Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Entry level, refurbished smartphones to be in focus, once sales resume
Govt starts e-retail chain for rural India
Cyber attack fears high due to work from home: NTRO
Thuan Pham, who fled Vietnam as a child and became Uber’s CTO in 2013, is leaving the company
Thuan Pham, hired as Uber’s chief technology officer by former CEO Travis Kalanick back in 2013, is leaving the company in three weeks, the ride-share giant revealed today in an SEC filing that came out as a piece in The Information reported that massive layoffs at Uber are being proposed to preserve some of the company’s dwindling capital reserves.
The outlet suggests the discussed cuts could impact upwards of 20 percent of Uber’s 27,000 employees, roughly 800 of whom could theoretically come from Pham’s engineering team, which currently comprises 3,800 people.
Said an Uber spokesman to The Information’s Amir Efrati: “As you would expect, the company is looking at every possible scenario to ensure we get to the other side of this crisis in a stronger position than ever.”
Uber has been hard hit as much of the country and world remains at home, awaiting a vaccine for — or at least more testing around — COVID-19. Last Thursday, Uber said it expects an impairment charge of up to $2.2 billion in the first quarter due to the outbreak and for revenue to nosedive by $17 million to $22 million in the quarter. (The company will report its first quarter results next Thursday.)
Pham has meanwhile become the longest-serving top executive at Uber, outlasting not just Kalanick, who was forced to resign as CEO back in 2018, but also the members of Kalanick’s so-called “A team” of trusted advisors. Included in this circle: Ryan Graves, who was one of Uber’s first employees a board member of the company until last May; Uber’s former head of product, Daniel Graf, who has since started his own company; Eric Alexander, who was Uber’s president of business in Asia and was fired in 2017 over his handling of a rape investigation in India; and Emil Michael, Uber’s controversial former SVP of business who left the company in 2017, though it remains unknown if he resigned or was fired.
Pham — who was recruited by Kalanick from VMWare, where he’d spent the previous eight years — stood to make more than $200 million from Uber’s IPO last year, according to Business Insider. At the time, he owned 5.4 million shares.
It’s a true American success story. At age 12, Pham escaped Vietnam with his mother and brother in a fishing boat that was reportedly carrying dozens of other refugees. After first spending 10 months at camp in Indonesia that he has described as having no sanitation and offering only a carp over their heads, his family later arrived in Maryland and Pham, an excellent student, wound up studying at MIT.
Pham would go on to nab a master’s degree in electrical engineering before being drawn to job in Silicon Valley, where his first job was at Hewlett Packard. He said after three years, he “got bored” and joined Silicon Graphics, whose cofounder, Jim Clark, would later cofound Netscape with a young Marc Andreessen.
Pham spoke at a startup event in February, roughly one month before the Bay Area instituted its shelter-in-place rules. You can check out the talk below.
How a handful of employees at Apple quickly pushed forward the development of a contract tracing API and collaboration with Google in less than a month (Christina Farr/CNBC)
How a handful of employees at Apple quickly pushed forward the development of a contract tracing API and collaboration with Google in less than a month — - Apple and Google announced a partnership to bring contact tracing to smartphones on April 10th. Their software toolkit will be released on Friday.
State-sponsored hackers circle around govt's Covid-19 efforts
Amazon India offers zero interest credit
Samsung reports Q1 earnings with total revenue ~$45.4B, up 5.6% YoY, and operating profit of ~$5.2B, up 3% YoY, as chip demand was solid amid COVID-19 crisis (Hyunjoo Jin/Reuters)
Samsung reports Q1 earnings with total revenue ~$45.4B, up 5.6% YoY, and operating profit of ~$5.2B, up 3% YoY, as chip demand was solid amid COVID-19 crisis — SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) said its operating profit rose 3% in the January to March period …
Ford says it is delaying the commercial launch of its self-driving vehicle services being developed with Argo AI to 2022, to reassess its strategy amid COVID-19 (Kirsten Korosec/TechCrunch)
Ford says it is delaying the commercial launch of its self-driving vehicle services being developed with Argo AI to 2022, to reassess its strategy amid COVID-19 — Ford said Tuesday it will delay plans to launch an autonomous vehicle service to 2022, as the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted …
Google Cloud revenue increased 52% to $2.78B in Q1, driven by "significant growth" in Google Cloud Platform and "ongoing strong growth" in G Suite (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)
Google Cloud revenue increased 52% to $2.78B in Q1, driven by “significant growth” in Google Cloud Platform and “ongoing strong growth” in G Suite — Google Cloud revenue increased 52% to $2.78 billion in the first quarter, helping Google parent Alphabet beat Wall …
Monday, April 27, 2020
Verizon, Cox extend customer payment concessions through June due to coronavirus
Amazon Ties Up With Indian Railways to Transport Essential Orders
Airtel Signs $1-Billion Deal With Nokia
The Last of Us Part 2 has a new release date and its sooner than you think
When The Last of Us Part 2 was delayed “indefinitely” fans of the franchise were deeply saddened. The game, which was originally set to release in February 2020, was delayed to May 29 because the developers wanted to give players a polished experience. As Shigeru Miyamoto said, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” However, in April it was announced that The Last of Us Part 2 was delayed yet again and not due to any technical reasons but due to the ongoing pandemic. Naughty Dog released a statement saying that they wanted to ensure the game reaches everyone, and since a lot of the world is in some form of lockdown, getting physical copies to them would be impossible.
Now, Sony has revealed on the PlayStation Blog that The Last of Us Part 2 will release on June 19. That is in 52 days as of writing this article. Less than 2 months away. Sony’s other high profile exclusive, Ghost of Tsushima which was scheduled to release on June 26 has been pushed back to July 17 to give the Last of Us Part 2 some breathing space.
Hermen Hulst, Head of Worldwide Studios, SIE took to the PlayStation Blog and said, “As our teams at Sony Interactive Entertainment and Worldwide Studios approach development milestones and confront a world changed by COVID-19, we find ourselves having to adapt to today’s ever-changing environment. Amidst some disruptions to our working styles, we wanted to provide an update to PlayStation gamers who are eager to learn when our next exclusive titles will arrive on PlayStation 4. As we begin to see an ease in the global distribution environment, I am pleased to confirm that The Last of Us Part II will arrive on June 19. And Ghost of Tsushima will follow on July 17.”
Even though Hermen Hulst sights distribution as the issue, we aren't entirely sure that was the reason The Last of Us Part 2 got a release date. On April 27, a massive Last of Us Part 2 leak hit the internet and while we aren't going to go over the details here, it is safe to say that the leak has major spoilers that will ruin the plot for anyone interested in the game.
In other PlayStation news, Sony has officially revealed the specs of the PS5 and you can see how it compares to the specs of the Xbox Series X here. You can also check out the all-new DualSense Controller for the PS5 here.
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Digital-ad downturn may complicate life for Google, Facebook
Docs: Israeli AI chip startup Hailo is pursuing an urgent IPO via a SPAC merger at a valuation of less than $500M; it was last valued at $1.2B in 2024 (Meir Orbach/CTech)
Meir Orbach / CTech : Docs: Israeli AI chip startup Hailo is pursuing an urgent IPO via a SPAC merger at a valuation of less than $500M; ...
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The first project we remember working on together was drawing scenes from the picture books that our mom brought with her when she immigrate...
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Sohee Kim / Bloomberg : South Korean authorities are investigating a data leak at e-commerce giant Coupang that exposed ~33.7M accounts; ...
