Techmeme
March 21, 2020, 2:00 AM

Top News

Abner Li / 9to5Google:
After canceling Google I/O's in-person event in early March, Google now says it will “not be holding an I/O event in any capacity this year”  —  Google earlier this month announced that it was not hosting a physical developer conference in light of coronavirus.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
A day with the new MacBook Air: delightfully close to perfection and settles all the issues with keyboard, price, and performance, but its camera still stinks  —  We waited a long time for a retina MacBook Air.  When we finally got it back in November 2018, it was worth waiting for.
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video say they will reduce their streaming quality in EU to reduce traffic on the network, as millions are confined at home  —  BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) YouTube said on Friday it will reduce its streaming quality in the European Union …
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
Twitter, which prohibits denials of established science on the virus' transmission, says Elon Musk's tweet that kids are “essentially immune” is not a violation  —  The journalists at BuzzFeed News are proud to bring you trustworthy and relevant reporting about the coronavirus.
Brandy Betz / Seeking Alpha:
Sources: Airbnb's plans to go public are in disarray after the company racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in losses this year  —  The coronavirus pandemic has led to hundreds of millions in losses for Airbnb (AIRB) and has the company considering a funding round rather than going public, according to WSJ sources.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google launches a dedicated COVID-19 website, focused on locally relevant info in the US, as well as enhanced Search results for terms related to the disease  —  After lots of complicated drama, a simple website  —  One week ago, President Donald Trump held a press conference wherein …
Amber Neely / AppleInsider:
Study: using touch on Apple CarPlay or Android Auto impairs driver reaction times by 50%+, vs. 35% for texting-while-driving and 46% for hand-held phone calls  —  U.K. based road safety charity IAM RoadSmart has released a study showing how in-vehicle infotainment systems …
Strategy Analytics:
Research: global smartphone shipments dropped 38% YoY in February, from 99.2M units in 2019 to 61.8M in 2020  —  According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments tumbled 38 percent year-on-year in the month of February, 2020.
CNBC:
AWS commits $20M and launches a diagnostics development unit, with 35 partner orgs, to accelerate research to find a faster, more affordable test for COVID-19  —  - Amazon is launching a diagnostics development unit through its cloud unit, AWS.  — The idea is to back researchers with funds …
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
WHO debuts Health Alert, a fact-finding tool on WhatsApp that shows up-to-date info like novel COVID-19 infection rates, travel advisories, and debunked misinfo  —  The World Health Organization is partnering with the messaging app to help ensure trustworthy information gets out.
Brent Lang / Variety:
Netflix creates a $100M fund to support cast and crew members laid off from Netflix projects, with $15M to go to third parties and nonprofits  —  Netflix has created a $100 million relief fund to help members of the creative community who have been left unemployed and without a way to earn an income during the coronavirus crisis.
Bloomberg:
Sources: SoftBank-backed car-rental startup Getaround, once valued at $1B+, is actively seeking a sale as it deals with the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak  —  The car-sharing company Getaround is actively seeking a sale as the coronavirus outbreak has sent demand plunging and left …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:

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.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Agentic AI in data & analytics: The next evolution of business intelligence  —  In a recent conversation, Clarence Rozario, Business Head - Zoho BI Suite, joined Ravit Jain on The Ravit Show to discuss how Agentic AI …
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

Big Technology Podcast:
Kimi K3 & AI's Price War, What Happened To Google?, OpenAI's Partner Trouble
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.
Great Chat:
Never follow your heroes (on X)
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Hard Fork:
The A.I. Trade Secrets War + Economists Say 'We Must Act Now' + HatGPT
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Pigment's Eléonore Crespo: Building France's Next Unicorn With AI Agents And Tom Cruise
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Access:
This AI will push back if you're rude to it
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
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 2:00 AM ET, March 21, 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

Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Alex Hern / The Guardian:
Reed Albergotti / Washington Post: