Techmeme
May 18, 2022, 8:10 PM

Top News

Brian Stelter / CNN:
Twitter's board says “Mr. Musk agreed to a transaction at $54.20 per share” and that it intends to “close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement”  —  Who wants to own Twitter?  Maybe Elon Musk doesn't.  Sure, maybe he is causing chaos to extract a lower price …
Bloomberg:
Edwin Chan / Bloomberg:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Amazon refreshes its Fire 7 tablet with USB-C charging, better battery life, and a 30% faster processor, and raises the price from $50 to $60, coming June 29  —  And faster internals  —  Amazon is updating its small and inexpensive Fire 7 tablet for the first time in three years …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Following years of complaints, TikTok announces its first crediting tools, letting creators link back to the videos of other creators and trend originators  —  TikTok is finally going to let users of the short-form app properly give credit where credit is due.
New York Times:
A profile of Do Kwon, the trash-talking founder of Terraform Labs, which raised $200M+ to build LUNA and UST; investors cashed out early, but traders lost big  —  Do Kwon, a South Korean entrepreneur, hyped the Luna and TerraUSD cryptocurrencies.  Their failures have devastated some traders …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
In response to rivals' complaints, Microsoft begins relaxing its cloud licensing rules in Europe, which made running its software on other clouds more expensive  —  Microsoft is undoing in Europe some of the restrictive cloud-licensing policies it first announced in 2019 which made running …
Financial Times:
Filing: Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund bought a 5% stake in Nintendo worth $2.98B; the PIF disclosed 5%+ stakes in Nexon and Capcom in February 2022  —  Sovereign wealth fund has already bought into Japan's Capcom and Nexon  —  Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has acquired …
Monica Chin / The Verge:
Acer refreshes the Swift 3 laptop, starting at $900 with a 14" OLED display, 12th Gen Intel Core H-series CPUs, and claimed 10-hour battery life, coming in July  —  A new 14-inch OLED for $899.99  —  It wasn't too long ago that the phrase “OLED laptop” implied a luxury product.
Sam Rutherford / Engadget:
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
New York accuses Amazon of discriminating against pregnant workers and those with disabilities; the state seeks civil fines and an end to discriminatory conduct  —  - New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday announced a state agency has filed a complaint against Amazon, alleging it discriminates …
Bloomberg:
Four Democratic senators ask the FTC to investigate whether ID.me illegally misled consumers and government agencies about its use of facial recognition tech  —  A group of Democratic senators has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether identity verification company ID …
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
New York AG plans to investigate social media platforms “used to stream, promote, or plan” the Buffalo attack, including Twitch, Discord, 4chan, and 8chan  —  - New York Attorney General Letitia James will investigate social media companies in connection to the apparently racially motivated attack …
Financial Times:
China's top economic official meets with dozens of tech execs and experts and pledges “support” for Chinese tech companies amid a deepening economic slump  —  Beijing's top economic official holds meetings with executives and industry experts  —  China's top economic official met dozens …
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
Texas asks SCOTUS to keep the state's social media law in effect; AG Ken Paxton argues that social media platforms should be regulated as common carriers  —  Texas attorney general Ken Paxton argues social media platforms are the 'twenty-first century descendants of telegraph and telephone companies …
Wall Street Journal:
Google's Russian subsidiary plans to file for bankruptcy, saying it cannot pay employees, suppliers, and vendors after authorities seized its local bank account  —  Departure of employees comes as Russian subsidiary prepares to declare bankruptcy, effectively ending the company's commercial operations in the country

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
The crossroads of AI and SaaS  —  Enabling businesses of all sizes to build products in-house and disqualifying SaaS tools that are not AI-powered.  In a span of just two years, AI has made a name for itself as the key driver for innovation.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:10 PM ET, May 18, 2022.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
Tomio Geron / Protocol:

Earlier Picks

Nellie Andreeva / Deadline:
Bloomberg:
Tiffany Hsu / New York Times:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Michael Potuck / 9to5Mac: