Techmeme
April 3, 2019, 10:45 AM

Top News

Ted Johnson / Variety:
DOJ warns the group behind the Oscars that potential rule changes limiting the eligibility of Netflix and other streaming services could raise antitrust issues  —  WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has warned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that its potential rule changes limiting …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Facebook says it will stop asking for email passwords to verify new accounts; previously, it used them to verify accounts whose email addresses didn't use OAuth  —  Responding to criticism, Facebook says it will stop asking users for their email passwords as a means of verifying some new accounts.
Edmund Lee / New York Times:
Sources: more than 200,000 people subscribed to Apple News+ in its first 48 hours, more than Texture had at its peak  —  Executives have been burned by their previous dealings with big tech companies.  But Apple's promise of a billion devices worldwide was too good to pass up.  Even for Rupert Murdoch.
Emily Birnbaum / The Hill:
Google will require contracting firms to give US workers health care benefits, parental leave, $15/hr min. wage, more, by 2022, following activism from Googlers  —  Google said on Tuesday it will require its contracted and temporary workforce to receive full benefits, including comprehensive health care …
Ivan Mehta / The Next Web:
WhatsApp now allows users to control who can add them to group chats  —  WhatsApp's group conversations can be awfully annoying when you're dragged into them without your consent.  It's finally rolled out a fix for that, in the form of a new setting that lets you choose who can add you to group chats …
New York Times:
Singapore introduces draft bill that requires sites to take down fake news raising concerns among human rights advocates over repression  —  HONG KONG — Singapore introduced draft legislation on Monday that it said would combat false or misleading information on the internet …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Google has officially started the process of shutting down and deleting all consumer accounts on its failed social network platform Google+  —  The deletion of personal accounts starts today  —  Google has officially started the process of shutting down and deleting all consumer accounts …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Run.AI, which is building a virtualization and acceleration platform for deep learning, comes out of stealth with a total of $13M raised  —  Tel Aviv's Run.AI, a startup that is building a new virtualization and acceleration platform for deep learning, is coming out of stealth today.
Issie Lapowsky / Wired:
Inside the DNC's plan to replace its aging data repository Vertica with the Data Warehouse, a more powerful BigQuery-based system, before the 2020 election  —  IN JULY OF 2017, as Raffi Krikorian settled into his new office at the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton's words were still ringing in his ears.
Andrew Liptak / The Verge:
Scribd launches Scribd Originals, a new long-form program with original content featuring notable authors such as Roxane Gay and Garrett Graff  —  Pieces will range between a magazine feature and a book  —  Reading platform Scribd is launching a new original content program called Scribd Originals today …
More: TechCrunchThanks:@yurieeka
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
District court in Florida orders 27 pirate sites to pay $1M in damages each to Philippine media giant ABS-CBN, which has won many legal fights in US this year  —  ABS-CBN, the largest media and entertainment company in the Philippines, has scored yet another legal victory in the United States.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Security researcher finds massive spam operation in an unsecured server, now inactive, which sent 5M+ emails over 10 days that 160K+ people clicked through  —  Five million emails in ten days  —  For ten days in March, millions were caught in the same massive spam campaign.
Paul Thurrott / Thurrott:
Microsoft closes the Microsoft Store's book category, offering full refunds on ebook purchases and a $25 credit to those who annotated their ebooks  —  I guess the only surprise here is when this would happen.  But Microsoft is indeed shutting down the ebook functionality in its Edge web browser and in the Microsoft Store.

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Earlier Picks

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Colin Lecher / The Verge: