Techmeme
April 27, 2020, 1:35 AM

Top News

Douglas Busvine / Reuters:
Germany says it will adopt a decentralized approach to digital contact tracing backed by Apple and Google, abandoning its home-grown alternative  —  BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany changed course on Sunday over which type of smartphone technology it wanted to use to trace coronavirus infections …
John Luttig / luttig's learnings:
The internet tailwinds that propelled meteoric growth in Silicon Valley are stalling, which will accelerate zero-sum games between startups and incumbents  —  The Internet tailwinds that propelled Silicon Valley's meteoric growth for decades are stalling out.  The ripple effects will jolt the tech industry.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Profile of Ryan Petersen, CEO of freight logistics startup Flexport which raised $1.3B to date and is helping fight COVID-19 by fundraising and delivering PPE  —  He's stepped up to lead the war against COVID-19  —  “I didn't know what the term ‘freight forwarder’ meant until a year into starting the business.”
Nathan Baschez / Divinations:
A deep dive into Clubhouse, an invite-only audio-based social network, how it might evolve, and its long-term potential as a business  —  About a month ago I got a DM inviting me to “a community for casual, drop-in audio conversations.”  So I downloaded the app, created a profile, and was greeted by a blank screen.
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Research: ~150 new domain registrations starting with “reopen”, and many ending with US place names, are tied to state GOP orgs and other conservative groups  —  The past few weeks have seen a large number of new domain registrations beginning with the word “reopen” and ending with U.S. city or state names.
Rebecca Heilweil / Vox:
A look at the origin of the conspiracy theory linking 5G to COVID-19, which went mainstream as influential people and celebrities started amplifying it in March  —  Damaged cabling and telecommunications equipment is pictured following a fire at a phone mast attached to a chimney in Huddersfield, northern England, on April 17.
Financial Times:
US startups and big companies like PwC are making contact tracing apps to track staff in reopened facilities, some incorporating data from Bluetooth wearables  —  Tools could track movement of office workers to within a few centimetres  —  Companies including PwC, the global consultancy …
Renee Dudley / ProPublica:
Afraid of losing rankings in Amazon search, some suppliers are redirecting a “lion's share” of their products to Amazon, and whatever is left to other retailers  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.
Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:
Executives at construction startups discuss how they are automating parts of their work and what it will take to create fully autonomous construction projects  —  Built Robotics executives are fond of saying that their autonomous system for construction equipment, like dozers and excavators …

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