Snapchat Spurned $3 Billion Acquisition Offer from Facebook  —  Snapchat, a rapidly growing messaging service, recently spurned an all-cash acquisition offer from Facebook for $3 billion or more, according to people briefed on the matter.  —  The offer, and rebuff, came as Snapchat …

Mozilla: No Firefox phones in US  —  Mozilla's Mitchell Baker stresses Firefox OS's appeal to developing countries — and (pay attention, Apple and Google) the importance of price.  SAN FRANCISCO — If you're a Firefox OS fan and you live in the United States, you're going to have to wait a bit longer to get your Firefox phone.

Amazon WorkSpaces - Desktop Computing in the Cloud  —  Once upon a time, enterprises had a straightforward way to give each employee access to a desktop computer.  New employees would join the organization and receive a standard-issue desktop, preconfigured with a common set of tools and applications.

Redfin is now a $500 million company  —  Online real estate company Redfin raises $50 million in new VC funding.  —  FORTUNE — Online real estate company Redfin has raised $50 million in what it believes will be its last round of VC funding before going public.

Our Government Has Weaponized the Internet.  Here's How They Did It  —  The internet backbone — the infrastructure of networks upon which internet traffic travels — went from being a passive infrastructure for communication to an active weapon for attacks.

The Dual-Screen YotaPhone Will Launch Internationally In December  —  Russia-based Yota Devices has been working on a curious beast called the YotaPhone for years now, and it's gained quite a reputation for itself because of its split personality.  While the front of the phone sports …

Dart, Google's controversial Web language, turns 1.0  —  Dart leader Lars Bak speaking at Google I/O 2013  —  Dart is done.  —  Well, not completely done — anything not actually cancelled at Google is a constant work in progress — but the company on Thursday announced version 1.0 of its controversial Web programming language.

The Story Behind the “What Would I Say?”  Facebook App  —  Am fond of Seinfeld, and I disparage the value of baseball arguments.—That was the first phrase generated just for me this afternoon by What Would I Say?, a new app that runs users' old Facebook status updates through a text-generating bot …

HP and Google order ‘pause’ in Chromebook 11 sales after reports of chargers overheating  —  The HP Chromebook 11 has been pulled from Best Buy store shelves, and sales halted on Amazon and HP and Google's online stores, following customer complaints of chargers overheating.

Government requests for user information double over three years  —  In a year in which government surveillance has dominated the headlines, today we're updating our Transparency Report for the eighth time.  Since we began sharing these figures with you in 2010, requests from governments …

MapQuest Updates Its iPhone App With Improved Cartography And Routing To Take On Google And Apple Maps  —  On the iPhone, Apple Maps and Google Maps app have gotten all the headlines over the last several years, but MapQuest is still hanging in there, despite a lack of real innovation over the years.

NSA Transparency Hurts Americans' Privacy, Feds Say With Straight Face  —  Adding limited public accountability to the NSA's vast electronic spying programs would actually harm the privacy of Americans, Obama administration officials told a Senate hearing today.

Dropbox Hits 200M Users, Unveils New “For Business” Client Combining Work And Personal Files  —  CEO Drew Houston today announced that Dropbox has hit 200 million users, up from 175 million in July.  He later revealed the new Dropbox For Business client securely houses both a user's personal …

Value of a bitcoin doubles, breaks $400 over last two weeks  —  Don't look now, but everyone's favorite crypto-currency is creeping back up the charts again.  Over the past two weeks the value of a bitcoin has skyrocketed from just over $200 to just shy of $450.  —  And it's not entirely clear why.

Android powers four in every five smartphones thanks to growth in China  —  Gartner's third-quarter smartphone research report is out, and on the surface it paints a very flattering portrait for Google.  Mirroring Strategy Analytics' report at the end of last month, Gartner also estimates …

TPP Leak Confirms the Worst: US Negotiators Still Trying to Trade Away Internet Freedoms  —  After years of secret trade negotiations over the future of intellectual property rights (and limits on those rights), the public gets a chance to looks at the results.

Pocket update highlights the saves you're most likely to enjoy  —  Pocket is releasing an update to its app today that puts a new focus on helping you discover the best of the items you have saved, using algorithms to surface content likely to interest you the most.

Go Launcher Developer Raises $20M From Kingsoft, Qihoo360 Ahead Of IPO  —  Go Launcher, an Android app maker out of Beijing that has been around for nearly a decade and has 42 million monthly active users across a portfolio of apps, just picked up $20 million in funding from Chinese antivirus software giant Qihoo360 and Kingsoft.

IBM buys Fiberlink, eyes BYOD management  —  Summary: The company said Fiberlink's cloud mobile management and security software will be lumped into IBM's MobileFirst suite.  —  IBM on Wednesday acquired Fiberlink Communications in a move to fill out its bring your own device management software.

Apple demands $380M in patent trial, but Samsung wants to pay $52M  —  The amount requested by Apple during opening arguments in a damages retrial is less than the $450 million awarded by a jury last year.  And Samsung's proposal is much lower.  SAN JOSE, Calif. — An Apple attorney told …

Twitter opens up advertising to small businesses in the UK  —  The social network lets small and medium enterprises outside the US advertise for the first time, just a week after its IPO  —  Twitter has opened up its self-serve advertising platform to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) …

IBM to offer Watson supercomputer as cloud development platform  —  IBM is preparing to give third parties access to its Watson supercomputer with the aim of spurring the growth of applications that take advantage of the system's artificial intelligence capabilities.

New Service Rates Your Phone Number Just Like Your Credit History  —  Most web companies want to attract as many users as possible.  But they don't want scammers, spammers, and bots using their web applications.  Companies use everything from email verification to IP address bans …

MeeGo Startup Jolla's First Phone To Go On Sale In Finland On November 27  —  MeeGo startup Jolla has just announced that its first smartphone will go on sale in Finland on November 27th.  It will be sold by Finnish carrier DNA - the first carrier Jolla signed up to its Sailfish OS project, back in November last year.