Recode Daily: Trump tweets a vow to help sanctioned Chinese phonemaker ZTE ‘get back into business, fast’

President Trump wants to help Chinese phone maker ZTE, which had stopped operations after U.S. companies were banned from selling to it. Via Twitter, Trump commanded the U.S. Commerce Department to give ZTE “a way to get back into business, fast.” This would be a stark reversal of the punishment his administration handed out to ZTE for failing to properly reprimand the employees involved in selling U.S.-origin equipment to Iran. ZTE is the fourth-largest smartphone maker in the U.S. [Roger Cheng / CNET]

[Want to get the Recode Daily in your inbox? Subscribe here.]

The annual broadcast TV “upfronts” kick off this morning — will this be the year that TV advertisers finally catch up to TV viewers? At the New York upfronts (here’s a list of events and parties) the TV networks put on a week of glitzy showcases, followed by weeks of negotiating where advertisers commit to the bulk of the TV spending they’ll do for the next 12 months. Comcast’s internet revenue is catching up to TV: The cable giant’s internet business has grown to more than 26 million subscribers, while its number of pay TV users has declined to 22 million. [Rani Molla / Recode]

Here’s a detailed look at the potential impact of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son’s $100 billion Vision Fund, which has invested $30 billion in 24 companies since launching a year ago. [The Economist]

Venture deep inside the phenomenon of Fortnite Battle Royale, by many measures the most popular video game in the world. Fortnite has also become the most-viewed game on YouTube — by March, there were almost three billion views of the millions of sessions that players had uploaded — and the top game on the Twitch streaming platform. “In terms of fervor, compulsive behavior, and parental noncomprehension, the Fortnite craze has elements of Beatlemania, the opioid crisis, and the ingestion of Tide Pods.” [Nick Paumgarten / The New Yorker]

Happy Blockchain Week! In New York, thousands of cryptocurrency advocates are expected to descend on Consensus, a trade show/conference. Among the hundreds of scheduled speakers: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and FedEx CEO Frederick Smith; Snoop Dogg will headline a party hosted by payment firm Ripple. Consensus tickets range from $1,499 to $2,999; Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted that the hefty price tag is one of the reasons he’s boycotting the event. [Lily Katz / Bloomberg]

Top stories from Recode

“Alexa” has become a less-popular baby name since Amazon launched Echo.

“Siri,” Apple’s virtual assistant, has never been a popular name.

Tim Cook brought his pro-privacy views to his Duke University commencement speech today.

“We reject the excuse that getting the most out of technology means trading away your right to privacy.”

Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr explains how to run your company like Bill Gates or Bono.

On the latest episode of Recode Decode, Doerr talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher and Teddy Schleifer about his new book, “Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs.”

This is cool

Supercomputers are driving a revolution in hurricane forecasting. And here are your hurricane names for 2018.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via