Axios

Amazon's cloud-based storage service, known as S3, was returning to life Tuesday afternoon following several hours of widespread problems.

As of 1:49 PM PST, we are fully recovered for operations for adding new objects in S3, which was our last operation showing a high error rate. The Amazon S3 service is operating normally.

Things still aren't perfect, though. For example, Isitdownrightnow, which tracks web outages, is still down.

The impact: While clearly a black eye for Amazon, the outage did prove just how ubiquitous Amazon's services are in powering the Internet.

Uber's tense relationship with drivers for its affordable UberX service is well-documented, but even drivers for the company's high-end options are growing disappointed.

In a video recording of CEO Travis Kalanick riding in an high-end Uber Black car published by Bloomberg, the driver confronts Kalanick about the company's fare cuts, which Kalanick disputes. Fawzi Kamel has been driving for Uber since 2011, according to the report, and told Kalanick: "You changed the whole business. You dropped the prices."

One of the big problems with Google Glass was the fact you looked like a dork wearing the things. A newly granted Google patent suggests one potential way to make the camera and computer less visibly jarring — add them into a baseball cap.

The patent describes pairing the hat with a phone for video streaming as well as the use of a personal assistant.

Our patent disclaimer (patent not pending): A patent means someone came up with the idea and the company wanted to protect it, not that there will ever be such a product or feature. And it's worth noting that the patent application was filed back in May 2013, even though it wasn't granted until today.

A significant problem with Amazon Web Services is causing big headaches for Web publishers on Tuesday. Businesses across the Web count on Amazon's cloud to make their sites function (including Axios, which relies on AWS to handle, among other things, the images that go with our stories).

Slack and Medium were among those experiencing issues related to the AWS problem. Amazon described the issue on its status page as "high error rates" with its U.S. East Coast servers.

We're continuing to work to remediate the availability issues for Amazon S3... AWS services and customer applications depending on S3 will continue to experience high error rates as we are actively working to remediate the errors in Amazon S3.

Pinterest, the online bookmarking service, has created Pinterest Labs, a formal unit to house its technology research efforts, the company said on Tuesday.

Pinterest Labs will focus on artificial intelligence areas such as machine learning, image recognition, and data analytics. It will work with top researchers inside and outside the company, including through partnerships with UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC San Diego, and other universities. Pinterest chief scientist Jure Leskovec, whose startup Pinterest acquired in 2015 and a currently an associate professor at Stanford, will lead the new division.

Formalizing research: Despite making its name as an online service for collecting photos of home decor or recipes, Pinterest has been heavily investing in technologies such as machine learning, computer vision, and recommendation algorithms. These technologies are increasingly behind some of the company's new features such as "Lens," a new tool that recognizes the items in a image when the user points their phone's camera at something. In the last few years, the company has also acquired several startups developing such technologies, so a formal division should help it to better focus and coordinate its research.

Comcast on Tuesday announced a deal to buy the remaining 49% stake in Universal Studios Japan that it doesn't already own for $2.27 billion, per Reuters. The transaction would value the Japanese theme park operator at around $7.5 billion, including the assumption of debt.

Sellers include Goldman Sachs and private equity firm MBK Partners. Comcast had acquired a 51% stake back in 2015.

South Korean prosecutors announced Tuesday that they're going to officially charge Jay Y. Lee — the third-generation heir and de facto leader of Samsung — with bribery, embezzlement, and hiding assets overseas. Formal charges were also filed against four other Samsung executives.

Background: Earlier this month, prosecutors arrested Lee, saying he bribed impeached President Park Geun-hye's close friend Choi Soon-sil with millions of dollars in order to gain government support for a 2015 company merger with Cheil Industries that would cement his control over Samsung. Lee, Park and Choi all denied the allegations.

What's next: The charges come ahead of a court ruling on whether to uphold parliament's December impeachment of Park, whose powers were suspended on accusations that she colluded with Choi to pressure big businesses, like Samsung, to make donations to charities that supported the president's policy agenda. "The indictment describes in detail the private conversation between Jay Y. Lee and President Park Geun-hye," said Lee Kyu-chul, a spokesman for the special prosecutor. The special prosecutor's office will deliver a final report on its investigation on March 6.

3,800 executives, analysts, directors, and experts voted. These are the top All-Stars, winning votes from inside and outside their industries:

The WSJ dives into how Snap is different than Twitter and Facebook.

• The office: "[T]he company defiantly operates unlike most Silicon Valley outfits, where collaboration and wide-open office spaces are prized. ... Snap doesn't have a headquarters."
• The founder: "Former employees say often the only way they knew co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel was at work was by seeing his chauffeured SUV. He avoids holding companywide meetings and prefers to dispense information to individuals or small groups, they say."
• And the quotes: "Evan doesn't talk much." ... "For someone of his age, he operates with much more wisdom than anyone else I have seen. I find him to be a very, very clear thinker. ... [H]e gets it right every time."