Techmeme
May 18, 2022, 2:00 PM

Top News

Brian Stelter / CNN:
Twitter's board says it intends to “close the transaction” at the agreed price and “enforce the merger agreement”  —  New York CNN Business — … Who wants to own Twitter?  Maybe Elon Musk doesn't.  Sure, maybe he is causing chaos to extract a lower price from the Twitter board …
Bloomberg:
Sources: despite Elon Musk's tweets, Twitter, Musk's team, and banks are continuing to work to close the deal, including preparing the 139-page SEC filing  —  In public, Elon Musk's erratic tweets have sent Twitter Inc.'s shares flailing, as traders bet that the billionaire is preparing …
Edwin Chan / Bloomberg:
Monica Chin / The Verge:
Acer unveils 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.
Financial Times:
Filing: Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund takes a ~5% stake in Nintendo, worth $2.98B; the PIF disclosed a 5% stake in Japan's Nexon and Capcom in February  —  Sovereign wealth fund has already bought into Japan's Capcom and Nexon  —  Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has acquired …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Ian Goodfellow, Apple's former director of machine learning who left due to the company's return to work policy, is joining Alphabet's DeepMind  —  An Apple Inc. executive who left over the company's stringent return-to-office policy is joining Alphabet Inc.'s DeepMind unit, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Nellie Andreeva / Deadline:
Netflix cuts 150 jobs out of 11K across departments in a new round of layoffs, mostly in the US, as the company reins in costs amid slowing revenue growth  —  EXCLUSIVE: Layoffs are underway at Netflix today.  About 150 positions out of the streamer's workforce of 11,000 are being eliminated amid …
Financial Times:
China's top economic official meets dozens of tech execs and industry experts, pledging “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:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Amazon refreshes the Fire 7 tablet with USB-C charging, better battery life, a faster processor, and increases the price from $50 to $60, shipping on June 29  —  And faster internals  —  Amazon is updating its small and inexpensive Fire 7 tablet for the first time in three years …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Addressing complaints by rivals, 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 …
Tiffany Hsu / New York Times:
Celebrities have been criticized for hyping crypto without highlighting the risks after this month's sell-off, as Crypto.com and FTX scale back on ad spending  —  Crypto boosters such as Matt Damon, Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow have been criticized for hyping virtual currency without highlighting the risks.
Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
CoinGecko: after Tether lost its dollar peg, leading to $8.5B+ in redemptions, Circle's USDC stablecoin circulation rose by $3.4B and Binance USD is up $1.2B  —  Circle's USD Coin is reaping the benefits as circulation of Tether, the world's largest stablecoin and its closest rival, continues to decline in a wave of redemptions.

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Earlier Picks

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
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Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
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Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch: