🌎 Cloudy tales from Amazon

Samanth Subramanian

28 April 2023 at 6:19 am·3-min read

Good morning, Quartz readers!

Here’s what you need to know

Amazon’s first-quarter results held signs of an economic slowdown... Companies have eased up their spending on Amazon’s cloud services, and consumers are wary of costs amid persistent inflation.

...and by way of confirmation, US GDP growth decelerated to 1.1% the same quarter. That might look bad on the surface, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

The world is faring poorly in meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Progress is on track for only 12% of the targets, according to a new UN report, which predicts that more people will face hunger in 2030 than in 2015.

Softbank made it clear Arm is front and center in its portfolio. Rene Haas, the CEO of the British chip designer, was named to Softbank’s board ahead of Arm’s landmark IPO.

Chinese police made an unannounced visit to Bain & Co’s Shanghai hub. It’s really just business as usual though, as the country heightens its scrutiny of foreign firms.

Twitter censorship is worsening around the globe

Elon Musk’s views on censorship are complicated and oftentimes erroneous, but the social media company he now runs is surely seeing a lot of real censorship from countries around the world.

In the first half of 2022, before the chief twit took over, Twitter got around 53,000 legal requests from governments to remove content from its site. India led the way—and its censorship efforts are only on the rise.

The EVs are coming, even if you can’t hear them

“The internal combustion engine has gone unrivaled for over a century, but electric vehicles are changing the status quo. By 2030, they will avoid the need for at least five million barrels a day of oil. Cars are just the first wave: electric buses and trucks will follow soon.”

—Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, talking about a new IEA report that found a fifth of all global automobile sales will be electric this year, up from just 4% in 2020. One country will be a clear front-runner.

The activists are coming for BP, and you can hear them, loud and clear

“Do you like wildfires? Do you like the natural world? Do you want to see it destroyed?”

Those were just some of the questions—sprinkled among the expletives—thrown at BP executives during their annual shareholder meeting yesterday. The oil giant’s chairman Helge Lund wasn’t amused. We’ve got the full recap.

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The 45-year-old Voyager 2 will live a bit longer. NASA’s scientists had a clever power hack up their sleeves.

Farmers in Colorado can now repair their own tractors and combines. It wasn’t a question of ability, it was a question of the law.

Get ready for the ocean census. Organizers believe there’s more than 100,000 species to be discovered.

Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, clever power hacks, and tractor manuals to talk@qz.com. Reader support makes Quartz available to all—become a member. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner and Samanth Subramanian.

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