Techmeme
May 18, 2022, 4:10 PM

Top News

Brian Stelter / CNN:
Bloomberg:
Sources: despite Elon Musk's tweets, his team, Twitter, and banks are preparing the documents needed to close the purchase, including the 139-page SEC filing  —  In public, Elon Musk's erratic tweets have sent Twitter Inc.'s shares flailing, as traders bet that the billionaire is preparing …
Edwin Chan / Bloomberg:
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:
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 …
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 …
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 …
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:
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 …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Ian Goodfellow, Apple's former director of machine learning who left over the company's strict return-to-office policy, is joining Alphabet's DeepMind  —  An Apple Inc. executive who left over the company's stringent return-to-office policy is joining Alphabet Inc.'s DeepMind unit …
Nellie Andreeva / Deadline:
Netflix cuts 150 jobs out of 11K across departments in a new round of layoffs, mostly in the US, as the company reins in costs amid slowing revenue growth  —  EXCLUSIVE: Layoffs are underway at Netflix today.  About 150 positions out of the streamer's workforce of 11,000 are being eliminated amid …
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
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 …
Tiffany Hsu / New York Times:
Celebrities face intensifying criticism for hyping crypto without highlighting the risks after this month's sell-off, as Crypto.com and FTX reduce ad spending  —  Crypto boosters such as Matt Damon, Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow have been criticized for hyping virtual currency without highlighting the risks.
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 …
Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
CoinGecko: after Tether lost its dollar peg, leading to $8.5B+ in redemptions, Circle's USDC stablecoin circulation rose by $3.4B and Binance USD is up $1.2B  —  Circle's USD Coin is reaping the benefits as circulation of Tether, the world's largest stablecoin and its closest rival, continues to decline in a wave of redemptions.

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