Techmeme
March 25, 2020, 8:40 AM

Top News

New York Times:
While traffic surges on Facebook, with messaging up 50% from last month in many countries, their now-remote workforce struggles to handle its own IT snafus  —  The social network is straining to deal with skyrocketing usage as its 45,000 employees work from home for the first time.
New York Times:
Facebook internal report: US users are reading more COVID-19 content from “higher-quality” sources based on its ranking of top publishers adopted last year  —  More than half of all news consumption on Facebook in America is about the virus, according to an internal report.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Apple updates Safari to fully block third-party cookies by default, months after Google said it would do the same in Chrome by 2022  —  Beating Google by two years to the privacy feature  —  Apple on Tuesday released a major update to its Safari Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
WHO partners with Facebook, Microsoft, and other tech companies on #BuildforCOVID19 hackathon to develop software tackling COVID-19 challenges, starting Mar. 26  —  - The World Health Organization has partnered with Facebook, Microsoft and several other tech companies for a hackathon to promote …
Chris Freeland / Internet Archive Blogs:
Internet Archive debuts National Emergency Library, allowing users to borrow 1.4M+ digitized books without joining a waitlist during the COVID-19 crisis  —  To address our unprecedented global and immediate need for access to reading and research materials, as of today, March 24, 2020 …
Stephen Palley / The Block:
NY federal court issues preliminary injunction against Telegram's 2018 $1.7B ICO, finding the distribution of Gram tokens likely violates US securities law  —  The $1.7 billion 2018 fundraising effort by Telegram hit a major snag today when a Federal Judge in New York issued …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple SVP of People and Retail says in internal memo that Apple expects to start reopening its retail stores in the first half of April on a staggered basis  —  Apple Inc. expects to start re-opening its retail stores in the first half of April on a staggered basis and has extended remote work abilities …
Geoffrey Fowler / Washington Post:
Unacast, an analytics company using location data from a variety of apps, debuts a Social Distancing Scoreboard to grade how US citizens are adapting by region  —  D.C. gets an ‘A’ while Wyoming earns an ‘F’ for following coronavirus stay-at-home advice, based on the locations of tens of millions of phones
Jay Greene / Washington Post:
Six US Amazon warehouses have at least one worker testing positive for COVID-19, with some facilities temporarily shut for cleaning and some workers quarantined  —  The spike in positive tests for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus comes as the ecommerce giant races to hire 100,000 workers to meet massive shopper demand.
Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed News:
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
YouTube will change the default video resolution to standard definition worldwide for a month starting today to ease internet traffic  —  - Videos will default to standard definition worldwide  — YouTube, Netflix already reduced video quality in Europe
Hariz Baharudin / The Straits Times:
Singapore will open source its contact-tracing app TraceTogether, which uses Bluetooth to identify people in extended close contact with COVID-19 patients  —  SINGAPORE - In a move to help the international community combat the coronavirus pandemic, the Government will be making the software …
Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Apple updates Apple Card's privacy policy to share more anonymized data with Goldman Sachs, to help some users secure or expand credit, allows opt out via email  —  Apple is updating its privacy policy for Apple Card to enable sharing more anonymized data with Goldman Sachs, its financial partner.

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Passkeys Week for a passwordless future: Learn how Zoho is embracing passkeys  —  Passkeys are the modern-day alternative authentication method that was introduced to replace traditional passwords for enhanced security and convenience.
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 11/18 - More Smartglasses On The Horizon
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:40 AM ET, March 25, 2020.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Laura Baldwin / O'Reilly Media:

Earlier Picks

Check Point Research:
Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat:
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Financial Times:
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge: