Techmeme: As More Startups Move To San Francisco, Y Combinator Opens A Satellite Office In The City (Ryan Lawler/TechCrunch)

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October 11, 2013, 10:00 AM

Top News

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Google to sunset Google TV brand as its smart TV platform merges with Android — Google TV is dead, long live Android TV: Three years after launching the first generation of Google TV devices, Google is now looking to rid itself of the brand and realign its smart TV platform efforts more closely with Android.

Ryan Gallagher / Guardian:

Skype under investigation in Luxembourg over link to NSA — Ten years ago, the calling service had a reputation as a tool for evading surveillance but now it is under scrutiny for covertly passing data to government agencies — Skype is being investigated by Luxembourg's data protection commissioner …

More: GigaOM, CNET, Softpedia News and Hillicon Valley

Tweets: @davidkenner, @rj_gallagher and @beuctweet

Financial Post:

Apple Inc looks to poach BlackBerry Ltd workers in Waterloo — Apple Inc. has all but destroyed BlackBerry Ltd.'s business model and now it's after the Canadian company's decimated workforce. — Just days after BlackBerry Ltd. revealed plans to lay off 40% of its global workforce amid …

More: AllThingsD, Digits, MacRumors, AppleInsider, The Mac Observer, MacDailyNews, App Advice, iPhone in Canada Blog, iDownloadBlog.com, BerryReview and Electronista

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

Seven Key Designers of BlackBerry 10 Left the Company in January — The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) has decamped BlackBerry. — Earlier this year, seven members of the Swedish design house acquired by the smartphone maker to help develop BlackBerry 10, left it to found a new design group called Topp.

More: SiliconANGLE, Bloomberg and Yahoo! News

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

BlackBerry Co-Founders Lazaridis, Fregin Mulling Bid to Buy Back Company

More: TechCrunch, TechSpot, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNET, Ars Technica, Electronista, Associated Press, The Verge and ZDNet

Tweets: @markgurman and @johnpaczkowski

David Meyer / paidContent:

Anonymous comments could suffer under European Court of Human Rights ruling — An Estonian court did not violate a local news site's right to free expression by holding it liable for offensive anonymous comments made under one of its stories, the ECHR has ruled.

More: Index on Censorship and The Register. Tweets: @glynmoody. See also Mediagazer

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook Removing Option To Be Unsearchable By Name, Highlighting Lack Of Universal Privacy Controls — “Who can look up your Timeline by name?” Anyone you haven't blocked. Facebook is removing this privacy setting, notifying those who had hidden themselves that they'll be searchable.

Brandon Bailey / Mercury News:

Zuckerberg buys four houses near his Palo Alto home — PALO ALTO — Living the fantasy of every homeowner who's faced the prospect of a nuisance project next door, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has bought four homes adjacent to his own 5-bedroom crash pad in one of Palo Alto's toniest neighborhoods.

More: Business Insider, Betabeat, Softpedia News and NBC Bay Area

Tweets: @drewharwell and @joshconstine

Thanks:@brandonbailey

Miguel Helft / Fortune:

Sheryl Sandberg: The real story — The motorcade that snaked through 1 Hacker Way earlier this year surprised even jaded Facebook employees, who are used to on-campus celebrity sightings and visits from politicians and world leaders. So a few days later, at the question-and-answer session …

More: AllThingsD, Digits and AllFacebook

Yuliya Chernova / Digits:

Weary of ‘Fruit Fly’ Consumer Startups, Andreessen Horowitz Raises Series A Bar — Andreessen Horowitz is one of the biggest venture firms around and an investor in some of the most prominent consumer startups in recent years, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Groupon and Zynga.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @gaberivera, @lessien and @davegirouard

Kyle VanHemert / Wired:

GE's Radical Software Helps Jet Engines Fix Themselves — The card-based UI and focus on contextual smarts make comparisons to Google Now a no-brainer. … A few years back, after an internal audit of their vast and various business holdings, the folks at General Electric made something of a discovery …

More: Silicon Valley Watcher. Tweets: @henningfischer, @mitchwagner, @gpetroff and @davcron

New York Times:

Google updates ToS allowing inclusion of users' names, photos and comments in web ads — Google Sets Plan to Sell Users' Endorsements — SAN FRANCISCO — Google, following in Facebook's footsteps, wants to sell users' endorsements to marketers to help them hawk their wares.

