Techmeme
March 12, 2020, 11:50 PM

Top News

CNN:
CNN investigation finds troll farms in Ghana and Nigeria exploited US racial tensions and have ties to Russia's IRA; Facebook and Twitter have removed accounts  —  Accra, Ghana (CNN)The Russian trolls are back — and once again trying to poison the political atmosphere in the United States ahead of this year's elections.
Karl Bode / VICE:
AT&T suspends broadband data caps for home internet customers in response to increased data needs during outbreak, 17 US senators ask large ISPs to follow suit  —  AT&T is the first major ISP to confirm that it will be suspending all broadband usage caps as millions of Americans bunker …
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Kuo: Apple plans to release new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models with scissor keyboards in the second quarter of 2020  —  Apple plans to release new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models with scissor keyboards in the second quarter of 2020, according to a new research note today from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, obtained by MacRumors.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says its Build 2020 developer conference, planned for May 19 through May 21, will be a digital event due to COVID-19 concerns  —  Microsoft's Build developer event is no longer taking place in Seattle  —  Microsoft's Build developer conference is the latest tech event to be affected by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Bloomberg:
Source: Airbnb reported a loss of $276.4M in Q4 before COVID-19 hit, nearly doubling YoY from $143.7M; revenue was up 32% to $1.1B, and it has $2B+ in the bank  —  - Revenue rose 32% in the period, according to a person familiar  — Startup's plans to list on stock market could be at risk
Will Oremus / OneZero :
As COVID-19 hastens the adoption of remote work tools, it deepens the divide between those who can and can't work remotely, and normalizes social distancing  —  How working from home could reshape society  —  8:45 each weekday morning, I drop off my 4-year-old at preschool, hug him goodbye, and drive back home.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Reuters:
Terry Gou, founder of Foxconn, said the resumption of production at its factories in China had “exceeded expectations” after a prolonged halt due to coronavirus  —  Terry Gou, founder of Apple's major manufacturing partner Foxconn, said on Thursday the resumption of production …
Dave Lee / Financial Times:
IBM sues Airbnb over what it claims is the illegal use of four patents, including one about “improved navigation using bookmarks”  —  Move threatens to cast shadow over short-term rental company's road to IPO  —  IBM is taking Airbnb to court over what it claims is the illegal use …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others sign an open letter opposing more than dozen bills across the US that target LGBTQ citizens  —  Apple is among 40 companies voicing opposition to recent bills introduced across the United States that target LGBTQ citizens.
Bloomberg:
Telecom Italia says its internet traffic surged 70%+, mostly due to games such as Fortnite, after reports of lost connections during Italy's school shutdown  —  - It's not just home-working adults who are hogging bandwidth  — International network operator sees big increase in traffic
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Microsoft releases a patch for the wormable flaw in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 that leaked this week  —  Fix for CVE-2020-0796 is now rolling out to Windows 10 and Windows Serve 2019 systems worldwide.  —  Microsoft has released today a patch for a vulnerability in the SMBv3 protocol …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
App Spotlight: Clean Contacts Pro for Zoho CRM  —  App Spotlight brings you hand-picked solutions that enhance your Zoho apps and tools.  Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all of our apps, integrations …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Sources:
Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Lenny's Podcast:
How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Invest Like the Best:
Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
The AI Race Has a Leaderboard | Arena CEO Anastasios Angelopoulos
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Big Technology Podcast:
GPT-6 & OpenAI's Comeback, Hugging Face Attack Debate, Ballmer's Scandalous Legacy
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:50 PM ET, March 12, 2020.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Tim Berners-Lee / World Wide Web Foundation:
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed News:
Julia Alexander / The Verge: