Techmeme: How to bet against the bitcoin megabubble (Stephen Gandel/Fortune)

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December 9, 2013, 5:05 AM

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Reform Government Surveillance:

Global Government Surveillance Reform — The undersigned companies believe that it is time for the world's governments to address the practices and laws regulating government surveillance of individuals and access to their information. While the undersigned companies understand …

More: Guardian, Gizmodo, Business Insider, Computerworld, TechCrunch, Gigaom, TechNet Blogs, GeekWire, CNET, 9to5Google, 9to5Mac, The Verge, The Next Web, PC World, iPhone Hacks, A VC, PhoneArena, App Advice and Android Beat

Tweets: @antichrista, @mattrosoff, @trevortimm, @segphault, @bradsmi, @cdixon, @nikcub, @sdw, @alexisohanian and @csoghoian

New York Times:

Tech Giants Issue Call for Limits on Government Surveillance of Users — Eight prominent technology companies, bruised by revelations of government spying on their customers' data and scrambling to repair the damage to their reputations, are mounting a public campaign to urge President Obama …

More: Digits, Microsoft Corporation, The Hill, BBC, Washington Post, Softpedia News, ABC News, Reuters, Cult of Mac, Guardian and Mashable

Tweets: @dannyyadron, @mikeisaac, @zpez, @clairecm, @dannyyadron, @0xabad1dea and @jbrodkin

Meghan Kelly / VentureBeat:

Facebook, Google, Twitter, and more create the Reform Government Surveillance coalition

More: MacRumors, Engadget and Guardian. Tweets: @tojiro

Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:

NSA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, former U.S. officials say — Morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency's surveillance activities, according to former officials who say they are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support.

More: emptywheel, Gawker and Global Nerdy

Tweets: @jerezim, @manish_vij, @radleybalko, @ron_miller, @broodman, @grady_booch and @rsingel

Janet Reitman / Rolling Stone:

Snowden and Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the Secrets — How two alienated, angry geeks broke the story of the year — Early one morning last December, Glenn Greenwald opened his laptop, scanned through his e-mail, and made a decision that almost cost him the story of his life.

Tweets: @kgcentral, @justinraimondo, @thomas_drake1 and @jaredbkeller

Tim Wu / The New Republic:

Binge-viewing was just the beginning. Netflix has a plan to rewire our entire culture — Given all the faces you see glued to computers, tablets, and cell phones, you might think that people watch much less television than they used to. You would be wrong.

More: Gigaom and VizWorld.com. Tweets: @simondingle, @vivwalt and @adamwestbrook

Stephen Gandel / Fortune:

How to bet against the bitcoin megabubble — One reason the virtual currency has been soaring could that figuring out how to profit from its fall is tough. — FORTUNE — Can you bet on the likely eventual bitcoin crash? — You bet. But it's an expensive trade.

More: Bloomberg and Forbes. Tweets: @noupside and @bobmcmillan

USA Today:

Local police get metadata dumps from cellular providers, spoof towers using Stingray devices — Cellphone data spying: It's not just the NSA — Police maintain that cellphone data can help solve crimes, track fugitives or abducted children — or even foil a terror attack.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @mattblaze, @pchopl, @thomas_drake1, @csoghoian, @megangeuss, @onekade, @glennbeck and @mattblaze

Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:

Agencies collected data on Americans' cellphone use in thousands of ‘tower dumps’

Tweets: @jujueyeball and @csoghoian

Jada F. Smith / New York Times:

Slowly They Modernize: A Federal Agency That Still Uses Floppy Disks — WASHINGTON — The technology troubles that plagued the HealthCare.gov website rollout may not have come as a shock to people who work for certain agencies of the government — especially those who still use floppy disks, the cutting-edge technology of the 1980s.

More: Guardian, Daily Dot, Gawker and Business Insider

Julie Bort / Business Insider:

The Sad Story Behind Yahoo's Latest Startup Acquisition: Ptch — On Wednesday we reported that Yahoo acquired a mobile app called Ptch and will shut it down in a month. — Business Insider has since learned from multiple sources that Yahoo paid $6.5 million for Ptch.

More: NBC Bay Area and TechCrunch. Tweets: @karaswisher, @jyarow and @stevekovach

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

“Hour of Code” Calls on Students to Program Computers, With Support From Obama (and the Republicans, Too!) — By now you may have heard about the United States' woeful lack of public coding classes, despite the economy's ever-growing need for technical workers.

More: VentureBeat, The Verge, TechCrunch, Digits, MSDN Blogs, CNET, NYT Bits and Lifehacker

Klint Finley / Wired:

New website ranks database popularity, shows continued growth for non-relational systems — New Site Tracks the Cracks in Oracle's Empire — Oracle is one of the most successful companies in the history of tech. But like any tech giant, it can be overturned.

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

The Test Begins: Do Google Shopping & Other Shopping Search Engines Give You The Best Deals? — It sounds pretty damning. Two recent surveys suggest that Google Shopping isn't leading searchers to the best prices on products. But the surveys weren't well documented …

Thanks:@sidharthdassani

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