Techmeme: The product lens — There has been a lot of discussion lately … (Chris Dixon)

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December 2, 2012, 10:35 PM

Top News

Paul Graham / Y Combinator:

YC W13 Will Be Smaller — We just finished interviews for the winter 2013 YC cycle. We funded a lot fewer startups this time than last. We funded 84 in summer 2012. We don't know yet exactly how many we'll have in winter 2013 because we usually add a handful after interviews and sometimes …

More: GigaOM, TechCrunch, The Next Web and TechCrunch

Tweets: @semil, @blake, @hncomments, @hunterwalk, @santiagojara and @shaig

Chris Dixon:

The product lens — There has been a lot of discussion lately about the markets for startup financing. Many of the discussions use words like “valuations” “bubble” “crunch” etc. Words like that generally mean the writer is discussing the world through the lens of finance.

Tweets: @infoarbitrage, @bznotes, @pkafka and @bill_gross

Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:

Some new iMacs marked as being ‘Assembled in USA’ — Apple may be taking some of the burden of assembling the new iMac off Chinese supply partners by performing parts of assembly in the U.S., as a number of newly-purchased standard units are showing an “Assembled in America” notation usually reserved for made-to-order machines.

More: 9to5Mac, CNET, Fortune, TUAW and Examiner. Tweets: @jyarow

Alexandra Chang / Wired:

Don't Blame Us for Windows 8′s Slow Sales, PC Makers Say — Microsoft is publicly touting its Windows 8 sales figures — 40 million licenses sold! Windows 8 outpacing Windows 7 upgrades! Windows Store apps double since launch! — but it isn't all sunshine and smiles in Redmond.

More: PC Magazine, The Next Web, Neowin and Geekosystem. Tweets: @carnage4life

Sam Byford / The Verge:

King of Samsung: a chairman's reign of cunning and corruption — Lee Kun-hee made Samsung a global power over 25 years, but at what cost? — If Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee takes a moment this weekend to reflect on the past 25 years, he could be forgiven for having mixed emotions.

Tweets: @zpower and @lluk. Thanks:@max8378

Brian X. Chen / New York Times:

App Maker Uber Hits Regulatory Snarl — WASHINGTON — Summoning a taxi or car service with your smartphone feels like the future. City governments around the world can agree on that. But many of them are proposing new rules that would run Uber, one of the most prominent ride-requesting apps, off the road.

Tweets: @kzaleski, @agpublic and @brettgurewitz

Cade Metz / Wired:

How Amazon Followed Google Into the World of Secret Servers — Chris Pinkham was walking through a data center that would one day house Amazon's seminal cloud computing service — the Elastic Compute Cloud — when he came face to face with a cage of Google machines.

Tweets: @nrfrancescon, @iblamm and @sequoia_capital

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Apps Like Rockmelt Ditch Social-Only Signup, Add Email So Privacy Buffs Can “Try Before You Pry” — Rockmelt's recently released iPad app only offered signup through Facebook and Twitter, leading 50 percent of users not to sign in at all. So today it followed Pinterest and Spotify …

More: Rockmelt Blog

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

New World Order: is the UN about to take control of the internet? — Is there a war on for the web? — The future of the web will be decided in a dark room by UN politicians and authoritarian governments — at least according to Google and some other opponents of the International …

More: BBC, David Talbot, The Official Google Blog, PC World, TechSpot, The Huffington Post, Ars Technica, TechnoLlama and ValueWalk

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook Makes A Huge Data Grab By Aggressively Promoting Photo Sync — Facebook was already taking in 300 million photos a day, and that rate is about to dramatically increase. It's now ushering users onto its background uploads feature Photo Sync with a big banner at the top of its mobile apps' news feed.

More: iMore.com, Forbes, digitaltrends.com and VentureBeat. Thanks:@eldon

David Segal / New York Times:

John McAfee Plays Hide-and-Seek in Belize — DANIEL GUERRERO promised during his campaign for mayor here to clean up San Pedro, the only town on this island, a 20-minute puddle jump from the mainland. But if he ever runs for re-election, don't expect him to mention that vow.

More: Network World, Boing Boing, Business Insider and CNN

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

ASUS Qube with Google TV pops up at the FCC — Despite its crucial role in the Android ecosystem, ASUS hasn't taken the plunge on Google TV so far. An FCC approval for a new adapter, the Qube, suggests that reticence is coming to a quick halt — and in an uncommon way.

More: 9to5Google, TG Daily, Android Authority, Crave, The Verge, PhoneArena, SlashGear and Android Phone Fans

Amy Chozick / New York Times:

Syria Rebels Find Skype Useful, but Dangers Lurk — In a demonstration of their growing sophistication and organization, Syrian rebels responded to a nationwide shutdown of the Internet by turning to satellite technology to coordinate within the country and to communicate with outside activists.

More: Electronista, The Verge and Renesys Blog

Tweets: @crispinburke and @dberlind

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