Plus a brilliant Kickstarter of the week, some picks of the week, and more.

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• Cambridge Analytica to File for Bankruptcy After Misuse of Facebook Data - The New York Times — In a statement posted to its website, Cambridge Analytica said the controversy had driven away virtually all of the company’s customers, forcing it to file for bankruptcy in both the United States and Britain.
• Pocket Casts acquired by NPR, other public radio stations, and This American Life — One of the best podcast apps just got bought by some of the biggest podcast producers
• Amazon halts Seattle expansion over city tax proposal | TechCrunch — The new law is designed to address Seattle’s housing crunch, charging large companies $500 per head. The proposal is pretty clearly aimed at Amazon’s own expansion, and the company is taking the move to heart, potentially abandoning construction on a new building and just moving into a pre-existing space instead.
• Amazon success in Seattle has squished families out of housing.
• Amazon Launches Own Pet Product Brand, Wag; Starts With Food - Bloomberg — The Wag brand launched Wednesday with dry dog food and Amazon plans to expand the selection to include other pet supplies. The brand is available only to Amazon Prime subscribers, who pay monthly or annual fees in exchange for fast delivery as well as video and music streaming.
• 2016 MacBook Pro butterfly keyboards failing twice as frequently as older models — Following anecdotal reports of a keyboard more prone to failure than in previous years, AppleInsider has collected service data for the first year of release of the 2014, 2015, and 2016 MacBook Pros, with an additional slightly shorter data set for the 2017 model year given that it hasn't been available for a year yet.
• Humble Software Bundle: Python Dev Kit — Improve your Python development skills with a new software bundle. Get egghead.io, Postman PRO, PyCharm Professional Edition, and more great resources (including books and videos, too). Go ahead, pick up this bundle and see what develops!
• TIC-80 tiny computer — TIC-80 is a fantasy computer for making, playing and sharing tiny games.
• ELIA—the world’s most intuitive tactile reading system by Andrew Chepaitis — Kickstarter

And why autonomous boats might be here much sooner than self-driving cars.

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• Digital Ocean: Smash our promo code heresthething after you create an account, and get a credit on us! Promo Code: heresthething

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• And now there's ~20 million or so AWS/Google Cloud addresses blocked in Russia. — More on Russia v Telegram v The Cloud in today's briefing: - Russia demands Telegram encryption keys, they refuse - Russia blocks Telegram - Telegram uses AWS + Google Cloud - Russia blocks the cloud
• Twitch is reportedly blocked in Russia right now — Twitch is reportedly blocked in Russia after the country’s state communications regulator announced it was blocking specific IP addresses owned by Amazon and Google.
• Telegram plays down Russian block — claiming no ‘significant’ impact yet | TechCrunch — A court in Russia ordered a block of messaging app Telegram this week but founder Pavel Durov has shrugged off the impact of the ban 24 hours in — claiming the app hasn’t seen “a significant drop in user engagement so far.”
• Regulatory filings indicate a flurry of new iPhone (SE?) models launching soon — Devices typically appear in this database about a month before the products ship. These iPhone references were posted yesterday, suggesting a new iPhone launch will be debuting in early May/June.
• Amazon’s new ‘Alexa Blueprints’ let anyone create custom Alexa skills and responses | TechCrunch — Amazon this morning is introducing “Alexa Blueprints,” a new way for any Alexa owner to create their own customized Alexa skills or responses, without needing to know how to code.
• Autonomous Boats Will Be On the Market Sooner Than Self-Driving Cars — Startups and major firms like Rolls Royce are now looking to automate the seas and help maritime companies ease navigation, save fuel, improve safety, increase tonnage, and make more money.
• Self-driving boats | Amherst | Buffalo Automation
• Reddit now has more active users than Twitter — That’s an increase of more than 30 percent in less than 6 months, and puts the platform in equal 11th place in our new global social media platform ranking (see chart above).
• I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place — A conversation with former Reddit product head Dan McComas on the problems of growth as a metric and what Twitter is doing wrong.
• Supreme Court Tosses Out Microsoft Case on Digital Data Abroad - The New York Times — The dispute arose from a federal drug investigation in which prosecutors sought the emails of a suspect stored in a Microsoft data center in Dublin.
• Neova | A Unique Connected Ring For Musicians by Enhancia — Kickstarter — Add musical effects to your play using simple and natural hand gestures. A brand new way to enhance musical performance.

Plus Geek Squad's cozy relationship with the FBI, Intel's hardware fix for Spectre is closer than you thought, and what the hell is a Steve?

Then our Kickstarter of the week, big Jupiter Broadcasting news, and more.

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• Coder Radio 300 Shirt and Hoodie
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• Google to Weed Out Cryptocurrency Ads | Online Advertising | TechNewsWorld — The ban includes, but is not limited to, initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets and cryptocurrency trading advice.
• YouTube didn’t tell Wikipedia about its plans for Wikipedia - The Verge — YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the platform would start adding information from Wikipedia to conspiracy-related videos within the next few weeks.
• Intel redesigned its 8th-gen processors to patch ‘Meltdown’ flaws — The changes will start with Xeon Scalable "Cascade Lake" processors and 8th-generation Core chips shipping in the second half of this year.
• Lyft is testing a Netflix-style monthly subscription plan - The Verge — Lyft is testing monthly subscription plans for high-frequency users, a sign that the company is shifting toward a Netflix or Spotify model for transportation.
• MoviePass Wants To Gather a Whole Lot of Data About Its Users — Lowe said that was possible because "we get an enormous amount of information. Since we mail you the card, we know your home address . . . we know the makeup of that household, the kids, the age groups, the income. It's all based on where you live. It's not that we ask that. You can extrapolate that. "Then," Lowe continued, "Because you are being tracked in your GPS by the phone . . . we watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards, and so we know the movies you watch. We know all about you. We don't sell that data. What we do is we use that data to market film."
• Amazon is testing a “brief mode” for Alexa that replaces verbal responses with beeps - The Verge — This seems to be the only difference with brief mode — using beeps instead of verbal cues to acknowledge successful commands — but it’s not hard to imagine how Amazon might expand its applications. (We’ve reached out to the company to find out and will update the story if they reply.)
• Geek Squad's Relationship with FBI Is Cozier Than We Thought — Some of these reports indicate that the FBI treated Geek Squad employees as informants, identifying them as “CHS,” which is shorthand for confidential human sources
• No, Space Did Not Permanently Alter 7 Percent of Scott Kelly's DNA - Slashdot — The mistake stems from an inaccurate interpretation of NASA's ongoing Twins Study. When Scott went to space in 2015, his identical twin Mark -- also a former NASA astronaut -- stayed on the ground. The idea was that Mark would serve as a control subject -- a nearly identical genetic copy that NASA could use to figure out how the space environment changed Scott's body. Some fascinating results have come out of the experiment. For one thing, Scott's gut bacteria changed significantly while he was in space. And yes, he did experience genetic changes. The protective caps on the ends of his DNA strands -- known as telomeres -- increased while in space. But space didn't permenantly alter 7 percent of his DNA. [...] NASA also confirmed this in a statement to The Verge: "Scott's DNA did not fundamentally change," a NASA spokesperson said. "What researchers did observe are changes in gene expression, which is how your body reacts to your environment. This likely is within the range for humans under stress, such as mountain climbing or SCUBA diving."
• Steve, a Famous Northern Light, Stays Mysterious (and Keeps His Name) - The New York Times — Now a research paper has shed light on what Steve actually is, and scientists have proposed a moniker: Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.
• Deadwood 1876: A Safe-Robbing Game of Teamwork & Betrayal by Travis Hancock — Kickstarter — Work with your team to collect the most gold and then fight your teammates to the death to keep it all for yourself. 2-9 Players.