Techmeme
August 18, 2013, 7:00 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Expecting the Unexpected From Jeff Bezos  —  EARLY employees of Amazon still remember the day the company took away their aspirin.  —  It was late 1999.  After years of heady excess, the Internet boom was beginning to falter.  Amazon, among the most celebrated of the dot-coms, was burdened with debt and spiraling losses.
Jacob Weisberg / Vogue:
Yahoo's Marissa Mayer: Hail to the Chief  —  As she works to reverse the fortunes of a failing Silicon Valley giant, Yahoo's Marissa Mayer has fueled a national debate about the office life, motherhood, and what it takes to be the CEO of the moment.  —  “I really like even numbers, and I like heavily divisible numbers.
Louis Kowolowski / Silent Circle Blog:
Why can't email be secure?  —  Coming on the heels of our announcement that we had shut down our Silent Mail service, we received a comment about securing email communications.  “In a recent press release, your company stated it was impossible to secure email communication ‘as we know it’.
More: The Verge and ForbesTweets: @marypcbuk and @carnage4life
Patrick Thibodeau / Computerworld:
Obama and Romney big data experts continue the battle as businesses  —  Big data is used to help Democrat Senate candidate Cory Booker in New Jersey  —  WASHINGTON — The self-described nerds of President Obama's presidential campaign last year were back using big data analytics …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Goldfinger: The Next iPhone  —  “Gold?  All over?”  M asks James Bond upon hearing how Jill Masterson died in 1964′s Goldfinger.  While Bond goes on to explain that the gold coating on Ms. Masterson caused her to die of “skin suffocation”, the same fate will not befall the next iPhone.
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Celebrity endorsements: Turning tech companies around since 2010  —  HTC is struggling.  Second quarter revenue fell sharply and the company is warning investors that it'll post a loss for the third quarter of this year.  —  But Chief Marketing Officer Ben Ho has big plans to turn the company around.
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Mozilla to ship ‘Metro-ized’ Firefox Dec. 10  —  If all goes well, touch-enabled Windows 8 browser will ship as part of Firefox 26  —  Mozilla will launch Firefox for Microsoft's Windows 8 “Modern” user interface in mid-December, more than a year after the operating system's launch …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
As Court Releases Files In Case Alleging Google Tracked UK Safari Users, Search Giant Wants To Move Case To U.S.  —  Some new developments this weekend in the case of 12 people in the UK who want to sue Google for secretly tracking their online activity by working around privacy settings in Apple's Safari web browser.
Steve Wozniak / Gizmodo:
Jobs, Reviewed by Steve Wozniak  —  In the discussion section of our Jobs review, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak weighed in with his own impressions of the movie—and how he and others were portrayed.  What follows is Woz's unedited take on Jobs:  —  I saw Jobs tonight.  I thought the acting throughout was good.
Vijith Assar / Slashdot:

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Alex Colon / GigaOM:

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