Techmeme
April 27, 2020, 6:50 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.
Bloomberg:
Australia launches a contact-tracing app that records digital handshakes between smartphones via Bluetooth, sees 1.1M signups within a few hours  —  - Software records digital handshake between smartphones  — Tracking app needs to overcome privacy concerns to succeed
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.”
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 …
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.
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Security firm ZecOps: iOS Mail app's old, unpatched bugs have been exploited against a US Fortune 500 firm, a Japanese telco exec, a journalist in Europe, more  —  Hacks that can play out without any user interaction may be more common than we realize, in part because they're so difficult to detect.
More: iLounge and Forbes
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.
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.

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Earlier Picks

Gerry Smith / Bloomberg:
Raymond Zhong / New York Times:
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security: