Techmeme: Mega-Launch: a fake FBI raid, dancing girls—oh, and human rights! (Joe Mullin/Ars Technica)

January 20, 2013, 8:55 PM

Top News

Google's Eric Schmidt calls for an open Internet as he lifts the lid on his visit to North Korea — Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, has shared extensive thoughts about his recent trip to North Korea which he attended alongside former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and others.

More: CNET, Ars Technica, The Next Web, PC World, Yahoo! News, Geekosystem, Google+ and AllThingsD

Kevin J. Delaney / Quartz:

Eric Schmidt's daughter's inside account of their visit to North Korea — Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's daughter Sophie has posted a lengthy account with photos of their recent trip to North Korea. She describes deep government control of the nine-person delegation's visit …

More: Sophie In North Korea, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, The Verge, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, CNNMoney.com and Business Insider. Tweets: @pourmecoffee

AFP:

Foreigners can now take own phones to North Korea: Xinhua — BEIJING: Foreigners visiting North Korea can now take their own mobile phones into the country, Chinese state media reported Sunday, citing an employee with the operator of the country's mobile network.

More: Voice of Russia

Owen Williams / The Next Web:

Face to face with Kim Dotcom as he launches Mega, talks about Megakey and the future of free content — If there's one place that you want to be for the launch of Mega.co.nz, it's within Kim Dotcom's mansion. That's precisely where I've been today. Sure we knew that Dotcom was larger than life …

More: The Next Web, Forbes, ZDNet, Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, The Wrap, New York Times, TechSpot, TorrentFreak, All New Musings and Ars Technica

Joe Mullin / Ars Technica:

Mega-Launch: a fake FBI raid, dancing girls—oh, and human rights! — Amid wild theatrics, Kim Dotcom launches super-private cloud storage service. — Kim Dotcom may see himself as being at war with Hollywood, but the man has quite a sense of theatrics himself.

More: Forbes, The Verge, TorrentFreak, Computerworld and Gizmodo

Tim Carmody / The Verge:

Wikileaks claims Aaron Swartz was an ally and possible source, breaking anonymity — Unsubstantiated statements implicate US Secret Service in Swartz's prosecution and break Wikileaks' own ‘doxxing’ rules — Aaron Swartz died a week ago. A public memorial service in New York City will be held later today.

More: CNET, Neowin, Mashable!, emptywheel, AllThingsD, emptywheel and VentureBeat

Tweets: @mathewi, @tcarmody, @jason_pontin, @dangillmor, @wikileaks and @wikileaks

Thanks:@daveying99

Edward Moyer / CNET:

Memorial service honors Swartz as activist, individual

More: Democracy Now, The Verge, Guardian and Associated Press. Tweets: @brainpicker

James Boyle / The Public Domain:

The Prosecution of Aaron: A Response to Orin Kerr

More: Harper's, The Verge, Techdirt, Lessig Blog, v2, The Volokh Conspiracy, Techdirt, The Huffington Post, The Verge and Doc Searls Weblog

Tweets: @lessig and @mattbuchanan

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Line, The Messaging App That Took Japan By Storm, Crosses 100M Users And Enters The U.S. — Line, a messaging app made by South Korea's Naver Corp. that took off in Japan, just crossed 100 million users globally 19 months after it originally launched. — The app is one of the leading contenders …

More: TruTower, Telecompaper, TechnoBuffalo, PR Newswire, AJW and VatorNews

Rich Trenholm / CNET:

Nexus 4 demand 10 times higher than Google expected … Ten times as many British phone fans want the Nexus 4 than Google expected. LG has once again blamed Google for stock issues with the perenially sold-out smash-hit Android phone, saying the Big G had no idea of the potential demand.

More: Business Insider, PalmAddict, Techie Buzz, The Droid Guy, digitaltrends.com and BetaNews

Chris Dixon:

Samsung's predicament — In the past year, Samsung went from being a moderately successful electronics manufacturer to the leading non-iOS mobile device maker. Together, Apple and Samsung earn 98% of the profits in the smartphone market. MG Siegler echoed a common sentiment when he wrote …

Tweets: @jinyk and @adrianblake

Business Insider:

Normal, Non-Geeky People Are Running Rampant On A New Dating App, Tinder — Today, one of our “normal” colleagues approached us about a new app all of her college-age friends and roommates use. It's called Tinder. — Tinder is a simple dating app that anonymously finds out who likes your looks nearby.

Tweets: @brennanjp

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

The Trend Against Skeuomorphic Textures and Effects in User Interface Design — Dave Wiskus, in a thoughtful piece for Macworld, “Apple and the Future of Design”: … I've been giving this a lot of thought lately, and I think I've figured it out. — There is a shift going on, fashion-wise.

More: Max Rudberg, Bjango and Forbes

Tweets: @davemcclure, @kevinmarks, @stephenhay and @albertlai

Aaron Levie / TechCrunch:

The Changing Of The Enterprise Guard — Editor's note: Aaron Levie is CEO and co-founder of Box. Follow him on Twitter @levie. — When we decided to focus on selling to enterprises five years ago at Box, we saw some exciting emerging trends: workers needed tools that were far simpler to use …

Tweets: @howardlindzon

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