Techmeme
April 12, 2020, 8:50 PM

Top News

The Sunday Times:
Sources: NHSX, UK health service's technology arm, is working on a Bluetooth-based contact tracing app with Google and Apple at a “breakneck speed”  —  Ministers have ordered the creation of an NHS mobile phone app the government hopes will help end the coronavirus lockdown.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Apple says COVID-19 contact tracing apps can include duration of proximity when deciding what is a proximity event, potentially limiting false positive pings  —  Adoption is the hard part of contact tracing apps so far — but if it's baked into the operating system, it gets a lot easier
Leo Kelion / BBC:
NHSX to test an app for users to send a “yellow alert” if they self-diagnose with COVID-19 symptoms and a “red alert” if they test positive, to recent contacts  —  The UK has confirmed plans for an app that will warn users if they have recently been in close proximity …
Ross Anderson / Light Blue Touchpaper:
A list of issues that make contact tracing an impractical solution in the real world, from trolling others to cheating to insufficient adoption  —  There have recently been several proposals for pseudonymous contact tracing, including from Apple and Google.
Moxie Marlinspike / @moxie:
The Guardian:
Leaked docs reveal the extent of UK's cooperation with Faculty and Palantir on a “Covid-19 datastore” to power the previously announced NHS pandemic dashboard  —  Technology firms are processing large volumes of confidential UK patient information in a data-mining operation …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Cloudflare says it will drop Google's reCAPTCHA bot detection service, as Google plans to charge for its use, and replace it with Intuition Machines' hCAPTCHA  —  Cloudflare says its moving to hCaptcha, an alternative CAPTCHA service, more private than reCAPTCHA.
Garrett Bridges / Android Police:
Instagram has now added support for watching Live streams on the web for some users  —  Instagram Live has become one of the largest platforms for personal streaming, but broadcasts were only viewable from the mobile app, which can be a drag for longer streams.
More: Engadget
Josh Dzieza / The Verge:
A look at the evolving safety precautions at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, and how changes are driven primarily by worker pressure  —  Early Tuesday, March 24th, Barbara Chandler drove from her home in Queens to the Staten Island Amazon warehouse where she'd worked for three years.
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple launches a site for COVID-19 testing providers to submit info on their testing locations, which, once reviewed, will be displayed on Apple Maps  —  Continuing Apple's efforts in helping fight the coronavirus, Apple Maps will soon display testing sites directly on the map.

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.
Zoho:
Highlights of 2024: Zoho Connect's journey to better workplaces  —  As we look back on 2024, it's clear that this has been a year of incredible transformation for Zoho Connect.  Our mission?
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/27 - A New "Definition" Of AGI
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 8:50 PM ET, April 12, 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

Duncan Fyfe / VICE:
Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
Canalys:
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
Justin Phillips / San Francisco Chronicle: