Techmeme
June 20, 2020, 2:25 AM

Top News

Jason Fried / HEY:
HEY's Jason Fried responds to Apple, says the dispute is not about the money, but about how Apple forcibly inserts itself between developers and their customers  —  So far, much of the recent discussion around Apple, HEY, In App Purchase (IAP), Subscriptions, the App Store, and the iOS developer community has been about money.
M.G. Siegler / 500ish:
App Store guidelines and policies were created for the world as it was a decade ago, and Apple should rewrite them for a very different world today  —  It's time for Apple to re-write and re-think the App Store rules.  Because it's 2020, not 2010. … Given Apple's recent statements …
Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple is temporarily closing 11 stores across Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and South Carolina amid COVID-19 spikes  —  Apple Inc. is temporarily shutting some of its U.S. retail stores again after cases of Covid-19 spiked in some areas across the country, Bloomberg News reports.
Patrick Kulp / Adweek:
Pandora will offer more stats to podcast hosts like where listeners live, how long they tune in to each episode, and the number of thumbs up/down they receive  —  Move makes the streaming service more competitive with Apple and Spotify  —  Key insight:  — Podcasting has long suffered …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Oracle owned BlueKai had an unprotected server leaking identifiable user data and sensitive browsing info, exposing billions of records for anyone to find  —  Billions of records exposed.  —  Have you ever wondered why online ads appear for things that you were just thinking about?
Bobbie Johnson / MIT Technology Review:
The UK government's efforts to build a centralized contract tracing app from scratch were plagued by poor technical execution and chaotic personnel management  —  The failed rollout of Britain's covid-19 app will damage digital contact tracing efforts worldwide—but its troubles were the result of clear, specific errors.
Leo Kelion / BBC:
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
Snap apologizes and disables its Juneteenth filter that allowed users to “smile and break the chains”, saying it didn't go through its usual review process  —  It's the latest example of a controversial Snapchat filter  —  Snapchat is apologizing for a controversial Juneteenth filter …
Sophie Alexander / Bloomberg:
Robinhood says it's changing its options offerings after a young customer committed suicide when his account temporarily showed a negative balance of over $700K  —  Robinhood is changing its options offerings, including increased education, in the wake of a young customer's suicide.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
A look at the internal divisions at Apple over its plans for an AR/VR headset, which may be released in 2022; AR glasses to be released by 2023 at the earliest  —  In late 2018, Apple Inc. was a few years into its plan to build a powerful headset with both virtual- and augmented-reality capabilities when things shifted dramatically.
Joseph Menn / Reuters:
Google removes 106 malicious Chrome extensions with 32M downloads that collected browsing history and sensitive credentials, after being alerted by researchers  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A newly discovered spyware effort attacked users through 32 million downloads of extensions …

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Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Louise Matsakis / Wired:
Jason Del Rey / Vox:
Media Matters for America: