11:40 PM • | Ryan Naraine / SecurityWeek: Mimic, which helps businesses detect, deflect, and quickly recover from ransomware attacks, emerges from stealth with a $27M seed led by Ballistic Ventures |
10:35 PM • | Associated Press: Japan's PM Fumio Kishida unveils an international voluntary framework for regulation and use of generative AI and says 49 countries and regions have signed up |
9:45 PM • | Aria Alamalhodaei / TechCrunch: Hubble Network, which is building a satellite network for Bluetooth devices, says it has made a Bluetooth connection directly to a satellite for the first time |
9:15 PM • | Michael Kan / PCMag: Onur Aksoy, who pleaded guilty to selling fake Cisco equipment on Amazon and eBay from 2013 to 2022, making over $100M, is sentenced to over six years in prison |
9:00 PM • | Bloomberg: Microsoft announces new anti-hacking initiatives and adds deputy chief information security officers to its product groups after several serious cyberattacks |
8:25 PM • | Karissa Bell / Engadget: X tweaks its block feature to let users see replies to their posts even by users who have blocked them, with the aim of identifying and reporting “bad content” |
7:50 PM • | Bloomberg: Cloudflare reports Q1 revenue up 30% YoY to $378.6M, vs. $373.7M est., and forecasts Q2 revenue below estimates |
7:35 PM • | Nikkei Asia: Apple reports Q2 revenue down 8.1% YoY to $16.4B in Greater China, down 12.7% YoY to $6.3B in Japan, and down 17.2% YoY to $6.7B in the rest of Asia-Pacific |
6:50 PM • | Sudz Niel Kar / MyHealthyApple: The US FDA approves Apple Watch's AFib history feature for clinical studies, the first digital health tech qualified under the FDA's MDDT program |
6:20 PM • | Paige Smith / Bloomberg: Block plans to invest 10% of its gross profit from bitcoin products each month into buying bitcoin; Block's $220M BTC investment grew by ~160% to $573M as of Q1 |
5:55 PM • | Zac Hall / 9to5Mac: Apple not making major AI news at upcoming product event, WWDC still expected venue [Updated] |
5:25 PM • | Todd Spangler / Variety: Apple reports Q2 revenue from Services, which includes Apple TV+ and Apple Music, up 14% YoY to $23.9B, vs. $23.12B estimated, an all-time record |
5:05 PM • | Olga Kharif / Bloomberg: Coinbase reports Q1 net revenue up 116% YoY to $1.59B, vs. $1.32B est., net income of $1.18B, consumer transaction revenue of $935M, up 99% QoQ |
4:53 PM • | Kif Leswing / CNBC: Apple Q2 revenue: iPhone down 10% YoY to $45.96B, Mac up 4% to $7.45B, iPad down 17% to $5.56B, and Wearables, Home, and Accessories down 10% to $7.91B |
4:42 PM • | Ryan Vlastelica / Bloomberg: Apple Q2 revenue: iPhone down 10% YoY to $45.96B, Mac up 4% to $7.45B, iPad down 17% to $5.56B, and Wearables, Home, and Accessories down 10% to $7.91B |
4:35 PM • | MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: Block reports Q1 revenue up 19% YoY to $5.96B, vs. $5.82B est., gross profit up 22% to $2.09B, Square profit up 19%, and Cash App profit up 25% |
4:32 PM • | Apple: Apple reports Q2 revenue down 4% YoY to $90.75B, net income down 2% to $23.64B, and announces a $110B share buyback, its largest yet |
4:10 PM • | Russell Brandom / Rest of World: WhatsApp told Delhi High Court last week that it will be forced to leave India if required to maintain “traceability” for messages as part of 2021's IT rules |
3:35 PM • | Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk: Tether partners with Chainalysis to identify risky crypto addresses that could be used for bypassing sanctions or illicit activities, like terrorist financing |
3:05 PM • | Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Microsoft bans law enforcement from using its real-time facial recognition tech on mobile cameras to ID a person in “uncontrolled, in-the-wild” environment |
2:25 PM • | Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Hyundai invests $475M in self-driving startup Motional and plans to spend another $448M to buy 11% of Aptiv's common equity interest in Motional |
2:05 PM • | New York Times: A US federal judge grills the DOJ and Google in the closing arguments of US v. Google, as the most consequential tech antitrust case since the 1990s concludes |
1:35 PM • | Senator Scott Wiener / @scott_wiener: [Thread] California State Senator Scott Wiener defends his AI safety bill, SB 1047, after criticism that it will “crush OpenAI's competitors” and open-source AI |
12:55 PM • | David Pierce / The Verge: Rabbit R1 review: $199 is the right price, fun design, and a good mic, but the best features are all MIA, finicky and slow, and using a phone is better |
12:20 PM • | Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE: Brazil-based Indicium, which helps enterprises become “data-driven” using data stacks from AWS and others, raised $40M to expand its operations in the US |
12:05 PM • | Kalley Huang / The Information: Some developers are releasing versions of Llama 3, which has a context window of 8K+ tokens, with longer context windows, thanks to Meta's open-source approach |
11:30 AM • | Meir Orbach / CTech: LayerX, which makes a browser extension to let companies secure their devices and SaaS apps, raised a $26M Series A, bringing its total funding to $34M |
11:10 AM • | Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: Apple adds carveouts to its EU core tech fee, exempting free app developers and giving those with annual global revenue under €10M a three-year “free on-ramp” |
11:00 AM • | The Verge: Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy steps down, as the company lays off ~15% of its workforce, or ~400 people, its fifth cut since its 2021 peak, when it had 8,600 staff |
10:20 AM • | Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft rolls out passkey support for all consumer accounts; Microsoft account owners can generate passkeys across Windows, Android, and iOS |
9:50 AM • | Katie Roof / Bloomberg: LA-based wealth management startup Altruist, whose software and app help with trading and more, raised a $169M Series E led by Iconiq at a $1.5B valuation |
8:50 AM • | Tom Phillips / Eurogamer.net: Sony plans to remove Horizon Zero Dawn, one of its biggest first-party PS4-only games, from PlayStation Plus on May 21, adding to speculation of a PS5 remaster |
8:35 AM • | Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: Microsoft confirms the April 2024 Windows security updates break VPN connections across client and server platforms on Windows 11, 10, and Server 2008 or later |
8:25 AM • | Sarah McBride / Bloomberg: Karius, which uses AI to help analyze blood tests in 400 hospitals, raised $100M led by Khosla, after raising $165M in early 2020 led by Vision Fund II |
8:15 AM • | Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Google says 400M+ Google Accounts have used passkeys since the rollout, logging 1B+ authentications, and expands passkeys to its Advanced Protection Program |
7:55 AM • | Bloomberg: Starlink users in some unauthorized regions can seemingly still use the internet, despite SpaceX telling users the service would be unavailable to them by May 1 |
7:40 AM • | Tess Owen / Wired: Tech Transparency Project: US extremist militias are quietly coordinating across ~200 Facebook groups and profiles, after lying low since the January 6 riot |
7:15 AM • | Kate O'Keeffe / Bloomberg: Sources and documents: Huawei is secretly funding cutting-edge research at US universities including Harvard through an independent Washington-based foundation |
6:55 AM • | Steve Lohr / New York Times: A profile of US District Court judge Amit P. Mehta, who is presiding over the US v. Google case, which could set a precedent for other US tech antitrust cases |
6:35 AM • | Justin Ling / Wired: A look at Ukraine's combat drone startup industry; Kyiv estimates ~200 local startups produce drones based on commercial first-person-view or photography drones |
6:15 AM • | Molly White / Citation Needed: As people yearn for the web's “good old days”, bringing those days back is possible with new tech, the possibility of new protocols, and more internet users |
5:50 AM • | Matthew Goldstein / New York Times: TMTG co-founder Andy Litinsky, testifying as a witness in an insider trading case, says Trump nearly derailed the DWAC deal in October 2021, before signing on |
5:05 AM • | Bloomberg: AI has the potential to ease the US meat industry's labor vulnerability by letting robots perform some of the high precision tasks required to butcher meat |
4:35 AM • | Kyle Chayka / New Yorker: As social media platforms pivot away from news distribution, a look at news sites like The Verge, which feel more like social media, with aggregation and more |
4:10 AM • | Jem Aswad / Variety: Universal Music Group and TikTok strike a new music licensing deal to bring UMG music back to the platform, including “improved remuneration” and AI protections |
2:35 AM • | Sofia Barnett / Wired: Anonymous social media app Sidechat has become both a place for dialog and a breeding ground for hate speech amid US college protests over the Israel-Hamas war |
2:00 AM • | Bloomberg: A look at Intel's efforts to build Ohio One, a “mega fab” that could become the world's largest chip factory and to which the company has committed $28B |
1:30 AM • | Hannah Murphy / Financial Times: Cybersecurity experts say responses to the new US data breach disclosure rules, which have raised legal risks for public companies and their CISOs, have varied |
12:50 AM • | Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: Microsoft announces plans to invest $2.2B in cloud and AI services infrastructure in Malaysia over four years and train 200K people in AI skills in the country |
12:35 AM • | Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Trend Micro: cybercriminals and nation-state spies are coexisting inside the same compromised name-brand routers, using the devices to disguise their attacks |
12:25 AM • | Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: SK Hynix says its capacity to make HBM chips is almost fully booked through 2025, and now aims to begin mass production of its next-generation HBM chip in Q3 |
12:05 AM • | Hannah Rabinowitz / CNN: The US DOJ sentences Ukrainian national Yaroslav Vasinskyi to 13+ years in prison and orders $16M in restitution for helping REvil conduct ransomware attacks |
10:40 PM • | Bhavya Dilipkumar / Moneycontrol: Chennai-based CRM software maker Freshworks redesignates CEO Girish Mathrubootham as the executive chairman and names Dennis Woodside as his replacement |
10:10 PM • | Vittoria Elliott / Wired: Ethan Zuckerman sues to stop Meta from blocking his planned Unfollow Everything 2.0 extension that would let Facebook users tune or even turn off their Feed |
9:05 PM • | Mengqi Sun / Wall Street Journal: The US CFTC appoints Ted Kaouk as its first chief AI officer; Kaouk currently serves as the regulator's chief data officer and director of its data division |
8:45 PM • | Annie Palmer / CNBC: An NLRB judge finds Amazon CEO Andy Jassy violated US labor law with his comments in 2022 suggesting workers would be “less empowered” if they voted in a union |
7:30 PM • | Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch: Testimony: UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty says the Change Healthcare hack impacted “maybe” 30% of US citizens; UnitedHealth will notify users in “several months” |
7:20 PM • | Umar Shakir / The Verge: Snap announces Snapchat users can edit messages within five minutes of sending them, “coming soon” to Snapchat+ subscribers “first”, map reactions, and more |
6:45 PM • | Leah Nylen / Bloomberg: US v. Google: Google paid Apple $20B in 2022 to be the default search engine in Safari; in 2020, Google's payments constituted 17.5% of Apple's operating income |
6:10 PM • | Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: Unity names ex-Zynga COO Matthew Bromberg as its new CEO, president, and board member; ex-CEO John Riccitiello resigned in October 2023 after a pricing fiasco |
5:30 PM • | Tom Warren / The Verge: Nvidia updates its experimental ChatRTX chatbot, formerly “Chat with RTX”, to support voice queries and AI models Google's Gemma, ChatGLM3, and OpenAI's CLIP |
4:30 PM • | Yuvraj Malik / Reuters: eBay reports Q1 revenue up 2% YoY to $2.56B, vs. $2.53B est., GMV up 1% to $18.6B, net income down 23% to $439M, and forecasts Q2 revenue below estimates |
4:20 PM • | Reuters: DoorDash reports Q1 revenue up 23% YoY to $2.51B, vs. $2.45B est., total orders up 21% YoY, and forecasts Q2 core profit below est.; DASH drops 9%+ |
4:15 PM • | Kif Leswing / CNBC: Qualcomm reports Q2 revenue up 1% YoY to $9.39B, vs. $9.34B est., handset sales up 1% YoY to $6.18B, and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates |
3:50 PM • | Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Substack now lets writers paywall their Chat discussion spaces and says active Chat participants are 12% more likely to retain their subscriptions |
3:15 PM • | Orlando Mayorquín / New York Times: Airbnb launches Icons, a new category of experiences that lets users meet celebrities and stay in outlandish venues, like a replica of the house from Pixar's Up |
2:35 PM • | Ashley Capoot / CNBC: US Senate hearing: UnitedHealth's CEO says the company paid a $22M ransom to the hackers who accessed a Change Healthcare server that wasn't protected by MFA |
1:50 PM • | Jennifer Elias / CNBC: Sources: Google laid off 200+ employees from its Core teams, including IT and its Python developer team, and plans to move some roles to India and Mexico |
12:40 PM • | Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch: Atlassian debuts Rovo, an AI product giving businesses contextual search, insights, and the ability to add custom agents to handle tasks and “complete projects” |
12:00 PM • | Steven Levy / Wired: Q&A with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar on her role, working at DARPA, AI, showing ChatGPT to Biden, and more |
11:40 AM • | Gretchen Morgenson / NBC News: Sources: US federal prosecutors are digging into internal practices at Block, discussing with an ex-employee alleged widespread and yearslong compliance lapses |
11:30 AM • | Wes Davis / The Verge: LastPass separates from GoTo, which announced the spinoff in December 2021, six years after acquiring LastPass; the service suffered high-profile hacks in 2022 |
11:06 AM • | Hayden Field / CNBC: Anthropic launches a free iOS app and Team, its first enterprise plan, which offers access to its Claude 3 Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku models for $30/user/month |
10:51 AM • | Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal: New Jersey-based CoreWeave, which offers GPUs in the cloud, raised $1.1B led by Coatue at a $19B valuation, up from $7B after raising $642M in December 2023 |
10:25 AM • | Reuters: Reuters/Ipsos poll: ~58% agree with the statement that the Chinese government uses TikTok to “influence American public opinion”, and 50% support banning TikTok |
10:10 AM • | Ash Parrish / The Verge: Meta unveils Batman: Arkham Shadow, a VR game and the next entry in the iconic Batman: Arkham game series, launching exclusively on the Quest 3 later in 2024 |
9:40 AM • | Karissa Bell / Engadget: LinkedIn debuts three Wordle-style puzzle games: theme-based guessing game Pinpoint, Sudoku- and Minesweeper-style crossover Queens, and trivia game Crossclimb |
9:30 AM • | Emilia David / The Verge: In a letter to the US Labor Department, Google says the US could lose out on valuable AI and tech talent if some of its immigration policies are not modernized |
9:20 AM • | Andy Greenberg / Wired: Elliptic, MIT, and IBM release an AI detection model and its 200M-transaction training dataset to help identify money laundering on Bitcoin's blockchain |
9:10 AM • | Washington Post: How an informal supper club became a US tech lobbying force, helping draft the TikTok bill; sources: the group plans an EO for Trump to reverse Biden's AI rules |
8:25 AM • | Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge: Changpeng Zhao's short sentence suggests he had some leverage, and the hearing referred to sealed documents and “cooperation”, perhaps over Binance user details |
8:10 AM • | Eva Dou / Washington Post: US NTIA head Alan Davidson says Starlink is an option in extremely remote areas where running fiber is pricey, as part of the $42B high speed internet program |
7:32 AM • | Yadarisa Shabong / Reuters: Ofcom opens an investigation into OnlyFans over its measures to stop children from accessing porn, after reviewing its “response to formal information requests” |
7:15 AM • | Bloomberg: A look at GM's risky bet to replace Apple's CarPlay with its own infotainment system, gambling on its software group, as carmakers worry over Apple's power |
6:35 AM • | Bloomberg: US v. Google: Microsoft invested in OpenAI over fears of falling behind Google; Kevin Scott said he was “very, very worried” in a 2019 email to Satya Nadella |
6:10 AM • | Reuters: Sources: Huawei moves Yu Chengdong, the high-profile chief of its consumer business who has held the job since 2012, to a new role as chair of the unit |
5:45 AM • | Allison Johnson / The Verge: Rabbit releases the R1's first software update, with “up to 5x” improved idle battery performance, a better music playback UI, more reliable Bluetooth, and more |
5:15 AM • | Yukio Tajima / Nikkei Asia: China implements a revised State Secrets Law, requiring Tencent, Weibo, and other internet companies to delete leaked information and comply with investigations |
4:55 AM • | Politico: How all the bills under consideration in US states meant to address AI bias contain loopholes that would make it too easy for companies to avoid accountability |
4:25 AM • | Nikkei Asia: A Chinese seller details how he ships civilian electronics, which could be repurposed for military uses, to Russia via distributors and Russian e-commerce sites |
2:45 AM • | Justine Calma / The Verge: Walmart discontinues its telehealth service Health Virtual Care, citing “escalating operating costs”; Walmart acquired telehealth provider MeMD in May 2021 |
2:25 AM • | Antonio Olivo / Washington Post: A backlash against data centers has triggered laws in Arizona, Georgia, and other parts of the US to restrain the rapidly growing, energy-intensive industry |
2:05 AM • | Financial Times: In tests run by executives in advertising, animation, and real estate, OpenAI's Sora generated people with more realistic facial features than Runway or Pika |
12:25 AM • | Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: Google Phone's beta app gets “Audio Emoji”, letting callers select an emoji to play animations with sound: clapping, laughing, party, crying, poop, and sting |