Techmeme
April 8, 2020, 2:00 PM

Top News

Michael McWhertor / Polygon:
Google makes Stadia free to use for anyone with a Gmail address and will give new users two months of Stadia Pro for free  —  Stadia Pro is also free for two months  —  Google's video game streaming platform, Stadia, is now free to anyone with a Gmail address, the company announced on Wednesday.
Luke O'Brien / HuffPost:
Investigation details facial recognition company Clearview AI's ties to the alt-right, including hiring employees with deep links to far-right extremists  —  Clearview AI, which has alarmed privacy experts, hired several far-right employees, a HuffPost investigation found.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Airbnb is paying 10%+ interest on the $1B funding it raised on Monday; investors were offered free stock warrants based on an $18B valuation  —  Airbnb's new investors get free warrants based on company valuation of $18 billion  —  Airbnb Inc. agreed to pay its new investors interest …
Eric S. Yuan / Zoom Blog:
Zoom gives updates on its progress with privacy and security: appointing a CISO Council and Advisory Board and bringing on Alex Stamos as an outside advisor  —  As I mentioned in my message on April 1, Zoom has seen tremendous growth and new use cases emerge over the past few weeks …
Bloomberg:
New York Times:
SimilarWeb and Apptopia: amid quarantines, Americans increasingly use online platforms on computers, not smartphones; Nextdoor.com traffic is up 73% from Jan.  —  Stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic, with movie theaters closed and no restaurants to dine in, Americans have been spending more of their lives online.
Craig Timberg / Washington Post:
Study of 225 pieces of COVID-19-related content rated false or misleading: 59% remain up with no warning label on Twitter, 27% on YouTube, and 24% on Facebook  —  Facebook and YouTube do better, but still leave some misinformation up  —  More than half of the misinformation …
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
UK's NCSC and US DHS publish a list of 2,500 COVID-19-related threats they are tracking, including malicious websites and email addresses linked to scams  —  If you weren't already taking the rise of coronavirus-based cybercrime seriously, take note.  A rare joint alert has gone out from U.S …
@jack:
Dorsey says he's moving $1B of his Square equity, ~28% of his wealth, to Start Small LLC to fund COVID-19 relief, to later focus on girls' health and education  —  I'm moving $1B of my Square equity (~28% of my wealth) to #startsmall LLC to fund global COVID-19 relief. After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl's health and education, and UBI. It will operate transparently, all flows tracked here: https://docs.google.com/...
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says it will make all of its events digital until July 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic  —  Build 2021 will likely be a digital event  —  Microsoft is planning to make all of its internal and external events digital-only until July 2021 due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Mishaal Rahman / XDA Developers:
Google will require a Virtual A/B partition setup on new Android 11 devices, paving way for simpler and seamless background updates, similar to Chrome OS  —  With Android 7.0 Nougat, Google introduced a partition scheme designed to speed up software updates.
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:
Valve releases data showing rise in games making $10K during first two weeks after release but analysis suggests ~80% of games earn under $5K during same period  —  Valve offers a peek behind the sales curtain, telling an incomplete and mixed story.  —  It has been roughly two years …
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Mozilla says long-time chairwoman Mitchell Baker will become CEO, following Chris Beard's departure last year  —  Mozilla Corporation announced today that it has chosen long-time chairwoman Mitchell Baker to be CEO, replacing Chris Beard who announced he would be stepping down at the end of the year last August.
Talos Blog:
Cisco's Talos security group finds fingerprint scanners from Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and others can be bypassed by fake fingerprints made with 3D printing  —  Phone, computer fingerprint scanners can be defeated with 3-D printing — By Paul Rascagneres and Vitor Ventura.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
FireEye details how zero-days were exploited worldwide from 2012 to 2019, says it was able to link the use of 55 zero-day exploits to state-sponsored operations  —  The collection of countries using those secret hacking techniques has expanded far beyond the usual suspects.
Dan Grover:
Overview of how apps from Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and others are helping users in China check their exposure, get care, and more during the COVID-19 outbreak  —  Summary: China's apps played a pivotal role in supporting some of the most effective tactics the country used in fighting Covid-19 …

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