Tech Releases

How Fortnite became a smash hit, reportedly making $100M+ per month, by combining the popular building and battle royale shooter genres in one accessible game (Aja Romano/Vox)

DoJ asks the Supreme Court to moot the case against Microsoft on email data stored in Ireland after the Cloud Act became a law (Ellen Nakashima/Washington Post)

Amazon Music is shutting down its Storage service for uploaded MP3s, will remove all songs on April 30 unless users select an option to keep them (Nick Statt/The Verge)

Pr0gramm, the image hosting community behind Coinhive, software that hijacks browsers to mine cryptocurrency, donates $250K+ to cancer research after exposé (Brian Krebs/Krebs on Security)

Alibaba's mapping unit AutoNavi launches carpooling business, starting in Chengdu and Wuhan; Meituan Dianping launched its ridesharing service in February (Yimian Wu/China Money Network)

Amazon updates Video Skill API so Alexa can start recordings, launch apps, and carry out playback commands on set-top boxes; Dish and others are building skills (Ashley Carman/The Verge)

Accelerating and increasingly damaging leaks show Facebook's crumbling internal morale, which could be more pressing than threats like regulation or user exodus (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)

Uber is shutting down UberRUSH, its on-demand business delivery service for items weighing less than 30 pounds, ending services on June 30 (Megan Rose Dickey/TechCrunch)

Google is winding down URL shortener goo.gl next month and will shut it down next year; all existing links will continue to redirect to intended destination (Google Devs/Google Developers Blog)

Cobalt Robotics raises $13M Series A from Sequoia Capital, Storm Ventures and Founders Fund for its roving robotic security guard (CNBC)

Latest Microsoft reorganization proves it has moved beyond Windows, with cloud and AI as the fundamental core Microsoft is betting its future on (Tom Warren/The Verge)

Developers of open source CMS Drupal warn of remote code execution vulnerability affecting ~1M sites running Drupal 6, 7, or 8 and urge immediate patching (Liam Tung/ZDNet)

Customs officers in Shenzhen arrested a gang that smuggled ~$80M worth of iPhones from Hong Kong to mainland China using drones (Reuters)

Accolade raises $50M from a16z, Madrona, others, bringing a total raised to $200M+ to help corporate employees navigate their healthcare options (Taylor Soper/GeekWire)

You can officially buy an Android Go phone in the US

Singapore says it has reasonable grounds to believe Uber-Grab deal may violate competition laws, tells firms not to integrate businesses in the country for now (Jon Russell/TechCrunch)

Yevgeniy Nikulin, a Russian indicted for allegedly hacking LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring in 2012, has been extradited to the US from Czech Republic (DW.COM)

Nift, a startup that enables merchants to give gift cards from other local merchants to best customers to cross-promote their businesses, raises $16.5M Series A (Anthony Ha/TechCrunch)

Chartbeat: Chrome recommendations on mobile, Articles for You, is now the fourth-highest referrer to websites, growing 2100% in 2017 from 15M to 341M visits/mo (John Saroff/Nieman Lab)

ProtonMail adds encrypted contacts manager, which uses digital signatures to check data integrity, to its iOS and Android apps (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)

Sources: Facebook employees react to VP's controversial 2016 memo, with dozens criticizing company leakers; Andrew Bosworth has now deleted his memo (Casey Newton/The Verge)

Apple details external GPU support now available in macOS 10.13.4 High Sierra, recommends a number of specific enclosures and AMD cards; no Nvidia cards listed (Roger Fingas/AppleInsider)

Some Silicon Valley executives warm up to Trump on taxes and deregulation even as they disagree with him on immigration and the environment (Jack Nicas/New York Times)

Foxconn, facing tough competition from local Chinese companies and squeezed by Apple, sees a way to boost revenues and margins with the acquisition of Belkin (Om Malik)

Profile of Dara Khosrowshahi as he works to repair Uber's image by acting as a diplomat and a salesman without giving up the qualities that led to its success (Sheelah Kolhatkar/New Yorker)

UK-based 16-24-year-olds watch Netflix and listen to services like Spotify more than BBC, BBC radio stations; over 80% of kids watch YouTube, 29% BBC iPlayer (Mark Sweney/The Guardian)

Document reveals Facebook was informed in 2014 that Aleksandr Kogan's company's survey app could sell user data, which broke with Facebook's policy at the time (Financial Times)

Daimler and BMW say they are combining their car-sharing businesses into a joint venture, with equal shares for each firm, to better compete with Silicon Valley (Jack Ewing/New York Times)