Techmeme
April 9, 2020, 4:05 AM

Top News

Michael McWhertor / Polygon:
Google makes Stadia free to use for anyone with a Gmail address and will give new users two months of Stadia Pro for free  —  Stadia Pro is also free for two months  —  Google's video game streaming platform, Stadia, is now free to anyone with a Gmail address, the company announced on Wednesday.
Jason Gurwin / The Streamable:
Disney says Disney+ has 50M+ paid subscribers globally, and that its April 3 launch in India accounts for 8M Disney+ subscribers; stock is up ~6% after hours  —  Disney announced that the company has surpassed 50 million paid subscribers, following their launch in India and eight Western European countries …
Eric S. Yuan / Zoom Blog:
Zoom gives updates on its progress with privacy and security: appointing a CISO Council and Advisory Board and bringing on Alex Stamos as an outside adviser  —  As I mentioned in my message on April 1, Zoom has seen tremendous growth and new use cases emerge over the past few weeks …
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Twitter removes a tool that let mobile users prevent some data from being shared with advertisers; EU users are exempt and need to opt in to sharing  —  Users in Europe are the exception  —  Twitter has removed a privacy feature that allowed all users to stop sharing some private information with advertisers.
Dave Gershgorn / OneZero :
Many US government and banking systems still use a 60-year-old COBOL, which makes it hard to find programmers to fix the systems when they break under pressure  —  Retired engineers are coming to the rescue  —  ver the weekend, New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, made an unusual public plea during …
Matt Drange / Protocol:
Online ticketing service Eventbrite says it will lay off 45% of its employees; sources say Eventbrite has over 1,000 staff  —  Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz announced Wednesday during a companywide meeting that 45% of employees were being laid off, Protocol has learned.
Eva Dou / Washington Post:
A look at COVID-19-related health security measures in places like Foxconn's iPhone-making complex and Huawei's factories in China as they restart production  —  Disinfect hands and shoes at the factory gate.  Bring your own towel.  No sunny-side-up eggs.
Johana Bhuiyan / Los Angeles Times:
In a letter, about 50 labor groups urge congressional leaders to reject Uber CEO's March 23 proposal to create a new legal category for its workers  —  A coalition of about 50 labor groups is asking congressional leaders to reject Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi's proposal …
Will Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
The pandemic has companies like Netflix and Equinix expediting network and server upgrades, driving the biggest expansion of internet infrastructure in years  —  Far from breaking it, the surge in usage the internet is seeing right now is driving a major upgrade.
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
UK's NCSC and US DHS publish a list of 2,500 COVID-19-related threats they are tracking, including malicious websites and email addresses linked to scams  —  If you weren't already taking the rise of coronavirus-based cybercrime seriously, take note.  A rare joint alert has gone out from U.S …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Sources: Microsoft won't be delivering its Windows 10X-powered Surface Neo dual-screen devices this year, nor will it ship Windows 10X to third-party OEMs  —  Microsoft is shifting its Windows focus to reflect the new world where virtualization and single-screen devices are more of a priority than brand-new form factors.
Andrei Frumusanu / AnandTech:
Evidence of benchmark cheating has been found in MediaTek chipsets used in smartphones from manufacturers including Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Sony  —  Mobile benchmark cheating has a long story that goes far back for the industry (well - at least in smartphone industry years) …
Richard Nieva / CNET:
Google says Meet, its teleconferencing tool, is adding 2M new users a day and logged 2B minutes of video calls in March with daily usage up 25x from January  —  As people around the world hunker down in their homes to slow the spread of COVID-19, one technology has emerged as a lifeline to the outside world: video chat.
Luke O'Brien / HuffPost:
Investigation details facial recognition company Clearview AI's ties to the alt-right, including hiring employees with deep links to far-right extremists  —  Clearview AI, which has alarmed privacy experts, hired several far-right employees, a HuffPost investigation found.
Dave Lee / Financial Times:
CloudKitchens blames rogue staffer for “Internet Food Court” PR campaign, after it created an impression that Kalanick was launching it during COVID-19 crisis  —  The Hollywood kitchen facility seemed perfect for the coronavirus crisis — but then suddenly vanished from the internet
Craig S. Smith / New York Times:
An overview of how machine learning is being used in sports to assess athletic talent, detect and predict injuries, improve the betting odds, and more  —  The pattern-recognizing power of machine learning is affecting players, teams, sports medicine and even betting.
Talos Blog:
Cisco's Talos security group finds fingerprint scanners from Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and others can be bypassed by fake fingerprints made with 3D printing  —  Phone, computer fingerprint scanners can be defeated with 3-D printing — By Paul Rascagneres and Vitor Ventura.

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
State of AI: Adoption, Challenges and Recommendations  —  Examining the current state of AI, the key challenges organizations face, and practical recommendations for utilizing AI integration alongside other best practices.
SignalFire:
SignalFire raises another $1 billion to back applied AI startups  —  We build AI too.  It tracks 650M tech employees so we can help companies with recruiting and GTM across enterprise, infra, healthcare, security, and consumer.
Zoho:
Mileage tracking made easy with Zoho Expense  —  When just a swipe of your finger could raise mileage expenses, why waste time remembering and logging every mile driven on your spreadsheets, emails, or shared files?
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Great Chat:
Founders need prenups, too
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Techmeme Ride Home:
The AI Coding Wars Are Upon Us
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View:
Sir Niall Ferguson decodes Trump, China, and the new world order
Azeem Azhar explores how AI and exponential technologies are shaping our future.
Subscribe to Azeem Azhar's Exponential View.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Roblox CEO David Baszucki knows what your kids are doing.
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Spotlight On:
CrowdStrike's George Kurtz on building a generational company
A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
Subscribe to Spotlight On.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:05 AM ET, April 9, 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

Andy Greenberg / Wired:

Earlier Picks

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Danny Crichton / TechCrunch:
Bloomberg:
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica: