Techmeme
February 20, 2020, 4:25 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is weighing an option to set third-party browser and email apps as defaults on iPhones and iPads and third-party music services on the HomePod  —  - Company considers letting users change web browser, email app  — Spotify, Pandora may be allowed to stream directly on HomePod
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft says it will offer its Defender antivirus software for Android and iOS devices later this year  —  - Microsoft's Defender software will become available for Android and iOS devices later this year.  — It's meant to prevent malware and phishing attacks.
Ben Collins / NBC News:
Twitter confirms it is testing bright labels beneath lies and misinfo posted by politicians and public figures, and points-based “community badges” for users  —  A leaked demo features bright red and orange badges for tweets that have been deemed “harmfully misleading.”
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed News:
Google removed ~600 Android apps, which were installed 4.5B+ times, and banned their developers from the Play store for ad fraud and pushing “disruptive” ads  —  Google has removed close to 600 Android apps and banned their developers from the Play store and its ad networks as part …
New York Times:
Morgan Stanley says it will buy online discount brokerage E-Trade for about $13B, in the biggest takeover by an American lender since the 2008 financial crisis  —  The $13 billion deal will give a powerful Wall Street firm control of a major presence in the world of online brokerages.
Sam Byford / The Verge:
HTC announces new Cosmos VR headset variants: $899 Elite, lower-end Play, and XR with “high-quality XR passthrough cameras”, giving it AR capabilities  —  One for gamers, one for AR, one for Angry Birds  —  HTC is expanding its range of virtual reality headsets today with multiple new variants of the Vive Cosmos.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Twitter announces a “continue thread” option, a new feature that links tweets together while they are being composed  —  Twitter is rolling out a new feature that makes it easier to thread multiple tweets together.  With this change, you can now link tweets together while you compose them.
Jezebel:
A look at the data sharing practices of therapy apps like Better Help, which notify third parties when an app is opened and if a patient has suicidal thoughts  —  Starting treatment with Better Help, one of the most prominent “therapy-on-demand” apps to launch over the last few years, is easy, which is more or less the point.
Shona Ghosh / Business Insider:
Google tells Cloud Vision API customers it will no longer label pictures with “woman” or “man” as a person's gender cannot be inferred by appearance alone  —  - A Google AI tool that can recognize objects in pictures will no longer attach gender labels like “woman” or “man” to images of people.
Craig Timberg / Washington Post:
Sources detail the rising clout of Joel Kaplan and other conservatives at Facebook during the Trump administration  —  Facebook created “Project P” — for propaganda — in the hectic weeks after the 2016 presidential election and quickly found dozens of pages that had peddled false news reports ahead of Donald Trump's surprise victory.
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Streaming platforms like Roku and Hulu aren't subject to the same political ad transparency rules as broadcasters even as campaigns and PACs buy ads on them  —  With more Americans cutting the cord, watchdogs worry that voters lack a full understanding of who's trying to influence them
Vincent Woo / New York Magazine:
Internal documents and interviews with former staff and students detail Lambda coding school's misleading claims about graduate outcomes and curriculum quality  —  If you visit the website of Lambda School, a “boot camp” for people who want to quickly learn how to code …

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:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/22 - An LLM Siri But... Only The Year AFTER Next?
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 4:25 PM ET, February 20, 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

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:

Earlier Picks

Joseph Menn / Reuters:
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed News:
Andrew Liszewski / Gizmodo:
Abner Li / 9to5Google: