Month: April 2022

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Elon Musk has claimed he is buying Twitter in order to protect free speech. But what does Musk mean by “free speech”? Musk provided a somewhat vague answer in a tweet on Tuesday, one day after striking a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion. (The sale to Musk is pending and needs shareholder approval to be completed.)

Musk’s statement, which he made the pinned tweet on his Twitter profile, said the following:

By “free speech,” I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.

If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.

Twitter has First Amendment right to moderate tweets

There are multiple ways to interpret Musk’s statement as it relates to United States law, particularly the First Amendment. One interpretation is that Musk doesn’t need to change Twitter at all to prevent “censorship that goes far beyond the law.”

Enlarge / Something new can now be found deep in the void that is the Bethesda Launcher’s logo. (credit: Bethesda / Valve / Sam Machkovech)

If you’ve been waiting to crack open a bottle of Balmora Blue Wine and pour one out for the soon-to-be-shuttered Bethesda Launcher, today might be the day.

Bethesda has now formally rolled out a method to seamlessly transfer most PC games and virtual currencies purchased or acquired on the 6-year-old Bethesda Launcher storefront. On May 11, the launcher will no longer function, and you’ll need to use Steam to access any games you had acquired via Bethesda Launcher from that point on.

Starting today, you can officially transfer all compatible content to Steam and safely uninstall the Bethesda Launcher. As Ars Technica has confirmed, the process could very well be painless for you.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Data suggests that gamers are moving to Windows 11 at a steady pace but not nearly as quickly as they warmed to Windows 10 a few years ago. For historically change-averse businesses, surprisingly, the opposite may be true—Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during the company’s Q3 2022 earnings call that enterprises were “adopting Windows 11 at a faster pace than previous releases.”

That’s just one highlight from an overwhelmingly rosy earnings report for Microsoft, which reported revenue of $49.4 billion (up 18 percent from the same quarter last year) and net income of $16.7 billion (up 8 percent year over year).

Sales of Windows licenses to PC manufacturers increased by 11 percent; revenue from consumer and commercial Office products increased by 11 and 12 percent (respectively); revenue from Xbox content and services increased 4 percent; Surface hardware revenue increased by 13 percent; and LinkedIn revenue (of all things) increased 34 percent. But the biggest driver of growth continues to be Microsoft’s cloud business, which reported 26 percent higher revenue year over year for a total of $19.1 billion in earnings. That growth is thanks in large part to Azure cloud computing services.

Enlarge / The Pixel 6 Pro. (credit: Google)

Google/Alphabet just had its Q1 2022 earnings call, and once again, the company touted the sales of the Pixel 6. During the prior quarter, Q4 2021, CEO Sundar Pichai had said the company set an “all-time quarterly sales record for Pixel.” The “Pixel” referenced there technically included the Pixel 6 and midrange Pixel 5a. For this latest earnings call, though, there’s no ambiguity, with Pichai calling the Pixel 6 “the fastest-selling Pixel ever.” Here are the executive’s full remarks on the company’s hardware division:

In hardware, Pixel 6 is a huge step forward for the Pixel portfolio, and it’s been great to see the response from Pixel users. It’s the fastest-selling Pixel ever, and we are building broad consumer awareness of the brand and making good progress. I am excited about the products we have coming and look forward to sharing more at Google I/O.

The Pixel 6 is an outlier in Google’s flagship phones—because of how good it is. Previous Pixel flagships were rather disappointing, either because they were too expensive, like the Pixel 5, or too expensive and full of experimental features that didn’t work, like the Pixel 4. The Pixel 6 brings Google’s superior software and support to an Android phone without any major show-stopping problems and at a lower price than the competition.

Being the fastest-selling Pixel phone is still a low bar, though. In the tech news sphere, we talk about Google phones in the same breath as Apple and Samsung devices, but Google is really an ad company whose tiny hardware division exists as a side hobby. One report from Nikkei Asia says Google only planned to make “more than 7 million” Pixel 6 phones, while flagship iPhone sales can break 100 million units in seven months. Samsung releases 40 different phone models a year, so there’s no single model that can serve as a direct comparison, but last year, Samsung shipped 272 million phones, while Apple shipped 235 million phones.