Facebook and Microsoft release solid earnings reports, scientists make a brain-to-speech breakthrough and Verizon announces more 5G plans. Here's your Daily Crunch for April 25, 2019.

1. Facebook reserves $3B for FTC fine, but keeps growing with 2.38B users in Q1

A massive penalty hangs over Facebook’s head, but it otherwise had a very strong Q1 earnings report. The company reached 2.38 billion monthly users, up 2.5 percent from the previous quarter, and it pulled in $15.08 billion in revenue.

Facebook recorded earnings per share were significantly lower than expected, but that’s because it set aside $3 billion to cover a potential FTC fine that it’s still resolving.

2. Scientists pull speech directly from the brain

In a feat that could eventually unlock the possibility of speech for people with severe medical conditions, scientists have successfully recreated the speech of healthy subjects by tapping directly into their brains.

3. Verizon announces 20 5G markets for 2019, as Samsung Galaxy S10 5G preorders open

Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) just revealed a one-two punch: opening up preorders for the Galaxy S10 5G and announcing a list of 20 cities that will be getting the technology before year’s end.

4. Microsoft beats expectations with $30.6B in revenue as Azure’s growth continues

Microsoft Azure had a pretty good quarter, with revenue growing 73 percent. That’s a bit lower than last quarter’s results, but only by a fraction.

5. Slack to extend collaboration to folks who don’t want to give up email

The company announced a new email and calendar bridge that enables team members who might not have made the leap to Slack to still be kept in the loop.

6. NASA and FEMA are contingency planning for a potential asteroid Armageddon

Alongside international partners, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office will participate in a “tabletop exercise” that will simulate a scenario for how to respond to an asteroid on an impact trajectory with Earth.

7. How to source hard-to-fill programming positions

Zack Burt's recruiting strategy is surprisingly simple, and boils down to optimizing various segments of the sourcing funnel: awareness, page views and application submits. (Extra Crunch membership required.)