After considerable outside pressure from political types and former employees, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced in a blog post that the non-profit will retain control of the company…even as it restructures into a public benefit corporation. CNBC.com reports that the Microsoft-backed company was recently valued at some $300 billion. The decision to keep the control with the non-profit came after meetings with the Attorneys General of California and Delaware. Altman said in a video call  “We will be converting the limited liability company, that is a subsidiary of that nonprofit, to a public benefit corporation. By doing so, it will change the equity structure of that company so that employees, investors and the not-for-profit can own equity in that PBC.” 

Microsoft has bowed a new Surface Pro tablet today..it has a 12 inch screen, and a few design changes from the bigger 13 inch Surface Pro 11. According to theverge.com, the Surface Pro 12 inch runs on an Arm processor. It is fanless, and doesn’t have a Surface Connect charging port. The keyboard is different as well. Besides the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core processor, it comes with 16 gigs of RAM, 256 gigs of storage, and starts at $799. A keyboard will run you another $149.99. Expect to tack on $100 more to the tablet price if you wan t 512 gigs of storage. You can order directly from Microsoft or at Best Buy. It ships May 20th to consumers, and July 22nd to businesses. 

Acting after a court order (which Apple has appealed), Amazon has made it much easier to buy books on an iPhone. Previously, Apple rules made it hard for users to leave the app to buy a book, then come back. 9to5mac.com notes that basically you had to browse and buy titles separately in your web browser, before returning to your Kindle app to read the downloaded books. Now, there’s a nice big ‘get book’ button with each listed title in the Kindle app. Hitting that takes you right to the book’s Amazon listing in your browser…you can buy with ‘1-Click,’ then jump right back into the Kindle app and start reading the downloaded book. It’s still not as elegant as just buying the thing directly in the Kindle app, but a lot quicker and cleaner. Whether this can continue depends on who wins in court, but it’s a nice feature for readers. Maybe Apple has given up enough on its failed Books app to let things go…but probably not. I have read books on my phone, but prefer to throw my Kindle in my bag when traveling…it’s small and light and the battery lasts forever. Of course it’s great for home…only really missing that book ‘smell and feel.’

Tesla sales in Germany went off a cliff in April. Mashable.com reports that the Musk-helmed EV firm sold less than 900 vehicles there in April. That’s a drop of 45.9% from last April. Since April is in 2nd quarter, these numbers won’t show up in Tesla’s earnings until the end of the quarter, that wraps the last of June. Meanwhile, total German EV sales were up 53.5%, with the bulk of those sales going to Chinese EV maker BYD. BYD sold 1566 EVs in Germany in April. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.