the team — this is just the most recent application.

“We have known for some time that MXene has the ability to block electromagnetic interference better than other materials, but this discovery shows that it can effectively adhere to fabrics and maintain its unique shielding capabilities,” said Gogotsi in a news release. You can see the fabric in action on video here.

Image Credits: Drexel University

MXenes are conductive metal-carbon compounds that can be fabricated into all sorts of forms: solid, liquid, even sprays. In this case it’s a liquid — a solution of tiny MXene flakes that adhere to the fabric quite easily and produce a Faraday effect, blocking 99.9% of RF radiation in tests. After sitting around for a couple years (perhaps forgotten in a lab cupboard) it kept 90% of their effectiveness, and the treated fabric can also be washed and worn safely.

You wouldn’t necessarily want to wear a whole suit of the stuff, but this would make it easier for clothing to include an RF-blocking pocket in a jacket, jeans or laptop bag that doesn’t feel out of place with the other materials. A hat (or underwear) with a layer of this fabric would be a popular item among conspiracy theorists, of course.

It’s still a ways from showing up on the rack, but Gogotsi was optimistic about its prospects for commercialization, noting that Drexel has multiple patents on the material and its uses. Other ways of infusing fabric with MXenes could lead to clothes that generate and store energy as well.

You can read more about this particular application of MXenes in the journal Carbon.

General Catalyst has made early bets on some of the biggest companies in tech today, including Airbnb, Lemonade and Warby Parker.

We sat down with Katherine Boyle and Peter Boyce, who co-lead the firm’s seed-stage investments, to discuss what they look for in founders, which sectors they’re most excited about and how business has changed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This conversation is part of our broader Extra Crunch Live series, where we sit down with VCs and founders to discuss startup core competencies and get advice. We’ve spoken to folks like Aileen Lee, Mark Cuban, Roelof Botha, Charles Hudson and many, others. You can browse the full library of episodes here.

Check out our full conversation with Boyce and Boyle in the YouTube video below, or skim the text for the highlights.

Which personality traits are most important in founders

Katherine Boyle: I look for what I would call this obsessive trait, where they are learning more about the regulatory complications, where they are constantly trying to figure out how to solve a problem.

I’d say that the common theme among the founders that I support are that they have this sort of obsessive gene or personality, where they will go deeper and deeper and deeper. When we invest in these companies, it becomes very clear that they often have sort of a contrarian view of the industry. Maybe they are not industry-native. They come at it from a different perspective of problem solving. They’ve had to defend that thesis for a very, very long time in front of a variety of different customers and different people. In some ways, that makes them much stronger in terms of the way they approach problems.

Peter Boyce: I think the first would be being magnetic for talent. It ends up influencing the speed of learning and development. Really incredible founding teams that can be magnetic for talent and learning just kind of spirals out of control in really good ways over time. I really look for the speed and the sources of learning. And can folks be really intentional? Can they get the right set of advisors and teammates around them?

The second would be the personal connection to the problem space. It’s like there’s this kind of deep-seated source of energy and fuel that actually isn’t going to run out. Catherine and I’ve been lucky to work across a number of different particular thematic areas, but the thing they have in common is just this personal connection to how and why their business needs to exist. Because I just think that that fuel doesn’t run out, you know what I mean? Like, that’s renewable.

On fundraising and building trust remotely

Boyle: If you’re someone who’s comfortable presenting on Zoom, making connections on Zoom, or using Signal and using Twitter and being very online, then I 100% think that you can make investments, build community and build connections through digital worlds and digital platforms. If you really like that in-person connectivity, then you might consider staying in a tech hub, or you might consider sort of these distanced walks until things go back to normal.

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At the end of 2019, no one would have predicted what an unpredictable and difficult year it has been for both startups and VCs in the fundraising world. Now we are staring down the end of 2020 and looking toward what we all hope is a better, safer 2021. What will this new year bring? With an end-of-year sprint to close deals, the anticipation of a new presidential administration and the hope of a COVID-19 vaccine on the horizon, startups and VCs know that change is on the horizon — but how much of that change will be positive?

