Techmeme
August 31, 2013, 12:05 PM

Top News

Washington Post:
U.S. spy agencies mounted 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, documents show  —  U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Feds plow $10 billion into “groundbreaking” crypto-cracking program  —  The federal government is pouring almost $11 billion per year into a 35,000-employee program dedicated to “groundbreaking” methods to decode encrypted messages such as e-mails, according to an intelligence black budget published by The Washington Post.
More: ComputerworldTweets: @suffert
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
Scoop: Google acquired WIMM Labs to bolster its own smartwatch plans  —  Watch out, Samsung: Google has some smartwatch development projects of its own, and it quietly snapped up Los Altos, Calif.-based WIMM Labs last year to kickstart these efforts.  WIMM Labs not only gives Google the talent …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Doctape Launches Standalone File Viewer App For iOS With Support For 80+ File Types  —  German cloud storage and file management startup doctape has launched a new standalone iOS app aimed at making it easier for iPhone and iPad users to view file types not supported natively by iOS.
Microsoft:
Microsoft and ValueAct Capital sign cooperation agreement  —  Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has signed a cooperation agreement with ValueAct Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm with $12 billion in assets under management that beneficially owns approximately .8 percent …
Brad Smith / TechNet Blogs:
Standing Together for Greater Transparency  —  General Counsel & Executive Vice President, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft  —  To followers of technology issues, there are many days when Microsoft and Google stand apart.  But today our two companies stand together.
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Apple blocking support personnel vacations from Sept. 15-28 for launch of new iPhones & iOS 7  —  AppleCare employees have been restricted from taking time off for a two-week period, from Sept. 15 through 28 — a span during which Apple is expected to launch its new iPhone lineup, as well as the revamped iOS 7 mobile operating system.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Target Ticket, Target's Video Download & Rental Service, Nears Launch  —  Target's answer to Walmart's Vudu, Netflix, and iTunes, is preparing to launch.  Employees at the Minneapolis-headquartered retailer were told this week that Target Ticket, as the service is called …
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Syrian Electronic Army ‘Hack’ Of The NYTimes Was The Exact Remedy MPAA Demanded With SOPA  —  There were many, many concerns related to SOPA and PIPA when they were proposed, but the absolute biggest was the use of DNS blocking as a “remedy” against sites where it was alleged that infringement was a primary purpose.
More: FortuneTweets: @alisternburg and @robpegoraro
Kelli B. Grant / CNBC:

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho Expense MCP: Turn conversations into expense workflows  —  Artificial intelligence (AI) has already changed how we search for information, summarize documents, and analyze data.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
The playbook for building high talent density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Demis Steps Down, Apple's Memory Problem, Microsoft's Clever Trick
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
The White House's Secret A.I. Rules + The State of Model Alignment With METR's Chris Painter + The Final Hot Mess Express
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Oliver Darcy on Status, Bari Weiss, and Why Media Reporters Are Too Soft
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Training Data:
Chai Discovery's Bitter Lesson: Drug Design Is Another Scaling Problem
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:05 PM ET, August 31, 2013.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

Earlier Picks

Mike Isaac / AllThingsD: