Tech Digest daily roundup: Tesla profits drop by a quarter after price cuts
Tesla has reported a drop in first-quarter earnings as price cuts at Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company boosted demand but hit profit margins. Profits came in at $2.5bn, down by 24 percent from the year-ago period on revenues of $23.3bn, which were up by 24 percent. Shares fell on the results, which were in line with Wall Street expectations for earnings per share but showed a lower profit margin than expected. Faced with more EV competition from other automakers, Tesla has undertaken a series of price cuts in 2023, most recently over the last 24 hours on some models in the United States. AlJazeera
Interest in electric cars has slumped as electricity prices and falling petrol costs have erased the benefits of owning a plug-in. Searches for battery-powered vehicles have dropped by two thirds since early 2022, according to Britain’s biggest online car marketplace AutoTrader. Interest has waned because of surging electricity prices and the end of Government grants for plug-in vehicles. Combined with falling petrol prices, it has narrowed the price advantage per mile of driving an electric vehicle. New battery-powered cars are now on average 37pc more expensive than petrol and diesel models, AutoTrader said in its Road to 2030 report. Telegraph
In March, Amazon’s Luna gaming service expanded to Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom. Now the platform is available on Samsung Gaming Hub in those same countries. As a refresher, the hub is an app that comes with 2021 to 2023 Samsung Smart TVs. Among other features, it offers a way to quickly access a host of cloud gaming services, including GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming. In the US, Amazon Luna users have had the ability to access the service through Samsung Gaming Hub since last August.
Snapchat is releasing its GPT-powered AI chatbot to every user for free, the company announced at its annual developer conference, as it tries to chart a distinctive path between the titans of Instagram and TikTok. That means expanding access to its AI chatbot, doubling down on the distinction between public and private posts, and paying successful creators a share of the revenue their viral content generates. First released for paying members of the social network’s Snapchat+ subscription service, “My AI” shows up as another chat contact in the social network’s app.
Bluesky, the Jack Dorsey-backed decentralized Twitter alternative, now has an Android app. The launch follows the release of the service’s iOS app, which came out in late February. However, if you want to access the service at all, you’ll need to join the waitlist or get an invite code from a friend. I don’t have an Android phone, so I can’t vouch for the quality of the Android app. But I would recommend getting on the waitlist for the service — it’s my favorite Twitter clone yet. The Verge
Michael Schumacher’s family are planning legal action against a German weekly magazine over an “interview” with the seven times Formula One champion that was generated by artificial intelligence. A spokesperson for the Schumacher family, asked by Reuters for a comment on Wednesday, pointed to published reports of legal action. The Ferrari great has not been seen in public since he suffered a serious brain injury in a skiing accident on a family holiday in the French Alps in December 2013. The Guardian
