Techmeme
April 26, 2018, 9:40 AM

Top News

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Snapchat launches slimmer Spectacles 2.0 with water resistance and faster photo download times for $150, available at Spectacles.com starting today  —  They're slimmer, they take photos, and you can take them in the pool.  But will you?  —  Snap today released the next generation of Spectacles …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Snap announces Snappables, AR lenses that use touch, motion, and facial expressions for single and multiplayer games, rolling out globally with new games weekly  —  Snapchat wants to let you play its augmented reality Lenses, not just play dress-up.  Today it launched Snappables …
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
Snap says it will begin testing six-second non-skippable ads in select Snapchat Shows beginning May 15  —  Once reluctant to force ads on its users, still-unprofitable Snapchat is going to start testing nonskippable ads in its TV-like shows, according to three sources with direct knowledge …
Shara Tibken / CNET:
Samsung reports $14.4B profit in Q1 driven by memory chips demand, up 58% YoY, but warns of profit decline in Q2 due to “stagnant sales” of its flagship phones  —  Despite reporting record profits, Samsung says it's seeing the effects of a “sluggish” smartphone market.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook reports Q1 revenue of $11.97B, up 49% YoY, vs. $11.41B est, and net income of $4.99B, up 63% YoY; MAUs up 13% YoY to 2.20B and DAUs up 13% YoY to 1.45B  —  Amongst massive criticism over data privacy, Facebook showed the resiliency of its advertising machine by beating Wall Street's …
Facebook:
Facebook reports Q1 advertising revenue of $11.8B, up 50% YoY, of which ~91% comes from mobile, up from 85% in Q1 2017; headcount up 48% YoY to 27,742  —  Facebook, Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) today reported financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2018.  —  “Despite facing important challenges …
Kif Leswing / Business Insider:
Facebook and Microsoft confirm plans to update their gun emoji designs to be more in line with Apple, Samsung, and Google; Microsoft shares water gun design  —  - Apple changed the design of the gun emoji into a squirt gun back in 2016.  — At the time, it was a controversial choice, but tech companies have since followed suit.
Sam Byford / The Verge:
Nintendo reports operating profit of $1.62B, up 505% YoY, on strong Switch sales of 15M units in the year ending March, and names Shuntaro Furukawa as president  —  Nintendo sold just over 15 million Switch consoles in the last financial year, matching its own raised expectations after a hugely successful launch.
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
WebStresser, a DDoS-for-hire service with 136K users and linked to 4M+ cyberattacks is shut down; UK's NCA says service could be rented for as little as $14.99  —  Authorities in the U.S., U.K. and the Netherlands on Tuesday took down popular online attack-for-hire service WebStresser.org and arrested its alleged administrators.
Cale Guthrie Weissman / Fast Company:
Digg, formerly owned by Betaworks, has been sold to Boston-based ad-tech company BuySellAds; new CEO Todd Garland plans to streamline Digg and build up ad stack  —  This story has been updated.  —  Last month, Digg, an old beloved content aggregation destination, made the sad announcement …
Sui-Lee Wee / New York Times:
CBC News:
Researchers say ten countries are using internet-filtering tech by a Canadian firm to censor news, religious content, LGBTQ+ resources, political campaigns  —  A new Citizen Lab report says Netsweeper is being used to censor political critics, news, and LGBTQ+ resources
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
YouTube announces expanded opt-in YouTube Kids controls for parents, including locking down content to show only channels reviewed by humans  —  To address parents' concerns over inappropriate content on YouTube being seen by children, Google today is announcing an expanded series of parental controls for its YouTube Kids application.
Steven Levy / Wired:
Profile of Ray Ozzie, former CTO at Microsoft, and his quest to architect a backdoor for encrypted devices that won't lead to a security or privacy fiasco  —  Ray Ozzie thinks he has an approach for accessing encrypted devices that attains the impossible: It satisfies both law enforcement and privacy purists.

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