Techmeme
June 17, 2013, 1:20 PM

Top News

Apple:
Apple's Commitment to Customer Privacy  —  Two weeks ago, when technology companies were accused of indiscriminately sharing customer data with government agencies, Apple issued a clear response: We first heard of the government's “Prism” program when news organizations asked us about it on June 6.
USA Today:
3 NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower: We told you so  —  In a roundtable discussion, a trio of former National Security Agency whistle-blowers tell USA TODAY that Edward Snowden succeeded where they failed.  —  When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Source: Instagram Will Get Video On June 20  —  We've been working on getting more details on a press event that Facebook is having this week.  Earlier, we wrote it could launch a news-reading app, but we have since heard more details that point to something else entirely.
Miyoung Kim / Reuters:
Samsung to launch faster Galaxy S4 smartphone  —  (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co plans to sell a variation of its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone that will transmit data at nearly twice the normal speed, the head of its mobile business said on Monday.  —  J.K. Shin, also co-chief executive …
Owen Good / Kotaku:
Here's a Look at One of the iPhone's New Game Controllers  —  With Steve Jobs no longer around to tell us these things aren't elegant enough for his device, it appears we'll finally get a proper gamepad for the iOS this year.  This will be one of them, made by Logitech.
Digg Blog:
Digg Reader Update!  —  Over the last 90 days, the Digg engineering team — all 5 of them — has been heads-down building an updated take on the RSS reader.  For our first public release, in time to (just) beat the shutdown of Google Reader, our aim has been to nail the basics …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
New DRM Changes Text of eBooks to Catch Pirates  —  With e-readers becoming more popular year after year, book piracy is seen as a growing problem for the publishing industry.  —  To counter this threat, publishers are constantly looking for new forms of DRM.
Washington Post:
State photo-ID databases become troves for police  —  The faces of more than 120 million people are in searchable photo databases that state officials assembled to prevent driver's-license fraud but that increasingly are used by police to identify suspects, accomplices and even innocent bystanders …
More: Gizmodo and SiliconBeat
Mat Smith / Engadget:
Skype video messaging officially launches on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android — but not Windows Phone  —  Out of beta and free, Skype today launches its video messaging service across all its major platforms.  You can now send an unlimited number of messages (video missives were previously limited during beta …
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Netflix Links Up With DreamWorks Again for More Kids' Shows  —  More kids' stuff for Netflix, this time via another DreamWorks Animation deal.  —  The Web video service will have exclusive worldwide first-run rights to a new batch of original programming from the studio …
Stephen Shankland / CNET:
Chinese supercomputer tops the charts — two years early  —  Tianhe-2, with 3.1 million processor cores and a lot of Chinese-build technology, is the new leader of the twice-yearly list of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers.  —  The performance of the systems on the Top500 list continues to improve exponentially.
Federico Viticci / MacStories:
Automattic Acquires Poster for iOS  —  In a post (via 512 Pixels), developer Tom Witkin has announced that his WordPress client for iPhone and iPad, Poster, has been acquired by Automattic - the company that is also behind WordPress.com (among other products).  He writes:

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Earlier Picks

David Barrett / Telegraph: