Techmeme
April 19, 2020, 10:30 AM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launch Rt.live, an up-to-date tracker of how fast COVID-19 is spreading in each US state  —  Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have teamed up to launch their first product together since leaving the Facebook mothership.
James Batchelor / GamesIndustry.biz:
Pokémon Go developer Niantic names its current board member Megan Quinn as COO; Quinn was most recently a general partner at VC firm Spark Capital  —  Former employee leaves position at Spark Capital to return to Pokmon Go developer  —  Niantic has appointed a new COO — and it's a familiar face for the firm.
Benedict Evans:
COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of tech and ecommerce that will impact the lives of people who aren't online, especially in the developing world  —  At the beginning of this year (which now feels like 100 years ago), I gave a presentation on macro trends in tech, at an event in Davos.
Ian Walker / Kotaku:
Riot launches one of the biggest bug bounty programs in gaming, offering up to $100K for finding security flaws in its controversial Vanguard anti-cheat system  —  Riot has posted one of the biggest—if not the biggest—bounties in gaming, offering people up to $100,000 if they can find …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Spontaneous social apps that let users join video, voice, and chat rooms on a whim have become popular under lockdowns, like exclusive voice chat app Clubhouse  —  Forget the calendar invite.  Just jump into a conversation.  That's the idea powering a fresh batch of social startups poised …
J. Edward Moreno / The Hill:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs an executive order allowing people to get a marriage license remotely and letting clerks perform ceremonies over video  —  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed an executive order Saturday allowing New Yorkers to obtain marriage licenses and perform ceremonies remotely.
Susan D'Agostino / Quanta Magazine:
Profile of and Q&A with pioneering computer scientist Donald Knuth, who is still writing his magnum opus The Art of Computer Programming, which he began in 1962  —  For pioneering computer scientist Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression.
Zach Schonfeld / VICE:
Cameo, which lets fans pay for shoutout videos from celebs, has become a gig economy for celebs during the pandemic as some use it to compensate for income loss  —  On March 20, Steven Galanis, the CEO and co-founder of Cameo, took a call from Akon, the R&B singer behind the 2006 hit “Smack That.”
Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE:
Uber's sick pay policy for drivers has changed several times amid the pandemic, excluding some who need it the most and increasing the documentation required  —  The pandemic makes clear that Uber sees its own well-being as divergent from that of its workers.

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

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.
Hard Fork:
The A.I. Mob That Attacked Hugging Face + METR's Ajeya Cotra
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.
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 10:30 AM ET, April 19, 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

Arielle Pardes / Wired:

Earlier Picks

Protocol: