Techmeme
February 28, 2020, 3:15 PM

Top News

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
CNN:
Twitter verified the account of a fake candidate for Congress created by a 17-year-old to test its election integrity efforts; the account is now suspended  —  New York (CNN Business)Andrew Walz calls himself a “proven business leader” and a “passionate advocate for students.”
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 …
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon has started restricting all non-essential travel by employees in the US as the coronavirus continues to spread  —  - Amazon has started restricting all nonessential employee travel in the U.S. as the coronavirus continues to spread, a company spokesperson told CNBC.
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 …
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.
Queenie Wong / CNET:
Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters:
Amazon says it has barred 1M+ products from sale in recent weeks that had inaccurately claimed to cure or defend against the coronavirus  —  (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc has barred more than 1 million products from sale in recent weeks that had inaccurately claimed to cure or defend against the coronavirus …
Bloomberg:
TikTok, with 145M US downloads, claims Chipotle-sponsored #boorito hashtag had 3.9B views; Captiv8: hashtag campaigns cost ~$150K, homescreen takeover $50K/day  —  Popular creators are paid to promote hashtags as mobile video app develops more targeting tools for advertisers
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 …
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 …
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Google Stadia's APK shows Stadia may get a free tier and features like YouTube streaming, family game sharing, and more  —  Google Stadia received an update today, bringing it to version 2.7, and introducing a few minor tweaks to the UI.  Below the surface though, we find that Google …
Varun Mishra / Counterpoint Research:
Counterpoint: iPhone XR was the best selling phone globally for 2019, followed by the iPhone 11, with the Samsung Galaxy A50 coming in third  —  According to Counterpoint Research's Market Pulse, iPhone 11 raced to become the second-best selling model globally for 2019 despite it being launched in September.

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More News

Maggie Miller / The Hill:
Maddie Stone / OneZero :

Earlier Picks

Let's Encrypt:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge: