at

Apple and Google release sample code, UI and detailed policies for COVID-19 exposure-notification apps

Apple and Google are providing additional resources for developers working with the first version of their Exposure Notification API, the development tools the companies have created and are working on in order to provide a cross-platform way for public health agencies to notify individuals of a potential exposure to a person with a confirmed case […]




at

UK’s coronavirus tracing app strategy faces fresh questions over transparency and interoperability

The UK’s data protection watchdog confirmed today the government still hasn’t given it sight of a key legal document attached to the coronavirus contacts tracing app which is being developed by the NHSX, the digital transformation branch of the country’s National Health Service . Under UK and EU law, a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) […]




at

Autotech Ventures raises more than $150 million with an eye on ground transportation startups

Autotech Ventures popped on the scene three years ago with a $120 million debut fund and a plan to invest in early-stage ground transportation startups. Now, with investments in 26 startups and a handful of exits, including Xnor.ai, DeepScale and Frontier Car Group, the venture firm is back with a new, bigger fund and the […]




at

Smartwatch shipments grew during the first quarter of 2020, with Apple Watch still in first place

Despite the worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, global smartwatch shipments continued to grow during the first three months of the year, driven by online sales, says a new report by research firm Strategy Analytics. Shipments grew 20% annually to reach 13.7 million units in the first quarter of 2020, up from 11.4 million units […]




at

Marx, Gramsci and strikes: life at Tony Benn University

Thinking up the most leftwing ideas imaginable is tricky when several were in the last Labour manifesto




at

A Budget that backs Boris Johnson’s hunches

The Conservatives will not lightly give up their newly acquired working-class voters




at

The Gatekeeper, by Kate Fall

A pacy, personal but unrevealing account of David Cameron’s government




at

A nation standing together, in isolation 

The coronavirus crisis brought out the best in Britons, but underlying divides persist




at

The new Labour leader must play a patient game

All the opposition can do now is ask the right questions and be seen to behave responsibly




at

Can Matt Hancock’s 5-point plan solve the testing crisis?

Health secretary pledges to increase tests to 100,000 a day in England by enlisting big companies and private labs




at

Culture wars are infecting the UK’s pandemic strategy

The attempt to set up gender equality and ethnic diversity as the enemies of prosperity is telling




at

My new government-inspired ‘non-information strategy’ ’

Whether on pocket money or holidays, I see the wisdom in refusing to discuss important decisions




at

GitHub launches a mobile app, smarter notifications and improved code search

At its annual Universe conference today, Microsoft -owned GitHub announced a couple of new products, as well as the general availability of a number of tools that developers have been able to test for the last few months. The two announcements that developers will likely be most interested in are the launch of GitHub’s first […]




at

Adobe details feature roadmap for Photoshop on the iPad, subject selection coming in 2019

Adobe has taken quite a bit of heat for its release of Photoshop on the iPad, mostly because it’s not as feature-complete as a lot of users were hoping, given that this is meant to be a full version of Photoshop on par with the desktop edition on Apple’s tablet OS for the first time. […]




at

Photoshop for iPad gains ‘Select Subject’ feature

Adobe’s Photoshop on the iPad got off to a rocky start that doesn’t seem to have left fans of the desktop version very happy, but the company looks intent on incorporating user feedback and releasing meaningful feature updates on a timely basis. Like today, for instance, it’s adding “Select Subject” to the iPad version of […]




at

Adobe celebrates Photoshop’s 30th anniversary with new desktop and mobile features

Adobe’s Photoshop celebrates its 30th birthday today. Over that time, the app has pretty much become synonymous with photo editing and there will surely be plenty of retrospectives. But to look ahead, Adobe also today announced a number of updates to both the desktop and mobile Photoshop experiences. The marquee feature here is probably the […]




at

Apple brings its hardware microphone disconnect feature to iPads

Apple has brought its hardware microphone disconnect security feature to its latest iPads. The microphone disconnect security feature aims to make it far more difficult for hackers to use malware or a malicious app to eavesdrop on a device’s surroundings. The feature was first introduced to Macs by way of Apple’s T2 security chip last […]




at

Apple Watch designer reveals the device’s origins on its fifth birthday

Update: We mistakenly noted in an earlier version that Chaudhri had been a part of Microsoft’s Hololens team. The story has been updated to remove the reference.  In his two decades at Apple, Imran Chaudhri worked on many of the company’s most iconic product lines, including the iPhone, iPad and Mac. The designer left the […]




at

Commercial real estate could be in trouble, even after COVID-19 is over

Commercial real estate owners, brokers and landlords have collectively made many hundreds of billions of dollars a year in recent years as the economy zipped along. Now, they’re getting clobbered by the pandemic-fueled economic crisis. Worse, their industry may be forever changed by it. To state the obvious, extracting rent from nearly anyone right now […]




at

As stocks recover, private investors aren’t buying the hype

You can easily read optimism in the stock market. Ask around the private markets, however, and you'll hear a very different narrative.




at

Trump’s hype for state lockdown protests puts Twitter and Facebook’s new COVID-19 policies to the test

A new flurry of tweets from President Trump is pushing the limits of social platform policies designed explicitly to keep users safe from the spread of the novel coronavirus, both online and off. In a series of rapid-fire messages on Friday morning, Trump issued a call to “LIBERATE” Virginia, Minnesota and Michigan, all states led […]




at

Twitter will remove dubious 5G tweets ‘that could potentially cause harm’

Ever since it first started rolling out, 5G skeptics have attempted to link the next-gen cellular technology to all manner of health issues. Most recently, it’s become an easy scapegoat for the global COVID-19 pandemic, given the rapid rise of both. Conspiracy theories have gained such a foothold that vigilantes have taken matters into their […]




at

Stay-at-home order for 7 million Bay Area residents extended to end of May

A stay-at-home order for several San Francisco Bay Area counties will be extended through the end of May due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a decision that affects 7 million residents and thousands of businesses. The Public Health Officers of the Counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara as well […]




at

Twitter says Elon Musk’s tweets advocating against expert COVID-19 guidance don’t violate its rules

Twitter has said that tweets posted early Tuesday morning by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk that irresponsibly call for restrictions put in place to defend against the spread of COVID-19 don’t violate its guidelines around inaccurate or disputed information about the coronavirus that could cause harm. Musk tweeted a series of things on Tuesday, […]





at

Twitter launches a COVID-19 data set of tweets for approved developers and researchers

Twitter is making it possible for developers and researchers to study the public conversation around COVID-19 in real time with an update to its API platform. The company is introducing a new COVID-19 stream endpoint to those participating in Twitter Developer Labs — a program that offers access to new API endpoints and other features […]




at

Silver Lake to invest $747M in India’s Jio Platforms

Weeks after Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms, India’s top telecom operator, private equity firm Silver Lake is following suit — and is willing to pay a premium for it. Silver Lake announced on Monday it will be investing 56.56 billion Indian rupees (about $746.8 million) in Jio Platforms for about 1.15% stake in the Indian […]




at

Twitter rolls out changes to threaded conversations following tests in its prototype app, twttr

Twitter announced today it’s introducing a new layout for replies that will use lines and indentations to make it easier to understand who you’re replying to and how the conversation is flowing. The company will also test putting engagement actions — including likes, Retweet and reply icons — behind an extra tap to make replies […]




at

Deep Render raises £1.6M for image compression tech that mimics ‘neural processes of the human eye’

Deep Render, a London startup and spin-out of Imperial College that is applying machine learning to image compression, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Pentech, with participation from Speedinvest. Founded in mid-2017 by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch, who met while studying Computer Science at Imperial College London, Deep Render […]




at

Longtime VC Todd Chaffee of IVP says late-stage scene is now ‘M&A world’

Todd Chaffee has long been one of the most senior members of the late-stage venture firm Institutional Venture Partners. Chaffee joined IVP in 2000 after logging six years at Visa, and went on to lead rounds in numerous prominent later-stage companies, many (but not all) of which have gone public, including Coinbase, Compass, Klarna, Kayak, […]




at

Death can be an expensive business

One third of over-55s don’t even have a will — but they can get one for free in October




at

Negative rates tarnish bankers’ halos

The failures of loose monetary policy could prompt a fall from grace




at

How you structure your finances is just as important as what you hold

Could Retirement Interest Only mortgages be an option for many older people?




at

Roadside recovery and an aggravating communications breakdown

In an overleveraged world headed for economic slowdown, don’t rely on the heavily indebted for rescue




at

UK Budget sides with small businesses, with a caveat

The chancellor need beware that policies introduced in a crisis are hard to end later




at

Bypass retail investors at your peril

Technology means small shareholders need not — and should not — be excluded from emergency equity fundraisings




at

Last chance for the climate transition

Achieving zero emissions by 2050 would require unprecedented global co-operation




at

Britain needs to be crystal clear about its virus strategy

After blundering, the government must admit that the lockdown will not be over in three weeks




at

Martin Wolf on the pain of separation from his grandchildren

‘We are used to having the grandchildren regularly in our house. When will that happen again? We have no idea. That is painful’




at

We must focus attention on our next steps

The lockdowns are necessary to get the disease under control — but they must be brief




at

Martin Wolf: coronavirus could be worst economic crisis since Great Depression

Pandemic's economic impact compared with historic crises of 1930s and 2008




at

Maintaining the lockdown and saving the economy are mutually compatible

It is not a matter of protecting people ‘or’ the economy but of protecting people ‘and’ the economy




at

H1 Insights is giving the healthcare industry the ultimate professional database

“I want to build a business which profiles every single researcher and healthcare professional in the world and I want to sell it to industry,” says Ariel Katz, the co-founder and chief executive of H1 Insights.  With the healthcare industry on a mission to digitize and analyze every conceivable data point it can to wring […]




at

Greylock’s Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo to talk fundraising at Early Stage SF 2020

Early Stage SF is around the corner, on April 28 in San Francisco, and we are more than excited for this brand new event. The intimate gathering of founders, VCs, operators and tech industry experts is all about giving founders the tools they need to find success, no matter the challenge ahead of them. Struggling […]




at

Online learning marketplace Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

The internet has, for better or worse, become the default platform for people seeking information, and today one of the companies leveraging that to deliver educational content has raised some funding to fuel its next stage of growth. Udemy, which provides a marketplace offering some 150,000 different online learning courses from business analytics to ukulele […]




at

Europe sets out plan to boost data reuse and regulate ‘high risk’ AIs

European Union lawmakers have set out a first bundle of proposals for a new digital strategy for the bloc, one that’s intended to drive digitalization across all industries and sectors — and enable what Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has described as ‘A Europe fit for the Digital Age‘. It could also be summed […]




at

Lack of big tech GDPR decisions looms large in EU watchdog’s annual report

The lead European Union privacy regulator for most of big tech has put out its annual report which shows another major bump in complaints filed under the bloc’s updated data protection framework, underlining the ongoing appetite EU citizens have for applying their rights. But what the report doesn’t show is any firm enforcement of EU […]




at

The Org nabs $8.5M led by Founders Fund to build a global database of company org charts

LinkedIn has cornered the market when it comes to putting your own professional profile online and using it to network for jobs, industry connections and professional development. But when it comes to looking at a chart of the people, and specifically the leadership teams, who make up organizations more holistically, the Microsoft-owned network comes up […]




at

HireSweet helps employers find candidates that aren’t actively looking to change jobs

The right candidate to fill your job may not actually be looking for a job right now. HireSweet, which is part of Y Combinator’s current class of startups, is trying to help companies find exactly these candidates that are perfect for a job but not actively looking. Like so many other recruiting platforms, the HireSweet […]




at

Facebook, Reddit, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube issue joint statement on misinformation

In an unprecedented move to reassure customers and flag the potential for misinformation about COVID-19 on their platforms, all of the major social media companies and their parent corporations issued a joint statement on their efforts. “We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe,” the statement […]