Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of April 25, 2021.
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Most popular stories on GeekWire
‘We are airborne!’ Stratolaunch sends the world’s biggest plane on second test flight
Stratolaunch, the aerospace company founded by the late Seattle billionaire Paul Allen, put the world’s biggest airplane through its second flight test today, two years after the first flight. … Read More
JEDI news: Judge won’t dismiss Amazon’s claim that Trump interfered with $10B cloud contract
The news: A federal judge on the Court of Federal Claims declined to dismiss allegations that former President Trump interfered with the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, a massive project to migrate the Pentagon’s computing infrastructure and data to the cloud. … Read More
Bill Gates predicts ‘very small numbers’ of COVID by end of 2022, takes heat for vaccine patent defense
Bill Gates predicts “the end will come” for the COVID-19 pandemic, saying in an interview on Sunday that a return to normal will arrive next year. … Read More
Washington lawmakers approve capital gains tax for the first time in state history
With time running out on the legislative session, Washington state lawmakers approved a $59 billion state budget including a tax on capital gains that has divided the region’s tech community. … Read More
Amazon to spend $1B to boost pay for 500k operations workers by as much as $3 an hour
Amazon announced Wednesday that it plans to invest more than $1 billion in wage increases for its operations workers, promising raises of between 50 cents and $3 an hour to more than 500,000 employees. … Read More
NASA freezes SpaceX’s lunar lander cash due to protests from Blue Origin, Dynetics
NASA says it’ll hold up on its payments to SpaceX for developing its Starship super-rocket as a lunar lander while the Government Accountability Office sorts out challenges to the $2.9 billion contract award from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture as well as from Alabama-based Dynetics. … Read More
Report: After MacKenzie Scott gave away billions, scammers began preying on vulnerable in her name
MacKenzie Scott made a philanthropic splash in 2020 by giving away more than $5 billion of her vast wealth to a variety of organizations. … Read More
Elon Musk taunts Jeff Bezos over Blue Origin’s challenge to SpaceX’s contract for lunar lander
The billionaire space battle just got kicked up a notch, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture challenging NASA’s award of a $2.9 billion lunar lander contract to SpaceX — and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk replying with a double entendre. … Read More
Amazon wins two Oscars for ‘Sound of Metal;’ Netflix leads all studios with seven wins
Amazon picked up two Oscars Sunday night during the 93rd Academy Awards as the annual celebration of the best in film took on a more subdued approach because of the pandemic. … Read More
How Starlink, Project Kuiper and other satellite broadband providers could change society
Imagine a world where high-speed internet blankets every corner of the globe, transforming the way people access health care, education and entertainment. … Read More
from GeekWire https://www.geekwire.com/2021/geekwire-weekly-roundup-2021-04-25/
