Techmeme
April 29, 2021, 10:10 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:
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.
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.
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 …
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 …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Twitter reports Q1 revenue of $1.04B, up 28% YoY, vs $1.03B est., monetizable DAUs of 199M, up 7M QoQ, vs 200M est.; stock drops ~8%+  —  - The company reported revenue of $1.04 billion for the quarter, which was up 28% from $808 million a year prior.  — Twitter guided that it is expecting …
Shira Ovide / New York Times:
Combined revenue of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook hit ~$1.2T this year, up 25% since March 2020, benefitting from a “perfect positive storm”  —  The dictionary doesn't have enough superlatives to describe what's happening to the five biggest technology companies …
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.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
The 90-day recognition cliff: Why praise programs fade, and what keeps them alive  —  Recognition programs often start with enthusiasm.  Employees participate, managers share shoutouts, and teams have a new way to celebrate achievements.
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

Big Technology Podcast:
SAP CEO: AI Won't Kill Software, But It Will Change Your Job — With Christian Klein
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Sources:
Factory CEO on why AGI is already here
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham
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.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:10 PM ET, April 29, 2021.

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

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
James Vincent / The Verge:
Sheila Dang / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge: