Techmeme
April 11, 2020, 5:45 PM

Top News

The Verge:
Apple and Google announce a joint effort to introduce iOS and Android APIs in mid-May for opt-in Bluetooth-based COVID-19 contact tracing  —  A huge step forward in the fight against COVID-19  —  Apple and Google announced a system for tracking the spread of the new coronavirus …
More: The Keyword, New York Times, Ars Technica, Washington Post, TechCrunch, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Wall Street Journal, NPR, New York Times, Wired, Vox, International Business Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, BBC, joekent.nyc, NBC News, Axios, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, Forbes, ZDNet, Six Colors, TidBITS, MacStories, Inc42 Media, The Hacker News, Towards Data Science, Aldo's Notes, MediaNama, coinspeaker.com, Variety, Ubergizmo, Nikkei Asian Review, Seeking Alpha, ACLU, kottke.org, Techdirt, Newser, Threatpost, PYMNTS.com, MacRumors, The New Consumer, New York Post, TalkAndroid.com, TechSpot, Digital Trends, FierceWireless, The Daily Hodl, Michael Tsai, ExtremeTech, ProgrammableWeb.com, BetaNews, Fortune, Macworld, Mashable, SiliconANGLE, Stacey on IoT, BuzzFeed News, Gizmodo, Droid Life, IDG Insider Pro, Thurrott, Pocket-lint, Pocketnow, AppleInsider, Liliputing, The Next Web, Daring Fireball, Daring Fireball, Wccftech, Politico, iPhone Hacks, Android Police, Apple Must, BGR, The Irish Times, and AppAdvice.com
Casey Newton / The Verge:
A look at the limits of Bluetooth-based voluntary COVID-19 contact tracing, which faces adoption hurdles, potentially big numbers of false positive pings, more  —  False positives and rampant privacy issues suggest we need to make a new investment in hiring people
Moxie Marlinspike / @moxie:
[Thread] Moxie Marlinspike explains how Apple and Google's contract tracing framework will work in practice  —  First look at Apple/Google contact tracing framework: 1) Once a day, your device derives a new key ("daily tracing key"). 2) It uses that to derive a new “proximity ID” every time your device's bluetooth address changes (15min), which is broadcast to nearby BT sensors. 1/10
Tom Maxwell / Input:
IBM is releasing a free course and forum next week to teach COBOL programming language, as US states struggle to find programmers for old unemployment systems  —  Many systems that process unemployment claims still run on a 60-year-old programming language that barely any coders understand.
Johana Bhuiyan / Los Angeles Times:
Instacart is paying workers about the same to do 2-3 orders at a time as it does for one order as demand rises during the pandemic, interviews and receipts show  —  Dina W. did her last job for Instacart on March 20.  Before the coronavirus outbreak, Dina could easily avoid doing …
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Research tracking tech startup layoffs across the world since March 11 finds 204 startups have laid off 16,229 employees, nearly doubling between April 2-8  —  On Thursday, the U.S. Labor Department reported some staggering figures: the number of unemployment claims filed between March 15-April 4 surged to 16.8 million.
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
Strip club dancers and promoters are hosting virtual pop-up strip clubs on Instagram Live, accepting tips via Cash app and promoting the events on Twitter  —  Going digital may be better for dancers.  —  For the past three weeks, Justin LaBoy, 28, a former professional basketball player …
Justin Phillips / San Francisco Chronicle:
SF mayor caps commissions for food delivery startups to 15% during the pandemic; startups say the cap will raise customer fees, hurt delivery people's income  —  As struggling San Francisco restaurants pin their hopes of staying open on delivery and takeout orders, city officials have stepped …
New York Times:
Experts say social distancing directives, likely to continue in some form after the COVID-19 crisis, could prompt various industries to accelerate automation  —  Broad unease about losing jobs to machines could dissipate as people focus on the benefits of minimizing close human contact.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google says it will make changes to search results over the coming week to make it easier for users to find virtual health care options  —  The changes are rolling out over the coming week  —  Google is making changes to search results to make it easier for people to find virtual health care options …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Zoho:
Introducing Campus: The digital home for educational institutions  —  Every educational institution needs a place where students, teachers, and administrators can find one another, communicate …
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.
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!

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Anthropic's IPO Leak, OpenAI's Dots vs. Meta's Muse, Visual Turing Test
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.
Sources:
OpenAI's Dots lead on the future of ChatGPT
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Great Chat:
What does the tech industry owe San Francisco?
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.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
David George from a16z
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:45 PM ET, April 11, 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

Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Sue-Lin Wong / Financial Times:
Brian Fung / CNN:
More: Vox and Forbes