Techmeme
March 18, 2020, 4:10 PM

Top News

Apple:
Apple unveils new 11" and 12.9" iPad Pro with a lidar scanner for depth-sensing, backlit keyboard and trackpad, available to order today for $799+ and $999+  —  New Magic Keyboard Designed for iPad Pro Features a Floating Design, Backlit Keyboard and Trackpad, Delivering the Best Typing Experience Ever on iPad
Apple:
Apple launches new MacBook Air with a Magic Keyboard featuring scissor-style keys, 13.3" display, Touch ID, and 10th-gen Intel Core CPUs, starting at $999  —  The Most Popular Mac Now Has Up to 2x Faster Performance, the New Magic Keyboard and Twice the Storage
Mitchel Broussard / MacRumors:
Apple will add full trackpad support to all iPads running iPadOS 13.4 on March 24 and unveils a Magic Keyboard with built-in trackpad starting at $299 in May  —  Apple today announced that iPadOS 13.4 will launch next Tuesday, March 24 as a free software update for all iPad Pro models …
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Richard Leadbetter / Eurogamer.net:
Sony details full PlayStation 5 specs: a custom eight-core AMD Zen 2 CPU, custom GPU based on AMD's RDNA 2 with 10.28 teraflops, 16GB RAM, and custom 825GB SSD  —  Sony has broken its silence.  PlayStation 5 specifications are now out in the open with system architect Mark Cerny delivering …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Slack unveils a new design with an updated navigation bar, collapsible sections within the sidebar, improved ways to respond to threads and mentions, and more  —  It arrives today, and it's more customizable and simplified  —  Slack is unveiling a big redesign to its communications app …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Google launches Android 11 Developer Preview 2 with hinge angle support for foldables, call screening improvements, and new Neural Networks API functionality  —  Google today launched the second Android 11 developer preview with hinge angle detection support, call screening improvements, and new ops in the Neural Networks API.
Casey Newton / The Interface:
Amid COVID-19 crisis, tech platforms are making a premature bet on AI, as human moderators shift to moderating less sensitive content while working from home  —  Today, let's talk about some of the front-line workers at Facebook and Google working on the pandemic: the content moderators who keep the site running day in and day out.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
This pandemic has generated a surge in online community building, creating cautious optimism that our virtual efforts can offset some in-person losses  —  We've always hoped that our digital tools would create connections, not conflict.  We have a chance to make it happen.
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Pat Hanrahan and Ed Catmull are awarded the $1M Turing Award for their work on 3D animation and RenderMan, the engine behind Pixar's movies  —  Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan created computer techniques that remade animation, special effects, virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp announces two initiatives to combat COVID-19 misinformation: an Information Hub in partnership with WHO and others, and a $1M grant to Poynter  —  WhatsApp has long grappled with its platform being used to spread misinformation.  In the latest move, today it announced two initiatives …
Patrick J. Sauer / Marker:
Profile of Cameo, a marketplace that lets fans pay for personalized videos from celebrities, which in the last 15 months has grown from 20 to 125 employees  —  Inside the surreal and lucrative two-sided marketplace of mediocre famous people  —  ho's the most famous person on the planet?" asks Steven Galanis. "

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
See how your customer experience priorities compare  —  TELUS Digital surveyed leaders about the tech they're investing in, the KPIs they're tracking and their plans for outsourcing.  Get the results.  No form fill required!
Intel:
Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking  —  With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs.  Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.
Zoho:
Zoho Sign at Kenya's Digital Trust Forum 2025 organized by Evrotrust and Geda  —  Kenyan businesses and government services are adapting to digital alternatives to explore opportunities in the nation's newly launched ten-year Digital Master Plan.
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

Techmeme Ride Home:
How Tariffs Might Impact Tech
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
What AI anime memes tell us about the future of art and humanity
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Great Chat:
Battle of the startup cities
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.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Zach Weinberg (Co-Founder & CEO, Curie.Bio) on The Tariff Trap, Self-Inflicted Recession Risk, and Open AI's Fundraise
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Trump vs The Media, Round 2, with Sara Fischer
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:
Graphite's Merrill Lutsky on Revolutionizing Code Review for the AI Era
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 4:10 PM ET, March 18, 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

Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:

Earlier Picks

Joe Tidy / BBC:
The Information: