Techmeme
February 19, 2020, 1:50 PM

Top News

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
EU issues proposals to drive digitization across industries and sectors, including rules for high risk AI systems and a regulatory framework for data governance  —  European Union lawmakers have set out a first bundle of proposals for a new digital strategy for the bloc …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google officially launches Android 11 Developer Preview, arriving earlier than expected, with new display types, improved messaging, biometrics, and more  —  Following an inadvertent tease last week, Google today officially launched the Android 11 Developer Preview.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook is internally testing a tabbed version of News Feed for mobile that includes the Most Relevant, Most Recent, and Already Seen feeds  —  Facebook may make it easier to escape its ranking algorithm and explore the News Feed in different formats.  Facebook has internally prototyped …
Michael del Castillo / Forbes:
Coinbase becomes a Visa Principal Member, allowing it to issue bitcoin debit cards for other crypto companies and traditional firms  —  Credit card giant Visa has granted its principal membership to a cryptocurrency company for the first time.  Officially awarded to cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Twitter acquires Chroma Labs, which makes tools for video and photo creation, will split team across product, design, and engineering, shut down Chroma Stories  —  - Company builds photo, video-editing features for social media  — Chroma will join Twitter to work on ‘conversations’ products
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft launches a unified Office app for iOS and Android, combining Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single app; standalone versions will remain available  —  Even more mobile features are on the way soon  —  Microsoft is releasing its new unified Office app for iOS and Android today …
Dave Gershgorn / OneZero :
Profile of Japan-based NEC, which has been a longtime provider of facial recognition services globally and garners less scrutiny than new entrants in the space  —  July 2018, the mayor of Irving, Texas, signed a contract that would dramatically expand how the city's police department could investigate crimes using facial recognition.
More: Vox and VICE
Dan Primack / Axios:
Inside Founders Fund's deal process, where smaller investments only need limited partner approval, as it has raised its seventh fund and a $1.5B growth fund  —  Founders Fund has raised $3 billion for a pair of new funds, so expect a slew of headlines about how “Peter Thiel's venture capital firm” is now flush with cash.
More: TechCrunch
Richard Cooke / Wired:
A tribute to Wikipedia, which is one of the few remaining places that retains the faintly utopian glow of the early World Wide Web  —  People used to think the crowdsourced encyclopedia represented all that was wrong with the web.  Now it's a beacon of so much that's right.
Billy Steele / Engadget:
As Photoshop turns 30, Adobe begins rolling out new desktop and mobile features, including bringing the Object Selection tool to iPad  —  Photoshop turns 30 today, and Adobe is celebrating with some worthwhile updates to the photo-editing app on both the desktop and iPad.
Katie Paul / Reuters:
IRS lawsuit against Facebook, alleging the company owes $9B+ in taxes after shifting profits to Ireland, begins in San Francisco  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc is slated to begin a tax trial in a San Francisco court on Tuesday, as the Internal Revenue Service tries to convince …
Cameron Wilson / BuzzFeed:
Facebook has 17M users in Australia but just seven fact checkers, from AFP and Australian Associated Press, who completed 220 fact checks since April 2019  —  “It's incredible the sheer speed at which lies travel, particularly when they're targeted at groups," one fact checker said.
Corbin Davenport / Android Police:
Mozilla releases its VPN service Firefox Private Network on Android in a closed beta for $4.99/month  —  Mozilla, the organization behind the much-loved Firefox web browser, has experimented with creating a VPN service for some time.  Unlike the VPNs packaged with browsers like Opera …

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Earlier Picks

Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Hugh Son / CNBC:
Steven Overly / Politico:
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Robert Hof / SiliconANGLE:
Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
Bloomberg: