Karen Weise / New York Times:
Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet disclosed that they had spent $32B+ combined on data centers and other capital expenses in Q1, as they accelerate AI spending — The spending that the industry’s giants expect artificial intelligence to require is starting to come into focus — and it is jarringly large.
Trump is using the prospect of a TikTok ban to court younger voters, blaming Biden for setting a ban in motion, as the new law rattles pro-Biden TikTok creators (Akayla Gardner/Bloomberg)
Akayla Gardner / Bloomberg:
Trump is using the prospect of a TikTok ban to court younger voters, blaming Biden for setting a ban in motion, as the new law rattles pro-Biden TikTok creators — Biden’s campaign is making an unprecedented effort to court influencers, even though he signed a bill that could lead to TikTok vanishing in the US.
A look at the rise in video podcasts, as YouTube leads in podcast consumption in the US and companies invest in video to gain new audiences and boost ad revenue (Reggie Ugwu/New York Times)
Reggie Ugwu / New York Times:
A look at the rise in video podcasts, as YouTube leads in podcast consumption in the US and companies invest in video to gain new audiences and boost ad revenue — To some, “video podcasts” are a contradiction in terms. That hasn’t made them any less popular.
Google and Apple use passkeys to capture users by locking credentials into their platforms and have made the UX of passkeys worse than that of password managers (William Brown/Firstyear’s blog-a-log)
William Brown / Firstyear’s blog-a-log:
Google and Apple use passkeys to capture users by locking credentials into their platforms and have made the UX of passkeys worse than that of password managers — At around 11pm last night my partner went to change our lounge room lights with our home light control system.
A review of Dana Mattioli’s The Everything War, which covers Lina Khan’s antitrust battle against Amazon and makes a case that no company should be so powerful (Jonathan Ford/Financial Times)
Jonathan Ford / Financial Times:
A review of Dana Mattioli’s The Everything War, which covers Lina Khan’s antitrust battle against Amazon and makes a case that no company should be so powerful — Dana Mattioli’s important book looks the winner-takes-all dynamic that built a competition-squashing behemoth
Investors cheer Microsoft and Alphabet’s huge AI spending plans as shares of both firms rallied but not Meta’s, which saw its worst trading day in 18 months (Tom Dotan/Wall Street Journal)
Tom Dotan / Wall Street Journal:
Investors cheer Microsoft and Alphabet’s huge AI spending plans as shares of both firms rallied but not Meta’s, which saw its worst trading day in 18 months — Meta had its worst trading day in 18 months after warning of years of AI investment; shares of Microsoft and Alphabet rallied
Google opens its second hardware office in New Taipei City, as VP of Engineering Elmer Peng says “Taiwan is Google’s largest hardware R&D hub outside of the US” (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia:
Google opens its second hardware office in New Taipei City, as VP of Engineering Elmer Peng says “Taiwan is Google’s largest hardware R&D hub outside of the US” — Search engine giant ‘serious’ about beefing up equipment and software ecosystem
A number of Apple users say they were logged out of their Apple ID across multiple devices on April 26 and forced to reset their password before logging back in (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
A number of Apple users say they were logged out of their Apple ID across multiple devices on April 26 and forced to reset their password before logging back in — There appears to be an increasingly widespread Apple ID outage of some sort impacting Apple users tonight.
Google plans to invest $2B to set up a data center in Indiana and $1B to expand three Virginia sites, and announces a $75M fund to train Americans on AI skills (Yuvraj Malik/Reuters)
Yuvraj Malik / Reuters:
Google plans to invest $2B to set up a data center in Indiana and $1B to expand three Virginia sites, and announces a $75M fund to train Americans on AI skills — Alphabet (GOOGL.O) unit Google said on Friday it would invest $3 billion to set up a data center campus in Indiana and expand sites in Virginia.
A US appeals court reverses a 2021 ruling that prevented New York from enforcing a law requiring ISPs to offer low-cost broadband plans to low-income consumers (Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica)
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
A US appeals court reverses a 2021 ruling that prevented New York from enforcing a law requiring ISPs to offer low-cost broadband plans to low-income consumers — New York obtains significant win for states’ ability to regulate broadband. — A federal appeals court today reversed a ruling …