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Apple Reportedly Cutting iPhone 5c Production as Chinese Gray Market Prices Drop — Apple is reportedly cutting iPhone 5c production in half from 300,000 units to 150,000 units per day, according to claims by C Technology [Google Translate], which leaked a number of photos of the iPhone 5s …

More: AllThingsD, CNET, Business Insider, AppleInsider, BGR, SiliconANGLE, ZDNet, Cult of Mac, bizjournals, Yahoo! News, Softpedia News, TechSpot, iDownloadBlog.com, WebProNews, TechnoBuffalo, iPhone Hacks, App Advice, InvestorPlace and Electronista

John Koetsier / VentureBeat:

Apple iWatch is actually a home automation play, not a smartphone companion (analyst) — Nov. 12 - 13, 2013 — Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch launched a couple of weeks ago as a fat, ugly, and expensive smartphone accessory that our own Devindra Hardawar called “relentlessly inessential.”

More: MacRumors, SiliconANGLE, BGR, Softpedia News, blog.chron.com, iDownloadBlog.com, PhoneArena, App Advice, iPhone Hacks, PhoneArena and Forbes. Tweets: @reckless

Jason Evangelho / Forbes:

Valve Confirms Official AMD-Powered Steam Machines For 2014 — In a statement to Forbes, a Valve representative has confirmed that AMD graphics hardware will be included in commercially available Steam Machines next year. The more interesting story, however, is why Valve needed to confirm this in the first place.

More: Gizmodo, SlashGear, I4U News, ZDNet, destructoid and bit-tech.net

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

As More Startups Move To San Francisco, Y Combinator Opens A Satellite Office In The City — Y Combinator has been a mainstay of Silicon Valley, with an office not far from the Mountain View Caltrain station. * Over the years, however, the seed-stage venture firm has seen more of its companies …

More: CNET and bizjournals

Dan Farber / CNET:

Apple legend Bill Atkinson's new mission: Save the postcard — The creator of the Macintosh's QuickDraw graphics system, MacPaint, and HyperCard wants to save the postcard from extinction. — It's 5:00 a.m., and Bill Atkinson makes his way downstairs to begin his daily routine of, as he calls it, milking the cow.

More: SiliconBeat

JP Mangalindan / Fortune:

Can Silicon Valley boot camps get you a $120K job? — These crash courses accomplish in 12 weeks (or less) what top computer science schools might teach in four years. Welcome to the 21st century vocational school. — FORTUNE — Hiring a good software engineer in Silicon Valley these days …

Digits:

Judge: Google's Tracking Not Harmful — It just got even tougher to stop a company from tracking your movements online. — A federal judge in Delaware Wednesday dismissed a class-action lawsuit brought against Google and two other tech companies, arguing that the Web users who brought …

More: The Switch, CNET, The Verge, AppleInsider, Electronista, iClarified, Bloomberg and InfoWorld

AllThingsD:

Vivian Schiller Is a Lock as Twitter's Head of News — Vivian Schiller, NBC News' SVP and chief digital officer, is being tapped for Twitter's head of news position, according to sources familiar with the matter. AllThingsD reported last week that she was the leading pick for the high-profile job.

More: Business Insider, bizjournals, Medium, Digits, The Verge, Betabeat, GigaOM and Engadget. See also Mediagazer

Andy Fixmer / Bloomberg:

Hulu Said Close to Naming Fox's Mike Hopkins CEO of Web Service — Hulu LLC, the streaming service controlled by Walt Disney Co. and 21st Century Fox Inc., is close to naming Fox executive Mike Hopkins as its new chief executive officer, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

More: Reuters, CNET, Bloomberg, AllThingsD, The Verge, GigaOM and SlashGear. See also Mediagazer

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Third of millennials watch mostly online video or no broadcast TV — Thirty-four percent of millennials surveyed watch mostly online video or no broadcast television, new research from The New York Times says. — Brian Brett, the Times' executive director of customer research …

More: Washington Post, Pew Internet, Music Ally, Central Valley Business Times, Multichannel.com, Washington Post, Deadline.com and GigaOM. See also Mediagazer

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