As 2020 proved, no one can say for sure what 2021 will bring, but I’d like to put a few predictions on the table based on DocSend’s data and research, including the DocSend Startup Index, as well as some trends I’ve seen and my own experiences. These predictions center around how we’ll fundraise post-pandemic, how the funding divide may widen for some, what fundraising activity could look like into 2021, a few sectors we think will fare well and will incorporate some tips on how to succeed in the new year, no matter what comes our way.

We’ll interact through a mix of the old and the new

The pandemic forced all of us to drastically change how we work and interact with colleagues and clients. When the pandemic subsides and vaccines are widely available, in-person meetings and gathering back at the office will definitely resume, but it’s safe to say the old ways of networking and fundraising won’t shift back 100%. Founders and VCs alike have navigated the ups and downs of remote networking and fundraising interactions and will stick to what works and what doesn’t.

Is traveling to a conference the best way for a founder to have a chance at meeting the VC who is right to support their business? Will a VC want to drive an hour through Bay Area traffic for an in-person status update meeting on their latest investment? Zoom fatigue aside, video conference calls do have some benefits — efficiency, no travel time — although not all meetings are best conducted virtually.

The extent to which businesses go in-person or stick to virtual meetings could depend directly on what round of fundraising they are working toward or have completed. Businesses in the pre-seed round might stick with more Zoom meetings in order to conserve resources.

Founders in the seed round will likely split between video and in-person meetings as they are under pressure to show traction in this round, as we found in our report on seed fundraising, yet will also need to conserve resources and time. For Series A, they might have to meet less in person because they have established relationships with their investors. Series B might see more in-person meetings as their business has reached a level of complexity that is difficult to communicate via a deck or video conference.

The funding divide may widen for those outside Silicon Valley

Benchmark, the storied venture firm, has brought aboard a fifth general partner: 29-year-old Miles Grimshaw, a Yale graduate who joins the outfit from Thrive Capital, where he similarly joined a team of four other partners back in 2013, helping then raise the firm’s fourth and fifth funds (per Forbes).

From his post as a general partner with New York-based Thrive, Grimshaw had sourced deals in some of today’s buzziest startups and served on their boards, including Lattice, Mapbox, Benchling and Airtable, getting to know fellow investors at Benchmark in the process.

He represented Thrive on the board of Benchling — whose software helps lab scientists manage their biotech research — with Eric Vishria, who joined Benchmark as a general partner in 2014.

Grimshaw also represented Thrive on the board of the cloud collaboration software company Airtable with Peter Fenton, who became the longest-serving general partner at Benchmark this year, as famed VC Bill Gurley began transitioning out of an active role at the firm. (Fenton was poached from Accel back in 2006.)

And Grimshaw has been serving on a board with Benchmark’s Sarah Tavel, who was herself poached by the firm in 2017, from Greylock. That company is Supergreat, a two-year-old, New York-based site for beauty enthusiasts that’s building a community of visitors who become reviewers, who then become shoppers

Supergreat is among Benchmark’s newest bets. It was announced earlier this month that Benchmark led the startup’s $6.5 million Series A round.

Before hiring Grimshaw, Benchmark’s newest general partner was Chetan Puttagunta, who joined the firm in 2018 from New Enterprise Associates, where he spent more than seven years.

Benchmark made it known this summer that it was looking to bring aboard a fifth partner, one who likely completes the firm’s roster for now. As Fenton told us in September when he sat down with us at our TechCrunch Disrupt event, Benchmark “can’t scale. When we’ve gotten above six partners, the firm doesn’t work so well.”

Fenton talked at some length about how Benchmark views the composition of its team, in fact. If you’re curious to learn more, you can watch that interview below.

It was an unprecedented year for [insert anything under the sun], and while plenty of tech verticals saw shifts that warped business models and shifted user habits, the gaming industry experienced plenty of new ideas in 2020. However, the loudest trends don’t always take hold as predicted.

This year, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon each leaned hard into new cloud-streaming tech that shifts game processing and computing to cloud-based servers, allowing users to play graphics-intensive content on low-powered systems or play titles without dealing with lengthy downloads.

It was heralded by executives as a tectonic shift for gaming, one that would democratize access to the next generation of titles. But in taking a closer look at the products built around this tech, it’s hard to see a future where any of these subscription services succeed.

Massive year-over-year changes in gaming are rare because even if a historically unique platform launches or is unveiled, it takes time for a critical mass of developers to congregate and adopt something new — and longer for users to coalesce. As a result, even in a year where major console makers launch historically powerful hardware, massive tech giants pump cash into new cloud-streaming tech and gamers log more hours collectively than ever before, it can feel like not much has shifted.

That said, the gaming industry did push boundaries in 2020, though it’s unclear where meaningful ground was gained. The most ambitious drives were toward redesigning marketplaces in the image of video streaming networks, aiming to make a more coordinated move toward driving subscription growth and moving farther away from an industry defined for decades by one-time purchases structured around single-player storylines, one dramatically shaped by internet networking and instantaneous payments infrastructure software.

But shifting gamers farther away from one-off purchases wasn’t even the gaming industry’s most fundamental reconsideration of the year, a space reserved for a coordinated move by the world’s richest companies to upend the console wars with an invisible competitor. It’s perhaps unsurprising that the most full-featured plays in this arena are coming from the cloud services triumvirate, with Google, Microsoft and Amazon each making significant strides in recent months.

The driving force for this change is both the maturation of virtual desktop streaming and continued developer movement toward online cross-play between gaming platforms, a trend long resisted by legacy platform owners intent on maintaining siloed network effects that pushed gamers toward buying the same consoles that their friends owned.

The cross-play trend reached a fever pitch in recent years as entities like Epic Games’ Fortnite developed massive user bases that gave developers exceptional influence over the deals they struck with platform owners.

While a trend toward deeper cross-play planted the seeds for new corporate players in the gaming world, it has been the tech companies with the deepest pockets that have pioneered the most concerted plays to side-load a third-party candidate into the console wars.

It’s already clear to plenty of gamers that even in their nascent stages, cloud-gaming platforms aren’t meeting up to their hype and standalone efforts aren’t technologically stunning enough to make up for the apparent lack of selection in the content libraries.

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2020 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’re here to help! We’ll be rolling out gift guides from now through the end of December. You can find our other guides right here.

For many of us, being home a lot more right now also means being online a lot more. It’s a great time to evaluate how you’re keeping your data safe — and to help others in your life do the same.

Whether it’s teaching them to use things like physical security keys or just convincing them to stop writing their passwords on sticky notes, there are LOTS of little ways to nudge your friends and family in a safer direction. We’ve put together an array of gift ideas that’ll help them keep things locked down without breaking the bank (and, if you’re the one they’d call to help clean up after a security incident, probably save you some time in the end.)

Much of what we wrote for our 2019 guide still holds true. There are some timeless security essentials that you can’t miss out on, and we’ve searched around for the best deals. But we also have a few more fun gift ideas up our sleeves for the holiday season.

This article contains links to affiliate partners where available. When you buy through these links, TechCrunch may earn an affiliate commission.

Timeless security essentials for your friends and family

(Images from top-left clockwise: Yubico, 1Password, Amazon, and Amazon)

A password manager subscription

Password managers are a real lifesaver. One strong, unique password lets you into your entire bank of passwords. They’re great for storing your passwords and other secrets, but also for encouraging you to use better, stronger, unique passwords. And because many are cross-platform, you can bring your passwords with you. Plenty of password managers exist — from LastPass, Lockbox, and Dashlane, to open-source versions like KeePass. Many are free, but a premium subscription often comes with benefits and better features. And if you’re a journalist, 1Password has a free subscription just for you.

Price: Many free, premium offerings start at $36 – $45 annually
Available from: 1Password | LastPass | Dashlane | KeePass

Don’t forget about a physical two-factor key

Your online accounts have everything about you and you’d want to keep them safe. A security key is a physical hardware device that offers far greater protections than a two-factor code going to your phone. A security key plugs into your USB port on your computer (or the charging port on your phone) to “prove” to online services, like Facebook, Google, and Twitter, that you are who you say you are. YubiKeys are by far our favorite and come in all shapes and sizes. The latest YubiKey 5 series has something for everyone, no matter what kind of devices they have. They’re also cheap. Google also has a range of its own branded Titan security keys, one of which also offers Bluetooth connectivity.

Price: From $25 to $55, depending on device type, from Yubico Store or Google Store

A webcam cover to protect your privacy

We’re all living through this pandemic together, and most of us are still working from home. If you, like me, have accidentally joined a video call by mistake, you’ll be more thankful for your webcam cover than you could ever know. Webcam covers slide open when you need to access your camera, and slides to cover the lens when you don’t. It’s that easy. You can buy webcam covers from practically anywhere — just make sure you get a thin cover that supports your device so as to not damage its display when you close the lid. You can support local businesses and non-profits — you can search for unique and interesting webcam covers on Etsy or from your favorite internet rights group.

Price: from $5 – $10.
Available from: Etsy | Electronic Frontier Foundation

A microphone blocker to prevent hot mics (and malware)

Now you have your webcam cover, what about your microphone? Just as hackers can tap into your webcam, they can also pick up on your audio. Microphone blockers contain a semiconductor that tricks your computer or device into thinking that it’s a working microphone, when in fact it’s not able to pick up any audio. Anyone hacking into your device won’t hear a thing. Some modern Macs already come with a new Apple T2 security chip which prevents hackers from snooping on your microphone when your laptop’s lid is shut. But a microphone blocker will work all the time, even when the lid is open.

Price: from $7 to $20 on Amazon

More gifts for the security and privacy minded

A Pi-hole to block pesky ads and online trackers

(Image: Pi-Hole)

Think of a Pi-hole as a “hardware ad-blocker.” A Pi-hole is a modified Raspberry Pi mini-computer that runs ad-blocking technology as a box that sits on your network. It means that everyone on your home network benefits from ad blocking. Online ads generate revenue for websites but are also notorious for tracking users across the web. Until ads can behave properly, a Pi-hole is a great way to capture and sinkhole bad ad traffic. The hardware may be cheap, but the ad-blocking software is free. Donations to the cause are welcome.

Price: from $35.
Available from: Pi-hole | Raspberry Pi

Get your computer or phone a privacy screen

(Image: Amazon)

How often have you seen someone’s private messages or documents as you look over their shoulder, or see them in the next seat over? It’s not as much of an issue when we’re all at home — but we’re also all getting pretty comfortable with having whatever on our screens right now, which might not be the best habit to develop. Privacy screens can help protect you from “visual hacking.” These screens make it near-impossible for anyone other than the device user to snoop at what you’re working on. And, you can get them for all kinds of devices and displays — including phones. But make sure you get the right size!

Price: from about $17 and up, depending on display size
Available from: Amazon

Find a perfect fit with authentic hacker apparel

(Image: Zero Day Clothing)

Ditch the stereotypical hacker hoodie, and get some decent hacker apparel instead. Zero Day Clothing has some excellent t-shirts and other clothing for your hacker or security-minded friends, from celebrating Diffie-Hellman encryption, fearing the botnet, or designing your own — there’s something for everyone. We’re particularly a fan because the company supports a ton of causes, from net neutrality all the way to freedom of speech and LGBTQ+ rights and fair access to knowledge and education.

Available from: Zero Day Clothing

A Raspberry Pi 400 computer for tinkering

(Image: Romain Dillet/TechCrunch)

The micro-computer maker has a new product, the Raspberry Pi 400, a personal computer kit built into a keyboard and mouse. Connect it to a display and you can get started almost immediately. The device is more powerful than a Chromebook, and allows you to build, develop, and tinker to your heart’s content.

Price: $70
Available from: Raspberry Pi

Test your hacker skills with the ‘Backdoors & Breaches’ card game

(Image: Black Hills Infosec)

Backdoors & Breaches is a security-focused card game, developed by Black Hills Infosec, designed to help you conduct incident response exercises while learning about attack tactics, tools, and techniques. It’s a great way to learn more about how to respond after a breach. Don’t worry if you can’t play in person any time soon — you can still play virtually, thanks to an active Discord channel.

Available from: Shopify