Techmeme
March 20, 2020, 7:30 PM

Top News

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video say they will reduce their streaming quality in EU to reduce traffic on the network, as millions are confined at home  —  BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) YouTube said on Friday it will reduce its streaming quality in the European Union …
Financial Times:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
After canceling Google I/O's in-person event in early March, Google now says it will “not be holding an I/O event in any capacity this year”  —  Google earlier this month announced that it was not hosting a physical developer conference in light of coronavirus.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
A day with the new MacBook Air: delightfully close to perfection and settles all the issues with keyboard, price, and performance, but its camera still stinks  —  We waited a long time for a retina MacBook Air.  When we finally got it back in November 2018, it was worth waiting for.
Amber Neely / AppleInsider:
Study: using touch on Apple CarPlay or Android Auto impairs driver reaction times by 50%+, vs. 35% for texting-while-driving and 46% for hand-held phone calls  —  U.K. based road safety charity IAM RoadSmart has released a study showing how in-vehicle infotainment systems …
CNBC:
AWS commits $20M and launches a diagnostics development unit, with 35 partner orgs, to accelerate research to find a faster, more affordable test for COVID-19  —  - Amazon is launching a diagnostics development unit through its cloud unit, AWS.  — The idea is to back researchers with funds …
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
WHO debuts Health Alert, a fact-finding tool on WhatsApp that shows up-to-date info like novel COVID-19 infection rates, travel advisories, and debunked misinfo  —  The World Health Organization is partnering with the messaging app to help ensure trustworthy information gets out.
Strategy Analytics:
Research: global smartphone shipments dropped 38% YoY in February, from 99.2M units in 2019 to 61.8M in 2020  —  According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments tumbled 38 percent year-on-year in the month of February, 2020.
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
Twitter, which prohibits denials of established science on the virus' transmission, says Elon Musk's tweet that kids are “essentially immune” is not a violation  —  The journalists at BuzzFeed News are proud to bring you trustworthy and relevant reporting about the coronavirus.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Instagram says it is internally testing a Snapchat-like ephemeral feature that clears chat messages after all members have viewed the thread and closed it  —  Instagram is finally preparing to copy Snapchat's most popular feature, and one of the few it hasn't already cloned.

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Earlier Picks

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