Interviews with 20+ people describe GTA developer Rockstar's attempts to change its male-heavy workplace culture, starting in 2018, after complaints and burnout
In the summer of 2020, after a police officer killed George Floyd, Rockstar Games quietly shelved a mode of play it had planned …
Spotify reports Q2 revenue rose 23% YoY to €2.9B as its net loss widened to €125M; MAUs were up 19% YoY to 433M and Premium users reached 188M, up 14% YoY
Spotify turned in strong numbers for the second quarter, beating expectations for total and paid subscriber adds and reporting 23% revenue growth. Source: Spotify Investor Relations .
Spotify says it has “decided to stop further production of Car Thing units” and will take a €31M charge, citing demand and supply chain issues
Spotify's push to complement its music streaming with a big move into podcasting and related content appears to be paying off …
Meta plans to increase the prices of its Quest 2 headsets to $400 for 128GB and $500 for 256GB on August 1, and bundle Beat Saber for free through December 31
The price for a new Quest 2 is jumping to $399 as Meta says “the costs to make and ship our products have been on the rise.”
Google announces Maps updates: photorealistic aerial views of nearly 100 landmarks, more detailed cycling routes, and improved location sharing
Google — facing increasing competition from other apps like Instagram and TikTok when it comes to consumers searching for things …
Mark Zuckerberg tells employees Meta and Apple are in a “very deep, philosophical competition” to build AR and VR devices and determine the internet's direction
“This is a competition of philosophies and ideas,” Meta's CEO recently told employees
Sony teases more PlayStation VR2 details, including a see-through view, a broadcast mode for filming gameplay, and a cinematic mode for non-VR games and media
There are also see-through and cinematic modes — Sony is teasing some more details about its upcoming PlayStation VR2 headset today.
Google plans to relaunch Street View in India, starting in 10 cities, over 10 years after the service was suspended by the government on security grounds
Vikas SN / Moneycontrol :
Microsoft reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $51.87B, net income up 2% YoY to $16.7B, Azure up 40% YoY, and LinkedIn up 26% YoY
REDMOND, Wash. — July 26, 2022 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended June 30, 2022, as compared to the corresponding period of last fiscal year:
Four former ByteDance employees say the company promoted pro-China content to Americans in its now-defunct news app TopBuzz; ByteDance denies the claims
things like videos of pandas and a CEO talking about how great it was to move his start-up to China. 3 former employees say these pieces of content were sometimes “pinned” to the top of the app feed. ...
Internal TikTok PR documents suggest responses to difficult questions, including downplaying AI, links to ByteDance, and “the China association”
Chris Stokel-Walker / Gizmodo :
Sources: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told donors at a fundraiser that the AICO Act to pare back the power of Big Tech companies doesn't have the votes
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told a group of donors that he doesn't believe that there are enough votes in the Senate …
Alphabet reports Q2 revenue up 13% YoY to $69.69B, net income of $16B, down from $18.53B YoY, and Google Cloud revenue of $6.28B, up from $4.63B YoY
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - July 26, 2022 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2022.
Daniel Ek says Spotify plans to reduce the pace of hiring by 25% as “things could get worse”; Spotify's stock rises 10%+
As the music streaming giant's stock jumps, CEO Daniel Ek addresses macro-economic challenges, saying “only the prepared survive, and we're preparing as if things could get worse.”
Kaspersky researchers find a malicious UEFI-based rootkit used in the wild since 2016 that keeps PCs infected after an OS reinstall or a hard drive replacement
Turns out they're not all that rare. We just don't know how to find them. — Researchers have unpacked a major cybersecurity find … Source: Securelist .
Nostalgia for the “old”, chronological Instagram makes sense but belies changing norms around online sharing, communication, privacy, and engaging content
It isn't just the platform that has changed, we have too. — Over the past few days there's been a movement to “Make Instagram Instagram again.”
Like Amazon's Ring, Google's Nest will comply with emergency US law enforcement requests for footage without a warrant or explicit user consent
The law lets Ring and Google share user footage with police during emergencies without consent and without warrants. Here's everything you should know.
An IBM study of 550 global organizations finds the average cost of a data breach is $4.35M, up ~13% over the last two years, and 83% had more than one breach
A new report from IBM Security today reveals that data breaches are costlier and more impactful than ever before. Source: IBM and IBM .
TikTok plans to give “selected researchers” access to its platform and moderation system, helping them “assess content and trends or conducts tests”
The move comes hours after a report reveals TikTok's efforts to distance itself from China Source: TikTok .
Microsoft's Q4 Surface revenue increased 10% YoY, driven by commercial PC sales, as Windows OEM revenue declined 2% YoY due to PC production shutdowns in China
Daniel Rubino / Windows Central :
Unstoppable Domains, which offers NFT domains as a personal identifier across Web3 apps, raised a $65M Series A led by Pantera Capital at a $1B+ valuation
- Unstoppable Domains announced Wednesday that it raised $65 million in a Series A funding, reaching a $1 billion valuation.
An illustrated look at the bipartisan American Innovation and Choice Act's impact on US tech giants, seeking to ban self-preferencing and improve competition
Leah Nylen / Bloomberg :
Microsoft misses Q4 estimates with $51.87B in revenue, vs. $52.44B estimated, citing changing exchange rates plus challenges in the advertising and PC markets
Good morning! The downturn is coming for Big Tech … Peter Cohen / RCR Wireless News : Microsoft promises continued cloud growth, despite missing estimates Ibukun Ogundare / Coinspeaker : Microsoft (M...
Shopify misses as Q2 revenue grew 16% YoY to $1.3B and GMV reached $46.9B, up 11% YoY; SHOP rises 6%+, after crashing 14% on Tuesday due to layoffs
Shopify Inc. rallied, reversing losses in premarket trading, as Chief Executive Officer Tobi Lutke urged investors to overlook the slowdown … Source: Shopify .
Google reported search ad Q2 revenue up nearly 14% YoY to $40.69B, vs. $40.15B est., suggesting it may withstand a global recession better than smaller rivals
Responding to criticism, Adam Mosseri says Instagram's full-screen feed is “a test” that is “not yet good” and that the app has to lean into the shift to video
Sources: the Treasury Department has been investigating US-based crypto exchange Kraken since 2019 for potentially violating US sanctions on Iran and more
shocked face https://twitter.com/... Ryan Mac / @rmac18 : @yaffebellany This story follows one from last month on the internal divisions at Kraken that have been stoked by CEO Jesse Powell. We learned...
Microsoft reports Q4 gaming revenue down $259M or 7% YoY, impacted by an 11% YoY revenue drop for Xbox hardware and a 6% YoY drop for Xbox content and services
Tom Ivan / Video Games Chronicle : Tweets: @domsplaying , @domsplaying , @tomwarren , and @benjisales Tweets: Dom / @domsplaying : Microsoft FY 2022 Q4 Call: CEO Satya Nadella claims 4 million people...
Alphabet's $69.69B revenue marks its slowest sales growth since Q2 2020, missing estimates by almost $190M, as macroeconomic pressures mount on the ad market
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal :
Unit 42: hackers typically scan for vulnerabilities within 15 minutes of a new CVE disclosure; the first active exploitation attempts are observed within hours
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer : Source: Unit 42 .
Researchers say cybercriminals are leveraging the automation features, like bots, inside Discord and Telegram to host, distribute, and execute malware schemes
Wednesday, July 27, 2022 // (IG): BB //Buy Me: The Hawk Enigma Ravie Lakshmanan / The Hacker News : New Ducktail Infostealer Malware Targeting Facebook Business and Ad Accounts Steve Zurier / SC Media...
Senators Toomey and Sinema introduce a bill to exempt crypto users from being taxed on transactions of under $50, similar to a bipartisan bill in the House
Madrid-based Seedtag, which offers a cookie-less contextual advertising engine to brands, raised €250M from Advent, following a ~€39M Series B in September 2021
Dan Taylor / Tech.eu :
Human Security, an enterprise bot mitigation and fraud prevention service, merges with PerimeterX, which helps protect web apps; terms were not disclosed
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch :
A researcher finds messaging app JusTalk, which has ~20M users, exposed a database with millions of conversations and call logs in plaintext since January 2022
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch :
US CFPB Director Rohit Chopra says the agency should “take a very careful look” at Big Tech entering the buy now, pay later space, after Apple's BNPL debut
Stefania Palma / Financial Times :
An interview with Pablo Galindo, one of the five members of the Python Steering Council who vet all revisions and additions to the programming language
Joel Khalili / TechRadar :
Memo: Twitter plans to reduce its office space in San Francisco, New York, Sydney, Seoul, Tokyo, and other major markets, in a bid to cut costs
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg :
Sources: activist investor Elliott Management is building a stake in PayPal to speed cost cutting and may become one of the company's five largest shareholders
Bloomberg :
SEC filing: Twitter schedules a shareholder meeting to vote on Elon Musk's $44B acquisition deal for September 13, 2022, at 10am PT
Nigerian payments startup Flutterwave, which is valued at $3B, is facing allegations of a money laundering scheme worth up to $215M in Kenya
Abubakar Idris / Rest of World : Tweets: @restofworld , @restofworld , and @yinkawrites Tweets: @restofworld : Months after accusations of mismanagement and sexual harassment rocked the Nigerian fint...
Acronis, which offers enterprise cybersecurity and data protection tools, raised $250M at a $3.5B+ valuation, up from $2.5B in May 2021 after raising $250M
Bloomberg : Tweets: @ivanlevingston . Thanks: @ivanlevingston Tweets: Ivan Levingston / @ivanlevingston : Scoop: Cyber firm Acronis raised $250 million earlier this year at a $3.5b+ valuation from in...
Nash, which aggregates delivery providers for businesses, has raised a $20M Series A from a16z, Y Combinator, and others, bringing its total funding to $27.8M
We're excited to announce that a16z is leading the Series A for Nash … Thanks: @10ayagoldsen
A profile of Andrew Yao, a China-born, Harvard-trained academic influencing China's AI plans via his computer science course at Beijing's Tsinghua University
Jane Zhang / Bloomberg :
Sources: Microsoft asks Google, Oracle, and others to help pressure the US into spreading its cloud spending across more services, challenging AWS' dominance
Aaron Tilley / Wall Street Journal : Tweets: @mgsiegler Tweets: M.G. Siegler / @mgsiegler : The best part of this report is where it notes that Microsoft has not yet asked Amazon to join its anti-Ama...
Shopify's new AI commerce stack
Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.