Techmeme
January 19, 2018, 11:33 AM

Top News

Nat Levy / GeekWire:
Amazon raises monthly Prime subscription fee from $10.99 to $12.99 but keeps the $99 annual membership option unchanged  —  Amazon is increasing the monthly price option for Prime from $10.99 to $12.99 as it continues to expand the reach and benefits of the popular fast-shipping program.
Michael Moritz / Financial Times:
Western tech companies will increasingly need to compete with Chinese counterparts where employees work very long hours and enjoy few perks  —  The declaration by Didi, the Chinese ride-hailing company, that delivery business Meituan's decision to launch a rival service would spark …
Li Yuan / Wall Street Journal:
Young Chinese tech entrepreneurs find Silicon Valley unimpressive on their latest annual trip, say moonshot ideas and long development times don't work in China  —  China's startup founders used to see a pilgrimage to tech's mecca of innovation as a rite.  Now, not so much.
Reuters:
SEC details concerns over crypto investments, demands answers from fund managers on how mutual funds/ETFs will store, safeguard, and price cryptocurrency assets  —  (Reuters) - The U.S. securities regulator on Thursday raised alarm about the safety of bitcoin-themed investments …
Crispian Balmer / Reuters:
Italy's antitrust agency opens probe into allegations that Apple and Samsung used software updates to slow phones and induce customers to buy newer models  —  ROME (Reuters) - Italy's antitrust body said on Thursday it had opened a probe into allegations that Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics …
Valentina Palladino / Ars Technica:
Twitch debuts Video Producer that lets creators pre-record, post-produce, rerun videos; brings in four of YouTube's popular gamers to create exclusive content  —  Four of YouTube's most popular gamers will produce “exclusive” Twitch content.  —  The Amazon-owned video site Twitch announced it's introducing …
Alex Heath / Cheddar:
Sources: Snap laid off about 24 people across 8 teams, mostly in the content unit that curates users' videos; some staff were asked to relocate to Los Angeles  —  Snapchat parent Snap Inc. laid off roughly two dozen people across 8 different teams on Thursday, people familiar with the matter told Cheddar.
Leslie Hook / Financial Times:
Uber's $9.3B deal with SoftBank closes; new board member Rajeev Misra says Uber should return focus to US, Europe, Latin America, Australia to become profitable  —  Uber's largest shareholder has called for the car-booking company to focus on recovering market share in the US and growing …
Ted Greenwald / Wall Street Journal:
IBM beats with Q4 revenue of $22.5B, up 3.6% YoY, the first YoY rise in 23 quarters, vs. $22.1B expected; $1.1B loss from one-time $5.5B tax overhaul charge  —  A $5.5 billion charge related to the new U.S. tax law pushes fourth-quarter results into the red
Ina Fried / Axios:
Interview with Microsoft's Brad Smith and Harry Shum on company's new book, The Future Computed: Artificial Intelligence and its Role in Society  —  When it comes to the ethics and impact of artificial intelligence, Microsoft is literally trying to write the book.

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Earlier Picks

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Colin Lecher / The Verge:
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Raphael Satter / Associated Press:
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg: