Techmeme
March 3, 2020, 2:50 PM

Top News

Sam Dean / Los Angeles Times:
Twitter says it strongly encourages its 4,800 employees to work from home to avoid spreading coronavirus, the first major US company to do so  —  Twitter on Monday became the first major U.S. corporation to strongly encourage its employees to work from home to avoid spreading coronavirus.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Facebook and Twitter pull out of the SXSW conference citing COVID-19 concerns; event organizers say the conference is proceeding as planned  —  Twitter pulled out earlier today  —  Facebook has pulled out of the upcoming SXSW conference in Austin, TX, according to a company statement given to Business Insider.
Kate Rooney / CNBC:
Bloomberg:
iPhone maker Foxconn says it expects its Chinese plants to begin operating normally by the end of March, after the disruption caused by the coronavirus  —  - Hon Hai says its facilities are at 50% seasonal capacity  — The epidemic has disrupted Apple's finely tuned supply chain
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Kuo says Apple is working on six products with mini-LED tech including an iMac Pro refresh for Q4'20, a 7.9" iPad mini coming in 2020, and a 14.1" MacBook Pro  —  Apple has six mini-LED products in the works that are set to debut in 2020 and 2021, and production is not expected to be delayed …
Jim Salter / Ars Technica:
Let's Encrypt discovers a bug in its Certification Authority Authorization code, meaning affected users need to manually force-renew certs to avoid downtime  —  Let's Encrypt users will need to manually force-renew once to avoid downtime.  —  On Leap Day, Let's Encrypt announced …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
WhatsApp says a dark mode will become available for iOS and Android users today, after months of testing, on by default for users with system dark mode enabled  —  Facebook finally says hello to darkness  —  WhatsApp is finally getting a new dark mode on iOS and Android today.
Nat Levy / GeekWire:
Amazon says it will speed up same-day delivery for Prime members in Philadelphia, Phoenix, Orlando, and Dallas thanks to newly built smaller warehouses  —  Amazon today unveiled its latest initiative to speed up delivery times on millions of items for its growing cadre of Prime members.
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Honeywell says it will launch a quantum computer within three months with a quantum volume of at least 64, the world's most powerful quantum computer  —  Under Honeywell's quantum plans, customers will connect directly to systems housed by the company.  Honeywell will use quantum computing …
Andrew Marantz / New Yorker:
Interviews with dozens of people shed light on how Brad Parscale, a political newcomer, leveraged Facebook and its ad platform to help Trump win in 2016  —  Brad Parscale used social media to sway the 2016 election.  He's poised to do it again.  —  In September, at a resort hotel in the Coachella Valley …
Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
Prescription drug companies are ramping up Facebook ads, often accessing user data via loopholes, with the sector's mobile spend roughly tripling in two years  —  Pharmaceutical companies are ramping up their spending on social media, triggering some patient advocate concerns about privacy
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Report: senior management at Apple rebuffed some operations execs' suggestion to relocate part of its manufacturing from China to Vietnam as early as 2015  —  Production on Apple's devices has been stymied in recent weeks due to delays caused by the coronavirus outbreak in China.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
US sanctions two Chinese nationals for allegedly laundering cryptocurrency for North Korea's Lazarus Group, which has hacked two crypto exchanges since 2018  —  UPDATE: The Department of Justice has also indicted the two Chinese nationals on money laundering-related charges.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Physical security startup Deep Sentinel, which uses cameras and AI to prevent break-ins, extends its Series A to $24M and launches Deep Sentinel for Business  —  Deep Sentinel, a physical security startup that leverages cameras, AI, and around-the-clock monitoring to prevent break-ins …
Adrian Chen / New York Times:
Profile of Hideo Kojima, a legend like few others in the gaming industry, as he looks past Metal Gear Solid with Death Stranding  —  He's an auteur whose bizarre creations — the Metal Gear Solid series and, most recently, Death Stranding — have become huge blockbusters.  Why do gamers find them so captivating?
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
Behind Facebook's rewrite of Messenger, going live today, that has shrunk the iOS app's size from 130MB to 30MB and its codebase from 1.7M to 360K lines of code  —  To make its iPhone messaging app run better—especially on older phones—Facebook rewrote it from the ground up.  The new version is going live now.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
UnitQ raises $11M Series A, led by Google's Gradient Ventures, to spot bugs in user reports with natural language processing  —  As of early 2018, only 21% of bugs found during software testing were fixed immediately, according to Statista.  It's the belief of Christian Wiklund, David Eklov …
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