Techmeme
February 20, 2020, 5:05 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is weighing an option to set third-party browser and email apps as defaults on iPhones and iPads and third-party music services on the HomePod  —  - Company considers letting users change web browser, email app  — Spotify, Pandora may be allowed to stream directly on HomePod
Ben Collins / NBC News:
Twitter confirms it is testing bright labels beneath lies and misinfo posted by politicians and public figures, and points-based “community badges” for users  —  A leaked demo features bright red and orange badges for tweets that have been deemed “harmfully misleading.”
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft says it will offer its Defender antivirus software for Android and iOS devices later this year  —  - Microsoft's Defender software will become available for Android and iOS devices later this year.  — It's meant to prevent malware and phishing attacks.
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed News:
Google removed ~600 Android apps, which were installed 4.5B+ times, and banned their developers from the Play store for ad fraud and pushing “disruptive” ads  —  Google has removed close to 600 Android apps and banned their developers from the Play store and its ad networks as part …
New York Times:
Morgan Stanley says it will buy online discount brokerage E-Trade for about $13B, in the biggest takeover by an American lender since the 2008 financial crisis  —  The $13 billion deal will give a powerful Wall Street firm control of a major presence in the world of online brokerages.
Sam Byford / The Verge:
HTC announces new Cosmos VR headset variants: $899 Elite, lower-end Play, and XR with “high-quality XR passthrough cameras”, giving it AR capabilities  —  One for gamers, one for AR, one for Angry Birds  —  HTC is expanding its range of virtual reality headsets today with multiple new variants of the Vive Cosmos.
Craig Timberg / Washington Post:
Sources detail the rising clout of Joel Kaplan and other conservatives at Facebook during the Trump administration  —  Facebook created “Project P” — for propaganda — in the hectic weeks after the 2016 presidential election and quickly found dozens of pages that had peddled false news reports ahead of Donald Trump's surprise victory.
Jezebel:
A look at the data sharing practices of therapy apps like Better Help, which notify third parties when an app is opened and if a patient has suicidal thoughts  —  Starting treatment with Better Help, one of the most prominent “therapy-on-demand” apps to launch over the last few years, is easy, which is more or less the point.
Shona Ghosh / Business Insider:
Google tells Cloud Vision API customers it will no longer label pictures with “woman” or “man” as a person's gender cannot be inferred by appearance alone  —  - A Google AI tool that can recognize objects in pictures will no longer attach gender labels like “woman” or “man” to images of people.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Twitter announces a “continue thread” option, a new feature that links tweets together while they are being composed  —  Twitter is rolling out a new feature that makes it easier to thread multiple tweets together.  With this change, you can now link tweets together while you compose them.
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Streaming platforms like Roku and Hulu aren't subject to the same political ad transparency rules as broadcasters even as campaigns and PACs buy ads on them  —  With more Americans cutting the cord, watchdogs worry that voters lack a full understanding of who's trying to influence them
Vincent Woo / New York Magazine:
Internal documents and interviews with former staff and students detail Lambda coding school's misleading claims about graduate outcomes and curriculum quality  —  If you visit the website of Lambda School, a “boot camp” for people who want to quickly learn how to code …
Dropbox:
Dropbox Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2019 Results  —  ropbox, Inc. (NASDAQ: DBX), the world's first smart workspace, today announced financial results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2019.  “Our strong Q4 marked the end of an exciting year for Dropbox …
More: ZDNet and CNBCTweets: @alex

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Earlier Picks

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Joseph Menn / Reuters:
Andrew Liszewski / Gizmodo:
Abner Li / 9to5Google: