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April 29, 2021, 7:15 PM
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| Tom Warren / The Verge: |
Microsoft says it will reduce its cut for PC games in Microsoft Store from 30% to 12% starting August 1, in a bid to compete with Steam — Microsoft puts the pressure on Valve's Steam store — Microsoft is shaking up the world of PC gaming today with a big cut to the amount of revenue it takes from games on Windows.
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Xbox Wire, LinkedIn, New York Times, GeekWire, Game Developers Conference, Engadget, GamesIndustry.biz, HotHardware.com News, Softpedia News, CNBC, Ars Technica, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, ExtremeTech, Forbes, PCMag, VG247, Dot Esports, SlashGear, Protocol, CNET, thegamer.com, GamingBolt, Pocketnow, KnowTechie, Thurrott, Developer Tech News, Micky, TechSpot, VentureBeat, Polygon, Digital Trends, IGN, PC Gamer, Kotaku, and TrueAchievements
Tweets: @tomwarren, @zhugeex, @tomwarren, @devrelcallum, @eposvox, @epro, @thexpaw, @sarafischer, @reckless, @methodicalmemes, @pat_garofalo, @futterish, @johnnycullen, @sirlarr, @tha_rami, and @tomwarren
| Amazon - Investor Relations: |
Amazon reports Q1 revenue of $108.5B, up 44% YoY, net income of $8.1B, up from $2.5B YoY, and says AWS has become a $54B annual sales run rate business — SEATTLE—(BUSINESS WIRE) April 29, 2021—Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2021.
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The Verge, GeekWire, Thurrott, SiliconANGLE, ZDNet, CNET, CNBC, New York Times, Fast Company, WRAL TechWire, and Mashable
Tweets: @epro, @shiraovide, @chrisbrogan, @nytimestech, @kenyanwalstreet, @thurrott, @delrey, @scobleizer, and @mattrosoff
| Jordan Novet / CNBC: |
Amazon says AWS had Q1 revenue of $13.50B, 32% growth YoY and 28% growth QoQ, beating estimates and contributing $4.16B to operating income — - Amazon Web Services revenue growth accelerated in the first quarter even as the segment leads the cloud infrastructure market.| Chance Miller / 9to5Mac: |
Apple clarifies that the first-gen Magic Keyboard is “functionally compatible” with the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro but may not “precisely fit when closed” — In a new support document published today, Apple has clarified the situation around the Magic Keyboard's compatibility with the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
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Apple Support, The Verge, AppleInsider, iThinkDifferent, MacRumors, MUO, TechRadar, SlashGear, iDownloadBlog.com, Six Colors, and iClarified
Tweets: @harrymccracken, @aapltree, @samifathi_, @tailosivetech, @dcseifert, and @tomwarren
| Nandita Bose / Reuters: |
US Labor Secretary says most gig workers should be classified as employees deserving of related benefits; shares of Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash are down sharply — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden's top labor official said most gig workers in the United States should be classified as …
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Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, CNBC, Vox, Financial Times, Investor's Business Daily, VICE, and Bloomberg Law
| Marie Fazio / New York Times: |
Zoë Roth, the girl from the “Disaster Girl” meme who is now a college senior studying peace, war, and defense, sells the meme as an NFT for ~$500,000 — Zoë Roth, now a college senior in North Carolina, plans to use the proceeds from this month's NFT auction to pay off student loans and donate to charity.| Tonya Riley / Washington Post: |
A task force of 60+ experts from industry, government, nonprofits, and academia calls on the US and allies to take steps to fight a surge in ransomware attacks — A task force of more than 60 experts from industry, government, nonprofits and academia is urging the U.S. government and global allies …
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RTF, CSO, VentureBeat, Wired, PCMag, Associated Press, Bloomberg, BleepingComputer, The Record, The Register, and The Hill
Tweets: @neerajka, @likethecoins, @rapid7, @k8em0, @fireeye, @talossecurity, @tonyajoriley, and @cristingoodwin
| Arielle Pardes / Wired: |
Founders and VCs are flocking to Miami for “Miami Tech Week”, an impromptu event kicked off by a tweet from Delian Asparouhov, a principal at Founders Fund — Founders and funders are flocking to the beach for an impromptu event that some are calling “South by Southeast.”
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TechCrunch and Miami Herald
Tweets: @gsabate, @zaoyang, @sarthakgh, @zebulgar, @lopiansky, @semil, @zebulgar, @yoda, @mikebutcher, @zebulgar, @grahammcbain, @francissuarez, @pardesoteric, @ndahlberg, @zebulgar, @ejzim, @apompliano, and @francissuarez
| Reuters: |
Sources: US is investigating a recently discovered hack against federal agencies that used a vulnerability in Pulse Secure VPN, that began during Trump years — (Reuters) - For at least the third time since the beginning of this year, the U.S. government is investigating a hack …
Tweets: @bing_chris, @bing_chris, @k8em0, and @snlyngaas
| Canalys.com: |
Global smartphone shipments in Q1 reached 347M, up 27% YoY; Samsung took first place, shipping 76.5M for a 22% share, while Apple shipped 52.4M for a 15% share — Shanghai (China), Bengaluru (India), Singapore, Reading (UK) and Portland (US) - Thursday, 29 April 2021| Thomas Claburn / The Register: |
Google removed an educational coding app called DroidScript, which was on the Play Store for 7+ years, without recourse, seemingly over allegations of ad fraud — Creator suspects his app's ad identifier was copied but Google keeping quiet — On the last day of March, DroidScript … | Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC: |
Twitter reports Q1 revenue of $1.04B, up 28% YoY, vs $1.03B est., monetizable DAUs of 199M, up 7M QoQ, vs 200M est.; stock drops ~8%+ — - The company reported revenue of $1.04 billion for the quarter, which was up 28% from $808 million a year prior. — Twitter guided that it is expecting … | Nikkei Asia: |
Source: Taiwan told foreign and domestic staffing companies to remove all listings for jobs in China, emphasizing listings that seek to poach chip-making talent — Home of TSMC and Foxconn takes drastic move to secure lead in semiconductors — TAIPEI — Taiwan has told staffing companies …
Tweets: @martijnrasser and @azeemibrahim
| The Markup: |
Financial services use Facebook's ad targeting to block people in certain age groups from seeing their ads, violating Facebook's anti-discrimination policies — Such ads, along with other age-targeted financial product ads, may violate civil rights laws, attorneys say
Tweets: @juliaangwin, @juliaangwin, @juliaangwin, @craignewmark, @corintxt, @jason_kint, @bostonjoan, @jason_kint, and @alfredwkng
| Liam Tung / ZDNet: |
Facebook joins the Rust Foundation, the org driving Rust, following Amazon, Google, Huawei, Microsoft, and Mozilla, and details its use of Rust since 2016 — Facebook is also ramping up internal developer support for Rust after targeting infrastructure written in C++.
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Developer News and Facebook Engineering
| Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: |
IBM acquires cloud app and network management company Turbonomic, reportedly for between $1.5B and $2B — IBM today made another acquisition to deepen its reach into providing enterprises with AI-based services to manage their networks and workloads. It announced that it is acquiring Turbonomic …
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SiliconANGLE, iTnews, The Economic Times, PR Newswire, CRN, and ZDNet
| Reuters: |
Samsung reports Q1 net profit of $6.4B, up 46% YoY, driven by 66% profit surge in mobile business to $3.97B, and revenue of $59B, up 18% YoY — ReutersJoyce LeeHeekyong Yang — 3 minutes read| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Instagram adds new features to let users mute their microphones and even turn their video off while using Instagram Live, as it seeks to compete with Clubhouse — In addition to Facebook's Clubhouse competitor built within Messenger Rooms and its experiments with a Clubhouse-like Q&A platform on the web …
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TNW, Engadget, Voicebot.ai, Engadget, iPhone Hacks, 9to5Mac, iPhone in Canada Blog, and marketingdive.com
Tweets: @taylorlorenz, @fboversight, @rmac18, and @alexvoica
| Mark Bergen / Bloomberg: |
Filing: during Q1, Alphabet saved $268M in expenses from company promotions, travel, and entertainment, compared to Q1 2020, “primarily as a result of COVID-19” — With Covid-19 restrictions lifting, more people are booking trips and hotels online, which is very good for Google's advertising business.| Yuan Yang / Financial Times: |
China asks 13 companies, including Tencent, ByteDance, and the fintech affiliate of Baidu, to introduce similar changes to those imposed on Ant Group — Thirteen companies told to ‘rectify prominent problems’ on their platforms — Chinese officials have called in 13 tech companies to ask them to …
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XDA Developers, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and PYMNTS.com
| John Egan / FinLedger: |
Rho, which offers business banking, expense management, and accounts payable services, raises $100M in debt financing, following a $15M Series A in January — Fintech startup Rho Technologies has lined up $100 million in debt financing to grow its business banking platform.
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FinSMEs, Crunchbase News, and PYMNTS.com
| Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge: |
Google finally gives users a way to search through Stadia's 172 games, 526 days after the service's launch — If only Google knew anyone with experience building search engines — Stadia is an online game streaming service from Google, a company that is practically synonymous with search engines …
Source:
Stadia Community Blog. More:
iPhone in Canada Blog, KnowTechie, Pocket-lint, SlashGear, and thegamer.com
Tweets: @googlestadia, @workthespace, @sohrabosati, @phonesoldier, @ztlaidlaw, @ztlaidlaw, @rokkshow, @briangaar, and @tomwarren
| Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: |
OpenSignal: 5G-capable devices access mmWave 5G less than 1% of the time across all US carriers; Verizon leads with just 0.8% availability — Phones capable of using mmWave 5G access it less than 1% of the time. — US mobile customers are almost never able to connect to millimeter-wave networks …
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Light Reading, The Verge, RCR Wireless News, and Tom's Guide
Tweets: @astern, @kylesamani, @karlbode, and @markdeloura
| Igor Bonifacic / Engadget: |
Google says it's rolling out an update that lets users train Assistant to pronounce and recognize uncommon names, at first in English — handful new updates that will make Assistant better at pronouncing tricky names and understanding the context of conversations you share with it.
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The Keyword, Gizmodo, Tom's Guide, KnowTechie, and Fortune
| James Vincent / The Verge: |
Researchers demonstrate how AI software based on generative adversarial networks can be used to create deepfake satellite images — Geographic deepfakes could be used for misinformation and much more — When we think of deepfakes, we tend to imagine AI-generated people.
Source:
Taylor & Francis. Tweets: @murakamiwood, @armscontrolwonk, @nickastronomer, @jambeckresearch, and @hareldan
| Gilad Edelman / Wired: |
Q&A: Evelyn Douek, a lecturer and Ph.D. student at Harvard studying online speech regulation, on why a “proportional” approach to online speech is a good thing — Major platforms' policies aren't actually inspired by the First Amendment. This legal scholar says that's a good thing.
Tweets: @gadgetlab, @wired, @jilliancyork, @risj_oxford, @bkcharvard, @mantzarlis, @wexler, and @juddlegum
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