Techmeme
May 5, 2017, 1:50 PM

Top News

Peter Kafka / Recode:
Sources: Amazon and Apple close to an agreement to launch Amazon video app on Apple TV; Amazon employees expect the app in Q3  —  Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook bury the hatchet.  —  Amazon and Apple may have reached a truce.  —  The tech giants, who are increasingly competing for customers' time …
Reuters:
Sources: Justice Department opens criminal probe into Uber's use of Greyball software to evade regulators  —  The U.S. Department of Justice has begun a criminal investigation into Uber Technologies Inc's use of a software tool that helped its drivers evade local transportation regulators, two sources familiar with the situation said.
CB Insights:Uber
Janko Roettgers / Variety:
Facebook says it is closing Oculus VR film studio, canceling all ongoing projects, will invest in VR content produced by outside partners  —  Oculus Story Studio, the award-winning studio behind virtual reality (VR) short films like “Dear Angelica” and “Henry,” is being shut down, Facebook announced Thursday afternoon.
Bloomberg:
YouTube producing a half-dozen original series this year; source says it will spend $100M+ for 40+ ad-supported original shows and movies next year  —  Online service sees opportunity to lure big national sponsors  —  Paid Red service gets budgets matching HBO, Showtime programs
Google Research Blog:
Google details how it uses deep learning and Street View imagery to update Maps, and publishes TensorFlow model for real-world image text extraction to GitHub  —  Posted by Julian Ibarz, Staff Software Engineer, Google Brain Team and Sujoy Banerjee, Product Manager, Ground Truth Team
Rich McCormick / The Verge:
Microsoft announces a new event on May 23 in Shanghai, confirms new hardware is coming; in a tweet Panos Panay hints at Surface update  —  Microsoft is holding an event this month, the company announced tonight, at which it says it will “show the world what's next.”
AFTVnews:
Possible image of redesigned Echo with a built-in touchscreen found on Amazon's servers  —  Here is the first look at what Amazon's upcoming Echo with a built-in touchscreen looks like.  I was able to locate this unfortunately low resolution image on Amazon's servers in a similar manner …

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