Techmeme
April 9, 2020, 4:05 AM

Top News

Michael McWhertor / Polygon:
Google makes Stadia free to use for anyone with a Gmail address and will give new users two months of Stadia Pro for free  —  Stadia Pro is also free for two months  —  Google's video game streaming platform, Stadia, is now free to anyone with a Gmail address, the company announced on Wednesday.
Jason Gurwin / The Streamable:
Disney says Disney+ has 50M+ paid subscribers globally, and that its April 3 launch in India accounts for 8M Disney+ subscribers; stock is up ~6% after hours  —  Disney announced that the company has surpassed 50 million paid subscribers, following their launch in India and eight Western European countries …
Eric S. Yuan / Zoom Blog:
Zoom gives updates on its progress with privacy and security: appointing a CISO Council and Advisory Board and bringing on Alex Stamos as an outside adviser  —  As I mentioned in my message on April 1, Zoom has seen tremendous growth and new use cases emerge over the past few weeks …
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Twitter removes a tool that let mobile users prevent some data from being shared with advertisers; EU users are exempt and need to opt in to sharing  —  Users in Europe are the exception  —  Twitter has removed a privacy feature that allowed all users to stop sharing some private information with advertisers.
Dave Gershgorn / OneZero :
Many US government and banking systems still use a 60-year-old COBOL, which makes it hard to find programmers to fix the systems when they break under pressure  —  Retired engineers are coming to the rescue  —  ver the weekend, New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, made an unusual public plea during …
Matt Drange / Protocol:
Online ticketing service Eventbrite says it will lay off 45% of its employees; sources say Eventbrite has over 1,000 staff  —  Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz announced Wednesday during a companywide meeting that 45% of employees were being laid off, Protocol has learned.
Eva Dou / Washington Post:
A look at COVID-19-related health security measures in places like Foxconn's iPhone-making complex and Huawei's factories in China as they restart production  —  Disinfect hands and shoes at the factory gate.  Bring your own towel.  No sunny-side-up eggs.
Johana Bhuiyan / Los Angeles Times:
In a letter, about 50 labor groups urge congressional leaders to reject Uber CEO's March 23 proposal to create a new legal category for its workers  —  A coalition of about 50 labor groups is asking congressional leaders to reject Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi's proposal …
Will Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
The pandemic has companies like Netflix and Equinix expediting network and server upgrades, driving the biggest expansion of internet infrastructure in years  —  Far from breaking it, the surge in usage the internet is seeing right now is driving a major upgrade.
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
UK's NCSC and US DHS publish a list of 2,500 COVID-19-related threats they are tracking, including malicious websites and email addresses linked to scams  —  If you weren't already taking the rise of coronavirus-based cybercrime seriously, take note.  A rare joint alert has gone out from U.S …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Sources: Microsoft won't be delivering its Windows 10X-powered Surface Neo dual-screen devices this year, nor will it ship Windows 10X to third-party OEMs  —  Microsoft is shifting its Windows focus to reflect the new world where virtualization and single-screen devices are more of a priority than brand-new form factors.
Andrei Frumusanu / AnandTech:
Evidence of benchmark cheating has been found in MediaTek chipsets used in smartphones from manufacturers including Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Sony  —  Mobile benchmark cheating has a long story that goes far back for the industry (well - at least in smartphone industry years) …
Richard Nieva / CNET:
Google says Meet, its teleconferencing tool, is adding 2M new users a day and logged 2B minutes of video calls in March with daily usage up 25x from January  —  As people around the world hunker down in their homes to slow the spread of COVID-19, one technology has emerged as a lifeline to the outside world: video chat.
Luke O'Brien / HuffPost:
Investigation details facial recognition company Clearview AI's ties to the alt-right, including hiring employees with deep links to far-right extremists  —  Clearview AI, which has alarmed privacy experts, hired several far-right employees, a HuffPost investigation found.
Dave Lee / Financial Times:
CloudKitchens blames rogue staffer for “Internet Food Court” PR campaign, after it created an impression that Kalanick was launching it during COVID-19 crisis  —  The Hollywood kitchen facility seemed perfect for the coronavirus crisis — but then suddenly vanished from the internet
Craig S. Smith / New York Times:
An overview of how machine learning is being used in sports to assess athletic talent, detect and predict injuries, improve the betting odds, and more  —  The pattern-recognizing power of machine learning is affecting players, teams, sports medicine and even betting.
Talos Blog:
Cisco's Talos security group finds fingerprint scanners from Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and others can be bypassed by fake fingerprints made with 3D printing  —  Phone, computer fingerprint scanners can be defeated with 3-D printing — By Paul Rascagneres and Vitor Ventura.

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Earlier Picks

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Bloomberg:
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica: