Techmeme: Google Translate Has Ambitious Goals for Machine Translation (Thomas Schulz/Spiegel Online)

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September 16, 2013, 5:15 AM

Top News

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Netflix Uses Pirate Sites to Determine What Shows to Buy — Video streaming giant Netflix sees itself as one of the most prominent competitors to the many pirate sites that offer video content without owners' permission. — However, these pirate sites also offer Netflix valuable information …

More: Softpedia News, The Verge, CNET, WebProNews, SlashGear, Electronista, Gizmodo, TechnoBuffalo and T3 News

Tweets: @codinghorror and @mindcrash

See also Mediagazer

Spiegel Online:

NSA Spies on International Payments — The United States' NSA intelligence agency is interested in international payments processed by companies including Visa, SPIEGEL has learned. It has even set up its own financial database to track money flows through a “tailored access operations” division.

More: Forbes, Mashable, CannyVision, emptywheel, GigaOM and TechCrunch

Tweets: @csoghoian, @kgosztola, @rszbt, @davewiner and @jlllow

Joseph Menn / Reuters:

NSA revelations haven't measurably hurt business yet for major US tech companies — Analysis: Despite fears, NSA revelations helping U.S. tech industry — (Reuters) - Edward Snowden's unprecedented exposure of U.S. technology companies' close collaboration with national intelligence agencies …

Tweets: @ewenmacaskill, @bobmcmillan, @kgosztola and @matthew_d_green

Roger Cheng / CNET:

Sprint preps ‘One Up,’ its own early upgrade program — Sprint One Up allows customers to pay for their devices in monthly installments and upgrade after one year, CNET has learned. — Better late than never, Sprint is finally getting into the early upgrade game.

More: Digital Trends, App Advice, The Verge, iMore, Pocketables, Electronista, Ubergizmo, PhoneArena, Mashable and Engadget. Tweets: @qthrul

Carlo Rotella / New York Times:

Educators are cautious of reliance on tech as schools adopt tablets from News Corp's Amplify — No Child Left Untableted — Sally Hurd Smith, a veteran teacher, held up her brand-new tablet computer and shook it as she said, “I don't want this thing to take over my classroom.”

More: The Verge, dylan tweney, TechSpot and VentureBeat. See also Mediagazer

Alexis Santos / Engadget:

Google Glass no longer requires tethering plan for smartphone data sharing — An Explorer Edition of Glass is already a pricey piece of tech, and smartphone tethering plans required to give it a mobile Internet connection have only made ownership that much more expensive.

More: The Next Web, Gearburn and Gizmodo. Tweets: @tim_stevens

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

Rdio to announce ad-supported free tier in partnership with radio operator Cumulus — Online Music Service Rdio in Deal With Cumulus — As radio broadcasters go digital and online music services try to stand out in a crowded market, both are finding ways to scratch each other's backs.

More: Gizmodo, The Verge, CNET, App Advice, Engadget and The Next Web

Tweets: @davidporter and @pkafka

Thomas Schulz / Spiegel Online:

Google Translate Has Ambitious Goals for Machine Translation — Can the language barrier be breached? Google certainly thinks so: Under the leadership of a computer scientist from Germany, the company is making progress toward a universal translation tool. But competition is looming from Microsoft and Facebook.

More: Softpedia News, Personanondata and BGR

Billy Gallagher / TechCrunch:

Silicon Valley Luminaries Got Grilled On The NSA At Disrupt, Here's How They Responded — On Monday, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington wrote that he would press the CEOs, VCs, and other Silicon Valley leaders who he was interviewing at TechCrunch Disrupt about the NSA scandal.

More: Forbes

George Hahn / Generic Maker:

Why the PhoneBloks phone will never happen — It's a physics issue. Signals in modern devices are extremely high speed; the easiest and cheapest way to combat this is to bring components closer together. For example, the wireless radios, RAM, and processor in all modern phones exist as one chip.

More: Daring Fireball, Stuff.co.nz and ExtremeTech

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

AT&T Threatens Persistent Pirates With Account Termination — After years of negotiating and planning the long-awaited U.S. “six-strikes” system finally went live in February. — The Copyright Alert System's main goal is to educate the public. That is, informing people that their connection …

More: VentureBeat and Boing Boing

James Surowiecki / Currency:

The Virtues of Twitter's Confidential I.P.O. Filing — When Twitter announced yesterday afternoon (via tweet, naturally) that it was planning to file an I.P.O., the company said it had started the process by “confidentially” submitting an S-1 prospectus to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

More: Mashable, TIME, Forbes, social media and Wall Street Journal

Tweets: @danprimack, @karaswisher and @elizakern

New York Times:

At Twitter IPO, Williams, Sacca, USV, and Spark will each hold stakes likely exceeding $1B

More: GigaOM. Tweets: @dom, @scottkirsner, @mathewi and @davewiner. See also Mediagazer

Jenna Wortham / NYT Bits:

Twitter's Magic Recs Experiment Personalizes What You Follow — A few months ago, a mysterious account called “Magic Recs” appeared on Twitter. — Magic Recs promises to deliver “instant, personalized recommendations for users and content via direct message.”

More: Mashable. Tweets: @rsarver and @nicolastorzec

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