Tech News
Tech News and Analysis from around the web
CNBC:
Airbnb will issue full refunds for trips starting on or before May 31 booked before March 14, will make a $250M fund to pay hosts 25% of regular cancelation fee — - Airbnb announced it will allow guests to receive full refunds for trips starting on or before May 31 that were booked prior …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
App Annie: videoconferencing apps saw a record 62M downloads during the week of March 14-21, up 45% from the prior week — Work-from-home policies, social distancing and government lockdowns have increased the demand for video conferencing apps, for both business and personal use.
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
A US federal court rules that simply breaking a site's terms of service does not constitute criminal hacking under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — Courts have struggled to interpret the vague Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. — A federal court in Washington, DC, has ruled that violating …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Huawei open sources MindSpore, an AI computing framework akin to TensorFlow and PyTorch, which it claims offers a 50% efficiency boost over rivals on average — Huawei this week announced that MindSpore, a framework for AI app development that the company detailed in August 2019, is now available in open source on GitHub and Gitee.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: in early March, Apple started letting some engineers take home early versions of future devices to continue work during the lockdown period — With its 175-acre campus in Cupertino, California, and several dozen more offices across the rest of the world, Apple Inc. wasn't designed as a work-at-home company.
Alyssa Newcomb / Fortune:
WeWork is selling the social network Meetup to AlleyCorp and other private investors, sources say at a fraction of the $156M that WeWork paid for Meetup in 2017 — WeWork is selling Meetup, the social network that encourages people to get together in person, to AlleyCorp and a team of private investors …
Sean Lyngaas / CyberScoop:
HackerOne expels mobile voting vendor Voatz from its security program over hostile interactions with researchers, the first time it's cut ties with an org — HackerOne, a company that pairs ethical hackers with organizations to fix software flaws, has kicked mobile voting vendor Voatz off its platform …
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld:
Review of AMD's 7nm, 8-core Ryzen 9 4900HS, which is now available in PCs like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, shows it crushing Intel's most powerful laptop CPUs — When AMD introduced its Ryzen 4000 mobile CPUs at CES, the company made bold claims of game-changing performance.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Kabbage, a Softbank-backed small business loan platform, is furloughing a “significant number” of its 500 US staff, closing India office in the wake of pandemic — Another tech unicorn is feeling the pinch of doing business during the coronavirus pandemic.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
A hacker hijacked several of Microsoft's YouTube channels to broadcast a crypto Ponzi scam, which continued for over 14 hours — Several of Microsoft's YouTube accounts appear to have been hacked. — A hacker has hijacked all of Microsoft's official YouTube accounts and is broadcasting …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft announces Teams for consumers, to help plan trips, share grocery lists, and more, Skype DAUs up 70% month-over-month to 40M, calling minutes up 220% — As part of its Microsoft 365 for consumers news today, Microsoft announced Microsoft Teams for consumers and new Skype metrics.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Personal information of nearly 5M citizens of the country of Georgia leaked, including home addresses, dates of birth, ID numbers, and mobile phone numbers — A file containing personal information for 4,934,863 Georgians has been published on a hacker forum over the weekend.
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft says Chromium Edge is getting Vertical Tabs, Smart Copy to help you copy web content into docs, Password Monitor to alert users of stolen credentials — Microsoft today announced upcoming features for its Edge browser based on Google's Chromium open source project, the same browser Google's Chrome is based on.
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft debuts a Family Safety mobile app and AI-powered PowerPoint and Excel features as part of its 365 Family and Personal subscriptions, coming April 21 — Microsoft today announced that on April 21, Office 365 will become Microsoft 365, or “the subscription for your life.”
Violet Blue / Engadget:
Before using the tools built by data harvesting companies to track the coronavirus pandemic, we must assume that the tools will be abused — Our worlds are so upside-down and backwards right now that Wired claims Surveillance Could Save Lives Amid a Public Health Crisis …
Me, with my stylin new mask.
I've privately encouraged a few reporter friends to look into what it's like to die from "CV", and report on it.
My imagination says it's very horrible. But maybe it isn't as bad as I imagine and maybe they knock you out for the most painful parts.
I know you can request a DNR, thinking of writing it on my body in Sharpie. But can you also request palliative treatment?
And btw, how are supplies of the palliatives?
This is a huge story, and as far as I can see no one is covering it. It would take a lot of courage.
Tom Watson: "Like with mass shootings or war zones, there's a media pact not to present the battlefield to the public." I respond: "This is different. The people they're reporting to are the battlefield."
Two reasons:
- Increase your chance of survival when you get the virus.
- Slow the rate of transmission of the virus.
One reason for you, another for everyone else.
Scientists are working feverishly on treatments and a vaccine. The latter will prevent you from getting infected, but it's a long way off. But treatments could come about any day. The longer you hold on, the more likely you will survive.
If everyone stayed in, the transmission of the virus would almost halt. You could still get it from someone you live with. But that's it.
But we can't be perfect. We need doctors, food, electric, internet, etc. So the best we can do is slow the rate. The slower it gets, the more time we give the scientists to find a treatment or vaccine. And the better the chance you survive.