Techmeme
February 19, 2020, 1:35 PM

Top News

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
EU issues proposals to drive digitization across industries and sectors, including rules for high risk AI systems and a regulatory framework for data governance  —  European Union lawmakers have set out a first bundle of proposals for a new digital strategy for the bloc …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google officially launches Android 11 Developer Preview, arriving earlier than expected, with new display types, improved messaging, biometrics, and more  —  Following an inadvertent tease last week, Google today officially launched the Android 11 Developer Preview.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook is internally testing a tabbed version of News Feed for mobile that includes the Most Relevant, Most Recent, and Already Seen feeds  —  Facebook may make it easier to escape its ranking algorithm and explore the News Feed in different formats.  Facebook has internally prototyped …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft launches a unified Office app for iOS and Android, combining Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single app; standalone versions will remain available  —  Even more mobile features are on the way soon  —  Microsoft is releasing its new unified Office app for iOS and Android today …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Twitter acquires Chroma Labs, which makes tools for video and photo creation, will split team across product, design, and engineering, shut down Chroma Stories  —  - Company builds photo, video-editing features for social media  — Chroma will join Twitter to work on ‘conversations’ products
Dave Gershgorn / OneZero :
Profile of Japan-based NEC, which has been a longtime provider of facial recognition services globally and garners less scrutiny than new entrants in the space  —  July 2018, the mayor of Irving, Texas, signed a contract that would dramatically expand how the city's police department could investigate crimes using facial recognition.
More: Vox and VICE
Michael del Castillo / Forbes:
Coinbase becomes a Visa Principal Member, allowing it to issue bitcoin debit cards for other crypto companies and traditional firms  —  Credit card giant Visa has granted its principal membership to a cryptocurrency company for the first time.  Officially awarded to cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase …
Richard Cooke / Wired:
A tribute to Wikipedia, which is one of the few remaining places that retains the faintly utopian glow of the early World Wide Web  —  People used to think the crowdsourced encyclopedia represented all that was wrong with the web.  Now it's a beacon of so much that's right.
Billy Steele / Engadget:
As Photoshop turns 30, Adobe begins rolling out new desktop and mobile features, including bringing the Object Selection tool to iPad  —  Photoshop turns 30 today, and Adobe is celebrating with some worthwhile updates to the photo-editing app on both the desktop and iPad.
Katie Paul / Reuters:
IRS lawsuit against Facebook, alleging the company owes $9B+ in taxes after shifting profits to Ireland, begins in San Francisco  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc is slated to begin a tax trial in a San Francisco court on Tuesday, as the Internal Revenue Service tries to convince …
Dan Primack / Axios:
Inside Founders Fund's deal process, where smaller investments only need limited partner approval, as it has raised its seventh fund and a $1.5B growth fund  —  Founders Fund has raised $3 billion for a pair of new funds, so expect a slew of headlines about how “Peter Thiel's venture capital firm” is now flush with cash.
More: TechCrunch
Cameron Wilson / BuzzFeed:
Facebook has just seven fact checkers working for its partners in Australia, where it has 17M users, who completed 220 fact checks since April 2019  —  “It's incredible the sheer speed at which lies travel, particularly when they're targeted at groups," one fact checker said.
Corbin Davenport / Android Police:
Mozilla releases its VPN service Firefox Private Network on Android in a closed beta for $4.99/month  —  Mozilla, the organization behind the much-loved Firefox web browser, has experimented with creating a VPN service for some time.  Unlike the VPNs packaged with browsers like Opera …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26  —  Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Zoho:
The best time to become a Zoho Partner  —  The business world is not only changing but it is being rebuilt.  Customers want connected ecosystems that will help them automate, unify their data, and do more with less.
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

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's 2026 Priority, Disney's AI Play, Datacenter Buildout Trouble
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Access:
Why the next AI frontier is phone calls, with Beside CEO Maxime Germain
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Great Chat:
So what happens after AGI?
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He's a Must-Read Media Gossip.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:35 PM ET, February 19, 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

Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Hugh Son / CNBC:
Steven Overly / Politico:
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Robert Hof / SiliconANGLE:
Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
Bloomberg: