Techmeme: Steve Ballmer and the Art of Managing a Monopoly (John Cassidy/The New Yorker)

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August 28, 2013, 11:55 AM

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Matthew Prince / CloudFlare Blog:

Details Behind Today's Internet Hacks … At 1:19pm (PDT) today, a researcher noticed that the New York Times' website wasn't loading. We know the New York Times tech team, so we sent an email to check in. A few minutes later, the CTO of the NYT called us back.

Christine Haughney / New York Times:

Times Site Is Disrupted in Attack by Hackers — The New York Times Web site was unavailable to readers on Tuesday afternoon following an attack on the company's domain name registrar, Melbourne IT. The attack also required employees of The Times to stop sending out sensitive e-mails.

More: CNN, Gizmodo, Digital Trends, Dyn, Domain Name Wire, ABC News, The Verge, VentureBeat and FireEye Blog. Tweets: @mattboggie. See also Mediagazer

Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

Syrian Electronic Army Says Attack on New York Times Is Over

More: The Next Web, Business Insider, Tech Trader Daily, Los Angeles Times and ZDNet

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Syrian Electronic Army Apparently Hacks DNS Records Of Twitter, NYT Through Registrar Melbourne IT

Eva Dou / Wall Street Journal:

HTC Developing Smartphone Operating System — Taiwanese Handset Maker Works With China in Bid to Revive Sales — TAIPEI—HTC Corp. is developing a mobile software system specifically for Chinese consumers, people familiar with the project say, as part of a big China bet …

More: PC Magazine, GigaOM, BGR, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, 9to5Google, AllThingsD, ZDNet, pocketnow.com, Wired.co.uk, TechnoBuffalo, The Next Web, I4U News, Digital Trends, The Verge, SlashGear, MoneyBeat, Engadget and Android Beat

Tweets: @wsj and @paulmozur

Kevin C. Tofel / GigaOM:

Does HTC's own mobile OS for China make sense? It depends

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Apple Acquires Swedish Firm AlgoTrim, A Company That Does Mobile Media And Data Compression — Apple has acquired AlgoTrim, a Swedish startup that builds codecs and designs solutions that maximize performance of data, mobile imaging, video and computer graphics while minimizing memory requirements …

More: rapidus.se, AllThingsD, Macworld, The Next Web, ZDNet, GigaOM, AppleInsider, VentureBeat, iMore, BGR, Business Insider, MacRumors, Engadget, ValueWalk, SlashGear, iDownloadBlog.com, Gotta Be Mobile, 9to5Mac, Electronista, App Advice, BGR India, iClarified, Mashable, Patently Apple, iPhone Hacks, I4U News and TUAW. Tweets: @markgurman

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

Nintendo dropping Wii U price to $299.99 ahead of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launch — The Wii U hasn't been selling quite as well as Nintendo might like, and September 20th it's giving the new console a $50 price cut that'll bring it down to $299.99. Earlier this month …

More: VentureBeat, USA Today, IGN, Eurogamer.net • … and Polygon

Michael McWhertor / Polygon:

Nintendo 2DS coming this Oct. for $129.99, plays 3DS games in 2D

More: VentureBeat, Engadget, New York Times and Joystiq

Tweets: @crecenteb, @aegies and @jasonschreier

Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:

Apple looking to turn the iPhone into an intelligent universal media, ‘smart home’ remote control — An Apple patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday describes a method in which a portable device, like the iPhone, can save, manage and recall entertainment and “smart home” system settings, called “scenes.”

More: 9to5Mac, I4U News, SlashGear, MacRumors, TechCrunch, MacNN, PC Magazine and MacDailyNews

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:

The Time Warner Cable TV App For Xbox 360 Is Now Available, With Access To 300 Channels — The TWC TV app for Xbox Live, which was announced back in June, is now available for download from the Xbox Live Marketplace. Microsoft's partnership with Time Warner Cable is a significant part …

More: oxm.co.uk, Engadget, WebProNews, VentureBeat and IntoMobile. Tweets: @nctacable. See also Mediagazer

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Time Warner Cable's new Xbox app won't count against data caps

More: The Verge. See also Mediagazer

John Cassidy / The New Yorker:

Steve Ballmer and the Art of Managing a Monopoly — Steve Ballmer hasn't been getting much love recently. On Friday, when he announced that he plans to retire as Microsoft's C.E.O. at some point within the next year, the firm's stock had its best day in years, rising seven per cent.

More: Yahoo! Finance. Tweets: @dbfarber, @tnyjohncassidy, @taylorlorenz, @peterhvu and @mrianleslie

Ricardo Bilton / VentureBeat:

Foursquare's impressive new Windows 8 app: Good for Foursquare, great for Microsoft — Foursquare's new Windows 8 app may not be the biggest deal for Foursquare, but it's huge for Microsoft. — With the app, which was officially announced in June, Foursquare takes some of the best parts about Windows 8 …

More: The Next Web, The Windows Blog, The Verge, TechCrunch, MSDN Blogs, Softpedia News, Foursquare Blog and TechNet Blogs

Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

Teardown Reveals Google's Moto X Costs $221 to Build — As the first smartphone to be completely designed since Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility, there are a lot of expectations riding on the Moto X. — The phone, now considered the flagship of the Motorola lineup, is getting noticed for being different.

More: GigaOM, VentureBeat, TechHive, Forbes, The Verge, The Official Motorola Blog, SlashGear, Android Beat, TechnoBuffalo and PhoneArena

Simon Bisson / ZDNet:

What Microsoft and Google's YouTube row says about the future of web development — Summary: The Google/Microsoft YouTube dispute tells you more about the way software for the mobile internet is being developed that you might have thought. — When it comes to Google and Microsoft's dispute …

Tweets: @theromit and @saschasegan

Bryan Bishop / The Verge:

Google drops Nexus 4 price, now starts at $199 — The Nexus 4 just got a lot cheaper. The company's flagship Android phone is now available for a full $100 less than it was just hours ago. The 8GB model is on sale through the Google Play Store for $199 with a contract, while the 16GB model is $249.

More: Engadget, Examiner, LAPTOP Magazine, Inquirer, TechHive, BGR, Computerworld, iPhone, Android Police, Softpedia News, Gearburn, Android Beat, pocketnow.com, GigaOM, Ubergizmo, Ars Technica, 9to5Google, PhoneArena, AllThingsD, Gotta Be Mobile, VentureBeat, The Next Web and Android Police. Tweets: @googleplay

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

Car Sharing Startup Local Motion Gets $6 Million Investment, Steven Sinofsky On Its Board — Steven Sinofsky is joining the board of car sharing technology startup Local Motion. — Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (AH) is investing $6 million in Local Motion. Sinofsky recently joined Andreessen Horowitz.

More: AllThingsD, Digits, VentureBeat, GeekWire, CNET, GigaOM, TechCrunch, pmarca and bizjournals

Tweets: @stevesi, @stevesi and @sai

Simon Sharwood / The Register:

Marc Andreessen, Pat Gelsinger in verbal VMworld brawl — Netscape legend and VMware CEO clash on security, ARM vs. x86 and role of cloud — VMworld 2013 VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and graphical-browser-inventor-turned- venture-capitalist Marc Andreessen have engaged in a feisty debate at Vmworld 2013 …

More: Forbes. Tweets: @matteastwood

Michael Kassner / TechRepublic:

Researchers reverse-engineer the Dropbox client: What it means — There were doubts about being able to reverse engineer heavily-obfuscated applications written in Python. Two researchers have removed all doubt by reverse engineering the immensely popular Dropbox client.

More: ReadWrite and It's a Gadget. Tweets: @liberationtech and @dangillmor

David Kravets / Wired:

Hacker Pleads Guilty to Selling FBI Access to U.S. Supercomputers — Cray XT4 supercomputer cluster (Franklin) has 9,660 compute nodes. Each has quad-core AMD processors running at 2.3 GHz. Franklin has 38,640 processor cores, with 8 GB of memory per node and a total 350 TB of usable disk space.

More: ZDNet, The Verge, Softpedia News and SlashGear

eMarketer:

Facebook Sees Big Gains in Global Mobile Ad Market Share — Google to take home half of $16.65 billion worldwide mobile ad market — Facebook's continued emphasis on mobile monetization, along with its users' ongoing shift toward mobile devices, is resulting in dramatic gains in mobile ad market share …

More: TechCrunch, GigaOM, AllThingsD, Business Insider, Mashable and Softpedia News

Andrew Webster / The Verge:

Hello art world: Smithsonian acquires first piece of code for design collection — iPad app Planetary has just been added to the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum's collection, but the institution has also gone as step further by acquiring the app's code.

More: Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt …, Gizmodo, memeburn, AllThingsD and TechCrunch. Tweets: @wolffolins

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