Techmeme
March 12, 2020, 7:25 AM

Top News

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Twitter is making it mandatory for all employees around the world to work from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic  —  After “strongly encouraging” it earlier this month, Twitter said today that working from home is now mandatory for all employees around the world due to COVID-19 concerns.
Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica:
ESA says E3, scheduled for early June as a three-day event, has been canceled due to COVID-19 concerns  —  ESA announces it won't hold massive game marketing event for the first time since 1995.  —  [Update: In a message sent Wednesday morning, the ESA cited “growing concerns over [the] …
Clare Duffy / CNN:
Steven Overly / Politico:
Sources: the White House sought help from Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and others to combat COVID-19 misinformation and track its spread  —  The Trump administration implored the companies to use their technical expertise to help those dealing directly with the fallout of coronavirus.
Ed Hammond / Bloomberg:
Sources: Magic Leap is exploring options, including a sale, partnerships, and a possible listing, after a meeting with Facebook never progressed to deal talks  —  - Florida-based company also weighing partnerships, stake sale  — Magic Leap could fetch more than $10 billion in a sale process
Mark Sullivan / Fast Company:
Source: at least one of this year's iPhones will have a 3D depth camera on its back, enabling new photo and video effects, as well as better AR experiences  —  Our source confirms Apple's plans to put a 3D depth camera on the back of the iPhone.  Here's what it'll do.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple says it will close all of its 17 retail stores in Italy from March 12 “until further notice” amid the COVID-19 outbreak  —  Apple Inc. said it is closing all 17 of its retail stores in Italy “until further notice” as the coronavirus pandemic limits activity in the country.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
EU Commission outlines proposals for green initiatives related to tech: right-to-repair laws, ending premature obsolescence, and restricting single-use products  —  The European Commission has set out a plan to move towards a ‘right to repair’ for electronics devices, such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
AWS debuts Bottlerocket, an open source OS for using Linux-based containers on virtual machines and bare metal hosts, in dev preview on Amazon EC2 and EKS  —  AWS has launched its own open-source operating system for running containers on both virtual machines and bare metal hosts.
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
At EARN IT Act hearing, Sen. Blumenthal says the “bill says nothing about encryption”, while industry groups allege it may force them to drop E2E encryption  —  - At a hearing Wednesday, senators disputed tech industry claims that a new bill targeting tech's legal shield would necessarily prohibit encryption.
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
YouTube says it will enable ads on a limited number of videos about coronavirus, including from some news partners and creators who accurately self-certify  —  Weeks after YouTube declared automatic demonetization  —  YouTube is reassessing its policies in an effort to let some creators monetize videos …
Shakeel Hashim / Protocol:
UK will introduce a 2% tax on search engines, social media services, and online marketplaces with $650M+ annual revenue and £25M+ UK revenue starting on April 1  —  The U.K. government has confirmed that it will levy a 2% tax on “the revenues of search engines, social media services …
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed News:
Investigation identifies owner of 60+ browser extensions which engaged in a long-running ad fraud scheme and were removed as part of a Google crackdown in Feb  —  It was a weed that Google kept trying and failing to kill.  —  The browser extension MyPDF kept appearing and being removed from the Chrome Web Store.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Microsoft posts an advisory about a new wormable flaw in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019; there's currently no patch available, but there are workarounds  —  Critical bug in Microsoft's SMBv3 implementation published under mysterious circumstances.  —  Word leaked out on Tuesday …

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Earlier Picks

Janko Roettgers / Protocol: