Techmeme
April 12, 2020, 4:35 PM

Top News

The Sunday Times:
Sources: NHSX, UK health service's technology arm, is working on a Bluetooth-based contact tracing app with Google and Apple at a “breakneck speed”  —  Ministers have ordered the creation of an NHS mobile phone app the government hopes will help end the coronavirus lockdown.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Apple says COVID-19 contact tracing apps can include duration of proximity when deciding what is a proximity event, potentially limiting false positive pings  —  Adoption is the hard part of contact tracing apps so far — but if it's baked into the operating system, it gets a lot easier
Leo Kelion / BBC:
NHSX to test an app for users to send a “yellow alert” if they self-diagnose with COVID-19 symptoms and a “red alert” if they test positive, to recent contacts  —  The UK has confirmed plans for an app that will warn users if they have recently been in close proximity …
Moxie Marlinspike / @moxie:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Cloudflare says it will drop Google's reCAPTCHA bot detection service, as Google plans to charge for its use, and replace it with Intuition Machines' hCAPTCHA  —  Cloudflare says its moving to hCaptcha, an alternative CAPTCHA service, more private than reCAPTCHA.
Josh Dzieza / The Verge:
A look at the evolving safety precautions at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, and how changes are driven primarily by worker pressure  —  Early Tuesday, March 24th, Barbara Chandler drove from her home in Queens to the Staten Island Amazon warehouse where she'd worked for three years.
Garrett Bridges / Android Police:
Instagram has now added support for watching Live streams on the web for some users  —  Instagram Live has become one of the largest platforms for personal streaming, but broadcasts were only viewable from the mobile app, which can be a drag for longer streams.
More: Engadget
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.
Washington Post:
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced experts to reframe the debate about screen time, at least temporarily, as devices become portals to employment and education  —  Go ahead, look at your phone and tablet.  Much of it is necessary.  Even the frivolous stuff.  —  We're on Zoom calls six hours per day.

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Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
Tom Maxwell / Input:
Justin Phillips / San Francisco Chronicle: