Twitter is urging its more than 330 million users to immediately change their passwords after a bug exposed them in plain text. Twitter says there’s no evidence that any breach or misuse of the unmasked passwords occurred, but the company still recommends changing your password, including on third-party apps like Twitterrific and TweetDeck. [Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge]
Recode Daily: Read this, then change your Twitter password
Plus, Elon Musk gets kinda Trumpy; as Fortnite ascends, eSports arenas are the new movie theaters; and tales of salad rage at Sweetgreen.
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Amazon abruptly suspended construction on the buildout of a new 17-story office tower in its hometown of Seattle. The company said it was waiting to see how the city council votes this month on a proposal that would tax Amazon and other big Seattle employers about $500 per local employee; revenue from the tax would go toward homeless services and affordable housing. Amazon, which would be on the hook for about $20 million a year under the proposed tax, is expanding its operations in other cities — this week, the company announced plans to add 2,000 workers in Boston, 3,000 in Vancouver and 200 in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, some of the more than 200 cities Amazon rejected for its HQ2 are making substantial changes based on the company’s feedback. [Jason Del Rey / Recode]
Black lawmakers are impatient with tech’s lack of diversity and are threatening regulation to force the issue. During a panel discussion with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus on the last day of their visit to Silicon Valley, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said she was “floored” to find out that many tech companies had only 1 percent to 2 percent black employees. [Shirin Ghaffary / Recode]
Instagram quietly added an in-app payments feature, which could be exciting for Instagram influencers, many of whom already peddle different products on the social photo- and video-sharing service. [Shannon Liao / The Verge]
Will biology will be the next great computing platform? Companies are popping up around a powerful gene-editing tool called Crispr, which is revolutionizing the speed and scope with which scientists can modify the DNA of organisms, including human cells. [Megan Molteni / Wired]
As Fortnite’s viral popularity grows, eSports arenas are the new movie theaters. U.S. companies are rapidly turning malls, movie theaters, storefronts and parking garages into neighborhood eSports arenas. And gamers — half athlete, half influencer — are the new stars. Fortnite content received 2.4 billion views on YouTube in February alone. Related reading: Parenting the Fortnite addict. [Nellie Bowles / The New York Times]
Top stories from Recode
“Excuse me. Next. Boring, bonehead questions are not cool,” Musk said in response to one analyst’s question.
Calling CEO Mark Zuckerberg “completely immoral,” the provocative investor has no regrets and says “no founder should ever sell a company to him.”
This is cool
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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