Techmeme
May 18, 2022, 8:10 PM

Top News

Brian Stelter / CNN:
Twitter's board says “Mr. Musk agreed to a transaction at $54.20 per share” and that it intends to “close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement”  —  Who wants to own Twitter?  Maybe Elon Musk doesn't.  Sure, maybe he is causing chaos to extract a lower price …
Bloomberg:
Edwin Chan / Bloomberg:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Amazon refreshes its Fire 7 tablet with USB-C charging, better battery life, and a 30% faster processor, and raises the price from $50 to $60, coming June 29  —  And faster internals  —  Amazon is updating its small and inexpensive Fire 7 tablet for the first time in three years …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Following years of complaints, TikTok announces its first crediting tools, letting creators link back to the videos of other creators and trend originators  —  TikTok is finally going to let users of the short-form app properly give credit where credit is due.
New York Times:
A profile of Do Kwon, the trash-talking founder of Terraform Labs, which raised $200M+ to build LUNA and UST; investors cashed out early, but traders lost big  —  Do Kwon, a South Korean entrepreneur, hyped the Luna and TerraUSD cryptocurrencies.  Their failures have devastated some traders …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
In response to rivals' complaints, Microsoft begins relaxing its cloud licensing rules in Europe, which made running its software on other clouds more expensive  —  Microsoft is undoing in Europe some of the restrictive cloud-licensing policies it first announced in 2019 which made running …
Financial Times:
Filing: Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund bought a 5% stake in Nintendo worth $2.98B; the PIF disclosed 5%+ stakes in Nexon and Capcom in February 2022  —  Sovereign wealth fund has already bought into Japan's Capcom and Nexon  —  Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has acquired …
Monica Chin / The Verge:
Acer refreshes the Swift 3 laptop, starting at $900 with a 14" OLED display, 12th Gen Intel Core H-series CPUs, and claimed 10-hour battery life, coming in July  —  A new 14-inch OLED for $899.99  —  It wasn't too long ago that the phrase “OLED laptop” implied a luxury product.
Sam Rutherford / Engadget:
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
New York accuses Amazon of discriminating against pregnant workers and those with disabilities; the state seeks civil fines and an end to discriminatory conduct  —  - New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday announced a state agency has filed a complaint against Amazon, alleging it discriminates …
Bloomberg:
Four Democratic senators ask the FTC to investigate whether ID.me illegally misled consumers and government agencies about its use of facial recognition tech  —  A group of Democratic senators has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether identity verification company ID …
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
New York AG plans to investigate social media platforms “used to stream, promote, or plan” the Buffalo attack, including Twitch, Discord, 4chan, and 8chan  —  - New York Attorney General Letitia James will investigate social media companies in connection to the apparently racially motivated attack …
Financial Times:
China's top economic official meets with dozens of tech execs and experts and pledges “support” for Chinese tech companies amid a deepening economic slump  —  Beijing's top economic official holds meetings with executives and industry experts  —  China's top economic official met dozens …
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
Texas asks SCOTUS to keep the state's social media law in effect; AG Ken Paxton argues that social media platforms should be regulated as common carriers  —  Texas attorney general Ken Paxton argues social media platforms are the 'twenty-first century descendants of telegraph and telephone companies …
Wall Street Journal:
Google's Russian subsidiary plans to file for bankruptcy, saying it cannot pay employees, suppliers, and vendors after authorities seized its local bank account  —  Departure of employees comes as Russian subsidiary prepares to declare bankruptcy, effectively ending the company's commercial operations in the country

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More News

Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
Tomio Geron / Protocol:

Earlier Picks

Nellie Andreeva / Deadline:
Bloomberg:
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Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Michael Potuck / 9to5Mac: