- April 4th, 2020
- 07:29 AM
- Zoom apologizes for routing some calls made in N. America through China, says it "mistakenly" allowed Chinese data centers to accept calls due to traffic spike (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)
- 06:37 AM
- A look at how tech's lobbying efforts in the US are quietly pushing for long-held goals in the frantic political and economic environment amid COVID-19 outbreak (David McCabe/New York Times)
- 05:45 AM
- UK researchers are using Google's mobile location data collected from apps like Google Maps to help track and predict the spread of COVID-19 across Europe (Ryan Gallagher/Bloomberg)
- 04:27 AM
- Zoom will require passwords to enter calls via Meeting ID and will turn on Waiting Rooms by default to prevent trolls from disrupting calls, starting April 5 (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)
- 03:36 AM
- US federal law enforcement warns that invading Zoom meetings to broadcast "disruptive content" will result in fines or possible imprisonment (Nick Statt/The Verge)
- 02:44 AM
- Global online music streaming grew 32% YoY in 2019, reaching 358M total subs; Spotify led with 31% market share of paid subs, followed by Apple Music at 19% (Abhilash Kumar/Counterpoint Research)
- 01:26 AM
- Google temporarily rolls back its SameSite policy in Chrome, to allow stability for essential service websites that may not meet third party cookie requirements (Aliya Chaudhry/The Verge)
- 12:34 AM
- Qcraft, which is developing simulation software to help train autonomous vehicle systems, raises a $12M seed round led by IDG Capital (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- 12:34 AM
- Apple has acquired Dublin-based AI startup Voysis, which developed a platform for digital assistants to better understand people's natural language (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
- April 3rd, 2020
- 11:43 PM
- Apptopia and Braze study: with 59M global installs, Netflix led rivals YouTube, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ in Q1, but more time was spent on YouTube Kids (Anthony Ha/TechCrunch)
- 10:51 PM
- Insight Partners closes a $9.5B Fund XI, says it will be "hyper-focused on supporting its portfolio companies" with ongoing and near-future funding (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)
- 09:59 PM
- Four democratic senators send a letter to Apple, asking whether its COVID-19 app and website comply with HIPAA and seeking info on its agreements with the govt (Bloomberg)
- 08:41 PM
- Internal docs: Amazon to postpone Prime Day at least until August, expects a potential $100M hit from excess devices it may now have to sell at a discount (Reuters)
- 08:15 PM
- Justin Trudeau says Canada has signed an agreement with Amazon to distribute critical medical supplies across the country (Alicja Siekierska/Yahoo Finance)
- 07:23 PM
- Thousands of Zoom calls found via web search using Zoom's default file naming scheme after users saved them in unprotected spaces like open AWS S3 buckets (Drew Harwell/Washington Post)
- 06:05 PM
- OctoML, which wants to use ML to make machine learning models run more efficiently on different types of hardware, raises $15M Series A led by Amplify (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)
- 06:05 PM
- Apple Arcade launches new RPG Legend of the Skyfish 2 (Shelby Brown/CNET)
- 05:13 PM
- In a court filing, CEO of NSO Group says Facebook representatives approached NSO in 2017 to buy parts of Pegasus to monitor phones of users who installed Onavo (Joseph Cox/VICE)
- 04:21 PM
- Profile of Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who says the company will "probably" suspend all tracking on Zoom's sites and consider open-sourcing its code in the future (Alex Konrad/Forbes)
- 04:21 PM
- The new iPad Pro gets a privacy feature, first introduced on 2018 MacBooks, that disconnects hardware microphones when an attached MFi compliant case is closed (Zac Hall/9to5Mac)
- 03:29 PM
- Civil liberties advocates say a data-driven approach to pandemic response is compatible with individual rights, but with limits and justifications at every step (Sam Biddle/The Intercept)
- 02:37 PM
- Airbnb lowers its internal valuation to $26B, a 16% drop since its last funding round; the company faces as much as an estimated 90% drop in bookings (Dave Lee/Financial Times)
- 01:45 PM
- Researchers: Zoom sometimes uses encryption keys issued by servers in China, uses a flawed encryption method, and hence is not suited to communicate secrets (Micah Lee/The Intercept)
-
- 01:19 PM
- Pinterest CEO and a team of multi-disciplinary scientists launch How We Feel app to collect global COVID-19 data daily while respecting user privacy (Darrell Etherington/TechCrunch)
- 11:09 AM
- Microsoft's Azure Cognitive Services gets new voice styles designed to help developers tailor the voice of their apps and services to their brand or scenario (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)
- 09:25 AM
- Google uses aggregated anonymized location data from 131 countries to show which places are complying with social distancing and which aren't (Casey Newton/The Verge)
- 07:41 AM
- Researchers are using Facebook's location data to provide daily updates to US cities and states evaluating the effectiveness of social distancing amid COVID-19 (Reuters)
- 06:49 AM
- Leaked memo: Apple told employees that its retail stores in the US will remain closed and work-from-home procedures will remain in place till early May (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
- 05:57 AM
- Facebook announces new measures to help businesses including a gift card registry, says applications for its $100M SMB grant program will open next week (Andrew Hutchinson/Social Media Today)
- 04:39 AM
- Twitter deletes 20K fake accounts linked to governments of Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Honduras, and Indonesia for "attempt to undermine public conversation" (Julian Borger/The Guardian)
- 02:55 AM
- FCC approves $200M COVID-19 Telehealth Program to help cover the cost of new telehealth services and devices with up to $1M in funding for medical providers (Devin Coldewey/TechCrunch)
- 02:29 AM
- Source: Apple's new entry level iPhone will be called iPhone SE, available in white, black, and red, with 64GB, 128GB, or 256GB storage options (Zac Hall/9to5Mac)
- 01:37 AM
- Zoom has issued a patch for a vulnerability in its Windows client that let attackers steal Windows login credentials from malicious chat links (Mark Hachman/PCWorld)
- 12:45 AM
- A deep dive into the deal between Apple and Amazon which lets the retail giant process some payments in Prime Video app, and the motivations of both companies (John Gruber/Daring Fireball)
- 12:19 AM
- European countries, including France and Germany, are offering billions of euros to support tech startups during COVID-19; the UK is facing calls to do similar (Ryan Browne/CNBC)
- April 2nd, 2020
- 11:27 PM
- Instacart says it will start providing free health and safety kits with a face mask, hand sanitizer, and a thermometer to its full-service shoppers (Megan Rose Dickey/TechCrunch)
- 10:35 PM
- Apple accidentally confirms the rumored AirTags item tracking tags in a video uploaded to its Apple Support channel on YouTube (Pururaj Dutta/Appleosophy)
- 10:35 PM
- Leaked notes from an internal meeting attended by Jeff Bezos reveal Amazon execs discussed a plan to smear fired warehouse employee Christian Smalls (Paul Blest/VICE)
- 10:35 PM
- Zoom issues a new update to fix its "malware-like" macOS installer (Tom Warren/The Verge)
- 09:43 PM
- eBay says it will waive seller fees for new businesses through June 30 as part of a new Up & Running program to help owners of shuttered physical stores (Chaim Gartenberg/The Verge)
- 08:51 PM
- House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says VC-backed startups will become eligible for $350B in small business loans guaranteed via the CARES Act (Dan Primack/Axios)
- 07:59 PM
- Google says it is shutting down Neighbourly, a neighborhood Q&A app for India, on May 12 (Ivan Mehta/The Next Web)
- 07:33 PM
- Memo: Google will begin letting some advertisers run COVID-19 related ads, prioritizing government entities, hospitals, and others working directly on the issue (Sara Fischer/Axios)
- 07:33 PM
- Amazon reveals plan for interactive games on Twitch, arriving over summer; sources say Amazon is working on a cloud gaming platform codenamed Project Tempo (Seth Schiesel/New York Times)
- 06:41 PM
- App Annie: consumers spent a record $23.4B+ globally through Google and Apple app stores in Q1 2020, with average weekly time spent in apps and games up 20% YoY (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
- 06:15 PM
- Amazon bans the sale of some medical supplies, like N95 and surgical masks, to the general public and will only allow hospitals and government orgs to buy them (Jason Del Rey/Vox)
- 05:49 PM
- Phantom AI, which is developing advanced driver-assistance systems for cars and trucks, raises $22M Series A led by Celeres Investments (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- 05:49 PM
- Intel announces its first 10th-gen Comet Lake H-series CPUs for high-end gaming laptops, with clock speeds that can boost past 5.0GHz (Chaim Gartenberg/The Verge)
-
- 05:23 PM
- Binance acquires crypto data aggregator CoinMarketCap, source says, for around $300M (Frank Chaparro/The Block)
- 05:23 PM
- Amazon says it plans to roll out temperature checks and masks for staff at its US and European warehouses and will use ML to improve social distancing measures (Jeffrey Dastin/Reuters)
- 04:57 PM
- Facebook launches a standalone Messenger app for MacOS and Windows with unlimited, free group video calls, support for Dark Mode, and more (Christine Fisher/Engadget)
- 04:05 PM
- Zoom says it's now disabled a feature that let users covertly access data from some people's LinkedIn profiles, even when they were in the meeting anonymously (New York Times)
- 04:05 PM
- Spyware firm NSO Group is marketing software that uses mobile phone data to monitor and predict the spread of COVID-19, says some countries are testing it (Rory Cellan-Jones/BBC)
- 04:05 PM
- How Toast, a cloud-based restaurant management software provider, is supporting its clients' transitions from in-person dining to takeout and delivery services (Ari Levy/CNBC)
- 03:13 PM
- Zoom apologizes for security failures, says it has 200M+ DAUs vs. 10M in Dec., and plans to freeze development of new features to focus on security and privacy (Eric S. Yuan/Zoom Blog)
- 03:13 PM
- Sources: SoftBank-backed online lender Kabbage suspended credit lines to its small business clients in the past week without notice (Bloomberg)
- 02:47 PM
- Collibra, which provides tools to manage, warehouse, store, and analyze data troves, raises $112.5M at a post-money valuation of $2.3B (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)
- 01:55 PM
- London-based Air Doctor, which helps travelers connect with local doctors for non-emergency conditions in 42 countries, raises $7.8M Series A (Tammy Lovell/MobiHealthNews)
- 11:19 AM
- Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Akamai, and Netflix join MANRS, an Internet Society-supported initiative aimed at bolstering internet's routing security (Kieren McCarthy/The Register)
- 07:51 AM
- Popular early internet meme site YTMND has been resurrected with the help of fans, a year after it went down (Matthew Gault/VICE)
- 06:33 AM
- Doctor Anywhere, a Singapore-based telemedicine startup, raises $27M Series B, says it will use the funds to expand into Malaysia and the Philippines (Olivia Poh/The Business Times)
- 06:07 AM
- Amazon is investigating claims of its contractors sleeping in "subhuman" conditions on makeshift beds in a Philippine call center due to travel restrictions (Dave Lee/Financial Times)
- 05:41 AM
- An inside account of how Bird laid off 406 employees in two minutes via a Zoom webinar; employees say they were locked out of their computers during the meeting (Ben Bergman/dot.LA)
- 04:23 AM
- Snap says the time users spent calling on its app increased by 50%+ from February to March, and that Snaps between friends reached all-time high in that period (Jason Aycock/Seeking Alpha)
- 02:39 AM
- Anthony Levandowski files motion to force Uber into arbitration, alleging Uber must shoulder $179M judgment against him as part of its 2016 indemnity agreement (Kirsten Korosec/TechCrunch)
- 02:13 AM
- FCC will vote on a proposal to allow the entire 6 GHz band to be available for unlicensed use, citing the increase in Wi-Fi demand; vote is set for April 23 (Ry Crist/CNET)
- 01:47 AM
- Some couples, faced with orders to shelter in place to avoid COVID-19, are getting married at home with friends and relatives watching on Zoom (Zoe Schiffer/The Verge)
- 12:29 AM
- Apple now lets some streaming apps like Amazon Prime Video use their own payment methods for in-app purchases on Apple devices, avoiding Apple's 30% cut (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
- April 1st, 2020
- 11:11 PM
- Amazon Prime Video now allows in-app purchases on Apple devices, after previously sending users to browsers to avoid Apple's 30% cut on in-app buys (Nick Statt/The Verge)
- 10:45 PM
- Ohio-based Olive, which is developing an automation tool for US healthcare administration, raises $51M led by General Catalyst, bringing total raised to $123.8M (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
- 09:53 PM
- All-in-one productivity tool Notion, which helps people organize and track their work, raises $50M from Index Ventures and others at a $2B valuation (Erin Griffith/New York Times)
- 09:53 PM
- Sources: YouTube is planning to release Shorts, a rival to TikTok inside YouTube's main app, by the end of the year (The Information)
- 09:27 PM
- As COVID-19 confines people to their homes and prohibits gatherings, US political races are moving online, causing anxiety for some campaigns (Issie Lapowsky/Protocol)
- 09:01 PM
- COVID-19 has negatively affected tech startups big and small, leading to layoffs, halted IPOs and hiring, slashed prices for products, and bankruptcies (Erin Griffith/New York Times)
- 08:35 PM
- Doctors are banding together on Twitter and TikTok to settle on frameworks of verifiable sources and information to share with the public (Kaya Yurieff/CNN)