Techmeme: Several companies race to build specialized chips for mining Bitcoins (Ashlee Vance/Businessweek)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

November 17, 2013, 4:50 PM

Top News

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Apple Aiming at PrimeSense Acquisition, but Deal Is Not Yet Done — Several sources confirm that Apple is in talks to buy 3-D sensing company PrimeSense, following a report in the Israeli publication Calcalist. However, those sources stressed that the deal is not yet done …

More: VentureBeat, Electronista, iClarified, TechnoBuffalo, Softpedia News, PE Hub Blog, App Advice and Mashable

Chris Davies / SlashGear:

Apple reportedly acquires PrimeSense, company behind original Kinect 3D sensor tech, for $345 million — Apple reportedly buys Kinect tech-creator PrimeSense — Apple has reportedly acquired PrimeSense, the motion-tracking company responsible for the technology in the original Xbox 360 Kinect …

More: Reuters, The Verge, The Next Web, GeekTime, MacRumors, Business Insider, iMore, Forbes, everythingiCafe, iDownloadBlog.com, WinBeta, Yankee Sabra Limey, 9to5Mac and iPhone in Canada Blog

Tweets: @joshblake and @markgurman

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple Stores to implement iBeacon location technology to improve service, boost sales — iOS 7's flashy launch earlier this year with an entirely new design and streaming music functionality overshadowed a breakthrough new feature: iBeacons, a location-based technology with profound implications for industries such as retail.

More: CNET, Redmond Pie, iMore, iPhone Hacks, App Advice, MacRumors, I4U News, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhone in Canada Blog and iClarified

Tweets: @markgurman, @markgurman and @howardlindzon

Violet Blue / ZDNet:

Forced Google Plus integration on YouTube backfires, petition hits 112,000 — Summary: The backlash against Google forcing YouTube commenters to use Google Plus is now too big to ignore. But will Google listen? OPINION. — Violet Blue — Google's war on anonymity during its involvement …

More: Andi S - Google+, Edward Morbius, howto.cnet.com, The Switch, Search Engine Watch, CNET, WebProNews, Rocket Jump, TIME, Softpedia News and Mediashift

Tweets: @hueypriest, @notch and @caseynewton

PR Newswire:

PlayStation 4 Sales Surpass 1 Million Units In North America In 24 Hours — Gamers Immerse Themselves In a New Era of Gaming and Entertainment Only Available on the PS4 system—Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCE) today announced that the highly anticipated launch of the PlayStation®4 …

More: The Verge, Digits, IGN, Joystiq, Engadget, Softpedia News, HotHardware.com News and destructoid

Tweets: @yosp, @iconmaster and @amboyes

Adario Strange / Mashable:

Some PlayStation 4 Owners Reporting Defective Consoles

More: The Verge, SlashGear, Tapscape and The Next Web

Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land:

Google's Broken Promises & Who's Running The Search Engine? — For two years in a row now, Google has gone back on major promises it made about search. The about-faces are easy fodder for anyone who wants to poke fun at Google for not keeping to its word.

Tweets: @owenthomas and @felixsalmon. Thanks:@sidharthdassani

Anne D'Innocenzio / Associated Press:

American Eagle, Target, and other retailers follow Wal-Mart in opening labs in Silicon Valley — Retailers Take On Silicon Valley — SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Software engineers wearing jeans and flip flops test the latest smartphone apps. Walls and windows double as whiteboards where ideas are jotted down.

Tweets: @qthrul and @andreawass

Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:

Apple iPad mini with Retina Display: Reviewed — I suppose there's only one way to start this review, and that's by looking back at last year's iPad mini review. In that review I had a section dedicated to the possibility of an iPad mini with Retina Display.

More: Daring Fireball, PC Magazine, Engadget, Ars Technica, iPhone in Canada Blog, Daring Fireball, SlashGear, LAPTOP Magazine and MacRumors. Tweets: @drbarnard

Glenn Peoples / Billboard:

Rap Genius and Sony/ATV Reveal Licensing Deal (Exclusive) — Rap Genius, the online lyric site with financial backing from Silicon Valley heavyweights, has signed its first licensing deal. Billboard has learned the Brooklyn-based startup has a licensing agreement with Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

More: NME, A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, The Trichordist, Digital Trends and The Verge

Ashlee Vance / Businessweek:

Several companies race to build specialized chips for mining Bitcoins — Bitcoin Mining Chips, a High-Tech Arms Race — The easiest way to get a Bitcoin is to buy one. You can join drug dealers, speculators, and the curious by hopping onto an online exchange and purchasing one unit …

More: Valleywag. Tweets: @bw, @valleyhack and @valleyhack

Nick Wingfield / New York Times:

Case of Georgia Tech professor illustrates risks in taking university research commercial — Reaching for Silicon Valley — Joy Laskar was not what you'd typically think of as a threat to public safety. — At the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where he was a professor …

Tweets: @nytimesbusiness, @bobmetcalfe, @stephenfleming and @xamat

Derrick Harris / Gigaom:

How Amazon is building substations, laying fiber and generally doing everything to keep cloud costs down — If there's anyone still left wondering how it is that large cloud providers can keep on rolling out new features and lowering their prices even when no one is complaining about them …

More: NYT Bits

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:

Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM — This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.

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.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Grit:

Ex-Twitter CEO on Why AI Needs a New Internet | Parag Agrawal

Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.

Subscribe to Grit.

Lenny's Podcast:

Anthropic's first technical PM on token maxing, the jagged edge, and living in the future | Dianne Penn

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:

What Happens If AI Fails?, Subprime Data Center Crisis, How Bad Can SpaceX Get?

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:

OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting

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.

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.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:50 PM ET, November 17, 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.