FCC tries to bust myths with more myths, Waymo accidentally spills the LiDAR beans and SiriusXM makes pivotal acquisition. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for April 27, 2017. 1. FCC's mythbusting release about net neutrality itself contains myths Ahead of today's FCC plan about repealing net neutrality protections, the organization released a document of "Myths vs. Facts" detailing some of its propaganda. We'll have more on the details of the plan later on today. For now, Devin colors in some of the details the document left blank – and there ended up being many more myths in the "Facts" provided than you might've guessed. 2. Waymo's LiDAR tech recipes revealed Waymo redacted a transcript of its lawyer questioning Uber's Anthony Levandowski, to protect its trade secrets. But a huge goof meant you could reassemble the transcript using an accompanying index to figure out what they were trying to keep under wraps. Illuminating comic legal foibles. 3. SiriusXM acquires Automatic for over $100 million Automatic, that company that makes connected car dongles and a companion app, which you may have heard about from its once-prolific podcast advertising, has been acquired by SiriusXM. This looks like SiriusXM's big move into connected vehicle tech and data, which is probably a much more lucrative market than satellite radio. 4. App Store had its best quarter ever in revenue and downloads The App Store recorded the most revenue and downloads ever in the store's history during the first quarter of 2017, according to new analytics from App Annie. That's good news, considering there has recently been some doom and gloom around App Store economics for developers that build businesses on Apple's mobile software store. 5. Nintendo sold 2.74 million Switches already Nintendo's new console is off to a strong start – the company reported 2.74 million sales to date, up to the financial year that just ended. The sales, combined with estimates, put the Switch pretty much on track to eclipse lifetime Wii U sales in its first year alone. 6. Amazon's Echo Look comes with the requisite privacy concerns Look, if you're not aware that a recording device from a gigantic ecommerce company concerned primarily with making money is going to involve privacy trade-offs I don't know what to tell you. 7. Space looks great in 4K AWS and NASA made the first live 4K broadcast from space and it makes me want there to be a 24/7 reality show from there on Amazon Prime. Make that happen. It may not be broadcast from space, but something fun will be streamed from NYC: That's right, I'm talking about Disrupt NY 2017 from May 15 - May 17. It's better in person though so get your tickets now. |