Techmeme
April 29, 2021, 8:55 PM

Top News

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.
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.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
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.
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.
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 …
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 …
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.”
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++.
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
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
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 …
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.
Reuters:
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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Earlier Picks

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