Techmeme
February 29, 2020, 10:50 AM

Top News

Polygon:
Organizers announce that this year's Game Developers Conference has been postponed from March to summer amid COVID-19 concerns  —  Sony, EA, Activision Blizzard, Unity, and Epic Games have all withdrawn due to COVID-19 concerns  —  This year's Game Developers Conference has been postponed …
Nicole Wetsman / The Verge:
Amazon restricts employee travel in US, Google restricts travel to Italy, Iran, Japan, and South Korea as a Google employee in Zurich is diagnosed with COVID-19  —  A Google employee in Switzerland has a confirmed case of the virus  —  Google is preventing employees from traveling to Italy …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Elliott Management has taken a “sizable” stake in Twitter, nominated four directors to Twitter's board, and seeks to replace CEO Jack Dorsey  —  - Elliott has nominated four directors for Twitter's board  — Hedge fund has had ‘constructive discussions’ with company
BuzzFeed News:
Apple disables the iOS developer account of Clearview AI for using the Developer Enterprise Program to distribute its app among its reported 2,200+ customers  —  Apple has disabled the iOS application of Clearview AI — the facial recognition company that claims to have amassed a database …
Sean Endicott / Windows Central:
Microsoft adds productivity features to Cortana, drops consumer skills including music, connected home, and third-party skills in the upcoming Windows 10 update  —  Cortana is converting to a productivity assistant, meaning Cortana skills are on the way out.  —  What you need to know
Margaret Harding McGill / Axios:
FCC proposes fines of $91M for T-Mobile, $57M for AT&T, $48M for Verizon, and $12M for Sprint for sharing customers' location information with outside parties  —  The Federal Communications Commission proposed fines totaling more than $200 million against the nation's biggest wireless carriers …
DL Cade / PetaPixel:
Facebook says its 3D Photos feature, which retroactively converts 2D photos to 3D using neural nets, now works on photos taken with single-lens cameras  —  Facebook just expanded 3D photo posting to phones that don't actually capture depth data.  Using the magic of machine learning …
Dan Primack / Axios:
Bernie Sanders introduces a bill that would tax stock options at vesting, not at exercise, for those making $130K+ and vesting $100K+ worth of stock per year  —  'Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) introduced legislation that would tax nonqualified stock options at vesting …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook to start rolling out a redesign for Messenger next week that removes the Discover tab, reorients the People tab around Stories, and hides chat bots  —  Chat bots were central to Facebook Messenger's strategy three years ago.  Now they're being hidden from view in the app along with games and businesses.
Josh Dzieza / The Verge:
In warehouses, call centers, and elsewhere, intelligent machines are managing humans, and they're making work more stressful, grueling, and dangerous  —  In warehouses, call centers, and other sectors, intelligent machines are managing humans, and they're making work more stressful, grueling, and dangerous
Business Insider:
Investigation: several staff members of the Chan-Zuckerberg family office have made allegations of assault, sexual harassment, and more, against other staff  —  KAUAI, Hawaii — One minute before midnight on December 29, 2017, one of Mark Zuckerberg's personal staffers got a phone call.

Sponsor Posts

Soxton:
Fast, affordable law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Deep dive into SalesIQ's Summer '26 release: 40+ features for the agentic era  —  We've already introduced you to Zoho SalesIQ's Summer '26 release, our annual release, and the one where SalesIQ enters a new territory: the era of agentic intelligence.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
Blitzy's Brian Elliott: Cursor And Claude Code Are Looking At Your Enterprise Code 'Through A Straw'
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
Re-Release: The Death of Hollywood? W/ Allan Loeb
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Great Chat:
Maybe Twitter isn't real life
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's Plan To Merge Chat And Agents — With Greg Brockman
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Encore: Inside Joe Weisenthal's brain
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:50 AM ET, February 29, 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

Sarah Tavel:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
CNN:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge: