Techmeme
April 20, 2022, 9:30 AM

Top News

Emily McCormick / Yahoo Finance:
Netflix reports losing 200K net subscribers in Q1, vs. an estimated 2.5M net additions, and $7.87B revenue, vs. $7.95B est.; Netflix stock drops 25%+  —  Netflix (NFLX) reported an unexpected decline in first-quarter net subscribers as the company navigated an exit from Russia and an increasingly saturated North American market.
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Reed Hastings says Netflix plans to offer cheaper, ad-supported plans and will examine what those plans will look like “over the next year or two”  —  Co-CEO Reed Hastings revealed the move on an earnings call after the streaming giant disclosed it lost 200,000 subscribers during its most recent quarter.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix estimates that its users are sharing passwords with 100M+ non-paying households globally, including 30M+ in the US and Canada, in violation of its rules  —  There's a whole lot of password-sharing going on across Netflix's customer base — and the streaming giant is eager to pocket …
Lauren Hirsch / New York Times:
Sources: Elon Musk is evaluating various debt packages, including preferred debt and a loan against his shares of Tesla, to secure financing for his Twitter bid  —  The world's richest man is trying to shore up debt financing, including potentially taking out a loan against his shares of Tesla, so he can buy Twitter for $43 billion.
Financial Times:
Matt Levine / Bloomberg:
Bloomberg:
Google and Meta restrict the accounts of Hong Kong's sole chief executive candidate, John Lee, citing US sanctions from 2020 on Lee for crushing protests  —  Google and Meta Platforms Inc. moved on Wednesday to curtail the social media presence of Hong Kong's sole chief executive candidate …
New York Times:
A timeline of warnings from investors over the past decade about a tech startup bubble that never burst; instead of a collapse, things got bubblier  —  The venture capitalists are sounding the alarm.  At posh conferences, they buzz about falling valuations for start-ups.
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Coinbase launches its NFT marketplace in beta, after announcing the service in October 2021, with support for Ethereum-based NFTs and ETH payments  —  Quick Take Coinbase NFT has gone live in beta form.  It currently supports Ethereum-based NFTs and payments in ETH.
Maddie Stone / Project Zero:
Google's Project Zero: 58 in-the-wild 0-days were detected and shared in 2021, more than double the previous record, as the industry improves at finding 0-days  —  A Year in Review of 0-days Used In-the-Wild in 2021  —  This is our third annual year in review of 0-days exploited in-the-wild [2020, 2019].
Nikkei Asia:
Analysis: half of Apple's top 200 suppliers have facilities in and around Shanghai, where China's COVID-19 lockdowns are disrupting activity  —  slong COVID lockdown in Shanghai is creating chaos for Apple suppliers based in and around the city.  (Source photos by Getty Images and Reuters) …
Canalys:
Global smartphone shipments fell 11% in Q1 2022; Samsung grew its market share from 22% to 24%, Apple gained from 15% to 18%, and Xiaomi dipped from 14% to 13%  —  Worldwide smartphone shipments fell 11% amid unfavorable economic conditions and sluggish seasonal demand in the first quarter of 2022.
Kyle Alspach / VentureBeat:
Okta's probe into the January Lapsus$ breach of a third-party vendor concludes that it lasted only 25 consecutive minutes and impacted just two active customers  —  Okta said Tuesday that a forensic investigation that it commissioned found that the hacker group Lapsus$ accessed …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Robinhood revives its UK expansion plans and agrees to acquire crypto app Ziglu, one of the few crypto companies to secure Financial Conduct Authority approval  —  - Robinhood has agreed to buy Ziglu, a London-based fintech app that lets users trade bitcoin and several other cryptocurrencies.
David Pierce / The Verge:
Brave browser introduces De-AMP, a feature which bypasses Google-hosted AMP pages and takes users straight to the original website  —  Yet another nail in the AMP coffin  —  Brave announced a new feature for its browser on Tuesday: De-AMP, which automatically jumps past any page rendered …
Ivan Levingston / Bloomberg:
Just Eat Takeaway says it is exploring a partial or full sale of Grubhub, less than one year after buying it for $7.3B  —  Just Eat Takeaway.com NV said it's considering a partial or full sale of its Grubhub unit less than a year after buying it for $7.3 billion, in a reversal that highlights …
Dan Gallagher / Wall Street Journal:
FactSet survey of Q1 ad revenue: Google is expected to rise 23% YoY to $55.1B, Meta is expected to rise 8% YoY to ~$27.5B, and Twitter to grow 25% YoY to $1.1B  —  Google's search business expected to stay resilient while social platforms grapple with challenges

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Introducing intelligent document processing with Zoho RPA  —  Documents are a major bottleneck at many organizations.  Invoices, contracts, forms, ID cards, receipts: They all arrive in different shapes and sizes …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
The Future of Addictive Design + Going Deep at DeepMind + HatGPT
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
Go touch some grass (but don't tweet about it)
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Lenny's Podcast:
An AI state of the union: We've passed the inflection point, dark factories are coming, and automation timelines | Simon Willison
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Access:
The future of AI might be on your finger
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Axiom's Carina Hong: Solving Math's Hardest Problems With AI, And AI's Problems With Math
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:30 AM ET, April 20, 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

Earlier Picks

Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Samantha Cole / VICE:
Alastair Gale / Wall Street Journal: