Techmeme
March 25, 2020, 8:05 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 …
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
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 …
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
Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed News:
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.
Annie Musgrove / Tech.eu:
London-based SoftIron, which provides performance-optimized data center appliances, raises $34M Series B led by its co-founder Norman Fraser  —  London-based data solutions company SoftIron has raised $34 million in a Series B round led by its co-founder, Norman Fraser, with support from existing investors.
More: FinSMEs and EU-Startups
Christina Farr / CNBC:
How volunteers from tech companies and epidemiologists worked together to build the US-focused COVID-19 data aggregation website covidnearyou.com in six days  —  - Volunteers from Amazon, Alphabet, Apple and other tech companies worked every night for a week to make a website called covidnearyou.

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