Techmeme
February 27, 2020, 10:45 PM

Top News

Queenie Wong / CNET:
Facebook cancels its F8 developer conference amid growing concerns around COVID-19, says it is planning “locally hosted events” and livestreamed content instead  —  Facebook said Thursday it's cancelling its annual F8 developers conference, the social media giant's biggest event of the year …
Carli Velocci / Windows Central:
Microsoft says it will not attend Game Developers Conference due to coronavirus concerns and will make sessions and experiences available in a digital event  —  The move follows Sony, Facebook, and Unity.  —  What you need to know  — Microsoft Game Stack announced it's pulling out of GDC due to coronavirus concerns.
BuzzFeed News:
Docs show Best Buy and Walmart, alongside ICE, DOJ, and FBI, are among the 2,200+ companies and law enforcement agencies listed as clients of Clearview AI  —  The United States' main immigration enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, retailers including Best Buy and Macy's …
Wayne Ma / The Information:
Source: Apple is planning to release an iPad keyboard with a built-in trackpad, likely with the next version of the iPad Pro, later this year  —  Apple is planning to release an iPad keyboard accessory later this year that will include a built-in trackpad, the latest step in its effort …
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Sources: FCC proposes fining AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon at least $200M in total for improperly disclosing some real-time location data of users  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is set to propose fining four major U.S. mobile phone companies …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Researchers find an Android malware strain Cerberus that can extract and steal one-time passwords generated by Google's Authenticator mobile app  —  A new version of the “Cerberus” Android banking trojan will be able to steal one-time codes generated by the Google Authenticator app and bypass 2FA-protected accounts.
Maddie Stone / OneZero :
Researchers argue that fear of rising data center usage, accounting for 1% of global electricity demand, is overblown and will be offset by improved efficiency  —  Researchers argue that new technology and greater efficiency could offset energy demands  —  The climate impact of the data centers …
Jason Del Rey / Vox:
Sources: Walmart plans to start publicly testing a membership program called Walmart+ as soon as next month to compete with Amazon Prime  —  Walmart has struggled to keep up with Amazon's online dominance for years.  Javier Zarracina/Vox  —  Amazon Prime has devastated traditional retail.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says TikTok is “fundamentally parasitic”, “always listening,” and its fingerprinting technology is “truly terrifying”  —  TikTok is one of the hottest social media platforms but the CEO of Reddit had some harsh words for the popular app …
Let's Encrypt:
Let's Encrypt says it has issued 1B free TLS certificates on around 192M unique domains in the four years since its launch  —  We issued our billionth certificate on February 27, 2020.  We're going to use this big round number as an opportunity to reflect on what has changed for us, and for the Internet, leading up to this event.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Facebook sues data analytics firm OneAudience, claiming it paid app developers to install its SDK in their apps so it could harvest data on Facebook users  —  Data analytics firm OneAudience allegedly paid app developers to include its SDK in their code so it could harvest data from Facebook users.
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
DoorDash announces it has confidentially filed documents for an IPO with the SEC  —  Food delivery service DoorDash announced Thursday it has taken a first step toward a public offering.  —  DoorDash said it has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Martin Brinkmann / gHacks Technology News:
Google officially adds support for Google Earth on Firefox, Edge, and Opera browsers, and says it is working on adding support for Safari  —  When Google unveiled the new Google Earth back in 2017, it switched Google Earth from being a desktop application to a web application.
Stephanie Condon / ZDNet:
VMware reports Q4 revenue of $3.07B, up 11% YoY, subscription and SaaS revenue up 14% YoY, but misses expectations, stock down 6% after hours  —  However, shares fell in after-hours trading as Q4 earnings fell below expectations.  —  VMware crossed a new revenue threshold in fiscal year 2020 …
More: SiliconANGLE and ZDNet
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra review: 120Hz screen is nice and battery life is good but the main camera often acts like a first-gen product with first-gen problems  —  A new-generation camera with first-generation problems  —  Samsung has something to prove.  —  That's the most obvious feeling …

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Bloomberg:
Drew Costley / OneZero :