Techmeme: Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures Running Out Of Cash; Looking For $3 Billion From Investors (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)

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October 5, 2013, 1:15 AM

Top News

Fred Vogelstein / New York Times:

And Then Steve Said, ‘Let There Be an iPhone’ — The 55 miles from Campbell to San Francisco make for one of the nicest commutes anywhere. The journey mostly zips along the Junipero Serra Freeway, a grand and remarkably empty highway that abuts the east side of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

More: Daring Fireball, Business Insider, iMore, The Verge, SlashGear, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac, App Advice, AppleInsider, iPhone in Canada Blog, The Next Web, Macgasm, iDownloadBlog.com, iLounge and Salon

Tweets: @lukew, @vitaliyk, @tnkgrl, @sfiegerman, @benjamincousins, @palafo, @josephkibe, @hugolindgren, @kevinroose, @doingitwrong and @pkafka

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Former Apple Engineer Gives Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Original iPhone Introduction — Just ahead of the second anniversary of Steve Jobs' death, Fred Vogelstein has published a piece in The New York Times that gives a detailed behind-the-scenes look at the work that went …

More: Daring Fireball

Guardian:

NSA and GCHQ target Tor network that protects anonymity of web users — • Top-secret documents detail repeated efforts to crack Tor — • Tool funded by US government and relied on by dissidents and activists — • Core security of network remains intact but NSA has some success attacking users' computers

More: Washington Post, Ars Technica, The Tor Blog blogs, Wired, Techdirt, InfoWorld, Gawker, AllThingsD, The Switch, ReadWrite, Daily Dot, Salon, Threatpost, Engadget, eWeek, Gizmodo UK, Lastest ITProPortal news, Boing Boing, SlashGear and PC World

Tweets: @csoghoian, @csoghoian, @wiredopinion, @ramez, @headhntr, @ethanz, @kpoulsen, @mathewi, @jamesrbuk, @holpuch, @guardianus, @gerryfsmith, @tomgara and @michaelkelleybi

Guardian:

‘Tor Stinks’ presentation - read the full document — Top-secret presentation says ‘We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time’ but ‘with manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users’

More: The Register, GigaOM, The Verge and emptywheel

Tweets: @eff, @eff, @edfelten, @pondswimmer, @spyblog, @rj_gallagher and @csoghoian

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

DNI responds to latest NSA revelations, emphasizing Tor is used by “our foreign adversaries”

More: IC ON THE RECORD, ZDNet, Techdirt, Hillicon Valley, The Register and InfoWorld

Tweets: @trevortimm, @ioerror and @ashk4n

Bruce Schneier / Guardian:

Attacking Tor: how the NSA targets users' online anonymity

More: Techdirt, emptywheel, Nextgov and Vacuum

Tweets: @erikcorry and @binarybits

Bruce Schneier / Guardian:

Why the NSA's attacks on the internet must be made public

Tweets: @valdiskrebs, @pierre, @slworona, @vikram_nz and @ramez

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Tim Cook reflects on second anniversary of Steve Jobs' passing in letter to employees — On the eve of the second anniversary of the passing of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Apple CEO Tim Cook has reflected on the moment in a company-wide email. A source has provided a copy:

Joanna Stern / ABC News:

iPhone 5C's price cut to $50 at Best Buy through Monday just two weeks after launch — Best Buy Drops the Price of iPhone 5c to $50 … Just two weeks after hitting the market, Best Buy will begin offering a discount on Apple's iPhone 5c. From today, Oct. 3, to Monday, Oct. 7, the iPhone 5c will be available for $50.

Shane Cole / AppleInsider:

Apple's iPhone 5s tops sales charts at big 4 US carriers, iPhone 5c close behind

More: CNET, TUAW, iDownloadBlog.com, ITworld.com, BGR and iPhone in Canada Blog

Joanna Stern / ABC News:

Two Weeks After Launch, Walmart Drops Price of the iPhone 5c to $45 After Best Buy's Offer

More: AppleInsider, MacRumors, everythingiCafe and TechnoBuffalo

Valleywag:

Analyst who recommended eToys and Webvan is now Goldman Sachs' head banker for Twitter IPO — Twitter's New Top Banker Was a Tech Bubble Clown — Anthony Noto just came out of Wall Street retirement for one big score: he's going to lead the Goldman Sachs blitz behind Twitter's IPO …

More: Gawker and DealBook. Tweets: @gawker, @dangillmor, @nitashatiku and @om

Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:

Here are the secret edits Twitter made to its IPO filing, hoping investors wouldn't notice

More: Digits. Tweets: @zseward, @zseward, @jdh, @danprimack, @yoreekoh, @zseward and @jessicalessin

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Twitter Is Made for Mobile, but It Still Has a Mobile Ad Gap

More: PandoDaily, Daily Dot and Xconomy. Tweets: @niemanlab

Ritchie King / Quartz:

Twitter's average ad revenue per user was $0.55 in Q2 2013, compared to $1.41 for Facebook

More: Wonkblog, Marketing Land, GigaOM, New York Times, Forbes, Softpedia News, Digits, Tom Simonite, Tech in Asia, Washington Post and DealBook. See also Mediagazer

Reuters:

Exclusive: Cisco, Google, SAP discussing BlackBerry bids - sources — (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd, on the block as its smartphone business struggles, is in talks with Cisco Systems, Google Inc and SAP about selling them all or parts of itself, several sources close to the matter said.

More: Engadget, 9to5Google, The Verge, The Next Web, SlashGear and n4bb.com

Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:

Apple officially appeals in ebook pricing case — Apple has filed its appeal against federal judge Denise Cote's verdict in the ebook pricing case. Apple seeks to overturn Judge Cote's July verdict that it conspired with publishers to fix ebook prices, as well as the September 6 injunction …

More: CNET, AppleInsider, BGR, TUAW, PC Magazine, PadGadget, TechnoBuffalo, Computerworld, iDownloadBlog.com, The Verge, SlashGear, Electronista, Macworld, The Atlantic Wire, AllThingsD and Macgasm

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures Running Out Of Cash; Looking For $3 Billion From Investors — It would appear that Intellectual Ventures' grand plans to tax innovators has hit a bit of a roadblock: the company appears to be running out of cash. Reuters has the news that the company …

More: Ars Technica, Reuters, VentureBeat and The Switch. Tweets: @fedcourtjunkie

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

iCloud Alternative Loom Raises $1.4 Million Seed Round — A startup called Loom, which begin its life as the Y Combinator-backed photo-sharing startup Popset, is working to build a better iCloud for both consumers and developers. Currently, the company offers a cloud storage and syncing service …

More: AllThingsD, Loom, VentureBeat, TechHive and Y Combinator Posthaven

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Skype Will Finally Start Syncing Chat Messages Across Devices — If you use Skype on your phone and desktop, you know how annoying its inability to effectively keep your chat message status in sync between different machines can be. After you start Skype on your phone, for example …

More: Skype Blogs, The Verge, iMore, SlashGear and BetaNews

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